by Ben Bova
“Where else? He had to leave us at the end, when it was time to go public with his predictions of the Empire’s fall. Then the Pubs started watching him in earnest, and in order to keep them from finding us, he couldn’t ever come back here again. It was the most terrible thing that ever happened to us. As if he died, for us, years before his body died. He was part of us, Leyel, the way that you and Deet are part of each other. She knows. She joined us before he left.”
It stung. To have had such a great secret, and not to have been included. “Why Deet, and not me?”
“Don’t you know, Leyel? Our little community’s survival was the most important thing. As long as you were Leyel Forska, master of one of the greatest fortunes in history, you couldn’t possibly be part of this-it would have provoked too much comment, too much attention. Deet could come, because Commissioner Chen wouldn’t care that much what she did-he never takes spouses seriously, just one of the ways he proves himself to be a fool.”
“But Hari always meant for you to be one of us,” said Deet. “His worst fear was that you’d go off half-cocked and force your way into the First Foundation, when all along he wanted you in this one. The Second Foundation.”
Leyel remembered his last interview with Hari. He tried to remember-did Hari ever lie to him? He told him that Deet couldn’t go to Terminus-but now that took on a completely different meaning. The old fox! He never lied at all, but he never told the truth, either.
Zay went on. “It was tricky, striking the right balance, encouraging you to provoke Chen just enough that he’d strip away your fortune and then forget you, but not so much that he’d have you imprisoned or killed.”
“You were making that happen?”
“No, no, Leyel. It was going to happen anyway, because you’re who you are and Chen is who he is. But there was a range of possibility, somewhere between having you and Deet tortured to death on the one hand, and on the other hand having you and Rom conspire to assassinate Chen and take control of the Empire. Either of those extremes would have made it impossible for you to be part of the Second Foundation. Hari was convinced-and so is Deet, and so am I-that you belong with us. Not dead. Not in politics. Here.”
It was outrageous, that they should make such choices for him, without telling him. How could Deet have kept it secret all this time? And yet they were so obviously correct. If Hari had told him about this Second Foundation, Leyel would have been eager, proud to join it. Yet Leyel couldn’t have been told, couldn’t have joined them until Chen no longer perceived him as a threat.
“What makes you think Chen will ever forget me?”
“Oh, he’s forgotten you, all right. In fact, I’d guess that by tonight he’ll have forgotten everything he ever knew.”
“What do you mean?”
“How do you think we’ve dared to speak so openly today, after keeping silence for so long? After all, we aren’t in Indexing now.”
Leyel felt a thrill of fear run through him. “They can hear us?”
“If they were listening. At the moment, though, the Pubs are very busy helping Rom Divart solidify his control of the Commission of Public Safety. And if Chen hasn’t been taken to the radiation chamber, he soon will be.”
Leyel couldn’t help himself. The news was too glorious-he sprang up from his bed, almost danced at the news. “Rom ‘s doing it! After all these years-overthrowing the old spider!”
“It’s more important than mere justice or revenge,” said Zay. “We’re absolutely certain that a significant number of governors and prefects and military commanders will refuse to recognize the overlordship of the Commission of Public Safety. It will take Rom Divart the rest of his life just to put down the most dangerous of the rebels. In order to concentrate his forces on the great rebels and pretenders close to Trantor, he’ll grant an unprecedented degree of independence to many, many worlds on the periphery. To all intents and purposes, those outer worlds will no longer be part of the Empire. Imperial authority will not touch them, and their taxes will no longer flow inward to Trantor. The Empire is no longer Galactic. The death of Commissioner Chen-today-will mark the beginning of the fall of the Galactic Empire, though no one but us will notice what it means for decades, even centuries to come.”
“So soon after Hari’s death. Already his predictions are coming true. “
“Oh, it isn’t just coincidence, “ said Zay. “One of our agents was able to influence Chen just enough to ensure that he sent Rom Divart in person to strip you of your fortune. That was what pushed Rom over the edge and made him carry out this coup. Chen would have fallenor died-sometime in the next year and a half no matter what we did. But I’ll admit we took a certain pleasure in using Hari’s death as a trigger to bring him down a little early, and under circumstances that allowed us to bring you into the library. “
“We also used it as a test,” said Deet. “We’re trying to find ways of influencing individuals without their knowing it. It’s still very crude and haphazard, but in this case we were able to influence Chen with great success. We had to do it-your life was at stake, and so was the chance of your joining us.”
“I feel like a puppet,” said Leyel.
“Chen was the puppet,” said Zay. “You were the prize. “
“That’s all nonsense,” said Deet. “Hari loved you. I love you. You’re a great man. The Second Foundation had to have you. And everything you’ve said and stood for all your life made it clear that you were hungry to be part of our work. Aren’t you?”.
“Yes,” said Leyel. Then he laughed. “The index!”
“What’s so funny?” asked Zay, looking a little miffed. “We worked very hard on it.”
“And it was wonderful, transforming, hypnotic. To take all these people and put them together as if they were a single mind, far wiser in its intuition than anyone could ever be alone. The most intensely unified, the most powerful human community that’s ever existed. If it’s our capacity for storytelling that makes us human, then perhaps our capacity for indexing will make us something better than human.”
Deet patted Zay’s hand. “Pay no attention to him, Zay. This is clearly the mad enthusiasm of a proselyte.”
Zay raised an eyebrow. “ I’m still waiting for him to explain why the index made him laugh. “
Leyel obliged her. “Because all the time, I kept thinking-how could librarians have done this? Mere librarians! And now I discover that these librarians are all of Hari Seldon’s prize students. My questions were indexed by psychohistorians!”
“Not exclusively. Most of us are librarians. Or machinists, or custodians, or whatever-the psychologists and psychohistorians are rather a thin current in the stream of the library. At first they were seen as outsiders. Researchers. Users of the library, not members of it. That’s what Deet’s work has been for these last few years-trying to bind us all together into one community. She came here as a researcher too, remember? Yet now she has made everyone’s allegiance to the library more important than any other loyalty. It’s working beautifully too, Leyel, you’ll see. Deet is a marvel.”
“We’re all creating it together,” said Deet. “It helps that the couple of hundred people I’m trying to bring in are so knowledgeable and understanding of the human mind. They understand exactly what I’m doing and then try to help me make it work. And it isn’t fully successful yet. As years go by, we have to see the psychology group teaching and accepting the children of librarians and machinists and medical officers, in full equality with their own, so that the psychologists don’t become a ruling caste. And then intermarriage between the groups. Maybe in a hundred years we’ll have a truly cohesive community. This is a democratic city-state we’re building, not an academic department or a social club.”
Leyel was off on his own tangent. It was almost unbearable for him to realize that there were hundreds of people who knew Hari’s work, while Leyel didn’t. “You have to teach me!” Leyel said. “Everything that Hari taught you, all the things that have been kept
from me-”
“Oh, eventually, Leyel,” said Zay. “At present, though, we’re much more interested in what you have to teach us. Already, I’m sure, a transcription of the things you said when you first woke up is being spread through the library.”
“It was recorded?” asked Leyel.
“We didn’t know if you were going to go catatonic on us at any moment, Leyel. You have no idea how you’ve been worrying us. Of course we recorded it-they might have been your last words.”
“They won’t be. I don’t feel tired at all.”
“Then you’re not as bright as we thought. Your body is dangerously weak. You’ve been abusing yourself terribly. You’re not a young man, and we insist that you stay away from your lector for a couple of days. “
“What, are you now my doctor?”
“Leyel,” Deet said, touching him on his shoulder the way she always did when he needed calming. “You have been examined by doctors. And you’ve got to realize-Zay is First Speaker. “
“Does that mean she’s commander?”
“This isn’t the Empire,” said Zay, “and I’m not Chen. All that it means to be First Speaker is that I speak first when we meet together. And then, at the end, I bring together all that has been said and express the consensus of the group. “
“That’s right,” said Deet. “Everybody thinks you ought to rest.”
“Everybody knows about me?” asked Leyel.
“Of course,” said Zay. “With Hari dead you’re the most original thinker we have. Our work needs you. Naturally we care about you. Besides, Deet loves you so much, and we love Deer so much, we feel like we’re all a little bit in love with you ourselves.”
She laughed, and so did Leyel, and so did Deet. Leyel noticed, though, that when he asked whether they all knew of him, she had answered that they cared about him and loved him. Only when Zay said this did he realize that she had answered the question he really meant to ask.
“And while you’re recuperating,” Zay continued, “Indexing will have a go at your new theory-”
“Not a theory, just a proposal, just a thought-”
“-and a few psychohistorians will see whether it can be quantified, perhaps by some variation on the formulas we’ve been using with Deet’s laws of community development. Maybe we can turn origin studies into a real science yet.”
“Maybe,” Leyel said.
“Feel all right about this?” asked Zay.
“I’m not sure. Mostly. I’m very excited, but I’m also a little angry at how I’ve been left out, but mostly I’m-I’m so relieved.”
“Good. You’re in a hopeless muddle. You’ll do your best work if we can keep you off balance forever.” With that, Zay led him back to the bed, helped him lie down, and then left the room.
Alone with Deet, Leyel had nothing to say. He just held her hand and looked up into her face, his heart too full to say anything with words. All the news about Hari’s byzantine plans and a Second Foundation full of psychohistorians and Rom Divart taking over the government-that receded into the background. What mattered was this: Deet’s hand in his, her eyes looking into his, and her heart, her self, her soul so closely bound to his that he couldn’t tell and didn’t care where he left off and she began.
How could he ever have imagined that she was leaving him? They had created each other through all these years of marriage. Deet was the most splendid accomplishment of his life, and he was the most valued creation of hers. We are each other’s parent, each other’s child. We might accomplish great works that will live on in this other community, the library, the Second Foundation. But the greatest work of all is the one that will die with us, the one that no one else will ever know of, because they remain perpetually outside. We can’t even explain it to them. They don’t have the language to understand us. We cat) only speak it to each other.
A Word or Two from Janet
by Janet Jeppson Asimov
I am often asked what it’s like to be Isaac Asimov’s wife or, as he referred to me in a recent speech, “the present holder of that enviable position.” I usually mull over several possible answers:
1. Isaac is, conveniently, a walking dictionary and encyclopedia, able to impart information quickly, accurately, and eloquently because he has well-honed powers of expression and an incredible memory-which gets him into trouble, since there are too many things he can’t forget. For instance, he is likely to say sadly, “This is the one hundred eighty-third anniversary of the Battle of Austerlitz and nobody cares!” Each December 2, since I have forgotten what he told me the year before, I have to ask him to explain allover again. Fortunately, although he does not put up with fools gladly, he puts up with me, and explains.
2. Isaac is reassuringly rational, with exceptions. He believes in the spectacular law-that if he flips up the dark spectacles attached to his eyeglasses, the sun will come out, and vice versa. Furthermore, in the baseball season he thinks the Mets will lose any game he dares to watch. Once they start losing, he turns off the TV and shouts, “I have to stop watching and go back to my typewriter to give them a chance!”
3. He has a wonderful lack of fear about showing emotion. Not only is he affectionate and demonstrative, he doesn’t even know what a stiff upper lip is. Isaac’s lower lip quivers most when he has to have a blood sample drawn, but even then he manages to flirt with the female doing it. He’s not afraid to cry (he always does when he reads Enobarbus’s last speech or sings ‘Danny Boy’), and will do so even in public, the way he did at Newton’s grave.
4. Isaac has a point of view that makes me glad I know him. For instance, he woke up once with his legs making running motions in the bed. He said, “I dreamt someone told me I was making a good living out of writing, and I said yes indeed I was. Then the person said, ‘It’s amazing to see someone make all that money out of beaten swords.’ I was running to tell you because it instantly struck me that the phrase meant I made my money out of the instruments of peace-the pen is mightier than the sword and thou shalt beat thy swords into plowshares.”
As you can see, there are many answers to the question of what it’s like to be Isaac Asimov’s wife, but the best is that my spouse defies description. Oddly enough, people always seem to be describing Isaac, and he is still on speaking terms with most of them. Perhaps paleontologist Simpson’s description is definitive-”Isaac Asimov is a natural wonder and a national resource.” I can testify that he is a wonder, completely natural, infinitely resourceful, and a dear.
We have a little wooden sculpture of two old people placidly sitting side by side, leaning toward each other. To me, they represent the contentment of being part of the pattern of life, together. The pattern includes intimacy and creativity, which have a lot in common because both take commitment, concentration, openness, effort, and inspiration.
My personal fiftieth anniversary with Isaac Asimov occurs in the third decade of the next century. Since life contains the three essential elements of a good work of fiction-a beginning, a middle, and an end-it is possible that Isaac and I won’t be here for that anniversary, but his books will. And the stories people write because of him. Like those in this book, done with love.
Fifty Years
by Isaac Asimov
I’ve got to start by expressing thanks. I want to thank Martin H. Greenberg for having the idea of memorializing my fifty years in science fiction in this fashion. I want to thank Tor Books for publishing the book. I want to thank all my fellow writers who have contributed stories to this book, and who have, in this way, demonstrated the fact that they feel friendly toward me and kindly toward my works. And I want to thank Janet for contributing, too, in all the ways she does and has.
This is all more than I deserve, for it means I have made my way through life making so many friends and so remarkably few enemies that I must have done something right by accident, and I’m grateful for that more than anything else.
But it’s fifty years! That’s why all this is happening! Fifty years
! Half a century!
So let’s see what thoughts this gives rise to
1. Fifty years. It’s a reasonably long time. Merely to live for fifty years is not terribly unusual these days, but many great people have not managed. Joan of Arc died at nineteen. Of the great poets: John Keats died at twenty-six; Percy Bysshe Shelley died at thirty; George Gordon Noel Byron died at thirty-six; Edgar Allan Poe died at forty. Of the great scientists, Sadi Carnot died at thirty-six; Heinrich Rudolf Hertz died at thirty-six; James C. Maxwell died at forty-eight.
When you pass the half-century mark, with all this in mind, you can’t help but feel a bit hangdog about it. The Greeks visualized the three Fates: Clotho (“spinner”), who formed the thread of life; Lachesis (“determiner by lot”), who measured its length; and Atropos (“unswervable”), who cut it, in the end. I thank them all as well. I thank Clotho for spinning such a good life; Lachesis for spinning one that is longer than those of many others far more deserving than myself; and to Atropos for withholding her formidable shears for as long as she has.
2. Fifty years of professional work. But it’s not just fifty years. It’s fifty years in a single profession, that of writing. My first story appeared in 1939 and there has been a regular procession of stories, essays, and books of all sorts ever since.
When Charles Dickens died at fifty-eight, he had been publishing for only thirty-five years. When Alexandre Dumas died at fifty-eight, he had been publishing for only forty-one years. William Shakespeare, who died at fifty-two, turned out all his professional works over a period of only thirty years.
Mind you, I am only talking length of professional life here; I am not talking quality. Anyone work of these gentlemen-DavidCopperfield, The Count of Monte Cristo, or Hamlet is worth innumerable times my entire oeuvre. I know that, so don’t bother writing to inform me of this matter.
