Second Foundation 02 Foundation And Chaos by Greg Bear

Author:Greg Bear [Bear, Greg]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-05-16T11:45:33.602000+00:00

�You�re the first visitor in two decades,� the image told him. �Please come again!� Lodovik stared at the image as it faded. He stepped out from under the overhang that shielded the doorway and strolled along a mid-class tier of the Agora of Vendors, among the Greys. So many pieces to fit together--in a puzzle thousands of years old, with so many pieces missing or deliberately obscured. What echoed through Lodovik�s positronic brain, cascading into conclusions that reinforced impressions and hypotheses already made, was the effect of Imperial culture (and brain fever?) on human nature. Where once the human race had laughed and reveled in the absurd, in the products of pure imagination, they now earnestly pursued stasis. The leading artists, scientists, engineers, philosophers, and politicians, were eager to confirm the discoveries of the past, not make new ones. And now, few even remembered the past well enough to know what had already been discovered! The past itself was no longer of interest--had not been for centuries, even thousands of years. The light had gone out. Stability and stasis across millennia had led to stagnation. Daneel uses his psychohistorian to confirm what he must already know--that the forest is overgrown, filled with rotten wood, desperately in need of a conflagration that he will not allow to happen! Lodovik paused at a surge of the crowd through the agora, listened to murmurs and shouts. A retinue of Imperial Specials was pushing through the crowd. Lodovik backed away, found an alley of smaller shops. He wanted to avoid making himself conspicuous in any way. He could not know who might be watching--and who might be reporting back to Daneel, human or robot. While he was not yet behaving suspiciously Just outside the alley, he heard a woman�s shrill shouts, commands. �Don�t let it get away!� He paused, turned, and saw two of the Specials turn into the alley, followed by a woman riding a small cart. He felt something brush through him, like a feather, and deduced instantly that the woman was a mentalic. He knew a little of the mentalics assembled by Hari Seldon to provide a backup and alternative to his First Foundation, but none of them were as strong as this woman--and none of them would have dreamed of pursuing him! Quite clearly, that was what the woman was doing. She pointed and screeched again. Lodovik knew it would make no difference if he altered his appearance--this woman was fixed on something below the surface. She recognizes your difference. Again the voice, the interior presence--producing a cascading conclusion he might not have reached by himself: the woman was feathering the fields associated with his iridium sponge brain! When pressed, Lodovik could move very rapidly indeed. One moment, the shoppers in the narrow alley of antiques dealers and sellers of trinkets became aware that the Specials were approaching a plump and homely looking man--and the next, he was gone. Vara Liso stood on her cart, her face flaming with anger and excitement.

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