Forward the Foundation f-2

by Isaac Asimov

  And it was as he said. Seldon resigned gracefully from the post he had held for ten years. He was given a fulsome letter of appreciation for his services by the just-formed military government, a junta led by certain members of the Imperial Guard and the armed forces. He returned to Streeling University and Manella Dubanqua, relieved of her own post as a security officer, went with Seldon and his family.

  4

  Raych came in, blowing on his hands. “I’m all for deliberate variety in the weather. You don’t want things under a dome to always be the same. Today, though, they made it just a little too cold and worked up a wind, besides. I think it’s about time someone complained to weather control.”

  “I don’t know that it’s weather control’s fault,” said Seldon. “It’s getting harder to control things in general.”

  “I know. Deterioration.” Raych brushed his thick black mustache with the back of his hand. He did that often, as though he had never quite managed to get over the few months during which he had been mustacheless in Wye. He had also put on a little weight around the middle and, overall, had come to seem very comfortable and middle-class. Even his Dahl accent had faded somewhat.

  He took off his light coverall and said, “And how’s the old birthday boy?”

  “Resenting it. Wait, wait, my son. One of these days, you’ll be celebrating your fortieth birthday. We’ll see how funny you’ll think that is.”

  “Not as funny as sixty.”

  “Stop joking,” said Manella, who had been chafing Raych’s hands, trying to warm them.

  Seldon spread his own hands. “We’re doing the wrong thing, Raych. Your wife is of the opinion that all this talk about my turning sixty has sent little Wanda into a decline over the possibility of my dying.”

  “Really?” said Raych. “That accounts for it, then. I stopped in to see her and she told me at once, before I even had a chance to say a word, that she had had a bad dream. Was it about your dying?”

  “Apparently,” said Seldon.

  “Well, she’ll get over that. No way of stopping bad dreams.”

  “I’m not dismissing it that easily,” said Manella. “She’s brooding over it and that’s not healthy. I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”

  “As you say, Manella,” said Raych agreeably. “You’re my dear wife and whatever you say—about Wanda—goes.” And he brushed his mustache again.

  His dear wife! It hadn’t been so easy to make her his dear wife. Raych remembered his mother’s attitude toward the possibility. Talk about nightmares. It was he who had the periodic nightmares in which he had to face down the furious Dors Venabili once more.

  5

  Raych’s first clear memory, after emerging from his desperance-induced ordeal, was that of being shaved.

  He felt the vibrorazor moving along his cheek and he said weakly, “Don’t cut anywhere near my upper lip, barber. I want my mustache back.”

  The barber, who had already received his instructions from Seldon, held up a mirror to reassure him.

  Dors Venabili, who was sitting at his bedside, said, “Let him work, Raych. Don’t excite yourself.”

  Raych’s eyes turned toward her momentarily and he was quiet. When the barber left, Dors said, “How do you feel, Raych?”

  “Rotten,” he muttered. “I’m so depressed, I can’t stand it.”

  “That’s the lingering effect of the desperance you’ve been dosed with. The effects will wash out.”

  “I can’t believe it. How long has it been?”

  “Never mind. It will take time. You were pumped full of it.”

  He looked around restlessly. “Has Manella been to see me?”

  “That woman?” (Raych was getting used to hearing Dors speak of Manella with those words and in that tone of voice.) “No. You’re not fit for visitors yet.”

  Interpreting the look on Raych’s face, Dors quickly added, “I’m an exception because I’m your mother, Raych. Why would you want that woman to see you, anyway? You’re in no condition to be seen.”

  “All the more reason to see her,” muttered Raych. “I want her to see me at my worst.” He then turned to one side dispiritedly. “I want to sleep.”

  Dors Venabili shook her head. Later that day she said to Seldon, “I don’t know what we’re going to do about Raych, Hari. He’s quite unreasonable.”

  Seldon said, “He’s not well, Dors. Give the young man a chance.”

  “He keeps muttering about that woman. Whatever her name is.”

  “Manella Dubanqua. It’s not a hard name to remember.”

  “I think he wants to set up housekeeping with her. Live with her. Marry her.”

  Seldon shrugged. “Raych is thirty—old enough to make up his own mind.”

  “As his parents, we have something to say—surely.”

  Hari sighed. “And I’m sure you’ve said it, Dors. And once you’ve said it, I’m sure he’ll do as he wishes.”

  “Is that your final word? Do you intend to do nothing while he makes plans to marry a woman like that?”

  “What do you expect me to do, Dors? Manella saved Raych’s life. Do you expect him to forget that? She saved mine, too, for that matter.”

  That seemed to feed Dors’s anger. She said, “And you also saved her. The score is even.”

  “I didn’t exactly—”

  “Of course you did. The military rascals who now run the Empire would have slaughtered her if you didn’t step in and sell them your resignation and your support in order to save her.”

  “Though I may have evened the score, which I don’t think I have, Raych has not. And, Dors dear, I would be very careful when it came to using unfortunate terms to describe our government. These times are not going to be as easy as the times when Cleon ruled and there will always be informers to repeat what they hear you say.”

  “Never mind that. I don’t like that woman. I presume that, at least, is permissible.”

  “Permissible, certainly, but of no use.”

  Hari looked down at the floor, deep in thought. Dors’s usually unfathomable black eyes were positively flashing in anger. Hari looked up.

  “What I’d like to know, Dors, is why? Why do you dislike Manella so? She saved our lives. If it had not been for her quick action, both Raych and I would be dead.”

  Dors snapped back, “Yes, Hari. I know that better than anyone. And if she had not been there, I would not have been able to do a thing to prevent your murder. I suppose you think I should be grateful. But every time I look at that woman, I am reminded of my failure. I know these feelings are not truly rational—and that is something I can’t explain. So do not ask me to like her, Hari. I cannot.”

  But the next day even Dors had to back down when the doctor said, “Your son wishes to see a woman named Manella.”

  “He’s in no condition to see visitors,” snapped Dors.

  “On the contrary. He is. He’s doing quite well. Besides, he insists and is doing so most strenuously. I don’t know that we’d be wise to refuse him.”

  So they brought in Manella and Raych greeted her effusively and with the first faint sign of happiness since he had arrived at the hospital.

  He made an unmistakable small gesture of dismissal at Dors. Lips tightened, she left.

  And the day came when Raych said, “She’ll have me, Mom.”

  Dors said, “Do you expect me to be surprised, you foolish man? Of course she’ll have you. You’re her only chance, now that she’s been disgraced, ousted from the security establishment . . .”

  Raych said, “Mom, if you’re trying to lose me, this is exactly the way of doing it. Don’t say things like that.”

  “I’m only thinking of your welfare.”

  “I’ll think of my own good, thank you. I’m no one’s ticket to respectability—if you’ll stop to think of it. I’m not exactly handsome. I’m short. Dad isn’t First Minister anymore and I talk solid lower-class. What’s there for her to be proud of in me? She can do a lot better
, but she wants me. And let me tell you, I want her.”

  “But you know what she is.”

  “Of course I know what she is. She’s a woman who loves me. She’s the woman I love. That’s what she is.”

  “And before you fell in love with her, what was she? You know some of what she had to do while undercover in Wye—you were one of her ‘assignments.’ How many others were there? Are you able to live with her past? With what she did in the name of duty? Now you can afford to be idealistic. But someday you will have your first quarrel with her—or your second or your nineteenth—and you’ll break down and say, ‘You wh——!’ ”

  Raych shouted angrily, “Don’t say that! When we fight, I’ll call her unreasonable, irrational, nagging, whining, inconsiderate—a million adjectives that will fit the situation. And she’ll have words for me. But they’ll all be sensible words that can be withdrawn when the fight is over.”

  “You think so—but just wait till it happens.”

  Raych had turned white. He said, “Mother, you’ve been with Father now for almost twenty years. Father is a hard man to disagree with, but there have been times when you two have argued. I’ve heard you. In all those twenty years, has he ever called you by any name that would in any way compromise your role as human being? For that matter, have I done so? Can you conceive of me doing so now—no matter how angry I get?”

  Dors struggled. Her face did not show emotion in quite the same way that Raych’s did or Seldon’s would, but it was clear that she was momentarily incapable of speech.

  “In fact,” said Raych, pushing his advantage (and feeling horrible at doing so) “the fact of the matter is that you are jealous because Manella saved Dad’s life. You don’t want anyone to do that but you. Well, you had no chance to do so. Would you prefer it if Manella had not shot Andorin—if Dad had died? And me, too?”

  Dors said in a choked voice, “He insisted on going out to meet the gardeners alone. He would not allow me to come.”

  “But that wasn’t Manella’s fault.”

  “Is that why you want to marry her? Gratitude?”

  “No. Love.”

  And so it was, but Manella said to Raych after the ceremony, “Your mother may have attended the wedding because you insisted, Raych, but she looked like one of those thunderclouds they sometimes send sailing under the dome.”

  Raych laughed. “She doesn’t have the face to be a thundercloud. You’re just imagining it.”

  “Not at all. How will we ever get her to give us a chance?”

  “We’ll just be patient. She’ll get over it.”

  But Dors Venabili didn’t.

  Two years after the wedding, Wanda was born. Dors’s attitude toward the child was all Raych and Manella could have wanted, but Wanda’s mother remained “that woman” to Raych’s mother.

  6

  Hari Seldon was fighting off melancholy. He was lectured in turn by Dors, by Raych, by Yugo, and by Manella. All united to tell him that sixty was not old.

  They simply did not understand. He had been thirty when the first hint of psychohistory had come to him, thirty-two when he delivered his famous lecture at the Decennial Convention, following which everything seemed to happen to him at once. After his brief interview with Cleon, he had fled across Trantor and met Demerzel, Dors, Yugo, and Raych, to say nothing of the people of Mycogen, of Dahl, and of Wye.

  He was forty when he became First Minister and fifty when he had relinquished the post. Now he was sixty.

  He had spent thirty years on psychohistory. How many more years would he require? How many more years would he live? Would he die with the Psychohistory Project unfinished after all?

  It was not the dying that bothered him, he told himself. It was the matter of leaving the Psychohistory Project unfinished.

  He went to see Yugo Amaryl. In recent years they had somehow drifted apart, as the Psychohistory Project had steadily increased in size. In the first years at Streeling, it had merely been Seldon and Amaryl working together—no one else. Now—

  Amaryl was nearly fifty—not exactly a young man—and he had somehow lost his spark. In all these years, he had developed no interest in anything but psychohistory: no woman, no companion, no hobby, no subsidiary activity.

  Amaryl blinked at Seldon, who couldn’t help but note the changes in the man’s appearance. Part of it may have been because Yugo had had to have his eyes reconstructed. He saw perfectly well, but there was an unnatural look about them and he tended to blink slowly. It made him appear sleepy.

  “What do you think, Yugo?” said Seldon. “Is there any light at the end of the tunnel?”

  “Light? Yes, as a matter of fact,” said Amaryl. “There’s this new fellow, Tamwile Elar. You know him, of course.”

  “Oh yes. I’m the one who hired him. Very vigorous and aggressive. How’s he doing?”

  “I can’t say I’m really comfortable with him, Hari. His loud laughter gets on my nerves. But he’s brilliant. The new system of equations fits right into the Prime Radiant and they seem to make it possible to get around the problem of chaos.”

  “Seem? Or will?”

  “Too early to say, but I’m very hopeful. I have tried a number of things that would have broken them down if they were worthless and the new equations survived them all. I’m beginning to think of them as ‘the achaotic equations.’ ”

  “I don’t imagine,” said Seldon, “we have anything like a rigorous demonstration concerning these equations?”

  “No, we don’t, though I’ve put half a dozen people on it, including Elar, of course.” Amaryl turned on his Prime Radiant—which was every bit as advanced as Seldon’s was—and he watched as the curving lines of luminous equations curled in midair—too small, too fine to be read without amplification. “Add the new equations and we may be able to begin to predict.”

  “Each time I study the Prime Radiant now,” said Seldon thoughtfully, “I wonder at the Electro-Clarifier and how tightly it squeezes material into the lines and curves of the future. Wasn’t that Elar’s idea, too?”

  “Yes. With the help of Cinda Monay, who designed it.”

  “It’s good to have new and brilliant men and women in the Project. Somehow it reconciles me to the future.”

  “You think someone like Elar may be heading the Project someday?” asked Amaryl, still studying the Prime Radiant.

  “Maybe. After you and I have retired—or died.”

  Amaryl seemed to relax and turned off the device. “I would like to complete the task before we retire or die.”

  “So would I, Yugo. So would I.”

  “Psychohistory has guided us pretty well in the last ten years.”

  That was true enough, but Seldon knew that one couldn’t attach too much triumph to that. Things had gone smoothly and without major surprises.

  Psychohistory had predicted that the center would hold after Cleon’s death—predicted it in a very dim and uncertain way—and it did hold. Trantor was reasonably quiet. Even with an assassination and the end of a dynasty, the center had held.

  It did so under the stress of military rule—Dors was quite right in speaking of the junta as “those military rascals.” She might have even gone farther in her accusations without being wrong. Nevertheless, they were holding the Empire together and would continue to do so for a time. Long enough, perhaps, to allow psychohistory to play an active role in the events that were to transpire.

  Lately Yugo had been speaking about the possible establishment of Foundations—separate, isolated, independent of the Empire itself—serving as seeds for developments through the forthcoming dark ages and into a new and better Empire. Seldon himself had been working on the consequences of such an arrangement.

  But he lacked the time and, he felt (with a certain misery), he lacked the youth as well. His mind, however firm and steady, did not have the resiliency and creativity that it had had when he was thirty and with each passing year, he knew he would have less.

  Perhaps he
ought to put the young and brilliant Elar on the task, taking him off everything else. Seldon had to admit to himself, shamefacedly, that the possibility did not excite him. He did not want to have invented psychohistory so that some stripling could come in and reap the final fruits of fame. In fact, to put it at its most disgraceful, Seldon felt jealous of Elar and realized it just sufficiently to feel ashamed of the emotion.

  Yet, regardless of his less rational feelings, he would have to depend on other younger men—whatever his discomfort over it. Psychohistory was no longer the private preserve of himself and Amaryl. The decade of his being First Minister had converted it into a large government-sanctioned and -budgeted undertaking and, quite to his surprise, after resigning from his post as First Minister and returning to Streeling University, it had grown still larger. Hari grimaced at its ponderous—and pompous—official name: the Seldon Psychohistory Project at Streeling University. But most people simply referred to it as the Project.

  The military junta apparently saw the Project as a possible political weapon and while that was so, funding was no problem. Credits poured in. In return, it was necessary to prepare annual reports, which, however, were quite opaque. Only fringe matters were reported on and even then the mathematics was not likely to be within the purview of any of the members of the junta.

  It was clear as he left his old assistant that Amaryl, at least, was more than satisfied with the way psychohistory was going and yet Seldon felt the blanket of depression settle over him once more.

  He decided it was the forthcoming birthday celebration that was bothering him. It was meant as a celebration of joy, but to Hari it was not even a gesture of consolation—it merely emphasized his age.

  Besides, it was upsetting his routine and Hari was a creature of habit. His office and a number of those adjoining had been cleared out and it had been days since he had been able to work normally. His proper offices would be converted into halls of glory, he supposed, and it would be many days before he could get back to work. Only Amaryl absolutely refused to budge and was able to maintain his office.