Brann will die along with you, then they will all die, and she will be destroyed as well. Useless.
She reached out for Brann. Alone she could do nothing against such naked and monstrous strength.
Brann was a filament of clean light in the torrent of flaming hatred. She tugged at him, as if she would wake him up.
Brann said yes, and they joined. She had almost felt this
happen during their physical joining, but had pulled back, still wishing to preserve her own self as a lone and defiant place.
Lodovik reached out with both hands, saw Vara Liso’s shoulders twitch in awareness of his presence. She swiveled her head suddenly, tears flying from her eyes.
Lodovik was willing to hurt her, kill her if need be, if she did not stop. This was what humans had done to each other throughout their history, and it hurt him that he had such freedom as well: freedom to harm and to kill. But he was under no misapprehension that he was no better than this gnarled and hideous female. Quite clearly she was evil; she was antihuman.
He made his judgment, his decision.
He could feel a rumbling tidal wash coming. He grasped her shoulder and neck, and, with a sudden twist of his arms
Broke the woman’s neck like a matchstick.
Poor small Vara Liso. At the age of five years, her mother had beaten her severely, venting anger against her father, who had not been in the small and immaculately clean apartment; her mother had held her down with a variety of persuasion that came only when she was enraged.
She had beaten young Vara with a long, flexible plastic pole, until little welts rose on her bottom and along her back.
And so there had come the day when she had caused her mother to die, a memory she sometimes grasped hard for strength. And she had taken her mother, perhaps just a memory but perhaps not, inside, to compensate. Held her in a little diamond cage in her dreams.
Bringing out her mother for extra strength did not help. Actually, it weakened her, because it made her a child again, even more than she had been before.
She had never been an adult, not really.
The combined ribbon of light and wave of terrified heat that caught her and shivered her (burning without flame: sinter), the hand on her neck twisting
was incredibly painful
and very welcome
and broke open all of her own cages
so that she was, for a second, calm
Klia felt the last gust of Vara Liso and it whispered free then was silent.
Lodovik knelt beside the body and saw that it was very tiny and when he picked it up, it was very light as well. So much trouble from so little mass--a human wonder.
Then he began to cry.
Dors had recovered enough to stand. She observed the men and the woman within the hall, and the dead thing in the arms of the robot Lodovik, and she started toward Hari, who seemed dazed and confused, though still alive. It was only natural for her to go to him.
Daneel was suddenly at her side and took her by the arm.
“He needs help,” Dors said, prepared to wrench her arm free from the grasp of her own master.
“There is nothing you can do,” Daneel said. By now, security in the Courts and Hall of Dispensation would be aware of the breach; they would soon be surrounded by heavily armed guards and no doubt even Imperial Specials.
He could not see any way of escaping. Nor could he predict what would happen next. Perhaps it did not matter.
It was very possible he had been completely in error in all of his actions, for over twenty thousand years.
81.
“The hall records show that after she killed Farad Sinter and incapacitated the guards, Vara Liso went to the Hall of Dispensation and threatened Hari Seldon,” Major Namm said. His head was encapsulated in a regeneration helmet. He would be weeks recovering from the brain damage Liso had inflicted on him outside the office of Farad Sinter. “We believe these others used many varieties of subterfuge to enter the hall and protect Seldon. They apparently knew Seldon was in grave danger.”
“And we did not?” Linge Chen asked. He leaned forward slightly in his chair, arms tight by his side, his gaze somewhere over the major’s shoulder.
“There were no directives issued for Seldon’s protection,” General Prothon reminded the Chief Commissioner. “If these others had not arrived, Vara Liso could easily have killed him with the neural whip or her peculiar talents. Yet she was the only one authorized to be in the Courts Building and Imperial Sector. It is not clear how she died, but I am glad she is dead.”
“For the last three days, everyone in Imperial Sector has suffered tremendous headaches. Haven’t you felt them?” Chen asked.
“I usually suffer from headaches, Commissioner. It is my lot in life,” Prothon said cheerfully.
Chen scrutinized the video summary of events in the Hall of Dispensation. He was looking for something, someone, a ghost, a shade, a clue embodied. He pointed to the tall man standing by the strong-looking woman at the end of the summary. “Individual file on this one?”
“There is none,” General Prothon told him. “We have no idea who he is.”
Linge Chen looked away from the informer display for a moment, and one side of his face tensed as he clenched his jaw. “Bring him to me. The woman with him as well.” He shifted his attention to the magnified image of the stocky man holding the body of Vara Liso. His expression softened for a moment. “And this one. Hari Seldon is to be released to his colleagues or to his family. I do not wish responsibility for him anymore. Keep the young Dahlites in custody for the time being.”