“You are an extremely dynamic individual, Captain Planch. Naturally you would find some clever way to use the knowledge against us.”

Planch smiled grimly. “So now you’ve become a heretic against your own psychohistory? A believer in the power of individuals?”

Hari shrugged, refusing to answer the pirate’s impudence.

“What if I could offer you something in exchange for my freedom?” Planch said in a low voice.

Hari felt fatigued by the man’s restless motion and relentless scheming. He pretended to concentrate instead on the conversation between Biron and Wanda.

“But will that matter?” Maserd grew increasingly enthusiastic. “Imagine if all of the galaxy’s quadrillions of people could accurately project human behavior, planning to advance their own self-interest, while taking into account the overall health of society. Wouldn’t that be more robust than any single model or plan? Even I can see that most people’s individual strategies will cancel each other’s out. But the net result should be a humanity that’s wiser, more potent, and better able to take care of itself…”

Biron’s voice trailed off. At first Hari thought it was because of the expression on Wanda’s face. He loved his granddaughter dearly, but sometimes she seemed altogether too assured, even patronizing in her confidence as an agent of destiny.

Then Hari saw that Maserd wasn’t even looking at Wanda. The nobleman’s jaw had dropped in an expression of blank surprise. Nearby, Mors Planch stiffened with sudden tension.

Hari sat up straight. Even the equations still darting through comers of his mind abruptly fled, like swarms of skittish flying creatures driven off by an approaching predator. He blinked, staring across the starship cabin at an intruder that had just emerged from a storage compartment… smaller than any adult human, wearing only a pair of shorts on a body covered with altogether too much brown hair. Bony eye ridges protruded from a forehead that vaulted in a way that looked neither human nor animal.

Hari instantly recognized the pan-or chimpanzee-whose feral grin exposed intimidating ranks of yellow teeth. In its right hand, the creature held a bulbous object, a rounded cylinder ending in a flared nozzle. Although not a blaster, anyone could tell it was a weapon on sight. In its other hand, the creature held a recording device, which it activated in playback mode.

“Hello, dear friends,“ spoke the unmistakable voice of R. Gornon Vlimt.“I urge you to remain calm. The creature standing before you, who was undetectable to any mentalics-either robot or human-will not harm anybody. I would never allow that, though you must all now be rendered temporarily helpless to prevent further interference with our plans.

“Please try to relax. We shall speak in person soon…when you stand once again on the surface of the world that engendered us all. “

Gornon’s voice finished, and the playback unit halted with an audible click. At that point, the pan grinned wider, appearing to relish what was about to happen.

Mors Planch and Biron Maserd stepped toward the creature. Men of action, they had silently and swiftly agreed to attack it from opposite directions. Meanwhile, Wanda frowned, concentrating with a furrowed brow, attempting with mentalic power to contact and quash the thoughts of an alien mind.

Hari could have warned them not to bother. The chimp pressed the weapon’s firing stub, and a burst of gas jetted into the room, colorless but with a heavy index of refraction, billowing toward every crevice. Hari noticed that the pan wore filters in each nostril.

It’s just as well,he thought.There was unfinished business to settle back on Earth.

That unfinished business had waited twenty thousand years or more. He figured it wouldn’t matter if he must abide a little longer.

Surprised by his own equanimity, with a faint smile spreading across his lips, Hari settled into his chair while everyone else struggled, gasped, and collapsed to the floor. He closed his eyes, letting go of consciousness with a sense of serene expectation.

He dreamed about an old legend he had read once. The tale of a man-doomed to die-who had a rib taken from him as he slept, and who thereby achieved an oblique form of immortality.

Somehow, Hari realized the story applied to him. While he lay helpless, only semi-conscious, someone seemed to reach deep inside and remove a piece of him. An important part. Something precious.

He started to rouse, in order to protest. But a familiar voice soothed.

“Fear not. We are only borrowing. Venerating. Copying.

“You won’t miss a thing.

“Return to sleep, and dream of pleasant things.“

He had no reason to doubt that assurance. So, doing as the voice bid, he relaxed back into slumber, imagining that beloved Dors lay by his side. Sleek and restored. Ever patient and steadfast.

For a little while, it felt as if he, too, had found the trick of living forever.

Having slept through the return trip and much of the next day, Hari stepped down the ship’s gangplank into a chill afternoon on planet Earth. Moving gingerly (because sciatica twinges had returned to his left leg), he shaded his eyes against the glare of distant buildings several kilometers away. The most recent ruins, dating from the early imperial era, shone under the sun like white porcelain.Chica could only have held fifty thousand or so inhabitants, in its heyday. Yet the little ghost town was positively homey next to its neighbor-a mountain of metal, larger than an asteroid-a windowless cave-city where millions sealed themselves away from some unbearable nightmare during the early days of Daneel Olivaw.

Much nearer at hand, nestled among the most ancient university buildings, some of today’s Earthlings had set up a makeshift encampment in order to work for their latest employer, R. Gornon Vlimt. Two of Gornon’s Calvinian assistants directed local laborers who toiled next to a tomblike sarcophagus, more than a hundred meters wide. New scaffolding arose, climbing to a crack in the containment shell. Within, Hari glimpsed the remains of a building more ancient than any he had ever seen. Older than starflight perhaps.

Through the crack poured a throbbing glow, visible even by daylight.

The Earthlings who labored to lash timbers and planks together were pitiful-looking creatures, shabbily dressed and painfully thin, as if they survived on little more than murky air. Their faces were gaunt, and something lurked in their eyes…a flickering that seemed like distraction, until Hari watched carefully. Then he realized the natives were constantlylistening, paying heed to the slightest sounds-the rolling of a pebble or the passing flight of a bee. These people hardly struck one as dangerous up close, though he remembered feeling different when they were shadowy shapes on surrounding hilltops, hurling jagged stone missiles through the night.

“They feel bad about the attack,” R. Gornon explained, introducing Hari to the local headman, a tall, slender being whose speech poured forth in some incomprehensible dialect. “He has asked me to apologize for his people. The urge to attack came over them suddenly and inexplicably. To expiate their inhospitality, the headman wants to know how many lives should be forfeited.”

“None!” Hari felt appalled at the very idea. “Please tell them that it’s over. What’s done is done.”

“I shall certainly try, Professor. But you have no idea how seriously Earthlings take such matters. Their current religion is one of total responsibility. They believe that all of this”-Gornon indicated the radioactive desolation-”was caused by the sins of their own ancestors, and that they remain partly at fault.”

Hari blinked. “They’ve paid off any guilt, just by living here. No one could deserve this, no matter how great the crime.”