Isaac Asimov - Foundation's Edge

Pelorat said, “I told you I had faith in you. I still do.”

And Trevize laughed with enormous relief. “Marvelous! Because another feeling I have is that you are, for some reason, also essential to this whole thing. In that case, Janov, we move on to Gaia, full speed. Forward!”

Mayor Harla Branno looked distinctly older than her sixty-two years. She did not always look older, but she did now. She had been sufficiently wrapped up in thought to forget to avoid the mirror and had seen her image on her way into the map room. So she was aware of the haggardness of her appearance.

She sighed. It drained the life out of one. Five years a Mayor and for twelve years before that the real power behind two figureheads. All of it had been quiet, all of it successful, all of it—draining. How would it have been, she wondered, if there had been strain—failure—disaster.

Not so bad for her personally, she suddenly decided. Action would have been invigorating. It was the horrible knowledge that nothing but drift was possible that had worn her out.

It was the Seldon Plan that was successful and it was the Second Foundation that made sure it would continue to be. She, as the strong hand at the helm of the Foundation (actually the First Foundation, but no one on Terminus ever thought of adding the adjective) merely rode the crest.

History would say little or nothing about her. She merely sat at the controls of a spaceship, while the spaceship was maneuvered from without.

Even Indbur III, who had presided over the Foundation’s catastrophic fall to the Mule, had done something . He had, at least, collapsed.

For Mayor Branno there would be nothing!

Unless this Golan Trevize, this thoughtless Councilman, this lightning rod, made it possible—

She looked at the map thoughtfully. It was not the kind of structure produced by a modern computer. It was, rather, a three-dimensional cluster of lights that pictured the Galaxy holographically in midair. Though it could not be made to move, to turn, to expand, or to contract, one could move about it and see it from any angle.

A large section of the Galaxy, perhaps a third of the whole (excluding the core, which was a “no-life’s land”) turned red when she touched a contact. That was the Foundation Federation, the more than seven million inhabited worlds ruled by the Council and by herself—the seven million inhabited worlds who voted for and were represented in the House of Worlds, which debated matters of minor importance, and then voted on them, and never, by any chance, dealt with anything of major importance.

Another contact and a faint pink jutted outward from the edges of the Federation, here and there. Spheres of influence! This was not Foundation territory, but the regions, though nominally independent, would never dream of resistance to any Foundation move.

There was no question in her mind that no power in the Galaxy could oppose the Foundation (not even the Second Foundation, if one but knew where it was), that the Foundation could, at will, reach out its fleet of modern ships and simply set up the Second Empire.

But only five centuries had passed since the beginning of the Plan. The Plan called for ten centuries before the Second Empire could be set up and the Second Foundation would make sure the Plan would hold. The Mayor shook her sad, gray head. If the Foundation acted now, it would somehow fail. Though its ships were irresistible, action now would fail.

Unless Trevize, the lightning rod, drew the lightning of the Second Foundation—and the lightning could be traced back to its source.

She looked about. Where was Kodell? This was no time for him to be late.

It was as though her thought had called him, for he came striding in, smiling cheerfully, looking more grandfatherly than ever with his gray-white mustache and tanned complexion. Grandfatherly, but not old. To be sure, he was eight years younger than she was.

How was it he showed no marks of strain? Did not fifteen years as Director of Security leave its scar?

Kodell nodded slowly in the formal greeting that was necessary in initiating a discussion with the Mayor. It was a tradition that had existed since the bad days of the Indburs. Almost everything had changed, but etiquette least of all.

He said, “Sorry I’m late, Mayor, but your arrest of Councilman Trevize is finally beginning to make its way through the anesthetized skin of the Council.”

“Oh?” said the Mayor phlegmatically. “Are we in for a palace revolution?”

“Not the least chance. We’re in control. But there’ll be noise.”

“Let them make noise. It will make them feel better, and I—I shall stay out of the way. I can count, I suppose, on general public opinion?”

“I think you can. Especially away from Terminus. No one outside Terminus cares what happens to a stray Councilman.”

“I do.”

“Ah? More news?”

“Liono,” said the Mayor, “I want to know about Sayshell.”

“I’m not a two-legged history book,” said Liono Kodell, smiling.

“I don’t want history. I want the truth. Why is Sayshell independent? —Look at it.” She pointed to the red of the Foundation on the holographic map and there, well into the inner spirals, was an in-pocketing of white.

Branno said, “We’ve got it almost encapsulated—almost sucked in—yet it’s white. Our map doesn’t even show it as a loyal-ally-in-pink.”

Kodell shrugged. “It’s not officially a loyal ally, but it never bothers us. It is neutral.”

“All right. See this, then.” Another touch at the controls. The red sprang out distinctly further. It covered nearly half the Galaxy. “That,” said Mayor Branno, “was the Mule’s realm at the time of his death. If you’ll peer in among the red, you’ll find the Sayshell Union, completely surrounded this time, but still white. It is the only enclave left free by the Mule.”

“It was neutral then, too.”

“The Mule had no great respect for neutrality.”

“He seems to have had, in this case.”

“ Seems to have had. What has Sayshell got?”

Kodell said, “Nothing! Believe me, Mayor, she is ours any time we want her.”

“Is she? Yet somehow she isn’t ours.”

“There’s no need to want her.”

Branno sat back in her chair and, with a sweep of her arm over the controls, turned the Galaxy dark. “I think we now want her.”

“Pardon, Mayor?”

“Liono, I sent that foolish Councilman into space as a lightning rod. I felt that the Second Foundation would see him as a greater danger than he was and see the Foundation itself as the lesser danger. The lightning would strike him and reveal its origin to us.”

“Yes, Mayor!”

“My intention was that he go to the decayed ruins of Trantor to fumble through what—if anything—was left of its Library and search for the Earth. That’s the world, you remember, that these wearisome mystics tell us was the site of origin of humanity, as though that matters, even in the unlikely case it is true. The Second Foundation couldn’t possibly have believed that was really what he was after and they would have moved to find out what he was really looking for.”

“But he didn’t go to Trantor.”

“No. Quite unexpectedly, he has gone to Sayshell. Why?”

“I don’t know. But please forgive an old bloodhound whose duty it is to suspect everything and tell me how you know he and this Pelorat have gone to Sayshell. I know that Compor reports it, but how far can we trust Compor?”

“The hyper-relay tells us that Compor’s ship has indeed landed on Sayshell Planet.”

“Undoubtedly, but how do you know that Trevize and Pelorat have? Compor may have gone to Sayshell for his own reasons and may not know—or care—where the others are.”