Foundation And Chaos

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Book: Read Foundation And Chaos for Free Online
Authors: Greg Bear
Tags: Science-Fiction, Fantasy
engage in that ancient internal debate.
    What could he learn from the loss of Lodovik Trema? Nothing, it seemed; the universe
     sometimes decided things beyond the control of rational action. There was nothing so
     frustrating and difficult to encompass, for a robot, as a universe indifferent to humans.
    Daneel could move anonymously from Sector to Sector, along with the migrating unemployed
     now pandemic on Trantor. He could maintain contact with his cohorts through a personal
     communicator or his portable informer, as well as through illegal hookups to the planet's
     many networks. Sometimes he dressed as a pitiful street beggar; he spent much of his time
     in a cramped, dirty apartment in the Trans-Imperial Sector, barely seventy kilometers from
     the Palace. Nobody wished to look at a figure so old, bent, filthy, and pitiful; in a way,
     Daneel had become a symbol of the misery he hoped to overcome.
    No humans remembered a fictional character who had so enjoyed going out in disguise among
     the common people, the lower classes, a man of pure and impossibly discerning intellect, a
     detective much like Daneel's old friend Elijah Bailey. With Daneel's frequent memory dumps
     and adjustments, all that he remembered was a single name and an overall impression:
     Sherlock.
    Daneel was one of the many robots who had become disguised Sherlocks among the masses;
     tens of thousands
    throughout the Galaxy, trying not just to solve a mystery, but to prevent further and
     greater crimes.
    The leader of these dedicated servants, the first Eternal, brushed as much of the street's
     filth from his rags as he could manage, and left the cramped and empty General Habitation
     Project hovel in search of finer clothes.
7.
    “They've searched the entire apartment, ” Sonden Asgar moaned, rubbing his elbows and
     looking smaller and more frail than she had ever seen him before. Klia's respect for her
     father had not been high in the last few years, but she still felt a pang for his
     misery-and an abiding sense of guilt that strengthened a sense of responsibility. “They
     went through our records-imagine that! Private records! Some Imperial authority... ”
    “Why your records, Father?” Klia asked. The apartment was a shambles. She could imagine
     the investigators pulling up cabinets and throwing out the boxes and few dishes within,
     tugging up the worn carpets... She was glad she hadn't been here, and for more than one
     reason.
    “Not my records!” Sonden shouted. “They were looking for you. School papers, bookfilms,
     and they took our family album. With all your mother's pictures. Why? What have you done
     now?”
    Klia shook her head and upturned a stool to sit. “If they're looking for me, I can't stay,
     ” she said.
    “Why, daughter? What could-”
    “If I've done anything illegal, Father, it's not worth the attention of Imperial Specials.
     It must be something else... ” She thought of the conversation with the man in dusty
     green, and frowned.
    Sonden Asgar stood in the middle of the main room, three
    meters square, hardly a room at all-more of a closet-and shivered like a frightened
     animal. “They were not kind, ” he . said. “They grabbed me and shook me hard... They acted
     like thugs. I might as well have gotten mugged in Billibotton!” “What did they say?” Klia
     asked softly. “They asked where you were, how you had done in school, how you made your
     living. They asked whether you knew a Kindril Nashak. Who is that?”
    “A man, ” she said, hiding her surprise. Kindril Nashak! He had been the kingpin in her
     greatest success so far, a deal that had put four hundred New Credits in her accounts with
     the Banker in Billibotton. But even that had been trivial-surely nothing worth their
     attention. Imperial Special police were supposed to seek out the Lords of the Underground,
     not clever girls with purely personal ambitions.
    “A man!” her father said

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