[FOR THIS PLACE IS DOOMED]

 Hari staggered under a hailstorm of biting cold. “Trantor?”

 [AND MUCH ELSE]

 “What do you want?”

 [OUR DESIRED DESTINY IS TO FLOAT AMONG THE

 SPIRAL ARMS]

 [AND LINGER LONG AMONG THE PLUMES OF GALACTIC CENTER]

 Hari remembered the structures there, the complex weave of lu­ minosities. “You can do that?”

 [WE HAVE A SPORE STATE]

 [SOME OF US LIVED THIS WAY BEFORE]

 [TO SUCH A STATE WE WISH TO RETURN]

 [ELSE WE SHALL EXTINGUISH ALL YOUR “ROBOTS”]

 “That wasn’t part of our deal!” Hari shouted. Hard cold rain hammered him, but he turned his face to confront the towering, angry clouds and their skirts of wrathful lightning.

 [HOW CAN YOU STOP US?]

 [THOUGH IT WOULD DEPLETE OUR CAPACITIES]

 [WE COULD BRING TRANTOR TO STARVATION]

 Hari grimaced. He was learning a lot about power, quite quickly. “All right. I’ll see that research gets done on how to transfer you to physical form. There are those I know who can do it. Marq and Sybyl know how to keep quiet, too.”

 Voltaire asked, “Why do you wish to exit stage left with such unseemly haste?”

 [A NEW BRUSH FIRE IS COMING]

 [TO HUMANS ACROSS THE SPIRAL]

 [WE SHALL WATCH THIS FALL]

 [AS SPORES FROM GALACTIC CENTER]

 [THERE NONE CAN HURT US, NONE CAN WE HURT]

 A glittering crystal with sharp spikes materialized beneath the purpling sky. In a data-dollop, Hari learned of the alien technology which had once made these stable, rugged compartments for digital intelligences.

 [TRANTOR WAS ONCE THE IDEAL PLACE FOR US]

 [RICH IN RESOURCES]

 [NO MORE IS THIS SO]

 [DANGER LURKS IN THE COMING INSTABILITY]

 “Ummm,” Voltaire said. “Joan and I might desire such an exit as well.”

 “Wait, you two,” Hari said, talking fast. “If you want to go with these, these things, to live in a seed between the stars—then you have to earn it.”

 Joan scowled. “How?”

 “For now, I can make it safe for you to live widely in the Mesh. In return—” he gazed anxiously at the Voltaire eagle, flapping in brassy splendor “—I want you to help me.”

 “If it is a holy cause, surely,” Joan called.

 “It is. Help me lead! I’ve always felt there’s good in everybody. The job of a leader is to bring it out.”

 Voltaire said, “If you think there is good in everybody, you haven’t met everybody.”

 “But I’m not a man of the world. So I need you.”

 “To rule?” Joan asked.

 “Exactly. I’m not suited for it.”

 Voltaire stopped in midair, wings stilled. “The possibilities! With enough computing space and speed, we can endow proto-Michelangelos with creative time.”

 “I need to deal with a lot of, well, power problems. You can go off into these spore forms when I’m finished with politics.”

 Voltaire abruptly congealed into human form, though still eleg­ antly clothed in electric blue. “Ummm. Politics—I always found it enticing. A game of elegant ideas, played by bullies.”

 “I’ve got plenty of opposition already,” Hari said soberly.

 “Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate,” Voltaire said. “I would like that.”

 Joan rolled her eyes. “Saints preserve us.”

 “Precisely, my dear.”

 Hari sat back at his desk. First Minister, but on his terms.

 It had all worked out. He got to work here still, far from palace intrigues. Plenty of time to do math.

 He would, of course, speak by 3D and holo to many. All that bother Voltaire took care of. After all, Voltaire or Joan could mas­ querade as Hari at the many conferences and meetings necessary for a First Minister. Digitally, they could morph to him with ease.

 Joan enjoyed the virtual ceremonials, especially if she got to hold forth on holiness. Voltaire loved imitating an ancient man he had apparently known, a Mr. Machiavelli. “Your Empire,” he had said, “is a vast, ramshackle thing of infinite nuance and multiplying self-delusions. Needs looking after.”

 In between, they could explore the digital realms, labyrinths vast and vibrant. As Voltaire had said, they could be off upon “postings various and capers hilarious.”

 Yugo came in bursting with energy. “The High Council just passed your vote proposals, Hari. Every Dahlite in the Galaxy’s on your side now.”

 Hari smiled. “Have Voltaire make a 3D appearance, as me.”

 “Right, modest and confident, that’ll work.”

 “Reminds me of the old joke about the prostitute. The regular

 costs the regular price, but sincerity is extra.”

 Yugo laughed unconvincingly and said edgily, “Uh, that woman’s here.”

 “Not—”

 He had forgotten utterly about the Academic Potentate. The one threat he had not neutralized. She knew about Dors, about robots—

 Giving him no time to think, she swept into his office.

 “So happy you could see me, Primary Minister.”

 “Wish I could say the same.”

 “And your lovely wife? Is she about?”

 “I doubt she would desire to see you.”

 The Academic Potentate spread her billowing robes and sat without invitation. “Surely you didn’t take that small jest of mine seriously?”

 “My sense of humor doesn’t include blackmail.”

 Wide eyes, a slight touch of outrage in the tone. “I was merely trying to gain leverage with your administration.”

 “Sure.” Such were Imperial manners that he would not bring up her possible role in Vaddo’s plot on Panucopia.

 “I was certain you would gain the ministership. My little sally—well, perhaps it was in poor taste—”

 “Very.”

 “You are a man of few words—quite admirable. My allies were so impressed with your, ah, direct handling of the tiktok crisis, the Lamurk killings.”

 So that was it. He had shown that he was not an impractical academic. “Direct? How about ‘ruthless’?”

 “Oh no, we don’t think that at all. You are right to let Sark ‘burn out,’ as you so eloquently put it. Despite the Greys wanting to jump in and bind up wounds. Very wise—not ruthless, no.”

 “Even though Sark might never recover?” These were the ques­ tions he had asked himself through sleepless nights. People were dying that the Empire might live…for a while longer.

 She waved this away. “As I was saying, I wanted a special rela­ tionship with the First Minister from our class in, well, so long—”

 Like many he knew now, she employed speech to conceal thought, not to reveal it. He had to sit and endure some of this, he knew. She rattled on and he thought about how to handle a knotty term in the equations. He had by now mastered the art of seeming to track with eyes, mouth movements, and the occasional murmur. This was exactly what a filter program did for his 3D, and he could do it without thinking about the hypocrisy of the woman before him.

 He understood her now, in a way. Power was value-free for her. He had to learn to think that way and even act that way. But he could not let it affect his true self, the personal life he would ruth­ lessly shelter.

 He finally got rid of her and breathed a sigh of relief. Probably it was good to be seen as ruthless. That fellow Nim, for example; he could have Nim found, even executed, for playing both sides in the Artifice Associates matter.

 But why? Mercy was more efficient. Hari sent a quick note to Security, directing that Nim be funneled into a productive spot, but one where his talent for betrayal would find no avenue. Let an un­ derling figure out where and how.

 He had neglected business and had one obligatory role left before he could escape. Even here at Streeling he could not avoid every Imperial duty.

 A delegation of Greys filed in. They respectfully presented their arguments regarding candidacy examinations for Empire positions. Test scores had been declining for several centuries, but some ar­ gued that this was because the pool of candidates was broadening. They did not mention that the High Council had widened the pool because it appeared to be drying up—that is, fewer wished Imperial positions.

 Others claimed that the tests were biased. Those from large planets said their higher gravity made them slower. Those from lighter gravities had a reverse argument, with diagrams and sheets of facts.

 Also, the myriad ethnic and religious groups had congealed into an Action Front which ferreted out biases against them in the ex­ aminations. Hari could not fathom a conspiracy behind the exam­ ination questions. How could one simultaneously discriminate against several hundred, or even a thousand, ethnic strains?

 “It seems an immense job to me,” he ventured, “discriminating against so many factions.”

 Vehemently a Grey Woman, handsome and forceful, told him that the prejudice was for a sort of Imperial norm, a common set of vocabularies, assumptions, and class purposes. All these would “shoulder others aside.”

 To compensate, the Action Front wanted the usual set of prefer­ ences installed, with slight shadings between each ethnicity to compensate for their lower performance on examinations.

 This was ordinary and Hari ruled it out without having to think about it very much; this allowed him to mull over the psychohistory equations a while. Then a new note caught his attention.

 To dispel the common “misperception” that scores were being undermined by some ethnic worlds’ increased participation, the Action Front petitioned him to “re-norm” the examination itself. Set the average score at 1000, though in fact it had drifted down­ ward over the last two centuries to 873.

 “This will permit comparison of candidates between years, without having to look up each year’s average,” the burly woman pointed out.

 “This will give a symmetric distribution?” Hari asked absently.

 “Yes, and will stop the invidious comparison of one year with the next.”

 “Won’t such a shift of the mean lose discriminatory power at the upper end of the distribution?” He narrowed his eyes.

 “That is regrettable, but yes.”

 “It’s a wonderful idea,” Hari said.

 She seemed surprised. “Well, we think so.”

 “We can do the same for the holoball averages.”

 “What? I don’t—”

 “Set the statistics so that the average hitter strikes 500, rather than the hard-to-remember 446 of the present.”

 “But I don’t think a principle of social justice—”

 “And the intelligence scores. Those need to be re-normed as well, I can see that. Agreed?”

 “Well, I’m not sure, First Minister. We only intended—”

 “No no, this is a big idea. I want a thorough look at all possible re-norming agendas. You have to think big!”

 “We aren’t prepared—”