Foundation and Empire

by Isaac Asimov

  The Siwennian openly displayed a certain quiet satisfaction. “You will notice that so far it would seem to bear out quite accurately my reconstruction of events from the paltry data on the subject that I have gathered.”

  “It is no doubt,” replied Riose with vexed sarcasm, “a tribute to your analytical powers. It is also a hearty and bumptious commentary on the growing danger to the domains of His Imperial Majesty.”

  Barr shrugged his unconcern, and Riose leaned forward suddenly, to seize the old man’s shoulders and stare with curious gentleness into his eyes.

  He said, “Now, patrician, none of that. I have no desire to be barbaric. For my part, the legacy of Siwennian hostility to the Imperium is an odious burden, and one which I would do everything in my power to wipe out. But my province is the military and interference in civil affairs is impossible. It would bring about my recall and ruin my usefulness at once. You see that? I know you see that. Between yourself and myself then, let the atrocity of forty years ago be repaid by your vengeance upon its author and so forgotten. I need your help. I frankly admit it.”

  There was a world of urgency in the young man’s voice, but Ducem Barr’s head shook gently and deliberately in a negative gesture.

  Riose said pleadingly, “You don’t understand, patrician, and I doubt my ability to make you. I can’t argue on your ground. You’re the scholar, not I. But this I can tell you. Whatever you think of the Empire, you will admit its great services. Its armed forces have committed isolated crimes, but in the main they have been a force for peace and civilization. It was the Imperial navy that created the Pax Imperium that ruled over all the Galaxy for thousands of years. Contrast the millennia of peace under the Sun-and-Spaceship of the Empire with the millennia of interstellar anarchy that preceded it. Consider the wars and devastations of those old days and tell me if, with all its faults, the Empire is not worth preserving.

  “Consider,” he drove on forcefully, “to what the outer fringe of the Galaxy is reduced in these days of their breakaway and independence, and ask yourself if for the sake of a petty revenge you would reduce Siwenna from its position as a province under the protection of a mighty Navy to a barbarian world in a barbarian Galaxy, all immersed in its fragmentary independence and its common degradation and misery.”

  “Is it so bad—so soon?” murmured the Siwennian.

  “No,” admitted Riose. “We would be safe ourselves no doubt, were our lifetimes quadrupled. But it is for the Empire I fight; that, and a military tradition which is something for myself alone, and which I cannot transfer to you. It is a military tradition built on the Imperial institution which I serve.”

  “You are getting mystical, and I always find it difficult to penetrate another person’s mysticism.”

  “No matter. You understand the danger of this Foundation.”

  “It was I who pointed out what you call the danger before ever you headed outward from Siwenna.”

  “Then you realize that it must be stopped in embryo or perhaps not at all. You have known of this Foundation before anyone had heard of it. You know more about it than anyone else in the Empire. You probably know how it might best be attacked; and you can probably forewarn me of its countermeasures. Come, let us be friends.”

  Ducem Barr rose. He said flatly, “Such help as I could give you means nothing. So I will make you free of it in the face of your strenuous demand.”

  “I will be the judge of its meaning.”

  “No, I am serious. Not all the might of the Empire could avail to crush this pygmy world.”

  “Why not?” Bel Riose’s eyes glistened fiercely. “No, stay where you are. I’ll tell you when you may leave. Why not? If you think I underestimate this enemy I have discovered, you are wrong. Patrician,” he spoke reluctantly, “I lost a ship on my return. I have no proof that it fell into the hands of the Foundation; but it has not been located since and were it merely an accident, its dead hulk should certainly have been found along the route we took. It is not an important loss—less than the tenth part of a fleabite, but it may mean that the Foundation has already opened hostilities. Such eagerness and such disregard for consequences might mean secret forces of which I know nothing. Can you help me then by answering a specific question? What is their military power?”

  “I haven’t any notion.”

  “Then explain yourself on your own terms. Why do you say the Empire cannot defeat this small enemy?”

  The Siwennian seated himself once more and looked away from Riose’s fixed glare. He spoke heavily, “Because I have faith in the principles of psychohistory. It is a strange science. It reached mathematical maturity with one man, Hari Seldon, and died with him, for no man since has been capable of manipulating its intricacies. But in that short period, it proved itself the most powerful instrument ever invented for the study of humanity. Without pretending to predict the actions of individual humans, it formulated definite laws capable of mathematical analysis and extrapolation to govern and predict the mass action of human groups.”

  “So—”

  “It was that psychohistory which Seldon and the group he worked with applied in full force to the establishment of the Foundation. The place, time, and conditions all conspire mathematically and so, inevitably, to the development of a Second Galactic Empire.”

  Riose’s voice trembled with indignation. “You mean that this art of his predicts that I would attack the Foundation and lose such and such a battle for such and such a reason? You are trying to say that I am a silly robot following a predetermined course into destruction.”

  “No,” replied the old patrician, sharply. “I have already said that the science had nothing to do with individual actions. It is the vaster background that has been foreseen.”

  “Then we stand clasped tightly in the forcing hand of the Goddess of Historical Necessity.”

  “Of Psychohistorical Necessity,” prompted Barr, softly.

  “And if I exercise my prerogative of freewill? If I choose to attack next year, or not to attack at all? How pliable is the Goddess? How resourceful?”

  Barr shrugged. “Attack now or never; with a single ship, or all the force in the Empire; by military force or economic pressure; by candid declaration of war or by treacherous ambush. Do whatever you wish in your fullest exercise of freewill. You will still lose.”

  “Because of Hari Seldon’s dead hand?”

  “Because of the dead hand of the mathematics of human behavior that can neither be stopped, swerved, nor delayed.”

  The two faced each other in deadlock, until the general stepped back.

  He said simply, “I’ll take that challenge. It’s a dead hand against a living will.”

  CLEON II . . . . commonly called “The Great.” The last strong Emperor of the First Empire, he is important for the political and artistic renaissance that took place during his long reign. He is best known to romance, however, for his connection with Bel Riose, and to the common man, he is simply “Riose’s Emperor.” It is important not to allow events of the last year of his reign to overshadow forty years of . . .

  ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA

  4

  THE EMPEROR

  Cleon II was Lord of the Universe. Cleon II also suffered from a painful and undiagnosed ailment. By the queer twists of human affairs, the two statements are not mutually exclusive, nor even particularly incongruous. There have been a wearisomely large number of precedents in history.

  But Cleon II cared nothing for such precedents. To meditate upon a long list of similar cases would not ameliorate personal suffering an electron’s worth. It soothed him as little to think that where his great-grandfather had been the pirate ruler of a dust-speck planet, he himself slept in the pleasure palace of Ammenetik the Great, as heir of a line of Galactic rulers stretching backward into a tenuous past. It was at present no source of comfort to him that the efforts of his father had cleansed the realm of its leprous patches of rebellion and restored it to the peace and unity it had enj
oyed under Stanel VI; that, as a consequence, in the twenty-five years of his reign, not one cloud of revolt had misted his burnished glory.

  The Emperor of the Galaxy and the Lord of All whimpered as he lolled his head backward into the invigorating plane of force about his pillows. It yielded in a softness that did not touch, and at the pleasant tingle, Cleon relaxed a bit. He sat up with difficulty and stared morosely at the distant walls of the grand chamber. It was a bad room to be alone in. It was too big. All the rooms were too big.

  But better to be alone during these crippling bouts than to endure the prinking of the courtiers, their lavish sympathy, their soft, condescending dullness. Better to be alone than to watch those insipid masks behind which spun the tortuous speculations on the chances of death and the fortunes of the succession.

  His thoughts hurried him. There were his three sons; three straight-backed youths full of promise and virtue. Where did they disappear on these bad days? Waiting, no doubt. Each watching the other; and all watching him.

  He stirred uneasily. And now Brodrig craved audience. The low-born, faithful Brodrig; faithful because he was hated with a unanimous and cordial hatred that was the only point of agreement between the dozen cliques that divided his court.

  Brodrig—the faithful favorite, who had to be faithful, since unless he owned the fastest speed-ship in the Galaxy and took to it the day of the Emperor’s death, it would be the radiation-chamber the day after.

  Cleon II touched the smooth knob on the arm of his great divan, and the huge door at the end of the room dissolved to transparency.

  Brodrig advanced along the crimson carpet, and knelt to kiss the Emperor’s limp hand.

  “Your health, sire?” asked the Privy Secretary in a low tone of becoming anxiety.

  “I live,” snapped the Emperor with exasperation, “if you can call it life where every scoundrel who can read a book of medicine uses me as a blank and receptive field for his feeble experiments. If there is a conceivable remedy, chemical, physical, or nuclear, which has not yet been tried, why then, some learned babbler from the far corners of the realm will arrive tomorrow to try it. And still another newly discovered book, or forgery more like, will be used as authority.

  “By my father’s memory,” he rumbled savagely, “it seems there is not a biped extant who can study a disease before his eyes with those same eyes. There is not one who can count a pulse-beat without a book of the ancients before him. I’m sick and they call it ‘unknown.’ The fools! If in the course of millennia, human bodies learn new methods of falling askew, it remains uncovered by the studies of the ancients and incurable forevermore. The ancients should be alive now, or I then.”

  The Emperor ran down to a low-breathed curse while Brodrig waited dutifully. Cleon II said peevishly, “How many are waiting outside?”

  He jerked his head in the direction of the door.

  Brodrig said patiently, “The Great Hall holds the usual number.”

  “Well, let them wait. State matters occupy me. Have the Captain of the Guard announce it. Or wait, forget the state matters. Just have it announced I hold no audience, and let the Captain of the Guard look doleful. The jackals among them may betray themselves.” The Emperor sneered nastily.

  “There is a rumor, sire,” said Brodrig, smoothly, “that it is your heart that troubles you.”

  The Emperor’s smile was little removed from the previous sneer. “It will hurt others more than myself if any act prematurely on that rumor. But what is it you want? Let’s have this over.”

  Brodrig rose from his kneeling posture at a gesture of permission and said, “It concerns General Bel Riose, the Military Governor of Siwenna.”

  “Riose?” Cleon II frowned heavily. “I don’t place him. Wait, is he the one who sent that quixotic message some months back? Yes, I remember. He panted for permission to enter a career of conquest for the glory of the Empire and Emperor.”

  “Exactly, sire.”

  The Emperor laughed shortly. “Did you think I had such generals left me, Brodrig? He seems to be a curious atavism. What was the answer? I believe you took care of it.”

  “I did, sire. He was instructed to forward additional information and to take no steps involving naval action without further orders from the Imperium.”

  “Hmp. Safe enough. Who is this Riose? Was he ever at court?”

  Brodrig nodded and his mouth twisted ever so little. “He began his career as a cadet in the Guards ten years back. He had part in that affair off the Lemul Cluster.”

  “The Lemul Cluster? You know, my memory isn’t quite—Was that the time a young soldier saved two ships of the line from a head-on collision by . . . uh . . . something or other?” He waved a hand impatiently. “I don’t remember the details. It was something heroic.”

  “Riose was that soldier. He received a promotion for it,” Brodrig said dryly, “and an appointment to field duty as captain of a ship.”

  “And now Military Governor of a border system and still young. Capable man, Brodrig!”

  “Unsafe, sire. He lives in the past. He is a dreamer of ancient times, or rather, of the myths of what ancient times used to be. Such men are harmless in themselves, but their queer lack of realism makes them fools for others.” He added, “His men, I understand, are completely under his control. He is one of your popular generals.”

  “Is he?” the Emperor mused. “Well, come, Brodrig, I would not wish to be served entirely by incompetents. They certainly set no enviable standard for faithfulness themselves.”

  “An incompetent traitor is no danger. It is rather the capable men who must be watched.”

  “You among them, Brodrig?” Cleon II laughed and then grimaced with pain. “Well, then, you may forget the lecture for the while. What new development is there in the matter of this young conqueror? I hope you haven’t come merely to reminisce.”

  “Another message, sire, has been received from General Riose.”

  “Oh? And to what effect?”

  “He has spied out the land of these barbarians and advocates an expedition in force. His arguments are long and fairly tedious. It is not worth annoying Your Imperial Majesty with it at present, during your indisposition. Particularly since it will be discussed at length during the session of the Council of Lords.” He glanced sidewise at the Emperor.

  Cleon II frowned. “The Lords? Is it a question for them, Brodrig? It will mean further demands for a broader interpretation of the Charter. It always comes to that.”

  “It can’t be avoided, sire. It might have been better if your august father could have beaten down the last rebellion without granting the Charter. But since it is here, we must endure it for the while.”

  “You’re right, I suppose. Then the Lords it must be. But why all this solemnity, man? It is, after all, a minor point. Success on a remote border with limited troops is scarcely a state affair.”

  Brodrig smiled narrowly. He said coolly, “It is an affair of a romantic idiot; but even a romantic idiot can be a deadly weapon when an unromantic rebel uses him as a tool. Sire, the man was popular here and is popular there. He is young. If he annexes a vagrant barbarian planet or two, he will become a conqueror. Now a young conqueror who has proven his ability to rouse the enthusiasm of pilots, miners, tradesmen, and such-like rabble is dangerous at any time. Even if he lacked the desire to do to you as your august father did to the usurper, Ricker, then one of our loyal Lords of the Domain may decide to use him as his weapon.”

  Cleon II moved an arm hastily and stiffened with pain. Slowly he relaxed, but his smile was weak, and his voice a whisper. “You are a valuable subject, Brodrig. You always suspect far more than is necessary, and I have but to take half your suggested precautions to be utterly safe. We’ll put it up to the Lords. We shall see what they say and take our measure accordingly. The young man, I suppose, has made no hostile moves yet.”

  “He reports none. But already he asks for reinforcements.”

  “Reinforcements!” The E
mperor’s eyes narrowed with wonder. “What force has he?”

  “Ten ships of the line, sire, with a full complement of auxiliary vessels. Two of the ships are equipped with motors salvaged from the old Grand Fleet, and one has a battery of power artillery from the same source. The other ships are new ones of the last fifty years, but are serviceable, nevertheless.”

  “Ten ships would seem adequate for any reasonable undertaking. Why, with less than ten ships my father won his first victories against the usurper. Who are these barbarians he’s fighting?”

  The Privy Secretary raised a pair of supercilious eyebrows. “He refers to them as ‘the Foundation.’ ”

  “The Foundation? What is it?”

  “There is no record of it, sire. I have searched the archives carefully. The area of the Galaxy indicated falls within the ancient province of Anacreon, which two centuries since gave itself up to brigandage, barbarism, and anarchy. There is no planet known as Foundation in the province, however. There was a vague reference to a group of scientists sent to that province just before its separation from our protection. They were to prepare an Encyclopedia.” He smiled thinly. “I believe they called it the Encyclopedia Foundation.”

  “Well,” the Emperor considered it somberly, “that seems a tenuous connection to advance.”

  “I’m not advancing it, sire. No word was ever received from that expedition after the growth of anarchy in that region. If their descendants still live and retain their name, then they have reverted to barbarism most certainly.”

  “And so he wants reinforcements.” The Emperor bent a fierce glance at his secretary. “This is most peculiar; to propose to fight savages with ten ships and to ask for more before a blow is struck. And yet I begin to remember this Riose; he was a handsome boy of loyal family. Brodrig, there are complications in this that I don’t penetrate. There may be more importance in it than would seem.”

  His fingers played idly with the gleaming sheet that covered his stiffened legs. He said, “I need a man out there; one with eyes, brains, and loyalty. Brodrig—”