Prelude to Foundation f-1

by Isaac Asimov

  “Because it pleases your vanity to have become known even to heatsinkers in Dahl?”

  “Well . . . perhaps. But it also piques my curiosity.”

  “And how do you know he hasn’t been briefed and intends to lead you into trouble as has happened before.”

  Seldon winced. “I won’t let him run his fingers through my hair. In any case, we’re more nearly prepared now, aren’t we? And I’m sure you’ll be with me. I mean, you let me go Upperside alone, you let me go with Raindrop Forty-Three to the microfarms alone, and you’re not going to do that again, are you?”

  “You can be absolutely sure I won’t,” said Dors.

  “Well then, I’ll talk to the young man and you can watch out for traps. I have every faith in you.”

  65

  Amaryl arrived a few minutes before 1400, looking warily about. His hair was neat and his thick mustache was combed and turned up slightly at the edges. His T-shirt was startlingly white. He did smell, but it was a fruity odor that undoubtedly came from the slightly over-enthusiastic use of scent. He had a bag with him.

  Seldon, who had been waiting outside for him, seized one elbow lightly, while Dors seized the other, and they moved rapidly into the elevator. Having reached the correct level, they passed through the apartment into Seldon’s room.

  Amaryl said in a low hangdog voice, “Nobody home, huh?”

  “Everyone’s busy,” said Seldon neutrally. He indicated the only chair in the room, a pad directly on the floor.

  “No,” said Amaryl. “I don’t need that. One of you two use it.” He squatted on the floor with a graceful downward motion.

  Dors imitated the movement, sitting on the edge of Seldon’s floor-based mattress, but Seldon dropped down rather clumsily, having to make use of his hands and unable, quite, to find a comfortable position for his legs.

  Seldon said, “Well, young man, why do you want to see me?”

  “Because you’re a mathematician. You’re the first mathematician I ever saw—close up—so I could touch him, you know.”

  “Mathematicians feel like anyone else.”

  “Not to me, Dr. . . . Dr. . . . Seldon?”

  “That’s my name.”

  Amaryl looked pleased. “I finally remembered. —You see, I want to be a mathematician too.”

  “Very good. What’s stopping you?”

  Amaryl suddenly frowned. “Are you serious?”

  “I presume something is stopping you. Yes, I’m serious.”

  “What’s stopping me is I’m a Dahlite, a heatsinker on Dahl. I don’t have the money to get an education and I can’t get the credits to get an education. A real education, I mean. All they taught me was to read and cipher and use a computer and then I knew enough to be a heatsinker. But I wanted more. So I taught myself.”

  “In some ways, that’s the best kind of teaching. How did you do that?”

  “I knew a librarian. She was willing to help me. She was a very nice woman and she showed me how to use computers for learning mathematics. And she set up a software system that would connect me with other libraries. I’d come on my days off and on mornings after my shift. Sometimes she’d lock me in her private room so I wouldn’t be bothered by people coming in or she would let me in when the library was closed. She didn’t know mathematics herself, but she helped me all she could. She was oldish, a widow lady. Maybe she thought of me as a kind of son or something. She didn’t have children of her own.”

  (Maybe, thought Seldon briefly, there was some other emotion involved too, but he put the thought away. None of his business.)

  “I liked number theory,” said Amaryl. “I worked some things out from what I learned from the computer and from the book-films it used to teach me mathematics. I came up with some new things that weren’t in the book-films.”

  Seldon raised his eyebrows. “That’s interesting. Like what?”

  “I’ve brought some of them to you. I’ve never showed them to anyone. The people around me—” He shrugged. “They’d either laugh or be annoyed. Once I tried to tell a girl I knew, but she just said I was weird and wouldn’t see me anymore. Is it all right for me to show them to you?”

  “Quite all right. Believe me.”

  Seldon held out his hand and after a brief hesitation, Amaryl handed him the bag he was carrying.

  For a long time, Seldon looked over Amaryl’s papers. The work was naïve in the extreme, but he allowed no smile to cross his face. He followed the demonstrations, not one of which was new, of course—or even nearly new—or of any importance.

  But that didn’t matter.

  Seldon looked up. “Did you do all of this yourself?”

  Amaryl, looking more than half-frightened, nodded his head.

  Seldon extracted several sheets. “What made you think of this?” His finger ran down a line of mathematical reasoning.

  Amaryl looked it over, frowned, and thought about it. Then he explained his line of thinking.

  Seldon listened and said, “Did you ever read a book by Anat Bigell?”

  “On number theory?”

  “The title was Mathematical Deduction. It wasn’t about number theory, particularly.”

  Amaryl shook his head. “I never heard of him. I’m sorry.”

  “He worked out this theorem of yours three hundred years ago.”

  Amaryl looked stricken. “I didn’t know that.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t. You did it more cleverly, though. It’s not rigorous, but—”

  “What do you mean, ‘rigorous’?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Seldon put the papers back together in a sheaf, restored it to the bag, and said, “Make several copies of all this. Take one copy, have it dated by an official computer, and place it under computerized seal. My friend here, Mistress Venabili, can get you into Streeling University without tuition on some sort of scholarship. You’ll have to start at the beginning and take courses in other subjects than mathematics, but—”

  By now Amaryl had caught his breath. “Into Streeling University? They won’t take me.”

  “Why not? Dors, you can arrange it, can’t you?”

  “I’m sure I can.”

  “No, you can’t,” said Amaryl hotly. “They won’t take me. I’m from Dahl.”

  “Well?”

  “They won’t take people from Dahl.”

  Seldon looked at Dors. “What’s he talking about?”

  Dors shook her head. “I really don’t know.”

  Amaryl said, “You’re an Outworlder, Mistress. How long have you been at Streeling?”

  “A little over two years, Mr. Amaryl.”

  “Have you ever seen Dahlites there—short, curly black hair, big mustaches?”

  “There are students with all kinds of appearances.”

  “But no Dahlites. Look again the next time you’re there.”

  “Why not?” said Seldon.

  “They don’t like us. We look different. They don’t like our mustaches.”

  “You can shave your—” but Seldon’s voice died under the other’s furious glance.

  “Never. Why should I? My mustache is my manhood.”

  “You shave your beard. That’s your manhood too.”

  “To my people it is the mustache.”

  Seldon looked at Dors again and murmured, “Bald heads, mustaches . . . madness.”

  “What?” said Amaryl angrily.

  “Nothing. Tell me what else they don’t like about Dahlites.”

  “They make up things not to like. They say we smell. They say we’re dirty. They say we steal. They say we’re violent. They say we’re dumb.”

  “Why do they say all this?”

  “Because it’s easy to say it and it makes them feel good. Sure, if we work in the heatsinks, we get dirty and smelly. If we’re poor and held down, some of us steal and get violent. But that isn’t the way it is with all of us. How about those tall yellow-hairs in the Imperial Sector who think they own the Galaxy—
no, they do own the Galaxy. Don’t they ever get violent? Don’t they steal sometimes? If they did my job, they’d smell the way I do. If they had to live the way I have to, they’d get dirty too.”

  “Who denies that there are people of all kinds in all places?” said Seldon.

  “No one argues the matter! They just take it for granted. Master Seldon, I’ve got to get away from Trantor. I have no chance on Trantor, no way of earning credits, no way of getting an education, no way of becoming a mathematician, no way of becoming anything but what they say I am . . . a worthless nothing.” This last was said in frustration—and desperation.

  Seldon tried to be reasonable. “The person I’m renting this room from is a Dahlite. He has a clean job. He’s educated.”

  “Oh sure,” said Amaryl passionately. “There are some. They let a few do it so that they can say it can be done. And those few can live nicely as long as they stay in Dahl. Let them go outside and they’ll see how they’re treated. And while they’re in here they make themselves feel good by treating the rest of us like dirt. That makes them yellow-hairs in their own eyes. What did this nice person you’re renting this room from say when you told him you were bringing in a heatsinker? What did he say I would be like? They’re gone now . . . wouldn’t be in the same place with me.”

  Seldon moistened his lips. “I won’t forget you. I’ll see to it that you’ll get off Trantor and into my own University in Helicon—once I’m back there myself.”

  “Do you promise that? Your word of honor? Even though I’m a Dahlite?”

  “The fact that you’re a Dahlite is unimportant to me. The fact that you are already a mathematician is! But I still can’t quite grasp what you’re telling me. I find it impossible to believe that there would be such unreasoning feeling against harmless people.”

  Amaryl said bitterly, “That’s because you’ve never had any occasion to interest yourself in such things. It can all pass right under your nose and you wouldn’t smell a thing because it doesn’t affect you.”

  Dors said, “Mr. Amaryl, Dr. Seldon is a mathematician like you and his head can sometimes be in the clouds. You must understand that. I am a historian, however. I know that it isn’t unusual to have one group of people look down upon another group. There are peculiar and almost ritualistic hatreds that have no rational justification and that can have their serious historical influence. It’s too bad.”

  Amaryl said, “Saying something is ‘too bad’ is easy. You say you disapprove, which makes you a nice person, and then you can go about your own business and not be interested anymore. It’s a lot worse than ‘too bad.’ It’s against everything decent and natural. We’re all of us the same, yellow-hairs and black-hairs, tall and short, Easterners, Westerners, Southerners, and Outworlders. We’re all of us, you and I and even the Emperor, descended from the people of Earth, aren’t we?”

  “Descended from what?” asked Seldon. He turned to look at Dors, his eyes wide.

  “From the people of Earth!” shouted Amaryl. “The one planet on which human beings originated.”

  “One planet? Just one planet?”

  “The only planet. Sure. Earth.”

  “When you say Earth, you mean Aurora, don’t you?”

  “Aurora? What’s that? —I mean Earth. Have you never heard of Earth?”

  “No,” said Seldon. “Actually not.”

  “It’s a mythical world,” began Dors, “that—”

  “It’s not mythical. It was a real planet.”

  Seldon sighed. “I’ve heard this all before. Well, let’s go through it again. Is there a Dahlite book that tells of Earth?”

  “What?”

  “Some computer software, then?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Young man, where did you hear about Earth?”

  “My dad told me. Everyone knows about it.”

  “Is there anyone who knows about it especially? Did they teach you about it in school?”

  “They never said a word about it there.”

  “Then how do people know about it?”

  Amaryl shrugged his shoulders with an air of being uselessly badgered over nothing. “Everyone just does. If you want stories about it, there’s Mother Rittah. I haven’t heard that she’s died yet.”

  “Your mother? Wouldn’t you know—”

  “She’s not my mother. That’s just what they call her. Mother Rittah. She’s an old woman. She lives in Billibotton. Or used to.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Down in that direction,” said Amaryl, gesturing vaguely.

  “How do I get there?”

  “Get there? You don’t want to get there. You’d never come back.”

  “Why not?”

  “Believe me. You don’t want to go there.”

  “But I’d like to see Mother Rittah.”

  Amaryl shook his head. “Can you use a knife?”

  “For what purpose? What kind of knife?”

  “A cutting knife. Like this.” Amaryl reached down to the belt that held his pants tight about his waist. A section of it came away and from one end there flashed out a knife blade, thin, gleaming, and deadly.

  Dors’s hand immediately came down hard upon his right wrist.

  Amaryl laughed. “I wasn’t planning to use it. I was just showing it to you.” He put the knife back in his belt. “You need one in self-defense and if you don’t have one or if you have one but don’t know how to use it, you’ll never get out of Billibotton alive. Anyway”—he suddenly grew very grave and intent—“are you really serious, Master Seldon, about helping me get to Helicon?”

  “Entirely serious. That’s a promise. Write down your name and where you can be reached by hyper-computer. You have a code, I suppose.”

  “My shift in the heatsinks has one. Will that do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then,” said Amaryl, looking up earnestly at Seldon, “this means I have my whole future riding on you, Master Seldon, so please don’t go to Billibotton. I can’t afford to lose you now.” He turned beseeching eyes on Dors and said softly, “Mistress Venabili, if he’ll listen to you, don’t let him go. Please.”

  BILLIBOTTON

  DAHL— . . . Oddly enough, the best-known aspect of this sector is Billibotton, a semilegendary place about which innumerable tales have grown up. In fact, a whole branch of literature now exists in which heroes and adventurers (and victims) must dare the dangers of passing through Billibotton. So stylized have these stories become that the one well-known and, presumably, authentic tale involving such a passage, that of Hari Seldon and Dors Venabili, has come to seem fantastic simply by association . . .

  ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA

  66

  When Hari Seldon and Dors Venabili were alone, Dors asked thoughtfully, “Are you really planning to see this ‘Mother’ woman?”

  “I’m thinking about it, Dors.”

  “You’re an odd one, Hari. You seem to go steadily from bad to worse. You went Upperside, which seemed harmless enough, for a rational purpose when you were in Streeling. Then, in Mycogen, you broke into the Elders’ aerie, a much more dangerous task, for a much more foolish purpose. And now in Dahl, you want to go to this place, which that young man seems to think is simple suicide, for something altogether nonsensical.”

  “I’m curious about this reference to Earth—and must know if there’s anything to it.”

  Dors said, “It’s a legend and not even an interesting one. It is routine. The names differ from planet to planet, but the content is the same. There is always the tale of an original world and a golden age. There is a longing for a supposedly simple and virtuous past that is almost universal among the people of a complex and vicious society. In one way or another, this is true of all societies, since everyone imagines his or her own society to be too complex and vicious, however simple it may be. Mark that down for your psychohistory.”

  “Just the same,” said Seldon, �
��I have to consider the possibility that one world did once exist. Aurora . . . Earth . . . the name doesn’t matter. In fact—”

  He paused and finally Dors said, “Well?”

  Seldon shook his head. “Do you remember the hand-on-thigh story you told me in Mycogen? It was right after I got the Book from Raindrop Forty-Three . . . Well, it popped into my head one evening recently when we were talking to the Tisalvers. I said something that reminded me, for an instant—”

  “Reminded you of what?”

  “I don’t remember. It came into my head and went out again, but somehow every time I think of the single-world notion, it seems to me I have the tips of my fingers on something and then lose it.”

  Dors looked at Seldon in surprise. “I don’t see what it could be. The hand-on-thigh story has nothing to do with Earth or Aurora.”

  “I know, but this . . . thing . . . that hovers just past the edge of my mind seems to be connected with this single world anyway and I have the feeling that I must find out more about it at any cost. That . . . and robots.”

  “Robots too? I thought the Elders’ aerie put an end to that.”

  “Not at all. I’ve been thinking about them.” He stared at Dors with a troubled look on his face for a long moment, then said, “But I’m not sure.”

  “Sure about what, Hari?”

  But Seldon merely shook his head and said nothing more.

  Dors frowned, then said, “Hari, let me tell you one thing. In sober history—and, believe me, I know what I’m talking about—there is no mention of one world of origin. It’s a popular belief, I admit. I don’t mean just among the unsophisticated followers of folklore, like the Mycogenians and the Dahlite heatsinkers, but there are biologists who insist that there must have been one world of origin for reasons that are well outside my area of expertise and there are the more mystical historians who tend to speculate about it. And among the leisure-class intellectuals, I understand such speculations are becoming fashionable. Still, scholarly history knows nothing about it.”