by Isaac Asimov
“And you,” added Bayta, bitterly, “betray your cause and become the Mule’s envoy to Trantor. I see!”
“I haven’t finished. The Mule’s gift works in reverse even more effectively. Despair is an emotion! At the crucial moment, key men on the Foundation—key men on Haven—despaired. Their worlds fell without too much struggle.”
“Do you mean to say,” demanded Bayta, tensely, “that the feeling I had in the Time Vault was the Mule juggling my emotional control?”
“Mine, too. Everyone’s. How was it on Haven towards the end?”
Bayta turned away.
Colonel Pritcher continued earnestly, “As it works for worlds, so it works for individuals. Can you fight a force which can make you surrender willingly when it so desires; can make you a faithful servant when it so desires?”
Toran said slowly, “How do I know this is the truth?”
“Can you explain the fall of the Foundation and of Haven otherwise? Can you explain—my conversion otherwise? Think, man! What have you—or I—or the whole Galaxy accomplished against the Mule in all this time? What one little thing?”
Toran felt the challenge, “By the Galaxy, I can!” With a sudden touch of fierce satisfaction, he shouted, “Your wonderful Mule had contacts with Neotrantor that you say were to have detained us, eh? Those contacts are dead or worse. We killed the crown prince and left the other a whimpering idiot. The Mule did not stop us there, and that much has been undone.”
“Why, no, not at all. Those weren’t our men. The crown prince was a wine-soaked mediocrity. The other man, Commason, is phenomenally stupid. He was a power on his world but that didn’t prevent him from being vicious, evil, and completely incompetent. We had nothing really to do with them. They were, in a sense, merely feints—”
“It was they who detained us, or tried.”
“Again, no. Commason had a personal slave—a man called Inchney. Detention was his policy. He is old, but will serve our temporary purpose. You would not have killed him, you see.”
Bayta whirled on him. She had not touched her own tea. “But, by your very statement, your own emotions have been tampered with. You’ve got faith and belief in the Mule, an unnatural, a diseased faith in the Mule. Of what value are your opinions? You’ve lost all power of objective thought.”
“You are wrong.” Slowly, the colonel shook his head. “Only my emotions are fixed. My reason is as it always was. It may be influenced in a certain direction by my conditioned emotions, but it is not forced. And there are some things I can see more clearly now that I am freed of my earlier emotional trend.
“I can see that the Mule’s program is an intelligent and worthy one. In the time since I have been—converted, I have followed his career from its start seven years ago. With his mutant mental power, he began by winning over a condottiere and his band. With that—and his power—he won a planet. With that—and his power—he extended his grip until he could tackle the warlord of Kalgan. Each step followed the other logically. With Kalgan in his pocket, he had a first-class fleet, and with that—and his power—he could attack the Foundation.
“The Foundation is the key. It is the greatest area of industrial concentration in the Galaxy, and now that the nuclear techniques of the Foundation are in his hands, he is the actual master of the Galaxy. With those techniques—and his power—he can force the remnants of the Empire to acknowledge his rule, and eventually—with the death of the old emperor, who is mad and not long for this world—to crown him emperor. He will then have the name as well as the fact. With that—and his power—where is the world in the Galaxy that can oppose him?
“In these last seven years, he has established a new Empire. In seven years, in other words, he will have accomplished what all Seldon’s psychohistory could not have done in less than an additional seven hundred. The Galaxy will have peace and order at last.
“And you could not stop it—any more than you could stop a planet’s rush with your shoulders.”
A long silence followed Pritcher’s speech. What remained of his tea had grown cold. He emptied his cup, filled it again, and drained it slowly. Toran bit viciously at a thumbnail. Bayta’s face was cold, and distant, and white.
Then Bayta said in a thin voice, “We are not convinced. If the Mule wishes us to be, let him come here and condition us himself. You fought him until the last moment of your conversion, I imagine, didn’t you?”
“I did,” said Colonel Pritcher, solemnly.
“Then allow us the same privilege.”
Colonel Pritcher arose. With a crisp air of finality, he said, “Then I leave. As I said earlier, my mission at present concerns you in no way. Therefore, I don’t think it will be necessary to report your presence here. That is not too great a kindness. If the Mule wishes you stopped, he no doubt has other men assigned to the job, and you will be stopped. But, for what it is worth, I shall not contribute more than my requirement.”
“Thank you,” said Bayta faintly.
“As for Magnifico. Where is he? Come out, Magnifico. I won’t hurt you—”
“What about him?” demanded Bayta, with sudden animation.
“Nothing. My instructions make no mention of him, either. I have heard that he is searched for, but the Mule will find him when the time suits him. I shall say nothing. Will you shake hands?”
Bayta shook her head. Toran glared his frustrated contempt.
There was the slightest lowering of the colonel’s iron shoulders. He strode to the door, turned, and said:
“One last thing. Don’t think I am not aware of the source of your stubbornness. It is known that you search for the Second Foundation. The Mule, in his time, will take his measures. Nothing will help you—But I knew you in other times; perhaps there is something in my conscience that urged me to this; at any rate, I tried to help you and remove you from the final danger before it was too late. Good-bye.”
He saluted sharply—and was gone.
Bayta turned to a silent Toran, and whispered, “They even know about the Second Foundation.”
In the recesses of the library, Ebling Mis, unaware of all, crouched under the one spark of light amid the murky spaces and mumbled triumphantly to himself.
25
DEATH OF A PSYCHOLOGIST
After that there were only two weeks left to the life of Ebling Mis.
And in those two weeks, Bayta was with him three times. The first time was on the night after the evening upon which they saw Colonel Pritcher. The second was one week later. And the third was again a week later—on the last day—the day Mis died.
First, there was the night of Colonel Pritcher’s evening, the first hour of which was spent by a stricken pair in a brooding, unmerry merry-go-round.
Bayta said, “Torie, let’s tell Ebling.”
Toran said dully, “Think he can help?”
“We’re only two. We’ve got to take some of the weight off. Maybe he can help.”
Toran said, “He’s changed. He’s lost weight. He’s a little feathery; a little woolly.” His fingers groped in air, metaphorically. “Sometimes, I don’t think he’ll help us much—ever. Sometimes, I don’t think anything will help.”
“Don’t!” Bayta’s voice caught and escaped a break, “Torie, don’t! When you say that, I think the Mule’s getting us. Let’s tell Ebling, Torie—now!”
Ebling Mis raised his head from the long desk, and bleared at them as they approached. His thinning hair was scuffed up, his lips made sleepy, smacking sounds.
“Eh?” he said. “Someone want me?”
Bayta bent to her knees, “Did we wake you? Shall we leave?”
“Leave? Who is it? Bayta? No, no, stay! Aren’t there chairs? I saw them—” His finger pointed vaguely.
Toran pushed two ahead of him. Bayta sat down and took one of the psychologist’s flaccid hands in hers. “May we talk to you, Doctor?” She rarely used the title.
“Is something wrong?” A little sparkle returned to his abstracted eyes. Hi
s sagging cheeks regained a touch of color. “Is something wrong?”
Bayta said, “Captain Pritcher has been here. Let me talk, Torie. You remember Captain Pritcher, Doctor?”
“Yes—Yes—” His fingers pinched his lips and released them. “Tall man. Democrat.”
“Yes, he. He’s discovered the Mule’s mutation. He was here, Doctor, and told us.”
“But that is nothing new. The Mule’s mutation is straightened out.” In honest astonishment, “Haven’t I told you? Have I forgotten to tell you?”
“Forgotten to tell us what?” put in Toran, quickly.
“About the Mule’s mutation, of course. He tampers with emotions. Emotional control! I haven’t told you? Now what made me forget?” Slowly, he sucked in his under lip and considered.
Then, slowly, life crept into his voice and his eyelids lifted wide, as though his sluggish brain had slid onto a well-greased single track. He spoke in a dream, looking between the two listeners rather than at them. “It is really so simple. It requires no specialized knowledge. In the mathematics of psychohistory, of course, it works out promptly, in a third-level equation involving no more—Never mind that. It can be put into ordinary words—roughly—and have it make sense, which isn’t usual with psychohistorical phenomena.
“Ask yourselves—What can upset Hari Seldon’s careful scheme of history, eh?” He peered from one to the other with a mild, questioning anxiety. “What were Seldon’s original assumptions? First, that there would be no fundamental change in human society over the next thousand years.
“For instance, suppose there were a major change in the Galaxy’s technology, such as finding a new principle for the utilization of energy, or perfecting the study of electronic neurobiology. Social changes would render Seldon’s original equations obsolete. But that hasn’t happened, has it now?
“Or suppose that a new weapon were to be invented by forces outside the Foundation, capable of withstanding all the Foundation’s armaments. That might cause a ruinous deviation, though less certainly. But even that hasn’t happened. The Mule’s Nuclear Field-Depressor was a clumsy weapon and could be countered. And that was the only novelty he presented, poor as it was.
“But there was a second assumption, a more subtle one! Seldon assumed that human reaction to stimuli would remain constant. Granted that the first assumption held true, then the second must have broken down! Some factor must be twisting and distorting the emotional responses of human beings or Seldon couldn’t have failed and the Foundation couldn’t have fallen. And what factor but the Mule?
“Am I right? Is there a flaw in the reasoning?”
Bayta’s plump hand patted his gently. “No flaw, Ebling.”
Mis was joyful, like a child. “This and more comes so easily. I tell you I wonder sometimes what is going on inside me. I seem to recall the time when so much was a mystery to me and now things are so clear. Problems are absent. I come across what might be one, and somehow, inside me, I see and understand. And my guesses, my theories seem always to be borne out. There’s a drive in me . . . always onward . . . so that I can’t stop . . . and I don’t want to eat or sleep . . . but always go on . . . and on . . . and on—”
His voice was a whisper; his wasted, blue-veined hand rested tremblingly upon his forehead. There was a frenzy in his eyes that faded and went out.
He said more quietly, “Then I never told you about the Mule’s mutant powers, did I? But then . . . did you say you knew about it?”
“It was Captain Pritcher, Ebling,” said Bayta. “Remember?”
“He told you?” There was a tinge of outrage in his tone. “But how did he find out?”
“He’s been conditioned by the Mule. He’s a colonel now, a Mule’s man. He came to advise us to surrender to the Mule, and he told us—what you told us.”
“Then the Mule knows we’re here? I must hurry—Where’s Magnifico? Isn’t he with you?”
“Magnifico’s sleeping,” said Toran, impatiently. “It’s past midnight, you know.”
“It is? Then—Was I sleeping when you came in?”
“You were,” said Bayta decisively, “and you’re not going back to work, either. You’re getting into bed. Come on, Torie, help me. And you stop pushing at me, Ebling, because it’s just your luck I don’t shove you under a shower first. Pull off his shoes, Torie, and tomorrow you come down here and drag him out into the open air before he fades completely away. Look at you, Ebling, you’ll be growing cobwebs. Are you hungry?”
Ebling Mis shook his head and looked up from his cot in a peevish confusion. “I want you to send Magnifico down tomorrow,” he muttered.
Bayta tucked the sheet around his neck. “You’ll have me down tomorrow, with washed clothes. You’re going to take a good bath, and then get out and visit the farm and feel a little sun on you.”
“I won’t do it,” said Mis weakly. “You hear me? I’m too busy.”
His sparse hair spread out on the pillow like a silver fringe about his head. His voice was a confidential whisper. “You want that Second Foundation, don’t you?”
Toran turned quickly and squatted down on the cot beside him. “What about the Second Foundation, Ebling?”
The psychologist freed an arm from beneath the sheet and his tired fingers clutched at Toran’s sleeve. “The Foundations were established at a great Psychological Convention presided over by Hari Seldon. Toran, I have located the published minutes of that Convention. Twenty-five fat films. I have already looked through various summaries.”
“Well?”
“Well, do you know that it is very easy to find from them the exact location of the First Foundation, if you know anything at all about psychohistory. It is frequently referred to, when you understand the equations. But, Toran, nobody mentions the Second Foundation. There has been no reference to it anywhere.”
Toran’s eyebrows pulled into a frown. “It doesn’t exist?”
“Of course it exists,” cried Mis, angrily, “who said it didn’t? But there’s less talk of it. Its significance—and all about it—are better hidden, better obscured. Don’t you see? It’s the more important of the two. It’s the critical one; the one that counts! And I’ve got the minutes of the Seldon Convention. The Mule hasn’t won yet—”
Quietly, Bayta turned the lights down. “Go to sleep!”
Without speaking, Toran and Bayta made their way up to their own quarters.
The next day, Ebling Mis bathed and dressed himself, saw the sun of Trantor, and felt the wind of Trantor for the last time. At the end of the day he was once again submerged in the gigantic recesses of the library, and never emerged thereafter.
In the week that followed, life settled again into its groove. The sun of Neotrantor was a calm, bright star in Trantor’s night sky. The farm was busy with its spring planting. The University Grounds were silent in their desertion. The Galaxy seemed empty. The Mule might never have existed.
Bayta was thinking that as she watched Toran light his cigar carefully and look up at the sections of blue sky visible between the swarming metal spires that encircled the horizon.
“It’s a nice day,” he said.
“Yes, it is. Have you everything mentioned on the list, Torie?”
“Sure. Half pound butter, dozen eggs, string beans—Got it all down here, Bay. I’ll have it right.”
“Good. And make sure the vegetables are of the last harvest and not museum relics. Did you see Magnifico anywhere, by the way?”
“Not since breakfast. Guess he’s down with Ebling, watching a book-film.”
“All right. Don’t waste any time, because I’ll need the eggs for dinner.”
Toran left with a backward smile and a wave of the hand.
Bayta turned away as Toran slid out of sight among the maze of metal. She hesitated before the kitchen door, about-faced slowly, and entered the colonnade leading to the elevator that burrowed down into the recesses.
Ebling Mis was there, head bent down over the eyepieces o
f the projector, motionless, a frozen, questing body. Near him sat Magnifico, screwed up into a chair, eyes sharp and watching—a bundle of slatty limbs with a nose emphasizing his scrawny face.
Bayta said softly, “Magnifico—”
Magnifico scrambled to his feet. His voice was an eager whisper. “My lady!”
“Magnifico,” said Bayta, “Toran has left for the farm and won’t be back for a while. Would you be a good boy and go out after him with a message that I’ll write for you?”
“Gladly, my lady. My small services are but too eagerly yours, for the tiny uses you can put them to.”
She was alone with Ebling Mis, who had not moved. Firmly, she placed her hand upon his shoulder. “Ebling—”
The psychologist started, with a peevish cry, “What is it?” He wrinkled his eyes. “Is it you, Bayta? Where’s Magnifico?”
“I sent him away. I want to be alone with you for a while.” She enunciated her words with exaggerated distinctness. “I want to talk to you, Ebling.”
The psychologist made a move to return to his projector, but her hand on his shoulder was firm. She felt the bone under the sleeve clearly. The flesh seemed to have fairly melted away since their arrival on Trantor. His face was thin, yellowish, and bore a half-week stubble. His shoulders were visibly stooped, even in a sitting position.
Bayta said, “Magnifico isn’t bothering you, is he, Ebling? He seems to be down here night and day.”
“No, no, no! Not at all. Why, I don’t mind him. He is silent and never disturbs me. Sometimes he carries the films back and forth for me; seems to know what I want without my speaking. Just let him be.”
“Very well—but, Ebling, doesn’t he make you wonder? Do you hear me, Ebling? Doesn’t he make you wonder?”
She jerked a chair close to his and stared at him as though to pull the answer out of his eyes.
Ebling Mis shook his head. “No. What do you mean?”
“I mean that Colonel Pritcher and you both say the Mule can condition the emotions of human beings. But are you sure of it? Isn’t Magnifico himself a flaw in the theory?”
