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

That echo set off an involuntary shiver in her circuits. Dors could tell at once, the head was old.

When Lodovic Trema next spoke, his voice was both amused and sympathetic.

"Yeah, it struck me the same way. Especially when I realized who this once was.

"Dors Venabili, I now entrust you with the most precious relic in the galaxy-the head and brain of R. Giskard Reventlov-co-



-7-



By mutual consent, Hari met the Grey Man at a cafe near the offices of the Imperial Soil Service, in one of the seedier bureaucratic levels of Coronnen Sector. Horis Antic expressed confidence that their conversation would be private, in a shielded booth that he must have prepared meticulously beforehand.

In fact, Hari did not care if Linge Chen's Special Police were still following him around, or listening in. This conversation would be dry enough to put the goons to sleep in no time.

"As you might guess, my superiors don't look kindly on unapproved research," the small man told Hari, pausing to dispense a blue tablet from his belt pouch and washing it down with a gulp of ale. "Our agency is not well regarded, politically. Even a small scandal might cost us overhead allotments, recruitment priorities, or a percentum of our office cubicles!"

Hari tried not to smile. Greys lived in a world of tense struggles over minutiae. Office politics and worries over government appropriations kept most senior bureaucrats in a constant state of agitation. No wonder Horis Antic seemed nervous, his eyes constantly darting. Even for a Grey, he took an inordinate number of calming pills.

Perhaps he harbors a secret dream, that his freelance studies might get him plucked out of the rat race, into the more serene world of the meritocracy.

That was what had happened to Hari-though admittedly before he was eight years old when those first algebra papers won him meritocratic robes.

Only the gentry class-the noble aristocracy whose thousand ranks and levels ranged from mere township squires all the way past planetary earls and sector dukes to the emperor himself- inherited their social status at birth. All others were born citizens, then recategorized according to their nature and accomplishments. Still, such changes generally took place during youth. Hari saw little hope for Antic to make a switch at his age . . . unless he would consider becoming an eccentric. In some ways, the fellow already qualified.

"It all began when I had a hunch to reexamine the ancient question of tilling," the bureaucrat explained, after a new round of drinks was served.

"The question of what?" Hari asked.

Antic nodded. "Of course you wouldn't have heard of it. The whole issue is rather obscure. Not many news reports or popular accounts are written about planetary soil analysis, I'm afraid. Let me begin again.

"You see, Professor Seldon, it has long been axiomatic that nearly all human-settled worlds have a narrow range of traits-for instance, oxygen-nitrogen atmospheres with a roughly twenty: eighty ratio. Most of the multicelled life-forms on these planets descend from the forty or so standard phyla, using the same basic DNA structure . . . though there are exceptions."

"Chickens on every world," Hari summarized with a smile, trying to put the man at ease. Antic kept twisting his cloth napkin, and it was starting to make Hari nervous.

"Ha!" The bureaucrat laughed eagerly. "And crabgrass on every lawn. I forgot that you're not a Trantor native. Some of this will be familiar to you, then. Indeed, a farmer from Sinbikdu would recognize most of the animals on far-off Incino. This supports the most popular theory regarding the origins of life-that similar species evolved naturally on many planets at the same time, due to some fundamental biological law. These similar creatures then naturally converged on the highest form of all, humanity"

Hari nodded. Antic was describing what a mathist would call an attractor state ... a situation that all surrounding states will drift toward, compelled by irresistible driving forces, so that all trajectories wind up intersecting at the same point. In this case, the standard dogma said that all evolutionary paths should inevitably produce human beings.

Only he knew for certain that this attractor notion was dead wrong. Years ago Hari had applied the tools of psychohistory to galaxy-wide genetic data and quickly determined that people must have emerged quite suddenly from somewhere in Sirius Sector, about twenty thousand years ago. This was recently confirmed by what he read in A Child's Book of Knowledge.

Naturally, he had no intention of announcing the truth, or trying to dispute the convergence theory. Nothing would bollix up the Seldon Plan worse than having the attention of the entire empire suddenly transfixed on a tiny world near Sirius, asking questions about events two hundred centuries ago!

"Go on," Hari urged. "I assume that similar patterns apply to the distribution of soil types?"

"Yes. Yes indeed, Professor! Oh, there are geological differences from planet to planet. . . sometimes profound ones. But certain aspects seem almost universal. The tilling I spoke of has to do with the natural state of lowland soils that colonists found on most planets, when they first settled each world. (We do have records stretching that far back, for about a million planets.) In each case soil conditions were similar-M;rushed and sifted to a depth of several dozen meters, with an abundance of familiar vegetation growing thereupon. Excellent conditions for farming, by the way. Of course, the mission of my organization is to see to it that things stay that way, through proper care and maintenance, preventing erosion or losses caused by industrial pollution. I'm afraid this sometimes makes us unpopular with farmers and local gentry, but we have to take the long view, eh? I mean, if somebody doesn't think about the future, how are we all going to have one? Sometimes it can get so frustrating-"