Foundation's Edge

by Isaac Asimov

  He was not sure, looking back on it, how he had managed to find the courage to continue his efforts. He could not penetrate the administrative barriers that ringed the Table. He had all but reconciled himself to a broken reputation. He had worked himself down (despairingly) to the most junior member of the Table and, finally, Stor Gendibal had responded to his call.

  Gendibal had listened patiently and from that time on there had been a special relationship between them. It was on Gendibal’s behalf that Compor had maintained his relationship with Trevize and on Gendibal’s direction that he had carefully set up the situation that had resulted in Trevize’s exile. And it was through Gendibal that Compor might yet (he was beginning to hope) achieve his dream of promotion to Trantor.

  All preparations, however, had been designed to send Trevize to Trantor. Trevize’s refusal to do this had taken Compor entirely by surprise and (Compor thought) had been unforeseen by Gendibal as well.

  At any rate, Gendibal was hurrying to the spot, and to Compor, that deepened the sense of crisis.

  Compor sent out his hypersignal.

  6.

  GENDIBAL WAS ROUSED FROM HIS SLEEP BY THE touch on his mind. It was effective and not in the least disturbing. Since it affected the arousal center directly, he simply awoke.

  He sat up in bed, the sheet falling from his well-shaped and smoothly muscular torso. He had recognized the touch; the differences were as distinctive to mentalists as were voices to those who communicated primarily by sound.

  Gendibal sent out the standard signal, asking if a small delay were possible, and the “no emergency” call returned.

  Without undue haste, then, Gendibal attended to the morning routine. He was still in the ship’s shower—with the used water draining into the recycling mechanisms—when he made contact again.

  “Compor?”

  “Yes, Speaker.”

  “Have you spoken with Trevize and the other one?”

  “Pelorat. Janov Pelorat. Yes, Speaker.”

  “Good. Give me another five minutes and I’ll arrange visuals.”

  He passed Sura Novi on his way to the controls. She looked at him questioningly and made as though to speak, but he placed a finger on his lips and she subsided at once. Gendibal still felt a bit uncomfortable at the intensity of adoration / respect in her mind, but it was coming to be a comfortingly normal part of his environment somehow.

  He had hooked a small tendril of his mind to hers and there would now be no way to affect his mind without affecting hers. The simplicity of her mind (and there was an enormous aesthetic pleasure to be found in contemplating its unadorned symmetry, Gendibal couldn’t help thinking) made it impossible for any extraneous mind field to exist in their neighborhood without detection. He felt a surge of gratitude for the courteous impulse that had moved him that moment they had stood together outside the University, and that had led her to come to him precisely when she could be most useful.

  He said, “Compor?”

  “Yes, Speaker.”

  “Relax, please. I must study your mind. No offense is intended.”

  “As you wish, Speaker. May I ask the purpose?”

  “To make certain you are untouched.”

  Compor said, “I know you have political adversaries at the Table, Speaker, but surely none of them—”

  “Do not speculate, Compor. Relax. —Yes, you are untouched. Now, if you will co-operate with me, we will establish visual contact.”

  What followed was, in the ordinary sense of the word, an illusion, since no one but someone who was aided by the mentalic power of a well-trained Second Foundationer would have been able to detect anything at all, either by the senses or by any physical detecting device.

  It was the building up of a face and its appearance from the contours of the mind, and even the best mentalist could succeed in producing only a shadowy and somewhat uncertain figure. Compor’s face was there in mid-space, as though it were seen through a thin but shifting curtain of gauze, and Gendibal knew that his own face appeared in an identical manner in front of Compor.

  By physical hyperwave, communication could have been established through images so clear that speakers who were a thousand parsecs apart might judge themselves to be face-to-face. Gendibal’s ship was equipped for the purpose.

  There were, however, advantages to the mentalist-vision. The chief was that it could not be tapped by any device known to the First Foundation. Nor, for that matter, could one Second Foundationer tap the mentalist-vision of another. The play of mind might be followed, but not the delicate change of facial expression that gave the communication its finer points.

  As for the Anti-Mules—Well, the purity of Novi’s mind was sufficient to assure him that none were about.

  He said, “Tell me precisely, Compor, the talk you had with Trevize and with this Pelorat. Precisely, to the level of mind.”

  “Of course, Speaker,” said Compor.

  It didn’t take long. The combination of sound, expression, and mentalism compressed matters considerably, despite the fact that there was far more to tell at the level of mind than if there had been a mere parroting of speech.

  Gendibal watched intently. There was little redundancy, if any, in mentalist-vision. In true vision, or even in physical hypervision across the parsecs, one saw enormously more in the way of information bits than was absolutely necessary for comprehension and one could miss a great deal without losing anything significant.

  Through the gauze of mentalist-vision, however, one bought absolute security at the price of losing the luxury of being able to miss bits. Every bit was significant.

  There were always horror tales that passed from instructor to student on Trantor, tales that were designed to impress on the young the importance of concentration. The most often repeated was certainly the least reliable. It told of the first report on the progress of the Mule before he had taken over Kalgan—of the minor official who received the report and who had no more than the impression of a horselike animal because he did not see or understand the small flick that signified “personal name.” The official therefore decided that the whole thing was too unimportant to pass on to Trantor. By the time the next message came, it was too late to take immediate action and five more bitter years had to pass.

  The event had almost certainly never happened, but that didn’t matter. It was a dramatic story and it served to motivate every student into the habit of intent concentration. Gendibal remembered his own student days when he made an error in reception that seemed, in his own mind, to be both insignificant and understandable. His teacher—old Kendast, a tyrant to the roots of his cerebellum—had simply sneered and said, “A horselike animal, Cub Gendibal?” and that had been enough to make him collapse in shame.

  Compor finished.

  Gendibal said, “Your estimate, please, of Trevize’s reaction. You know him better than I do, better than anyone does.”

  Compor said, “It was clear enough. The mentalic indications were unmistakable. He thinks my words and actions represent my extreme anxiety to have him go to Trantor or to the Sirius Sector or to any place but where, in fact, he is actually going. It meant, in my opinion, that he would remain firmly where he was. The fact that I attached great importance to his shifting his position, in short, forced him to give it the same importance, and since he feels his own interests to be diametrically opposed to mine, he will deliberately act against what he interprets to be my wish.”

  “You are certain of that?”

  “Quite certain.”

  Gendibal considered this and decided that Compor was correct. He said, “I am satisfied. You have done well. Your tale of Earth’s radioactive destruction was cleverly chosen to help produce the proper reaction without the need for direct manipulation of the mind. Commendable!”

  Compor seemed to struggle with himself a short moment. “Speaker,” he said, “I cannot accept your praise. I did not invent the tale. It is true. There really is a planet called Earth in the Sirius
Sector and it really is considered to be the original home of humanity. It was radioactive, either to begin with or eventually, and this grew worse till the planet died. There was indeed a mind-enhancing invention that came to nothing. All this is considered history on the home planet of my ancestors.”

  “So? Interesting!” said Gendibal with no obvious conviction. “And better yet. To know when a truth will do is admirable, since no nontruth can be presented with the same sincerity. Palver once said, ‘The closer to the truth, the better the lie, and the truth itself, when it can be used, is the best lie.’ ”

  Compor said, “There is one thing more to say. In following instructions to keep Trevize in the Sayshell Sector until you arrived—and to do so at all costs—I had to go so far in my efforts that it is clear that he suspects me of being under the influence of the Second Foundation.”

  Gendibal nodded. “That, I think, is unavoidable under the circumstances. His monomania on the subject would be sufficient to have him see Second Foundation even where it was not. We must simply take that into account.”

  “Speaker, if it is absolutely necessary that Trevize stay where he is until you can reach him, it would simplify matters if I came to meet you, took you aboard my ship, and brought you back. It would take less than a day—”

  “No, Observer,” said Gendibal sharply. “You will not do this. The people on Terminus know where you are. You have a hyper-relay on your ship which you cannot remove, have you not?”

  “Yes, Speaker.”

  “And if Terminus knows you have landed on Sayshell, their ambassador on Sayshell knows of it—and the ambassador knows also that Trevize has landed. Your hyper-relay will tell Terminus that you have left for a specific point hundreds of parsecs away and returned; and the ambassador will inform them that Trevize has, however, remained in the sector. From this, how much will the people at Terminus guess? The Mayor of Terminus is, by all accounts, a shrewd woman and the last thing we want to do is to alarm her by presenting her with an obscure puzzle. We don’t want her to lead a section of her fleet here. The chances of that are, in any case, uncomfortably high.”

  Compor said, “With respect, Speaker—What reason do we have to fear a fleet if we can control a commander?”

  “However little reason there might be, there is still less reason to fear if the fleet is not here. You stay where you are, Observer. When I reach you, I will join you on your ship and then—”

  “And then, Speaker?”

  “Why, and then I will take over.”

  7.

  GENDIBAL SAT IN PLACE AFTER HE DISMANTLED the mentalist-vision—and stayed there for long minutes—considering.

  During this long trip to Sayshell, unavoidably long in this ship of his which could in no way match the technological advancement of the products of the First Foundation, he had gone over every single report on Trevize. The reports had stretched over nearly a decade.

  Seen as a whole and in the light of recent events, there was no longer any doubt Trevize would have been a marvelous recruit for the Second Foundation, if the policy of never touching the Terminus-born had not been in place since Palver’s time.

  There was no telling how many recruits of highest quality had been lost to the Second Foundation over the centuries. There were no way of evaluating every one of the quadrillions of human beings populating the Galaxy. None of them was likely to have had more promise than Trevize, however, and certainly none could have been in a more sensitive spot.

  Gendibal shook his head slightly. Trevize should never have been overlooked, Terminus-born or not. —And credit to Observer Compor for seeing it, even after the years had distorted him.

  Trevize was of no use to them now, of course. He was too old for the molding, but he still had that inborn intuition, that ability to guess a solution on the basis of totally inadequate information, and something—something—

  Old Shandess—who, despite being past his prime, was First Speaker and had, on the whole, been a good one—saw something there, even without the correlated data and the reasoning that Gendibal had worked out in the course of this trip. Trevize, Shandess had thought, was the key to the crisis.

  Why was Trevize here at Sayshell? What was he planning? What was he doing?

  And he couldn’t be touched! Of that Gendibal was sure. Until it was known precisely what Trevize’s role was, it would be totally wrong to try to modify him in any way. With the Anti-Mules—whoever they were—whatever they might be—in the field, a wrong move with respect to Trevize (Trevize, above all) might explode a wholly unexpected micro-sun in their faces.

  He felt a mind hovering about his own and absently brushed at it as he might at one of the more annoying Trantorian insects—though with mind rather than hand. He felt the instant wash of other-pain and looked up.

  Sura Novi had her palm to her furrowed brow. “Your pardon, Master, I be struck with sudden head-anguish.”

  Gendibal was instantly contrite. “I’m sorry, Novi. I wasn’t thinking—or I was thinking too intently.” Instantly—and gently—he smoothed the ruffled mind tendrils.

  Novi smiled with sudden brightness. “It passed with sudden vanishing. The kind sound of your words, Master, works well upon me.”

  Gendibal said, “Good! Is something wrong? Why are you here?” He forbore to enter her mind in greater detail in order to find out for himself. More and more, he felt a reluctance to invade her privacy.

  Novi hesitated. She leaned toward him slightly. “I be concerned. You were looking at nothing and making sounds and your face was twitching. I stayed there, stick-frozen, afeared you were declining—ill—and unknowing what to do.”

  “It was nothing, Novi. You are not to fear.” He patted her nearer hand. “There is nothing to fear. Do you understand?”

  Fear—or any strong emotion—twisted and spoiled the symmetry of her mind somewhat. He preferred it calm and peaceful and happy, but he hesitated at the thought of adjusting it into that position by outer influence. She had felt the previous adjustment to be the effect of his words and it seemed to him that he preferred it that way.

  He said, “Novi, why don’t I call you Sura?”

  She looked up at him in sudden woe. “Oh, Master, do not do so.”

  “But Rufirant did so on that day that we met. I know you well enough now—”

  “I know well he did so, Master. It be how a man speak to girl who have no man, no betrothed, who is—not complete. You say her previous. It is more honorable for me if you say ‘Novi’ and I be proud that you say so. And if I have not man now, I have master and I be pleased. I hope it be not offensive to you to say ‘Novi.’ ”

  “It certainly isn’t, Novi.”

  And her mind was beautifully smooth at that and Gendibal was pleased. Too pleased. Ought he to be so pleased?

  A little shamefacedly, he remembered that the Mule was supposed to have been affected in this manner by that woman of the First Foundation, Bayta Darell, to his own undoing.

  This, of course, was different. This Hamishwoman was his defense against alien minds and he wanted her to serve that purpose most efficiently.

  No, that was not true—His function as a Speaker would be compromised if he ceased to understand his own mind or, worse, if he deliberately misconstrued it to avoid the truth. The truth was that it pleased him when she was calm and peaceful and happy endogenously—without his interference—and that it pleased him simply because she pleased him; and (he thought defiantly) there was nothing wrong with that.

  He said, “Sit down, Novi.”

  She did so, balancing herself precariously at the edge of the chair and sitting as far away as the confines of the room allowed. Her mind was flooded with respect.

  He said, “When you saw me making sounds, Novi, I was speaking at a long distance, scholar-fashion.”

  Novi said sadly, her eyes cast down, “I see, Master, that there be much to scowler-fashion I understand not and imagine not. It be difficult mountain-high art. I be ashamed to have come
to you to be made scowler. How is it, Master, you did not be-laugh me?”

  Gendibal said, “It is no shame to aspire to something even if it is beyond your reach. You are now too old to be made a scholar after my fashion, but you are never too old to learn more than you already know and to become able to do more than you already can. I will teach you something about this ship. By the time we reach our destination, you will know quite a bit about it.”

  He felt delighted. Why not? He was deliberately turning his back on the stereotype of the Hamish people. What right, in any case, had the heterogeneous group of the Second Foundation to set up such a stereotype? The young produced by them were only occasionally suited to become high-level Second Foundationers themselves. The children of Speakers almost never qualified to be Speakers. There were the three generations of Linguesters three centuries ago, but there was always the suspicion that the middle Speaker of that series did not really belong. And if that were true, who were the people of the University to place themselves on so high a pedestal?

  He watched Novi’s eyes glisten and was pleased that they did.

  She said, “I try hard to learn all you teach me, Master.”

  “I’m sure you will,” he said—and then hesitated. It occurred to him that, in his conversation with Compor, he had in no way indicated at any time that he was not alone. There was no hint of a companion.

  A woman could be taken for granted, perhaps; at least, Compor would no doubt not be surprised. —But a Hamishwoman?

  For a moment, despite anything Gendibal could do, the stereotype reigned supreme and he found himself glad that Compor had never been on Trantor and would not recognize Novi as a Hamishwoman.

  He shook it off. It didn’t matter if Compor knew or knew not—or if anyone did. Gendibal was a Speaker of the Second Foundation and he could do as he pleased within the constraints of the Seldon Plan—and no one could interfere.

  Novi said “Master, once we reach our destination, will we part?”

  He looked at her and said, with perhaps more force than he intended, “We will not be separated, Novi.”