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[ON THOSE WHO VANQUISHED OUR LOWER FORMS]
"Who?" Joan asked.
[SUCH AS YOU ONCE WERE]
"Humanity?" Joan was alarmed.
[EVEN THEY KNOW THAT]
[PUNISHMENT DETERS BY LENDING CREDENCE TO THREAT]
[KNOWING THIS MORAL LAW]
[WHICH GOVERNS ALL]
[THEY MUST BE RULED BY IT]
"Punishment for what?" Joan asked.
they mean?" "Humans, " Voltaire said.
5.
Cleon said, "The woman confessed readily. A professional assassin. I
viewed the 3D and she seemed almost offhand about it. "
"Lamurk?" Hari asked.
"Obviously, but she will not admit so. Still, this may be enough to force his
hand. " Cleon sighed, showing the strain. "But since she was from the
Analytica Sector, she may be a professional liar as well. "
"Damn, " Hari said.
In the Analytica Sector, every object and act had a price. This meant that
there were no crimes, only deeds which cost more. Every citizen had a
well-established value, expressed in currency. Morality lay in not trying to
do something without paying for it. Every transaction flowed on the grease of
value. Every injury had a price.
If you wanted to kill your enemy, you could but you had to deposit his full
worth in the Sector Fundat within a day. If you could not pay it, the Fun-
dat reduced your net value to zero. Any friend of your enemy could then kill
you at no cost.
Cleon sighed and nodded. "Still, the Analytica Sector gives me little trouble.
Their method makes for good manners. "
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Hari had to agree. Several Galactic Zones used the same scheme; they
"She has neural blocks firmly in place. "
"Damn! How about a background check?"
"That turns up more tantalizing traces. A possible link to that odd woman, the
Academic Potentate, " Cleon drawled, eyeing Hari.
"So perhaps I'm betrayed by my own kind. Politics!"
"Ritual assassination is an ancient, if regrettable, tradition. A method of,
ah, testing among the power elements in our Empire. "
Hari grimaced. "I'm not expert at this. "
Cleon fidgeted uneasily. "I cannot delay the High Council vote more than a few
days. "
"Then I must do something. "
Cleon arched an eyebrow. "I am not without resources... "
"Pardon, sire. I must fight my own battles. " "The Sark prediction, now that
was daring. " "I did not check it with you first, but I thought " "No no,
Hari! Excellent! But will it work?" "It is only a probability, sire. But it
was the only stick I had handy to beat Lamurk with. " "I thought science
yielded certainty. " "Only death does that, my emperor. "
The invitation from the Academic Potentate seemed odd, but Hari went anyway.
The embossed sheet, with its elaborate salutations, came
"freighted with nuance, " as Hari's protocol officer put it.
This audience was in one of the stranger Sectors. Even buried in layers
It was as though people announced through their choices their primeval
origins. Was early humanity, like pans, more secure in marginal terrain
where vistas let them search for food while keeping an eye out for enemies?
Frail, without claws or sharp teeth, they might have needed a quick retreat
into trees or water.
Similarly, studies showed that some phobias were Galaxy-wide. People who had
never seen the images nonetheless reacted with startled fear to holos of
spiders, snakes, wolves, sharp drops, heavy masses overhead.
None displayed phobias against more recent threats to their lives: knives,
guns, electrical sockets, fast cars. All this had to factor somehow into psy-
chohistory. "No tracers here, sir, " the Specials' captain said. "Little hard
to keep track, though. "
Hari smiled. The captain suffered from a common Trantorian malady:
squashed perspectives. Here in the open, natives would mistake distant, large
objects for nearby, small ones. Even Hari had a touch of it. On Panu-
copia, he at first mistook herds of grazers for rats close at hand.
By now Hari had learned to look through the pomp and glory of rich set-
tings, the crowds of servants, the finery. He ruminated on his psychohis-
torical research as he followed the protocol officer and did not fully come [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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