Free Foundation and Chaos by Greg Bear

circular chamber at least twelve meters in diameter and perhaps thirty meters high. Above, all the inhabited star systems of the Galaxy rotated across the dome, blinking in order of settlement, tens of millions of them. Hari glanced up and squinted at the immensity of humanity’s reach. Klayus I ignored the display. His pinched lips and wide, yet somehow vacuous eyes disturbed Hari.
    Klayus pushed open a huge door to his entertainment room. Silently, the door—more like the entrance to a vault—swung on its immense hinges, and insects, green and gold, crawled over the frame. Hari assumed they were projected, but would not have been surprised to discover they were real.
    “I have very little interest in your future, Raven,” the Emperor said lightly. “I do manage to keep informed. I won’t stop the trial, and I won’t second-guess Chen on this.”
    “I refer to your own immediate future, sire,” Hari said. I hope Daneel’s message was not just a dream, a fancy! This could turn deadly, if so.
    The Emperor turned, smiling at this dramatic turn of phrase. “You’re on record as saying the Empire is doomed. That sounds treasonous enough to me. On this, Chen and I agree.”
    “I say Trantor will be in ruins within five hundred years. But I’ve never predicted your future, sire.”
    The entertainment room was filled with hulking sculptures of giant creatures from around the Galaxy, all savagely carnivorous, all caught in poses of attack. Hari regarded them with little appreciation for the artistry. Art had never interested him much, and certainly not the more popular forms, except wherehe could abstract entertainment trends as indicators for social health.
    “I’ve had my palm read,” Klayus said, still smiling, “by a number of beautiful women. They all found it most attractive, and assured me my future was bright. No assassinations, Raven.”
    “You will not be assassinated, sire.”
    “Deposed? Exiled to Smyrmo? That’s where they sent my heroic quintuple-great-grandfather. Smyrmo, hot and dry, where you can’t go outside without protective clothing, where the rooms smell of sulfur and there are only cramped tunnels through the rock fit for vermin. His memoirs are quite good entertainment, Raven.”
    “No, sire. You will be ridiculed until you lose all stature, then you will be ignored, and Linge Chen will never even have to defer to you. He will soon enough declare a people’s democracy and leave you only as a symbol, with declining revenues, until you can no longer even keep up appearances.”
    The Emperor stopped between two Gareth-lions, the largest carnivores on any mid-gravity world, life-size—about twenty meters from clawed feet to razor-barbed, prehensile snouts. He leaned on the canted ankle of one. “Psychohistory tells you this?”
    “No, sire. Experience and logical deduction, without benefit of psychohistory. Have you ever heard of Joranum?”
    The Emperor shrugged. “I don’t think so. Person or place—or perhaps beast?”
    “A man, who wanted to become Emperor, and who betrayed his hidden origins by subscribing to an ancient myth…About robots.”
    “Robots! Yes, I believe in them.”
    Hari was taken aback. “Not tiktoks, sire, but intelligent machines made in human form.”
    “Of course. I believe they existed once, and that we outgrew them. Put them aside like toys. The tiktok experiment wassimply an anachronism. We don’t need mechanical workers, much less mechanical intelligences.”
    Hari blinked slowly, and wondered if he had underestimated this young man. “Joranum believed”— (Was led to believe, by Raych! he reminded himself) —“that a robot had infiltrated the Palace. He claimed First Minister Demerzel was a robot.”
    “Ah, yes, I seem to remember something about that…not that long ago, was it? Though before I was born.”
    “Demerzel laughed at him, sire, and Joranum’s political movement collapsed under the weight of ridicule.”
    “Yes, yes, I