“Now, Dors. In light of what just happened, would it be wise for me to answer that question?”

She responded with a shrug. If Lodovic had wanted to retaliate, it would have been easy at that point.

“Did I just kill a doppel? A dummy copy?”

“Will you hold it against me that I was so untrusting, Dors?”

Standing there, as Panucopia’s sun gradually set and their shadows lengthened, she had estimated the odds that Lodovic’s real brain lay inside the tiktok. If so, a second shot would eliminate the enemy for good.

“May I note one interesting observation, Dors?” The automaton had buzzed. “You just used the word ‘kill’ instead of ‘destroy’ or ‘deactivate.’ Shall I take that as a small sign of progress in our relationship?”

She was tempted to use the blaster again. But then, in all probability his real brain was somewhere in the forest, out of reach, controlling doppels from some hidden place of safety. So instead, with a humanlike sigh, she put away the pistol and reached for the box.

“There will be another time,” she said, taking up the burden as gingerly as a human would pick up a crate of poisonous snakes.

“That is what we robots have always been able to say, Dors. But time may be running out for our kind, sooner than you think.”

The only dignified thing she could do at that point was to let him have the last word. So Dors had turned without farewell and begun her long voyage home.

All the way back to Smushell, her sole company had been Lodovic’s gift, the ancient head. For a week it stared at her-metal-skulled and gem-eyed-containing the inactive brain of R. Giskard Reventlov.

Giskard the founder,who long ago helped Daneel develop the Zeroth Law.

Giskard the savior,who sacrificed himself in the act of rescuing human destiny, while ruthlessly destroying humanity’s birthplace.

Giskard the legendary,first of the mentalic robots, capable and willing to guide humans, nudging and shifting their thoughts and memories…for their own good.

Even now, with the ancient treasure safely ensconced in a secret niche of Klia Askar’s house, Dors could not yet bring herself to access its stored memories.

Instead, she stared at it, knowing exactly what she was looking at.

The head was a trap. A lure.

A test of faith,her Joan of Arc simulation would call it, as irresistible as any temptation faced by a human being.

If Lodovic wanted her to look inside, that must mean it contained something intoxicating, possibly a poison.

Something dangerous and unknown, despite the fact that she already had a clear name for it.

The truth.

Looking from his hotel-room balcony across the tree-lined avenues of Galactic Boulevard, it seemed easy for Hari to imagine this was some bucolic world of the periphery, not the “second imperial capital.”

Of course, there were statues and imposing monuments, gleaming in the sun. Countless commemorative shrines had been erected here during the last fifteen millennia, celebrating emperors and prefects, victories and victims, great events and greater accomplishments. Still, in contrast to mighty Trantor, everything seemed small of scale and slow of pace, befitting Demarchia’s true status as the forgotten junior partner, forsaken by power.

Even the Eight Houses of Parliament, glorious white structures that shone like diadems in a ring around Deliberation Hill, seemed somehow forlorn and irrelevant. Each of the five social castes still sent representatives to argue over points of law. And the three upper chambers occasionally managed to agree upon a bill or two. But ever since Hari’s tenure as First Minister ended, there had been very little of consequence to emerge from those sacred halls. The Executive Council on Trantor ruled mostly by decree, and those decrees were largely fashioned by Linge Chen’s Commission for Public Safety.

Not that specific laws mattered very much. Psychohistory predicted what would happen next. If Linge Chen were replaced tomorrow in some palace coup, the momentum of events would impel his successor in identical ways. Some cliques would win and others lose. But over the course of the next thirty years, the average of forces-taken across twenty-five million worlds-would overwhelm any initiatives attempted by commissioners, emperors, or oligarchic cabals.

And yet, a romantic part of Hari always felt saddened by Demarchia. The place struck him as a personification of lost opportunity. A might-have-been.

In theory, democracy is supposed to predominate over all the machinations of the gentry class. Even the worst imperial tyrants have always paid lip service to that principle of Ruellianism.

But in practice it was hard to implement. The Cumulative House, the Senate of Sectors, and the Assembly of Trades were all supposed to compensate for each other’s faults, bringing representatives to Demarchia who were chosen in widely diverse ways. But the net result seemed always the same-a sapping of energy and dynamism. As First Minister, he had found it agonizing to get legislation passed-such as the emergency Chaos Suppression Law-even though his knowledge of psychohistory principles made him unusually effective compared to others.

In those days, Daneel and I still thought it could be fixed…the whole great Empire of Humanity. But back then my equations were still incomplete. They left some room for doubt. For hope.

Since Hari’s tenure in office ended, Demarchia had become a backwater. A place to exile failed politicians. No one of importance bothered with it anymore.

Which suits our purpose in coming here now,he thought with a grim smile. This time, Demarchia was not a destination, but a convenient launching-off point.

“Professor Seldon?” Horis Antic’s voice murmured behind Hari, from within the hotel room. As the next stage of their adventure approached, the portly bureaucrat grew increasingly nervous.

“I-I’ve just heard from the, uh,individual we talked about earlier. He says arrangements have been made. We’re to meet him at hisvehicle in an hour.”

Hari touched a control and turned his mobile chair around, gliding back inside. Antic’s convoluted speech, a precaution against possible bugging devices, would almost certainly be futile if they were under serious surveillance. Besides, up until now, no one had committed a single crime.

“Has your equipment arrived, Horis?”

The bureaucrat wore casual clothing. Still, anyone looking at his posture and poor fashion sense would know in an instant that he was a Grey Man.

“Yes, m’lord.” He nodded. “The last crates are downstairs. It was much easier to order the instruments from a variety of companies and have them sent here, instead of to Trantor proper, where there might have been…embarrassing questions.”

Hari had seen the list of tools and devices, and saw nothing that could even remotely be called contraband. Nevertheless, Antic had good reason not to let his superiors know he was spending his sabbatical time pursuing a bizarre “intellectual pastime.”

In fact, Hari had been grateful for the delay while Antic gathered his equipment. It gave him a chance to rest after that harrowing star-shunt ride…much bumpier than he recalled from decades past. It also let him spend time under the sun, remembering Demarchia in the old days, when some of the best restaurants in the galaxy used to line the boulevards, and he still had taste buds to enjoy them…with beautiful, vivacious Dors Venabili at his side.

“All right,” he said, feeling exceptionally alive, almost as if he could walk all the way to the spaceport. “Let’s get going.”

Kers Kantun met them in front of the hotel, next to Antic’s equipment crates. At a glance, Hari knew that his bodyguard had checked them against the manifests and found nothing amiss. Hari acknowledged his servant’s concern without giving it much importance. What did Kers imagine, that Antic had recruited the famed Hari Seldon into some convoluted smuggling scheme?