Foundation and Earth

by Isaac Asimov

  “What? Irreversible brain damage? No, thanks.”

  “Golan, you’re deliberately misunderstanding me. I mean, just that small moment of union. You don’t know what you’re missing. It’s indescribable. Bliss says there’s a sense of joy. That’s like saying there’s a sense of joy when you finally drink a bit of water after you have all but died of thirst. I couldn’t even begin to tell you what it’s like. You share all the pleasures that a billion people separately experience. It isn’t a steady joy; if it were you would quickly stop feeling it. It vibrates—twinkles—has a strange pulsing rhythm that doesn’t let you go. It’s more joy—no, not more—it’s a better joy than you could ever experience separately. I could weep when she shuts the door on me—”

  Trevize shook his head. “You are amazingly eloquent, my good friend, but you sound very much as though you’re describing pseudendorphin addiction, or that of some other drug that admits you to joy in the short term at the price of leaving you permanently in horror in the long term. Not for me! I am reluctant to sell my individuality for some brief feeling of joy.”

  “I still have my individuality, Golan.”

  “But for how long will you have it if you keep it up, Janov? You’ll beg for more and more of your drug until, eventually, your brain will be damaged. Janov, you mustn’t let Bliss do this to you. —Perhaps I had better speak to her about it.”

  “No! Don’t! You’re not the soul of tact, you know, and I don’t want her hurt. I assure you she takes better care of me in that respect than you can imagine. She’s more concerned with the possibility of brain damage than I am. You can be sure of that.”

  “Well, then, I’ll speak to you. Janov, don’t do this anymore. You’ve lived for fifty-two years with your own kind of pleasure and joy, and your brain is adapted to withstanding that. Don’t be snapped up by a new and unusual vice. There is a price for it; if not immediately, then eventually.”

  “Yes, Golan,” said Pelorat in a low voice, looking down at the tips of his shoes. Then he said, “Suppose you look at it this way. What if you were a one-celled creature—”

  “I know what you’re going to say, Janov. Forget it. Bliss and I have already referred to that analogy.”

  “Yes, but think a moment. Suppose we imagine single-celled organisms with a human level of consciousness and with the power of thought and imagine them faced with the possibility of becoming a multicellular organism. Would not the single-celled organisms mourn their loss of individuality, and bitterly resent their forthcoming enforced regimentation into the personality of an overall organism? And would they not be wrong? Could an individual cell even imagine the power of the human brain?”

  Trevize shook his head violently. “No, Janov, it’s a false analogy. Single-celled organisms don’t have consciousness or any power of thought—or if they do it is so infinitesimal it might as well be considered zero. For such objects to combine and lose individuality is to lose something they have never really had. A human being, however, is conscious and does have the power of thought. He has an actual consciousness and an actual independent intelligence to lose, so the analogy fails.”

  There was silence between the two of them for a moment; an almost oppressive silence; and finally Pelorat, attempting to wrench the conversation in a new direction, said, “Why do you stare at the viewscreen?”

  “Habit,” said Trevize, smiling wryly. “The computer tells me that there are no Gaian ships following me and that there are no Sayshellian fleets coming to meet me. Still I look anxiously, comforted by my own failure to see such ships, when the computer’s sensors are hundreds of times keener and more piercing than my eyes. What’s more, the computer is capable of sensing some properties of space very delicately, properties that my senses can’t perceive under any conditions. —Knowing all that, I still stare.”

  Pelorat said, “Golan, if we are indeed friends—”

  “I promise you I will do nothing to grieve Bliss; at least, nothing I can help.”

  “It’s another matter now. You keep your destination from me, as though you don’t trust me with it. Where are we going? Are you of the opinion you know where Earth is?”

  Trevize looked up, eyebrows lifted. “I’m sorry. I have been hugging the secret to my own bosom, haven’t I?”

  “Yes, but why?”

  Trevize said, “Why, indeed. I wonder, my friend, if it isn’t a matter of Bliss.”

  “Bliss? Is it that you don’t want her to know. Really, old fellow, she is completely to be trusted.”

  “It’s not that. What’s the use of not trusting her? I suspect she can tweak any secret out of my mind if she wishes to. I think I have a more childish reason than that. I have the feeling that you are paying attention only to her and that I no longer really exist.”

  Pelorat looked horrified. “But that’s not true, Golan.”

  “I know, but I’m trying to analyze my own feelings. You came to me just now with fears for our friendship, and thinking about it, I feel as though I’ve had the same fears. I haven’t openly admitted it to myself, but I think I have felt cut out by Bliss. Perhaps I seek to ‘get even’ by petulantly keeping things from you. Childish, I suppose.”

  “Golan!”

  “I said it was childish, didn’t I? But where is the person who isn’t childish now and then? However, we are friends. We’ve settled that and therefore I will play no further games. We’re going to Comporellon.”

  “Comporellon?” said Pelorat, for the moment not remembering.

  “Surely you recall my friend, the traitor, Munn Li Compor. We three met on Sayshell.”

  Pelorat’s face assumed a visible expression of enlightenment. “Of course I remember. Comporellon was the world of his ancestors.”

  “If it was. I don’t necessarily believe anything Compor said. But Comporellon is a known world, and Compor said that its inhabitants knew of Earth. Well, then, we’ll go there and find out. It may lead to nothing but it’s the only starting point we have.”

  Pelorat cleared his throat and looked dubious. “Oh, my dear fellow, are you sure?”

  “There’s nothing about which to be either sure or not sure. We have one starting point and, however feeble it might be, we have no choice but to follow it up.”

  “Yes, but if we’re doing it on the basis of what Compor told us, then perhaps we ought to consider everything he told us. I seem to remember that he told us, most emphatically, that Earth did not exist as a living planet—that its surface was radioactive and that it was utterly lifeless. And if that is so, then we are going to Comporellon for nothing.”

  8.

  THE THREE WERE LUNCHING IN THE DINING ROOM, virtually filling it as they did so.

  “This is very good,” said Pelorat, with considerable satisfaction. “Is this part of our original Terminus supply?”

  “No, not at all,” said Trevize. “That’s long gone. This is part of the supplies we bought on Sayshell, before we headed out toward Gaia. Unusual, isn’t it? Some sort of seafood, but rather crunchy. As for this stuff—I was under the impression it was cabbage when I bought it, but it doesn’t taste anything like it.”

  Bliss listened but said nothing. She picked at the food on her own plate gingerly.

  Pelorat said gently, “You’ve got to eat, dear.”

  “I know, Pel, and I’m eating.”

  Trevize said, with a touch of impatience he couldn’t quite suppress, “We do have Gaian food, Bliss.”

  “I know,” said Bliss, “but I would rather conserve that. We don’t know how long we will be out in space and eventually I must learn to eat Isolate food.”

  “Is that so bad? Or must Gaia eat only Gaia.”

  Bliss sighed. “Actually, there’s a saying of ours that goes: ‘When Gaia eats Gaia, there is neither loss nor gain.’ It is no more than a transfer of consciousness up and down the scale. Whatever I eat on Gaia is Gaia and when much of it is metabolized and becomes me, it is still Gaia. In fact, by the fact that I eat, some of what I eat
has a chance to participate in a higher intensity of consciousness, while, of course, other portions of it are turned into waste of one sort or another and therefore sink in the scale of consciousness.”

  She took a firm bite of her food, chewed vigorously for a moment, swallowed, and said, “It represents a vast circulation. Plants grow and are eaten by animals. Animals eat and are eaten. Any organism that dies is incorporated into the cells of molds, decay bacteria, and so on—still Gaia. In this vast circulation of consciousness, even inorganic matter participates, and everything in the circulation has its chance of periodically participating in a high intensity of consciousness.”

  “All this,” said Trevize, “can be said of any world. Every atom in me has a long history during which it may have been part of many living things, including human beings, and during which it may also have spent long periods as part of the sea, or in a lump of coal, or in a rock, or as a portion of the wind blowing upon us.”

  “On Gaia, however,” said Bliss, “all atoms are also continually part of a higher planetary consciousness of which you know nothing.”

  “Well, what happens, then,” said Trevize, “to these vegetables from Sayshell that you are eating? Do they become part of Gaia?”

  “They do—rather slowly. And the wastes I excrete as slowly cease being part of Gaia. After all, what leaves me is altogether lacking in contact with Gaia. It lacks even the less-direct hyperspatial contact that I can maintain, thanks to my high level of conscious intensity. It is this hyperspatial contact that causes non-Gaian food to become part of Gaia—slowly—once I eat it.”

  “What about the Gaian food in our stores? Will that slowly become non-Gaian? If so, you had better eat it while you can.”

  “There is no need to be concerned about that,” said Bliss. “Our Gaian stores have been treated in such a way that they will remain part of Gaia over a long interval.”

  Pelorat said, suddenly, “But what will happen when we eat the Gaian food. For that matter, what happened to us when we ate Gaian food on Gaia itself. Are we ourselves slowly turning into Gaia?”

  Bliss shook her head and a peculiarly disturbed expression crossed her face. “No, what you ate was lost to us. Or at least the portions that were metabolized into your tissues were lost to us. What you excreted stayed Gaia or very slowly became Gaia so that in the end the balance was maintained, but numerous atoms of Gaia became non-Gaia as a result of your visit to us.”

  “Why was that?” asked Trevize curiously.

  “Because you would not have been able to endure the conversion, even a very partial one. You were our guests, brought to our world under compulsion, in a manner of speaking, and we had to protect you from danger, even at the cost of the loss of tiny fragments of Gaia. It was a willing price we paid, but not a happy one.”

  “We regret that,” said Trevize, “but are you sure that non-Gaian food, or some kinds of non-Gaian food, might not, in their turn, harm you?”

  “No,” said Bliss. “What is edible for you would be edible to me. I merely have the additional problem of metabolizing such food into Gaia as well as into my own tissues. It represents a psychological barrier that rather spoils my enjoyment of the food and causes me to eat slowly, but I will overcome that with time.”

  “What about infection?” said Pelorat, in high-pitched alarm. “I can’t understand why I didn’t think of this earlier. Bliss! Any world you land on is likely to have microorganisms against which you have no defense and you will die of some simple infectious disease. Trevize, we must turn back.”

  “Don’t be panicked, Pel dear,” said Bliss, smiling. “Microorganisms, too, are assimilated into Gaia when they are part of my food, or when they enter my body in any other way. If they seem to be in the process of doing harm, they will be assimilated the more quickly, and once they are Gaia, they will do me no harm.”

  The meal drew to its end and Pelorat sipped at his spiced and heated mixture of fruit juices. “Dear me,” he said, licking his lips, “I think it is time to change the subject again. It does seem to me that my sole occupation on board ship is subject-changing. Why is that?”

  Trevize said solemnly, “Because Bliss and I cling to whatever subjects we discuss, even to the death. We depend upon you, Janov, to save our sanity. What subject do you want to change to, old friend?”

  “I’ve gone through my reference material on Comporellon and the entire sector of which it is part is rich in legends of age. They set their settlement far back in time, in the first millennium of hyperspatial travel. Comporellon even speaks of a legendary founder named Benbally, though they don’t say where he came from. They say that the original name of their planet was Benbally World.”

  “And how much truth is there in that, in your opinion, Janov?”

  “A kernel, perhaps, but who can guess what the kernel might be.”

  “I never heard of anyone named Benbally in actual history. Have you?”

  “No, I haven’t, but you know that in the late Imperial era there was a deliberate suppression of pre-Imperial history. The Emperors, in the turbulent last centuries of the Empire, were anxious to reduce local patriotism, since they considered it, with ample justification, to be a disintegrating influence. In almost every sector of the Galaxy, therefore, true history, with complete records and accurate chronology, begins only with the days when Trantor’s influence made itself felt and the sector in question had allied itself to the Empire or been annexed by it.”

  “I shouldn’t think that history would be that easy to eradicate,” said Trevize.

  “In many ways, it isn’t,” said Pelorat, “but a determined and powerful government can weaken it greatly. If it is sufficiently weakened, early history comes to depend on scattered material and tends to degenerate into folk tales. Invariably such folk tales will fill with exaggeration and come to show the sector to be older and more powerful than, in all likelihood, it ever really was. And no matter how silly a particular legend is, or how impossible it might be on the very face of it, it becomes a matter of patriotism among the locals to believe it. I can show you tales from every corner of the Galaxy that speak of original colonization as having taken place from Earth itself, though that is not always the name they give the parent planet.”

  “What else do they call it?”

  “Any of a number of names. They call it the Only, sometimes; and sometimes, the Oldest. Or they call it the Mooned World, which, according to some authorities is a reference to its giant satellite. Others claim it means ‘Lost World’ and that ‘Mooned’ is a version of ‘Marooned,’ a pre-Galactic word meaning ‘lost’ or ‘abandoned.’ ”

  Trevize said gently, “Janov, stop! You’ll continue forever with your authorities and counterauthorities. These legends are everywhere, you say?”

  “Oh yes, my dear fellow. Quite. You have only to go through them to gain a feel for this human habit of beginning with some seed of truth and layering about it shell after shell of pretty falsehood—in the fashion of the oysters of Rhampora that build pearls about a piece of grit. I came across just exactly that metaphor once when—”

  “Janov! Stop again! Tell me, is there anything about Comporellon’s legends that is different from others?”

  “Oh!” Pelorat gazed at Trevize blankly for a moment. “Different? Well, they claim that Earth is relatively nearby and that’s unusual. On most worlds that speak of Earth, under whatever name they choose, there is a tendency to be vague about its location—placing it indefinitely far away or in some never-never land.”

  Trevize said, “Yes, as some on Sayshell told us that Gaia was located in hyperspace.”

  Bliss laughed.

  Trevize cast her a quick glance. “It’s true. That’s what we were told.”

  “I don’t disbelieve it. It’s amusing, that’s all. It is, of course, what we want them to believe. We only ask to be left alone right now, and where can we be safer and more secure than in hyperspace? If we’re not there, we’re as good as there, if people beli
eve that to be our location.”

  “Yes,” said Trevize dryly, “and in the same way there is something that causes people to believe that Earth doesn’t exist, or that it is far away, or that it has a radioactive crust.”

  “Except,” said Pelorat, “that the Comporellians believe it to be relatively close to themselves.”

  “But nevertheless give it a radioactive crust. One way or another every people with an Earth-legend consider Earth to be unapproachable.”

  “That’s more or less right,” said Pelorat.

  Trevize said, “Many on Sayshell believed Gaia to be nearby; some even identified its star correctly; and yet all considered it unapproachable. There may be some Comporellians who insist that Earth is radioactive and dead, but who can identify its star. We will then approach it, unapproachable though they may consider it. We did exactly that in the case of Gaia.”

  Bliss said, “Gaia was willing to receive you, Trevize. You were helpless in our grip but we had no thought of harming you. What if Earth, too, is powerful, but not benevolent. What then?”

  “I must in any case try to reach it, and accept the consequences. However, that is my task. Once I locate Earth and head for it, it will not be too late for you to leave. I will put you off on the nearest Foundation world, or take you back to Gaia, if you insist, and then go on to Earth alone.”

  “My dear chap,” said Pelorat, in obvious distress. “Don’t say such things. I wouldn’t dream of abandoning you.”

  “Or I of abandoning Pel,” said Bliss, as she reached out a hand to touch Pelorat’s cheek.

  “Very well, then. It won’t be long before we’re ready to take the Jump to Comporellon and thereafter, let us hope, it will be—on to Earth.”

  PART II

  COMPORELLON