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Chapter One . . . Undoubtedly his greatest contributions were in the field of psychohistory. Seldon found the field little more than a set of vague axioms; he left it a profound statistical science. . . . . . . The best existing authority we have for the details of his life is the biography written by Gaal Dornick who, as a young man, met Seldon two years before the great mathematician's death. The story of the meeting . . . ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA 1 His name was Gaal Dornick and he was just a country boy who had never seen Trantor before. That is, not in real life. He had seen it many times on the hyper-video, and occasionally in tremendous three-dimensional newscasts covering an Imperial Coronation or the opening of a Galactic Council. Even though he had lived all his life on the world of Synnax, which circled a star at the edges of the Blue Drift, he was not cut off from civilization, you see. At that time, no place in the Galaxy was. There were nearly twenty-five million inhabited planets in the Galaxy then, and not one but owed allegiance to the Empire whose seat was on Trantor. It was the last half-century in which that could be said. To Gaal, this trip was the undoubted climax of his young, scholarly life. He had been in space before so that the trip, as a voyage and nothing more, meant little to him. To be sure, he had traveled previously only as far as Synnax's only satellite in order to get the data on the mechanics of meteor driftage which he needed for his dissertation, but space-travel was all one whether one travelled half a million miles, or as many light years. He had steeled himself just a little for the Jump through hyper-space, a phenomenon one did not experience in simple interplanetary trips. The Jump remained, and would probably remain forever, the only practical method of travelling between the stars. Travel through ordinary space could proceed at no rate more rapid than that of ordinary light (a bit of scientific knowledge that belonged among the items known since the forgotten dawn of human history), and that would have meant years of travel between even the nearest of inhabited systems. Through hyper-space, that unimaginable region that was neither space nor time, matter nor energy, something nor nothing, one could traverse the length of the Galaxy in the interval between two neighboring instants of time. Gaal had waited for the first of those jumps with a little dread curled gently in his stomach, and it ended in nothing more than a trifling jar, a little internal kick which ceased an instant before he could be sure he had felt it. That was all. And after that, there was only the ship, large and glistening; the cool production of 12,000 years of Imperial progress; and himself, with his doctorate in mathematics freshly obtained and an invitation from the great Hari Seldon to come to Trantor and join the vast and somewhat mysterious Seldon Project. What Gaal was waiting for after the disappointment of the Jump was that first sight of Trantor. He haunted the View-room. The steel shutter-lids were rolled back at announced times and he was always there, watching the hard brilliance of the stars, enjoying the incredible hazy swarm of a star cluster, like a giant conglomeration of fireflies caught in mid-motion and stilled forever. At one time there was the cold, blue-white smoke of a gaseous nebula within five light years of the ship, spreading over the window like distant milk, filling the room with an icy tinge, and...  $0.84 Rewards
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Adobe ePub [ 0.4 Mb ]Street Date: Tuesday, June 1, 2004 Adobe Digital Edition [ 0.9 Mb ]Street Date: Tuesday, June 1, 2004 Microsoft Reader [ 0.4 Mb ]Street Date: Tuesday, June 1, 2004 eReader [ 0.2 Mb ]Street Date: Tuesday, June 1, 2004 From the book BEL RIOSE. . . . In his relatively short career, Riose earned the title of "The Last of the Imperials" and earned it well. A study of his campaigns reveals him to be the equal of Peurifoy in strategic ability and his superior perhaps in his ability to handle men. That he was born in the days of the decline of Empire made it all but impossible for him to equal Peurifoy's record as a conqueror. Yet he had his chance when, the first of the Empire's generals to do so, he faced the Foundation squarely. . . .encyclopedia galactica 1 SEARCH FOR MAGICIANS Bel Riose traveled without escort, which is not what court etiquette prescribes for the head of a fleet stationed in a yet-sullen stellar system on the Marches of the Galactic Empire. But Bel Riose was young and energetic--energetic enough to be sent as near the end of the universe as possible by an unemotional and calculating court--and curious besides. Strange and improbable tales fancifully repeated by hundreds and murkily known to thousands intrigued the last faculty; the possibility of a military venture engaged the other two. The combination was overpowering. He was out of the dowdy ground-car he had appropriated and at the door of the fading mansion that was his destination. He waited. The photonic eye that spanned the doorway was alive, but when the door opened it was by hand. Bel Riose smiled at the old man. "I am Riose--" "I recognize you." The old man remained stiffly and unsurprised in his place. "Your business?" Riose withdrew a step in a gesture of submission. "One of peace. If you are Ducem Barr, I ask the favor of conversation." Ducem Barr stepped aside and in the interior of the house the walls glowed into life. The general entered into daylight. He touched the wall of the study, then stared at his fingertips. "You have this on Siwenna?" Barr smiled thinly. "Not elsewhere, I believe. I keep this in repair myself as well as I can. I must apologize for your wait at the door. The automatic device registers the presence of a visitor but will no longer open the door." "Your repairs fall short?" The general's voice was faintly mocking. "Parts are no longer available. If you will sit, sir. You drink tea?" "On Siwenna? My good sir, it is socially impossible not to drink it here." The old patrician retreated noiselessly with a slow bow that was part of the ceremonious legacy left by the aristocracy of the last century's better days. Riose looked after his host's departing figure, and his studied urbanity grew a bit uncertain at the edges. His education had been purely military; his experience likewise. He had, as the cliche has it, faced death many times; but always death of a very familiar and tangible nature. Consequently, there is no inconsistency in the fact that the idolized lion of the Twentieth Fleet felt chilled in the suddenly musty atmosphere of an ancient room. The general recognized the small black-ivroid boxes that lined the shelves to be books. Their titles were unfamiliar. He guessed that the large structure at one end of the room was the receiver that transmuted the books into sight-and-sound on demand. He had never seen one in operation; but he had heard of them. Once he had been told that long before, during the golden ages when the Empire had been co-extensive with the entire Galaxy, nine houses out of every ten had such receivers--and such rows of...  $6.99
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Adobe ePub [ 0.4 Mb ]Street Date: Tuesday, June 1, 2004 Adobe Digital Edition [ 0.9 Mb ]Street Date: Tuesday, June 1, 2004 Microsoft Reader [ 0.4 Mb ]Street Date: Tuesday, June 1, 2004 eReader [ 0.2 Mb ]Street Date: Tuesday, June 1, 2004 From the book THE MULE It was after the fall of the First Foundation that the constructive aspects of the Mule's regime took shape. After the definite break-up of the first Galactic Empire, it was he who first presented history with a unified volume of space truly imperial in scope. The earlier commercial empire of the fallen Foundation had been diverse and loosely knit, despite the impalpable backing of the predictions of psychohistory. It was not to be compared with the tightly controlled "Union of Worlds" under the Mule, particularly during the era of the so-called Search. . . .ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA 1 TWO MEN AND THE MULE There is much more that the Encyclopedia has to say on the subject of the Mule and his Empire but almost all of it is not germane to the issue at immediate hand, and most of it is considerably too dry for our purposes in any case. Mainly, the article concerns itself at this point with the economic conditions that led to the rise of the "First Citizen of the Union"--the Mule's official title--and with the economic consequences thereof. If, at any time, the writer of the article is mildly astonished at the colossal haste with which the Mule rose from nothing to vast dominion in five years, he conceals it. If he is further surprised at the sudden cessation of expansion in favor of a five-year consolidation of territory, he hides the fact. We therefore abandon the Encyclopedia and continue on our own path for our own purposes and take up the history of the Great Interregnum--between the First and Second Galactic Empires--at the end of that five years of consolidation. Politically, the Union is quiet. Economically, it is prosperous. Few would care to exchange the peace of the Mule's steady grip for the chaos that had preceded. On the worlds that five years previously had known the Foundation, there might be a nostalgic regret, but no more. The Foundation's leaders were dead, where useless; and Converted, where useful. And of the Converted, the most useful was Han Pritcher, now lieutenant general. In the days of the Foundation, Han Pritcher had been a captain and a member of the underground Democratic Opposition. When the Foundation fell to the Mule without a fight, Pritcher fought the Mule. Until, that is, he was Converted. The Conversion was not the ordinary one brought on by the power of superior reason. Han Pritcher knew that well enough. He had been changed because the Mule was a mutant with mental powers quite capable of adjusting the conditions of ordinary humans to suit himself. But that satisfied him completely. That was as it should be. The very contentment with the Conversion was a prime symptom of it, but Han Pritcher was no longer even curious about the matter. And now that he was returning from his fifth major expedition into the boundlessness of the Galaxy outside the Union, it was with something approaching artless joy that the veteran spaceman and Intelligence agent considered his approaching audience with the "First Citizen." His hard face, gouged out of a dark, grainless wood that did not seem to be capable of smiling without cracking, didn't show it--but the outward indications were unnecessary. The Mule could see the emotions within, down to the smallest, much as an ordinary man could see the twitch of an eyebrow. Pritcher left his air car at the old vice-regal hangars and entered the palace grounds on foot as was required. He walked one mile... $0.24 Rewards
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Chapter One Do you know me? Do you know where you are? Oh, Malenfant . . . I know you. And you're just what you always were, an incorrigible space cadet. That's how we both finished up stranded here, isn't it? I remember how I loved to hear you talk when we were kids. When everybody else was snuggling at the drive-in, you used to lec- ture me on how space is a high frontier, a sky to be mined, a resource for humanity. But is that all there is? Is the sky really nothing more than an empty stage for mankind to strut and squabble? And what if we blew ourselves up before we ever got to the stars? Would the universe just evolve on, a huge piece of clockwork slowly running down, utterly devoid of life and mind? How--desolating. Surely it couldn't be like that. All those suns and worlds spinning through the void, the grand complexity of creation unwinding all the way out of the Big Bang itself . . . You always said you just couldn't believe that there was nobody out there looking back at you down here. But if so, where is everybody? This is the Fermi Paradox--right, Malenfant? If the aliens existed, they would be here. I heard you lecture on that so often I could recite it in my sleep. But I agree with you. It's powerful strange. I'm sure Fermi is telling us something very profound about the nature of the universe we live in. It is as if we are all embedded in a vast graph of possibilities, a graph with an axis marked time, for our own future destiny, and an axis marked space, for the possibilities of the universe. Much of your life has been shaped by thinking about that cosmic graph. Your life and, as a consequence, mine. Well, on every graph there is a unique point, the place where the axes cross. It's called the origin. Which is where we've finished up, isn't it, Malenfant? And now we know why we were alone . . . But, you know, one thing you never considered was the subtext. Alone or not alone--why do we care so much? I always knew why. We care because we are lonely. I understood that because I was lonely. I was lonely before you stranded me here, in this terrible place, this Red Moon. I lost you to the sky long ago. Now you found me here--but you're leaving me again, aren't you, Malenfant? . . . Malenfant? Can you hear me? Do you know me? Do you know who you are?--Oh. Watch the Earth, Malenfant. Watch the Earth . . . Manekatopokanemahedo This is how it is, how it was, how it came to be. It began in the afterglow of the Big Bang, that brief age when stars still burned. Humans arose on an Earth. Emma, perhaps it was your Earth. Soon they were alone. Humans spread over their world. They spread in waves across the universe, sprawling and brawling and breeding and dying and evolving. There were wars, there was love, there was life and death. Minds flowed together in great rivers of consciousness, or shattered in sparkling droplets. There was immortality to be had, of a sort, a continuity of identity through copying and confluence across billions upon billions of years. Everywhere humans found life: crude replicators, of carbon or silicon or metal, churning meaninglessly in the dark. Nowhere did they find mind--save what they brought with them or created--no other against which human advancement could be tested. They came to understand that they would forever be alone. With time, the... $0.27 Rewards
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Chapter One Aaron spent the whole day mingling with the faithful of the Living Dream movement in Golden Park's vast plaza, eavesdropping on their restless talk about the succession, drinking water from the mobile catering stalls, trying to find some shade from the searing sun as the heat and coastal humidity rose relentlessly. He thought he remembered arriving at daybreak; certainly the expanse of marble cobbles had been virtually empty as he had walked across it. The tips of the splendid white metal pillars surrounding the area had been crowned with rose-gold light as the local star rose above the horizon. He had smiled appreciatively at the outline of the replica city, matching the topography surrounding Golden Park with the dreams he had gathered from the gaiafield over the last . . . well, for quite some time. Golden Park had started to fill up rapidly after that, with the faithful arriving from the other districts of Makkathran2 across the canal bridges, ferried in by a fleet of gondolas. By midday there must have been close to a hundred thousand of them. All faced the Orchard Palace, which sprawled possessively like a huddle of high dunes over the Anemone district on the other side of the Outer Circle Canal. There they waited with badly disguised impatience for the Cleric Council to come to a decision--any sort of decision. The Council had been in conclave for three days now. How long could they possibly take to elect a new Conservator? At one point that morning he had edged his way right up to the Outer Circle Canal, close to the central wire-and-wood bridge that arched over to Anemone. It was closed, of course, as were the other two bridges in that section. Although in ordinary times anyone from the ultradevout to curious tourist could cross over and wander around the vast Orchard Palace, this day it had been sealed off by fit-looking junior Clerics who had undergone a lot of muscle enrichment. Camped out to one side of the temporarily forbidden bridge were hundreds of journalists from all over the Greater Commonwealth, most of them outraged by the stubborn refusal of Living Dream to leak information their way. They were easily identifiable by their chic modern clothes and by faces that obviously were maintained at peak gloss by a membrane of cosmetic scales. Not even Advancer DNA produced complexions that good. Behind them the bulk of the crowd buzzed about, discussing their favorite candidates. If Aaron was judging the mood correctly, just about ninety-five percent of them were rooting for Ethan. They wanted him because they were done with waiting, with patience, with the status quo preached by all the other lackluster caretakers since the Dreamer himself, Inigo, had slipped away from public life. They wanted someone who would bring their whole movement to that blissful moment of fulfillment they had been promised from the moment they had tasted Inigo's first dream. Some time in the afternoon Aaron realized that the woman was watching him. Instinct smoothly clicked his awareness to her location--which was an interesting trait to know he had. From then on he was conscious of her: how she casually wandered in order to keep an easy distance between them, how she never had her eyes in his direction when he glanced at her. She wore a simple short-sleeved rusty-orange top and knee-length blue trousers of some modern fabric. A little different from the faithful--who tended to wear the more primitive rustic clothes of wool, cotton, and leather favored by Makkathran's citizens, but not contemporary enough to be obvious. Nor did her looks make her stand out, though she had a flattish face and a cute button nose; some of the time her... $0.24 Rewards
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