Isaac Asimov - Foundation's Edge

“I know that. —And what about this day of meditation?”

“Compor didn’t lie to us. The waiter said it was a day of meditation when we came in here and asked him.”

“Yes, he did, but he said the restaurant wasn’t closed. In fact, what he said was: ‘Sayshell City isn’t the backwoods. It doesn’t close down.’ People meditate, in other words, but not in the big town, where everyone is sophisticated and there’s no place for small-town piety. So there’s traffic and it’s busy—perhaps not quite as busy as on ordinary days—but busy.”

“But, Golan, no one came into the tourist center while we were there. I was aware of that. Not one person entered.”

“I noticed that, too. I even went to the window at one point and looked out and saw clearly that the streets around the center had a good scattering of people on foot and in vehicles—and yet not one person entered. The day of meditation made a good cover. We would not have questioned the fortunate privacy we had if I simply hadn’t made up my mind not to trust that son of two strangers.”

Pelorat said, “What is the significance of all this, then?”

“I think it’s simple, Janov. We have here someone who knows where we’re going as soon as we do, even though he and we are in separate spaceships, and we also have here someone who can keep a public building empty when it is surrounded by people in order that we might talk in convenient privacy.”

“Would you have me believe he can perform miracles?”

“Certainly. If it so happens that Compor is an agent of the Second Foundation and can control minds; if he can read yours and mine in a distant spaceship; if he can influence his way through a customs station at once; if he can land gravitically, with no border patrol outraged at his defiance of the radio beams; and if he can influence minds in such a way as to keep people from entering a building he doesn’t want entered.

“By all the stars,” Trevize went on with a marked air of grievance, “I can even follow this back to graduation. I didn’t go on tour with him. I remember not wanting to. Wasn’t that a matter of his influence? He had to be alone. Where was he really going?”

Pelorat pushed away the dishes before him, as though he wanted to clear a space about himself in order to have room to think. It seemed to be a gesture that signaled the busboy-robot, a self-moving table that stopped near them and waited while they placed their dishes and cutlery upon it.

When they were alone, Pelorat said, “But that’s mad. Nothing has happened that could not have happened naturally. Once you get it into your head that somebody is controlling events, you can interpret everything in that light and find no reasonable certainty anywhere. Come on, old fellow, it’s all circumstantial and a matter of interpretation. Don’t yield to paranoia.”

“I’m not going to yield to complacency, either.”

“Well, let us look at this logically. Suppose he was an agent of the Second Foundation. Why would he run the risk of rousing our suspicions by keeping the tourist center empty? What did he say that was so important that a few people at a distance—who would have been wrapped in their own concerns anyway—would have made a difference?”

“There’s an easy answer to that, Janov. He would have to keep our minds under close observation and he wanted no interference from other minds. No static. No chance of confusion.”

“Again, just your interpretation. What was so important about his conversation with us? It would make sense to suppose, as he himself insisted, that he met us only in order to explain what he had done, to apologize for it, and to warn us of the trouble that might await us. Why would he have to look further than that?”

The small card-receptacle at the farther rim of the table glittered unobtrusively and the figures representing the cost of the meal flashed briefly. Trevize groped beneath his sash for his credit card which, with its Foundation imprint, was good anywhere in the Galaxy—or anywhere a Foundation citizen was likely to go. He inserted it in the appropriate slot. It took a moment to complete the transaction and Trevize (with native caution) checked on the remaining balance before returning it to its pocket.

He looked about casually to make sure there was no undesirable interest in him on the faces of any of the few who still sat in the restaurant and then said, “Why look further than that? Why look further? That was not all he talked about. He talked about Earth. He told us it was dead and urged us very strongly to go to Comporellon. Shall we go?”

“It’s something I’ve been considering, Golan,” admitted Pelorat.

“Just leave here?”

“We can come back after we check out the Sirius Sector.”

“It doesn’t occur to you that his whole purpose in seeing us was to deflect us from Sayshell and get us out of here? Get us anywhere but here?”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. See here, they expected us to go to Trantor. That was what you wanted to do and maybe that’s what they counted on us doing. I messed things up by insisting we go to Sayshell, which is the last thing they wanted, and so now they have to get us out of here.”

Pelorat looked distinctly unhappy. “But Golan, you are just making statements. Why don’t they want us on Sayshell?”

“I don’t know, Janov. But it’s enough for me that they want us out. I’m staying. I’m not going to leave.”

“But—but— Look, Golan, if the Second Foundation wanted us to leave, wouldn’t they just influence our minds to make us want to leave? Why bother reasoning with us?”

“Now that you bring up the point, haven’t they done that in your case, Professor?” and Trevize’s eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion. “Don’t you want to leave?”

Pelorat looked at Trevize in surprise. “I just think there’s some sense to it.”

“Of course you would, if you’ve been influenced.”

“But I haven’t been—”

“Of course you would swear you hadn’t been if you had been.”

Pelorat said, “If you box me in this way, there is no way of disproving your bare assertion. What are you going to do?”

“I will remain in Sayshell. And you’ll stay here, too. You can’t navigate the ship without me, so if Compor has influenced you, he has influenced the wrong one.”

“Very well, Golan. We’ll stay in Sayshell until we have independent reasons to leave. The worst thing we can do, after all—worse than either staying or going—is to fall out with each other. Come, old chap, if I had been influenced, would I be able to change my mind and go along with you cheerfully, as I plan to do now?”

Trevize thought for a moment and then, as though with an inner shake, smiled and held out his hand. “Agreed, Janov. Now let’s get back to the ship and make another start tomorrow. —If we can think of one.”

Munn Li Compor did not remember when he had been recruited. For one thing, he had been a child at the time; for another, the agents of the Second Foundation were meticulous in removing their traces as far as possible.

Compor was an “Observer” and, to a Second Foundationer, he was instantly recognizable as such.

It meant that Compor was acquainted with mentalics and could converse with Second Foundationers in their own fashion to a degree, but he was in the lowest rank of the hierarchy. He could catch glimpses of minds, but he could not adjust them. The education he had received had never gone that far. He was an Observer, not a Doer.

It made him second-class at best, but he did not mind—much. He knew his importance in the scheme of things.

During the early centuries of the Second Foundation, it had underestimated the task before it. It had imagined that its handful of members could monitor the entire Galaxy and that Seldon’s Plan, to be maintained, would require only the most occasional, the lightest touch, here and there.