Part 11 (1/2)

Eto Demerzel laughed.

It was not the first time. He sat there, with Hari Seldon and Dors Venabili in a tap-free room, and, every once in a while, at a signal from Hari, he would laugh. Sometimes he leaned back and laughed uproariously, but Seldon shook his head. ”That would never sound convincing.”

So Demerzel smiled and then laughed with dignity and Seldon made a face. ”I'm stumped,” he said. ”It's no use trying to tell you funny stories. You get the point only intellectually. You will simply have to memorize the sound.”

Dors said, ”Use a holographic laughtrack.”

”No! That would never be Demerzel. That's a bunch of idiots being paid to yak. It's not what I want. Try again, Demerzel.”

Demerzel tried again until Seldon said, ”All right, then, memorize that sound and reproduce it when you're asked the question. You've got to look amused. You can't make the sound of laughing, however proficient, with a grave face. Smile a little, just a little. Pull back the corner of your mouth.” Slowly Demerzel's mouth widened into a grin. ”Not bad. Can you make your eyes twinkle?”

”What do you mean, 'twinkle,”' said Dors indignantly. ”No one makes their eyes twinkle. That's a metaphorical expression.”

”No, it's not,” said Seldon. ”There's the hint of tears in the eye-sadness, joy, surprise, whatever-and the reflection of light from that hint of fluid is what does it.”

”Well, do you seriously expect Demerzel to produce tears?”

And Demerzel said, matter-of-factly, ”My eyes do produce tears for general cleansing-never in excess. Perhaps, though, if I imagine my eyes to be slightly irritated-”

”Try it,” said Seldon. ”It can't hurt.”

And so it was that when the talk on subetheric holovision was over and the words were streaking out to millions of worlds at thousands of times the effective speed of light words that were grave, matter-of-fact, informative, and without rhetorical embellishment-and that discussed everything but robots-Demerzel declared himself ready to answer questions.

He did not have to wait long. The very first question was: ”Mr. First Minister, are you a robot?”

Demerzel simply stared calmly and let the tension build. Then he smiled, his body shook slightly, and he laughed. It was not a loud uproarious laugh, but it was a rich one, the laugh of someone enjoying a moment of fantasy. It was infectious. The audience t.i.ttered and then laughed along with him.

Demerzel waited for the laughter to die down and then, eyes twinkling, said, ”Must I really answer that? Is it necessary to do so?” He was still smiling as the screen darkened.

23

”I'm sure it worked,” said Seldon. ”Naturally we won't have a complete reversal instantly. It takes time. But things are moving in the right direction now. I noticed that when I stopped Namarti's talk at the University Field. The audience was with him until I faced him and showed s.p.u.n.k against odds. The audience began to change sides at once.”

”Do you think this is an a.n.a.logous situation?” asked Dors dubiously.

”Of course. If I don't have psychohistory, I can use a.n.a.logy-and the brains I was born with, I suppose. There was the First Minister, beleaguered on all sides with the accusation, and he faced it down with a smile and a laugh, the most nonrobot thing he could have done, so that in itself was an answer to the question. Of course sympathy began to slide to his side. Nothing would stop that. But that's only the beginning. We have to wait for Sunmaster Fourteen and hear what he has to say.”

”Are you confident there, too?”

”Absolutely.”

24

Tennis was one of Hari's favorite sports, but he preferred to play rather than watch others. He watched with impatience, therefore, as the Emperor Cleon, dressed in sports fas.h.i.+on, loped across the court to return the ball. It was Imperial tennis, actually, so-called because it was a favorite of Emperors, a version of the game in which a computerized racket was used that could alter its angle slightly with appropriate pressures on the handle. Hari had tried to develop the technique on several occasions but found that mastering the computerized racket would take a great deal of practice-and Hari Seldon's time was far too precious for what was clearly a trivial pursuit.

Cleon placed the ball in a nonreturnable position and won the game. He trotted off the court to the careful applause of the functionaries who were watching and Seldon said to him, ”Congratulations, Sire. You played a marvelous game.”

Cleon said indifferently, ”Do you think so, Seldon? They're all so careful to let me win. I get no pleasure out of it.”

5eldon said, ”In that case, Sire, you might order your opponents to play harder.”

”It wouldn't help. They'd be careful to lose anyway. And if they did win, I would get even less pleasure out of losing than out of winning meaninglessly. Being an Emperor has its woes, Seldon. Joranum would have found that out-if he had ever succeeded in becoming one.”

He disappeared into his private shower facility and emerged in due time, scrubbed and dried and dressed rather more formally.

”And now, Seldon” he said, waving all the others away, ”the tennis court is as private a place as we can find and the weather is glorious, so let us not go indoors. I have read the Mycogenian message of this Sunmaster Fourteen. Will it do?”

”Entirely, Sire. As you have read, Joranum was denounced as a Mycogenian Breakaway and is accused of blasphemy in the strongest terms.”

”And does that finish him?”

”It diminishes his importance fatally, Sire. There are few who accept the mad story of the First Minister's robothood now. Furthermore, Joranum is revealed as a liar and a poseur and, worse, one who was caught at it.”

”Caught at it, yes,” said Cleon thoughtfully. ”You mean that merely to be underhanded is to be sly and that may be admirable, while to be caught is to be stupid and that is never admirable.”

”You put it succinctly, Sire.”

”Then Joranum is no longer a danger.”

”We can't be certain of that, Sire. He may recover, even now. He still has an organization and some of his followers will remain loyal. History yields examples of men and women who have come back after disasters as great as this one-or greater.”

”In that case, let us execute him, Seldon.”

Seldon shook his head. ”That would be inadvisable, Sire. You would not want to create a martyr or to make yourself appear to be a despot.”

Cleon frowned. ”Now you sound like Demerzel. Whenever I wish to take forceful action, he mutters the word 'despot.' There have been Emperors before me who have taken forceful action and who have been admired as a result and have been considered strong and decisive.”

”Undoubtedly, Sire, but we live in troubled times. Nor is execution necessary. You can accomplish your purpose in a way that will make you seem enlightened and benevolent.”

”Seem enlightened?”