1.
TRANTOR!
For eight thousand years, it was the capital of a large and mighty political entity that spanned an ever-growing union of planetary systems. For twelve thousand years after that, it was the capital of a political entity that spanned the entire Galaxy. It was the center, the heart, the epitome of the Galactic Empire.
It was impossible to think of the Empire without thinking of Trantor.
Trantor did not reach its physical peak until the Empire was far gone in decay. In fact, no one noticed that the Empire had lost its drive, its forward look, because Trantor gleamed in shining metal.
Its growth had peaked at the point where it was a planet-girdling city. Its population was stabilized (by law) at forty-five billion and the only surface greenery was at the Imperial Palace and the Galactic University/Library complex.
Trantor’s land surface was metal-coated. Its deserts and its fertile areas were alike engulfed and made into warrens of humanity, administrative jungles, computerized elaborations, vast storehouses of food and replacement parts. its mountain ranges were beaten down; its chasms filled in. The city’s endless corridors burrowed under the continental shelves and the oceans were turned into huge underground aquacultural cisterns--the only (and insufficient native source of food and minerals.
The connections with the Outer Worlds, from which Trantor obtained the resources it required, depended upon its thousand spaceports, its ten thousand warships, its hundred thousand merchant ships, its million space freighters.
No city so vast was ever recycled so tightly. No planet in the Galaxy had ever made so much use of solar power or went to such extremes to rid itself of waste heat. Glittering radiators stretched up into the thin upper atmosphere upon the nightside and were withdrawn into the metal city on the dayside. As the planet turned, the radiators rose as night progressively fell around the world and sank as day progressively broke. So Trantor always had an artificial asymmetry that was almost its symbol.
At this peak, Trantor ran the Empire?
It ran it poorly, but nothing could have run the Empire well. The Empire was too large to be run from a single world--even under the most dynamic of Emperors. How could Trantor have helped but run it poorly when, in the ages of decay, the Imperial crown was traded back and forth by sly politicians and foolish incompetents and the bureaucracy had become a subculture of corruptibles?
But even at its worst, there was some self-propelled worth to the machinery. The Galactic Empire could not have been run without Trantor.
The Empire crumbled steadily, but as long as Trantor remained Trantor, a core of the Empire remained and it retained an air of pride, of millennia, of tradition and power and--exaltation.
Only when the unthinkable happened--when Trantor finally fell and was sacked; when its citizens were killed by the millions and left to starve by the billions; when its mighty metal coating was scarred and punctured and fused by the attack of the “barbarian” fleet--only then was the Empire considered to have fallen. The surviving remnants on the once-great world undid further what had been left and, in a generation, Trantor was transformed from the greatest planet the human race had ever seen to an inconceivable tangle of ruins.
That had been nearly two and a half centuries ago. In the rest of the Galaxy, Trantor-as-it-had-been still was not forgotten. It would live forever as the favored site of historical novels, the favored symbol and memory of the past, the favored word for sayings such as “All starships land on Trantor,” “Like looking for a person in Trantor,” and “No more alike than this and Trantor.”
In all the rest of the Galaxy--
But that was not true on Trantor itself! Here the old Trantor was forgotten. The surface metal seas gone, almost everywhere. Trantor was now a sparsely settled world of self-sufficient farmers, a place where trading ships rarely came and were not particularly welcome when they did come. The very word “Trantor,” though still in official use, had dropped out of popular speech. By present-day Trantorians, it was called “Name,” which in their dialect was what would be called “Home” in Galactic Standard.
Quindor Shandess thought of all this and much more as he sat quietly in a welcome state of half-drowse, in which he could allow his mind to run along a self-propelled and unorganized stream of thought.
He had been First Speaker of the Second Foundation for eighteen years, and he might well bold on for ten or twelve years more if his mind remained reasonably vigorous and if he could continue to fight the political wars.
He was the analog, the mirror image, of the Mayor of Terminus, who ruled over the First Foundation, but how different they were in every respect. The Mayor of Terminus was known to all the Galaxy and the First Foundation was therefore simply “the Foundation” to all the worlds. The First Speaker of the Second Foundation was known only to his associates.
And yet it was the Second Foundation, under himself and his predecessors, who held the real power. The First Foundation was supreme in the realm of physical power, of technology, of war weapons. The Second Foundation was supreme in the realm of mental power, of the mind, of the ability to control. In any conflict between the two, what would it matter how many ships and weapons the First Foundation disposed of, if the Second Foundation could control the minds of those who controlled the ships and weapons?
But how long could he revel in this realization of secret power?
He was the twenty-fifth First Speaker and his incumbency was already a shade longer than average. Ought he, perhaps, not be too keen on holding on and keeping out the younger aspirants? There was Speaker Gendibal, the keenest and newest at the Table. Tonight they would spend time together and Shandess looked forward to it. Ought he look forward also to Gendibal’s possible accession some day?
The answer to the question was that Shandess had no real thought of leaving his post. He enjoyed it too much.
He sat there, in his old age, still perfectly capable of performing his duties. His hair was gray, but it had always been light in color and he wore it cut an inch long so that the color scarcely mattered. His eyes were a faded blue and his clothing conformed to the drab styling of the Trantorian farmers.
The First Speaker could, if he wished, pass among the Hamish people as one of them, but his hidden power nevertheless existed. He could choose to focus his eyes and mind at any time and they would then act according to his will and recall nothing about it afterward.
It rarely happened. Almost never. The Golden Rule of the Second Foundation was, “Do nothing unless you must, and when you must act--hesitate.”
The First Speaker sighed softly. Living in the old University, with the brooding grandeur of the ruins of the Imperial Palace not too far distant, made one wonder on occasion how Golden the Rule might be.
In the days of the Great Sack, the Golden Rule had been strained to the breaking point. There was no way of saving Trantor without sacrificing the Seldon Plan for establishing a Second Empire. It would have been humane to spare the forty-five billion, but they could not have been spared without retention of the core of the First Empire and that would have only delayed the reckoning. If would have led to a greater destruction some centuries later and perhaps no Second Empire ever
The early First Speakers had worked over the clearly foreseen Sack for decades but had found no solution--no way of assuring both the salvation of Trantor and the eventual establishment of the Second Empire. The lesser evil had to be chosen and Trantor had died!
The Second Foundationers of the time had managed--by the narrowest of margins--to save the University/Library complex and there had been guilt forever after because of that, too. Though no one had ever demonstrated that saving the complex had led to the of the Mule, there was always the intuition that there was a connection.
How nearly that had wrecked everything!
Yet following the decades of the Sack and the Mule came the Golden Age of the Second Foundation.
Prior to that, for over two and a half centuries after Seldon’s death, the Second Foundation had burrowed like moles into the Library, intent only on staying out of the way of the Imperials. They served as librarians in a decaying society that cared less and less for the ever-more-misnamed Galactic Library, which fell into the desuetude that best suited the purpose of the Second Foundationers.
It was an ignoble life. They merely conserved the Plan, while out at the end of the Galaxy, the First Foundation fought for its life against always greater enemies with neither help from the Second Foundation nor any real knowledge of it.
It was the Great Sack that liberated the Second Foundation--another reason (young Gendibal--who had courage--had recently said that it was the chief reason) why the Sack was allowed to proceed.
After the Great Sack, the Empire was gone and, in all the later times, the Trantorian survivors never trespassed on Second Foundation territory uninvited. The Second Foundationers saw to it that the University/Library complex which had survived the Sack also survived the Great Renewal. The ruins of the Palace were preserved, too. The metal was gone over almost all the rest of the world. The great and endless corridors were covered up, filled in, twisted, destroyed, ignored; all under rock and soil--all except here, where metal still surrounded the ancient open places.
It might be viewed as a grand memorial of greatness, the sepulcher of Empire, but to the Trantorians--the Hamish people--these were haunted places, filled with ghosts, not to be stirred. Only the Second Foundationers ever set foot in the ancient corridors or touched the titanium gleam.
And even so, all had nearly come to nothing because of the Mule.
The Mule had actually been on Trantor. What if he had found out the nature of the world he had been standing on? His physical weapons were far greater than those at the disposal of the Second Foundation, his mental weapons almost as great. The Second Foundation would have been hampered always by the necessity of doing nothing but what they must, and by the knowledge that almost any hope of tinning the immediate fight might portend a greater eventual loss.
Had it not been for Banta Darell and her swift moment of action-- And that, too, had been without the help of the Second Foundation?
And then--the Golden ?age, when somehow the First Speakers of the time found ways of becoming active, stopping the Mule in his career of conquest, controlling his mind at last; and then stopping the First Foundation itself when it grew wary and overcurious concerning the nature and identity of the Second Foundation. There was Preem Palver, nineteenth First Speaker and greatest of them all, who had managed to put an end to all danger--not without terrible sacrifice--and who had rescued the Seldon Plan.
Now, for a hundred and twenty years, the Second Foundation was again as it once had been, hiding in a haunted portion of Trantor. They were hiding no longer from the Imperials, but from the First Foundation still--a First Foundation almost as large as the Galactic Empire had been and even greater in technological expertise.
The First Speaker’s eyes closed in the pleasant warmth and he passed into that never-never state of relaxing hallucinatory experiences that were not quite dreams and not quite conscious thought.
Enough of gloom. All would be well. Trantor was still capital of the Galaxy, for the Second Foundation was here and it was mightier and more in control than ever the Emperor had been.
The First Foundation would be contained and guided and would move correctly. However formidable their ships and weapons, they could do nothing as long as key leaders could be, at need, mentally controlled.
And the Second Empire would come, but it would not be like the first. It would be a Federated Empire, with its parts possessing considerable self-rule, so that there would be none of the apparent strength and actual weakness of a unitary, centralized government. The new Empire would be looser, more pliant, more flexible, more capable of withstanding strain, and it would be guided always--always--by the hidden men and women of the Second Foundation. Trantor would then be still the capital, more powerful with its forty thousand psychohistorians than ever it had been with its forty-five billion
The First Speaker snapped awake. The sun was lower in the sky. Had he been mumbling? Had he said anything aloud’
If the Second Foundation had to know much and say little, the ruling Speakers had to know mere and say less, and the First Speaker lead to know mist and say least.
He smiled wryly. It was always so tempting to become a Trantorian patriot--to see the whole purpose of the Second Empire as that of bringing about Trantorian hegemony. Seldon had warned of it; he had foreseen even that, five centuries before it could come to pass.
The First Speaker had not slept too long, however. It was not yet time for Gendibal’s audience.
Shandess was looking forward to that private meeting. Gendibal was young enough to look at the Plan with new eyes, and keen enough to see what others might not. And it was not beyond possibility that Shandess would learn from what the youngster had to say.
No one would ever be certain how much Preem Palver--the great Palver himself--had profited from that day when the young Kol Benjoam, not yet thirty, came to talk to him about possible ways of handling the First Foundation. Benjoam, who was later recognized as the greatest theorist since Seldon, never spoke of that audience in later years, but eventually he became the twenty-first First Speaker. There were some who credited Benjoam, rather than Palver, for the great accomplishments of Palver’s administration.
Shandess amused himself with the thought of what Gendibal might say. It was traditional that keen youngsters, confronting the First Speaker alone for the first time, would place their entire thesis in the first sentence. And surely they would not ask for that precious first audience for something trivial--something that might ruin their entire subsequent career by convincing the First Speaker they were lightweights.
Four hours later, Gendibal faced him. The young man showed no sign of nervousness. He waited calmly for Shandess to speak first.
Shandess said, “You have asked for a private audience, Speaker, on a matter of importance. Could you please summarize the matter for me?”
And Gendibal, speaking quietly, almost as though he were describing what he had just eaten at dinner, said, “First Speaker, the Seldon Plan is meaningless!”
2.
Stor Gendibal did not require the evidence of others to give him a sense of worth. He could not recall a time when he did not know himself to be unusual. He had been recruited for the Second Foundation when he was only a ten-year-old boy by an agent who had recognized the potentialities of his mind.
He had then done remarkably well at his studies and had taken to psychohistory as a spaceship responds to a gravitational field. Psychohistory had pulled at him and he had curved toward it, reading Seldon’s text on the fundamentals when others his age were merely trying to handle differential equations.
When he was fifteen, he entered Trantor’s Galactic University (as the University of Trantor had been officially renamed), after an interview during which, when asked what his ambitions were, he had answered firmly, “To be First Speaker before I am forty.”
He had not bothered to aim for the First Speaker’s chair without qualification. To gain it, one way or another, seemed to him to be a certainty. It was to do it in youth that seemed to him to be the goal. Even Preem Palver bad been forty-two on his accession.
The interviewer’s expression had flickered when Gendibal had said that, but the young man already had the feel of psycholanguage and could interpret that flicker. He knew, as certainly as though the interviewer had announced it, that a small notation would go on his records to the effect that he would be difficult to handle.
Well, of course!
Gendibal intended to be difficult to handle.
He was thirty now. He would be thirty-one in a matter of two months and he was already a member of the Council of Speakers. He had nine years, at most, to become First Speaker and he knew he would make it. This audience with the present First Speaker was crucial to his plans and, laboring to present precisely the proper impression, he had. spared no effort to polish his command of psycholanguage.
When two Speakers of the Second Foundation communicate with each other, the language is like no other in the Galaxy. It is as much a language of fleeting gestures as of words, as much a matter of detected mental-change patterns as anything else.
An outsider would hear little or nothing, but in a short time, much in the way of thought would be exchanged and the communication would be unreportable in its literal form to anyone but still another Speaker.
The language of Speakers had its advantage in speed and in infinite delicacy, but it had the disadvantage of making it almost impossible to mask true opinion.
Gendibal knew his own opinion of the First Speaker. He felt the First Speaker to be a man past his mental prime. The First Speaker--in Gendibal’s assessment--expected no crisis, was not trained to meet one, and lacked the sharpness to deal with one if it appeared. With all Shandess’s goodwill and amiability, he was the stuff of which disaster was made.
All of this Gendibal had to hide not merely from words, gestures, and facial expressions, but even from his thoughts. He knew no way of doing so efficiently enough to keep the First Speaker from catching a whiff of it.
Nor could Gendibal avoid knowing something of the First Speaker’s feeling toward him. Through bonhomie and goodwill--quite apparent and reasonably sincere--Gendibal could feel the distant edge of condescension and amusement, and tightened his own mental grip to avoid revealing any resentment in return--or as little as possible.
The First Speaker smiled and leaned back in his chair. He did not actually lift his feet to the desk top, but he got across just the right mixture of self-assured ease and informal friendship--just enough of each to leave Gendibal uncertain as to the effect of his statement.
Since Gendibal had not been invited to sit down, the actions and attitudes available to him that might be designed to minimize the uncertainty were limited. It was impossible that the First Speaker did not understand this.
Shandess said, “The Seldon Plan is meaningless? What a remarkable statement! Have you looked at the Prime Radiant lately, Speaker Gendibal?”
“I study it frequently, First Speaker. It is my duty to do so and my pleasure as well.”
“Do you, by any chance, study only those portions of it that fall under your purview, now and then? Do you observe it in microfashion--an equation system here, an adjustment rivulet there? Highly important, of course, but I have always thought it an excellent occasional exercise to observe the whole course. Studying the Prime Radiant, acre by acre, has its uses--but observing it as a continent is inspirational. To tell you the truth, Speaker, I have not done it for a long time myself. Would you join me?”
Gendibal dared not pause too long. It had to be done, and it must be done easily and pleasantly or it might as well not be done. “It would be an honor and a pleasure, First Speaker.”
The First Speaker depressed a lever on the side of his desk. T here was one such in the office of every Speaker and the one in Gendibal’s office was in no way inferior to that of the First Speaker. The Second Foundation was an equalitarian society in all its surface manifestations--the unimportant ones. In fact, the only official prerogative of the First Speaker was that which was explicit in his title he always spoke first.
The room grew dark with the depression of the lever but, almost at once, the darkness lifted into a pearly dimness. Both long walls turned faintly creamy, then brighter and whiter, and finally there appeared neatly printed equations--so small that they could not be easily read.
“If you have no objections,” said the First Speaker, making it quite clear that there would be none allowed, “we will reduce the magnification in order to see as much at one time as we can.”
The neat printing shrank down into fine hairlines, faint black meanderings over the pearly background.
The First Speaker touched the keys of the small console built into the arm of his chair. “We’ll bring it back to the start--to the lifetime of Hari Seldon--and we’ll adjust it to a small forward movement. We’ll shutter it so that we can only see a decade of development at a time. It gives one a wonderful feeling of the flow of history, with no distractions by the details. I wonder if you have ever done this.”
“Never exactly this way, First Speaker.”
“You should. It’s a marvelous feeling. Observe the sparseness of the black tracery at the start. There was not much chance for alternatives in the first few decades. The branch points, however, increase exponentially with time. Were it not for the fact that, as soon as a particular branch is taken, there is an extinction of a vast array of others in its future, all would soon become unmanageable. Of course, in dealing with the future, we must be careful what extinctions we rely upon.”
“I know, First Speaker.” There was a touch of dryness in Gendibal’s response that he could not quire remove.
The First Speaker did not respond to it. “Notice the winding lines of symbols in red. There is a pattern to them. To all appearances, they should exist randomly, as even Speaker earns his place by adding refinements to Seldon’s original Plan. It would seem there is no way, after all, of predicting where a refinement can be added easily or where a particular Speaker will find his interests or his ability tending, and yet I have long suspected that the admixture of Seldon Black and Speaker Red follows a strict law that is strongly dependent on time and on very little else.”
Gendibal watched as the years passed and as the black and red hairlines made an almost hypnotic interlacing pattern. The pattern meant nothing in itself, of course. What counted were the symbols of which it was composed.
Here and there a bright-blue rivulet made its appearance, bellying out; branching, and becoming prominent, then falling in upon itself and fading into the black or red.
The First Speaker said, “Deviation Blue,” and the feeling of distaste, originating in each, filled the space between them. “We catch it over and over, and we’ll be coming to the Century of Deviations eventually.”
They did. One could tell precisely when the shattering phonemenon of the Mule momentarily filled the Galaxy, as the Prime Radiant suddenly grew thick with branching rivulets of blue--more starting than could be closed down--until the room itself seemed to turn blue as the lines thickened and marked the wall with brighter and brighter pollution. (It was the only word.)
It reached its peak and then faded, thinned, and came together for a long century before it trickled to its end at last. When it was gone, and when the Plan had returned to black and red, it was clear that Preem Palver’s hand had been there.
Onward, onward--
“That’s the present,” said the First Speaker comfortably.
Onward, onward--
Then a narrowing into a veritable knot of close-knit black with little red in it.
“That’s the establishment of the Second Empire,” said the First Speaker.
He shut off the Prime Radiant and the room was bathed in ordinary light.
Gendibal said, “That was an emotional experience.”
“Yes,” smiled the First Speaker, “and you are careful not to identify the emotion, as far as you can manage to fail to identify it. It doesn’t matter. Let me make the points I wish to make.
“You will notice, first, the all-but-complete absence of Deviation Blue after the time of Preem Palver--over the last twelve decades, in other words. You will notice that there are no reasonable probabilities of Deviations above the fifth-class over the next five centuries. You will notice, too, that we have begun extending the refinements of psychohistory beyond the establishment of the Second Empire. As you undoubtedly know, Hari Seldon--although a transcendent genius--is not, and could not, be all-knowing. We have improved on him. We know more about psychohistory than he could possibly have known.
“Seldon ended his calculations with the Second Empire and we have continued beyond it. Indeed, if I may say so without offense, the new Hyper-Plan that goes past the establishment of the Second Empire is very largely my doing and has earned me my present post.
“I tell you all this so that you can spare me unnecessary talk. With all this, how do you manage to conclude that the Seldon Plan is meaningless? It is without flaw. The mere fact that it survived the Century of Deviations--with all due respect to Palver’s genius--is the best evidence we have that it is without flaw. Where is its weakness, young man, that you should brand the Plan as meaningless?”
Gendibal stood stiffly upright. “You are right, First Speaker. The Seldon Plan has no flaw.”
“You withdraw your remark, then?”
“No, First Speaker. Its lack of flaw is its flaw. Its flawlessness is fatal!”
3.
The First Speaker regarded Gendibal with equanimity. He had learned to control his expressions and it amused him to watch Gendibal’s ineptness in this respect. At every exchange, the young man did his best to hide his feelings, but each time, he exposed them completely.
Shandess studied him dispassionately. He was a thin young man, not much above the middle height, with thin lips and bony, restless hands. He had dark, humorless eyes that tended to smolder.
He would be, the First Speaker knew, a hard person to talk out of his convictions.
“You speak in paradoxes, Speaker,” he said.
“It sounds like a paradox, First Speaker, because there is so much about Seldon’s Plan that we take for granted and accept in so unquestioning a manner.”
“And what is it you question, then?”
“The Plan’s very basis. We all know that the Plan will not work if its nature--or even its existence--is known to too many of those whose behavior it is designed to predict.”
“I believe Hari Seldon understood that. I even believe he made it one of his two fundamental axioms of psychohistory.”
“He did not anticipate the Mule, First Speaker, and therefore he could not anticipate the extent to which the Second Foundation would become an obsession with the people of the First Foundation, once they had been shown its importance by the Mule.”
“Hari Seldon--” and for one moment, the First Speaker shuddered and fell silent.
Hari Seldon’s physical appearance was known to all the members of the Second Foundation. Reproductions of him in two and in three dimensions, photographic and holographic, in bas-relief and in the round, sitting and standing, were ubiquitous. They all represented him in the last few years of his life. All were of an old and benign man, face wrinkled with the wisdom of the aged, symbolizing the quintessence of well-ripened genius.
But the First Speaker now recalled seeing a photograph reputed to be Seldon as a young man. The photograph was neglected, since the thought of a young Seldon was almost a contradiction in terms. Yet Shandess had seen it, and the thought had suddenly come to him that Stor Gendibal looked remarkably like the young Seldon.
Ridiculous? It was the sort of superstition that afflicted everyone, now and then, however rational they might be. He was deceived by a fugitive similarity. If he had the photograph before him, he would see at once that the similarity was an illusion. Yet why should that silly thought have occurred to him now?
He recovered. It had been a momentary quaver--a transient derailment of thought--too brief to be noticed by anyone but a Speaker. Gendibal might interpret it as he pleased.
“Hari Seldon,” he said very firmly the second time, “knew well that there were an infinite number of possibilities he could not foresee, and it was for that reason that he set up the Second Foundation. We did not foresee the Mule either, but tie recognized him once he was upon us and we stopped him. We did not foresee the subsequent obsession of the First Foundation with ourselves, but we saw it when it came and we stopped it. What is it about this that you can possibly find fault with?”
“For one thing,” said Gendibal, “the obsession of the First Foundation with us is not yet over.”
There was a distinct ebb in the deference with which Gendibal had been speaking. He had noted the quaver in the First Speaker’s voice (Shandess decided) and had interpreted it as uncertainty. That had to be countered.
The First Speaker said briskly, “Let me anticipate. There would be people on the First Foundation, who--comparing the hectic difficulties of the first nearly four centuries of existence with the placidity of the last twelve decades--will come to the conclusion that this cannot be unless the Second Foundation is taking good care of the Plan--and, of course, they will be right in so concluding. They will decide that the Second Foundation may not have been destroyed after all--and, of course, they will be right in so deciding. In fact, we’ve received reports that there is a young man on the First Foundation’s capital world of Terminus, an official of their government, who is quite convinced of all this. -I forget his name--”
“Golan Trevize,” said Gendibal softly. “It was I who first noted the matter in the reports, and it was I who directed the matter to your office.”
“Oh?” said the First Speaker with exaggerated politeness. “And how did your attention come to be focused on him?”
“One of our agents on Terminus sent in a tedious report on the newly elected members of their Council--a perfectly routine matter usually sent to and ignored by all Speakers. This one caught my eye because of the nature of the description of one new Councilman, Golan Trevize. From the description, he seemed unusually self-assured and combative.”
“You recognized a kindred spirit, did you?”
“Not at all,” said Gendibal, stiffly. “He seemed a reckless person who enjoyed doing ridiculous things, a description which does not apply to me. In any case, I directed an in-depth study. It did not take long for me to decide that he would have made good material for us if he had been recruited at an early age.”
“Perhaps,” said the First Speaker, “but you know that we do not recruit on Terminus.”
“I know that well. In any case, even without our training, he has an unusual intuition. It is, of course, thoroughly undisciplined. I was, therefore. not particularly surprised that he had grasped the fact that the Second Foundation still exists. I felt it important enough, however, to direct a memo on the matter to your office.”
“And I take it from your manner that there is a new development?”
“Having grasped the fact that we still exist, thanks to his highly developed intuitive abilities, he then used it in a characteristically undisciplined fashion and has, as a result, been exiled from Terminus.”
The First Speaker lifted his eyebrows. “You stop suddenly. You want me to interpret the significance. Without using my computer, let me mentally apply a rough approximation of Seldon’s equations and guess that a shrewd Mayor, capable of suspecting that the Second Foundation exists, prefers not to have an undisciplined individual shout it to the Galaxy and thus alert said Second Foundation to the danger. I take it Branno the Bronze decided that Terminus is safer with Trevize off the planet.”
“She might have imprisoned Trevize or had him quietly assassinated.”
“The equations are not reliable when applied to individuals, as you well know. They deal only with humanity in mass. Individual behavior is therefore unpredictable and it is possible to assume that the Mayor is a humane individual who feels imprisonment, let alone assassination, is unmerciful.”
Gendibal said nothing for a while. It was an eloquent nothing, and he maintained it just long enough for the First Speaker to grow uncertain of himself but not so long as to induce a defensive anger.
He timed it to the second and then he said, “That is not my interpretation. I believe that Trevize, at this moment, represents the cutting edge of the greatest threat to the Second Foundation in its history--a greater danger even than the Mule!”
4.
Gendibal was satisfied. The force of the statement had worked well. The First Speaker had not expected it and was caught off-balance. From this moment, the whip hard was Gendibal’s. If he had any doubt of that at all, it vanished with Shandess’s next remark.
“Does this have anything to do with your contention that Seldon’s Plan is meaningless?”
Gendibal gambled on complete certainty, driving in with a didacticism that would not allow the First Speaker to recover. He said, “First Speaker, it is an article of faith that it was Preem Palver who restored the Plan to its course after the wild aberrance of the Century of Deviations. Study the Prime Radiant and you will see that the Deviations did not disappear till two decades after Palver’s death and that not one Deviation has appeared since. The credit might rest with the First Speakers since Palver, but that is improbable.”
“Improbable? Granted none of us have been Palvers, but--why improbable?”
“Will you allow me to demonstrate, First Speaker? Using the mathematics of psychohistory, I can clearly show that the chances of total disappearance of Deviation are too microscopically small to have taken place through anything the Second Foundation can do. You need not allow me if you lack the time or the desire for the demonstration, which will take half an hour of close attention. I can, as an alternative, call for a full meeting of the Speaker’s Table and demonstrate it there. But that would mean a loss of time for me and unnecessary controversy.”
“Yes, and a possible loss of face for me. --Demonstrate the matter to me now. But a word of warning.” The First Speaker was making a heroic effort to recover. “If what you show me is worthless, I will not forget that.”
“If it proves worthless,” said Gendibal with an effortless pride that overrode the other, “you will have my resignation on the spot.”
It took, actually, considerably more than half an hour, for the First Speaker questioned the mathematics with near-savage intensity.
Gendibal made up some of the time by his smooth use of his MicroRadiant. The device--which could locate any portion of the vast Plan holographically and with required n either wall nor desk sized console--had come into use only a decade ago and the First Speaker had never learned the knack of handling it. Gendibal was aware of that. The First Speaker knew that he was.
Gendibal hooked it over his right thumb and manipulated it with his four fingers, using his hand deliberately as though it were a musical instrument. (Indeed, he had written a small paper on the analogies. )
The equations Gendibal produced (and found with sure ease) moved back and forth snakily to accompany his commentary. He could obtain definitions, if necessary; set up axioms; and produce graphics, both two-dimensional and three-dimensional (to say nothing of projections of multidimensional relationships).
Gendibal’s commentary was clear and incisive and the First Speaker abandoned the game. He was won over and said, “I do not recall having seen an analysis of this nature. Whose work is it?”
“First Speaker, it is my own. I have published the basic mathematics involved.”
“Very clever, Speaker Gendibal. Something like this will put you in line for the First Speakership, should I die--or retire.”
“I have given that matter no thought, First Speaker--but since there’s no chance of your believing that, I withdraw the comment. I have given it thought and I hope I will be First Speaker, since whoever succeeds to the post must follow a procedure that only I see clearly.”
“Yes,” said the First Speaker, “inappropriate modesty can be very dangerous. What procedure? Perhaps the present First Speaker may follow it, too. If I am too old to have made the creative leap you have, I am not so old that I cannot follow your direction.”
It was a graceful surrender and Gendibal’s heart warned, rather unexpectedly, toward the older man, even as he realized that this was precisely the First Speaker’s intention.
“Thank you, First Speaker, for I will need your help badly. I cannot expect to sway the Table without your enlightened leadership.” (Grace for grace.) “I assume, then, that you have already seen from what I have demonstrated that it is impossible for the Century of Deviations to have been corrected under our policies or for all Deviations to have ceased since then.”
“This is clear to me,” said the First Speaker. “If your mathematics is correct, then in order for the Plan to have recovered as it did and to work as perfectly as it seems to be working, it would be necessary for us to be able to predict the reactions of small groups of people--even of individuals--with some degree of assurance.”
“Quite so. Since the mathematics of psychohistory does not allow this, the Deviations should not have vanished and, even more so, should not have remained absent. You see, then, what I meant when I said earlier that the flaw in the Seldon Plan was its flawlessness.”
The First Speaker said, “Either the Seldon Plan does possess Deviations, then, or there is something wrong in your mathematics. Since I must admit that the Seldon Plan has not shown Deviations in a century and more, it follows that there is something wrong with your mathematics--except that I detected no fallacies or missteps.”
“You do wrong,” said Gendibal, “to exclude a third alternative. It is quite possible for the Seldon Plan to possess no Deviations and yet for there to be nothing wrong in my mathematics when it predicts that to be impossible.”
“I fail to see the third alternative.”
“Suppose the Seldon Plan is being controlled by means of a psychohistorical method so advanced that the reactions of small groups of people--even perhaps of individual persons--can be predicted, a method that we of the Second Foundation do not possess. Then, and only then, my mathematics would predict that the Seldon Plan should indeed experience no Deviations?”
For a while (by Second Foundation standards) the First Speaker made no response. He said, “There is no such advanced psychohistorical method that is known to me or, I am certain from your manner, to you. If you and I know of none, the chance that any other Speaker, or any group of Speakers, has developed such a micropsychohistory--if I may call it that--and has kept it secret from the rest of the Table is infinitesimally small. Don’t you agree?”
“I agree.”
“Then either your analysis is wrong or else micropsychohistory is in the hands of some group outside the Second Foundation.”
“Exactly, First Speaker, the latter alternative must be correct.”
“Can you demonstrate the truth of such a statement?”
“I cannot, in any formal way; but consider-- Has there not already been a person who could affect the Seldon Plan by dealing with individual people?”
“I presume you are referring to the Mule.”
“Yes, certainly.”
“The Mule could only disrupt. The problem here is that the Seldon Plan is working too well, considerably closer to perfection than your mathematics would allow. You would need an Anti-Mule--someone who is as capable of overriding the Plan as the Mule was, but who acts for the opposite motive--overriding not to disrupt but to perfect.”
“Exactly, First Speaker. I wish I had thought of that expression. What was the Mule? A mutant. But where did he come from? How did he come to be? No one really knows. Might there not be more?”
“Apparently not. The one thing that is best known about the Mule is that he was sterile. Hence his name. Or do you think that is a myth?”
“I am not referring to descendants of the Mule. Might it not be that the Mule was an aberrant member of what is--or has now become--a sizable group of people with Mulish powers who--for some reason of their own--are not disrupting the Seldon Plan but supporting it?”
“Why in the Galaxy should they support it?”
“Why do we support it? We plan a Second Empire in which we --or, rather, our intellectual descendants--will be the decision makers. If, some other group is supporting the Plan even more efficiently than we are, they cannot be planning to leave the decision-making to us. They will make the decisions--but to what end? Ought we not try to find out what kind of a Second Empire they are sweeping us into?”
“And how do you propose to find out?”
“Well, why has the Mayor of Terminus exiled Golan Trevize? By doing so, she allows a possibly dangerous person to move freely about the Galaxy. That she does it out of motives of humanity, I cannot believe. Historically the rulers of the First Foundation have always acted realistically, which means, usually, without regard for ‘morality.’ One of their heroes--Salvor Hardin--counseled against morality, in fact. No, I think the Mayor acted under compulsion from agents of the Anti-Mules, to use your phrase. I think Trevize has been recruited by them and I think he is the spearhead of danger to us. Deadly danger.”
And the First Speaker said, “By Seldon, you may be right. But how will we ever convince the Table of this?”
“First Speaker, you underestimate your eminence.”
1.
TREVIZE WAS HOT AND ANNOYED. HE AND PELORAT WERE SITTING IN the small dining area, having just completed their midday meal.
Pelorat said, “We’ve only been in space two days and I find myself quite comfortable, although I miss fresh air, nature, and all that. Strange! Never seemed to notice all that sort of thing when it was all round me. Still between my wafer and that remarkable computer of yours, I have my entire library with me--or all that matters, at any rate. And I don’t feel the least bit frightened of being out in space now. Astonishing!”
Trevize made a noncommittal sound. His eyes were inwardly focused.
Pelorat said gently, “I don’t mean to intrude, Golan, but I don’t really think you’re listening. Not that I’m a particularly interesting person always been a hit of a bore, you know. Still, you seem preoccupied in another way. --Are we in trouble? Needn’t be afraid to tell me, you know. Not much I could do, I suppose, but I won’t go into panic, dear fellow.”
“In trouble?” Trevize seemed to come to his senses, frowning slightly.
“I mean the ship. It’s a new model, so I suppose there could be something wrong:” Pelorat allowed himself a small, uncertain smile.
Trevize shook his head vigorously. “Stupid of me to leave you in such uncertainty, Janov. There’s nothing wrong at all with the ship. It’s working perfectly. It’s just that I’ve been looking for a hyper-relay.”
“Ah, I see. --Except that I don’t. What is a hyper-relay?”
“Well, let me explain, Janov. I am in communication with Terminus. At least, I can be anytime I wish and Terminus can, in reverse, be in communication with us. They know the ship’s location, having observed its trajectory. Even if they had not, they could locate us by scanning near-space for mass, which would warn them of the presence of a ship or, possibly, a meteoroid. But they could further detect an energy pattern, which would not only distinguish a ship from a meteoroid but would identify a particular ship, for no two ships make use of energy in quite the same way. In some way, our pattern remains characteristic, no matter what appliances or instruments we turn on and off. The ship may be unknown, of course, but if it is a ship whose energy pattern is on record in Terminus--as ours is--it can be identified as soon as detected:’
Pelorat said, “It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.”
“You may be right. Sooner or later, however, we must move through hyperspace or we will be condemned to remain within a parsec or two of Terminus for the rest of our lives. We will then be unable to engage in interstellar travel to any but the slightest degree. In passing through hyperspace, on the other hand, we undergo a discontinuity in ordinary space. We pass from here to there--and I mean across a gap of hundreds of parsecs sometimes--in an instant of experienced time. We are suddenly enormously far away in a direction that is very difficult to predict and, in a practical sense, we can no longer be detected.”
“I see that. Yes.”
“Unless, of course, they have planted a hyper-relay on board. A hyperrelay sends out a signal through hyperspace--a signal characteristic of this ship--and the authorities on Terminus would know where we are at all times. That answers your question, you see. There would be nowhere in the Galaxy we could hide and no combination of jumps through hyperspace would make it possible for us to evade their instruments:”
“But, Golan,” bald Pelorat softly, “don’t we want Foundation protection?”
“Yes, Janov, but only when we ask for it. You said the advance of civilization meant the continuing restriction of privacy. --Well. I don’t want to be that advanced. I want freedom to move undetected as I wish--unless and until I want protection So I would feel better, a great deal better, if there weren’t a hyper-relay on board.”
“Have you found one, Golan?”
“No, I have not. If I had, I might be able to render it inoperative somehow.”
“Would you know one if you saw it?”
“That’s one of the difficulties. I might not be able to recognize it. I know what a hyper-relay looks like generally and I know ways of testing a suspicious object--but this is a late-model ship, designed for special tasks. A hyper-relay may have been incorporated into its design in such a way as to show no signs of its presence.”
“On the other hand, maybe there is no hyper-relay present and that’s why you haven’t found it.”
“I don’t dare assume that and I don’t like the thought of making a jump until I know.”
Pelorat looked enlightened. “That’s why we’ve just been drifting through space. I’ve been wondering why we haven’t jumped. I’ve heard about jumps, you know. Been a little nervous about it, actually--been wandering when you’d order me to strap myself in or take a pill or something like that.”
Trevize managed a smile. “No need for apprehension. These aren’t ancient times. On a ship like this, you just leave it all to the computer. You give it your instructions and it does the rest. You won’t know that anything has happened at all, except that the view of space will suddenly change. If you’ve ever seen a slide show, you’ll know what happens when one slide is suddenly projected in place of another. Well, that’s what the jump will seem like.”
“Dear me. One won’t feel anything? Odd! I find that somewhat disappointing.”
“I’ve never felt anything and the ships I’ve been in haven’t been as advanced as this baby of ours. --but it’s not because of the hyperrelay that we haven’t jumped. We have to get a bit further away from Terminus--and from the sun, too. The farther we are from any massive abject, the easier to control the jump, to make re-emergence into space at exactly desired co-ordinates. In an emergency, you might risk a jump when you’re only two hundred kilometers off she surface of a planet and just trust to luck that you’ll end up safely. Since there is much mete safe than unsafe volume in the Galaxy, you can reasonably count on safety. Still, there’s always the possibility that random factors will cause you to re-emerge within a few million kilometers of a large star or in the Galactic core--and you will find yourself fried before you can blink. The further away you are from mass, the smaller those factors and the less likely it is that anything untoward will happen.”
“In that case, I commend your caution. We’re not in a tearing hurry,”
“Exactly. --Especially since I would dearly love to find the hyperrelay before I make a move. --or find a way of convincing myself there is no hyper-relay.”
Trevize seemed to drift off again into his private concentration and Pelorat said, raising his voice a little to surmount the preoccupation barrier, “How much longer do we have?”
“What?”
“I mean, when would you make the jump if you had no concerns over the hyper-relay, my dear chap?”
“At our present speed and trajectory, I should say on our fourth day out. I’ll work out the proper time on the computer.”
“Well, then, you still have two days for your search. May I make a suggestion?”
“Go ahead.”
“I have always found in my own work--quite different from yours, of course, but possibly we may generalize--that zeroing in tightly on a particular problem is self-defeating. Why not relax and talk about something else, and your unconscious mind--not laboring under the weight of concentrated thought--may solve the problem for you.”
Trevize looked momentarily annoyed and then laughed. “Well, why not? --Tell me, Professor, what got you interested in Earth? What brought up this odd notion of a particular planet from which we all started?”
“Ah!” Pelorat nodded his head reminiscently. “That’s going back a while. Over thirty years. I planned to be a biologist when I was going to college. I was particularly interested in the variation of species on different worlds. The variation, as you know--well, maybe you don’t know, so you won’t mind if I tell you--is very small. All forms of life throughout the Galaxy--at least all that we have yet encountered--share a water-based protein/nucleic acid chemistry.”
Trevize said, “I went to military college, which emphasized nucleonics and gravities, but I’m not exactly a narrow specialist. I know a bit about the chemical basis of life. We were taught that water, proteins, and nucleic acids are the only possible basis for life.”
“That, I think, is an unwarranted conclusion. It is safer to say that no other form of life has yet been found--or, at any rate, been recognized--and let it go at that. What is more surprising is that indigenous species--that is, species found on only a single planet and no other--are few in number. Most of the species that exist, including Homo sapiens in particular, are distributed through all or most of the inhabited worlds of the Galaxy and are closely related biochemically, physiologically, and morphologically. The indigenous species, on the other hand, are widely separated in characteristics from both the widespread forms and from each other.”
“Well, what of that?”
“The conclusion is that one world in the Galaxy--one world--is different from the rest. Tens of millions of worlds in the Galaxy--no one knows exactly how many--have developed life. It was simple life, sparse life, feeble life--not very variegated, not easily maintained, and not easily spread. One world, one world alone, developed life in millions of species--easily millions--some of it very specialized, highly developed, very prone to multiplication and to spreading, and including us. We were intelligent enough to form a civilization, to develop hyperspatial flight, and to colonize the Galaxy--and, in spreading through the Galaxy, we took many other forms of lifeforms related to each other and to ourselves--along with us.”
“If you stop to think of it,” said Trevize rather indifferently, “I suppose that stands to reason. I mean, here we are in a human Galaxy. If we assume that it all started on some one world, then that one world would have to be different. But why not? The chances of life developing in that riotous fashion must be very slim indeed--perhaps one in a hundred million--so the chances are that it happened in one life-bearing world out of a hundred million. It had to be one.”
“But what is it that made that particular one world so different from the others?” said Pelorat excitedly. “What were the conditions that made it unique?”
“Merely chance, perhaps. After all, human beings and the lifeforms they brought with them now exist on tens of millions of planets, all of which can support life, so all those worlds must be good enough.”
“No! Once the human species had evolved, once it had developed a technology, once it had toughened itself in the hard struggle for survival, it could then adapt to life on any world that is in the least hospitable--on Terminus, for instance. But can you imagine intelligent life having developed on Terminus? When Terminus was first occupied by human beings in the days of the EncycIopedists, the highest form of plant life it produced was a mosslike growth on rocks; the highest forms of animal life were small coral-like growths in the ocean and insectlike flying organisms on land. We just about wiped them out and stocked sea and land with fish and rabbits and goats and grass and grain and trees and so on. We have nothing left of the indigenous life, except for what exists in zoos and aquaria.”
“Hmm,” said Trevize.
Pelorat stared at him for a full minute, then sighed and said, “You don’t really care, do you? Remarkable! I find no one who does, somehow. My fault, I think. I cannot make it interesting, even though it interests me so much.”
Trevize said, “It’s interesting. It is. But--but--so what?”
“It doesn’t strike you that it might be interesting scientifically to study a world that gave rise to the only really flourishing indigenous ecological balance the Galaxy has ever seen?”
“Maybe, if you’re a biologist. --I’m not, you see. You must forgive me.”
“Of course, dear fellow. It’s just that I never found any biologists who were interested, either. I told you I was a biology major. I took it up with my professor and he wasn’t interested. He told me to turn to some practical problem. That so disgusted me I took up history instead--which had been rather a hobby of mine from my teenage years, in any case--and tackled the ‘Origin Question’ from that angle.”
Trevize said, “But at least it has given you a lifework, so you must be pleased that your professor was so unenlightened.”
“Yes, I suppose one might look at it that way. And the lifework is an interesting one, of which I have never tired. --but I do wish it interested you. I hate this feeling of forever talking to myself.”
Trevize leaned his bead back and laughed heartily.
Pelorat’s quiet face took or: a trace of hurt. “Why are you laughing at me?”
“Not you, Janov,” said Trevize. “I was laughing at my own stupidity, Where you’re concerned, I am completely grateful. You were perfectly right, you know,”
“To take up the importance of human origins?”
“No, no. --Well, yes, that too. --but 1 meant you were right to tell me to stop consciously thinking of my problem and to turn my mind elsewhere. It worked. When you were talking about the manner in which life evolved, it finally occurred to me that I knew how to find that hyperrelay--if it existed.”
“Oh, that!”
“Yes, that! That’s my monomania at the moment. I’ve been looking for that hyper-relay as though I were on my old scow of a training ship, studying every part of the ship by eye, looking for something that stood out from the rest. I had forgotten that this ship is a developed product of thousands of years of technological evolution. Don’t you see?”
“No, Golan.”
“We have a computer aboard. How could I have forgotten?”
He waved his hand and passed into his own room, urging Pelorat along with him.
“I need only try to communicate,” he said, placing his hands onto the computer contact.
It was a matter of trying to reach Terminus, which was now some thousands of kilometers behind.
Reach! Speak! It was as though nerve endings sprouted and extended, reaching outward with bewildering speed--the speed of light, of course--to make contact.
Trevize felt himself touching--well, not quite touching, but sensing--well, not quite sensing, but--it didn’t matter, for there wasn’t a word for it.
He was aware of Terminus within reach and, although the distance between himself and it was lengthening by some twenty kilometers per second, contact persisted as though planet and ship were motionless and separated by a few meters.
He said nothing. He clamped shut. He was merely testing the principle of communication; he was not actively communicating.
Out beyond, eight parsecs away, was Anacreon, the nearest large planet--in their backyard, by Galactic standards. To send a message by the same light-speed system that had just worked for Terminus--and to receive an answer as well--would take fifty-two years.
Reach for Anacreon! Think Anacreon! Think it as clearly as you can. You know its position relative to Terminus and the Galactic core; you’ve studied its planetography and history; you’ve solved military problems where it was necessary to recapture Anacreon (in the impossible case--these days--that it was taken by an enemy).
Space! You’ve been on Anacreon.
Picture it! Picture it! You will sense being on it via hyper-relay.
Nothing! His nerve endings quivered and came to rest nowhere.
Trevize pulled loose. “There’s no hyper-relay on board the Far Star, Janov. I’m positive. --and if I hadn’t followed your suggestion, I wonder how long it would have taken me to reach this point.”
Pelorat, without moving a facial muscle, positively glowed. “I’m so pleased to have been of help. Does this mean we jump?”
“No, we still wait two more days, to be safe. We have to get away from mass, remember? --Ordinarily, considering that I have a new and untried ship with which I am thoroughly unacquainted, it would probably take me two days to calculate the exact procedure--the proper hyperthrust for the first jump, in particular. I have a feeling, though, the computer will do it all.”
“Dear me! That leaves us facing a rather boring stretch of time, it seems to me.”
“Boring?” Trevize smiled broadly. “Anything but! You and I, Janov, are going to talk about Earth.”
Pelorat said, “Indeed? You are trying to please an old man? That is kind of you. Really it is.”
“Nonsense! I’m trying to please myself. Janov, you have made a convert. As a result of what you have told me, I realize that Earth is the most important and the most devouringly interesting object in the Universe.”
2.
It must surely have struck Trevize at the moment that Pelorat had presented his view of Earth. It was only because his mind was reverberating with the problem of the hyper-relay that he hadn’t responded at once. And the instant the problem had gone, he had responded.
Perhaps the one statement of Hari Seldon’s that was most often repeated was his remark concerning the Second Foundation being “at the other end of the Galaxy” from Terminus. Seldon had even named the spot. It was to be “at Star’s End.”
This had been included in Gaal Dornick’s account of the day of the trial before the Imperial court. “The other end of the Galaxy”‘--those were the words Seldon had used to Dornick and ever since that day their significance had been debated.
What was it that connected one end of the Galaxy with “the other end”? Was it a straight line, a spiral, a circle, or what?
And now, luminously, it was suddenly clear to Trevize that it was no line and no curve that should--or could--be drawn on the map of the Galaxy. It was more subtle than that.
It was perfectly clear that the one end of the Galaxy was Terminus. It was at the edge of the Galaxy, yes--our Foundation’s edge --which gave the word “end” a literal meaning. It was, however, also the newest world of the Galaxy at the time Seldon was speaking, a world that was about to be founded, that had not as yet been in existence for a single moment.
What would be the other end of the Galaxy, in that light? The other Foundation’s edge? Why, the oldest world of the Galaxy? And according to the argument Pelorat had presented--without knowing what he was presenting--that could only be Earth. The Second Foundation might well be on Earth.
Yet Seldon had said the other end of the Galaxy was “at Star’s End.” Who could say he was not speaking metaphorically? Trace the history of humanity backward as Pelorat did and the line would stretch back from each planetary system, each star that shone down on an inhabited planet, to some other planetary system, some other star from which the first migrants had come, then back to a star before that--until finally, all the lines stretched back to the planet on which humanity had originated. It was the star that shone upon Earth that was “Star’s End:”
Trevize smiled and said almost lovingly, “Tell me more about Earth, Janov.”
Pelorat shook his head. “I have told you all there is, really. We will find out more on Trantor.”
Trevize said, “No, we won’t, Janov. We’ll find out nothing there. Why? Because we’re not going to Trantor. I control this ship and I assure you we’re not.”
Pelorat’s mouth fell open. He struggled for breath for a moment and then said, woebegone, “Oh, my dear fellow!”
Trevize said, “Come an, Janov. Don’t look like that. We’re going to find Earth.”
“But it’s only on Trantor that--”
“No, it’s not. Trantor is just someplace you can study brittle films and dusty documents and turn brittle and dusty yourself.”
“For decades, I’ve dreamed--”
“You’ve dreamed of finding Earth.”
“But it’s only--”
Trevize stood up, leaned over, caught the slack of Pelorat’s tunic, and said, “Don’t repeat that, Professor. Don’t repeat it. When you first told me we were going to look for Earth, before ever we got onto this ship, you said we were sure to find it because, and I quote your own words, ‘I have an excellent possibility in mind: Now I don’t ever want to hear you say ‘Trantor’ again. I just want you to tell me about this excellent possibility.”
“But it must be confirmed. So far, it’s only a thought, a hope, a vague possibility.”
“Good! Tell me about it!”
“You don’t understand. You simply don’t understand. It is not a field in which anyone but myself has done research. There is nothing historical, nothing firm, nothing real. People talk about Earth as though it’s a fact, and also as though it’s a myth. There are a million contradictory tales--”
“Well then, what has your research consisted of?”
“I’ve been forced to collect every tale, every bit of supposed history, every legend, every misty myth. Even fiction. Anything that includes the name of Earth or the idea of a planet of origin. For over thirty years, I’ve been collecting everything I could find from every planet of the Galaxy. Now if I could only get something more reliable than all of these from the Galactic Library at-- But you don’t want me to say the word.”
“That’s right. Don’t say it. Tell me instead that one of these items has caught your attention, and tell me your reasons for thinking why it, of them all, should be legitimate.”
Pelorat shook his head. “There, Golan, if you will excuse my saying so, you talk like a soldier or a politician. That is not the way history works.”
Trevize took a deep breath and kept his temper. “Tell me how it works, Janov. We’ve got two days. Educate me.”
“You can’t rely on any one myth or even on any one group. I’ve had to gather them all, analyze them, organize them, set up symbols to represent different aspects of their content--tales of impossible weather, astronomic details of planetary systems at variance with what actually exists, place of origin of culture heroes specifically stated not to be native, quite literally hundreds of other items. No use going through the entire list. Even two days wouldn’t be enough. I spent over thirty years, I tell you.
“I then worked up a computer program that searched through all these myths for common components and sought a transformation that would eliminate the true impossibilities. Gradually I worked up a model of what Earth must have been like. After all, if human beings all originated on a single planet, that single planet must represent the one fact that all origin myths, all culture--hero tales, have in common. --Well, do you want me to go into mathematical detail?”
Trevize said, “Not at the moment, thank you, but how do you know you won’t be misled by your mathematics? We know for a fact that Terminus was founded only five centuries ago and that the first human beings arrived as a colony from Trantor but had been assembled from dozens--if not hundreds--of other worlds. Yet someone who did not know this could assume that Hari Seldon and Salvor Hardin, neither of whom were born on Terminus, came from Earth and that Trantor was really a name that stood for Earth. Certainly, if the Trantor as described in Seldon’s time were searched for --a world with all its land surface coated with metal--it would not be found and it might be considered an impossible myth.”
Pelorat looked pleased. “I withdraw my earlier remark about soldiers and politicians, my dear fellow. You have a remarkable intuitive sense. Of course, I had to set up controls. I invented a hundred falsities based on distortions of actual history and imitating myths of the type I had collected. I then attempted to incorporate my inventions into the model. One of my inventions was even based on Terminus’s early history. The computer rejected them all. Every one. To be sure, that might have meant I simply lacked the fictional talents to make up something reasonable, but I did my best”
“I’m sure you did, Janov. And what did your model tell you about Earth?”
“A number of things of varying degrees of likelihood. A kind of profile. For instance, about 9o percent of the inhabited planets in the Galaxy have rotation periods of between twenty-two and twenty-six Galactic Standard Hours. Well--”
Trevize cut in. “I hope you didn’t pay any attention to that, Janov. There’s no mystery there. For a planet to be habitable, you don’t want it to rotate so quickly that air circulation patterns produce impossibly stormy conditions or so slowly that temperature variation patterns are extreme. It’s a property that’s self-selective. Human beings prefer to live on planets with suitable characteristics, and then when all habitable planets resemble each other in these characteristics, some say, ‘What an amazing coincidence,’ when it’s not amazing at all and not even a coincidence.”
“As a matter of fact,” said Pelorat calmly, “that’s a well-known phenomenon in social science. In physics, too, I believe--but I’m not a physicist and I’m not certain about that. In any case, it is called the ‘anthropic principle: The observer influences the events he observes by the mere act of observing them or by being there to observe them. But the question is: Where is the planet that served as a model? Which planet rotates in precisely one Galactic Standard Day of twenty-four Galactic Standard Hours?”
Trevize looked thoughtful and thrust out his lower lip. “You think that might be Earth? Surely Galactic Standard could have been based on the local characteristics of any world, might it not?”
“Not likely. It’s not the human way. Trantor was the capital world of the Galaxy for twelve thousand years--the most populous world for twenty thousand years--yet it did not impose its rotation period of 1.08 Galactic Standard Days on all the Galaxy. And Terminus’s rotation period is 0.91 GSD and we don’t enforce ours on the planets dominated by us. Every planet makes use of its own private calculations in its own Local Planetary Day system, and for matters of interplanetary importance converts--with the help of computers--back and forth between LPD and GSD. The Galactic Standard Day must come from Earth!”
“Why is it a must?”
“For one thing, Earth was once the only inhabited world, so naturally its day and year would be standard and would very likely remain standard out of social inertia as other worlds were populated. Then, too, the model I produced was that of an Earth that rotated on its axis in just twenty-four Galactic Standard Hours and that revolved about its sun in just one Galactic Standard Year.”
“Might that not be coincidence?”
Pelorat laughed. “Now it is you who are talking coincidence. Would you care to lay a wager on such a thing happening by coincidence?”
“Well well,” muttered Trevize.
“In fact, there’s more to it. There’s an archaic measure of time that’s called the month--”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“It, apparently, about fits the period of revolution of Earth’s satellite about Earth. However--”
“Yes?”
“Well, one rather astonishing factor of the model is that the satellite I just mentioned is huge--over one quarter the diameter of the Earth itself.”
“Never heard of such a thing, Janov. There isn’t a populated planet in the Galaxy with a satellite like that.”
“But that’s good,” said Pelorat with animation. “If Earth is a unique world in its production of variegated species and the evolution of intelligence, then we want some physical uniqueness.”
“But what could a large satellite have to do with variegated species, intelligence, and all that?”
“Well now, there you hit a difficulty. I don’t really know. But it’s worth examination, don’t you think?”
Trevize rose to his feet and folded his arms across his chest. “But what’s the problem, then? Look up the statistics on inhabited planets and find one that has a period of rotation and of revolution that are exactly one Galactic Standard Day and one Galactic Standard Year in length, respectively. And if it also has a gigantic satellite, you’d have what you want. I presume, from your statement that you ‘have an excellent possibility in mind,’ that you’ve done just this, and that you have your world.”
Pelorat looked disconcerted. “Well, now, that’s not exactly what happened. I did look through the statistics, or at least I had it done by the astronomy department and--well, to put it bluntly, there’s no such world.”
Trevize sat down again abruptly. “But that means your whole argument falls to the ground.”
“Not quite, it seems to me.”
“What do you mean, not quite? You produce a model with all sorts of detailed descriptions and you can’t find anything that fits. Your model is useless, then. You must start from the beginning.”
“No. It just means that the statistics on populated planets are incomplete. After all, there are tens of millions of them and some are very obscure worlds. For instance, there is no good data on the population of nearly half. And concerning six hundred and forty thousand populated worlds there is almost no information other than their names and sometimes the location. Some galactographers have estimated that there may be up to ten thousand inhabited planets that aren’t listed at all. The worlds prefer it that way, presumably. During the Imperial Era, it might have helped them avoid taxation.”
“And in the centuries that followed,” said Trevize cynically. “It might have helped them serve as home bases for pirates, and that might have, on occasion, proved more enriching than ordinary trade.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” said Pelorat doubtfully.
Trevize said, “Just the same, it seems to me that Earth would have to be on the list of inhabited planets, whatever its own desires. It would be the oldest of them all, by definition, and it could not have been overlooked in the early centuries of Galactic civilization. And once on the list, it would stay on. Surely we could count on social inertia there.”
Pelorat hesitated and looked anguished. “Actually, there--there is a planet named Earth on the list of inhabited planets.”
Trevize stared. “I’m under the impression that you told me a while ago that Earth was not on the list?”
“As Earth, it is not. There is, however, a planet named Gaia.”
“What has that got to do with it? Gahyah?”
“It’s spelled G-A-I-A. It means ‘Earth.”‘
“Why should it mean Earth, Janov, any more than anything else? The name is meaningless to me.”
Pelorat’s ordinarily expressionless face came close to a grimace. “I’m not sure you’ll believe this-- If I go by my analysis of the myths, there were several different, mutually unintelligible, languages on Earth.”
“What?”
“Yes. After all, we have a thousand different ways of speaking across the Galaxy--”
“Across the Galaxy, there are certainly dialectical variations, but these are not mutually unintelligible. And even if understanding some of them is a matter of difficulty, we all share Galactic Standard.”
“Certainly, but there is constant interstellar travel. What if some world was in isolation for a prolonged period?”
“But you’re talking of Earth. A single planet. Where’s the isolation?”
“Earth is the planet of origin, don’t forget, where humanity must at one time have been primitive beyond imagining. Without interstellar travel, without computers, without technology at all, struggling up from nonhuman ancestors.”
“This is so ridiculous.”
Pelorat hung his head in embarrassment at that. “There is perhaps no use discussing this, old chap. I never have managed to make it convincing to anyone. My own fault, I’m sure.”
Trevize was at once contrite. “Janov, I apologize. I spoke without thinking. These are views, after all, to which I am not accustomed. You have been developing your theories for over thirty years, while I’ve been introduced to them all at once. You must make allowances. --Look, I’ll imagine that we have primitive people on Earth who speak two completely different, mutually unintelligible, languages.”‘
“Half a dozen, perhaps,” said Pelorat diffidently. “Earth may have been divided into several large land masses and it may be that there were, at first, no communications among them. The inhabitants of each land mass might have developed an individual language.”
Trevize said with careful gravity, “And on each of these land masses, once they grew cognizant of one another, they might have argued an ‘origin Question’ and wondered on which one human beings had first arisen from other animals.”
“They might very well, Golan. It would be a very natural attitude for them to have.”
“And in one of those languages, Gaia means Earth. And the word ‘Earth’ itself is derived from another one of those languages.”
“Yes, yes.”
“And while Galactic Standard is the language that descended from the particular language in which ‘Earth’ means ‘Earth,’ the people of Earth for some reason call their planet ‘Gala’ from another of their languages.”
“Exactly! You are indeed quick, Golan.”
“But it seems to me that there’s no need to make a mystery of this. If Gaia is really Earth, despite the difference in names, then Gala, by your previous argument, ought to have a period of rotation of just one Galactic Day, a period of revolution of just one Galactic Year, and a giant satellite that revolves about it in just one month.”
“Yes, it would have to be so.”
“Well then, does it or doesn’t it fulfill these requirements?”
“Actually I can’t say. The information isn’t given in the tables.”
“Indeed? Well, then, Janov, shall we go to Gaia and time its periods and stare at its satellite?”
“I would like to, Golan,” Pelorat hesitated. “The trouble is that the location isn’t given exactly, either.”
“You mean, all you have is the name and nothing more, and that is your excellent possibility?”
“But that is just why I want to visit the Galactic Library!”
“Well, wait. You say the table doesn’t give the location exactly. Does it give any information at all?”
“It lists it in the Sayshell Sector--and adds a question mark.”
“Well, then-- Janov, don’t be downcast. We will go to the Sayshell Sector and somehow we will find Gaia!”
1.
STOR GENDIBAL JOGGED ALONG THE COUNTRY ROAD OUTSIDE THE UNIVERSITY. It was not common practice for Second Foundationers to venture into the farming world of Trantor. They could do so, certainly, but when they did, they did not venture either far or for long.
Gendibal was an exception and he had, in times past, wondered why. Wondering meant exploring his own mind, something that Speakers, in particular, were encouraged to do. Their minds were at once their weapons and their targets, and they had to keep both offense and defense well honed.
Gendibal had decided, to his own satisfaction, that one reason he was different was because he had come from a planet that was both colder and more massive than the average inhabited planet. When he was brought to Trantor as a boy (through the net that was quietly cast throughout the Galaxy by agents of the Second Foundation on the lookout for talent), he found himself, therefore, in a lighter gravitational field and a delightfully mild climate. Naturally he enjoyed being in the open more than some of the others might.
In his early years on Trantor, he grew conscious of his puny, undersized frame, and he was afraid that settling back into the comfort of a benign world would turn him flabby indeed. He therefore undertook a series of self-developing exercises that had left him still puny in appearance but kept hint wiry and with a good wind. Part of his regimen were these long walks arid joggings--about which some at the Speaker’s Table muttered. Gendibal disregarded their chattering.
He kept his own ways, despite the fact that he was first-generation. All the others at the Table were second- and third-generation, with parents and grandparents who had been Second Foundationers. And they were all older than he, too. What, then, was to be expected but muttering?
By long custom, all minds at the Speaker’s Table were open (supposedly altogether, though it was a rare Speaker who didn’t maintain a comer of privacy somewhere--in the long run, ineffectively, of course) and Gendibal knew that what they felt was envy. So did they; just as Gendibal knew his own attitude was defensive, overcompensating ambition. And so did they.
Besides (Gendibal’s mind reverted to the reasons for his ventures into the hinterland) he had spent his childhood in a whole world--a large and expansive one, with grand and variegated scenery--and in a fertile valley of that world, surrounded by what he believed to be the most beautiful mountain ranges in the Galaxy. They were unbelievably spectacular in the grim winter of that world. He remembered his former world and the glories of a now-distant childhood. He dreamed about it often. How could he bring himself to be confined to a few dozen square miles of ancient architecture?
He looked about disparagingly as he jogged. Trantor was a mild and pleasant world, but it was not a rugged and beautiful one. Though it was a farming world, it was not a fertile planet.
It never had been. Perhaps that, as much as any other factor, had led to its becoming the administrative center of, first, an extensive union of planets and then of a Galactic Empire. There was no strong push to have it be anything else. It wasn’t extraordinarily good for anything else.
After the Great Sack, one thing that kept Trantor going was its enormous supply of metal. It was a great mine, supplying half a hundred worlds with cheap alloy steel, aluminum, titanium, copper, magnesium--returning, in this way, what it had collected over thousands of years; depleting its supplies at a rate hundreds of times faster than the original rate of accumulation.
There were still enormous metal supplies available, but they were underground and harder to obtain. The Hamish farmers (who never called themselves “Trantorians,” a term they considered ill-omened and which the Second Foundationers therefore reserved for themselves) had grown reluctant to deal with the metal any further. Superstition, undoubtedly.
Foolish of them. The metal that remained underground might well be poisoning the soil and further lowering its fertility. And yet, on the other hand, the population was thinly spread and the land supported them. And there were some sales of metal, always.
Gendibal’s eyes roved over the fiat horizon. Trantor was alive geologically, as almost all inhabited planets were, but it had been a hundred million years, at least, since the last major geological mountain-building period had occurred. What uplands existed had been eroded into gentle hills. Indeed, many of them had been leveled during the great metal-coating period of Trantor’s history.
Off to the south, well out of sight, was the shore of Capital Bay, and beyond that, the Eastern Ocean, both of which had been re-established after the disruption of the underground cisterns.
To the north were the towers of Galactic University, obscuring the comparatively squat-but-wide Library (most of which was underground), and the remains of the Imperial Palace still farther north.
Immediately on either side were farms, on which there was an occasional building. He passed groups of cattle, goats, chickens--the wide variety of domesticated animals found on any Trantorian farm. None of them paid him any mind.
Gendibal thought casually that anywhere in the Galaxy, on any of the vast number of inhabited worlds, he would see these animals and that on no two worlds would they be exactly alike. He remembered the goats of home and his own tame nanny whom he had once milked. They were much larger and more resolute than the small and philosophical specimens that had been brought to Trantor and established there since the Great Sack. Over the inhabited worlds of the Galaxy, there were varieties of each of these animals, in numbers almost beyond counting, and there was no sophisticate on any world who didn’t swear by his favorite variety, whether for meat, milk, eggs, wool, or anything else they could produce.
As usual, there were no Hamish in view. Gendibal had the feeling that the farmers avoided being seen by those whom they referred to as “scowlers” (a mispronunciation--perhaps deliberately--of the word “scholars” in their dialect). --Superstition, again.
Gendibal glanced up briefly at Trantor’s sun. It was quite high in the sky, but its heat was not oppressive. In this location, at this latitude, the warmth saved mild and the cold never bit. (Gendibal ever. missed the biting cold sometimes or so he imagined. He had never revisited his native world. Perhaps, he admitted to himself, because he didn’t want to be disillusioned.)
He had the pleasant feel of muscles that were sharpened and tightened to keenness and he decided he had jogged just long enough. He settled down to a walk, breathing deeply.
He would be ready for the upcoming Table meeting and for one last push to force a change in policy, a new attitude that would recognize the growing danger from the First Foundation and elsewhere and that would put an end to the fatal reliance on the “perfect” working of the Plan. When would they realize that the very perfection was the surest sign of danger?
Had anyone but himself proposed it, he knew, it would have gone through without trouble. As things stood now, there would be trouble, but it would go through, just the same, for old Shandess was supporting him and would undoubtedly continue to do so. He would not wish to enter the history books as the particular First Speaker under whom the Second Foundation had withered.
Hamish!
Gendibal was startled. He became aware of the distant tendril of mind well before he saw the person. It was Hamish mind--a farmer --coarse and unsubtle. Carefully Gendibal withdrew, leaving a touch so light as to be undetectable. Second Foundation policy was very firm in this respect. The farmers were the unwitting shields of the Second Foundation. They must be left as untouched as possible.
No one who came to Trantor for trade or tourism ever saw anything other than the farmers, plus perhaps a few unimportant scholars living in the past. Remove the farmers or merely tamper with their innocence and the scholars would become more noticeable--with catastrophic results. (That was one of the classic demonstrations which neophytes at the University were expected to work out for themselves. The tremendous Deviations displayed on the Prime Radiant when the farmer minds were even slightly tampered with were astonishing.)
Gendibal saw him. It was a farmer, certainly, Hamish to the core. He was almost a caricature of what a Trantorian farmer should be tall and wide, brown-skinned, roughly dressed, arms bare, dark-haired, dark-eyed, a long ungainly stride. Gendibal felt as though he could smell the barnyard about him. (Not too much scorn, he thought. Preem Palver had not minded playing the role of farmer, when that was necessary to his plans. Some farmer he was--short and plump and soft. It was his mind that had fooled the teenaged Arkady, never his body.)
The farmer was approaching him, clumping down the road, staring at him openly--something that made Gendibal frown. No Hamish man or woman had ever looked at him in this manner. Even the children ran away and peered from a distance.
Gendibal did not slow his own stride. There would be room enough to pass the other with neither comment nor glance and that would be best. He determined to stay away from the farmer’s mind.
Gendibal drifted to one side, but the farmer was not going to have that. He stopped, spread his legs wide, stretched out his large arms as though to block passage, and said, “Ho! Be you scowler?”
Try as he might, Gendibal could not refrain from sensing the wash of pugnacity in the approaching mind. He stopped. It would be impossible to attempt to pass by without conversation and that would be, in itself, a weary task. Used as one was to the swift and subtle interplay of sound and expression and thought and mentality that combined to make up the communication between Second Foundationers, it was wearisome to resort to word combination alone. It was like prying up a boulder by arm and shoulder, with a crowbar lying nearby.
Gendibal said, quietly and with careful lack of emotion, “I am a scholar. Yes.”
“Ho! You am a scowler. Don’t we speak outlandish now? And cannot I see that you be one or am one?” He ducked his head in a mocking bow. “Being, as you be, small and weazen and pale and upnosed.”
“What is it you want of me, Hamishman?” asked Gendibal, unmoved.
“I be titled Rufirant. And Karoll be my previous.” His accent became noticeably more Hamish. His r’s rolled throatily.
Gendibal said, “What is it you want with me, Karoll Rufirant?”
“And how be you titled, scowler?”
“Does it matter? You may continue to call me ‘scholar.”‘
“If I ask, it matters that I be answered, little up-nosed scowler.”
“Well then, I am titled Stor Gendibal and I will now go about my business.”
“What be your business?”
Gendibal felt the hair prickling on the back of his neck. There were other minds present. He did not have to turn to know there were three more Hamishmen behind him. Off in the distance, there were others. The farmer smell was strong.
“My business, Karoll Rufirant, is certainly none of yours.”
“Say you so?” Rufirant’s voice rose. “Mates, he says his business be not ours.”
There was a laugh from behind him and a voice sounded. “Right he be, for his business be book-mucking and ‘puter-rubbing, and that be naught for true men.”
“Whatever my business is,” said Gendibal firmly, “I will be about it now.”
“And how will you do that, wee scowler?” said Rufirant.
“By passing you.”
“You would try? You would not fear arm-stopping?”
“By you and all your mates? Or by you alone?” Gendibal suddenly dropped into thick Hamish dialect. “Art not feared alone?”
Strictly speaking, it was not proper to prod him in this manner, but it would stop a mass attack and that had to be stopped, lest it force a still greater indiscretion on his part.
It worked. Rufirant’s expression grew lowering. “If fear there be, bookboy, th’art the one to be full of it. Mates, make room. Stand back and let him pass that he may see if I be feared alane.”
Rufirant lifted his great arms and moved them about. Gendibal did not fear the farmer’s pugilistic science; but there was always a chance that a goodly blow might land.
Gendibal approached cautiously, working with delicate speed within Rufirant’s mind. Not much--just a touch, unfelt--but enough to slow reflexes that crucial notch. Then out, and into all the others, who were now gathering in greater numbers. Gendibal’s Speaker mind darted back and forth with virtuosity, never resting in one mind long enough to leave a mark, but just long enough for the detection of something that might be useful.
He approached the farmer catlike, watchful, aware and relieved that no one was making a move to interfere.
Rufirant struck suddenly, but Gendibal saw it in his mind before any muscle had begun to tighten and he stepped to one side. The blow whistled past, with little room to spare. Yet Gendibal still stood there, unshaken. There was a collective sigh from the others.
Gendibal made no attempt to either parry or return a blow. It would be difficult to parry without paralyzing his own arm and to return a blow would be of no use, far the farmer would withstand it without trouble.
He could only maneuver the man as though he were a bull, forcing him to miss. That would serve to break his morale as direct opposition would not.
Bull-like and roaring, Rufirant charged. Gendibal was ready and drifted to one side just sufficiently to allow the farmer to miss his clutch. Again the charge. Again the miss.
Gendibal felt his own breath begin to whistle through his nose. The physical effort was small, but the mental effort of trying to control without controlling was enormously difficult. He could not keep it up long.
He said--as calmly as he could while batting lightly at Rufirant’s fear-depressant mechanism, trying to rouse in a minimalist manner what must surely be the farmer’s superstitious dread of scholars--”I will now go about my business.”
Rufirant’s face distorted with rage, but for a moment he did not move. Gendibal could sense his thinking. The little scholar had melted away like magic. Gendibal could feel the other’s fear rise and for a moment
But then the Hamish rage surged higher and drowned the fear.
Rufirant shouted, “Mates! Scowler he dancer. He do duck on nimble toes and scorns the rules of honest Hamish blow-for-blow. Seize him. Hold him. We will trade blow for blow, then. He may be firststriker, gift of me, and I--I will be last-striker.”
Gendibal found the gaps among those who now surrounded him. His only chance was to maintain a gap long enough to get through, then to run, trusting to his own wind and to his ability to dull the farmers’ will.
Back and forth he dodged, with his mind cramping in effort.
It would rat work. There were too many of them and the necessity of abiding within the rules of Trantorian behavior was too constricting.
He felt hands on his arms. He was held.
He would have to interfere with at least a few of the minds. It would be unacceptable and his cancer would be destroyed. But his life--his very life--was at hazard.
How had this happened?
2.
The meeting of the Table was not complete.
It was not the custom to wait if any Speaker were late. Nor, thought Shandess, was the Table in a mood to wait, in any case. Stor Gendibal was the youngest and far from sufficiently aware of the fact. He acted as though youth were in itself a virtue and age a matter of negligence on the part of those who should know better. Gendibal was not popular with the other Speakers. He was not, in point of fact, entirely popular with Shandess himself. But popularity was not at issue here.
Delora Delarmi broke in on his reverie. She was looking at him out of wide blue eyes, her round face--with its accustomed air of innocence and friendliness--masking an acute mind (to all but other Second Foundationers of her own rank) and ferocity of concentration.
She said, smiling, “First Speaker, do we wait longer?” (The meeting had not yet been formally called to order so that, strictly speaking, she could open the conversation, though another might have waited for Shandess to speak first by right of his title.)
Shandess looked at her disarmingly, despite the slight breach in courtesy. “Ordinarily we would not, Speaker Delarmi, but since the Table meets precisely to hear Speaker Gendibal, it is suitable to stretch the rules.”
“Where is he, First Speaker?”
“That, Speaker Delarmi, I do not know.”
Delarmi looked about the rectangle of faces. There was the First Speaker and what should have been eleven other Speakers. --Only twelve. Through five centuries, the Second Foundation had expanded its powers and its duties, but all attempts to expand the Table beyond twelve had failed.
Twelve it had been after Seldon’s death, when the second First Speaker (Seldon himself had always been considered as having been the first of the line) had established it, and twelve it still was.
Why twelve? That number divided itself easily into groups of identical size. It was small enough to consult as a whole and large enough to do work in subgroups. More would have been too unwieldy; fewer, too inflexible.
So went the explanations. In fact, no one knew why the number had been chosen--or why it should be immutable. But then, even the Second Foundation could find itself a slave to tradition.
It took Delarmi only a flashing moment to have her mind twiddle the matter as she looked from face to face, and mind to mind, and then, sardonically, at the empty seat--the junior seat.
She was satisfied that there was no sympathy at all with Gendibal. The young man, she had always felt, had all the charm of a centipede and was best treated as one. So far, only his unquestioned ability and talent had kept anyone from openly proposing trial for expulsion. (Only two Speakers had been impeached--but not convicted--in the hemimillennial history of the Second Foundation.)
The obvious contempt, however, of missing a meeting of the Table was worse than many an offense and Delarmi was pleased to sense that the mood for trial had moved forward rather more than a notch.
She said, “First Speaker, if you do not know the whereabouts of Speaker Gendibal, I would be pleased to tell you.”
“Yes, Speaker?”
“Who among us does not know that this young man” (she used no honorific in speaking of him, and it was something that everyone noted, of course) “finds business among the Hamish continually? What that business might be, I do not ask, but he is among them now and his concern with them is clearly important enough to take precedence over this Table.”
“I believe,” said another of the Speakers, “that he merely walks or jogs as a form of physical exercise.”
Delarmi smiled again. She enjoyed smiling. It cost her nothing. “The University, the Library, the Palace, and the entire region surrounding these are ours. It is small in comparison with the planet itself, but it contains room enough, I think, for physical exercise. --First Speaker, might we not begin?”
The First Speaker sighed inwardly. He had the full power to keep the Table waiting--or, indeed, to adjourn the meeting until a time when Gendibal was present.
No First Speaker could long function smoothly, however, without at least the passive support of the other Speakers and it was never wise to irritate them. Even Preem Palver had occasionally been forced into cajolery to get his way. --Besides, Gendibal’s absence was annoying, even to the First Speaker. The young Speaker might as well learn he was not a law unto himself.
And now, as First Speaker, he did speak first, saying, “We will begin. Speaker Gendibal has presented some startling deductions from Prime Radiant data. He believes that there is some organization that is working to. maintain the Seldon Plan more efficiently than we can and that it does so for its own purpose. We must, in his view therefore, learn more about it out of self-defense. You all have been informed of this, and this meeting is to allow you all a chance to question Speaker Gendibal, in order that we may come to some conclusion as to future policy.”
It was, in fact, even unnecessary to say this much. Shandess held his mind open, so they all knew. Speaking was a matter of courtesy.
Delarmi looked about swiftly. The other ten seemed content to allow her to take on the role of anti-Gendibal spokesperson. She said, “Yet Gendibal” (again the omission of the honorific) “does not know and cannot say what or who this other organization is.”
She phrased it unmistakably as a statement, which skirted the edge of rudeness. It was as much as to say: I can analyze your mind; you need not bother to explain.
The First Speaker recognized the rudeness and made the swift decision to ignore it. “The fact that Speaker Gendibal” (he punctiliously avoided the omission of the honorific and did not even point up the fact by stressing it) “does not know and cannot say what the other organization is, does not mean it does not exist. The people of the First Foundation, through most of their history, knew virtually nothing about us and, in fact, know next to nothing about us now. Do you question our existence?”
“It does not follow,” said Delarmi, “that because we are unknown and yet exist, that anything, in order to exist, need only be unknown.” And she laughed lightly.
“True enough. That is why Speaker Gendibal’s assertion must be examined most carefully. It is based on rigorous mathematical deduction, which I have gone over myself and which I urge you all to consider. It is” (he searched for a cast of mind that best expressed his views) “not unconvincing.”
“And this First Foundationer, Golan Trevize, who hovers in your mind but whom you do not mention?” (Another rudeness and this time the First Speaker flushed a bit.) “What of him?”
The First Speaker said, “It is Speaker Gendibal’s thought that this man, Trevize, is the tool--perhaps an unwitting one--of this organization and that we must not ignore him.”
“If,” said Delarmi, sitting back in her chair and pushing her graying hair backward and out of her eyes, “this organization--whatever it is--exists and if it is dangerously powerful in its mental capabilities and is so hidden, is it likely to be maneuvering so openly by way of someone as noticeable as an exiled Councilman of the First Foundation?”
The First Speaker said gravely, “One would think not. And yet I have noticed something that is most disquieting. I do not understand it.” Almost involuntarily he buried the thought in his mind, ashamed that others might see it.
Each of the Speakers noted the mental action and, as was rigorously required, respected the shame. Delarmi did, too, but she did so impatiently. She said, in accordance with the required formula, “May we request that you let us know your thoughts, since we understand and forgive any shame you may feel?”
The First Speaker said, “Like you, I do not see on what grounds one should suppose Councilman Trevize to be a tool of the other organization, or what purpose he could possibly serve if he were. Yet Speaker Gendibal seems sure of it, and one cannot ignore the possible value of intuition in anyone who has qualified for Speaker. I therefore attempted to apply the Plan to Trevize.”
“To a single person?” said one of the Speakers in low voiced surprise, and then indicated his contrition at once for having accompanied the question with a thought that was clearly the equivalent of: What a fool!
“To a single person,” said the First Speaker, “and you are right. What a fool I am! I know very well that the Plan cannot possibly apply to individuals, not even to small groups of individuals. Nevertheless, I was curious. I extrapolated the Interpersonal Intersections far past the reasonable limits, but I did it in sixteen different ways and chose a region rather than a point. I then made use of all the details we know about Trevize--a Councilman of the First Foundation does not go completely unnoticed--and of the Foundation’s Mayor. I then threw it all together, rather higgledy-piggledy, I’m afraid.” He paused.
“ Well?” said Delarmi. “I gather you-- Were the results surprising?”
“There weren’t any results, as you might all expect,” said the First Speaker. “Nothing can be done with a single individual, and yet--and yet--”
“And yet?”
“I have spent forty years analyzing results and I have grown used to obtaining a clear feeling of what the results would be before they were analyzed--and I have rarely been mistaken. In this case, even though there were no results, I developed the strong feeling that Gendibal was right and that Trevize should not be left to himself.”
“Why not, First Speaker?” asked Delarmi, clearly taken aback at the strong feeling in the First Speaker’s mind.
“I am ashamed,” said the First Speaker, “that I have let myself be tempted into using the Plan for a purpose for which it is not fit. I am further ashamed now that I am allowing myself to be influenced by something that is purely intuitive. --Yet I must, for I feel this very strongly. If Speaker Gendibal is right--if we are in danger from an unknown direction--then I feel that when the time comes that our affairs are at a crisis, it will be Trevize who will hold and play the deciding card.”
“On what basis do you feel this?” said Delarmi, shocked.
First Speaker Shandess looked about the table miserably, “I have no basis. The psychohistorical mathematics produces nothing, but as I watched the interplay of relationships, it seemed to me that Trevize is the key to everything. Attention must be paid to this young man.”
3.
Gendibal knew that he would not get back in time to join the meeting of the Table. It might be that he would not get back at all.
He was held firmly and he tested desperately about him to see how he could best manage to force them to release him.
Rufirant stood before him now, exultant. “Be you ready now, scowler? Blow for blow, strike for strike, Hamish-fashion. Come then, art the smaller; strike then first.”
Gendibal said, “Will someone hold thee, then, as I be held?”
Rufirant said, “Let him go. Nah nah. His arms alane. Leave arms free, but hold legs strong. We want no dancing.”
Gendibal felt himself pinned to the ground. His arms were free.
“Strike, scowler,” said Rufirant. “Give us a blow.”
And then Gendibal’s probing mind found something that answered--indignation, a sense of injustice and pity. He had no choice; he would have to run the risk of outright strengthening and then improvising on the basis of There was no need! He had not touched this new mind, yet it reacted as he would have wished. Precisely.
He suddenly became aware of a small figure--stocky, with long, tangled black hair and arms thrust outward--careening madly into his field of view and pushing madly at the Hamish farmer.
The figure was that of a woman. Gendibal thought grimly that it was a measure of his tension and preoccupation that he had not noted this till his eyes told him so.
“Karoll Rufirant!” She shrieked at the farmer. “Art bully and coward! Strike for strike, Hamish-fashion? You be two times yon scowler’s size. You’ll be in more sore danger attacking me. Be there renown in pashing yon poor spalp? There be shame, I’m thinking. It will be a fair heap of finger-pointing and there’ll be full saying, ‘Yon be Rufirant, renowned baby-smasher.’ It’ll be laughter, I’m thinking, and no decent Hamishman will be drinking with you--and no decent Hamishwoman will be ought with you.”
Rufirant was trying to stem the torrent, warding off the blows she was aiming at him, attempting weakly to answer with a placating, “Now, Sura. Now, Sura.”
Gendibal was aware that hands no longer grasped him, that Rufirant no longer glared at him, that the minds of all were no longer concerned with him.
Sura was not concerned with him, either; her fury was concentrated solely on Rufirant. Gendibal, recovering, now looked to take measures to keep that fury alive and to strengthen the uneasy shame flooding Rufirant’s mind, and to do both so lightly and skillfully as to leave no mark. Again, there was no need.
The woman said, “All of you back-step. Look here. If it be not sufficient that this Karoll-heap be like giant to this starveling, there must be five or six more of you ally-friends to share in shame and go back to farm with glorious tale of dewing-do in baby-smashing. ‘I held the spalp’s arm,’ you’ll say, ‘and giant Rufirant-block pashed him in face when he was not to back-strike.’ And you’ll say, ‘But I held his foot, so give me also-glory.’ And Rufirant-chunk will say, ‘I could not have kiln on his lane, so my furrow-mates pinned him and, with help of all six, I gloried on him.”“
“But Sura,” said Rufirant, almost whining, “I told scowler he might have first-shrike.”
“And fearful you were of the mighty blows of his thin arms, not so, Rufirant thickhead. Come. Let him go where he be going, and the rest of you to your homes back-crawl, if so be those homes will still find a welcome-making for you. You had all best hope the grand deeds of this day be forgotten. And they will not be, for I be spreading them far-wide, if you do make me any the more fiercely raging than I be raging now.”
They trooped off quietly, heads hanging, not looking back.
Gendibal stared after them, then back at the woman. She was dressed in blouse and trousers, with roughmade shoes on her feet. Her face was wet with perspiration and she breathed heavily. Her nose was rather large, her breasts heavy (as best Gendibal could tell through the looseness of her blouse), and her bare arms muscular. --but then, the Hamishwomen worked in the fields beside their men.
She was looking at him sternly, arms akimbo. “Well, scowler, why be lagging? Go on to Place of Scowlers. Be you feared? Shall I company you?”
Gendibal could smell the perspiration on clothes that were clearly not freshly laundered, but under the circumstances it would be most discourteous to show any repulsion.
“I thank you, Miss Sura--”
“The name be Novi,” she said gruffly. “Sura Novi. You may say Novi. It be unneeded to moresay.”
“I thank you, Novi. You have been very helpful. You be welcome to company me, not for fear of mine but for company-pleasure in you.” And he bowed gracefully, as he might have bowed to one of the young women at the University.
Novi flushed, seemed uncertain, and then tried to imitate his gesture. “Pleasure-be mine,” she said, as though searching for words that would adequately express her pleasure and lend an air of culture.
They walked together. Gendibal knew well that each leisurely step made him the more unforgiveably late for the Table meeting, but by now he had had a chance to think on the significance of what had taken place and he was icily content to let the lateness grow.
The University buildings were looming ahead of them when Sura Novi stopped and said hesitantly, “Master Scowler?”
Apparently, Gendibal thought, as she approached what she called the “Place of Scowlers,” she grew mare polite. He had a momentary urge to say, “Address you not yon poor spalp?” --but that would embarrass her beyond reason.
“Yes, Novi?”
“Be it very fine like and rich in Place of Scowlers?”
“It’s nice,” said Gendibal.
“I once dreamed I be in Place. And--and I be scowler.”
“Someday,” said Gendibal politely, “I’ll show it thee.”
Her look at him showed plainly she didn’t take it for mere politeness. She said, “I can write. I be taught by schoolmaster. If I write letter to thee,” she tried to make it casual, “how do I mark it so it come to thee?”
“Just say, ‘Speaker’s House, Apartment 27,’ and it will come to me. But I must go, Novi.”
He bowed again, and again she tried to imitate the action. They moved off in opposite directions and Gendibal promptly put her out of his mind. He thought instead of the Table meeting and, in particular, of Speaker Delora Delarmi. His thoughts were not gentle.