Foundation's Edge

by Isaac Asimov

  Pelorat said, “If you list it like that—”

  “List it any way you please,” said Trevize. “I don’t believe in extraordinary concatenations of coincidence.”

  “What does all this mean, then? That we are being maneuvered to Gaia?”

  “Yes.”

  “By whom?”

  Trevize said, “Surely there can be no question about that. Who is capable of adjusting minds, of giving gentle nudges to this one or that, of managing to divert progress in this direction or that?”

  “You’re going to tell me it’s the Second Foundation.”

  “Well, what have we been told about Gaia? It is untouchable. Fleets that move against it are destroyed. People who reach it do not return. Even the Mule didn’t dare move against it—and the Mule, in fact, was probably born there. Surely it seems that Gaia is the Second Foundation—and finding that, after all, is my ultimate goal.”

  Pelorat shook his head. “But according to some historians, the Second Foundation stopped the Mule. How could he have been one of them?”

  “A renegade, I suppose.”

  “But why should we be so relentlessly maneuvered toward the Second Foundation by the Second Foundation?”

  Trevize’s eyes were unfocused, his brow furrowed. He said, “Let’s reason it out. It has always seemed important to the Second Foundation that as little information as possible about it should be available to the Galaxy. Ideally it wants its very existence to remain unknown. We know that much about them. For a hundred twenty years, the Second Foundation was thought to be extinct and that must have suited them right down to the Galactic core. Yet when I began to suspect that they did exist, they did nothing. Compor knew. They might have used him to shut me up one way or another—had me killed, even. Yet they did nothing.”

  Pelorat said, “They had you arrested, if you want to blame that on the Second Foundation. According to what you told me, that resulted in the people of Terminus not knowing about your views. The people of the Second Foundation accomplished that much without violence and they may be devotees of Salvor Hardin’s remark that ‘Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.’ ”

  “But keeping it from the people of Terminus accomplishes nothing. Mayor Branno knows my view and—at the very least—must wonder if I am correct. So now, you see, it is too late for them to harm us. If they had gotten rid of me to begin with, they would be in the clear. If they had left me alone altogether, they might have still remained in the clear, for they might have maneuvered Terminus into believing I was an eccentric, perhaps a madman. The prospective ruin of my political career might even have forced me into silence as soon as I saw what the announcement of my beliefs would mean.

  “And now it is too late for them to do anything. Mayor Branno was suspicious enough of the situation to send Compor after me and—having no faith in him either, being wiser than I was—she placed a hyper-relay on Compor’s ship. In consequence, she knows we are on Sayshell. And last night, while you were sleeping, I had our computer place a message directly into the computer of the Foundation ambassador here on Sayshell, explaining that we were on our way to Gaia. I took the trouble of giving its coordinates, too. If the Second Foundation does anything to us now, I am certain that Branno will have the matter investigated—and the concentrated attention of the Foundation must surely be what they don’t want.”

  “Would they care about attracting the Foundation’s attention, if they are so powerful?”

  “Yes,” said Trevize forcefully. “They lie hidden because, in some ways, they must be weak and because the Foundation is technologically advanced perhaps beyond even what Seldon himself might have foreseen. The very quiet, even stealthy, way in which they’ve been maneuvering us to their world would seem to show their eager desire to do nothing that will attract attention. And if so, then they have already lost, at least in part—for they’ve attracted attention and I doubt they can do anything to reverse the situation.”

  Pelorat said, “But why do they go through all this? Why do they ruin themselves—if your analysis is correct—by angling for us across the Galaxy? What is it they want of us?”

  Trevize stared at Pelorat and flushed. “Janov,” he said, “I have a feeling about this. I have this gift of coming to a correct conclusion on the basis of almost nothing. There’s a kind of sureness about me that tells me when I’m right—and I’m sure now. There’s something I have that they want—and want enough to risk their very existence for. I don’t know what it can be, but I’ve got to find out, because if I’ve got it and if it’s that powerful, then I want to be able to use it for what I feel is right.” He shrugged slightly. “Do you still want to come along with me, old friend, now that you see how much a madman I am?”

  Pelorat said, “I told you I had faith in you. I still do.”

  And Trevize laughed with enormous relief. “Marvelous! Because another feeling I have is that you are, for some reason, also essential to this whole thing. In that case, Janov, we move on to Gaia, full speed. Forward!”

  2.

  MAYOR HARLA BRANNO LOOKED DISTINCTLY older than her sixty-two years. She did not always look older, but she did now. She had been sufficiently wrapped up in thought to forget to avoid the mirror and had seen her image on her way into the map room. So she was aware of the haggardness of her appearance.

  She sighed. It drained the life out of one. Five years a Mayor and for twelve years before that the real power behind two figureheads. All of it had been quiet, all of it successful, all of it—draining. How would it have been, she wondered, if there had been strain—failure—disaster.

  Not so bad for her personally, she suddenly decided. Action would have been invigorating. It was the horrible knowledge that nothing but drift was possible that had worn her out.

  It was the Seldon Plan that was successful and it was the Second Foundation that made sure it would continue to be. She, as the strong hand at the helm of the Foundation (actually the First Foundation, but no one on Terminus ever thought of adding the adjective) merely rode the crest.

  History would say little or nothing about her. She merely sat at the controls of a spaceship, while the spaceship was maneuvered from without.

  Even Indbur III, who had presided over the Foundation’s catastrophic fall to the Mule, had done something. He had, at least, collapsed.

  For Mayor Branno there would be nothing!

  Unless this Golan Trevize, this thoughtless Councilman, this lightning rod, made it possible—

  She looked at the map thoughtfully. It was not the kind of structure produced by a modern computer. It was, rather, a three-dimensional cluster of lights that pictured the Galaxy holographically in midair. Though it could not be made to move, to turn, to expand, or to contract, one could move about it and see it from any angle.

  A large section of the Galaxy, perhaps a third of the whole (excluding the core, which was a “no-life’s land”) turned red when she touched a contact. That was the Foundation Federation, the more than seven million inhabited worlds ruled by the Council and by herself—the seven million inhabited worlds who voted for and were represented in the House of Worlds, which debated matters of minor importance, and then voted on them, and never, by any chance, dealt with anything of major importance.

  Another contact and a faint pink jutted outward from the edges of the Federation, here and there. Spheres of influence! This was not Foundation territory, but the regions, though nominally independent, would never dream of resistance to any Foundation move.

  There was no question in her mind that no power in the Galaxy could oppose the Foundation (not even the Second Foundation, if one but knew where it was), that the Foundation could, at will, reach out its fleet of modern ships and simply set up the Second Empire.

  But only five centuries had passed since the beginning of the Plan. The Plan called for ten centuries before the Second Empire could be set up and the Second Foundation would make sure the Plan would hold. The Mayor shook her sad, gray head. If
the Foundation acted now, it would somehow fail. Though its ships were irresistible, action now would fail.

  Unless Trevize, the lightning rod, drew the lightning of the Second Foundation—and the lightning could be traced back to its source.

  She looked about. Where was Kodell? This was no time for him to be late.

  It was as though her thought had called him, for he came striding in, smiling cheerfully, looking more grandfatherly than ever with his gray-white mustache and tanned complexion. Grandfatherly, but not old. To be sure, he was eight years younger than she was.

  How was it he showed no marks of strain? Did not fifteen years as Director of Security leave its scar?

  3.

  KODELL NODDED SLOWLY IN THE FORMAL GREETING that was necessary in initiating a discussion with the Mayor. It was a tradition that had existed since the bad days of the Indburs. Almost everything had changed, but etiquette least of all.

  He said, “Sorry I’m late, Mayor, but your arrest of Councilman Trevize is finally beginning to make its way through the anesthetized skin of the Council.”

  “Oh?” said the Mayor phlegmatically. “Are we in for a palace revolution?”

  “Not the least chance. We’re in control. But there’ll be noise.”

  “Let them make noise. It will make them feel better, and I—I shall stay out of the way. I can count, I suppose, on general public opinion?”

  “I think you can. Especially away from Terminus. No one outside Terminus cares what happens to a stray Councilman.”

  “I do.”

  “Ah? More news?”

  “Liono,” said the Mayor, “I want to know about Sayshell.”

  “I’m not a two-legged history book,” said Liono Kodell, smiling.

  “I don’t want history. I want the truth. Why is Sayshell independent? —Look at it.” She pointed to the red of the Foundation on the holographic map and there, well into the inner spirals, was an in-pocketing of white.

  Branno said, “We’ve got it almost encapsulated—almost sucked in—yet it’s white. Our map doesn’t even show it as a loyal-ally-in-pink.”

  Kodell shrugged. “It’s not officially a loyal ally, but it never bothers us. It is neutral.”

  “All right. See this, then.” Another touch at the controls. The red sprang out distinctly further. It covered nearly half the Galaxy. “That,” said Mayor Branno, “was the Mule’s realm at the time of his death. If you’ll peer in among the red, you’ll find the Sayshell Union, completely surrounded this time, but still white. It is the only enclave left free by the Mule.”

  “It was neutral then, too.”

  “The Mule had no great respect for neutrality.”

  “He seems to have had, in this case.”

  “Seems to have had. What has Sayshell got?”

  Kodell said, “Nothing! Believe me, Mayor, she is ours any time we want her.”

  “Is she? Yet somehow she isn’t ours.”

  “There’s no need to want her.”

  Branno sat back in her chair and, with a sweep of her arm over the controls, turned the Galaxy dark. “I think we now want her.”

  “Pardon, Mayor?”

  “Liono, I sent that foolish Councilman into space as a lightning rod. I felt that the Second Foundation would see him as a greater danger than he was and see the Foundation itself as the lesser danger. The lightning would strike him and reveal its origin to us.”

  “Yes, Mayor!”

  “My intention was that he go to the decayed ruins of Trantor to fumble through what—if anything—was left of its Library and search for the Earth. That’s the world, you remember, that these wearisome mystics tell us was the site of origin of humanity, as though that matters, even in the unlikely case it is true. The Second Foundation couldn’t possibly have believed that was really what he was after and they would have moved to find out what he was really looking for.”

  “But he didn’t go to Trantor.”

  “No. Quite unexpectedly, he has gone to Sayshell. Why?”

  “I don’t know. But please forgive an old bloodhound whose duty it is to suspect everything and tell me how you know he and this Pelorat have gone to Sayshell. I know that Compor reports it, but how far can we trust Compor?”

  “The hyper-relay tells us that Compor’s ship has indeed landed on Sayshell Planet.”

  “Undoubtedly, but how do you know that Trevize and Pelorat have? Compor may have gone to Sayshell for his own reasons and may not know—or care—where the others are.”

  “The fact is, that our ambassador on Sayshell has informed us of the arrival of the ship on which we placed Trevize and Pelorat. I am not ready to believe the ship arrived at Sayshell without them. What is more, Compor reports having talked to them and, if he cannot be trusted, we have other reports placing them at Sayshell University, where they consulted with a historian of no particular note.”

  “None of this,” said Kodell mildly, “has reached me.”

  Branno sniffed. “Do not feel stepped on. I am dealing with this personally and the information has now reached you—with not much in the way of delay, either. The latest news—just received—is from the ambassador. Our lightning rod is moving on. He stayed on Sayshell Planet two days, then left. He is heading for another planet system, he says, some ten parsecs away. He gave the name and the Galactic co-ordinates of his destination to the ambassador, who passed them on to us.”

  “Is there anything corroborative from Compor?”

  “Compor’s message that Trevize and Pelorat have left Sayshell came even before the ambassador’s message. Compor has not yet determined where Trevize is going. Presumably he will follow.”

  Kodell said, “We are missing the why’s of the situation.” He popped a pastille into his mouth and sucked at it meditatively. “Why did Trevize go to Sayshell? Why did he leave?”

  “The question that intrigues me most is: Where? Where is Trevize going?”

  “You did say, Mayor, did you not, that he gave the name and co-ordinates of his destination to the ambassador. Are you implying that he lied to the ambassador? Or that the ambassador is lying to us?”

  “Even assuming everyone told the truth all round and that no one made any errors, there is a name that interests me. Trevize told the ambassador he was going to Gaia. That’s G-A-I-A. Trevize was careful to spell it.”

  Kodell said, “Gaia? I never heard of it.”

  “Indeed? That’s not strange.” Branno pointed to the spot in the air where the map had been. “Upon the map in this room, I can set up, at a moment’s notice, every star—supposedly—around which there circles an inhabited world and many prominent stars with uninhabited systems. Over thirty million stars can be marked out—if I handle the controls properly—in single units, in pairs, in clusters. I can mark them out in any of five different colors, one at a time, or all together. What I cannot do is locate Gaia on the map. As far as the map is concerned, Gaia does not exist.”

  Kodell said, “For every star the map shows, there are ten thousand it doesn’t show.”

  “Granted, but the stars it doesn’t show lack inhabited planets and why would Trevize want to go to an uninhabited planet?”

  “Have you tried the Central Computer? It has all three hundred billion Galactic stars listed.”

  “I’ve been told it has, but does it? We know very well, you and I, that there are thousands of inhabited planets that have escaped listing on any of our maps—not only on the one in this room, but even on the Central Computer. Gaia is apparently one of them.”

  Kodell’s voice remained calm, even coaxing. “Mayor, there may well be nothing at all to be concerned about. Trevize may be off on a wild goose chase or he may be lying to us and there is no star called Gaia—and no star at all at the co-ordinates he gave us. He is trying to throw us off his scent, now that he has met Compor and perhaps guesses he is being traced.”

  “How will this throw us off the scent? Compor will still follow. No, Liono, I have another possibility in mind, one
with far greater potentiality for trouble. Listen to me—”

  She paused and said, “This room is shielded, Liono. Understand that. We cannot be overheard by anyone, so please feel free to speak. And I will speak freely, as well.

  “This Gaia is located, if we accept the information, ten parsecs from Sayshell Planet and is therefore part of the Sayshell Union. The Sayshell Union is a well-explored portion of the Galaxy. All its star systems—inhabited or not inhabited—are recorded and the inhabited ones are known in detail. Gaia is the one exception. Inhabited or not, none have heard of it; it is present in no map. Add to this that the Sayshell Union maintains a peculiar state of independence with respect to the Foundation Federation, and did so even with respect to the Mule’s former realm. It has been independent since the fall of the Galactic Empire.”

  “What of all this?” asked Kodell cautiously.

  “Surely the two points I have made must be connected. Sayshell incorporates a planetary system that is totally unknown and Sayshell is untouchable. The two cannot be independent. Whatever Gaia is, it protects itself. It sees to it that there is no knowledge of its existence outside its immediate surroundings and it protects those surroundings so that outsiders cannot take over.”

  “You are telling me, Mayor, that Gaia is the seat of the Second Foundation?”

  “I am telling you that Gaia deserves inspection.”

  “May I mention an odd point that might be difficult to explain by this theory?”

  “Please do.”

  “If Gaia is the Second Foundation and if, for centuries, it has protected itself physically against intruders, protecting all of the Sayshell Union as a broad, deep shield for itself, and if it has even prevented knowledge of itself leaking into the Galaxy—then why has all that protection suddenly vanished? Trevize and Pelorat leave Terminus and, even though you had advised them to go to Trantor, they go immediately and without hesitation to Sayshell and now to Gaia. What is more, you can think of Gaia and speculate on it. Why are you not somehow prevented from doing so?”