“Technology enters only in its effects on other large issues,” Hari said. How to explain the intricacies of nonlinear calculus? “Often its limitations are the important point.”

“Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced,” Cleon said airily.

“Well put, sire.”

“You like it? That fellow Draius gave it to me. It has a ring, doesn’t it? True, too. Perhaps I’ll-” He broke off and said to the air, “Transcription officer! Give that line about magic to the Presepth for general distribution.”

Cleon sat back. “They’re always after me for ‘Imperial wisdom.’ A bother!”

A faint musical note announced Betan Lamurk. Hari stiffened at first sight of the man, but Lamurk had eyes only for the Emperor as he went smoothly through a litany of court ritual. As a prime member of the High Council he had to recite some time-honored and empty phrases, bow with a curious swoop, and never avert his gaze from the Emperor. That done, he could relax.

“Professor Seldon! So good to meet again.”

Hari shook hands in the formal manner. “Sorry about that little dustup. I really didn’t know the 3D was there.”

“No matter. One can’t help what the media make of things.”

“My Seldon gave me excellent advice about the Moron Decree,” Cleon said. He went on, his delight deepening the twist of Lamurk’s mouth.

Cleon led them to luxuriant chairs that popped out of the walls. Hari found himself swept immediately into a detailed discussion of Council matters. Resolutions, measures of appropriation, abstracts of proposed legislation. This stuff had been flowing through Hari’s office, as well. He had dutifully set his autosec to text-analyzing it, breaking the sea of jargon down into Galactic and smoothing out the connections. This got him through the first hour. Most of the material he had ignored, tipping piles of to-be-scanned documents into his recycler when nobody was looking.

The arcane workings of the High Council were not in principle difficult to follow-they were just boring. As Lamurk deftly conferred with the Emperor, Hari watched them as he would watch a bodyball game: a curious practice, no doubt fascinating in a narrow sort of way.

That the Council set general standards and directions, while below them mere legal mavens worked out the details and passed legislation, did not change his bemused disinterest. People spent their lives doing such things!

For tactics he cared little. Even mankind did not matter. On the Galactic chessboard the pieces were the phenomena of humanity, the rules of the game were the laws of psychohistory. The player on the other side was hidden, perhaps did not exist.

Lamurk needed an opposite player, a rival. Subtly, Hari saw that he was the inevitable foe.

Lamurk’s career had aimed him for the First Ministership and he meant to get it. At every turn Lamurk curried favor with the Emperor and waved away Hari’s points, of which there were few.

He did not directly counter Lamurk; the man was a master. He kept quiet, confining himself to an occasional expressively (he hoped) raised eyebrow. He had rarely regretted keeping quiet.

“This MacroMesh thing, do you favor it?” the Emperor abruptly asked Hari.

He barely remembered the idea. “It will alter the Galaxy considerably,” he stalled.

“Productively!” Lamurk slapped a table. “All the econ-indicators are falling. The MacroMesh will speed up info-flow, boost productivity.”

The Emperor’s mouth tilted with doubt. “I’m not altogether happy with the idea of linking so many, so easily.”

“Just think,” Lamurk pressed, “the new squeezers will let an ordinary person in, say, Eqquis Zone talk every day with a friend in the Far Reaches-or anywhere else.”

The Emperor nodded uncertainly. “Hari? What do you think?”

“I have doubts as well.”

Lamurk waved dismissively. “Failure of nerve.”

“Increased communication may worsen the Empire’s crisis.”

Lamurk’s mouth twisted derisively. “Nonsense. Contrary to every good executive rule.”

“The Empire isn’t ruled-” Hari made a half-bow to the Emperor “-alas, it’s let run.”

“More nonsense. We in the High Council-”

“Hear him out!” Cleon said. “He does not talk very much.”

Hari smiled. “Many people are grateful for that, sire.”

“No oblique answers, now. What does your psychohistory tell you about how the Empire runs?”

“It is millions of castles, webbed by’ bridges.”

“Castles?” Cleon’s famous nose rose skeptically.

“Planets. They have local concerns and run them selves as they like. The Empire doesn’t trouble itself over such details, unless a world begins making aggressive trouble.”

“True enough, and as it should be,” Cleon said. “Ah-and your bridges are the wormholes.”

“Exactly, sire.” Hari deliberately avoided looking at Lamurk and focused on the Emperor, while sketching in his vision.

Planets could have any number of lesser duchies, with disputes and wars and “microstructure” galore. The psychohistorical equations showed that none of that mattered.

What did matter was that physical resources could not be shared among indefinitely large numbers of people. Each solar system was a finite store of goods, and in the end, that meant local hierarchies to control access.

Wormholes could carry rather little mass, because the holes were seldom more than ten meters across. Massive hyperspace ships carried heavy cargoes, but they were slower and cumbersome. They distorted space-time, contracting it fore and expanding it aft, moving at super-light speeds in the Galaxy’s frame but not in its own. Trade among most stellar systems was constrained to light, compact, expensive items. Spices, fashions, technology-not bulky raw materials.

Wormholes could accommodate modulated light beams far more easily. The wormhole curvature refracted beams through to receivers at the other mouth. Data flowed freely, knitting together the Galaxy.

And information was the opposite of mass. Data could be moved, compressed, and leaked readily through copies. It was infinitely shareable. It blossomed like flowers in eternal spring, for as information was applied to a problem, the resulting solution was new information. And it was cheap, meaning that it took few mass resources to acquire it. Its preferred medium was light, quite literally-the laser beam.

“That provided enough communication to make an Empire. But the odds of a native of the Puissant Zone ever voyaging to the Zaqulot Zone-or even to the next star, since by wormhole they are equivalent trips-were tiny,” Hari said.

“So every one of your ‘castles’ kept itself isolated-except for information flow,” Cleon said, absorbed.

“But now the MacroMesh will increase the information transfer rate a thousand-fold, using these ‘squeezers’ that compress information.”

Cleon pursed his lips, puzzled. “Why is that bad?”

“It’s not,” Lamurk said. “Better data makes for better decisions, everybody knows that.”

“Not necessarily. Human life is a voyage on a sea of meaning, not a net of information. What will most people get from a close, personal flow of data? Detached, foreign logic. Uprooted details.”

“We can run things better!” Lamurk insisted. Cleon held up a finger and Lamurk choked off his next words.

Hari hesitated. Lamurk had a point, indeed.

There were mathematical relationships between technology, capital accumulation, labor, but the most important driver proved to be knowledge. About half the Empire’s economic growth came from the increase in the quality of information, as embodied in better machines and improved skills, leading to efficiency.

That was where the Empire had faltered. The innovative thrust of the sciences had slowly faltered. The Imperial universities produced fine engineers, but no inventors. Great scholars, but few true scientists. That factored into the other tides of time. But something other than data starvation had made that happen, and as yet, Hari did not know the cause.