by Isaac Asimov
“That’s right.”
“A good one?”
“I’d like to think so, but it’s a hard thing to guarantee.”
“And you’re interested in intractable problems?”
Seldon said feelingly, “I’m stuck with one.”
“I’m stuck with another. You’re free to look about. If you have any questions, our intern, Clowzia, will help out. You might be able to help us.”
“I would be delighted to, but I know nothing about meteorology.”
“That’s all right, Seldon. I just want you to get a feel for this thing and then I’d like to discuss my mathematics, such as it is.”
“I’m at your service.”
Leggen turned away, his long scowling face looking grim. Then he turned back. “If you get cold—too cold—the elevator door is open. You just step in and touch the spot marked: UNIVERSITY BASE. It will take you down and the elevator will then return to us automatically. Clowzia will show you—if you forget.”
“I won’t forget.”
This time he did leave and Seldon looked after him, feeling the cold wind knife through his sweater. Clowzia came back over to him, her face slightly reddened by that wind.
Seldon said, “Dr. Leggen seems annoyed. Or is that just his ordinary outlook on life?”
She giggled. “He does look annoyed most of the time, but right now he really is.”
Seldon said very naturally, “Why?”
Clowzia looked over her shoulder, her long hair swirling. Then she said, “I’m not supposed to know, but I do just the same. Dr. Leggen had it all figured out that today, just at this time, there was going to be a break in the clouds and he’d been planning to make special measurements in sunlight. Only . . . well, look at the weather.”
Seldon nodded.
“We have holovision receivers up here, so he knew it was cloudy—worse than usual—and I guess he was hoping there would be something wrong with the instruments so that it would be their fault and not that of his theory. So far, though, they haven’t found anything out of the way.”
“And that’s why he looks so unhappy.”
“Well, he never looks happy.”
Seldon looked about, squinting. Despite the clouds, the light was harsh. He became aware that the surface under his feet was not quite horizontal. He was standing on a shallow dome and as he looked outward there were other domes in all directions, with different widths and heights.
“Upperside seems to be irregular,” he said.
“Mostly, I think. That’s the way it worked out.”
“Any reason for it?”
“Not really. The way I’ve heard it explained—I looked around and asked, just as you did, you know—was that originally the people on Trantor domed in places, shopping malls, sports arenas, things like that, then whole towns, so that there were lots of domes here and there, with different heights and different widths. When they all came together, it was all uneven, but by that time, people decided that’s the way it ought to be.”
“You mean that something quite accidental came to be viewed as a tradition?”
“I suppose so—if you want to put it that way.”
(If something quite accidental can easily become viewed as a tradition and be made unbreakable or nearly so, thought Seldon, would that be a law of psychohistory? It sounded trivial, but how many other laws, equally trivial, might there be? A million? A billion? Were there a relatively few general laws from which these trivial ones could be derived as corollaries? How could he say? For a while, lost in thought, he almost forgot the biting wind.)
Clowzia was aware of that wind, however, for she shuddered and said, “It’s very nasty. It’s much better under the dome.”
“Are you a Trantorian?” asked Seldon.
“That’s right.”
Seldon remembered Randa’s dismissal of Trantorians as agoraphobic and said, “Do you mind being up here?”
“I hate it,” said Clowzia, “but I want my degree and my specialty and status and Dr. Leggen says I can’t get it without some field work. So here I am, hating it, especially when it’s so cold. When it’s this cold, by the way, you wouldn’t dream that vegetation actually grows on these domes, would you?”
“It does?” He looked at Clowzia sharply, suspecting some sort of practical joke designed to make him look foolish. She looked totally innocent, but how much of that was real and how much was just her baby face?
“Oh sure. Even here, when it’s warmer. You notice the soil here? We keep it swept away because of our work, as I said, but in other places it accumulates here and there and is especially deep in the low places where the domes meet. Plants grow in it.”
“But where does the soil come from?”
“When the domes covered just part of the planet, the wind deposited soil on them, little by little. Then, when Trantor was all covered and the living levels were dug deeper and deeper, some of the material dug up, if suitable, would be spread over the top.”
“Surely, it would break down the domes.”
“Oh no. The domes are very strong and they’re supported almost everywhere. The idea was, according to a book-film I viewed, that they were going to grow crops Upperside, but it turned out to be much more practical to do it inside the dome. Yeast and algae could be cultivated within the domes too, taking the pressure off the usual crops, so it was decided to let Upperside go wild. There are animals on Upperside too—butterflies, bees, mice, rabbits. Lots of them.”
“Won’t the plant roots damage the domes?”
“In thousands of years they haven’t. The domes are treated so that they repel the roots. Most of the growth is grass, but there are trees too. You’d be able to see for yourself if this were the warm season or if we were farther south or if you were up in a spaceship.” She looked at him with a sidewise flick of her eyes, “Did you see Trantor when you were coming down from space?”
“No, Clowzia, I must confess I didn’t. The hypership was never well placed for viewing. Have you ever seen Trantor from space?”
She smiled weakly. “I’ve never been in space.”
Seldon looked about. Gray everywhere.
“I can’t make myself believe it,” he said. “About vegetation Upperside, I mean.”
“It’s true, though. I’ve heard people say—Otherworlders, like yourself, who did see Trantor from space—that the planet looks green, like a lawn, because it’s mostly grass and underbrush. There are trees too, actually. There’s a copse not very far from here. I’ve seen it. They’re evergreens and they’re up to six meters high.”
“Where?”
“You can’t see it from here. It’s on the other side of a dome. It’s—”
The call came out thinly. (Seldon realized they had been walking while they had been talking and had moved away from the immediate vicinity of the others.) “Clowzia. Get back here. We need you.”
Clowzia said, “Uh-oh. Coming. —Sorry, Dr. Seldon, I have to go.” She ran off, managing to step lightly despite her lined boots.
Had she been playing with him? Had she been filling the gullible foreigner with a mess of lies for amusement’s sake? Such things had been known to happen on every world and in every time. An air of transparent honesty was no guide either; in fact, successful taletellers would deliberately cultivate just such an air.
So could there really be six-meter trees Upperside? Without thinking much about it, he moved in the direction of the highest dome on the horizon. He swung his arms in an attempt to warm himself. And his feet were getting cold.
Clowzia hadn’t pointed. She might have, to give him a hint of the direction of the trees, but she didn’t. Why didn’t she? To be sure, she had been called away.
The domes were broad rather than high, which was a good thing, since otherwise the going would have been considerably more difficult. On the other hand, the gentle grade meant trudging a distance before he could top a dome and look down the other side.
Eventually, he could see th
e other side of the dome he had climbed. He looked back to make sure he could still see the meteorologists and their instruments. They were a good way off, in a distant valley, but he could see them clearly enough. Good.
He saw no copse, no trees, but there was a depression that snaked about between two domes. Along each side of that crease, the soil was thicker and there were occasional green smears of what might be moss. If he followed the crease and if it got low enough and the soil was thick enough, there might be trees.
He looked back, trying to fix landmarks in his mind, but there were just the rise and fall of domes. It made him hesitate and Dors’s warning against his being lost, which had seemed a rather unnecessary piece of advice then, made more sense now. Still, it seemed clear to him that the crease was a kind of road. If he followed it for some distance, he only had to turn about and follow it back to return to this spot.
He strode off purposefully, following the rounded crease downward. There was a soft rumbling noise above, but he didn’t give it any thought. He had made up his mind that he wanted to see trees and that was all that occupied him at the moment.
The moss grew thicker and spread out like a carpet and here and there grassy tufts had sprung up. Despite the desolation Upperside, the moss was bright green and it occurred to Seldon that on a cloudy, overcast planet there was likely to be considerable rain.
The crease continued to curve and there, just above another dome, was a dark smudge against the gray sky and he knew he had found the trees.
Then, as though his mind, having been liberated by the sight of those trees, could turn to other things, Seldon took note of the rumble he had heard before and had, without thinking, dismissed as the sound of machinery. Now he considered that possibility: Was it, indeed, the sound of machinery?
Why not? He was standing on one of the myriad domes that covered hundreds of millions of square kilometers of the world-city. There must be machinery of all kinds hidden under those domes—ventilation motors, for one thing. Maybe it could be heard, where and when all the other sounds of the world-city were absent.
Except that it did not seem to come from the ground. He looked up at the dreary featureless sky. Nothing.
He continued to scan the sky, vertical creases appearing between his eyes and then, far off—
It was a small dark spot, showing up against the gray. And whatever it was it seemed to be moving about as though getting its bearings before it was obscured by the clouds again.
Then, without knowing why, he thought, They’re after me.
And almost before he could work out a line of action, he had taken one. He ran desperately along the crease toward the trees and then, to reach them more quickly, he turned left and hurtled up and over a low dome, treading through brown and dying fernlike overgrowth, including thorny springs with bright red berries.
24
Seldon panted, facing a tree, holding it closely, embracing it. He watched for the flying object to make its appearance again so that he could back about the tree and hide on the far side, like a squirrel.
The tree was cold, its bark was rough, it gave no comfort—but it offered cover. Of course, that might be insufficient, if he was being searched for with a heat-seeker, but, on the other hand, the cold trunk of a tree might blur even that.
Below him was hard-packed soil. Even in this moment of hiding, of attempting to see his pursuer while remaining unseen, he could not help wondering how thick the soil might be, how long it had taken to accumulate, how many domes in the warmer areas of Trantor carried forests on their back, and whether the trees were always confined to the creases between domes, leaving the higher regions to moss, grass, and underbrush.
He saw it again. It was not a hypership, nor even an ordinary air-jet. It was a jet-down. He could see the faint glow of the ion trails coming out at the vertices of a hexagon, neutralizing the gravitational pull and allowing the wings to keep it aloft like a large soaring bird. It was a vehicle that could hover and explore a planetary terrain.
It was only the clouds that had saved him. Even if they were using heat-seekers, that would only indicate there were people below. The jet-down would have to make a tentative dive below the banked ceiling before it could hope to know how many human beings there were and whether any of them might be the particular person the parties aboard were seeking.
The jet-down was closer now, but it couldn’t hide from him either. The rumble of the engine gave it away and they couldn’t turn that off, not as long as they wished to continue their search. Seldon knew the jet-downs, for on Helicon or on any undomed world with skies that cleared now and then, they were common, with many in private hands.
Of what possible use would jet-downs be on Trantor, with all the human life of the world under domes, with low cloud ceilings all but perpetual—except for a few government vehicles designed for just this purpose, that of picking up a wanted person who had been lured above the domes?
Why not? Government forces could not enter the grounds of the University, but perhaps Seldon was no longer on the grounds. He was on top of the domes, which might be outside the jurisdiction of any local government. An Imperial vehicle might have every right to land on any part of the dome and question or remove any person found upon it. Hummin had not warned him of this, but perhaps he had merely not thought of doing so.
The jet-down was even closer now, nosing about like a blind beast sniffing out its prey. Would it occur to them to search this group of trees? Would they land and send out an armed soldier or two to beat through the copse?
And if so, what could he do? He was unarmed and all his quick-twist agility would be useless against the agonizing pain of a neuronic whip.
It was not attempting to land. Either they missed the significance of the trees—
Or—
A new thought suddenly hit him. What if this wasn’t a pursuit vessel at all? What if it was part of the meteorological testing? Surely, meteorologists would want to test the upper reaches of the atmosphere.
Was he a fool to hide from it?
The sky was getting darker. The clouds were getting thicker or, much more likely, night was falling.
And it was getting colder and would get colder still. Was he going to stay out here freezing because a perfectly harmless jet-down had made an appearance and had activated a sense of paranoia that he had never felt before? He had a strong impulse to leave the copse and get back to the meteorological station.
After all, how would the man Hummin feared so much—Demerzel—know that Seldon would, at this particular time, be Upperside and ready to be taken?
For a moment, that seemed conclusive and, shivering with the cold, he moved out from behind the tree.
And then he scurried back as the vessel reappeared even closer than before. He hadn’t seen it do anything that would seem to be meteorological. It did nothing that might be considered sampling, measuring, or testing. Would he see such things if they took place? He did not know the precise sort of instruments the jet-down carried or how they worked. If they were doing meteorological work, he might not be able to tell. —Still, could he take the chance of coming into the open?
After all, what if Demerzel did know of his presence Upperside, simply because an agent of his, working in the University, knew about it and had reported the matter. Lisung Randa, that cheerful, smiling little Easterner, had suggested he go Upperside. He had suggested it quite forcefully and the subject had not arisen naturally out of the conversation; at least, not naturally enough. Was it possible that he was a government agent and had alerted Demerzel somehow?
Then there was Leggen, who had given him the sweater. The sweater was useful, but why hadn’t Leggen told him he would need one earlier so he could get his own? Was there something special about the one he was wearing? It was uniformly purple, while all the others’ indulged in the Trantorian fashion of bright patterns. Anyone looking down from a height would see a moving dull blotch in among others that were bright and know immediately whom th
ey wanted.
And Clowzia? She was supposedly Upperside to learn meteorology and help the meteorologists. How was it possible that she could come to him, talk to him at ease, and quietly walk him away from the others and isolate him so that he could easily be picked up?
For that matter, what about Dors Venabili? She knew he was going Upperside. She did not stop it. She might have gone with him, but she was conveniently busy.
It was a conspiracy. Surely, it was a conspiracy.
He had convinced himself now and there was no further thought of getting out from the shelter of the trees. (His feet felt like lumps of ice and stamping them against the ground seemed to do no good.) Would the jet-down never leave?
And even as he thought that, the pitch of the engine’s rumble heightened and the jet-down rose into the clouds and faded away.
Seldon listened eagerly, alert to the smallest sound, making sure it was finally gone. And then, even after he was sure it was gone, he wondered if that was just a device to flush him out of hiding. He remained where he was while the minutes slowly crawled on and night continued to fall.
And finally, when he felt that the true alternative to taking the chance of coming out in the open was that of freezing into insensibility, he stepped out and moved cautiously beyond the shelter of the trees.
It was dusky twilight, after all. They couldn’t detect him except by a heat-seeker, but, if so, he would hear the jet-down return. He waited just beyond the trees, counting to himself, ready to hide in the copse again at the smallest sound—though what good that would do him once he was spotted, he couldn’t imagine.
Seldon looked about. If he could find the meteorologists, they would surely have artificial light, but except for that, there would be nothing.
He could still just make out his surroundings, but in a matter of a quarter of an hour, half an hour at the outside, he would not. With no lights and a cloudy sky above, it would be dark—completely dark.
Desperate at the prospect of being enveloped in total darkness, Seldon realized that he would have to find his way back to the crease that had brought him there as quickly as possible and retrace his steps. Folding his arms tightly around himself for warmth, he set off in what he thought was the direction of the crease between the domes.
