by Isaac Asimov
“I don’t doubt that. What particular difficulty are you refusing to turn your back upon at the present moment?”
“The difficulty, Hardin, of persuading the Foundation to co-operate. Your policy of peace, you see, has led you into making several very serious mistakes, simply because you underestimated the boldness of your adversary. Not everyone is as afraid of direct action as you are.”
“For instance?” suggested Hardin.
“For instance, you came to Anacreon alone and accompanied me to my chambers alone.”
Hardin looked about him. “And what is wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” said the regent, “except that outside this room are five police guards, well armed and ready to shoot. I don’t think you can leave, Hardin.”
The mayor’s eyebrows lifted. “I have no immediate desire to leave. Do you then fear me so much?”
“I don’t fear you at all. But this may serve to impress you with my determination. Shall we call it a gesture?”
“Call it what you please,” said Hardin, indifferently. “I shall not discommode myself over the incident, whatever you choose to call it.”
“I’m sure that attitude will change with time. But you have made another error, Hardin, a more serious one. It seems that the planet Terminus is almost wholly undefended.”
“Naturally. What have we to fear? We threaten no one’s interest and serve all alike.”
“And while remaining helpless,” Wienis went on, “you kindly helped us to arm ourselves, aiding us particularly in the development of a navy of our own, a great navy. In fact, a navy which, since your donation of the Imperial cruiser, is quite irresistible.”
“Your highness, you are wasting time.” Hardin made as if to rise from his seat. “If you mean to declare war, and are informing me of the fact, you will allow me to communicate with my government at once.”
“Sit down, Hardin. I am not declaring war, and you are not communicating with your government at all. When the war is fought—not declared, Hardin, fought—the Foundation will be informed of it in due time by the nuclear blasts of the Anacreonian navy under the lead of my own son upon the flagship, Wienis, once a cruiser of the Imperial navy.”
Hardin frowned. “When will all this happen?”
“If you’re really interested, the ships of the fleet left Anacreon exactly fifty minutes ago, at eleven, and the first shot will be fired as soon as they sight Terminus, which should be at noon tomorrow. You may consider yourself a prisoner of war.”
“That’s exactly what I do consider myself, your highness,” said Hardin, still frowning. “But I’m disappointed.”
Wienis chuckled contemptuously. “Is that all?”
“Yes. I had thought that the moment of coronation—midnight, you know—would be the logical time to set the fleet in motion. Evidently, you wanted to start the war while you were still regent. It would have been more dramatic the other way.”
The regent stared. “What in Space are you talking about?”
“Don’t you understand?” said Hardin, softly. “I had set my counterstroke for midnight.”
Wienis started from his chair. “You are not bluffing me. There is no counterstroke. If you are counting on the support of the other kingdoms, forget it. Their navies, combined, are no match for ours.”
“I know that. I don’t intend firing a shot. It is simply that the word went out a week ago that at midnight tonight, the planet Anacreon goes under the interdict.”
“The interdict?”
“Yes. If you don’t understand, I might explain that every priest in Anacreon is going on strike, unless I countermand the order. But I can’t while I’m being held incommunicado; nor do I wish to even if I weren’t!” He leaned forward and added, with sudden animation, “Do you realize, your highness, that an attack on the Foundation is nothing short of sacrilege of the highest order?”
Wienis was groping visibly for self-control. “Give me none of that, Hardin. Save it for the mob.”
“My dear Wienis, whoever do you think I am saving it for? I imagine that for the last half hour every temple on Anacreon has been the center of a mob listening to a priest exhorting them upon that very subject. There’s not a man or woman on Anacreon that doesn’t know that their government has launched a vicious, unprovoked attack upon the center of their religion. But it lacks only four minutes of midnight now. You’d better go down to the ballroom to watch events. I’ll be safe here with five guards outside the door.” He leaned back in his chair, helped himself to another glass of Locris wine, and gazed at the ceiling with perfect indifference.
Wienis, suddenly furious, rushed out of the room.
A hush had fallen over the elite in the ballroom, as a broad path was cleared for the throne. Lepold sat on it now, hands solidly on its arms, head high, face frozen. The huge chandeliers had dimmed and in the diffused multi-colored light from the tiny nucleo-bulbs that bespangled the vaulted ceiling, the royal aura shone out bravely, lifting high above his head to form a blazing coronet.
Wienis paused on the stairway. No one saw him; all eyes were on the throne. He clenched his fists and remained where he was; Hardin would not bluff him into action.
And then the throne stirred. Noiselessly, it lifted upward—and drifted. Off the dais, slowly down the steps, and then horizontally, five centimetres off the floor, it worked itself toward the huge, open window.
At the sound of the deep-toned bell that signified midnight, it stopped before the window—and the king’s aura died.
For a frozen split second, the king did not move, face twisted in surprise, without an aura, merely human; and then the throne wobbled and dropped to the floor with a crashing thump, just as every light in the palace went out.
Through the shrieking din and confusion, Wienis’ bull voice sounded. “Get the flares! Get the flares!”
He buffeted right and left through the crowd and forced his way to the door. From without, palace guards had streamed into the darkness.
Somehow the flares were brought back to the ballroom; flares that were to have been used in the gigantic torchlight procession through the streets of the city after the coronation.
Back to the ballroom guardsmen swarmed with torches—blue, green, and red; where the strange light lit up frightened, confused faces.
“There is no harm done,” shouted Wienis. “Keep your places. Power will return in a moment.”
He turned to the captain of the guard who stood stiffly at attention. “What is it, Captain?”
“Your highness,” was the instant response, “the palace is surrounded by the people of the city.”
“What do they want?” snarled Wienis.
“A priest is at the head. He has been identified as High Priest Poly Verisof. He demands the immediate release of Mayor Salvor Hardin and cessation of the war against the Foundation.” The report was made in the expressionless tones of an officer, but his eyes shifted uneasily.
Wienis cried, “If any of the rabble attempt to pass the palace gates, blast them out of existence. For the moment, nothing more. Let them howl! There will be an accounting tomorrow.”
The torches had been distributed now, and the ballroom was again alight. Wienis rushed to the throne, still standing by the window, and dragged the stricken, wax-faced Lepold to his feet.
“Come with me.” He cast one look out of the window. The city was pitch-black. From below there were the hoarse confused cries of the mob. Only toward the right, where the Argolid Temple stood, was there illumination. He swore angrily, and dragged the king away.
Wienis burst into his chambers, the five guardsmen at his heels. Lepold followed, wide-eyed, scared speechless.
“Hardin,” said Wienis, huskily, “you are playing with forces too great for you.”
The mayor ignored the speaker. In the pearly light of the pocket nucleo-bulb at his side, he remained quietly seated, a slightly ironic smile on his face.
“Good morning, your majesty,” he said to Lepold.
“I congratulate you on your coronation.”
“Hardin,” cried Wienis again, “order your priests back to their jobs.”
Hardin looked up coolly. “Order them yourself, Wienis, and see who is playing with forces too great for whom. Right now, there’s not a wheel turning in Anacreon. There’s not a light burning, except in the temples. There’s not a drop of water running, except in the temples. On the wintry half of the planet, there’s not a calorie of heat, except in the temples. The hospitals are taking in no more patients. The power plants have shut down. All ships are grounded. If you don’t like it, Wienis, you can order the priests back to their jobs. I don’t wish to.”
“By Space, Hardin, I will. If it’s to be a showdown, so be it. We’ll see if your priests can withstand the army. Tonight, every temple on the planet will be put under army supervision.”
“Very good, but how are you going to give the orders? Every line of communication on the planet is shut down. You’ll find that neither wave nor hyperwave will work. In fact, the only communicator of the planet that will work—outside of the temples, of course—is the televisor right here in this room, and I’ve fitted it only for reception.”
Wienis struggled vainly for breath, and Hardin continued. “If you wish you can order your army into the Argolid Temple just outside the palace and then use the ultrawave sets there to contact other portions of the planet. But if you do that, I’m afraid the army contingent will be cut to pieces by the mob, and then what will protect your palace, Wienis? And your lives, Wienis?”
Wienis said thickly, “We can hold out, devil. We’ll last the day. Let the mob howl and let the power die, but we’ll hold out. And when the news comes back that the Foundation has been taken, your precious mob will find upon what vacuum their religion has been built, and they’ll desert your priests and turn against them. I give you until noon tomorrow, Hardin, because you can stop the power on Anacreon but you can’t stop my fleet.” His voice croaked exultantly. “They’re on their way, Hardin, with the great cruiser you yourself ordered repaired, at the head.”
Hardin replied lightly. “Yes, the cruiser I myself ordered repaired—but in my own way. Tell me, Wienis, have you ever heard of a hyperwave relay? No, I see you haven’t. Well, in about two minutes you’ll find out what one can do.”
The televisor flashed to life as he spoke, and he amended, “No, in two seconds. Sit down, Wienis, and listen.”
7
Theo Aporat was one of the very highest ranking priests of Anacreon. From the standpoint of precedence alone, he deserved his appointment as head priest-attendant upon the flagship Wienis.
But it was not only rank or precedence. He knew the ship. He had worked directly under the holy men from the Foundation itself in repairing the ship. He had gone over the motors under their orders. He had rewired the ’visors; revamped the communications system; replated the punctured hull; reinforced the beams. He had even been permitted to help while the wise men of the Foundation had installed a device so holy it had never been placed in any previous ship, but had been reserved only for this magnificent colossus of a vessel—a hyperwave relay.
It was no wonder that he felt heartsick over the purposes to which the glorious ship was perverted. He had never wanted to believe what Verisof had told him—that the ship was to be used for appalling wickedness; that its guns were to be turned on the great Foundation. Turned on that Foundation, where he had been trained as a youth, from which all blessedness was derived.
Yet he could not doubt now, after what the admiral had told him.
How could the king, divinely blessed, allow this abominable act? Or was it the king? Was it not, perhaps, an action of the accursed regent, Wienis, without the knowledge of the king at all. And it was the son of this same Wienis that was the admiral who five minutes before had told him:
“Attend to your souls and your blessings, priest. I will attend to my ship.”
Aporat smiled crookedly. He would attend to his souls and his blessings—and also to his cursings; and Prince Lefkin would whine soon enough.
He had entered the general communications room now. His acolyte preceded him and the two officers in charge made no move to interfere. The head priest-attendant had the right of free entry anywhere on the ship.
“Close the door,” Aporat ordered, and looked at the chronometer. It lacked five minutes of twelve. He had timed it well.
With quick practiced motions, he moved the little levers that opened all communications, so that every part of the two-mile-long ship was within reach of his voice and his image.
“Soldiers of the royal flagship Wienis, attend! It is your priest-attendant that speaks!” The sound of his voice reverberated, he knew, from the stern atom blast in the extreme rear to the navigation tables in the prow.
“Your ship,” he cried, “is engaged in sacrilege. Without your knowledge, it is performing such an act as will doom the soul of every man among you to the eternal frigidity of space! Listen! It is the intention of your commander to take this ship to the Foundation and there to bombard that source of all blessings into submission to his sinful will. And since that is his intention, I, in the name of the Galactic Spirit, remove him from his command, for there is no command where the blessing of the Galactic Spirit has been withdrawn. The divine king himself may not maintain his kingship without the consent of the Spirit.”
His voice took on a deeper tone, while the acolyte listened with veneration and the two soldiers with mounting fear. “And because this ship is upon such a devil’s errand, the blessing of the Spirit is removed from it as well.”
He lifted his arms solemnly, and before a thousand televisors throughout the ship, soldiers cowered, as the stately image of their priest-attendant spoke:
“In the name of the Galactic Spirit and of his prophet, Hari Seldon, and of his interpreters, the holy men of the Foundation, I curse this ship. Let the televisors of this ship, which are its eyes, become blind. Let its grapples, which are its arms, be paralyzed. Let the nuclear blasts, which are its fists, lose their function. Let the motors, which are its heart, cease to beat. Let the communications, which are its voice, become dumb. Let its ventilations, which are its breath, fade. Let its lights, which are its soul, shrivel into nothing. In the name of the Galactic Spirit, I so curse this ship.”
And with his last word, at the stroke of midnight, a hand, light-years distant in the Argolid Temple, opened an ultrawave relay, which at the instantaneous speed of the ultrawave, opened another on the flagship Wienis.
And the ship died!
For it is the chief characteristic of the religion of science that it works, and that such curses as that of Aporat’s are really deadly.
Aporat saw the darkness close down on the ship and heard the sudden ceasing of the soft, distant purring of the hyperatomic motors. He exulted and from the pocket of his long robe withdrew a self-powered nucleo-bulb that filled the room with pearly light.
He looked down at the two soldiers who, brave men though they undoubtedly were, writhed on their knees in the last extremity of mortal terror. “Save our souls, your reverence. We are poor men, ignorant of the crimes of our leaders,” one whimpered.
“Follow,” said Aporat, sternly. “Your soul is not yet lost.”
The ship was a turmoil of darkness in which fear was so thick and palpable, it was all but a miasmic smell. Soldiers crowded close wherever Aporat and his circle of light passed, striving to touch the hem of his robe, pleading for the tiniest scrap of mercy.
And always his answer was, “Follow me!”
He found Prince Lefkin, groping his way through the officers’ quarters, cursing loudly for lights. The admiral stared at the priest-attendant with hating eyes.
“There you are!” Lefkin inherited his blue eyes from his mother, but there was that about the hook in his nose and the squint in his eye that marked him as the son of Wienis. “What is the meaning of your treasonable actions? Return the power to the ship. I am commander here.”
Lefkin looked about wildly. “Seize that man. Arrest him, or by Space, I will send every man within reach of my voice out the air lock in the nude.” He paused, and then shrieked, “It is your admiral that orders. Arrest him.”
Then, as he lost his head entirely, “Are you allowing yourselves to be fooled by this mountebank, this harlequin? Do you cringe before a religion compounded of clouds and moonbeams? This man is an imposter and the Galactic Spirit he speaks of a fraud of the imagination devised to—”
Aporat interrupted furiously. “Seize the blasphemer. You listen to him at the peril of your souls.”
And promptly, the noble admiral went down under the clutching hands of a score of soldiers.
“Take him with you and follow me.”
Aporat turned, and with Lefkin dragged along after him, and the corridors behind black with soldiery, he returned to the communications room. There, he ordered the ex-commander before the one televisor that worked.
“Order the rest of the fleet to cease course and to prepare for the return to Anacreon.”
The disheveled Lefkin, bleeding, beaten, and half stunned, did so.
“And now,” continued Aporat, grimly, “we are in contact with Anacreon on the hyperwave beam. Speak as I order you.”
Lefkin made a gesture of negation, and the mob in the room and the others crowding the corridor beyond, growled fearfully.
“Speak!” said Aporat. “Begin: The Anacreonian navy—”
Lefkin began.
8
There was absolute silence in Wienis’s chambers when the image of Prince Lefkin appeared at the televisor. There had been one startled gasp from the regent at the haggard face and shredded uniform of his son, and then he collapsed into a chair, face contorted with surprise and apprehension.
Hardin listened stolidly, hands clasped lightly in his lap, while the just-crowned King Lepold sat shriveled in the most shadowy corner, biting spasmodically at his goldbraided sleeve. Even the soldiers had lost the emotionless stare that is the prerogative of the military, and, from where they lined up against the door, nuclear blasts ready, peered furtively at the figure upon the televisor.
