Asimov’s Future History Volume 14

by Isaac Asimov

  Presumably, the rapping was at the door, but he didn’t remember where the door was. Presumably, also, there was a contact that would flood the room with light, but he didn’t remember where that was either.

  He sat up in bed and felt along the wall to his left rather desperately while calling out, “One moment, please.”

  He found the necessary contact and the room suddenly bloomed with a soft light.

  He scrambled out of bed, blinking, still searching for the door, finding it, reaching out to open it, remembering caution at the last moment, and saying in a suddenly stern, no-nonsense voice, “Who’s there?”

  A rather gentle woman’s voice said, “My dame is Dors Venabili and I have come to see Dr. Hari Seldon.”

  Even as that was said, a woman was standing just in front of the door, without that door ever having been opened.

  For a moment, Hari Seldon stared at her in surprise, then realized that he was wearing only a one-piece undergarment. He let out a strangled gasp and dashed for the bed and only then realized that he was staring at a holograph. It lacked the hard edge of reality and it became apparent the woman wasn’t looking at him. She was merely showing herself for identification.

  He paused, breathing hard, then said, raising his voice to be heard through the door, “If you’ll wait, I’ll be with you. Give me... maybe half an hour.”

  The woman, or the holograph, at any rate, said, “I’ll wait, “and disappeared.

  There was no shower, so he sponged himself, making a rare mess on the tiled floor in the washroom corner. There was toothpaste but no toothbrush, so he used his finger. He had no choice but to put on the clothes he had been wearing the day before. He finally opened the door.

  He realized, even as he did so, that she had not really identified herself. She had merely given a name and Hummin had not told him whom to expect, whether it was to be this Dors Somebody or anyone else. He had felt secure because the holograph was that of a personable young woman, but for all he knew there might be half a dozen hostile young men with her.

  He peered out cautiously, saw only the woman, then opened the door sufficiently to allow her to enter. He immediately closed and locked the door behind her.

  “Pardon me, “he said, “What time is it?”

  “Nine,” she said, “The day has long since begun.”

  As far as official time was concerned, Trantor held to Galactic Standard, since only so could sense be made out of interstellar commerce and governmental dealings. Each world, however, also had a local time system and Seldon had not yet come to the point where he felt at home with casual Trantorian references to the hour.

  “Midmorning?” he said.

  “Of course.”

  “There are no windows in this room, “he said defensively.

  Dors walked to his bed, reached out, and touched a small dark spot on the wall. Red numbers appeared on the ceiling just over his pillow. They read: 0903.

  She smiled without superiority. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I rather assumed Chetter Hummin would have told you I’d be coming for you at nine. The trouble with him is he’s so used to knowing, he sometimes forgets that others occasionally don’t know. And I shouldn’t have used radio-holographic identification. I imagine you don’t have it on Helicon and I’m afraid I must have alarmed you.”

  Seldon felt himself relax. She seemed natural and friendly and the casual reference to Hummin reassured him. He said, “You’re quite wrong about Helicon, Miss–”

  “Please call me Dors.”

  “You’re still wrong about Helicon, Dors. We do have radioholography, but I’ve never been able to afford the equipment. Nor could anyone in my circle, so I haven’t actually had the experience. But I understood what had happened soon enough.”

  He studied her. She was not very tall, average height for a woman, he judged. Her hair was a reddish-gold, though not very bright, and was arranged in shore curls about her head. (He had seen a number of women in Trantor with their hair so arranged. It was apparently a local fashion that would have been laughed at in Helicon.) She was not amazingly beautiful, but was quire pleasant to look at, this being helped by full lips that seemed to have a slight humorous curl to them. She was slim, well-built, and looked quite young. (Too young, he thought uneasily, to be of use perhaps.)

  “Do I pass inspection?” she asked. (She seemed to have Hummin’s trick of guessing his thoughts, Seldon thought, or perhaps he himself lacked the trick of hiding them.)

  He said, “I’m sorry. I seem to have been staring, but I’ve only been trying to evaluate you. I’m in a strange place. I know no one and have no friends.”

  “Please, Dr. Seldon, count me as a friend. Mr. Hummin has asked me to take care of you.”

  Seldon smiled ruefully. “You may be a little young for the job.”

  “You’ll find I am not.”

  “Well, I’ll try to be as little trouble as possible. Could you please repeat your name?”

  “Dors Venabili.” She spelled the last name and emphasized the stress on the second syllable. “As I said, please call me Dors and if you don’t object too strenuously I will call you Hari. We’re quite informal here at the University and there is an almost self-conscious effort to show no signs of status, either inherited or professional.”

  “Please, by all means, call me Hari.”

  “Good. I shall remain informal then. For instance, the instinct for formality, if there is such a thing, would cause me to ask permission to sit down. Informally, however, I shall just sit.” She then sat down on the one chair in the room.

  Seldon cleared his throat. “Clearly, I’m not at all in possession of my ordinary faculties. I should have asked you to sit.” He sat down on the aide of his crumpled bed and wished he had thought to straighten it out somewhat, but he had been caught by surprise.

  She said pleasantly, “This is how it’s going to work, Hari. First, we’ll go to breakfast at one of the University cafes. Then I’ll get you a room in one of the domiciles, a better room than this. You’ll have a window. Hummin has instructed me to get you a credit tile in his name, but it will take me a day or two to extort one out of the University bureaucracy. Until that’s done, I’ll be responsible for your expenses and you can pay me back later. And we can use you. Chetter Hummin told me you’re a mathematician and for some reason there’s a serious lack of good ones at the University.”

  “Did Hummin tell you that I was a good mathematician?”

  “As a matter of face, he did. He said you were a remarkable man–”

  “Well.” Seldon looked down at his fingernails. “I would like to be considered so, but Hummin knew me for less than a day and, before that, he had heard me present a paper, the quality of which he has no way of judging. I think he was just being polite.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Dors. “He is a remarkable person himself and has had a great deal of experience with people. I’ll go by his judgment. In any case, I imagine you’ll have a chance to prove yourself. You can program computers, I suppose.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m talking about teaching computers, you understand, and I’m asking if you can devise programs to teach various phases of contemporary mathematics.”

  “Yes, that’s part of my profession. I’m assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Helicon.”

  She said, “Yes, I know. Hummin told me that. It means, of course, that everyone will know you are a non-Trantorian, but that will present no serious problems. We’re mainly Trantorian here at the University, but there’s a substantial minority of Outworlders from any number of different worlds and that’s accepted. I won’t say that you’ll never hear a planetary slur but actually the Outworlders are more likely to use them than the Trantorians. I’m an Outworlder myself, by the way.”

  “Oh?” He hesitated and then decided it would be only polite to ask. “What world are you from?”

  “I’m from Cinna. Have you ever heard of it?”

 
He’d be caught out if he was polite enough to lie, Seldon decided, so he said, “No.”

  “I’m not surprised. It’s probably of even less account than Helicon is. Anyway, to get back to the programming of mathematical teaching computers, I suppose that that can be done either proficiently or poorly.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And you would do it proficiently.”

  “I would like to think so.”

  “There you are, then. The University will pay you for that, so lee’s go out and eat. Did you sleep well, by the way?”

  “Surprisingly, I did.”

  “And are you hungry?”

  “Yes, but–” He hesitated.

  She said cheerfully, “But you’re worried about the quality of the food, is that it? Well, don’t be. Being an Outworlder myself, I can understand your feelings about the strong infusion of microfood into everything, but the University menus aren’t bad. In the faculty dining room, at least. The students suffer a bit, but that serves to harden them.”

  She rose and turned to the door, but stopped when Seldon could not keep himself from saying, “Are you a member of the faculty?”

  She turned and smiled at him impishly. “Don’t I look old enough? I got my doctorate two years ago at Cinna and I’ve been here ever since. In two weeks, I’ll be thirty.”

  “Sorry,” said Seldon, smiling in his turn, “but you can’t expect to look twentyfour and not raise doubts as to your academic status.”

  “Aren’t you nice?” said Dors and Seldon felt a certain pleasure wash over him. After all, he thought, you can’t exchange pleasantries with an attractive woman and feel entirely like a stranger.

  18.

  Dors was right. Breakfast was by no means bad. There was something that was unmistakably eggy and the meat was pleasantly smoked. The chocolate drink (Trantor was strong on chocolate and Seldon did not mind that) was probably synthetic, but it was tasty and the breakfast rolls were good.

  He felt is only right to say as much. “This has been a very pleasant breakfast. Food. Surroundings. Everything.”

  “I’m delighted you think so,” said Dors.

  Seldon looked about. There were a bank of windows in one wall and while actual sunlight did not enter (he wondered if, after a while, he would learn to be satisfied with diffuse daylight and would cease to look for patches of sunlight in a room), the place was light enough. In face, it was quite bright, for the local weather computer had apparently decided is was time for a sharp, clear day.

  The cables were arranged for four apiece and most were occupied by the full number, but Dors and Seldon remained alone at theirs. Dors had called over some of the men and women and had introduced them. All had been police, but none had joined them. Undoubtedly, Dors intended that to be so, but Seldon did not see how she managed to arrange it.

  He said, “You haven’t introduced me to any mathematicians, Dors.”

  “I haven’t seen any that I know. Most mathematicians start the day early and have classes by eight. My own feeling is that any student so foolhardy as to take mathematics wants to get that part of the course over with as soon as possible.”

  “I take is you’re not a mathematician yourself.”

  “Anything but,” said Dors with a short laugh. “Anything. History is my field. I’ve already published some studies on the rise of Trantor, I mean the primitive kingdom, not this world. I suppose that will end up as my field of specialization, Royal Trantor.”

  “Wonderful,” said Seldon.

  “Wonderful?” Dors looked at him quizzically. “Are you interested in Royal Trantor too?”

  “In a way, yes. That and other things like that. I’ve never really studied history and I should have.”

  “Should you? If you had studied history, you’d scarcely have had time to study mathematics and mathematicians are very much needed especially at this University. We’re full to here with historians,” she said, raising her hand to her eyebrows, “and economists and political scientists, but we’re short on science and mathematics. Chetter Hummin pointed that out to me once. He called it the decline of science and seemed to think it was a general phenomenon.”

  Seldon said, “Of course, when I say I should have studied history, I don’t mean that I should have made it a life work. I meant I should have studied enough to help me in my mathematics. My field of specialization is the mathematical analysis of social structure.”

  “Sounds horrible.”

  “In a way, it is. It’s very complicated and without my knowing a great deal more about how societies evolved it’s hopeless. My picture is too static, you see.”

  “I can’t see because I know nothing about it. Chetter told me you were developing something called psychohistory and that it was important. Have I got it right? Psychohistory?”

  “That’s right. I should have called it ‘psychsociology,’ but it seemed to me that was too ugly a word. Or perhaps I knew instinctively that a knowledge of history was necessary and then didn’t pay sufficient attention to my thoughts.”

  “Psychohistory does sound better, but I don’t know what it is.”

  “I scarcely do myself.” He brooded a few minutes, looking at the woman on the other side of the table and feeling that she might make this exile of his seem a little less like an exile. He thought of the other woman he had known a few years ago, but blocked it off with a determined effort. If he ever found another companion, it would have to be one who understood scholarship and what it demanded of a person.

  To get his mind onto a new track, he said, “Chetter Hummin told me that the University is in no way troubled by the government.”

  “He’s right.”

  Seldon shook his head. “That seems rather unbelievably forbearing of the Imperial government. The educational institutions on Helicon are by no means so independent of governmental pressures.”

  “Nor on Cinna. Nor on any Outworld, except perhaps for one or two of the largest. Trantor is another matter.”

  “Yes, but why?”

  “Because it’s the center of the Empire. The universities here have enormous prestige. Professionals are turned out by any university anywhere, but the administrators of the Empire, the high officials, the countless millions of people who represent the tentacles of Empire reaching into every corner of the Galaxy, are educated right here on Trantor.”

  “I’ve never seen the statistics–” began Seldon.

  “Take my word for it. It is important that the officials of the Empire have some common ground, some special feeling for the Empire. And they can’t all be native Trantorians or else the Outworlds would grow restless. For that reason, Trantor must attract millions of Outworlders for education here. It doesn’t matter where they come from or what their home accent or culture may be, as long as they pick up the Trantorian patina and identify themselves with a Trantorian educational background. That’s what holds the Empire together. The Outworlds are also less restive when a noticeable portion of the administrators who represent the Imperial government are their own people by birth and upbringing.”

  Seldon felt embarrassed again. This was something he had never given any thought to. He wondered if anyone could be a truly great mathematician if mathematics was all he knew. He said, “Is this common knowledge?”

  “I suppose it isn’t,” said Dors after some thought. “There’s so much knowledge to be had that specialists cling to their specialties as a shield against having to know anything about anything else. They avoid being drowned.”

  “Yet you know it.”

  “But that’s my specialty. I’m a historian who deals with the rise of Royal Trantor and this administrative technique was one of the ways in which Trantor spread its influence and managed the transition from Royal Trantor to Imperial Trantor.”

  Seldon said, almost as though muttering to himself, “How harmful overspecialization is. It cuts knowledge at a million points and leaves it bleeding.”

  Dors shrugged. “What can one do? But you s
ee, if Trantor is going to attract Outworlders to Trantorian universities, it has to give them something in return for uprooting themselves and going to a strange world with an incredibly artificial structure and unusual ways. I’ve been here two years and I’m still not used to it. I may never get used to it. But then, of course, I don’t intend to be an administrator, so I’m not forcing myself to be a Trantorian.

  “And what Trantor offers in exchange is not only the promise of a position with high status, considerable power, and money, of course, but also freedom. While students are having their education, they are free to denounce the government, demonstrate against it peacefully, work out their own theories and points of view. They enjoy that and many come here so that they can experience the sensation of liberty.”

  “I imagine,” said Seldon, “that it helps relieve pressure as well. They work off all their resentments, enjoy all the smug self-satisfaction a young revolutionary would have, and by the time they take their place in the Imperial hierarchy, they are ready to settle down into conformity and obedience.”

  Dors nodded. “You may be right. In any case, the government, for all these reasons, carefully preserves the freedom of the universities. It’s not a matter of their being forbearing at all, only clever.”

  “And if you’re not going to be an administrator, Dors, what are you going to be?”

  “A historian. I’ll teach, put book-films of my own into the programming.”

  “Not much status, perhaps.”

  “Not much money, Hari, which is more important. As for status, that’s the sort of push and pull I’d just as soon avoid. I’ve seen many people with status, but I’m still looking for a happy one. Status won’t sit still under you; you have to continually fight to keep from sinking. Even Emperors manage to come to bad ends most of the time. Someday I may just go back to Cinna and be a professor.”

  “And a Trantorian education will give you status.”

  Don laughed. “I suppose so, but on Cinna who would care? It’s a dull world, full of farms and with lots of cattle, both four-legged and two-legged.”