Foundation's Fear Read Online Free Page A

Foundation's Fear
Book: Foundation's Fear Read Online Free
Author: Gregory Benford
Tags: Retail, Personal
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He knew full well he could never comprehend such people.
    “So give me an idea. Something psychohistorical.”
    Hari was intrigued by the problem, but nothing came to mind. He had long ago learned to deliberately not concentrate on a vexing question immediately, letting his subconscious have first crack. To gain time he asked, “Sire, you saw the smoke beyond the gardens?”
    “Um? No.” Cleon gave a quick hand signal to unseen eyes and the far wall blossomed with light. A full holo of the gardens filled the massive space. The oily black plume had grown. It coiled snakelike into the gray sky.
    A soft, neutral voice spoke in midair. “A breakdown, with insurrection by mechanicals, has caused this unfortunate lapse in domestic order.”
    “A tiktok riot?” This sort of thing Hari had heard about.
    Cleon rose and walked toward the holo. “Ah yes, another recalcitrant riddle. For some reason the mechanicals are going awry. Look at that! How many levels are burning?”
    “Twelve levels are aflame,” the autovoice answered. “Imperial Analysis estimates a death toll of four hundred thirty-seven, within an uncertainty of eighty-four.”
    “Imperial cost?” Cleon demanded.
    “Minor. Some Imperial Regulars were hurt in subduing mechanicals.”
    “Ah. Well then, it is a small matter.” Cleon watched as the wall close-upped. The view plunged down a smoking pit. To the side, like a blazing layer cake, whole floors curled up from the heat. Sparks shot between electrical boosters. Burst pipes showered the flames but had little effect.
    Then a distant view, telescoping up into orbit. The program was giving the Emperor an eyeful, showing off its capabilities. Hari guessed that it didn’t often get the chance. Cleon the Calm was one derisive nickname for him, for he seemed bored with most matters that moved men.
    From space, the only deep green was the Imperial Gardens—just a splotch amid the grays and browns of roofs and roof-agriculture. Charcoal-black solar collectors and burnished steel, pole to pole. The ice caps had dissipated long ago and the seas sloshed in underground cisterns.
    Trantor supported forty billion people in a world-wrapping single city, seldom less than half a kilometer deep. Sealed, protected, its billions had long grown used to recycled air and short perspectives, and feared the open spaces a mere elevator ride away.
    The view zoomed down into the smoky pit again.Hari could see tiny figures leaping to their deaths to escape the flames. Hundreds dying …Hari’s stomach lurched. In crowded stacks of humanity, accidents took a fearsome toll.
    Still, Hari calculated, there were on average only a hundred people in a square kilometer of the planet’s surface. People jammed into the more popular Sectors out of preference, not necessity. With the seas pumped below, there was ample room for automated factories, deep mines, and immense, cavernous growing pods, where raw materials for food emerged with little direct human labor needed. These wearisome chores the tiktoks did. But now they were bringing mayhem to the intricacy that was Trantor, and Cleon fumed as he watched the disaster grow, eating away whole layers with fiery teeth.
    More figures writhed in the orange flames. These were people, not statistics, he reminded himself. Bile rose in his throat. To be a leader meant that sometimes you had to look away from the pain. Could he do that?
    “Another puzzle, my Seldon,” Cleon said abruptly. “Why do the tiktoks have these large-scale ‘disorders’ my advisers keep telling me about? Ah?”
    “I do not—”
    “There must be some psychohistorical explanation!”
    “These tiny phenomena may well lie beyond—”
    “Work on it! Find out!”
    “Uh, yes, sire.”
    Hari knew enough to let Cleon pad pointlessly around the vault, frowning at the continuing wall-high scenes of carnage, in utter silence. Perhaps, Hari thought, the Emperor was calm because he had seen so much calamity already. Even
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