Isaac Asimov: Foundation's Edge

It made her, for a time, in the eyes of all the Foundation, as wise as Seldon himself. She knew they could forget that any hour, however.

And this young man dared to challenge her on this day of days.

And he dared to be right!

That was the danger of it. He was right! And by being right, he might destroy the Foundation!

And now she faced him and they were alone.

She said sadly, “Could you not have come to see me privately? Did you have to shout it all out in the Council Chamber in your idiotic desire to make a fool of me? What have you done, you mindless boy?”

Trevize felt himself flushing and fought to control his anger. The Mayor was an aging woman who would be sixty-three on her next birthday. He hesitated to engage in a shouting match with someone nearly twice his age.

Besides, she was well practiced in the political wars and knew that if she could place her opponent off-balance at the start then the battle was half-won. But it took an audience to make such a tactic effective and there was no audience before whom one might be humiliated. There were just the two of them.

So he ignored her words and did his best to survey her dispassionately. She was an old woman wearing the unisex fashions which had prevailed for two generations now. They did not become her. The Mayor, the leader of the Galaxy—if leader there could be—was just a plain old woman who might easily have been mistaken for an old man, except that her iron-gray hair was tied tightly back, instead of being worn free in the traditional male style.

Trevize smiled engagingly. However much an aged opponent strove to make the epithet “boy” sound like an insult, this particular “boy” had the advantage of youth and good looks—and the full awareness of both.

He said, “It’s true. I’m thirty-two and, therefore, a boy—in a manner of speaking. And I’m a Councilman and, therefore, ex officio , mindless. The first condition is unavoidable. For the second, I can only say I’m sorry.”

“Do you know what you’ve done? Don’t stand there and strive for wit. Sit down. Put your mind into gear, if you can, and answer me rationally.”

“I know what I’ve done. I’ve told the truth as I’ve seen it.”

“And on this day you try to defy me with it? On this one day when my prestige is such that I could pluck you out of the Council Chamber and arrest you, with no one daring to protest?”

“The Council will recover its breath and it will protest. They may be protesting now. And they will listen to me all the more for the persecution to which you are subjecting me.”

“No one will listen to you, because if I thought you would continue what you have been doing, I would continue to treat you as a traitor to the full extent of the law.”

“I would then have to be tried. I’d have my day in court.”

“Don’t count on that. A Mayor’s emergency powers are enormous, even if they are rarely used.”

“On what grounds would you declare an emergency?”

“I’ll invent the grounds. I have that much ingenuity left, and I do not fear taking the political risk. Don’t push me, young man. We are going to come to an agreement here or you will never be free again. You will be imprisoned for the rest of your life. I guarantee it.”

They stared at each other: Branno in gray, Trevize in multishade brown.

Trevize said, “What kind of an agreement?”

“Ah. You’re curious. That’s better. Then we can engage in conversation instead of confrontation. What is your point of view?”

“You know it well. You have been crawling in the mud with Councilman Compor, have you not?”

“I want to hear it from you —in the light of the Seldon Crisis just passed.”

“Very well, if that’s what you want—Madam Mayor!” (He had been on the brink of saying “old woman.”) “The image of Seldon was too correct, too impossibly correct after five hundred years. It’s the eighth time he has appeared, I believe. On some occasions, no one was there to hear him. On at least one occasion, in the time of Indbur III, what he had to say was utterly out of synchronization with reality—but that was in the time of the Mule, wasn’t it? But when, on any of those occasions, was he as correct as he was now?”

Trevize allowed himself a small smile. “Never before, Madam Mayor, as far as our recordings of the past are concerned, has Seldon managed to describe the situation so perfectly, in all its smallest details.”

Branno said, “Is it your suggestion that the Seldon appearance, the holographic image, is faked; that the Seldon recordings have been prepared by a contemporary such as myself, perhaps; that an actor was playing the Seldon role?”

“Not impossible, Madam Mayor, but that’s not what I mean. The truth is far worse. I believe that it is Seldon’s image we see, and that his description of the present moment in history is the description he prepared five hundred years ago. I have said as much to your man, Kodell, who carefully guided me through a charade in which I seemed to support the superstitions of the unthinking Foundationer.”

“Yes. The recording will be used, if necessary, to allow the Foundation to see that you were never really in the opposition.”

Trevize spread his arms. “But I am. There is no Seldon Plan in the sense that we believe there is, and there hasn’t been for perhaps two centuries. I have suspected that for years now, and what we went through in the Time Vault twelve hours ago proves it.”

“Because Seldon was too accurate?”

“Precisely. Don’t smile. That is the final proof.”

“I’m not smiling, as you can see. Go on.”

“How could he have been so accurate? Two centuries ago, Seldon’s analysis of what was then the present was completely wrong. Three hundred years had passed since the Foundation was set up and he was wide of the mark. Completely!”

“That, Councilman, you yourself explained a few moments ago. It was because of the Mule. The Mule was a mutant with intense mental power and there had been no way of allowing for him in the Plan.”

“But he was there just the same—allowed or not. The Seldon Plan was derailed. The Mule didn’t rule for long and he had no successor. The Foundation regained its independence and its domination, but how could the Seldon Plan have gotten back on target after so enormous a tearing of its fabric?”

Branno looked grim and her aging hands clasped together tightly. “You know the answer to that. We were one of two Foundations. You’ve read the history books.”

“I’ve read Arkady’s biography of her grandmother—required reading in school, after all—and I’ve read her novels, too. I’ve read the official view of the history of the Mule and afterward. Am I to be allowed to doubt them?”

“In what way?”

“Officially we, the First Foundation, were to retain the knowledge of the physical sciences and to advance them. We were to operate openly, our historical development following—whether we knew it or not—the Seldon Plan. There was, however, also the Second Foundation, which was to preserve and further develop the psychological sciences, including psychohistory, and their existence was to be a secret even from us. The Second Foundation was the fine-tuning agency of the Plan, acting to adjust the currents of Galactic history, when they turned from the paths outlined by the Plan.”

“Then you answer yourself,” said the Mayor. “Bayta Darell defeated the Mule, perhaps under the inspiration of the Second Foundation, although her granddaughter insists that was not so. It was the Second Foundation without doubt, however, which labored to bring Galactic history back to the Plan after the Mule died and, quite obviously, they succeeded. —What on Terminus, then, are you talking about, Councilman?”