Han’s servant had the rolling accent-and greenish skin pallor-of a Valmoril, a subspecies of humanity that had spread through the isolated Conthi Cluster, living secluded there for so long that by now they could only interbreed with other races by pretreating sperm and eggs with enzymes. Kers had been chosen as Han’s nurse and final guardian after the robots departed. He performed both roles with quiet determination.

“This wild place makes me o’comfortable, Doc. Surely you don’ like the breeze gustin’ like this?”

Hari had been told that Kantun’s parents arrived on Trantor as young Greys-members of the bureaucratic caste-expecting to spend a few years’ service on the capital planet, training in monkish dormitories, then heading back out to the galaxy as administrators in the vast civil service. But flukes of talent and promotion intervened to keep them here, raising a son amid the steel caverns they hated. Kers inherited his parents’ famed Valmoril sense of duty-or else Daneel Olivaw would never have chosen the fellow to tend Hari in these final days.

I may no longer be useful, but some people still think I’m worth looking after.

In Hari’s mind, the word “person” applied to R. Daneel Olivaw, perhaps more than most of thehumans he ever knew.

For decades, Hari had carefully kept secret the existence of “eternals”-robots who had shepherded human destiny for twenty thousand years-immortal machines that helped create the first Galactic Empire, then encouraged Hari to plan a successor. Indeed, Hari spent the happiest part of his life married to one of them. Without the affection of Dors Venabili-or the aid and protection of Daneel Olivaw-he could never have created psychohistory, setting in motion the Seldon Plan.

Or discovered how useless it would all turn out to be, in the long run.

Wind in the surrounding trees seemed to mock Hari. In that sound, he heard hollow echoes of his own doubts.

The Foundation cannot achieve the task set before it. Somewhere, sometime during the next thousand years, a perturbation will nudge the psychohistorical parameters, rocking the statistical momentum, knocking your Plan off course.

True enough, he wanted to shout back at the zephyr. But that had been allowed for! There would be aSecond Foundation, a secret one, led by his successors, who would adjust the Plan as years passed, providing counternudges to keep it on course!

Yet, the nagging voice came back.

A tiny hidden colony of mathematicians and psychologists will do all that, in a galaxy fast tumbling to violence and ruin?

For years this had seemed a flaw…until fortuitous fate provided an answer.Mentalics, a mutant strain of humans with uncanny ability to sense and alter the emotions and memories of others. These powers were still weak, but heritable. Hari’s own adopted son, Raych, passed the talent to a daughter, Wanda, now a leader in the Seldon Project. Every mentalic they could find had been recruited, to intermarry with the descendants of the psychohistorians. After a few generations of genetic mingling, the clandestine Second Foundation should have potent tools to protect his Plan against deviations during the coming centuries.

And so?

The forest sneered once more.

What will you have then? Will the Second Empire be ruled by a shadowy elite? A secret cabal of human psychics? An aristocracy of mentalic demigods?

Even if kindness motivated this new elite, the prospect left him feeling cold.

The shadow of Kers Kantun bent closer, peering at him with concern. Hari tore his attention away from the singing breeze and finally answered his servant

“Ah…sorry. Of course you’re right. Let’s go back. I’m fatigued.”

But as Kers guided the wheelchair toward a hidden transit station, Hari could still hear the forest, jeering at his life’s work.

The mentalic elite is just one layer though, isn’t it? The Second Foundation conceals yet another truth, then another.

Beyond your own Plan, a different one has been crafted by a greater mind than yours. By someone stronger, more dedicated, and more patient by far. A plan that uses yours, for a while…but which will eventually make psychohistory meaningless.

With his right hand, Hari fumbled under his robe until he found a smooth cube of gemlike stone, a parting gift from his friend and lifetime guide, R. Daneel Olivaw. Palming the archive’s ancient surface, he murmured, too low for Kers to hear.

“Daneel, you promised you’d come to answer all my questions. I have so many, before I die.”

From space it seemed a gentle world, barely touched by civilization. A rich belt of verdant rain forest girdled the tropics, leaping narrow oceans to sweep all the way around three continents.

Dors Venabili watched green Panucopia swell below, during her descent toward the old Imperial Research Station. Nearly forty years had passed since she last came here, accompanying her human husband as they fled dangerous enemies back on Trantor. But those troubles had followed them here, with nearly tragic consequences.

The ensuing adventure had been the strangest of her life-though admittedly Dors was still quite young for a robot. For more than a month, she and Hari had left their bodies in suspensor tanks while their minds were projected into the bodies of pans-(or “chimpanzees” in some dialects)-roaming the forest preserves of this world. Hari claimed he needed data about primitive response patterns for his psychohistorical research, but Dors suspected at the time that something deep within the august Professor Seldon relished “going ape” for a while.

She well recalled the sensations of inhabiting a female pan, feeling powerful organic drives propel that vivid, living body. Unlike the simulated emotions she had been programmed with, these surged and fluxed with natural, unrestrained passion-especially during several hazard-filled days when someone tried to assassinate the two of them, hunting them like beasts while their minds were still trapped in pan bodies.

After barely foiling that scheme, they had swiftly returned to Trantor, where Hari soon took up reluctant duties as First Minister of the Empire. And yet, that month left her changed, with a much deeper understanding of organic life. Looking back on it, she treasured the experience, which helped her better care for Hari.

Still, Dors had never expected to see Panucopia again. Until receiving the summons for a rendezvous.

I have a gift for you,the message said.Something you’ll find useful.

It was signed with a unique identifier code that Dors recognized at once.

Lodovic Trema.

Lodovic the mutant.

Lodovic the renegade.

The robot who is no longer a robot.

It wasn’t easy to decide, at first. Dors had duties on planet Smushell-an easy assignment, setting up a young Trantorian couple in comfortable marriage, disguised as minor gentry on a pleasant little world, then encouraging them to have as many babies as possible. Daneel considered this important, though his reasons were, as usual, somewhat obscure. Dors only knew that Klia Asgar and her husband, Brann, were exceptionally powerful mentalics-humans with potent psychic powers, of the sort that only a few robots like Daneel heretofore possessed. Their sudden appearance had caused many plans to change…and change again several times in the last year. It was essential that the existence of mentalic humans be kept from the galaxy’s masses, just as the presence of robots in their midst had been kept secret for a thousand generations.

When the message from Lodovic came, there was no time to send for instructions from Daneel. In order to make the rendezvous, she had to take the very next liner to Siwenna, where a fast ship would be waiting for her.