Psychohistorical Crisis Read online

  How did one defend oneself against such a machine? Bits of odd information came to Eron’s organic mind from the Order of Zenoli Warriors. There was an attack move—kai-un—he could make right now that would sweep his leathery fam from Jars’ hands (breaking them) while propelling his body into a swinging thrust that would take out the three bailiffs before they could even think about using their neuronic whips. It would be over in half a jiff.

  Except... even his muddled mind knew that the zenoli reflexes were no longer there, that his muscles were out of training, that zenoli skills required the intercession of a fam. It was weird to be so certain of this; he had no idea when he had last trained or what it meant to be zenoli.

  He stood at a moment of entropic no return. All that he valued was about to cease. His wishes did not count... yet still, at this last moment, he couldn’t resign; he willed time to freeze... futilely. The fingers of Jars Hanis continued to move forward, as if holding garbage, then slacked their grip. Eron’s eyes attached to his fam as it went spinning down, into the maw of the disintegrator. The opal turbulence there erupted into a flash of coruscations—which sank away immediately. In the finality of that flash the resolving capacity of Eron’s conscious mind had been degraded by a factor of a hundred. He would never be able to awaken from his haze. Never...

  The petaled maw closed. A whole life’s work—uncountable skills, his off-loaded memories, the nuances of an active life—all lost to oblivion. And those secret love poems... Vm dead, thought Eron in shock. They had confined him inside the mind of an animal! What foolish thing did I do to come to this? Gone was his vast hoard of associated data, far larger than any organic brain could hold, gone were his quantronic agents, his research staff, his reminders, his organizers. He no longer knew even enough about what he had done to repent for his sins. He couldn’t release his eyes from the machine of his death.

  Anger, uncontrolled by his fam, was surprising him with its intensity. He needed distracting. While slow tears leaked from the pressure vessel of a monumental rage, he glanced upward again at the glory of a distant ceiling. At least his senses were alive! Other than the rage, his organic mind seemed to be working well, what sluggish little there was of it. Is this what a dog felt like in a viceroy’s palace?

  He was escorted by the bailiffs through the labyrinthine Lyceum to an obscure room among the laboratories and given plebeian clothes. The room was entirely white. The white was so soft that even comers seemed to blend into the whiteness. A narrow mirror showed a man in his early thirties, and that was the first time he had been able to calibrate his age. The bailiffs withdrew, leaving him with a slight woman in white whom he was tempted to flee—but he noticed the discreet presence of bulbous damping-field generators which she could probably arm faster than he could think. Or else they were built-in roboguards ready to interfere if his actions went beyond certain parameters. The bailiffs had only been for show. The lethal mechanical controls were hidden.

  Then he noticed the tentacled machine. He had almost missed the calibration and training apparatus—which was also all white; the technician who stood beside the calibrator was unwrapping a fam! Great Space! His judges weren’t intending to leave him as a famless cripple? It was a wildly exhilarating hope! A man reduced to the state of an unbalanced landlubber cartwheeling around his arse aboard a buffeted ship in microgravity is grateful for any offer that promises him familiar stability. And if it wasn’t his fam, it was a fam!

  The technician seated him in her calibration chair and left him to undergo a spinal scan. When she returned she began to instruct him brightly in the use of this common-issue fam, while checking her holos and asking questions as she made adjustments to the fit. This fam contained none of his memories or his hard-earned abilities—but it did hold useful behaviors to guide him within the planetopolis maze; it could provide him with info about government regulations, manage his new pension, or act as an extensive reference library. The library seemed to include a repertoire of behaviors that he surmised wryly might be appropriate for a reformed criminal. A government-issue soul for the executed. It was far from optimal, but it would have to do. Would he be able to upgrade its mathematical abilities?

  The room’s entrance shutter, behind Eron, silently admitted a second man. Eron remained unaware of the arrival until fingers at his neck were removing his newly adjusted fam. He turned, ready to grab it back. One of the judges. What now? Hope given and hope withdrawn? With a curt phrase the old Pscholar dismissed the technician. He did not elaborate beyond his dismissal, his eyes fixed on the woman until she was out of sight behind the wall’s sound barrier. Even then he waited. He turned to Eron. It was a sluggish moment before Eron identified the judge who had made the feeble protest attempt on the rostrum.

  “Well, boy, are you able to recognize me? I have to make this visit a quick one. We won’t have time to get reacquainted.”

  “Your face is very familiar. I’m sure we’ve met”

  The grizzled Pscholar snorted. “You were a student of mine when you were in your arrogant twenties—and a good one. You probably can’t even remember why you should be sorry you left my protection. I regret that I have been in no position to help you. Even my heaviest guns don’t have that kind of range. Let me introduce myself. Hahukum Konn.”

  The name, and the fierce expression, triggered organic memories that he hadn’t been able to access without the mediation of his quantronic fam. “The Admiral-Engineer?” It was a weird memory that couldn ft be real but one so vivid he couldn’t let it go. It was a dream from the dawn of science. Konn wore the blue uniform and thirteen-starred tricorn of an Admiral of Ultimate Sam’s Amazing Air Fangs—mercenary fighters of ancient Rith? “I remember—maybe a dream—together we were flying over Girmani in a roaring winged battleship of our own make. You were grinning like a maniac all the way. I can still hear the roar—it went on for hours. When we landed there were cheering crowds of ugly sapiens waving swastikas. I remember the dancing.”

  “You remember that, do you?” Silently he took out of his pockets some flat photos, shuffled through them, and handed Eron a picture of the two of them beside a preposterous but half-familiar riveted battleship. “Do you remember yourself calling me the Crazy Admiral, not to my face, of course?” “You had a cook. Magda. She died here on Splendid Wisdom. I remember you reading poetry to your cook.”

  The Pscholar snorted again. “I sincerely hope you are never going to be able to remember all the stories you used to know about me!” he exclaimed while glancing around to check, again, that they were alone. He opened his robe to poke with his finger at a spy beam suppressor on his belt. “I want no record of our chat. In the meantime are you able to understand me?”

  “I admit to a bad case of...” Eron searched for the right word. “... disorientation.”

  “Indeed we may have trouble conversing. Ninety-five percent of your vocabulary is gone. However, what’s left of it probably covers ninety-five percent of the words used in ordinary speech. If anything I say draws a blank, speak up.” Then he put a hand over the utility fam, which he had returned to its position upon the white table. “A warning. This bit of diabolical machinery is poison. Accept it gracefully to avoid suspicion—but don’t use it!” Konn paused, then repeated himself for emphasis. “Don’t use it!”

  “I’m supposed to spend the rest of my death famless?”* Eron’s obtuse recalcitrance annoyed the old psychohistorian. “You were once a very impetuous young man and had little respect for my excellent advice—mainly because you didn’t have the experience to understand it. I needed you and you failed me. You aren’t in any position to understand my advice now-—but take it! There are standard memories in that government-issue fam. It holds behaviors that will aid you in building a new life for yourself on Splendid Wisdom. But they’ll lead you along a comfortable trail that the old Eron Osa would not have wanted you to take.”

  “I’ve got to have a fam, even if it is standard issue.” “Stubborn to the core! You onl
y need one because you are addicted to a test rating in the thousands. Why are you so sure you can’t function without? Because everyone else has one? Because you’ve never been smart enough to disconnect from your fam and exercise your naked brain to keep it animal-sharp? Do you need a fam? It depends upon where you have to function. If you travel in space, you need a spacesuit—but your body can stay alive quite nicely without a spacesuit if you confine yourself to the surface of a habitable planet That late model of body you inhabit has almost two hundred thousand years of testing built into it; your organic parts have been tested to destruction billions of times and refined for millions of years, many for hundreds of millions of years.

  “Now look at this fam thing. It was only invented, in its first crude form, during the Dark Interregnum. Men just as incompetent and as confused as you are right now were able to build the First Galactic Empire over a period of ten millennia and, for another two, hold it together under a government that spanned the spiral aims. What makes you think you’ve got to have a fam?”

  “I’m a psychohistorian,” Eron whispered.

  A flicker between pity and anger crossed Hahukum” s eyes. “Eron Osa. Understand this. You are through as a psychohistorian. Through Build a new career. As artist As street clown. Your genius was part of the fam you grew attached to as a child. It was a symbiosis. It’s gone. Your organic brain is probably one of the finest mathematical talents in the Galaxy—certainly the equal of our Founder’s—but, famless, it probably has only three to five percent of the capacity it wielded only a few watches ago. And yes, the Founder was a famless psychohistorian,” Konn added, enjoying his back-handed put down of a .man they all revered. It was Komi’s pointed way of emphasizing how far psychohistory had come since its pauper beginnings.

  Eron wasn’t ready to let another fam get out of his grasp; his arm almost twitched as he prepared to sneak it to a less visible place. Hahukum noticed and gripped Eron’s hand, easing it away from temptation. “Don’t even think about it, boy. All fams aren’t the same. Would you marry your parole officer? Bide your time. A good fam is worth waiting for. Meanwhile search out some of the old mental disciplines. You need a bout of mental calisthenics. From what I can deduce of your past month’s performance, your organic brain has gone shockingly flabby—or you would never have permitted yourself this mess.”

  “What was my crime?” asked Eron, desperate to know.

  Again the Admiral ripped out his snort. I'll never tell you. I’m just as afraid as Hanis that you’ll do it all over again—even minus your quantronic thumbs. Information in a fam-neural system is distributed in some ways like a hologram, and so an enormous amount of that which was stored in your fam will have degraded representations in your organic brain. You’ll regain pieces of it—and tantalizing hints of the rest. My certainty is that you’ll never be able to recreate all that you were. Too much is missing... I hope.”

  It was infuriating to be condemned yet not allowed the knowledge to repent! What had he done! Again rage staggered Eron, even as he knew rage was unlike his normal self. “Kill me then! Kill me like you killed my fam!”

  The blast of emotion caused the Admiral’s defenses to trigger his personal force-shield; he had to smile while deactivating it. “But killing you wouldn’t help”—he sighed— “any more than vaporizing your fam has helped. Jars Hanis is as wrong as a man can be. Psychohistorical crises aren’t precipitated by the actions of one man. This historical crisis began in the quiet of the interstellar night long before you were bom. It does not depend upon you to proceed. Jars is a creature of the suns. My nightly vision sees the ghosts of future events centuries beyond his range.” Scorn. “If you’d worked with me, you would have been part of the solution.” Regret. “You wanted to be part of the problem.” Anger. “It’s too late now for either. You’re out of the game.” Resignation. “And damn it, I could have used you. In my futile fantasies I travel back in time and discover you when you were a twelve-year-old hothead and offer you a fabulous scholarship—under my guidance.”

  “Did you know me back then?” asked Eron with an eager curiosity.

  “When you were unspoiled and empty-headed? No,” said Konn wryly. “I tested a few ideas in the Ulmat Constellation during your youth and so chance might have put us together then—but it didn’t. It’s a big Galaxy. Maybe even I couldn’t have saved you.”

  “I can save myself.” From where his defiance came, he did not know. It seemed to be an integral part of his personality. “I’m going to reestablish myself as a psychohistorian ” “No.” The negative wasn’t a refusal; it was just sadness and a sigh. “No, you’re not. Forget it!”

 
  “More than you ever knew.”

  Overwhelming grief. “Help me. I have to start somewhere.” Eron was suddenly bawling and it shocked him, to be shaking like that, real tears running down a convulsing face. He had expected his fam to modulate his grief, and again his fam wasn’t there. How weird to be an animal. “There must..he said between sobs w... be something...” he took a breath “... I can do.”

  Hahukum didn’t have the heart to discourage the boy with more good advice. He didn’t know what to do or say. He pulled out a small printed book that he often carried with him.

  “Try this. You were fond of books when I knew you. I often read this one when I’m fam-disconnected. Exercise for the raw brain. Makes it work. Takes me back to my animal roots. Dissociation is not popular but my belief has always been that disconnecting from one’s fam is healthy once in a while. I do it regularly” He grinned. “Of course, maybe I’m just getting ready to survive the time when Hanis gets to do to me what he did to you.” Eron did not take the book and so Konn pressed it into his hands. “I’m serious. Read it.”

  “With my eyes?” The tears were gone as quickly as they had come. He had gone from grief to being appalled.

  “You’re expecting to download?” asked Hahukum sarcastically.

  Eron stared at the slim book. He was used to scanning them in with his fam; it was hundreds of times faster that way. The book wore a gold title in an obsolete typeface. Selected Essays by the Founder Eron was shocked by how difficult it was to read even that much.

  “People quote the Master a lot,” said Konn wryly. “They talk about him in grand terms—but they never read him. Obsolete. But I like his stuff.” He waited until he had caught Eron’s direct gaze. “I’ve always been impressed by how much our Founder did with so little. Pretty good stuff for a mere famless mind.” He held Eron’s gaze commandingly. It was his way of giving Eron hope, though he had none himself. The Founder, famless, had taught himself psychohistory.

  “Thanks. I wish I could remember having worked with you.”

  “My mother gave me the book a long, long time ago.

  Down in the nether worlds ” He pointed at his feet, referring to the lower depths of Splendid Wisdom. “She was barely making grade as a tax clerk. She wanted me to be somebody. Mothers are like that.” He smiled wistfully. “Fathers, too.”

  2

  IN THE LAIR DFTHE ADMIRAL, 14,790 GE

  "Death haunts an Emperor as he grows wise in mind and feeble in body. Haunted he seeks a king/y son out among this starry expanse of suns—where there are no sons "

  —Soliloquy of the Emperor Maximoy-the-Polite, from Act 3 of Valodian’s last play, The Twilight of an Emperor. Valodian is credited with reviving the tradition of the Lament as it was perfected in the 98th century GE.

  When Eron Osa was twelve years old and the Founder had been dead for more than twenty-seven centuries, “Admiral” Hahukum Konn was already a feisty eighty-three. For decades he had been trolling the ocean of galactic space in search of the Second Empire’s mysterious adversary whose shadow self skulked through his ocean of numbers. This year he had a first nibble, but wasn’t sure the fish (or the flotsam) was still hooked. The Ulmat Constellation seemed to be the first of the anomalous regions to have reacted to one of his discrete probes.

&nb
sp; He paced patiently to and fro across the shining floor of “Hahukum’s Bridge” waiting for his then most valuable student to arrive—Nejirt Kambu was brilliant, a possible successor, often late for appointments. But the “Admiral” never waited or paced with an idle mind; now his attention bided the time by focusing itself on the needs of his wounded battleship.

  Behind sleeping forcefield spires, the colossal warship brooded in defiance of its terrible dismemberment, a black and skinless superstructure of spars and ribs and breakup-bulkheads—still breathing—as if being stripped, exposed, and flayed had not yet brought defeat, only the readiness to strike out with one last deadly flash at anyone from the stars who dared to attack*

  Beyond was the panorama of a mottled planet under siege.

  The Horezkor was a major warship of the Middle Empire period, produced in minor quantities, the first one being commissioned in the year 5517 GE. Almost three thousand were built during that century, many serving well beyond normal retirement age.

  “The Mad Admiral” had been working with pleasure on this unfinished model of the ancient Imperial dreadnought The Horezkor dominated the ebony hover-space above the bridge’s workshop table. So formidable was this vast war-machine that it cast upon Konn an unreal aura, as if he were a giant placed among the stars. One might hardly notice that both ship and man were embedded in a vast scholarly maze deep inside the Lyceum metropolis where students were apprenticed to the psychohistorians of Splendid Wisdom’s Second Empire, a Lyceum itself embedded in a planetary city that regulated the commerce and life of the Galaxy.