Ten minutes before landing on Panucopia, Dors retreated to her shielded cabin. She reached into her shirt and unfolded a piece of dark fabric. It lay on the small table, creaseless and passive, until her positronic brain sent a coded microwave burst. Then the surface flickered, and a human face suddenly shimmered to life, resembling a young woman with close-cropped hair, stern-visaged and experienced beyond her apparent years. Blue eyes scanned Dors, evaluating, before the image finally spoke.

“Months have passed since you last summoned me, Dors Venabili. Does my presence make you so uncomfortable?”

“You are a synthetically resurrected human sim, Joan, and therefore contraband. Against the law.”

“Against human law. But angels may see what men cannot.“

“I’ve told you before, I’m a robot,not an angel.”

The youthful figure shrugged. Links of chain armor rustled.

“You are immortal, Dors. You think of nothing but service to fallen humanity, restoring opportunities that have been thrown away by obstinate men and women. You are the embodiment of faith in ultimate redemption. All of that seems to support my interpretation.“

“But my faith is not the same as yours.”

The ersatz Joan of Arc smiled.

“That would have mattered to me earlier, when I was first revived-or artificially simulated-into this strange new era. But the time I spent linked to Voltaire’s sim changed me. Not as much as he hoped! But enough to learn a certain amount of prag-mat-ism.“

She enunciated the final word with a soft grimace.

“My beloved France is now a poisoned wasteland on a ruined world, and Christianity is long forgotten, so I will settle for the closest thing.

“After getting to know Daneel Olivaw, I came to recognize a true apostle of chaste goodness and saintly self-sacrifice. His followers wield righteousness, for the sake of countless suffering human souls.

“And so I ask, dear angel, what can I do for you?”

Dors pondered. This was just one copy of the Joan sim. Millions had been dispersed into the interstellar medium-along with just as many Voltaires and a collection of ancient meme-entities-to be blown out of the galaxy by supernova winds, as part of a deal that Hari had struck forty years earlier to get the cybernetic entities away from Trantor. Until they were successfully banished, the software beings could have become a wild card in human affairs, potentially spoiling the Seldon Plan.

Despite all that effort to get rid of them, a few duplicates remained “stuck” in the real world. Though she took precautions to keep this one isolated, Dors felt unavoidable sympathy for Joan. Anyway, the approaching rendezvous with Lodovic created an overwhelming need to talk to somebody.

Maybe it’s from all those years when I could tell everything to Hari. The one man in the cosmos who knew all about robots and considered us his closest friends. For a few brief decades I got used to the idea of consulting with a human. It felt natural and right.

I know Joan is no more human than I am. But she feels and acts so much like one! So filled with conflicts, yet so tempestuously sure of her opinions.

Dors admitted that part of her attraction might come from envy. Joan had no body, no physical sensation. No power in the real world. Still, she would always consider herself a passionate, authentic woman.

“I face a quandary of duty,” Dors finally told the sim. “An enemy has invited me to a meeting.”

“Ah.“ Joan nodded. “Aparley-of-war. And you fear it is a trap?”

“I know it’s a trap. He’s offered me a ‘gift.’ One that I know has to be dangerous. Lodovic wants to snare me in some way.”

“A test of faith!“ Joan clapped her hands.“Of course, I am familiar with such. Myyears entwined with Voltaire exposed me to many.

“In that case, the answer to your question is obvious, Dors.”

“But you haven’t heard any details!”

“I don’t have to. You must confront this challenge. Set forth and prevail over your doubts.

“Go, sweet angel, and trust your faith in God.“

Dors shook her head.

“I told you before-”

But the sim raised a hand before Dors could finish, cutting her off.

“Yes, of course. The God I worship is only a superstition.

“In that case, dear robot…go forth and trust your faith in the Zeroth Law of Robotics.“

Hari chose to avoid the Shoufeen groves during their next outing. Instead, he let Kers Kantun guide him to one of the many ornate areas of the imperial gardens that lay open to visitors-a generous concession by the new figurehead on the throne, Emperor Semrin, lately installed by the Commission for Public Safety.

Normally, five small corners of the palace grounds, just a few thousand acres each, were set aside for use by each social caste-citizens, eccentrics, bureaucrats, meritocrats, and gentry-but Semrin had used his limited authority to open more than half the vast tract, currying public favor by letting in folk from every class.

Of course, most Trantor natives would rather have their eyelashes yanked out than go sniffing flowers beneath a naked sun. They preferred their warm steel caverns. But the planet also had an immense transitory population consisting of merchants, diplomats, cultural emissaries, and tourists-plus a veritable army of Greys, young members of the bureaucratic order, briefly assigned to the capital-world for training and intense clerical service. Most of them came from planets where clouds still moved across open skies, and rain rolled down green-swathed mountains to a sea. They were the ones most grateful for Semrin’s largesse. Each day, hundreds of miles of paths thronged with visitors, at first nervously agog at the richly manicured beauty, but then gradually making themselves at home.

It’s a clever political move, but Semrin may pay for it, if he isn’t careful. What is given cannot easily be taken back.

Of course such minor perturbations would hardly show up as blips in the psychohistorical equations. It hardly even mattered which monarch happened to reign. The fall of the empire had a ponderous momentum that could only be nudged a little, by those who knew exactly how. Everyone else was simply doomed to go along for the ride.

For the most part, Hari enjoyed the open expanses and never-ending variety of the palace grounds. Alas, they also reminded him of poor Gruber-the gardener who had only wanted to tend his humble flower beds, yet found himself driven by desperation to become an imperial assassin.

That was long ago,Hari thought.Gruber is now dust, along with Emperor Cleon.

And I will join them soon.

Rolling along a path they had never visited before, Hari and Kers abruptly confronted a fractal garden, where special variants of lichenlike shrubbery were programmed to grow and then retract with intricate, minutely branching abandon. It was an old art form, but he had seldom seen it so well executed. Color hues varied subtly, depending on sun angle and the shape of nearby shadows. The resulting maze of twisting gyre-configurations was a tumult of labyrinthine convolution, never the same from moment to moment.

Most passersby appreciated the display with uncomprehending awe, before strolling on to the next imperial wonder. But Hari signaled Kers to stop there while his eyes darted left and right, drawn by an inherent challenge. This complexity was nothing like the riotous chaos of the Shoufeen Woods. Hari quickly recognized the basic pattern-generating system. This organic pseudolichen was programmed to react according to fractional derivatives based on a sequence of Fiquarnn-Julia transforms. That much a child could see. But it only told part of the story. Squinting, Hari soon realized thatholes kept appearing in the pattern, causing retreat and recession at semirandom intervals.