“Ugh.” Marq curled his lip.

Hari smiled. “When food gets scarce, table manners change.”

“But this-”

“Hey, we’re payin’,” Yugo said sardonically.

The menu was exclusively pseudoffal, the latest stopgap in Trantor’s food crisis. This foodworks had the whole run, livers and kidneys and tripe made in pristine vats. Not the slightest hint of actual animal tissue involved. Still, the voice menu reassured them in warm feminine tones, every item carried the true dank, visceral aromas of the gut.

“Can’t we get some decent mealmeat?” Marq asked irritably.

“This has higher food value,” Yugo said. “And nobody’ll be lookin’ for us here.”

Hari glanced around. They were behind a sound shield, but still, security was essential. Most of the tables in the restaurant were taken by his Specials, the rest by well dressed gentry class.

“It’s fashionable, too,” he said affably. “You can brag about coming here.”

“Brag after I gag?” Marq sniffed the air, wrinkled his nose.

“All the nonconformists are doing it,” Hari said, but no one got the joke.

“I’m a fugitive,” Marq whispered. “People are still trying to hang those Junin riots on me. Taking a big risk to come here.”

“We shall make it worth your while,” Hari said. “I need a job done by someone outside the law.”

“That, I am. Hungry, too.”

The voice menu assured them that there were, as well whole meals-of pseudo-animal, vegetable or transmineral ingredients-boiled from within. “The newest foodie craze,” the menu gushed. “One bites into a firm shell and then ventures inward to a mellow, stewed interior of luxuriant implication.”

Some items offered not mere flavor, aroma, and texture, but what the menu demurely described as “motility.” The featured item was a pile of red strands which did not just lie there limply in your mouth, but squirmed and wriggled “eagerly,” expressing its longing to be eaten.

“You guys don’t need to torture me into collaboration.” Marq jutted his chin out, reminding Hari of a pan gesture used by Bigger.

Hari chuckled and ordered a “gut sampler.” It was surprising how he could accommodate what would have revolted him only weeks before. When they had ordered, Hari put the deal on the table directly.

Marq scowled. “Direct linkup? To the whole damned system?”

“We want an interbridge to our psychohistorical equation system,” Yugo said.

Marq blinked. “Full body link? That’s big capacity.”

“We know it can be done,” Yugo pressed. “Just takes the tech-which you’ve got.”

“Who says?” Marq’s eyes narrowed.

Hari leaned forward earnestly. “Yugo infiltrated your systems.”

“How’d you do that?”

“Got some buddies to help,” Yugo said archly.

“Dahlites, you mean,” Marq said hotly. “Your kind-”

“Stop,” Hari said sternly. “No such talk here. This is a business proposition.”

Marq peered at Hari. “You going to be First Minister?”

“Maybe.”

“I want a pardon as part of the deal. One for Sybyl, too.”

Hari hated making uncertain promises, but-”Done.”

Marq’s mouth tightened but he nodded. “Costs plenty, too. You got the money?”

“Is the Emperor fat?” Yugo said.

In principle the process was simple.

Magnetic induction loops, tiny and superconducting, could map individual neurons in the brain. Interactive programs laid bare the intricacies of the visual cortex. Neuronal probes coupled the “subject nervous system” to a parallel constellation of purely digital “events.” Deeper still, ties formed with evolution’s kludgy tangle in the limbic system.

As well, this technology could unleash new definitions of Genus Homo. But the age-old taboos against artificial intelligences of high order had kept the processes marginal. As well, nobody considered Homo Digital to be an equal manifestation to Natural Man.

Hari knew all this, but his immersion on Panucopia-an allied technology-had taught him much.

Two days after meeting Marq in the restaurant-which had been surprisingly good, and in the food crisis had cost him a month’s salary-Hari lay silent and slack in a tubular receptacle…and plunged into psychohistory.

First he noticed that his right foot itched from toe to heel. Detailed twitches told him of instability in the population-driver terms. Must correct that.

He continued falling into a cosmos which yawned below.

This was system-space, an infinite vault defined by the parameters of psychohistory. The complete expanse had twenty-eight dimensions. His nervous system could only see this in slices. With a conceptual shift, Hari could peer along several parameter-axes and see events unfold as geometric shapes.

Down, down-into the entire history of the Empire.

Social forms rose like peaks. These stable alps had arisen as the Empire grew, Basins churned between the mountain range of Feudal Forms. These were the chaos sinks,

At the rim of simmering chaos lakes lay the crisis topozone. This was a no-man’s-land between regular, rigid landscapes and the stochastic morass.

Imperial history unfolded as he cruised above the seething landscape. Seen this way, mistakes abounded in the early Empire.

Philosophers had told humanity that they were animals of all sorts: political animals, feeling animals’ social animals, power-polarized animals, sick animals, machinelike animals, even rational ones. Over and over, erroneous theories of human nature yielded failed political systems. Many simply generalized from the basic human family and saw the State as either Mother Figure or Father Figure.

Mommy States stressed support and comfort, often giving cradle-to-grave security-though only for a generation or two, when the expenses collapsed the economy.

Daddy States featured a strict, competitive economy, with stem controls over behavior and private lives. Typically, Daddy States fell to periodic personal liberation movements and demands for Mommy State succor.

Slowly, order emerged. Stability. Tens of millions of planets, weakly linked by wormholes and hyperships, found their many ways. Some crashed down into Feudal or Macho swamps. Usually technology eventually pulled them out of it.

Planetary societies differed in their topologies. Plodding sorts dwelled far on the stable side. Wildly creative types could venture swiftly across the topozone, skate into true chaos, gather what they needed-though how they “knew” this was unclear.

As centuries ticked on, a society could ski down the erratic slopes of the shifting landscape and shoot back across the topozone. Perhaps it would even slow and weave figure-8s on the stable, smooth plains of the plodder states…for a while.

Many today believed that the early Empire had been a far better affair, serene and lovely, with few conflicts and certainly nicer people. “Fine feelings and bad history,” Dors had told him, dismissing all such talk.

This he saw and felt as he sped through the Early Eras. Bright shiny ideas built up hills of innovation-only to be seared by lava from an adjoining volcano. Seemingly sturdy ridge lines eroded into landslides.

Hari understood this now.

When the Empire was young, people seemed to see the galaxy as infinite in its bounty. The spiral arms held myriad planets barely visited, the Galactic Center was poorly mapped because of its intense radiation, and vast dark clouds hid much promised wealth.

Slowly, slowly, the entire disk was mapped, its resources tallied.

A blandness settled on the landscape. The Empire had changed from brawling conqueror to careful steward. A psychological shift underlay it all, a constricting of the sense of human purpose. Why?

He witnessed clouds forming over even the highest social peaks, cutting off the sense of openness above them. A complacent murk settled.