Foundation's Edge

by Isaac Asimov

  “Do you mean that, in your opinion, Hari Seldon never existed?”

  “Not at all. Of course he existed.”

  “That he never evolved the science of psychohistory?”

  “No, of course I don’t mean any such thing. See here, Director, I would have explained this to the Council if I had been allowed to, and I will explain it to you. The truth of what I am going to say is so plain—”

  The Director of Security had quietly, and quite obviously, turned off the recording device.

  Trevize paused and frowned. “Why did you do that?”

  “You are wasting my time, Councilman. I am not asking you for speeches.”

  “You are asking me to explain my views, aren’t you?”

  “Not at all. I am asking you to answer questions—simply, directly, and straightforwardly. Answer only the questions and offer nothing that I do not ask for. Do that and this won’t take long.”

  Trevize said, “You mean you will elicit statements from me that will reinforce the official version of what I am supposed to have done.”

  “We ask you only to make truthful statements, and I assure you we will not distort them. Please, let me try again. We were talking about Hari Seldon.” The recording device was in action once more and Kodell repeated calmly, “That he never evolved the science of psychohistory?”

  “Of course he evolved the science that we call psychohistory,” said Trevize, failing to mask his impatience, and gesturing with exasperated passion.

  “Which you would define—how?”

  “Galaxy! It is usually defined as that branch of mathematics that deals with the overall reactions of large groups of human beings to given stimuli under given conditions. In other words, it is supposed to predict social and historical changes.”

  “You say ‘supposed to.’ Do you question that from the standpoint of mathematical expertise?”

  “No,” said Trevize. “I am not a psychohistorian. Nor is any member of the Foundation government, nor any citizen of Terminus, nor any—”

  Kodell’s hand raised. He said softly, “Councilman, please!” and Trevize was silent.

  Kodell said, “Have you any reason to suppose that Hari Seldon did not make the necessary analysis that would combine, as efficiently as possible, the factors of maximum probability and shortest duration in the path leading from the First to the Second Empire by way of the Foundation?”

  “I wasn’t there,” said Trevize sardonically. “How can I know?”

  “Can you know he didn’t?”

  “No.”

  “Do you deny, perhaps, that the holographic image of Hari Seldon that has appeared during each of a number of historical crises over the past five hundred years is, in actual fact, a reproduction of Hari Seldon himself, made in the last year of his life, shortly before the establishment of the Foundation?”

  “I suppose I can’t deny that.”

  “You ‘suppose.’ Would you care to say that it is a fraud, a hoax devised by someone in past history for some purpose?”

  Trevize sighed. “No. I am not maintaining that.”

  “Are you prepared to maintain that the messages that Hari Seldon delivers are in any way manipulated by anyone at all?”

  “No. I have no reason to think that such manipulation is either possible or useful.”

  “I see. You witnessed this most recent appearance of Seldon’s image. Did you find that his analysis—prepared five hundred years ago—did not match the actual conditions of today quite closely?”

  “On the contrary,” said Trevize with sudden glee. “It matched very closely.”

  Kodell seemed indifferent to the other’s emotion. “And yet, Councilman, after the appearance of Seldon, you still maintain that the Seldon Plan does not exist.”

  “Of course I do. I maintain it does not exist precisely because the analysis matched so perfectly—”

  Kodell had turned off the recorder. “Councilman,” he said, shaking his head, “you put me to the trouble of erasing. I ask if you still maintain this odd belief of yours and you start giving me reasons. Let me repeat my question.”

  He said, “And yet, Councilman, after the appearance of Seldon, you still maintain that the Seldon Plan does not exist.”

  “How do you know that? No one had a chance to speak to my informer friend, Compor, after the appearance.”

  “Let us say we guessed, Councilman. And let us say you have already answered, ‘Of course I do.’ If you will say that once more without volunteering added information, we can get on with it.”

  “Of course I do,” said Trevize ironically.

  “Well,” said Kodell, “I will choose whichever of the ‘Of course I do’s’ sounds more natural. Thank you, Councilman,” and the recording device was turned off again.

  Trevize said, “Is that it?”

  “For what I need, yes.”

  “What you need, quite clearly, is a set of questions and answers that you can present to Terminus and to all the Foundation Federation which it rules, in order to show that I accept the legend of the Seldon Plan totally. That will make any denial of it that I later make seem quixotic or outright insane.”

  “Or even treasonable in the eyes of an excited multitude which sees the plan as essential to the Foundation’s safety. It will perhaps not be necessary to publicize this, Councilman Trevize, if we can come to some understanding, but if it should prove necessary we will see to it that the Federation hears.”

  “Are you fool enough, sir,” said Trevize, frowning, “to be entirely uninterested in what I really have to say?”

  “As a human being I am very interested, and if an appropriate time comes I will listen to you with interest and a certain amount of skepticism. As Director of Security, however, I have, at the present moment, exactly what I want.”

  “I hope you know that this will do you, and the Mayor, no good.”

  “Oddly enough, I am not at all of that opinion. You will now leave. Under guard, of course.”

  “Where am I to be taken?”

  Kodell merely smiled. “Good-bye, Councilman. You were not perfectly co-operative, but it would have been unrealistic to have expected you to be.”

  He held out his hand.

  Trevize, standing up, ignored it. He smoothed the creases out of his sash and said, “You only delay the inevitable. Others must think as I do now, or will come to think that way later. To imprison me or to kill me will serve to inspire wonder and, eventually, accelerate such thinking. In the end the truth and I shall win.”

  Kodell took back his hand and shook his head slowly. “Really, Trevize,” he said. “You are a fool.”

  4.

  IT WAS NOT TILL MIDNIGHT THAT TWO GUARDS came to remove Trevize from what was, he had to admit, a luxurious room at Security Headquarters. Luxurious but locked. A prison cell by any name.

  Trevize had over four hours to second-guess himself bitterly, striding restlessly across the floor for much of the period.

  Why did he trust Compor?

  Why not? He had seemed so clearly in agreement. —No, not that. He had seemed so ready to be argued into agreement. —No, not that, either. He had seemed so stupid, so easily dominated, so surely lacking a mind and opinions of his own that Trevize enjoyed the chance of using him as a comfortable sounding board. Compor had helped Trevize improve and hone his opinions. He had been useful and Trevize had trusted him for no other reason than that it had been convenient to do so.

  But it was useless now to try to decide whether he ought to have seen through Compor. He should have followed the simple generalization: Trust nobody.

  Yet can one go through life trusting nobody?

  Clearly one had to.

  And who would have thought that Branno would have had the audacity to pluck a Councilman out of the Council—and that not one of the other Councilmen would move to protect one of their own? Though they had disagreed with Trevize to their very hearts; though they would have been ready to bet their blood, drop by drop, on
Branno’s rightness; they should still, on principle, have interposed themselves against this violation of their prerogatives. Branno the Bronze she was sometimes called, and she certainly acted with metallic rigor—

  Unless she herself was already in the grip—

  No! That way led to paranoia!

  And yet—

  His mind tiptoed in circles, and had not broken out of uselessly repetitive thought when the guards came.

  “You will have to come with us, Councilman,” the senior of the two said with unemotional gravity. His insignia showed him to be a lieutenant. He had a small scar on his right cheek, and he looked tired, as though he had been at his job too long and had done too little—as might be expected of a soldier whose people had been at peace for over a century.

  Trevize did not budge. “Your name, Lieutenant.”

  “I am Lieutenant Evander Sopellor, Councilman.”

  “You realize you are breaking the law, Lieutenant Sopellor. You cannot arrest a Councilman.”

  The lieutenant said, “We have our direct orders, sir.”

  “That does not matter. You cannot be ordered to arrest a Councilman. You must understand that you will be liable for court-martial as a result.”

  The lieutenant said, “You are not being arrested, Councilman.”

  “Then I don’t have to go with you, do I?”

  “We have been instructed to escort you to your home.”

  “I know the way.”

  “And to protect you en route.”

  “From what? —Or from whom?”

  “From any mob that may gather.”

  “At midnight?”

  “It is why we have waited for midnight, sir. —And now, sir, for your protection we must ask you to come with us. May I say—not as a threat but as a matter of information—that we are authorized to use force if necessary.”

  Trevize was aware of the neuronic whips with which they were armed. He rose with what he hoped was dignity. “To my home, then. —Or will I find out that you are going to take me to prison?”

  “We have not been instructed to lie to you, sir,” said the lieutenant with a pride of his own. Trevize became aware that he was in the presence of a professional man who would require a direct order before he would lie—and that even then his expression and his tone of voice would give him away.

  Trevize said, “I ask your pardon, Lieutenant. I did not mean to imply that I doubted your word.”

  A ground-car was waiting for them outside. The street was empty and there was no sign of any human being, let alone a mob—but the lieutenant had been truthful. He had not said there was a mob outside or that one would form. He had referred to “any mob that may gather.” He had only said “may.”

  The lieutenant had carefully kept Trevize between himself and the car. Trevize could not have twisted away and made a run for it. The lieutenant entered immediately after him and sat beside him in the back.

  The car moved off.

  Trevize said, “Once I am home, I presume I may then go about my business freely—that I may leave, for instance, if I choose.”

  “We have no order to interfere with you, Councilman, in any way, except insofar as we are ordered to protect you.”

  “Insofar? What does that mean in this case?”

  “I am instructed to tell you that once you are home, you may not leave it. The streets are not safe for you and I am responsible for your safety.”

  “You mean I am under house arrest.”

  “I am not a lawyer, Councilman. I do not know what that means.”

  He gazed straight ahead, but his elbow made contact with Trevize’s side. Trevize could not have moved, however slightly, without the lieutenant becoming aware of it.

  The car stopped before Trevize’s small house in the suburb of Flexner. At the moment, he lacked a housemate—Flavella having wearied of the erratic life that Council membership had forced upon him—so he expected no one to be waiting for him.

  “Do I get out now?” Trevize asked.

  “I will get out first, Councilman. We will escort you in.”

  “For my safety?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There were two guards waiting inside his front door. A night-light was gleaming, but the windows had been opacified and it was not visible from outside.

  For a moment, he was indignant at the invasion and then he dismissed it with an inward shrug. If the Council could not protect him in the Council Chamber itself, then surely his house could not serve as his castle.

  Trevize said, “How many of you do I have in here altogether? A regiment?”

  “No, Councilman,” came a voice, hard and steady. “Just one person aside from those you see, and I have been waiting for you long enough.”

  Harla Branno, Mayor of Terminus, stood in the door that led into the living room. “Time enough, don’t you think, for us to talk?”

  Trevize stared. “All this rigmarole to—”

  But Branno said in a low, forceful voice, “Quiet, Councilman. —And you four, outside. Outside! —All will be well in here.”

  The four guards saluted and turned on their heels. Trevize and Branno were alone.

  2

  MAYOR

  1.

  BRANNO HAD BEEN WAITING FOR AN HOUR, THINKING wearily. Technically speaking, she was guilty of breaking and entering. What’s more, she had violated, quite unconstitutionally, the rights of a Councilman. By the strict laws that held Mayors to account—since the days of Indbur III and the Mule, nearly two centuries before—she was impeachable.

  On this one day, however, for twenty-four hours she could do no wrong.

  But it would pass. She stirred restlessly.

  The first two centuries had been the Golden Age of the Foundation, the Heroic Era—at least in retrospect, if not to the unfortunates who had lived in that insecure time. Salvor Hardin and Hober Mallow had been the two great heroes, semideified to the point of rivaling the incomparable Hari Seldon himself. The three were a tripod on which all Foundation legend (and even Foundation history) rested.

  In those days, though, the Foundation had been one puny world, with a tenuous hold on the Four Kingdoms and with only a dim awareness of the extent to which the Seldon Plan was holding its protective hand over it, caring for it even against the remnant of the mighty Galactic Empire.

  And the more powerful the Foundation grew as a political and commercial entity, the less significant its rulers and fighters had come to seem. Lathan Devers was almost forgotten. If he was remembered at all, it was for his tragic death in the slave mines, rather than for his unnecessary but successful fight against Bel Riose.

  As for Bel Riose, the noblest of the Foundation’s adversaries, he too was nearly forgotten, overshadowed by the Mule, who alone among enemies had broken the Seldon Plan and defeated and ruled the Foundation. He alone was the Great Enemy—indeed, the last of the Greats.

  It was little remembered that the Mule had been, in essence, defeated by one person—a woman, Bayta Darell—and that she had accomplished the victory without the help of anyone, without even the support of the Seldon Plan. So, too, was it almost forgotten that her son and granddaughter, Toran and Arkady Darell, had defeated the Second Foundation, leaving the Foundation, the First Foundation, supreme.

  These latter-day victors were no longer heroic figures. The times had become too expansive to do anything but shrink heroes into ordinary mortals. Then, too, Arkady’s biography of her grandmother had reduced her from a heroine to a figure of romance.

  And since then there had been no heroes—not even figures of romance. The Kalganian war had been the last moment of violence engulfing the Foundation and that had been a minor conflict. Nearly two centuries of virtual peace! A hundred and twenty years without so much as a ship scratched.

  It had been a good peace—Branno would not deny that—a profitable peace. The Foundation had not established a Second Galactic Empire—it was only halfway there by the Seldon Plan—but, as the Foundation F
ederation, it held a strong economic grip on over a third of the scattered political units of the Galaxy, and influenced what it didn’t control. There were few places where “I am of the Foundation” was not met with respect. There was no one who ranked higher in all the millions of inhabited worlds than the Mayor of Terminus.

  That was still the title. It was inherited from the leader of a single small and almost disregarded city on a lonely world on the far edge of civilization, some five centuries before, but no one would dream of changing it or of giving it one atom more glory-in-sound. As it was, only the all-forgotten title of Imperial Majesty could rival it in awe.

  —Except on Terminus itself, where the powers of the Mayor were carefully limited. The memory of the Indburs still remained. It was not their tyranny that people could not forget but the fact that they had lost to the Mule.

  And here she was, Harla Branno, the strongest to rule since the Mule’s death (she knew that) and only the fifth woman to do so. On this day only had she been able to use her strength openly.

  She had fought for her interpretation of what was right and what should be—against the dogged opposition of those who longed for the prestige-filled Interior of the Galaxy and for the aura of Imperial power—and she had won.

  Not yet, she had said. Not yet! Jump too soon for the Interior and you will lose for this reason and for that. And Seldon had appeared and had supported her in language almost identical with her own.

  It made her, for a time, in the eyes of all the Foundation, as wise as Seldom himself. She knew they could forget that any hour, however.

  And this young man dared to challenge her on this day of days.

  And he dared to be right!

  That was the danger of it. He was right! And by being right, he might destroy the Foundation!

  And now she faced him and they were alone.

  She said sadly, “Could you not have come to see me privately? Did you have to shout it all out in the Council Chamber in your idiotic desire to make a fool of me? What have you done, you mindless boy?”