“Because they have only one Sector’s votes?”

“Right-and there are four hundred million of us in Dahl alone.”

“And more elsewhere.”

“Damn right. Averaged over Trantor, a Dahlite has only point-six-eight as much representation as the others.”

“And throughout the Galaxy-”

“Same damn thing! We got our Zone, sure, but except in the Galactic Low Council, we’re boxed in.”

Yugo had changed from the chattering friend out on a lark to sober-faced and scowling. Hari didn’t want the trip to turn into an argument. “Statistics require care, Yugo. Remember the classic joke about three statisticians who took up hunting ducks-”

“Which are?”

“A game bird, known on some worlds. The first shot a meter high, the second a meter low: When this happened, the third statistician cried, ‘We got it!”‘

Yugo laughed a bit dutifully. Hari was trying to follow Dors’ advice about handling people, using his humor more and logic less. The incident with Lamurk had rebounded in Hari’s favor among the media and even the High Council, the Emperor had said.

Dors herself, though, seemed singularly immune to both laughs and logic; the incident with the ferrite cores had put a strain in their relationship. Hari realized now that this, too, was why he had greeted Yugo’s suggestion of a day away from Streeling. Dors had two classes to teach and couldn’t go. She had grumbled, but conceded that the Specials could probably cover him well enough. As long as he did nothing “foolish.”

Yugo persisted. “Okay, but the courts are stacked against us, too.”

“Dahl is the largest Sector now. You will get your judgeships in time.”

“Time we don’t have. We’re getting shut out by blocs.”

Hari deeply disliked the usual circular logic of political griping, so he tried to appeal to Yugo’s mathist side. “All judging bodies are vulnerable to bloc control, my friend. Suppose a court had eleven judges. Then a cohesive group of six could decide every ruling. They could meet secretly and agree to be bound by what a majority of them thinks, then vote as a bloc in the full eleven.”

Yugo’s mouth twisted with irritation. “The High Tribunal’s eleven-that’s your point, right?”

“It’s a general principle. Even smaller schemes could work, too. Suppose four of the High Tribunal met secretly and agreed to be bound by their own ballot. Then they’d vote as a bloc among the original cabal of six. Then four would determine the outcome of all eleven.”

“Damn-all, it’s worse than I thought,” Yugo said.

“My point is that any finite representation can be corrupted. It’s a general theorem about the method.”

Yugo nodded and then to Hari’s dismay launched into reciting the woes and humiliations visited upon Dahlites at the hands of the ruling majorities in the Tribunal, the Councils both High and Low, the Diktat Directory…

The endless busyness of ruling. What a bore!

Hari realized that his style of thought was a far cry from the fevered calculations of Yugo, and further still from the wily likes of Lamurk. How could he hope to survive as a First Minister? Why couldn’t the Emperor see that?

He nodded, put on his mask of thoughtful listening, and let the wall displays soothe him. They were still plunging down the long cycloidal curve of the grav drop.

This time the name was apt. Most long-distance travel on Trantor was in fact under Trantor, along a curve which let their car plunge down under gravity alone, suspended on magnetic fields a bare finger’s width from the tube walls. Falling through dark vacuum, there were no windows. Instead, the walls quieted any fears of falling.

Mature technology was discreet, simple, easy, quiet, sinuously classical, even friendly-while its use remained as obvious as a hammer, its effects as easy as a 3D. Both it and its user had educated each other.

A forest slid by all around him and Yugo. Many on Trantor lived among trees and rocks and clouds, as humans once had. The effects were not real, but they didn’t need to be. We are the wild, now, Hari thought. Humans shaped Trantor’s labyrinths to quiet their deep-set needs, so the mind’s eye felt itself flitting through a park. Technology appeared only when called forth, like magical spirits.

“Say, mind if I kill this?” Yugo’s question broke through his reverie.

“The trees?”

“Yeah, the open, y’know.”

Hari nodded and Yugo thumbed in a view of a mall with no great distances visible. Many Trantorians became anxious in big spaces, or even near images of them.

They had leveled out and soon began to rise. Hari felt pressed back into his chair, which compensated deftly. They were moving at high velocity, he knew, but there was no sign of it. Slight pulses of the magnetic throat added increments of velocity as they rose, making up for the slight losses. Otherwise, the entire trip took no energy, gravity giving and then taking away.

When they emerged in the Carmondian Sector his Specials drew in close. This was no elite university setting. Few buildings here could be seen as exteriors, so design focused on interior spectacle: thrusting slopes, airy transepts, soaring trunks of worked metal and muscular fiber. But amid this serene architecture milling crowds jostled and fretted, lapping like an angry tide.

Across an overhead bikepad a steady stream of cyclists hauled tow-cars. Jamming their narrow bays were bulky appliances, glistening sides of meat, boxes, and lumpy goods, all bound for nearby customers. Restaurants were little more than hotplates surrounded with tiny tables and chairs, all squeezed into the walkways. Barbers conducted business in the thoroughfare, working one end of the customer while beggars massaged the feet for a coin.

“Seems…busy,” Hari said diplomatically as he caught the tang of Dahlite cooking.

“Yeah, doncha love it?”

“Beggars and street vendors were made illegal by the last Emperor, I thought.”

“Right.” He grinned. “Don’t work with Dahlites. We’ve moved plenty people into this Sector. C’mon, I want some lunch.”

It was early, but they ate in a stand-up restaurant, drawn in by the odors. Hari tried a “bomber,” which wriggled into his mouth, then exploded into a smoky dark taste he could not identify, finally fading into a bittersweet aftertaste. His Specials looked quite uneasy, standing around in a crowded, busy hubbub. They were accustomed to more regal surroundings.

“Things’re really boomin’ here,” Yugo observed. His manners had reverted to his laboring days and he spoke with his mouth half full.

“Dahlites have a gift for expansion,” Hari said diplomatically. Their high birth rate pushed them into other Sectors, where their connections to Dahl brought new investment. Hari liked their restless energy; it reminded him of Helicon’s few cities.

He had been modeling all of Trantor, trying to use it as a shrunken version of the Empire. Much of his progress had come from unlearning conventional wisdom. Most economists saw money as simple ownership-a basic, linear power relationship. But it was a fluid, Hari found-slippery and quick, always flowing from one hand to the next as it greased the momentum of change. Imperial analysts had mistaken a varying flux for a static counter.

They finished and Yugo urged him into a groundpod. They followed a complicated path, alive with noise and smells and vigor. Here orderly traffic disintegrated. Instead of making an entire layer one way, local streets intersected at angles acute and oblique, seldom rectangular. Yugo seemed to regard traffic intersections as rude interruptions.

They sped by buildings at close range, stopped, and got out for a walk to a slideway. The Specials were right behind and without any transition Hari found himself in the middle of chaos. Smoke enveloped them and the acrid stench made him almost vomit.

The Specials captain shouted to him, “Stay down!” Then the man shouted to his men to arm with anamorphine. They all bristled with weapons.