Prelude to Foundation

by Isaac Asimov

  The Emperor scowled and reddened slightly. "I am annoyed at that word-'untouchable.' There should be nowhere in the Empire my hand cannot reach. Yet here, on my own world, you tell me someone can be untouchable. Insufferable!"

  "Your hand can reach to the University, Sire. You can send in your army and pluck out this Seldon at any moment you desire. To do so, however, is . . . undesirable."

  "Why don't you say 'impractical,' Demerzel. You sound like the mathematician speaking of his fortune-telling. It is possible, but impractical. I am an Emperor who finds everything possible, but very little practical. Remember, Demerzel, if reaching Seldon is not practical, reaching you is entirely so."

  Eto Demerzel let this last comment pass. The "man behind the throne" knew his importance to the Emperor, he had heard such threats before. He waited in silence while the Emperor glowered. Drumming his fingers against the arm of his chair, Cleon asked, ..Well then, what good is this mathematician to us if he is at Streeling University?"

  "It may perhaps be possible, Sire, to snatch use out of adversity. At the University, he may decide to work on his psychohistory."

  "Even though he insists it's impractical?"

  "He may be wrong and he may find out that he is wrong. And if he finds out that he is wrong, we would find some way of getting him out of the University. It is even possible he would join us voluntarily under those circumstances."

  The Emperor remained lost in thought for a while, then said, "And what if someone else plucks him out before we do?"

  "Who would want to do that, Sire?" asked Demerzel softy.

  "The Mayor of Wye, for one," said Cleon, suddenly shouting. "He dreams still of taking over the Empire."

  "Old age has drawn his fangs, Sire."

  "Don't you believe it, Demerzel."

  "And we have no reason for supposing he has any interest in Seldon or even knows of him, Sire."

  "Come on, Demerzel. If we heard of the paper, so could Wye. If we see the possible importance of Seldon, so could Wye."

  "If that should happen," said Demerzel, "or even if there should be a reasonable chance of its happening, then we would be justified in taking strong measures."

  "How strong?"

  Demerzel said cautiously, "It might be argued that rather than have Seldon in Wye's hands, we might prefer to have him in no one's hands. To have him cease to exist, Sire."

  "To have him killed, you mean," said Cleon.

  "If you wish to put it that way, Sire," said Demerzel.

  20.

  Hari Seldon sat back in his chair in the alcove that had been assigned to him through Dors Venabili's intervention. He was dissatisfied.

  As a matter of fact, although that was the expression he used in his mind, he knew that it was a gross underestimation of his feelings. He was not simply dissatisfied, he was furious-all the more so because he wasn't sure what it was he was furious about. Was it about the histories? The writers and compilers of histories? The worlds and people that made the histories?

  Whatever the target of his fury, it didn't really matter. What counted was that his notes were useless, his new knowledge was useless, everything was useless.

  He had been at the University now for almost six weeks. He had managed to find a computer outlet at the very start and with it had begun work-without instruction, but using the instincts he had developed over a number of years of mathematical labors. It had been slow and halting, but there was a certain pleasure in gradually determining the routes by which he could get his questions answered.

  Then came the week of instruction with Dors, which had taught him several dozen shortcuts and had brought with it two sets of embarrassments. The first set included the sidelong glances he received from the undergraduates, who seemed contemptuously aware of his greater age and who were disposed to frown a bit at Dors's constant use of the honorific "Doctor" in addressing him.

  "I don't want them to think," she said, "that you're some backward perpetual student taking remedial history."

  "But surely you've established the point. Surely, a mere 'Seldon' is sufficient now."

  "No," Dors said and smiled suddenly. "Besides, I like to call you 'Dr. Seldon.' I like the way you look uncomfortable each time."

  "You have a peculiar sense of sadistic humor."

  "Would you deprive me?"

  For some reason, that made him laugh. Surely, the natural reaction would have been to deny sadism. Somehow he found it pleasant that she accepted the ball of conversation and fired it back. The thought led to a natural question. "Do you play tennis here at the University?"

  "We have courts, but I don't play."

  "Good. I'll teach you. And when I do, I'll call you Professor Venabili. "

  "That's what you call me in class anyway."

  "You'll be surprised how ridiculous it will sound on the tennis court. "

  "I may get to like it."

  "In that case, I will try to find what else you might get to like."

  "I see you have a peculiar sense of salacious humor."

  She had put that ball in that spot deliberately and he said, "Would you deprive me?"

  She smiled and later did surprisingly well on the tennis court. "Are you sure you never played tennis?" he said, puffing, after one session.

  "Positive," she said.

  The other set of embarrassments was more private. He learned the necessary techniques of historical research and then burned-in privateat his earlier attempts to make use of the computer's memory. It was simply an entirely different mind-set from that used in mathematics. It was equally logical, he supposed, since it could be used, consistently and without error, to move in whatever direction he wanted to, but it was a substantially different brand of logic from that to which he was accustomed.

  But with or without instructions, whether he stumbled or moved in swiftly, he simply didn't get any results.

  His annoyance made itself felt on the tennis court. Dors quickly reached the stage where it was no longer necessary to lob easy balls at her to give her time to judge direction and distance. That made it easy to forget that she was just a beginner and he expressed his anger in his swing, firing the ball back at her as though it were a laser beam made solid.

  She came trotting up to the net and said, "I can understand your wanting to kill me, since it must annoy you to watch me miss the shots so often. How is it, though, that you managed to miss my head by about three centimeters that time? I mean, you didn't even nick me. Can't you do better than that?"

  Seldon, horrified, tried to explain, but only managed to sound incoherent.

  She said, "Look. I'm not going to face any other returns of yours today, so why don't we shower and then get together for some tea and whatever and you can tell me just what you were trying to kill. If it wasn't my poor head and if you don't get the real victim off your chest, you'll be entirely too dangerous on the other side of the net for me to want to serve as a target."

  Over tea he said, "Dors, I've scanned history after history; just scanned, browsed. I haven't had time for deep study yet. Even so, it's become obvious. All the book-films concentrate on the same few events."

  "Crucial ones. History-making ones."

  "That's just an excuse. They're copying each other. There are twentyfive million worlds out there and there's significant mention of perhaps twenty-five."

  Dors said, "You're reading general Galactic histories only. Look up the special histories of some of the minor worlds. On every world, however small, the children are taught local histories before they ever find out there's a great big Galaxy outside. Don't you yourself know more about Helicon, right now, than you know about the rise of Trantor or of the Great Interstellar War?"

  "That sort of knowledge is limited too," said Seldon gloomily. "I know Heliconian geography and the stories of its settlement and of the malfeasance and misfeasance of the planet Jennisek-that's our traditional enemy, though our teachers carefully told us that we ought to say 'traditional rival.' But I never lear
ned anything about the contributions of Helicon to general Galactic history."

  "Maybe there weren't any."

  "Don't be silly. Of course there were. There may not have been great, huge space battles involving Helicon or crucial rebellions or peace treaties. There may not have been some Imperial competitor making his base on Helicon. But there must have been subtle influences. Surely, nothing can happen anywhere without affecting everywhere else. Yet there's nothing I can find' to help me. wee here, Dors. In mathematics, all can be found in the computer; everything we know or have found out in twenty thousand years. In history, that's not so. Historians pick and choose and every one of them picks and chooses the same thing."

  "But, Hari," said Dors, "mathematics is an orderly thing of human invention. One thing follows from another. There are definitions and axioms, all of which are known. It is . . . it is . . . all one piece. History is different. It is the unconscious working out of the deeds and thoughts of quadrillions of human beings. Historians must pick and choose."

  "Exactly," said Seldon, "but I must know all of history if I am to work out the laws of psychohistory."

  "In that case, you won't ever formulate the laws of psychohistory."

  That was yesterday. Now Seldon sat in his chair in his alcove, having spent another day of utter failure, and he could hear Dors's voice saying, "In that case, you won't ever formulate the laws of psychohistory."

  It was what he had thought to begin with and if it hadn't been for Hummin's conviction to the contrary and his odd ability to fire Seldon with his own blaze of conviction, Seldon would have continued to think so.

  And yet neither could he quite let go. Might there not be some way out?

  He couldn't think of any.

  * * *

  Upperside

  TRANTOR- . . . It is almost never pictured as a world seen from space. It has long since captured the general mind of humanity as a world of the interior and the image is that of the human hive that existeed under the domes. Yet there was an exterior as well and there are holographs that still remain that were taken from apace and show varying degrees of devil (see Figures 14 and l5 ). Note that the surface of the domes, the interface of the vast city and the overlying atmosphere, a surface referred to in its time as "Upperside," is . . .

  ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA

  21.

  Yet the following day found Hari Seldon back in the library. For one thing, there was his promise to Hummin. He had promised to try and he couldn't very well make it a halfhearted process. For another, he owed something to himself too. He resented having to admit failure. Not yet, at least. Not while he could plausibly tell himself he was following up leads.

  So he stared at the list of reference book-films he had not yet checked through and tried to decide which of the unappetizing number had the slightest chance of being useful to him. He had about decided that the answer was "none of the above" and saw no way out but to look at samples of each when he was startled by a gentle tap against the alcove wall.

  Seldon looked up and found the embarrassed face of Usung Rands peering at him around the edge of the alcove opening. Seldon knew Randa, had been introduced to him by Dors, and had dined with him (and with others) on several occasions.

  Randa, an instructor in psychology, was a little man, short and plump, with a round cheerful face and an almost perpetual smile. He had a sallow complexion and the narrowed eyes so characteristic of people on millions of worlds. Seldon knew that appearance well, for there were many of the great mathematicians who had borne it, and he had frequently seen their holograms. Yet on Helicon he had never seen one of these Easterners. (By tradition they were called that, though no one knew why; and the Easterners themselves were said to resent the term to some degree, but again no one knew why.)

  "There's millions of us here on Trantor," Randa had said, smiling with no trace of self-consciousness, when Seldon, on first meeting him, had not been able to repress all trace of startled surprise. "You'll also find lot of Southerners-dark skins, tightly curled hair. Did you ever see one?"

  "Not on Helicon," muttered Seldon.

  "All Westerners on Helicon, eh? How dull! But it doesn't matter. Takes all kinds." (He left Seldon wondering at the fact that there were Easterners, Southerners, and Westerners, but no Northerners. He had tried finding an answer to why that might be in his reference searches and had not succeeded.)

  And now Randa's good-natured face was looking at him with an almost ludicrous look of concern. He said, "Are you all right, Seldon?"

  Seldon stared. "Yes, of course. Why shouldn't I be?"

  "I'm just going by sounds, my friend. You were screaming."

  "Screaming?" Seldon looked at him with offended disbelief.

  "Not loud. Like this." Ranch gritted his teeth and emitted a strangled high-pitched sound from the back of his throat. "If I'm wrong, I apologize for this unwarranted intrusion on you. Please forgive me."

  Seldon hung his head. "You're forgiven, Lisung. I do make that sound sometimes, I'm told. I assure you it's unconscious. I'm never aware of it."

  "Are you aware why you make it?"

  "Yes. Frustration. Frustration. "

  Randa beckoned Seldon closer and lowered his voice further. "We're disturbing people. Let's come out to the lounge before we're thrown out."

  In the lounge, over a pair of mild drinks, Randa said, "May I ask you, as a matter of professional interest, why you are feeling frustration?"

  Seldon shrugged. "Why does one usually feel frustration? I'm tackling something in which I am making no progress."

  "But you're a mathematician, Hari. Why should anything in the history library frustrate you?"

  "What were you doing here?"

  "Passing through as part of a shortcut to where I was going when I heard you . . . moaning. Now you see"--and he smiled-"it's no longer a shortcut, but a serious delay-one that I welcome, however."

  "I wish I were just passing through the history library, but I'm trying to solve a mathematical problem that requires some knowledge of history and I'm afraid I'm not handling it well."

  Randa stared at Seldon with an unusually solemn expression on his face, then he said, "Pardon me, but I must run the risk of offending you now. I've been computering you."

  "Computering me.!" Seldon's eyes widened. He felt distinctly angry.

  "I have offended you. But, you know, I had an uncle who was a mathematician. You might even have heard of him: Kiangtow Randa."

  Seldon drew in his breath. "Are you a relative of that Randa?"

  "Yes. He is my father's older brother and he was quite displeased with me for not following in his footsteps-he has no children of his own. I thought somehow that it might please him that I had met a mathematician and I wanted to boast of you-if I could-so I checked what information the mathematics library might have."

  "I see. And that's what you were really doing there. Well-fm sorry. I don't suppose you could do much boasting."

  "You suppose wrong. I was impressed. I couldn't make heads or tails of the subject matter of your papers, but somehow the information seemed to be very favorable. And when I checked the news files, I found you were at the Decennial Convention earlier this year. So . . . what's 'psychohistory,' anyway? Obviously, the first two syllables stir my curiosity."

  "I see you got that word out of it."

  "Unless I'm totally misled, it seemed to me that you can work out the future course of history."

  Seldon nodded wearily, "That, more or less, is what psychohistory is or, rather, what it is intended to be."

  "But is it a serious study?" Randa was smiling. "You don't just throw sticks?"

  "throw sticks?"

  "That's just a reference to a game played by children on my home planet of Hopara. The game is supposed to tell the future and if you're a smart kid, you can make a good thing out of it. Tell a mother that her child will grow up beautiful and marry a rich man and it's good for a piece of cake or a half-credit piece on the spot. She isn't g
oing to wait and see if it comes true; you are rewarded just for saying it."

  "I see. No, I don't throw sticks. Psychohistory is just an abstract study. Strictly abstract. It has no practical application at all, except-"

  "Now we're getting to it. Exceptions are what are interesting."

  "Except that I would like to work out such an application. Perhaps if I knew more about history-"

  "Ah, that is why you are reading history?"

  "Yes, but it does me no good," said Seldon sadly. "There is too much history and there is too little of it that is told."

  "And that's what's frustrating you?"

  Seldon nodded.

  Randa said, "But, Hari, you've only been here a matter of weeks."

  "True, but already I can see--"

  "You can't see anything in a few weeks. You may have to spend your whole lifetime making one little advance. It may take many generations of work by many mathematicians to make a real inroad on the problem."

  "I know that, Lisung, but that doesn't make me feel better. I want to make some visible progress myself."

  "Well, driving yourself to distraction won't help either. If it will make you feel better, I can give you an example of a subject much less complex than human history that people have been working for I don't know how long without making much progress. I know because a group is working on it right here at the University and one of my good friends is involved. Talk about frustration! You don't know what frustration is!"

  "What's the subject?" Seldon felt a small curiosity stirring within him.

  "Meteorology."

  "Meteorology!" Seldon felt revolted at the anticlimax.

  "Don't make faces. Look. Every inhabited world has an atmosphere. Every world has its own atmospheric composition, its own temperature range, its own rotation and revolution rate, its own axial tipping, it's own land-water distribution. We've got twenty five million different problems and no one has succeeded in finding a generalization."

  ...that's because atmospheric behavior easily enters a chaotic phase. Everyone knows that."

  "So my friend Jenarr Leggen says. You've met him."