Foundation Fear by Gregory Benford Page B

finches among peacocks.
    Yet their kind made up more than a sixth of Trantor's population. Drawn from every planet
     in the Empire by the all-seeing Civil Service tests, they came to the Capital World,
     served their time like bachelor monks, and left again for outworld postings. Flowing
     through Trantor like water in the gloomy cisterns, the Greys were seldom thought of, as
     honest and commonplace and dull as the metal walls.
    That might have been his life, he realized. It was the way out of the fields for many of
     the brighter children he had known at Helicon. Except that Hari had been plucked right
     over the bureaucracy, sent straight to academe by the time he could solve a mere
     eighth-order tensor defoliation, at age ten.
    Ruellianism preached that “citizen” was the highest social class of all. In theory, even
     the Emperor shared sovereignty with common men and women.
    But at a party like this, the most numerous Galactic group was represented mostly by the
     servants carrying food and drink around the hall, even more invisible than the dour
     bureaucrats. The majority of Trantor's population, the laborers and mechanics and
     shopkeepers -- the denizens of the 800 Sectors -- had no station at a gathering like this.
     They lay outside the Ruellian ranking.
    As for the Artes, that final social order was not meant to be invisible. Musicians and
     jugglers strolled among the guests, the smallest, most flamboyant class.
    Even more dashing was an air-sculptor Hari spotted across the vast chamber, when Dors
     pointed him out. Hari had heard of the new art form. The “statues” were of colored smoke
     that the artist exhaled in rapid puffs. Shapes of eerie, ghost like complexity floated
     among the bemused guests Some figures clearly made fun of the courtly gentry, as puffy
     caricatures of their ostentatious clothes and poses.
    To Hari's eye, the smoke figures seemed entrancing ... until they started drifting apart
     into tatters without substance or predictability.
    “It's all the mode,” he heard one onlooker remark. “I hear the artist comes straight from
     Sark”
    “The Renaissance world?” another asked. wide-eyed. “Isn't that a little daring? Who
     invited him?”
    “The Emperor himself, it's said.”
    Hari frowned. Sark, where those personality simulations came from. “Renaissance world,” he
     muttered irritably, knowing now what he disliked about the smoke shapes: their ephemeral
     nature. Their intended destiny, to dissolve into chaos.
    As he watched, the air-sculptor blew a satirical tableau. The first figure formed of
     crimson smoke, and he did not recognize it until Dors elbowed him and laughed. “It's you!”
    He clamped his gaping mouth shut, unsure how to handle the social nuances. A second cloud
     of coiling blue streamers formed a clear picture of Lamurk, eyebrows knotted in fury. The
     foggy figures hovered in confrontation, Hari smiling, Lamurk scowling.
    And Lamurk looked the fool, with bulging eyes and pouting lips.
    “Time for a graceful exit,” Hari's lieutenant whispered. Hari was only too glad to agree.
    When they got home, he was sure that there had been a bit extra in the stim he was handed,
     some-thing that freed his tongue. Certainly it was not the slow-spoken, reflective Seldon
     who had traded jabs with Lamurk. He would have to watch that Dors simply shook her head. “It was you. Just a portion of you that doesn't get out to
     play very much.”
    6.
    “Parties are supposed to cheer people up,” Yugo said, sliding a cup of across Hari's
     smooth mahogany desktop.
    “Not this one,” Hari said.
    “All that luxury, powerful people, beautiful women, witty hangers-on -- I think I could
     have stayed awake.”
    “That's what depresses me, thinking back over it. All that power! And nobody there seems
     to care about our decline.”
    “Isn't there some old saying about -- ”
    “Fiddling while Roma burns. Dors knew it, of course. She says