by Isaac Asimov
He said, pleasantly, “I came prepared. I have been informed of your prowess as a Heliconian Twister, and there will be no hand-to-hand combat.”
He looked down at his weapon. “This is not a blaster,” he said. “I can’t afford to have you killed before you accomplish your task. It’s a neuronic whip. Much worse in a way. I will aim at your left shoulder and, believe me, the pain will be so excruciating that the world’s greatest stoic would not be able to endure it.”
Raych, who had been advancing slowly and grimly, stopped abruptly. He had been twelve years old when he had had a taste—a small one—of a neuronic whip. No one ever struck by one forgets the pain, however long he lives, however full of incidents his life.
Andorin said, “Moreover, I will use full strength so that the nerves in your upper arms will be stimulated first into unbearable pain and then damaged into uselessness. You will never use your left arm again. I will leave the right so you can handle the blaster. —Now if you sit down and accept matters, as you must, you may keep both arms. Of course, you must eat again so your desperance level will increase. Your situation will only worsen.”
Raych felt the drug-induced despair settle over him, and that despair served, in itself, to deepen the effect. His vision was turning double, and he could think of nothing to say.
He knew only that he would have to do what Andorin would tell him to do. He had played the game, and he had lost.
“No!” Hari Seldon was almost violent. “I don’t want you out there, Dors.”
Venabili stared back at him, with an expression as firm as his own. “Then I don’t want you out there, Hari.”
“I must be there.”
“It is not your place. It is the First Gardener who must greet these new people.”
“So it is. But Gruber can’t do it. He’s a broken man.”
“He must have a deputy of some sort, an assistant. Let the old Chief Gardener do it. He holds the office till the end of the year.”
“The old Chief Gardener is too ill. Besides,” Seldon hesitated, “there are ringers among the gardeners. Trantorians. They’re here for some reason. I have the names of every one of them.”
“Have them taken into custody, then. Every last one of them. It’s simple. Why are you making it complex?”
“Because we don’t know the reason they’re here. Something’s up. I don’t see what twelve gardeners can do, but—No, let me rephrase that. I can see a dozen things they can do, but I don’t know which one of those things they plan. We will indeed take them into custody, but I must know more about everything before it’s done.
“We have to know enough to winkle out everyone in the conspiracy from top to bottom, and we must know enough of what they’re doing to be able to make the proper punishment stick. I don’t want to get twelve men and women on what is essentially a misdemeanor charge. They’ll plead desperation, the need for a job. They’ll complain it isn’t fair for Trantorians to be excluded. They’ll get plenty of sympathy and we’ll be left looking like fools. We must give them a chance to convict themselves of more than that. Besides—”
There was a long pause and Venabili said, wrathfully, “Well, what’s the new ‘besides’?”
Seldon’s voice lowered. “One of the twelve is Raych, using the name of Planchet.”
“What?”
“Why are you surprised? I sent him to Wye to infiltrate the Joranumite movement and he’s succeeded in infiltrating something. I have every faith in him. If he’s there, he knows why he’s there, and he must have some sort of plan to put a spoke in the wheel. But I want to be there, too. I want to see him. I want to be in a position to help him if I can.”
“If you want to help him, have fifty Guards of the Palace standing shoulder to shoulder on either side of your gardeners.”
“No. Again, we’ll end up with nothing. The guards will be in place, but not in evidence. The gardeners in question must think they have a clear hand to do whatever it is they plan to do. Before they can do so, but after they have made it quite plain what they intend—we’ll have them.”
“That’s risky. It’s risky for Raych.”
“Risks are something we have to take. There’s more riding on this than individual lives.”
“That is a heartless thing to say.”
“You think I have no heart? Even if it broke, my concern would have to be with psycho—”
“Don’t say it.” She turned away, as if in pain.
“I understand,” said Seldon, “but you mustn’t be there. Your presence would be so inappropriate that the conspirators will suspect we know too much and will abort their plan. I don’t want their plan aborted.”
He paused, then said, softly, “Dors, your job is to protect me. That comes before protecting Raych, and you know that. I wouldn’t insist on it, but to protect me is to protect psychohistory and the entire human species. That must come first. What I have of psychohistory tells me that I, in turn, must protect the center at all costs, and that is what I am trying to do. —Do you understand?”
Venabili said, “I understand,” and turned away from him.
Seldon thought: And I hope I’m right.
If he weren’t, she would never forgive him. Far worse, he would never forgive himself, psychohistory or not.
They were lined up beautifully, feet spread apart, hands behind their backs, every one in a natty green uniform, loosely fitted and with wide pockets. There was very little gender differential; one could only guess that some of the shorter ones were women. The hoods covered whatever hair they had, but then, gardeners were supposed to clip their hair quite short, either sex, and there could be no facial hair.
Why that should be, one couldn’t say. The word “tradition” covered it all, as it covered so many things, some useful, some foolish.
Facing them was Mandell Gruber, flanked on either side by a deputy. Gruber was trembling, his wide-open eyes glazed.
Hari Seldon’s lips tightened. If Gruber could but manage to say, “The Emperor’s Gardeners greet you all,” that would be enough. Seldon himself would then take over.
His eyes swept over the new contingent, and he located Raych.
His heart jumped a bit. It was the mustacheless Raych in the front row, standing more rigid than the rest, staring straight ahead. His eyes did not move to meet Seldon’s; he showed no sign of recognition, however subtle.
Good, thought Seldon. He’s not supposed to. He’s giving nothing away.
Gruber muttered a welcome and Seldon jumped in.
He advanced with an easy stride, putting himself immediately before Gruber, and said, “Thank you, Acting First Gardener. Men and women, Gardeners of the Emperor, you are to undertake an important task. You will be responsible for the beauty and health of the only open land on our great world of Trantor, capital of the Galactic Empire. You will see to it that if we don’t have the endless vistas of open, undomed worlds, we will have a small jewel here that will outshine anything else in the Empire.
“You will all be under Mandell Gruber, who will shortly become First Gardener. He will report to me, when necessary, and I will report to the Emperor. This means, as you can all see, that you will be only three levels removed from the Imperial presence, and you will always be under his benign watch. I am certain that even now he is surveying us from the Small Palace, his personal home, which is the building you see to the right—the one with the opallayered dome—and that he is pleased with what he sees.
“Before you start work, of course, you will all undertake a course of training that will make you entirely familiar with the Grounds and its needs. You will—”
He had, by this time, moved, almost stealthily, to a point directly in front of Raych, who still remained motionless, unblinking.
Seldon tried not to look unnaturally benign, and then a slight frown crossed his face. The person directly behind Raych looked familiar. He might have gone unrecognized if Seldon had not studied his hologram. Wasn’t that Gleb Andorin of Wye? Rayc
h’s patron in Wye, in fact? What was he doing here?
Andorin must have noticed Seldon’s sudden regard, for he muttered something between scarcely opened lips and Raych, his right arm moving forward from behind his back, plucked a blaster out of the wide pocket of his green doublet. So did Andorin.
Seldon felt himself going into near-shock. How could blasters have been allowed onto the Grounds? Confused, he barely heard the cries of “Treason” and the sudden noise of running and shouting.
All that really occupied Seldon’s mind was Raych’s blaster pointing directly at him, with Raych looking at him without any sign of recognition. Seldon’s mind filled with horror as he realized that Raych was going to shoot, and that he himself was only seconds from death.
A blaster, despite its name, does not “blast” in the proper sense of the term. It vaporizes and blows out an interior and, if anything, causes implosion. There is a soft, sighing sound, leaving what appears to be a “blasted” object.
Hari Seldon did not expect to hear that sound. He expected only death. It was, therefore, with surprise that he heard the distinctive soft, sighing sound, and he blinked rapidly as he looked down at himself, slack-jawed.
He was alive?
Raych was still standing there, his blaster pointing forward, his eyes glazed. He was absolutely motionless as though some motive power had ceased.
Behind him was the crumpled body of Andorin, fallen in a pool of blood, and standing next to him, blaster in hand, was a gardener. The hood had slipped away; the gardener was clearly a woman with freshly clipped hair.
She allowed herself a glance at Seldon and said, “Your son knew me as Manella Dubanqua. I’m Imperial Guard. Do you want my identification, First Minister?”
“No,” said Seldon, faintly. Palace guards had converged on the scene. “My son! What’s wrong with my son?”
“Desperance, I think,” said Manella. “That can be washed out eventually.” She reached forward to take the blaster out of Raych’s hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t act sooner. I had to wait for an overt move and, when it came, it almost caught me napping.”
“I had the same trouble. We must take Raych to the Palace hospital.”
A confused noise emanated from the Small Palace. It occurred to Seldon that the Emperor was indeed watching the proceedings and, if so, he must be grandly furious indeed.
“Take care of my son, Miss Dubanqua,” said Seldon. “I must see the Emperor.”
He set off at an undignified run through the chaos on the Great Lawns, and dashed into the Small Palace without ceremony. Cleon could scarcely grow any angrier over that.
And there, with an appalled group watching in stupor—there on the semicircular stairway, was the body of His Imperial Majesty, Cleon II, smashed all but beyond recognition. His rich Imperial robes now served as a shroud. Cowering against the wall, staring stupidly at the horrified faces surrounding him, was Mandell Gruber.
Seldon felt he could take no more. He looked at the blaster lying at Gruber’s feet. It had been Andorin’s, he was sure. He asked, softly, “Gruber, what have you done?”
Gruber, staring at him, babbled, “Everyone screaming and yelling. I thought, who would know? They would think someone else had killed the Emperor. But then I couldn’t run.”
“But Gruber. Why?”
“So I wouldn’t have to be First Gardener.” And he collapsed.
Seldon stared in shock at the unconscious Gruber.
Everything had worked out by the narrowest of margins. He himself was alive. Raych was alive. Andorin was dead, and the Joranumite conspiracy would now be hunted down to the last person.
The center would have held, just as psychohistory had dictated.
And then one man, for a reason so trivial as to defy analysis, had killed the Emperor.
And now, thought Seldon in despair, what do we do? What happens?
