by Isaac Asimov
Bayta struggled with a strange emotion and then caught herself in a mental gasp. Almost, it reminded her of the time in the Time Vault, of those last days on Haven. It was that horrible, cloying, clinging spiderweb of honor and despair. She shrunk beneath it oppressed.
The music dinned upon her, laughing horribly, and the writhing terror at the wrong end of the telescope in the small circle of light was lost as she turned feverishly away. Her forehead was wet and cold.
The music died. It must have lasted fifteen minutes, and a vast pleasure at its absence flooded Bayta. Light glared, and Magnifico’s face was close to hers, sweaty, wild-eyed, lugubrious.
“My lady,” he gasped, “how fare you?”
“Well enough,” she whispered, “but why did you play like that?”
She became aware of the others in the room. Toran and Mis were limp and helpless against the wall, but her eyes skimmed over them. There was the prince, lying strangely still at the foot of the table. There was Commason, moaning wildly through an open, drooling mouth.
Commason flinched, and yelled mindlessly, as Magnifico took a step toward him.
Magnifico turned, and with a leap, turned the others loose.
Toran lunged upwards and with eager, taut fists seized the landowner by the neck, “You come with us. We’ll want you—to make sure we get to our ship.”
Two hours later, in the ship’s kitchen, Bayta served a walloping homemade pie, and Magnifico celebrated the return to space by attacking it with a magnificent disregard of table manners.
“Good, Magnifico?”
“Um-m-m-m!”
“Magnifico?”
“Yes, my lady?”
“What was it you played back there?”
The clown writhed, “I . . . I’d rather not say. I learned it once, and the Visi-Sonor is of an effect upon the nervous system most profound. Surely, it was an evil thing, and not for your sweet innocence, my lady.”
“Oh, now, come, Magnifico. I’m not as innocent as that. Don’t flatter so. Did I see anything like what they saw?”
“I hope not. I played it for them only. If you saw, it was but the rim of it—from afar.”
“And that was enough. Do you know you knocked the prince out?”
Magnifico spoke grimly through a large, muffling piece of pie. “I killed him, my lady.”
“What?” She swallowed, painfully.
“He was dead when I stopped, or I would have continued. I cared not for Commason. His greatest threat was death or torture. But, my lady, this prince looked upon you wickedly, and—” he choked in a mixture of indignation and embarrassment.
Bayta felt strange thoughts come and repressed them sternly. “Magnifico, you’ve got a gallant soul.”
“Oh, my lady.” He bent a red nose into his pie, but somehow did not eat.
Ebling Mis stared out the port. Trantor was near—its metallic shine fearfully bright. Toran was standing there, too.
He said with dull bitterness, “We’ve come for nothing, Ebling. The Mule’s man precedes us.”
Ebling Mis rubbed his forehead with a hand that seemed shriveled out of its former plumpness. His voice was an abstracted mutter.
Toran was annoyed. “I say those people know the Foundation has fallen. I say—”
“Eh?” Mis looked up, puzzled. Then, he placed a gentle hand upon Toran’s wrist, in complete oblivion of any previous conversation, “Toran, I . . . I’ve been looking at Trantor. Do you know . . . I have the queerest feeling . . . ever since we arrived on Neotrantor. It’s an urge, a driving urge that’s pushing and pushing inside. Toran, I can do it; I know I can do it. Things are becoming clear in my mind—they have never been so clear.”
Toran stared—and shrugged. The words brought him no confidence.
He said, tentatively, “Mis?”
“Yes?”
“You didn’t see a ship come down on Neotrantor as we left?”
Consideration was brief. “No.”
“I did. Imagination, I suppose, but it could have been that Filian ship.”
“The one with Captain Han Pritcher on it?”
“The one with space knows who upon it. Magnifico’s information— It followed us here, Mis.”
Ebling Mis said nothing.
Toran said strenuously, “Is there anything wrong with you? Aren’t you well?”
Mis’s eyes were thoughtful, luminous, and strange. He did not answer.
23
THE RUINS OF TRANTOR
The location of an objective upon the great world of Trantor presents a problem unique in the Galaxy. There are no continents or oceans to locate from a thousand miles’ distance. There are no rivers, lakes, and islands to catch sight of through the cloud rifts.
The metal-covered world was—had been—one colossal city, and only the old Imperial palace could be identified readily from outer space by a stranger. The Bayta circled the world at almost air-car height in repeated painful search.
From polar regions, where the icy coating of the metal spires were somber evidence of the breakdown or neglect of the weather-conditioning machinery, they worked southwards. Occasionally they could experiment with the correlations—(or presumable correlations)—between what they saw and what the inadequate map obtained at Neotrantor showed.
But it was unmistakable when it came. The gap in the metal coat of the planet was fifty miles. The unusual greenery spread over hundreds of square miles, enclosing the mighty grace of the ancient Imperial residences.
The Bayta hovered and slowly oriented itself. There were only the huge supercauseways to guide them. Long straight arrows on the map, smooth, gleaming ribbons there below them.
What the map indicated to be the University area was reached by dead reckoning, and upon the flat area of what once must have been a busy landing field, the ship lowered itself.
It was only as they submerged into the welter of metal that the smooth beauty apparent from the air dissolved into the broken, twisted near-wreckage that had been left in the wake of the Sack. Spires were truncated, smooth walls gouted and twisted, and just for an instant there was the glimpse of a shaven area of earth—perhaps several hundred acres in extent—dark and plowed.
Lee Senter waited as the ship settled downward cautiously. It was a strange ship, not from Neotrantor, and inwardly he sighed. Strange ships and confused dealings with the men of outer space could mean the end of the short days of peace, a return to the old grandiose times of death and battle. Senter was leader of the Group; the old books were in his charge and he had read of those old days. He did not want them.
Perhaps ten minutes spent themselves as the strange ship came down to nestle upon the flatness, but long memories telescoped themselves in that time. There was first the great farm of his childhood—that remained in his mind merely as busy crowds of people. Then there was the trek of the young families to new lands. He was ten, then; an only child, puzzled, and frightened.
Then the new buildings; the great metal slabs to be uprooted and torn aside; the exposed soil to be turned, and freshened, and invigorated; neighboring buildings to be torn down and leveled; others to be transformed to living quarters.
There were crops to be grown and harvested; peaceful relations with neighboring farms to be established—
There was growth and expansion, and the quiet efficiency of self-rule. There was the coming of a new generation of hard, little youngsters born to the soil. There was the great day when he was chosen leader of the Group and for the first time since his eighteenth birthday he did not shave and saw the first stubble of his Leader’s Beard appear.
And now the Galaxy might intrude and put an end to the brief idyll of isolation—
The ship landed. He watched wordlessly as the port opened. Four emerged, cautious and watchful. There were three men, varied, old, young, thin, and beaked. And a woman striding among them like an equal. His hand left the two glassy black tufts of his beard as he stepped forward.
He gave
the universal gesture of peace. Both hands were before him; hard, callused palms upward.
The young man approached two steps and duplicated the gesture. “I come in peace.”
The accent was strange, but the words were understandable, and welcome. He replied, deeply, “In peace be it. You are welcome to the hospitality of the Group. Are you hungry? You shall eat. Are you thirsty? You shall drink.”
Slowly, the reply came, “We thank you for your kindness, and shall bear good report of your Group when we return to our world.”
A queer answer, but good. Behind him, the men of the Group were smiling, and from the recesses of the surrounding structures, the women emerged.
In his own quarters, he removed the locked, mirror-walled box from its hidden place, and offered each of the guests the long, plump cigars that were reserved for great occasions. Before the woman, he hesitated. She had taken a seat among the men. The strangers evidently allowed, even expected, such effrontery. Stiffly, he offered the box.
She accepted one with a smile, and drew in its aromatic smoke, with all the relish one could expect. Lee Senter repressed a scandalized emotion.
The stiff conversation, in advance of the meal, touched politely upon the subject of farming on Trantor.
It was the old man who asked, “What about hydroponics? Surely, for such a world as Trantor, hydroponics would be the answer.”
Senter shook his head slowly. He felt uncertain. His knowledge was the unfamiliar matter of the books he had read, “Artificial farming in chemicals, I think? No, not on Trantor. This hydroponics requires a world of industry—for instance, a great chemical industry. And in war or disaster, when industry breaks down, the people starve. Nor can all foods be grown artificially. Some lose their food value. The soil is cheaper, still better—always more dependable.”
“And your food supply is sufficient?”
“Sufficient; perhaps monotonous. We have fowl that supply eggs, and milk-yielders for our dairy products—but our meat supply rests upon our foreign trade.”
“Trade.” The young man seemed roused to sudden interest. “You trade then. But what do you export?”
“Metal,” was the curt answer. “Look for yourself. We have an infinite supply, ready processed. They come from Neotrantor with ships, demolish an indicated area—increasing our growing space—and leave us in exchange meat, canned fruit, food concentrates, farm machinery, and so on. They carry off the metal and both sides profit.”
They feasted on bread and cheese, and a vegetable stew that was unreservedly delicious. It was over the dessert of frosted fruit, the only imported item on the menu, that, for the first time, the Outlanders became other than mere guests. The young man produced a map of Trantor.
Calmly, Lee Senter studied it. He listened—and said gravely, “The University Grounds are a static area. We farmers do not grow crops on it. We do not, by preference, even enter it. It is one of our few relics of another time we would keep undisturbed.”
“We are seekers after knowledge. We would disturb nothing. Our ship would be our hostage.” The old man offered this—eagerly, feverishly.
“I can take you there then,” said Senter.
That night the strangers slept, and that night Lee Senter sent a message to Neotrantor.
24
CONVERT
The thin life of Trantor trickled to nothing when they entered among the wide-spaced buildings of the University Grounds. There was a solemn and lonely silence over it.
The strangers of the Foundation knew nothing of the swirling days and nights of the bloody Sack that had left the University untouched. They knew nothing of the time after the collapse of the Imperial power, when the students, with their borrowed weapons, and their pale-faced inexperienced bravery, formed a protective volunteer army to protect the central shrine of the science of the Galaxy. They knew nothing of the Seven Days Fight, and the armistice that kept the University free, when even the Imperial palace clanged with the boots of Gilmer and his soldiers, during the short interval of their rule.
Those of the Foundation, approaching for the first time, realized only that in a world of transition from a gutted old to a strenuous new this area was a quiet, graceful museum piece of ancient greatness.
They were intruders in a sense. The brooding emptiness rejected them. The academic atmosphere seemed still to live and to stir angrily at the disturbance.
The library was a deceptively small building which broadened out vastly underground into a mammoth volume of silence and reverie. Ebling Mis paused before the elaborate murals of the reception room.
He whispered—one had to whisper here: “I think we passed the catalog rooms back a way. I’ll stop there.”
His forehead was flushed, his hand trembling, “I mustn’t be disturbed, Toran. Will you bring my meals down to me?”
“Anything you say. We’ll do all we can to help. Do you want us to work under you—”
“No, I must be alone—”
“You think you will get what you want.”
And Ebling Mis replied with a soft certainty, “I know I will!”
Toran and Bayta came closer to “setting up housekeeping” in normal fashion than at any time in their year of married life. It was a strange sort of “housekeeping.” They lived in the middle of grandeur with an inappropriate simplicity. Their food was drawn largely from Lee Senter’s farm and was paid for in the little nuclear gadgets that may be found on any Trader’s ship.
Magnifico taught himself how to use the projectors in the library reading room, and sat over adventure novels and romances to the point where he was almost as forgetful of meals and sleep as was Ebling Mis.
Ebling himself was completely buried. He had insisted on a hammock being slung up for him in the Psychology Reference Room. His face grew thin and white. His vigor of speech was lost and his favorite curses had died a mild death. There were times when the recognition of either Toran or Bayta seemed a struggle.
He was more himself with Magnifico, who brought him his meals and often sat watching him for hours at a time, with a queer, fascinated absorption, as the aging psychologist transcribed endless equations, cross-referred to endless book-films, scurried endlessly about in a wild mental effort toward an end he alone saw.
Toran came upon her in the darkened room, and said sharply, “Bayta!”
Bayta started guiltily. “Yes? You want me, Torie?”
“Sure I want you. What in Space are you sitting there for? You’ve been acting all wrong since we got to Trantor. What’s the matter with you?”
“Oh, Torie, stop,” she said, wearily.
And “Oh, Torie, stop!” he mimicked impatiently. Then, with sudden softness, “Won’t you tell me what’s wrong, Bay? Something’s bothering you.”
“No! Nothing is, Torie. If you keep on just nagging and nagging, you’ll have me mad. I’m just—thinking.”
“Thinking about what?”
“About nothing. Well, about the Mule, and Haven, and the Foundation, and everything. About Ebling Mis and whether he’ll find anything about the Second Foundation, and whether it will help us when he does find it—and a million other things. Are you satisfied?” Her voice was agitated.
“If you’re just brooding, do you mind stopping? It isn’t pleasant and it doesn’t help the situation.”
Bayta got to her feet and smiled weakly. “All right. I’m happy. See, I’m smiling and jolly.”
Magnifico’s voice was an agitated cry outside. “My lady—”
“What is it? Come—”
Bayta’s voice choked off sharply when the opening door framed the large, hard-faced—
“Pritcher,” cried Toran.
Bayta gasped, “Captain! How did you find us?”
Han Pritcher stepped inside. His voice was clear and level, and utterly dead of feeling, “My rank is colonel now—under the Mule.”
“Under the . . . Mule!” Toran’s voice trailed off. They formed a tableau there, the three.
&nb
sp; Magnifico stared wildly and shrank behind Toran. Nobody stopped to notice him.
Bayta said, her hands trembling in each other’s tight grasp, “You are arresting us? You have really gone over to them?”
The colonel replied quickly, “I have not come to arrest you. My instructions make no mention of you. With regard to you, I am free, and I choose to exercise our old friendship, if you will let me.”
Toran’s face was a twisted suppression of fury, “How did you find us? You were in the Filian ship, then? You followed us?”
The wooden lack of expression on Pritcher’s face might have flickered in embarrassment. “I was on the Filian ship! I met you in the first place . . . well . . . by chance.”
“It is a chance that is mathematically impossible.”
“No. Simply rather improbable, so my statement will have to stand. In any case, you admitted to the Filians—there is, of course, no such nation as Filia actually—that you were heading for the Trantor sector, and since the Mule already had his contacts upon Neotrantor, it was easy to have you detained there. Unfortunately, you got away before I arrived, but not long before. I had time to have the farms on Trantor ordered to report your arrival. It was done and I am here. May I sit down? I come in friendliness, believe me.”
He sat. Toran bent his head and thought futilely. With a numbed lack of emotion, Bayta prepared tea.
Toran looked up harshly. “Well, what are you waiting for—colonel? What’s your friendship? If it’s not arrest, what is it then? Protective custody? Call in your men and give your orders.”
Patiently, Pritcher shook his head. “No, Toran. I come of my own will to speak to you, to persuade you of the uselessness of what you are doing. If I fail I shall leave. That is all.”
“That is all? Well, then, peddle your propaganda, give us your speech, and leave. I don’t want any tea, Bayta.”
Pritcher accepted a cup with a grave word of thanks. He looked at Toran with a clear strength as he sipped lightly. Then he said, “The Mule is a mutant. He cannot be beaten in the very nature of the mutation—”
