Cleon looked off in a distracted way at the towering, shadowy art forms looming around them. By now Hari understood that this pointed to the crux of why he had been summoned. “Your appointment will take a while, as the High Council fidgets. So I shall seek your advice…”

“Without giving me the power.”

“Well, yes.”

Hari felt no disappointment. “So I can stay in my office at Streeling?”

“I suppose it would seem forward if you came here.”

“Good. Now, about those Specials-”

“ Theymust remain with you. Trantor is more dangerous than a professor knows.”

Hari sighed. “Yes, sire.”

Cleon lounged back, his airchair folding itself about him elaborately. “Now I would like your advice on this Renegatum matter.”

“Renegatum?”

For the first time, Hari saw Cleon show surprise. “You have not followed the case? It is everywhere!”

“I am a bit out of the main stream, sire.”

“The Renegatum-the Society of Renegades. They kill and destroy.”

“For what?”

“For the pleasure of destruction!” Cleon slapped his chair angrily and it responded by massaging him, apparently a standard answer. “The latest of their members to ‘demonstrate their contempt for society’ is a woman named Kutonin. She invaded the Imperial Galleries, torch-melted art many millennia old, and killed two guards. Then she peacefully turned herself over to the officers who arrived.”

“You shall have her executed?”

“Of course. Court decided she was guilty quickly enough-she confessed.”

“Readily?”

“Immediately.”

Confession under the subtle ministrations of the Imperials was legendary. Breaking the flesh was easy enough; the Imperials broke the suspect’s psyche, as well. “So sentence can be set by you, it being a high crime against the Imperium.”

“Oh yes, that old law about rebellious vandalism.”

“It allows the death penalty and any special torture.”

“But death is not enough! Not for the Renegatum crimes. So I turn to my psychohistorian.”

“You want me to…?”

“Give me an idea. These people say they’re doing it to bring down the existing order and all that, of course. But they get immense planet-wide coverage, their names known by everyone as the destroyers of time-honored art. They go to their graves famous. All the psychers say that’s their real motivation. I can kill them, but they don’t care by that time!”

“Um,” Hari said uncomfortably. He knew full well he could never comprehend such people.

“So give me an idea. Something psychohistorical.” Hari was intrigued by the problem, but nothing came to mind. He had long ago learned to deliberately not concentrate on a vexing question immediately, letting his subconscious have first crack. To gain time he asked, “Sire, you saw the smoke beyond the gardens?”

“Um? No.” Cleon gave a quick hand signal to unseen eyes and the far wall blossomed with light. A full holo of the gardens filled the massive space. The oily black plume had grown. It coiled snakelike into the gray sky.

A soft, neutral voice spoke in midair. “A breakdown, with insurrection by mechanicals, has caused this unfortunate lapse in domestic order.”

“A tiktok riot?” This sort of thing Hari had heard about.

Cleon rose and walked toward the holo. “Ah yes, another recalcitrant riddle. For some reason the mechanicals are going awry. Look at that! How many levels are-burning?”

“Twelve levels are aflame,” the autovoice answered. “Imperial Analysis estimates a death toll of four hundred thirty-seven, within an uncertainty of eighty-four.”

“Imperial cost?” Cleon demanded.

“Minor. Some Imperial Regulars were hurt in subduing mechanicals.”

“Ah. Well then, it is a small matter.” Cleon watched as the wall close-upped. The view plunged down a smoking pit. To the side, like a blazing layer cake, whole floors curled up from the heat. Sparks shot between electrical boosters. Burst pipes showered the flames but had little effect.

Then a distant view, telescoping up into orbit. The program was giving the Emperor an eyeful, showing off its capabilities. Hari guessed that it didn’t often get the chance. Cleon the Calm was one derisive nickname for him, for he seemed bored with most matters that moved men.

From space, the only deep green was the Imperial Gardens-just a splotch amid the grays and browns of roofs and roof-agriculture. Charcoal-black solar collectors and burnished steel, pole to pole. The ice caps had dissipated long ago and the seas sloshed in underground cisterns.

Trantor supported forty billion people in a world-wrapping single city, seldom less than half a kilometer deep. Sealed, protected, its billions had long grown used to recycled air and short perspectives, and feared the open spaces a mere elevator ride away.

The view zoomed down into the smoky pit again. Hari could see tiny figures leaping to their deaths to escape the flames. Hundreds dying….Hari’s stomach lurched. In crowded stacks of humanity, accidents took a fearsome toll.

Still, Hari calculated, there were on average only a hundred people in a square kilometer of the planet’s surface. People jammed into the more popular Sectors out of preference, not necessity. With the seas pumped below, there was ample room for automated factories, deep mines, and immense, cavernous growing pods, where raw materials for food emerged with little direct human labor needed. These wearisome chores the tiktoks did. But now they were bringing mayhem to the intricacy that was Trantor, and Cleon fumed as he watched the disaster grow, eating away whole layers with fiery teeth.

More figures writhed in the orange flames. These were people, not statistics, he reminded himself. Bile rose in his throat. To be a leader meant that sometimes you had to look away from the pain. Could he do that?

“Another puzzle, my Seldon,” Cleon said abruptly. “Why do the tiktoks have these large-scale ‘disorders’ my advisers keep telling me about? Ah?”

“I do not-”

“There must be some psychohistorical explanation!”

“These tiny phenomena may well lie beyond-”

“Work on it! Find out!”

“Uh, yes, sire.”

Hari knew enough to let Cleon pad pointlessly around the vault, frowning at the continuing wall-high scenes of carnage, in utter silence. Perhaps, Hari thought, the Emperor was calm because he had seen so much calamity already. Even horrendous news palls. A sobering thought; would the same happen to the naive Hari Seldon?

Cleon had some way of dealing with disaster, though, for after a few moments he waved and the scenes vanished. The vault filled with cheerful music and the lighting rose. Attendants scampered out with bowls and trays of appetizers. A man at Hari’s elbow offered him a stim. Hari waved it away. The sudden shift in mood was heady enough. Apparently it was commonplace, though, for the Imperial Court.

Hari had felt something tickling at the back of his mind for several minutes now, and the quiet moments had given him a chance to finally pay attention to it. As Cleon accepted a stim, he said hesitantly, “Sire, I-?”

“Yes? Have one, ah?”

“Nossir, I, I had a thought about the Renegatum and the Kutonin woman.”

“Oh, my, I’d rather not think about-”

“Suppose you erase her identity.”

Cleon’s hand stopped with a stim halfway to his nose. “Ah?”

“They are willing to die, once they’ve attracted attention. They probably think they will live on, be famous. Take that away from them. Permit no release of their true names. In all media and official documents, give them an insulting name.”

Cleon frowned. “Another name…?”

“Call this Kutonin woman Moron One. The next one, Moron Thro. Make it illegal by Imperial decree to ever refer to her any other way. Then she as a person vanishes from history. No fame.”

Cleon brightened. “Now, that’s an idea. I’ll try it. I not merely take their lives, I can take their selves.”