"Asimov, Isaac - Brin, David - Foundations Triumph" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

But the sim raised a hand before Dors could finish, cutting her off.

"Yes, of course. The God I worship is only a superstition.

"In that case, dear robot... go forth and trust your faith in ihe Zeroth Law of Robotics."



-5-



Hari chose to avoid the Shoufeen groves during their next outing. Instead, he let Kers Kantun guide him to one of the many ornate areas of the imperial gardens that lay open to visitors-a generous concession by the new figurehead on the throne, Emperor Semrin, lately installed by the Commission for Public Safety.

Normally, five small corners of the palace grounds, just a few thousand acres each, were set aside for use by each social caste-citizens, eccentrics, bureaucrats, meritocrats, and gentry-but Semrin had used his limited authority to open more than half the vast tract, currying public favor by letting in folk from every class.

Of course, most Trantor natives would rather have their eyelashes yanked out than go sniffing flowers beneath a naked sun. They preferred their warm steel caverns. But the planet also had an immense transitory population consisting of merchants, diplomats, cultural emissaries, and tourists-plus a veritable army of Greys, young members of the bureaucratic order, briefly assigned to the capital-world for training and intense clerical service. Most of them came from planets where clouds still moved across open skies, and rain rolled down green-swathed mountains to a sea. They were the ones most grateful for Semrin's largesse. Each day, hundreds of miles of paths thronged with visitors, at first nervously agog at the richly manicured beauty, but then gradually making themselves at home.

It's a clever political move, but Semrin may pay for it, if he isn't careful. What is given cannot easily be taken back.

Of course such minor perturbations would hardly show up as blips in the psychohistorical equations. It hardly even mattered which monarch happened to reign. The fall of the empire had a ponderous momentum that could only be nudged a little, by those who knew exactly how. Everyone else was simply doomed to go along for the ride.

For the most part, Hari enjoyed the open expanses and never-ending variety of the palace grounds. Alas, they also reminded him of poor Gruber-the gardener who had only wanted to tend his humble flower beds, yet found himself driven by desperation to become an imperial assassin.

That was long ago, Hari thought. Gruber is now dust, along with Emperor Cleon.

And I will join them soon.

Rolling along a path they had never visited before, Hari and Kers abruptly confronted a fractal garden, where special variants of lichenlike shrubbery were programmed to grow and then retract with intricate, minutely branching abandon. It was an old art form, but he had seldom seen it so well executed. Color hues varied subtly, depending on sun angle and the shape of nearby shadows. The resulting maze of twisting gyre-configurations was a tumult of labyrinthine convolution, never the same from moment to moment.

Most passersby appreciated the display with uncomprehending awe, before strolling on to the next imperial wonder. But Hari signaled Kers to stop there while his eyes darted left and right, drawn by an inherent challenge. This complexity was nothing like the riotous chaos of the Shoufeen Woods. Hari quickly recognized the basic pattern-generating system. This organic pseudolichen was programmed to react according to fractional derivatives based on a sequence of Fiquarnn-Julia transforms. That much a child could see. But it only told part of the story. Squinting, Hari soon realized that holes kept appearing in the pattern, causing retreat and recession at semirandom intervals.

Predation, he realized. There must be a virus or some other parasite at work, assigned to degrade the lichen under certain conditions. This not only creates interesting secondary patterns. It's necessary for the system's overall health for it to experience die-back and renewal!

Soon, Hari saw that more than one kind of predator had to be at work. In fact, a microecosystem must be involved ... all formatted for the purpose of art.

His head began to fill, swiftly tracing algorithms used by the virtuoso gardener. Oh, it wasn't genius-level math, by any means. Nevertheless, to combine it with organic engineering in this way showed not only grace and originality, but a sense of humor as well. Hari nearly chuckled . . .

Until he noticed them.

Holes that endured.

Here. And over there. And several more places. Patches of open space where lichens never ventured, for no apparent reason. "There was light, and a fine nutrient mist. Tendrils kept probing toward the empty spots. . . then just happened to turn away, toward some other opportunity, each and every time.

Nor was that the only apparent strangeness. Over there] A place where living matter writhed and twisted, but always returned to the same shade of deep blue, every eight seconds or so. Soon, Hari counted at least a dozen anomalies that he could not explain. They fit no clear mathematical profile. And yet, they persisted.

He breathed a sigh of recognition. This was a familiar quandary-one that had dogged him nearly all of his professional life.

Attractor states.