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 beenon Anacreon.

 

                Picture it! Picture it! You will sense beingon it via hyper-relay.

 

                Nothing! His nerve endings quivered and came to rest nowhere.

 

                Trevize pulled loose. “There’s no hyper-relay on board theFar 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, hehad 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--ourFoundation’s edge --which gave the word “end” a literal meaning. It was, however, also thenewest 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? Theother Foundation’s edge? Why, theoldest 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, mydear fellow!”

 

                Trevize said, “Come an, Janov. Don’t look like that. We’re going to findEarth .”

 

                “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 beconfirmed . 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 hasyour research consisted of?”

 

                “I’ve been forced to collect every tale, every bit of supposed history, every legend, every misty myth. Evenfiction . 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 Daymust come from Earth!”

 

                “Why is it a must?”

 

                “For one thing, Earth was once theonly 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’sgood ,” 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--thereis 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, andthat 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!”

 

  

 

  

 

 7. FARMER

 

  

 

 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 weresome 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! Youam a scowler. Don’t we speak outlandish now? And cannot I see that you be one oram 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. Hisr ’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 thathad 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 bebefore 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 willnot 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.

 

  

 

  

 

 8. FARMWOMAN

 

  

 

 1.

 

  

 

       THE SPEAKERS SAT ABOUT THE TABLE, FROZEN IN THEIR MENTAL shielding. It was as though all--with one accord--had hidden their minds to avoid irrevocable insult to the First Speaker after his statement concerning Trevize. Surreptitiously they glanced toward Delarmi and even that gave away much. Of them all, she was best known for her irreverence --Even Gendibal paid more lip service to convention.

 

                Delarmi was aware of the glances and she knew that she had no choice but to face up to this impossible situation. In fact, she did not want to duck the issue. In all the history of the Second Foundation, no First Speaker had ever been impeached for misanalysis (and behind the term, which she had invented as cover-up, was the unacknowledgedincompetence ). Such impeachment now became possible. She would not hang back.

 

                “First Speaker!” she said softly, her thin, colorless lips more nearly invisible than usual in the general whiteness of her face. “You yourself say you have no basis for your opinion, that the psychohistorical mathematics show nothing Do you ask us to base a crucial decision on a mystical feeling?”

 

                The First Speaker looked up, his forehead corrugated. He was aware of the universal shielding at the Table. He knew what it meant. He said coldly, “I do not hide the lack of evidence. I present you with nothing falsely. What I offer is the strongly intuitive feeling of a First Speaker, one with decades of experience who has spent nearly a lifetime in the close analysis of the Seldon Plan.” He looked about him with a proud rigidity he rarely displayed, and one by one the mental shields softened and dropped. Delarmi’s (when he turned to stare at her) was the last.

 

                She said, with a disarming frankness that filled her mind as though nothing else had ever been there, “I accept your statement, of course, First Speaker. Nevertheless, I think you might perhaps want to reconsider. As you think about it now, having already expressed shame at having to fall back on intuition, would you wish your remarks to be stricken from the record if, in your judgment they should be--”

 

                And Gendibal’s voice cut in. “What are these remarks that should. be stricken from the record?”

 

                Every pair of eyes turned in unison. Had their shields not been up during the crucial moments before, they would have been aware of his approach long before he was at the door.

 

                “All shields up a moment ago? All unaware of my entrance?” said Gendibal sardonically. “What a commonplace meeting of the Table we have here. Was no one on their guard for my coming? Or did you all fully expect that I would not arrive?”

 

                This outburst was a flagrant violation of all standards. For Gendibal to arrive late was bad enough. For him to then enter unannounced was worse. For him to speak before the First Speaker had acknowledged his attendance was worst of all.

 

                The First Speaker turned to him. All else was superceded. The question of discipline came first.

 

                “Speaker Gendibal,” he said, “you are late. You arrive unannounced. You speak. Is there any reason why you should not be suspended from your seat for thirty days?”

 

                “Of course. The move for suspension should not be considered until first we consider who it was that made it certain Iwould be late--and why.” Gendibal’s words were cool and measured, but his mind clothed his thoughts with anger and he did not care who sensed it.

 

                Certainly Delarmi sensed it. She said forcefully, “This man is mad.”

 

                “Mad? This woman is mad to say so. Or aware of guilt. --First Speaker, I address myself to you and move a point of personal privilege,” said Gendibal.

 

                “Personal privilege of what nature, Speaker?”

 

                “First Speaker, I accuse someone here of attempted murder.”

 

                The room exploded as every Speaker rose to his or her feet in a simultaneous babble of words, expression, and mentality.

 

                The First Speaker raised his arms. He cried, “The Speaker must have his chance to express his point of personal privilege.” He found himself forced to intensify his authority, mentally, in a manner most inappropriate to the place--yet there was no choice.

 

                The babble quieted.

 

                Gendibal waited unmoved until the silence was both audibly and mentally profound. He said, “On my way here, moving along a Hamish road at a distance and approaching at a speed that would have easily assured my arrival in good time for the meeting, I was stopped by several farmers and narrowly escaped being beaten, perhaps being killed. As it was, I was delayed and have but just arrived. May I point out, to begin with, that I know of no instance since the Great Sack that a Second Foundationer has been spoken to disrespectfully--let alone manhandled--by one of these Hamish people.”

 

                “Nor do I,” said the First Speaker.

 

                Delarmi cried out, “Second Foundationers do not habitually walk alone in Hamish territory! Youinvite this by doing so?”

 

                “It is true,” said Gendibal, “that I habitually walk alone in Hamish territory. I have walked there hundreds of times in every direction. Yet I have never been accosted before. Others do not walk with the freedom that I do, but no one exiles himself from the world or imprisons himself in the University and no one has ever been accosted. I recall occasions when Delarmi--” and then, as though remembering the honorific too late, he deliberately converted it into a deadly insult. “I mean to say, I recall when Speakeress Delarmi was in Hamish territory, at one time or another, and yetshe was not accosted.”

 

                “Perhaps,” said Delarmi, with eyes widened into a glare, “because I did not speak to them first and because I maintained my distance. Because I behaved as though I deserved respect, I was accorded it.”

 

                “Strange,” said Gendibal, “and I was about to say that it was because you presented a more formidable appearance than I did. After all, few dare approach you even here. --but tell me, why should it be that of all times for interference, the Hamish would choose this day to face me, when I am to attend an important meeting of the Table?”

 

                “If it were not because of your behavior, then it must ‘have been chance,” said Delarmi. “I have not heard that even all of Seldon’s mathematics has removed the role of chance from the Galaxy--certainly not in the case of individual events. Or are you, too, speaking from intuitional inspiration?” (There was a soft mental sigh from one or two Speakers at this sideways thrust at the First Speaker.)

 

                “It was not my behavior. It was not chance. It was deliberate interference,” said Gendibal.

 

                “How can we know that?” asked the First Speaker gently. He could not help but soften toward Gendibal as a result of Delarmi’s last remark.

 

                “My mind is open to you, First Speaker. I give you--and all the Table--my memory of events.”

 

                The transfer took but a few moments. The First Speaker said, “Shocking! You behaved very well, Speaker, under circumstances of considerable pressure. I agree that the Hamish behavior is anomalous and warrants investigation. In the meantime, please join our meeting--”

 

                “A moment!” cut in Delarmi. “How certain are we that the Speaker’s account is accurate?”

 

                Gendibal’s nostrils flared at the insult, but he retained his level composure. “My mind is open:”

 

                “I have known open minds that were not open.”

 

                “I have no doubt of that, Speaker,” said Gendibal, “since you, like the rest of us, must keep your own mind under inspection at all times. My mind, when open, however, is open.”

 

                The First Speaker said, “Let us have no further--”

 

                “A point of personal privilege, First Speaker, with apologies for the interruption,” said Delarmi.

 

                “Personal privilege of what nature, Speaker?”

 

                “Speaker Gendibal has accused one of us of attempted murder, presumably by instigating the farmer to attack him. As long as the accusation is not withdrawn, I must be viewed as a possible murderer, as would every person in this room--including you, First Speaker.”

 

                The First Speaker said, “Would you withdraw the accusation, Speaker Gendibal?”

 

                Gendibal took his seat and put his hands down upon its arms, gripping them tightly, as though taking ownership of it, and said, “I will do so, as soon as someone explains why a Hamish farmer, rallying several others, should deliberately set out to delay me on my way to this meeting.”

 

                “A thousand reasons, perhaps,” said the First Speaker. “I repeat that this event will be investigated. Will you, for now, Speaker Gendibal, and in the interest of continuing the present discussion, withdraw your accusation?”

 

                “I cannot, First Speaker. I spent long minutes trying, as delicately as I might, to search his mind for ways to alter his behavior without damage and failed. His mind lacked the give it should have had. His emotions were fixed, as though by an outside mind.”

 

                Delarmi said with a sudden little smile, “And you think one of us was the outside mind? Might it not have been your mysterious organization that is competing with us, that is more powerful than we are?”

 

                “It might,” said Gendibal.

 

                “In that case, we--who are not members of this organization that only you know of--are not guilty and you should withdraw your accusation. Or can it be that you are accusing someone here of being under the control of this strange organization? Perhaps one of us here is not quite what he or she seems?”

 

                “Perhaps,” said Gendibal stolidly, quite aware that Delarmi was feeding him rope with a noose at the end of it.

 

                “It might seem,” said Delarmi, reaching the noose and preparing to tighten it, “that your dream of a secret, unknown, hidden, mysterious organization is a nightmare of paranoia. It would ft in with your paranoid fantasy that Hamish farmers are being influenced, that Speakers are under hidden control. I am willing, however, to follow this peculiar thought line of yours for a while longer. Which of us here, Speaker, do you think is under control? Might it be me?”

 

                Gendibal said, “I would not think so, Speaker. If you were attempting to rid yourself of me in so indirect a manner, you would not so openly advertise your dislike for me.”

 

                “A double-double-cross, perhaps?” said Delarmi. She was virtually purring. “That would be a common conclusion in a paranoid fantasy.”

 

                “So it might be. You are more experienced in such matters than I.”“

 

                Speaker Lestim Gianni interrupted hotly. “See here, Speaker Gendibal, if you are exonerating Speaker Delarmi, you are directing your accusations the more tightly at the rest of us. What grounds wouldany of us have to delay your presence at this meeting, let alone wish you dead?”

 

                Gendibal answered quickly, as though he had been waiting for the question. “When I entered, the point under discussion was the striking of remarks from the record, remarks made by the First Speaker. I was the only Speaker not in a position to hear those remarks. Let me know what they were and I rather think I will tell you the motive for delaying me.”

 

                The First Speaker said, “I had stated--and it was something to which Speaker Delarmi and others took serious exception--that I had decided, on the basis of intuition and of a most inappropriate use of psychohistorical mathematics, that the entire future of the Plan may rest on the exile of First Foundationer Golan Trevize:”

 

                Gendibal said, “What other Speakers may think is up to them. For my part, I agree with this hypothesis. Trevize is the key. I find his sudden ejection by the First Foundation too curious to be innocent.”

 

                Delarmi said, “Would you care to say, Speaker Gendibal, that Trevize is in the grip of this mystery organization--or that the people who exiled him are? Is perhaps everyone and everything in their control except you and the First Speaker--and me, whom you have declared to be uncontrolled?”

 

                Gendibal said, “These ravings require no answer. Instead let me ask if there is any Speaker here who would like to express agreement on this matter with the First Speaker and myself? You have read, I presume, the mathematical treatment that I have, with the First Speaker’s approval, circulated among you.”

 

                There was silence.

 

                “I repeat my request,” said Gendibal. “Anyone?”

 

                There was silence.

 

                Gendibal said, “First Speaker, you now have the motive for delaying me.”

 

                The First Speaker said, “State it explicitly.”

 

                “You have expressed the need to deal with Trevize, with this First Foundationer. It represents an important initiative in policy and if the Speakers had read my treatment, they would have known in a general way what was in the wind. If, nevertheless, they had unanimously disagreed with you--unanimously--then, by traditional self-limitation, you would have been unable to go forward. If even one Speaker backed you, then you would be able to implement this new policy. I was theone Speaker who would back yon, as anyone who had read my treatment would know, and it was necessary that I must, at all costs, be kept from the Table. That trick proved nearly successful, but I am now here and I back the First Speaker. I agree with him and he can, in accordance with tradition, disregard the disagreement of the ten other Speakers.”

 

                Delarmi struck the table with her fist. “The implication is that someone knew in advance what the First Speaker would advise, knew in advance that Speaker Gendibal would support it and that all the rest would not--that someone knew what he could not have known. There is the further implication that this initiative is not to the liking of Speaker Gendibal’s paranoia-inspired organization and that they are fighting to prevent it and that, therefore, one or more of us is under the control of that organization:”

 

                “The implication is there,” agreed Gendibal. “Your analysis is masterly.”

 

                “Whom do you accuse?” cried out Delarmi.

 

                “No one. I call upon the First Speaker to take up the matter. It is clear that there is someone in our organization who is working against us. I suggest that everyone working for the Second Foundation should undergo a thorough mental analysis. Everyone, including the Speakers themselves. Even including myself--and the First Speaker.”

 

                The meeting of the Table broke up in greater confusion and greater excitement than any on record.

 

                And when the First Speaker finally spoke the phrase of adjournment, Gendibal--without speaking to anyone--made his way back to his room. He knew well that he had not one friend among the Speakers, that even whatever support the First Speaker could give him would be half-hearted at best.

 

                He could not tell whether he feared for himself or for the entire Second Foundation. The taste of doom was sour in his mouth.

 

  

 

 2.

 

  

 

 Gendibal did not sleep well. His waking thoughts and his sleeping dreams were alike engaged in quarreling with Delora Delarmi. In one passage of one dream, there was even a confusion between her and the Hamish farmer, Rufirant, so that Gendibal found himself facing an out-of-proportion Delarmi advancing upon him with enormous fists and a sweet smile that revealed needlelike teeth.

 

                He finally woke, later than usual, with no sensation of having rested and with the buzzer on his night table in muted action. He turned over to bring his hand down upon the contact.

 

                “Yes? What is it?”

 

                “Speaker!” The voice was that of the floor proctor, rather less than suitably respectful. “A visitor wishes to speak to you:”

 

                “A visitor?” Gendibal punched his appointment schedule and the screen showed nothing before noon. He pushed the time button; it was 8:3i A.m. He said peevishly, “Who in space and time is it?”

 

                “Will not give a name, Speaker.” Then, with clear disapproval, “One of these Hamishers, Speaker. Arrived at your invitation.” The last sentence was said with even clearer disapproval.

 

                “Let him wait in the reception room till I come down. It will take time.”

 

                Gendibal did not hurry. Throughout the morning ablutions, he remained lost in thought. That someone was using the Hamish to hamper his movements made sense--but he would like to know who that someone was. And what was this new intrusion of the Hamish into his very quarters? A complicated trap of some sort?

 

                How in the name of Seldon would a Hamish farmer get into the University? What reason could he advance? What reason could he really have?

 

                For one fleeting moment, Gendibal wondered if he ought to arm himself. He decided against it almost at once, since he felt contemptuously certain of being able to control any single farmer on the University grounds without any danger to himself--and without any unacceptable marking of a Hamish mind.

 

                Gendibal decided he had been too strongly affected by the incident with Karoll Rufirant the day before. --Was it the very farmer, by the way? No longer under the influence, perhaps--of whatever or whoever it was--he might well have come to Gendibal to apologize for what he had done and with apprehension of punishment. --but how would Rufirant know where to go? Whom to approach?

 

                Gendibal swung down the corridor resolutely and entered the waiting room. He stopped in astonishment, then fumed to the proctor, who was pretending to be busy in his glass-walled cubicle.

 

                “Proctor, you did not say the visitor was a woman.”

 

                The proctor said quietly, “Speaker, I said a Hamisher. You did not ask further.”

 

                “Minimal information, Proctor? I must remember that as one of your characteristics.” (And he must check to see if the proctor was a Delarmi appointee. And he must remember, from now on, to note the functionaries who surrounded him, “Lowlies” whom it was too easy to ignore from the height of his still-new Speakership.) “Are any of the conference rooms available?”

 

                The proctor said, “Number 4 is the only one available, Speaker. It will be free for three hours.” He glanced briefly at the Hamishwoman, then at Gendibal, with blank innocence.

 

                “We will use Number 4, Proctor, and I would advise you to mind your thoughts.” Gendibal struck, not gently, and the proctor’s shield closed far too slowly. Gendibal knew well it was beneath his dignity to manhandle a lesser mind, but a person who was incapable of shielding an unpleasant conjecture against a superior ought to learn not to indulge in one. The proctor would have a mild headache for a few hours. It was well deserved.

 

  

 

 3.

 

  

 

 Her name did not spring immediately to mind and Gendibal was in no mood to delve deeper. She could scarcely expect him to remember, in any case.

 

                He said peevishly, “You are--”

 

                “I be Novi, Master Scowler,” she said in what was almost a gasp. “My previous be Sura, but I be called Novi plain.”

 

                “Yes. Novi. We met yesterday; I remember now. I have not forgotten that you came to my defense.” He could not bring himself to use the Hamish accent on the very University grounds. “Now how did you get here?”

 

                “Master, you said I might write letter. You said, it should say, ‘Speaker’s House, Apartment 27--’ I self-bring it and I show the writing--my own writing, Master.” She said it with a kind of bashful pride. “They ask, ‘For whom be this writing?’ I heared your calling when you said it to that oafish bane-top, Rufirant. I say it be for Stor Gendibal, Master Scowler.”

 

                “And they let you pass, Novi? Didn’t they ask to see the letter?”

 

                “I be very frightened. I think maybe they feel gentle-sorry. I said, ‘Scowler Gendibal promise to show me Place of Scowlers,’ and they smile. One of them at gate-door say to other, ‘And that not all he be show her.’ And they show me where to go, and say not to go elseplace at all or I be thrown out moment-wise.”

 

                Gendibal reddened faintly. By Seldon, if he felt the need for Hamish amusement, it would not be in so open a fashion and his choice would have been made more selectively. He looked at the Trantorian woman with an inward shake of his head.

 

                She seemed quite young, younger perhaps than hard work had made her appear. She could not be more than twenty-five, at which age Hamishwomen were usually already married. She wore her dark hair in the braids that signified her to be unmarried--virginal, in fact--and he was not surprised. Her performance yesterday showed her to have enormous talent as a shrew and he doubted that a Hamishman could easily be found who would dare be yoked to her tongue and her ready fist. Nor was her appearance much of an attraction. Though she had gone to pains to make herself look presentable, her face was angular and plain, her hands red and knobby. What he could see of her figure seemed built for endurance rather than for grace.

 

                Her lower lip began to tremble under his scrutiny. He could sense her embarrassment and fright quite plainly and felt pity. She had, indeed, been of use to him yesterday and that was what counted.

 

                He said, in an attempt to be genial and soothing, “So you have come to see the--uh--Place of Scholars?”

 

                She opened her dark eyes wide (they were rather fine) and said, “Master, be not ired with me, but I come to be scowler own-self.”

 

                “You want to be ascholar ?” Gendibal was thunderstruck. “My good woman--”

 

                He paused. How on Trantor could one explain to a completely unsophisticated farmwoman the level of intelligence, training, and mental stamina required to be what Trantorians called a “scowler”?

 

                But Sura Novi drove on fiercely. “I be a writerand a reader. I have read whole books to end and from beginning, too. And I havewish to be scowler. I do not wish to be farmer’s wife. I be no person for farm. I will not wed farmer or have farmer children.” She lifted her head and said proudly, “I be asked. Many times. I always say, ‘Nay! Politely, but ‘Nay.”‘

 

                Gendibal could see plainly enough that she was lying. She had not been asked, but he kept his face straight. He said, “What will you do with your life if you do not marry?”

 

                Novi brought her hand down on the table, palm flat. “I will be scowler. Inot be farmwoman.”

 

                “What if I cannot make you a scholar?”

 

                “Then I be nothing and I wait to die. I be nothing in life if I be not a scowler.”

 

                For a moment there was the impulse to search her mind and find out the extent of her motivation. But it would be wrong to do so. A Speaker did not amuse one’s self by rummaging through the helpless minds of others. There was a code to the science and technique of mental control--mentalics--as to other professions. Or there should be. (He was suddenly regretful he had struck out at the proctor.)

 

                He said, “Whynot be a farmwoman, Novi?” With a little manipulation, he could make her content with that and manipulate some Hamish lout into being happy to marry her--and she to marry him. It would do no harm. It would be a kindness. --but it was against the law and thus unthinkable.

 

                She said, “Inot be. A farmer is a clod. He works with earthlumps, and he becomes earth-lump. If I be farmwoman, I be earthlump, too. I will be timeless to read and write, and I will forget. My head,” she put her hand to her temple, “will grow sour and stale. No! A scowler be different. Thoughtful!” (She meant by the word, Gendibal noted, “intelligent” rather than “considerate.”)

 

                “A scowler,” she said, “live with books and with--with--I forget what they be name-said.” She made a gesture as though she were making some sort of vague manipulations that would have meant nothing to Gendibal--if he did not have her mind radiations to guide him.

 

                “Microfilms,” he said. “How do you know about microfilms?”

 

                “In books, I read of many things,” she said proudly.

 

                Gendibal could no longer fight off the desire to know more. This was an unusual Hamisher; he had never heard of one like this. The Hamish were never recruited, but if Novi were younger, say ten years old

 

                What a waste? He would not disturb her; he would not disturb her in the least, but of what use was it to be a Speaker if one could not observe unusual minds and learn from them?

 

                He said, “Novi, I want you to sit there for a moment. Be very quiet. Do not say anything. Do not think of saying anything. just think of falling asleep: Do you understand?”

 

                Her fright returned at once, “Why must ‘ do this, Master?”

 

                “Because I wish to think how you might become a scholar.”

 

                After all, no matter what she had read, there was no possible way in which she could know what being a “scholar” truly meant. It was therefore necessary to find out what shethought a scholar was.

 

                Very carefully and with infinite delicacy he probed her mind; sensing without actually touching--like placing one’s hand on a polished metal surface without leaving fingerprints. To her a scholar was someone who always read books. She had not the slightest idea of why one read books. For herself to be a scholar--the picture in her mind was that of doing the labor she knew--fetching, carrying, cooking, cleaning, following orders--but on the University grounds where books were available and where she would have time to read them and, very vaguely, “to become learned.” What it amounted to was that she wanted to be a servant--hisservant.

 

                Gendibal frowned. A Hamishwoman servant--and one who was plain, graceless, uneducated, barely literate. Unthinkable.

 

                He would simply have to divert her. There would have to be some way of adjusting her desires to make her content to be a farmwoman, some way that would leave no mark, some way about which even Delarmi could not complain.

 

                --or had she been sent by Delarmi? Was all this a complicated plan to lure him into tampering with a Hamish mind, so that he might be caught and impeached?

 

                Ridiculous. Hewas in danger of growing paranoid. Somewhere in the simple tendrils of her uncomplicated mind, a trickle of mental current needed to be diverted. It would only take a tiny push.

 

                It was against the letter of the law, but it would do no harm and no one would ever notice.

 

                He paused.

 

                Back. Back. Back.

 

                Space! He had almost missed it!

 

                Was he the victim of an illusion?

 

                No! Now that his attention was drawn. to it, he could make it out clearly. There was the tiniest tendril disarrayed--an abnormal disarray. Yet it was so delicate, so ramification-free.

 

                Gendibal emerged from .her mind. He said gently, “Novi.”

 

                Her eyes focused. She said, “Yes, Master?”

 

                Gendibal said, “You may work with me. I will make you a scholar--”

 

                Joyfully, eyes blazing, she said, “Master--”

 

                He detected it at once. She was going to throw herself at his feet. He put his hands on her shoulders and held her tightly. “Don’t move, Novi. Stay where you are. --Stay!”

 

                He might have been talking to a half-trained animal. When he could see the order had penetrated, he let her go. He was conscious of the hard muscles along her upper arms.

 

                He said, “If you are to be a scholar, you must behave like one. That means you will have to be always quiet, always soft-spoken, always doing what I tell you to do. And you must try to learn to talk as I do. You will also have to meet other scholars. Will you be afraid?”

 

                “I be not afeared--afraid, Master, if you be with me.”

 

                “I will be with you. But now, first-- I must find you a room, arrange to have you assigned a lavatory, a place in the dining room, and clothes, too. You will have to wear clothes more suitable to a scholar, Novi.”

 

                “These be all I--” she began miserably.

 

                “We will supply others.”

 

                Clearly he would have to get a woman to arrange for a new supply of clothing for Novi. He would also need someone to teach the Hamisher the rudiments of personal hygiene. After all, though the clothes she wore were probably her best and though she had obviously spruced herself up, she still had a distinct odor that was faintly unpleasant.

 

                And he would have to make sure that the relationship between them was understood. It was always an open secret that the men (and women, too) of the Second Foundation made occasional forays among the Hamish for their pleasure. If there was no interference with Hamish minds in the process, no one dreamed of making a fuss about it. Gendibal himself had never indulged in this, and he liked to think it was because he felt no need for sex that might be coarser and more highly spiced than was available at the University. The women of the Second Foundation might be pallid in comparison to the Hamish, but they were clean and their skins were smooth.

 

                But even if the matter were misunderstood and there were sniggers at a Speaker who net only turned to the Hamish but brought one into his quarters, he would have to endure the embarrassment. As it stood, this farmwoman, Sura Novi, was his key to victory in the inevitable forthcoming duel with Speaker Delarmi and the rest of the Table.

 

  

 

 4.

 

  

 

 Gendibal did not see Novi again till after dinnertime, at which time she was brought to him by the woman to whom he had endlessly explained the situation--at least, the nonsexual character of the situation. She had understood--or, at least, did not dare show any indication of failure to understand, which was perhaps just as good.

 

                Novi stood before him now, bashful, proud, embarrassed, triumphant--all at once, in an incongruous mixture.

 

                He said, “You look very nice, Novi.”

 

                The clothes they had given her fit surprisingly well and there was no question that she did not look at all ludicrous. Had they pinched in her waist? Lifted her breasts? Or had that just been not particularly noticeable in her farmwoman clothing?

 

                Her buttocks were prominent, but not displeasingly so. Her face, of course, remained plain, but when the tan of outdoor life faded and she learned how to care for her complexion, it would not look downright ugly.

 

                By the Old Empire, that womandid think Novi was to be his mistress. She had tried to make her beautiful for him.

 

                And then he thought: Well, why not?

 

                Novi would have to face the Speaker’s Table--and the more attractive she seemed, the more easily he would be able to get his point across.

 

                It was with this thought that the message from the First Speaker reached him. It had the kind of appropriateness that was common in a mentalic society. It was called, more or less informally, the “Coincidence Effect.” If you think vaguely of someone when someone is thinking vaguely of you, there is a mutual, escalating stimulation which in a matter of seconds makes the two thoughts sharp, decisive, and, to all appearances, simultaneous.

 

                It can be startling even to those who understand it intellectually, particularly if the preliminary vague thoughts were so dim--on one side or the other (or both)--as to have gone consciously unnoticed.

 

                “I can’t be with you this evening, Novi,” said Gendibal. “I have scholar work to do. I will take you to your room. There will be some books there and you can practice your reading. I will show you how to use the signal if you need help with anything--and I will see you tomorrow.”

 

  

 

 5.

 

  

 

 Gendibal said politely, “First Speaker?”

 

                Shandess merely nodded. He looked dour and fully his age. He looked as though he were a man who did not drink, but who could use a stiff one. He said finally, “I ‘called’ you--”

 

                “No messenger. I presumed from the direct ‘call’ that it was important.”

 

                “It is. Your quarry--the First Foundationer--Trevize--”

 

                “Yes?”

 

                “He isnot coming to Trantor.”

 

                Gendibal did not look surprised. “Why should he? The information we received was that he was leaving with a professor of ancient history who was seeking Earth.”

 

                “Yes, the legendary Primal Planet. And that is why he should be coming to Trantor. After all, does the professor know where Earth is? Do you? Do I? Can we be sure it exists at all, or ever existed? Surely they would have to come to this Library to obtain the necessary information--if it were to be obtained anywhere. I have until this hour felt that the situation was not at crisis level--that the First Foundationer would come here and that we would, through him, learn what we need to know.”

 

                “Which would certainly be the reason he is not allowed to come here.”

 

                “But whereis he going, then?”

 

                “We have not yet found out, I see.”

 

                The First Speaker said pettishly, “You seem calm about it.”

 

                Gendibal said, “I wonder if it is not better so. You want him to come to Trantor to keep him safe and use him as a source of information. Will he not, however, prove a source of more important information, involving others still more important than himself, if he goes where he wants to go and does what he wants to do--provided we do not lose sight of him?”

 

                “Not enough!” said the First Speaker. “You have persuaded me of the existence of this new enemy of ours and now I cannot rest. Worse, I have persuaded myself that we must secure Trevize or we have lost everything. I cannot rid myself of the feeling that he--and nothing else--is the key.”

 

                Gendibal said intensely, “Whatever happens, we will not lose, First Speaker. That would only have been possible, if these Anti-Mules, to use your phrase again, had continued to burrow beneath us unnoticed. But we know they are there now. We no longer work blind. At the next meeting of the Table, if we can work together, we shall begin the counterattack.”

 

                The First Speaker said, “It was not the matter of Trevize that had me send out the call to you. The subject came up first only because it seemed to me a personal defeat. I had misanalyzed that aspect of the situation. I was wrong to place personal pique above general policy and I apologize. There is something else.”

 

                “More serious, First Speaker?”

 

                “More serious, Speaker Gendibal.” The First Speaker sighed and drummed his fingers on the desk while Gendibal stood patiently before it and waited.

 

                The First Speaker finally said, in a mild way, as though that would ease the blow, “At an emergency meeting of the Table, initiated by Speaker Delarmi--”

 

                “Without your consent, First Speaker?”

 

                “For what she wanted, she needed the consent of only three other Speakers, not including myself. At the emergency meeting that was then called, you were impeached, Speaker Gendibal. You have been accused as being unworthy of the post of Speaker and you must be tried. This is the first time in over three centuries that a bill of impeachment has been carried out against a Speaker--”

 

                Gendibal said, fighting to keep down any sign of anger, “Surely you did not vote for my impeachment yourself.”

 

                “I did not, but I was alone. The rest of the Table was unanimous and the vote was ten to one for impeachment. The requirement for impeachment, as you know, is eight votes including the First Speaker--or ten without him.”

 

                “But I was not present.”

 

                “You would not have been able to vote.”

 

                “I might have spoken in my defense.”

 

                “Not at that stage. The precedents are few, but clear. Your defense will be at the trial, which will come as soon as possible, naturally.”

 

                Gendibal bowed his head in thought. Then he said, “This does not concern me overmuch, First Speaker. Your initial instinct, I think, was right. The matter of Trevize takes precedence. May I suggest you delay the trial on that ground?”

 

                The First Speaker held up his hand. “I don’t blame you for not understanding the situation, Speaker. Impeachment is so rare an event that I myself have been forced to look up the legal procedures involved. Nothing takes precedence. We are forced to move directly to the trial, postponing everything else.”

 

                Gendibal placed his fists on the desk and leaned toward the First Speaker. “You are not serious?”

 

                “It is the law.”

 

                “The law can’t be allowed to stand in the way of a clear and present danger.”

 

                “To the Table, Speaker Gendibal,you are the clear and present danger. --No, listen to me! The law that is involved is based on the conviction that nothing can be more important than the possibility of corruption or the misuse of power on the part of a Speaker.”

 

                “But I am guilty of neither, First Speaker, and you knew it. This is a matter of a personal vendetta on the part of Speaker Delarmi. If there is misuse of power, it is on her part. My crime is that I have never labored to make myself popular--I admit that much--and I have paid too little attention to fools who are old enough to be senile but young enough to have power.”

 

                “Like myself, Speaker?”

 

                Gendibal sighed. “You see, I’ve done it again. I don’t refer to you, First Speaker. --Very well, then, let us have aninstant trial, then. Let us have it tomorrow. Better yet, tonight. Let us get it over with and then pass on to the matter of Trevize. We dare not wait.”

 

                The First Speaker said, “Speaker Gendibal. I don’t think you understand the situation. We have had impeachments before--not many, just two. Neither of those resulted in a conviction. You, however, will be convicted! You will then no longer be a member of the Table and you will no longer have a say in public policy. You will not, in fact, even have a vote at the annual meeting of the Assembly.”

 

                “And you will not act to prevent that?

 

                “I cannot. I will be voted down unanimously. I will then lie forced to resign, which I think is what the Speakers would like to see.

 

                “And Delarmi will become First Speaker?”

 

                “That is certainly a strong possibility.”

 

                “But that must not be allowed to happen!”

 

                “Exactly! Which is why I will have to vote for your conviction.”

 

                Gendibal drew a deep breath. “I still demand an instant trial.”

 

                “You must have time to prepare your defense.”

 

                “What defense? They will listen to no defense. Instant trial!”

 

                “The Table must have time to preparetheir case.”

 

                “They have no case and will want none. They have me convicted in their minds and will require nothing more. In fact, they would rather convict me tomorrow than the day after--and tonight rather than tomorrow. Put it to them.”

 

                The First Speaker rose to his feet. They faced each other across the desk. The First Speaker said, “Why are you in such a hurry?”

 

                “The matter of Trevize will not wait.”

 

                “Once you are convicted and I am rendered feeble in the face of a Table united against me, what will have been accomplished?”

 

                Gendibal said in an intense whisper, “Have no fears! Despite everything, I will not be convicted.”

 

  

 

  

 

 9. HYPERSPACE

 

  

 

 1.

 

  

 

       TREVIZE SAID, “ARE YOU READY, JANOV?”

 

                Pelorat looked up from the book he was viewing and said, “You mean, for the jump, old fellow?”

 

                “For the hyperspatial jump. Yes.”

 

                Pelorat swallowed. “Now, you’re sure that it will be in no way uncomfortable. I know it is a silly thing to fear, but the thought of having myself reduced to incorporeal tachyons, which no one has ever seen or detected--”

 

                “Come, Janov, it’s a perfected thing. Upon my honor! The jump has been in use for twenty-two thousand years, as you explained, and I’ve never beard of a single fatality in hyperspace. We might come out of hyperspace in an uncomfortable place, but then the accident would happen in space--not while we are composed of tachyons.”

 

                “Small consolation, it seems to me.”

 

                “We won’t come out in error, either. To tell you the truth, I was thinking of carrying it through without telling you, so that you would never know it had happened. On the whole, though, I felt it would be better if you experienced it consciously, saw that it was no problem of any kind, and could forget it totally henceforward.”

 

                “Well “ said Pelorat dubiously. “I suppose you’re right, but honestly I’m in no hurry.”

 

                “I assure you--”

 

                “No no, old fellow, I accept your assurances unequivocally. It’s just that--Did you ever readSanertestil Matt ?”

 

                “Of course. I’m not illiterate.”

 

                “Certainly. Certainly. I should not have asked. Do you remember it?”

 

                “Neither am I an amnesiac.”

 

                “I seem to have a talent for offending. All I mean is that I keep thinking of the scenes where Santerestil and his friend, Ban, have gotten away from Planet 17 and are lost in space. I think of those perfectly hypnotic scenes among the stars, lazily moving along in deep silence, in changelessness, in-- Never believed it, you know. I loved it and I was moved by it, but I never really believed it. But now--after I got used to just the notion of being in space, I’mexperiencing it and--it’s silly, I know--but I don’t want to give it up. It’s as though I’m Santerestil--”

 

                “And I’m Ban,” said Trevize with just an edge of impatience.

 

                “In a way. The small scattering of dim stars out there are motionless, except our sun, of course, which must be shrinking but which we don’t see. The Galaxy retains its dim majesty, unchanging. Space is silent and I have no distractions--”

 

                “Except me.”

 

                “Except you. --but then, Golan, dear chap, talking to you about Earth and trying to teach you a bit of prehistory has its pleasures, too. I don’t want that to come to an end, either.”

 

                “It won’t. Not immediately, at any rate. You don’t suppose we’ll take the jump and come through on the surface of a planet, do you? We’ll still be in space and the jump will have taken no measurable time at ail. It may well be a week before we make surface of any kind, so do relax.”

 

                “By surface, you surely don’t mean Gaia. We may be nowhere near Gaia when we come out of the jump.”

 

                “I know that, Janov, but we’ll be in the right sector, if your information is correct. If it isn’t--well--”

 

                Pelorat shook his head glumly. “How will being in the right sector help if we don’t know Gaia’s co-ordinates?”

 

                Trevize said, “Janov, suppose you were on Terminus, heading for the town of Argyropol, and you didn’t know where that town was except that it was somewhere on the isthmus. Once you were on the isthmus, what would you do?”

 

                Pelorat waited cautiously, as though feeling there must be a terribly sophisticated answer expected of him. Finally giving up, he said, “I suppose I’d ask somebody.”

 

                “Exactly!What elseis there to do? --Now, are you ready?”

 

                “You mean,now ?” Pelorat scrambled to his feet, his pleasantly unemotional face coming as near as it might to a look of concern. “What am I supposed to do? Sit? Stand? What?”

 

                “Time and Space, Pelorat, you don’t do anything. Just come with me to my room so I can use the computer, then sit or stand or turn cartwheels--whatever will make you most comfortable. My suggestion is that you sit before the viewscreen and watch it. It’s sure to be interesting. Come!”

 

                They stepped along the short corridor to Trevize’s room and he seated himself at the computer. “Would you like to do this, Janov?” he asked suddenly. “I’ll give you the figures and all you do is think them. The computer will do the rest.”

 

                Pelorat said, “No thank you. The computer doesn’t work well with me, somehow. I know you say I just need practice, but I don’t believe that. There’s something about your mind, Golan--”

 

                “Don’t be foolish.”

 

                “No no. That computer just seems to fit you. You and it seem to be a single organism when you’re hooked up. When I’m hooked up, there are two objects involved--Janov Pelorat and a computer. It’s just not the same.”

 

                “Ridiculous,” said Trevize, but he was vaguely pleased at the thought and stroked the hand-rests of the computer with loving fingertips.

 

                “So I’d rather watch,” said Pelorat. “I mean, I’d rather it didn’t happen at all, but as long as it will, I’d rather watch.” He fixed . his eyes anxiously on the viewscreen and on the foggy Galaxy with the thin powdering of dim stars in the foreground. “Let me know when it’s about to happen.” Slowly he backed against the wall and braced himself.

 

                Trevize smiled. He placed his hands on the rests and felt the mental union. It came more easily day by day, and more intimately, too, and however he might scoff at what Pelorat said--he actuallyfelt it. It seemed to him he scarcely needed to think of the co-ordinates in any conscious way. It almost seemed the computer knew what he wanted, without the conscious process of “telling.” It lifted the information out of his brain for itself.

 

                But Trevize “told” it and then asked for a two-minute interval before the jump.

 

                “All right, Janov. We have two minutes: 120--115--110 Just watch the viewscreen.”

 

                Pelorat did, with a slight tightness about the corners of his mouth and with a holding of his breath.

 

                Trevize said softly, “15--10--5--4--3--2--1--0 “

 

                With no perceptible motion, no perceptible sensation, the view on the screen changed. There was a distinct thickening of the starfield and the Galaxy vanished.

 

                Pelorat started and said, “Was that it?”

 

                “Waswhat it? You flinched. But that was your fault. You felt nothing. Admit it.”

 

                “I admit it.”

 

                “Then that’s it. Way back when hyperspatial travel was relatively new--according to the books, anyway--there would be a queer internal sensation and some people felt dizziness or nausea. It was perhaps psychogenic, perhaps not. In any case, with more and more experience with hyperspatiality and with better equipment, that decreased. With a computer like the one on board this vessel, any effect is well below the threshold of sensation. At least, I find it so.”

 

                “And I do, too, I must admit. Where are we, Golan?”

 

                “Just a step forward. In the Kalganian region. There’s a long way to go yet and before we make another move, we’ll have to check the accuracy of the jump.”

 

                “What bothers me is--where’s the Galaxy?”

 

                “All around us, Janov. We’re weal inside it, now. If we focus the viewscreen properly, we can see the more distant parts of it as a luminous band across the sky.”

 

                “The Milky Way!” Pelorat cried out joyfully. “Almost every world describes it in their sky, but it’s something we don’t see on Terminus. Show it to me, old fellow!”

 

                The viewscreen tilted, giving the effect of a swimming of the starfield across it, and then there was a thick, pearly luminosity nearly filling the field. The screen followed it around, as it thinned, then swelled again.

 

                Trevize said, “It’s thicker in the direction of the center of the Galaxy. Not as thick or as bright as it might be, however, because of the dark clouds in the spiral arms. You see something like this from most inhabited worlds.”

 

                “And from Earth, too.”

 

                “That’s no distinction. That would not be an identifying characteristic.”

 

                “Of course not. But you know-- You haven’t studied the history of science, have you?”

 

                “Not really, though I’ve picked up some of it, naturally. Still, if you have questions to ask, don’t expect me to be an expert.”

 

                “It’s just that making this jump has put me in mind of something that has always puzzled me. It’s possible to work out a description of the Universe in which hyperspatial travel is impossible and in which the speed of light traveling through a vacuum is the absolute maximum where speed is concerned.”

 

                “Certainly.”

 

                “Under those conditions, the geometry of the Universe is such that it is impossible to make the trip we have just undertaken in less time than a ray of light would make it. And if we did it at the speed of light, our experience of duration would not match that of the Universe generally. If this spot is, say, forty parsecs from Terminus, then if we had gotten here at the speed of light, we would have felt no time lapse--but on Terminus and in the entire Galaxy, about a hundred and thirty years would have passed. Now we have made a trip, not at the speed of light but at thousands of times the speed of light actually, and there has been no time advance anywhere. At least, I hope not.”

 

                Trevize said, “Don’t expect me to give you the mathematics of the Olanjen Hyperspatial Theory to you. All I can say is that if you had traveled at the speed of light within normal space, time would indeed have advanced at the rate of 3.26 years per parsec, as you described. The so-called relativistic Universe, which humanity has understood as far back as we can probe inter prehistory--though that’s your department, I think--remains, and its laws have not been repealed. In our hyperspatial jumps, however, we do something out side the conditions under which relativity operates and the rules are different. Hyperspatially the Galaxy is a tiny object--ideally a nondimensional dot--and there are no relativistic effects at all.

 

                “In fact, in the mathematical formulations of cosmology, there are two symbols for the Galaxy: Grfor the “relativistic Galaxy,” where the speed of light is a maximum, and Ghfor the “hyperspatial Galaxy,” where speed does not really have a meaning. Hyperspatially the value of all speed is zero and we do not move with reference to space itself, speed is infinite. I can’t explain things a bit more than that.

 

                “Oh, except that one of the beautiful catches in theoretical physics is to place a symbol or a value that has meaning in Grinto an equation dealing with Gh--or vice versa--and leave it there for a student to deal with. The chances are enormous that the student falls into the trap and generally remains there, sweating and panting, with nothing seeming to work, till some kindly elder helps him out. I was neatly caught that way, once.”

 

                Pelorat considered that gravely for a while, then said in a perplexed sort of way, “But which is the true Galaxy?”

 

                “Either, depending on what you’re doing. If you’re back on Terminus, you can use a car to cover distance on land and a ship to cover distance across the sea. Conditions are different in every way, so which is thetrue Terminus, the land or the sea?”

 

                Pelorat nodded. “Analogies are always risky,” he said, “but I’d rather accept that one than risk my sanity by thinking about hyperspace any further. I’ll concentrate on what we’re doing now.”

 

                “Look upon what we just did,” said Trevize, “as our first stop toward Earth.”

 

                And, he thought to himself, toward what else, I wonder.

 

  

 

 2.

 

  

 

 “Well,” said Trevize. “I’ve wasted a day.”

 

                “Oh?” Pelorat looked up from his careful indexing. “In what way?”

 

                Trevize spread his arms. “I didn’t trust the computer. I didn’t dare to, so I checked our present position with the position we had aimed at in the jump. The difference was not measurable. There was no detectable error.”

 

                “That’s good, isn’t it?”

 

                “It’s more than good. It’s unbelievable. I’ve never heard of such a thing. I’ve gone through jumps and I’ve directed them, in all kinds of ways and with all kinds of devices. In school, I had to work one out with a hand computer and then I sent off a hyper-relay to check results. Naturally I couldn’t send a real ship, since--aside from the expense--I could easily have placed it in the middle of a star at the other end.

 

                “I never did anything that bad, of course,” Trevize went on, “but there would always be a sizable error. There’s always some error, even with experts. There’s got to be, since there are so many variables. Put it this way--the geometry of space is too complicated to handle and hyperspace compounds all those complications with a complexity of its own that we can’t even pretend to understand. That’s why we have to go by steps, instead of making one big jump from here to Sayshell. The errors would grow worse with distance.”

 

                Pelorat said, “But you said this computer didn’t make an error.”

 

                “Itsaid it didn’t make an error. I directed it to check our actual position with our precalculated position--’what is’ against ‘what was asked for.’It said that the two were identical within its limits of measurement and I thought: What if it’s lying?”

 

                Until that moment, Pelorat had held his printer in his hand. He now put it down and looked shaken. “Are you joking? A computer can’t lie. Unless you mean you thought it might be out of order.”

 

                “No, that’s not what I thought. Space! I thought it waslying . This computer is so advanced I can’t think of it as anything but human--superhuman, maybe. Human enough to have pride--and to lie, perhaps. I gave it directions--to work out a course through hyperspace to a position near Sayshell Planet, the capital of the Sayshell Union. It did, and charted a course in twenty-nine steps, which is arrogance of the worst sort.”

 

                “Why arrogance?”

 

                “The error in the first jump makes the second jump that much less certain, and the added error then makes the third jump pretty wobbly and untrustworthy, and so on. How do you calculate twenty-nine steps all at once? The twenty-ninth could end up anywhere in the Galaxy, anywhere at all. So I directed it to make the first step only. Then we could check that before proceeding.”

 

                “The cautious approach,” said Pelorat warmly. “I approve!”

 

                “Yes, but having made the first step, might the computer not feel wounded at my having mistrusted it? Would it then be forced to salve its pride by telling me there was no error at all when I asked it? Would it find it impossible to admit a mistake, to own up to imperfection? If that were so, we might as well not have a computer.”