“I’ve got ‘em.”

“Machine translated? They will run?”

“Yeah, but they take an awful lot of memory and running volume. I’ve tuned them some, but they need a bigger parallel-processing network than I can give them.”

Dors frowned. “I don’t like this. These aren’t just constellations, they’re sims.”

Hari nodded. “We’re doing research here, not trying to manufacture a superrace.”

Dors stood and paced energetically. “The most ancient of taboos is against sims. Even personality constellations obey rigid laws! “

“Of course, ancient history. But-”

“ Prehistory.”Her nostrils flared. “The prohibitions go back so far, there are no records of how they started-undoubtedly, from some disastrous experiments well before the Shadow Age.”

“What’s that?” Yugo asked.

“The long time-we have no clear idea of how long it lasted, though certainly several millennia-before the Empire became coherent.”

“Back on Earth, you mean?” Yugo looked skeptical.

“Earth is more legend than fact. But yes, the taboo could go back that far.”

“These are hopelessly constricted sims,” Yugo said. “They don’t know anything about our time. One is a religious fanatic for some faith I never heard of. The other’s a smartass writer. No danger to anybody, except maybe themselves.”

Dors regarded Yugo suspiciously. “If they’re so narrow, why are they useful?”

“Because they can calibrate psychohistorical indices. We have modeling equations that depend on basic human perceptions. If we have a pre-ancient mind, even simmed, we can calibrate the missing constants in the rate equations.”

Dors snorted doubtfully. “I don’t follow the mathematics, but I know sims are dangerous.”

“Look, nobody savvy believes that stuff any more,” Yugo said. “Mathists have been running pseudo-sims for ages. Tiktoks-”

“Those are incomplete personalities, correct?” Dors asked severely.

“Well, yeah, but-”

“We could get into very big trouble if these sims are better, more versatile.”

Yugo waved away her point with his large hands, smiling lazily. “Don’t worry. I got them all under control. Anyway, I’ve already got a way to solve our problem of getting enough running volume, machine time-and I’ve got a cover for us.”

Hari arched his eyebrows. “What’s this?”

“I’ve got a customer for the sims. Somebody who’ll run them, cover all expenses, and pay for the privilege. Wants to use them for commercial purposes.”

“Who?” Hari and Dors asked together.

“Artifice Associates,” Yugo said triumphantly.

Hari looked blank. Dors paused as though searching for a distant memory, and then said, “A firm engaged in computer systems architecture.”

“Right, one of the best. They’ve got a market for old sims as entertainment.”

Hari said, “Never heard of them.”

Yugo shook his head in amazement. “You don’t keep up, Hari.”

“I don’t try to keep up. I try to stay ahead.”

Dors said, “I don’t like using any outside agency. And what’s this about paying?”

Yugo beamed. “They’re paying for license rights. I negotiated it all.”

“Do we have any control over how they use the sims?” Dors leaned forward alertly.

“We don’t need any,” Yugo said defensively. “They’ll probably use them in advertisements or something. How much use can you get out of a sim nobody will probably understand?”

“I don’t like it. Aside from the commercial aspects, it’s risky to even revive an ancient sim. Public outrage-”

“Hey, that’s the past. People don’t feel that way about tiktoks, and they’re getting pretty smart.”

Tiktoks were machines of low mental capacity, held rigorously beneath an intelligence ceiling by the Encoding Laws of antiquity. Hari had always suspected that the true, ancient robots had made those laws, so that the realm of machine intelligence did not spawn ever more specialized and unpredictable types.

The true robots, such as R. Daneel Olivaw, remained aloof, cool, and long-visioned. But in the gathering anxieties across the entire Empire, traditional cybernetic protocols were breaking down. Like everything else.

Dors stood. “I’m opposed. We must stop this at once.”

Yugo rose too, startled. “You helped me find the sims. Now you-”

“I did not intend this.” Her face tightened. Hari wondered at her intensity. Something else was at stake here, but what? He said mildly, “I see no reason to not make a bit of profit from side avenues of our research. And we do need increased computing capacity.”

Dors’ mouth worked with irritation, but she said nothing more. Hari wondered why she was so opposed. “Usually you don’t give a damn about social conventions.”

She said acidly, “Usually you are not a candidate for First Minister.”

“I will not let such considerations deflect our research,” he said firmly. “Understand?”

She nodded and said nothing. He instantly felt like an overbearing tyrant. There was always a potential conflict between being coworkers and lovers. Usually they waltzed around the problems. Why was she so adamant?

They got through some more work on psychohistory, and Dors mentioned his next appointment. “She’s from my history department. I asked her to look into patterns in Trantorian trends over the last ten millennia.”

“Oh, good, thanks. Could you show her in, please?”

Sylvin Thoranax was a striking woman, bearing a box of old data pyramids. “I found these in a library halfway around the planet,” she explained.

Hari picked one up. “I’ve never seen one of these. Dusty!”

“For some there’s no library index. I down-coded a few-and they’re good, still readable with a translation matrix.”

“Ummm.” Hari liked the musty feel of old technology from simpler times. “We can read these directly?”

She nodded. “I know how the reduced Seldon Equations function. You should be able to do a mat comparison and find the coefficients you need.”

Hari grimaced. “They’re not my equations; they come out of a body of research by many-”

“Come come, Academician, everyone knows you wrote down the procedures, the approach.”

Hari groused a little more, because it did irk him, but the Thoranax woman went on about using the pyramids and Yugo joined in enthusiastically and he let the point pass. She went off with Yugo to work and he settled into his usual academic grind.

His daily schedule hovered on the holo:

· Get Symposia speakers-sweeten the invitation for the reluctant

· Write nominations for Imperial Fellows

· Read student thesis, after it has been checked amp; passed by Logic Chopper program

These burned up the bulk of his day. Only when the Chancellor entered his office did he remember that he had promised to give a speech. The Chancellor had a quick, ironic smile and pursed lips, a reserved gaze-the scholar’s look. “Your…dress?” he asked pointedly.

Hari fumbled in his office closet, fetched forth the balloon-sleeved and ample-girted robe, and changed in the side room. His secretary handed him his all-purpose view cube as they quickly left the office. With the Chancellor he crossed the main square, his Specials in an inconspicuous formation fore and aft. A crowd of well-dressed men and women trained 3D cameras at them, one panning up and down to get the full effect of the Streeling blue-and-yellow swirl-stripes.

“Have you heard from Lamurk?”

“What about the Dahlites?”

“Do you like the new Sector Principal? Does it matter that she’s a trisexualist?”

“How about the new health reports? Should the Emperor set exercise requirements for Trantor?”

“Ignore them,” Hari said.

The Chancellor smiled and waved at the cameras. “They’re just doing their job.”

“What’s this about exercise?” Hari asked.

“A study found that electro-stim while sleeping doesn’t develop muscles as well as old-fashioned exercise.”