As they approached the anomaly, draped in scaffolding, Hari saw the rounded outline of the sarcophagus slide past each of the ancient cities in turn.

First, Old Chicago, with its battered skyscrapers still aiming adventurously toward the sky, recalling an age of openness and unfettered ambition. Next to vanish was New Chicago, that monstrous fortress where so many millions sealed themselves away from daylight, and a terror they could not understand. Finally, little Chica disappeared-the white porcelain village where Earth’s final civilization struggled in vain against irrelevance, in a galaxy that simply did not care about its origins anymore.

Rounding a bend in the ancient university campus, they came to a point where thecrack could be seen…splitting open thick walls that had been meant to seal away something dire. To entomb it forever. Hari glanced to his left, toward R. Gornon.

“If this anomaly truly gives you access to the fourth dimension, why hasn’t it been used during all of these centuries? Why did no one attempt to change the past?”

The robot shook its head. “Travel into the past is impossible, on many different levels, Dr. Seldon. Anyway, even if you could change the past, that would only create a new future in which someoneelse will be discontented. Those people, in turn, would send emissaries to changetheir past, and so on. No time track would have any more valid claim to reality than any other.”

“Then perhaps none of this matters,” Hari mused. “We all may be just parallel mirror images…or else little simulations, like the numbers we juggle in the Prime Radiant. Temporary. Ghosts who only exist while someone else is thinking about them.”

Hari had not been looking where he was going. His left foot snagged on some patch of uneven ground, and he started to pitch forward…but was caught by R. Gornon’s gentle, firm grasp. Even so, Hari’s body felt quakes of pain and fatigue. He missed his nurse, Kers Kantun, and the wheelchair he once hated. At one level, Hari could tell he was dying, as he had been sliding toward death for several years.

“I’m not in great condition for so long a journey,” he murmured, while his companions waited for him to recover.

“The one other human who traveled this way was also an old man,” Gornon assured Hari. “Tests show that the process is gentle, or else we would never risk harming you. And when you arrive, someone will be waiting.”

“I see. Still I wonder…”

“About what, Professor?”

“You have great powers of medical science available to you. Breakthroughs and techniques that robots have hoarded for millennia. These cyborgs”-he jerked a thumb toward Zorma and Cloudia-”appear able to duplicate bodies and extend life indefinitely. So I wonder why you didn’t boost my physical health, at least a bit more, before I made this journey.”

“It’s not allowed, Professor. There are strong reasons, moral, ethical, and-”

Harsh laughter interrupted, coming from the robot called Zorma.

“Except when it suits your purposes! You should give Seldon a better answer than that, Gornon.”

After a pause, Gornon said in a low voice, “We no longer have the organoforming apparatus. It was taken away at Pengia. The device was needed elsewhere to continue an important project…and that is all I will say about it.”

They resumed walking until the glow emanating from the cracked tomb filled the night just overhead, casting spiderweb shadows from the scaffolding across the ruined university. Most of the Earthlings and other onlookers climbed nearby rubble mounds to watch, while Hari and Gornon led a diminished procession onto a broad wooden platform that began rising on creaking ropes, hauling a dozen of them upward.

As Hari and his entourage ascended, he commented to Gornon, “It occurs to me that you may be going to a lot of unnecessary trouble. There’s another way of sending a person into the future, you know.”

This time, the robot did not answer. Instead, Gornon steadied Hari with an arm around his shoulders as the makeshift elevator reached its destination with a rattling bump. Hari had to shade his eyes against the glare pouring from within the broken containment shell.

To the awed murmurs of his guests, Gornon gave an explanation that was both poignant and brief.

“It began with a simple, well-meaning experiment, during the same brash era when humans were inventing both robots and hyperdrive. The researchers here had an incredible hunch and acted on it impulsively. Suddenly, a beam of fractured space-time shot forth, snaring a passing pedestrian, yanking Joseph Schwartz out of his normal life and hurling him forward ten thousand years.

“For Schwartz, a great adventure ensued. But back in the Chicago he left behind, a nightmare had just begun.” Hari watched the robot’s face, looking for the complex expressions of emotion that Dors and Daneel simulated so well. But this artificial man was grimly stoic.

“You sound as if you were there, when it happened.”

“Not I, but an early-model robot was. One whose memories I inherited. Those memories aren’t pleasant. Some of us believe this event marked the beginning of the end for humanity’s great time of youthful exuberance. Not long thereafter, amid international recriminations, the first waves of unreason began. Robots were banished from Earth. Acrimony built between nations and the colonial worlds, There were outbreaks of biological warfare. Some of us swore…”

Hari suddenly had a wild hunch.

“You stayed here, didn’t you? That agent of Daneel’s whom you mentioned earlier-the one who helped stop the Earthlings from spreading a new plague-was that you?”

R. Gornon paused, then gave a jerky nod.

“Then Zorma is right. You’re no Calvinian after all.”

“I suppose I no longer fit any of the rigid classifications, though at one time I was a fervent follower of Giskardianism.”

Now the robot’s impassive mask broke. Like that of any stoic man, whose equanimity was shattered by the most powerful emotion-hope.

“Time affects even immortals, Or. Seldon. Many of us tired old robots don’t know what we are anymore. Perhaps that is somethingyou will be able to tell us, when you have had a chance to reflect. In time.”

And so I come to the moment of decision,Hari acknowledged, still shading his eyes and peering toward the harsh light. Of course it would be anticlimactic to back out now. Everyone was watching. Even those, like Wanda, who disapproved of this whole plan, would surely be disappointed at some level…to be promised a spectacular show and have the star performer withdraw at the last minute. On the other hand, Hari had built a reputation of doing the unexpected. There was almost a delicious attraction to the notion of surprising all these people.

Several members of the group edged close to the opal light, peering inside. Biron Maserd pointed at the crumbling building, no doubt an ancient physics lab where the original mistake was made. The headman of the Earthling tribe stood next to Maserd, nodding. Even Wanda approached out of curiosity, though Horis Antic kept his distance, chewing ragged fingernails.

Mors Planch shuffled forward, lifting his manacled hands.

“Take these off of me, Seldon, I entreat you. These robots…they all revere you. Perhaps I was wrong. Let me prove my worth to you, before you go. I have some information…the whereabouts of somebody precious to you. Someone you have been searching for, across many years.”

Hari abruptly realized what Planch was driving at.

Bellis!

He took a step toward the pirate captain. “You found my other granddaughter?”

On hearing this, Wanda Seldon turned her attention fully away from the sarcophagus. She, too, stepped closer to Planch.

“Where is she? What has happened to my sister?”

R. Gornon interrupted. “I am very sorry, but you should have discussed this earlier. There is no more time. At any moment, the field will expand. We have managed to transform the beam into a circular field, but we cannot be certain how long it will-”