The long twilight of the Empire would darkle. He would not live much longer to see it, nor did he want to. Seeing the glow of the overhead domes through the vault windows, perhaps fifty meters above him, made him think of what a real skyglow through real stained glass would look like, on Helicon.

Stillness. Completion is near, yet I feel no real sense of satisfaction; where is my personal reward? What if I have saved humanity from thousands of years of chaos; what have I accomplished for myself! Unworthy thoughts for a prophet or a hero. I have a granddaughter, not really my own flesh; the continuity is broken biologically, if not philosophically. I have a few new friends around me, but the old are either gone, dead, or inaccessible.

He thought of standing on the upperside maintenance tower, just a few weeks ago, and of the gloom that had enveloped him then. I cannot leave Trantor; Chen will not let me. I am still dangerous and best kept bottled. But where would I most like to go now, where would I most like to be, in my last days?

Helicon. In the sun, outside, away from these enclosing ceiled cities, away from the metal skin of Trantor. To see a night sky that was not simulated and to be unafraid of the expanse, the thousands of stars, a small glimpse of the Empire for which he had labored and which he had tried to understand.

To stand in the open, in the rain and the weather and the cold, and not be afraid; to be with old friends and family

The obsessive thoughts that filled so many of his nights. He sighed and sat up, listening to the sounds of boots marching down the northern hallway.

Three guards and the warden entered and approached Hari.

“There’s been a disturbance in the new Commission building, near the palace and not too far from here,” the warden said. “We’ve been told to lock down until the disturbance has been explained.”

“What sort of disturbance?” Hari asked.

“I don’t know,” the warden said. “Nothing to worry about. We’re fine here. We’ve been given instructions to protect you at any cost-”

Hari heard a sound from the eastern entrance of the hall. He turned and saw a woman standing there and gave a gasp-in the light, at this distance, her stance, her bearing-the dream-

Dors Venabili had kept her own list of codes and passages in the palace buildings, and remarkably, most of them still worked. No doubt the codes that let people out of the buildings were changed more frequently than those that let them in. When Hari had been arrested and charged with assault, decades before, she had made plans to break into the Courts Building and release him, and the work she had done then served her well now.

It also possible that Joan had helped her…But how she had come here ultimately did not matter. She would have battered down walls to do so.

She was the first to enter the Hall of Dispensation. She saw Hari and three men, standing near the center, lit by the dif. fuse glow of the skylight. She halted for a moment. The men were not threatening Hari. Quite the contrary; she judged they were there to protect him.

Hari turned and looked in her direction. His mouth opened and she heard his intake of breath echo in the hall. The three men turned, and the eldest, a large, stocky fellow wearing the uniform of an Imperial warden, called out to her:

“Who are you? What are you doing here?”

From the northern entrance came a sizzle and a flash of light. Dors knew that sound very well: a neural whip, fired from several dozen meters. The three men around Hari jerked and danced for a moment, then fell to the floor, moaning.

Hari stood untouched.

Dors ran as fast as she could toward the small, intense-looking woman standing near the northern entrance. This woman still held the neural whip, and seemed to have eyes only for Hari. In less than four seconds, Dors moved to within less than two meters of her.

Vara Liso cried out with the effort of her persuasion. The hall seemed to fill with voices, ugly demanding voices. Hari clutched his hands over his ears and winced, and the men on the floor twitched even more violently, but the main force of the mentalic bolt went toward Dors.

Dors had never felt such a blast, had never known humans were capable of such discharges. She had felt Daneel’s subtle persuasive abilities during her training period on Eos, nothing more.

It seemed perfectly natural, in mid-stride, on her way to incapacitating and if necessary killing this woman who threatened Hari, simply to pull up her legs and attempt to fly. Her body of metal and synthetic flesh curled into a ball and she glanced off the woman’s upper shoulder, knocking her to one side.

Dors caromed from the opposite wall and fell to the floor in a tangle. She could not move; she did not want to move, not at that moment, perhaps not ever again.

Daneel left the taxi at the Greys’ Entrance on the east side of the Imperial Courts Building, then stood by the small double metal doors. He wore the uniform of a lifetime bureaucrat, native to Trantor and not a student or pilgrim; he had reserved this identity decades ago, among many others, and if queried by any security guards, there would be files in the personnel computers to explain him and his duties, his right to be here.

The doors were ornately inscribed with the general rules of public service. The first rule was Do no harm to your Emperor or his subjects.

Even in the taxi, Daneel had felt the mentalic explosions, from the general vicinity of the palace, but did not know what they signified, if anything. It was easy to imagine his plans unraveling, now that they were almost complete. He had juggled for so long, keeping literally tens of millions of balls in the air at once…

He shifted the small bureaucratic valise under his arm and entered a specific and reserved code for entry by a gray administrative officer.

It was refused. The codes had all been changed; there was an emergency within the Courts Building, perhaps within the palace itself.

Here. My Other is within the building. Joan, split into many Joans, many meme-minds, worked from both sides.

The left-hand door opened, and he entered the building.

It took him longer than he expected to make his way through the secure facilities, even with Joan’s help.

On the last door, when he knew he was within two doors of joining Hari in the beautiful, high-ceilinged Hall of Dispensation, Joan distracted a human guard by sending him revised watch instructions.

Daneel smelled electricity in the next segment of hallway. A neural whip had been discharged here in the last few minutes