by Isaac Asimov
Shandess said, “The Seldon Plan is meaningless? What a remarkable statement! Have you looked at the Prime Radiant lately, Speaker Gendibal?”
“I study it frequently, First Speaker. It is my duty to do so and my pleasure as well.”
“Do you, by any chance, study only those portions of it that fall under your purview, now and then? Do you observe it in microfashion—an equation system here, an adjustment rivulet there? Highly important, of course, but I have always thought it an excellent occasional exercise to observe the whole course. Studying the Prime Radiant, acre by acre, has its uses—but observing it as a continent is inspirational. To tell you the truth, Speaker, I have not done it for a long time myself. Would you join me?”
Gendibal dared not pause too long. It had to be done, and it must be done easily and pleasantly or it might as well not be done. “It would be an honor and a pleasure, First Speaker.”
The First Speaker depressed a lever on the side of his desk. There was one such in the office of every Speaker and the one in Gendibal’s office was in no way inferior to that of the First Speaker. The Second Foundation was an equalitarian society in all its surface manifestations—the unimportant ones. In fact, the only official prerogative of the First Speaker was that which was explicit in his title—he always spoke first.
The room grew dark with the depression of the lever but, almost at once, the darkness lifted into a pearly dimness. Both long walls turned faintly creamy, then brighter and whiter, and finally there appeared neatly printed equations—so small that they could not be easily read.
“If you have no objections,” said the First Speaker, making it quite clear that there would be none allowed, “we will reduce the magnification in order to see as much at one time as we can.”
The neat printing shrank down into fine hairlines, faint black meanderings over the pearly background.
The First Speaker touched the keys of the small console built into the arm of his chair. “We’ll bring it back to the start—to the lifetime of Hari Seldon—and we’ll adjust it to a small forward movement. We’ll shutter it so that we can only see a decade of development at a time. It gives one a wonderful feeling of the flow of history, with no distractions by the details. I wonder if you have ever done this.”
“Never exactly this way, First Speaker.”
“You should. It’s a marvelous feeling. Observe the sparseness of the black tracery at the start. There was not much chance for alternatives in the first few decades. The branch points, however, increase exponentially with time. Were it not for the fact that, as soon as a particular branch is taken, there is an extinction of a vast array of others in its future, all would soon become unmanageable. Of course, in dealing with the future, we must be careful what extinctions we rely upon.”
“I know, First Speaker.” There was a touch of dryness in Gendibal’s response that he could not quite remove.
The First Speaker did not respond to it. “Notice the winding lines of symbols in red. There is a pattern to them. To all appearances, they should exist randomly, as every Speaker earns his place by adding refinements to Seldon’s original Plan. It would seem there is no way, after all, of predicting where a refinement can be added easily or where a particular Speaker will find his interests or his ability tending, and yet I have long suspected that the admixture of Seldon Black and Speaker Red follows a strict law that is strongly dependent on time and on very little else.”
Gendibal watched as the years passed and as the black and red hairlines made an almost hypnotic interlacing pattern. The pattern meant nothing in itself, of course. What counted were the symbols of which it was composed.
Here and there a bright-blue rivulet made its appearance, bellying out, branching, and becoming prominent, then falling in upon itself and fading into the black or red.
The First Speaker said, “Deviation Blue,” and the feeling of distaste, originating in each, filled the space between them. “We catch it over and over, and we’ll be coming to the Century of Deviations eventually.”
They did. One could tell precisely when the shattering phenomenon of the Mule momentarily filled the Galaxy, as the Prime Radiant suddenly grew thick with branching rivulets of blue—more starting than could be closed down—until the room itself seemed to turn blue as the lines thickened and marked the wall with brighter and brighter pollution. (It was the only word.)
It reached its peak and then faded, thinned, and came together for a long century before it trickled to its end at last. When it was gone, and when the Plan had returned to black and red, it was clear that Preem Palver’s hand had been there.
Onward, onward—
“That’s the present,” said the First Speaker comfortably.
Onward, onward—
Then a narrowing into a veritable knot of close-knit black with little red in it.
“That’s the establishment of the Second Empire,” said the First Speaker.
He shut off the Prime Radiant and the room was bathed in ordinary light.
Gendibal said, “That was an emotional experience.”
“Yes,” smiled the First Speaker, “and you are careful not to identify the emotion, as far as you can manage to fail to identify it. It doesn’t matter. Let me make the points I wish to make.
“You will notice, first, the all-but-complete absence of Deviation Blue after the time of Preem Palver—over the last twelve decades, in other words. You will notice that there are no reasonable probabilities of Deviations above the fifth-class over the next five centuries. You will notice, too, that we have begun extending the refinements of psychohistory beyond the establishment of the Second Empire. As you undoubtedly know, Hari Seldon—although a transcendent genius—is not, and could not, be all-knowing. We have improved on him. We know more about psychohistory than he could possibly have known.
“Seldon ended his calculations with the Second Empire and we have continued beyond it. Indeed, if I may say so without offense, the new Hyper-Plan that goes past the establishment of the Second Empire is very largely my doing and has earned me my present post.
“I tell you all this so that you can spare me unnecessary talk. With all this, how do you manage to conclude that the Seldon Plan is meaningless? It is without flaw. The mere fact that it survived the Century of Deviations—with all due respect to Palver’s genius—is the best evidence we have that it is without flaw. Where is its weakness, young man, that you should brand the Plan as meaningless?”
Gendibal stood stiffly upright. “You are right, First Speaker. The Seldon Plan has no flaw.”
“You withdraw your remark, then?”
“No, First Speaker. Its lack of flaw is its flaw. Its flawlessness is fatal!”
3.
The First Speaker regarded Gendibal with equanimity. He had learned to control his expressions and it amused him to watch Gendibal’s ineptness in this respect. At every exchange, the young man did his best to hide his feelings, but each time, he exposed them completely.
Shandess studied him dispassionately. He was a thin young man, not much above the middle height, with thin lips and bony, restless hands. He had dark, humorless eyes that tended to smolder.
He would be, the First Speaker knew, a hard person to talk out of his convictions.
“You speak in paradoxes, Speaker,” he said.
“It sounds like a paradox, First Speaker, because there is so much about Seldon’s Plan that we take for granted and accept in so unquestioning a manner.”
“And what is it you question, then?”
“The Plan’s very basis. We all know that the Plan will not work if its nature—or even its existence—is known to too many of those whose behavior it is designed to predict.”
“I believe Hari Seldon understood that. I even believe he made it one of his two fundamental axioms of psychohistory.”
“He did not anticipate the Mule, First Speaker, and therefore he could not anticipate the extent to which the Second Foundation would become an obsession
with the people of the First Foundation, once they had been shown its importance by the Mule.”
“Hari Seldon—” and for one moment, the First Speaker shuddered and fell silent.
Hari Seldon’s physical appearance was known to all the members of the Second Foundation. Reproductions of him in two and in three dimensions, photographic and holographic, in bas-relief and in the round, sitting and standing, were ubiquitous. They all represented him in the last few years of his life. All were of an old and benign man, face wrinkled with the wisdom of the aged, symbolizing the quintessence of well-ripened genius.
But the First Speaker now recalled seeing a photograph reputed to be Seldon as a young man. The photograph was neglected, since the thought of a young Seldon was almost a contradiction in terms. Yet Shandess had seen it, and the thought had suddenly come to him that Stor Gendibal looked remarkably like the young Seldon.
Ridiculous! It was the sort of superstition that afflicted everyone, now and then, however rational they might be. He was deceived by a fugitive similarity. If he had the photograph before him, he would see at once that the similarity was an illusion. Yet why should that silly thought have occurred to him now?
He recovered. It had been a momentary quaver—a transient derailment of thought—too brief to be noticed by anyone but a Speaker. Gendibal might interpret it as he pleased.
“Hari Seldon,” he said very firmly the second time, “knew well that there were an infinite number of possibilities he could not foresee, and it was for that reason that he set up the Second Foundation. We did not foresee the Mule either, but we recognized him once he was upon us and we stopped him. We did not foresee the subsequent obsession of the First Foundation with ourselves, but we saw it when it came and we stopped it. What is it about this that you can possibly find fault with?”
“For one thing,” said Gendibal, “the obsession of the First Foundation with us is not yet over.”
There was a distinct ebb in the deference with which Gendibal had been speaking. He had noted the quaver in the First Speaker’s voice (Shandess decided) and had interpreted it as uncertainty. That had to be countered.
The First Speaker said briskly, “Let me anticipate. There would be people on the First Foundation, who—comparing the hectic difficulties of the first nearly four centuries of existence with the placidity of the last twelve decades—will come to the conclusion that this cannot be unless the Second Foundation is taking good care of the Plan—and, of course, they will be right in so concluding. They will decide that the Second Foundation may not have been destroyed after all—and, of course, they will be right in so deciding. In fact, we’ve received reports that there is a young man on the First Foundation’s capital world of Terminus, an official of their government, who is quite convinced of all this. —I forget his name—”
“Golan Trevize,” said Gendibal softly. “It was I who first noted the matter in the reports, and it was I who directed the matter to your office.”
“Oh?” said the First Speaker with exaggerated politeness. “And how did your attention come to be focused on him?”
“One of our agents on Terminus sent in a tedious report on the newly elected members of their Council—a perfectly routine matter usually sent to and ignored by all Speakers. This one caught my eye because of the nature of the description of one new Councilman, Golan Trevize. From the description, he seemed unusually self-assured and combative.”
“You recognized a kindred spirit, did you?”
“Not at all,” said Gendibal, stiffly. “He seemed a reckless person who enjoyed doing ridiculous things, a description which does not apply to me. In any case, I directed an indepth study. It did not take long for me to decide that he would have made good material for us if he had been recruited at an early age.”
“Perhaps,” said the First Speaker, “but you know that we do not recruit on Terminus.”
“I know that well. In any case, even without our training, he has an unusual intuition. It is, of course, thoroughly undisciplined. I was, therefore, not particularly surprised that he had grasped the fact that the Second Foundation still exists. I felt it important enough, however, to direct a memo on the matter to your office.”
“And I take it from your manner that there is a new development?”
“Having grasped the fact that we still exist, thanks to his highly developed intuitive abilities, he then used it in a characteristically undisciplined fashion and has, as a result, been exiled from Terminus.”
The First Speaker lifted his eyebrows. “You stop suddenly. You want me to interpret the significance. Without using my computer, let me mentally apply a rough approximation of Seldon’s equations and guess that a shrewd Mayor, capable of suspecting that the Second Foundation exists, prefers not to have an undisciplined individual shout it to the Galaxy and thus alert said Second Foundation to the danger. I take it Branno the Bronze decided that Terminus is safer with Trevize off the planet.”
“She might have imprisoned Trevize or had him quietly assassinated.”
“The equations are not reliable when applied to individuals, as you well know. They deal only with humanity in mass. Individual behavior is therefore unpredictable and it is possible to assume that the Mayor is a humane individual who feels imprisonment, let alone assassination, is unmerciful.”
Gendibal said nothing for a while. It was an eloquent nothing, and he maintained it just long enough for the First Speaker to grow uncertain of himself but not so long as to induce a defensive anger.
He timed it to the second and then he said, “That is not my interpretation. I believe that Trevize, at this moment, represents the cutting edge of the greatest threat to the Second Foundation in its history—a greater danger even than the Mule!”
4.
Gendibal was satisfied. The force of the statement had worked well. The First Speaker had not expected it and was caught off-balance. From this moment, the whip hand was Gendibal’s. If he had any doubt of that at all, it vanished with Shandess’s next remark.
“Does this have anything to do with your contention that Seldon’s Plan is meaningless?”
Gendibal gambled on complete certainty, driving in with a didacticism that would not allow the First Speaker to recover. He said, “First Speaker, it is an article of faith that it was Preem Palver who restored the Plan to its course after the wild aberrance of the Century of Deviations. Study the Prime Radiant and you will see that the Deviations did not disappear till two decades after Palver’s death and that not one Deviation has appeared since. The credit might rest with the First Speakers since Palver, but that is improbable.”
“Improbable? Granted none of us have been Palvers, but—why improbable?”
“Will you allow me to demonstrate, First Speaker? Using the mathematics of psychohistory, I can clearly show that the chances of total disappearance of Deviation are too microscopically small to have taken place through anything the Second Foundation can do. You need not allow me if you lack the time or the desire for the demonstration, which will take half an hour of close attention. I can, as an alternative, call for a full meeting of the Speaker’s Table and demonstrate it there. But that would mean a loss of time for me and unnecessary controversy.”
“Yes, and a possible loss of face for me. —Demonstrate the matter to me now. But a word of warning.” The First Speaker was making a heroic effort to recover. “If what you show me is worthless, I will not forget that.”
“If it proves worthless,” said Gendibal with an effortless pride that overrode the other, “you will have my resignation on the spot.”
It took, actually, considerably more than half an hour, for the First Speaker questioned the mathematics with near-savage intensity.
Gendibal made up some of the time by his smooth use of his Micro-Radiant. The device—which could locate any portion of the vast Plan holographically and which required neither wall nor desk-sized console—had come into use only a decade ago and the First Speaker had never learned t
he knack of handling it. Gendibal was aware of that. The First Speaker knew that he was.
Gendibal hooked it over his right thumb and manipulated its controls with his four fingers, using his hand deliberately as though it were a musical instrument. (Indeed, he had written a small paper on the analogies.)
The equations Gendibal produced (and found with sure ease) moved back and forth snakily to accompany his commentary. He could obtain definitions, if necessary; set up axioms; and produce graphics, both two-dimensional and three-dimensional (to say nothing of projections of multi-dimensional relationships).
Gendibal’s commentary was clear and incisive and the First Speaker abandoned the game. He was won over and said, “I do not recall having seen an analysis of this nature. Whose work is it?”
“First Speaker, it is my own. I have published the basic mathematics involved.”
“Very clever, Speaker Gendibal. Something like this will put you in line for the First Speakership, should I die—or retire.”
“I have given that matter no thought, First Speaker—but since there’s no chance of your believing that, I withdraw the comment. I have given it thought and I hope I will be First Speaker, since whoever succeeds to the post must follow a procedure that only I see clearly.”
“Yes,” said the First Speaker, “inappropriate modesty can be very dangerous. What procedure? Perhaps the present First Speaker may follow it, too. If I am too old to have made the creative leap you have, I am not so old that I cannot follow your direction.”
It was a graceful surrender and Gendibal’s heart warmed, rather unexpectedly, toward the older man, even as he realized that this was precisely the First Speaker’s intention.
“Thank you, First Speaker, for I will need your help badly. I cannot expect to sway the Table without your enlightened leadership.” (Grace for grace.) “I assume, then, that you have already seen from what I have demonstrated that it is impossible for the Century of Deviations to have been corrected under our policies or for all Deviations to have ceased since then.”
