Isaac Asimov - Second Foundation

That was barely time.

What the Mule realized in that same tiny space of time was that the emotional potential of Channis’ brain had surged suddenly upwards without his own mind feeling any impact and that, simultaneously, a flood of pure, thrilling hatred cascaded upon him from an unexpected direction.

It was that new emotional element that jerked his thumb off the contact. Nothing else could have done it, and almost together with his change of action came complete realization of the new situation.

It was a tableau that endured far less than the significance adhering to it should require from a dramatic standpoint. There was the Mule, thumb off the blaster, staring intently upon Channis. There was Channis, taut, not quite daring to breathe yet. And there was Pritcher, convulsed in his chair; every muscle at a spasmodic breaking point; every tendon writhing in an effort to hurl forward; his face twisted at last out of schooled woodenness into an unrecognizable death mask of horrid hate; and his eyes only and entirely and supremely upon the Mule.

Only a word or two passed between Channis and the Mule—only a word or two and that utterly revealing stream of emotional consciousness that remains forever the true interplay of understanding between such as they. For the sake of our own limits, it is necessary to translate into words what went on, then, and thenceforward.

Channis said, tensely: “You’re between two fires, First Citizen. You can’t control two minds simultaneously, not when one of them is mine—so you have your choice. Pritcher is free of your Conversion now. I’ve snapped the bonds. He’s the old Pritcher; the one who tried to kill you once; the one who thinks you’re the enemy of all that is free and right and holy; and he’s the one besides who knows that you’ve debased him to helpless adulation for five years. I’m holding him back now by suppressing his will, but if you kill me that ends, and in considerably less time than you could shift your blaster or even your will—he will kill you.”

The Mule quite plainly realized that. He did not move.

Channis continued: “If you turn to place him under control, to kill him, to do anything, you won’t ever be quick enough to turn again to stop me.”

The Mule still did not move. Only a soft sigh of realization.

“So,” said Channis, “throw down the blaster, and let us be on even terms again, and you can have Pritcher back.”

“I made a mistake,” said the Mule, finally. “It was wrong to have a third party present when I confronted you. It introduced one variable too many. It is a mistake that must be paid for, I suppose.”

He dropped the blaster carelessly, and kicked it to the other end of the room. Simultaneously, Pritcher crumpled into profound sleep.

“He’ll be normal when he awakes,” said the Mule, indifferently.

The entire exchange from the time the Mule’s thumb had begun pressing the trigger-contact to the time he dropped the blaster had occupied just under a second and a half of time.

But just beneath the borders of consciousness, for a time just above the borders of detection, Channis caught a fugitive emotional gleam in the Mule’s mind. And it was still one of sure and confident triumph.

Two men, apparently relaxed and entirely at ease, poles apart physically—with every nerve that served as emotional detector quivering tensely.

The Mule, for the first time in long years, had insufficient surety of his own way. Channis knew that, though he could protect himself for the moment, it was an effort—and that the attack upon him was none such for his opponent. In a test of endurance, Channis knew he would lose.

But it was deadly to think of that. To give away to the Mule an emotional weakness would be to hand him a weapon. There was already that glimpse of something—a winner’s something—in the Mule’s mind.

To gain time—

Why did the others delay? Was that the source of the Mule’s confidence? What did his opponent know that he didn’t? The mind he watched told nothing. If only he could read ideas. And yet—

Channis braked his own mental whirling roughly. There was only that; to gain time—

Channis said: “Since it is decided, and not denied by myself after our little duel over Pritcher, that I am a Second Foundationer, suppose you tell me why I came to Tazenda.”

“Oh, no,” and the Mule laughed, with high-pitched confidence, “I am not Pritcher. I need make no explanations to you. You had what you thought were reasons. Whatever they were, your actions suited me, and so I inquire no further.”

“Yet there must be such gaps in your conception of the story. Is Tazenda the Second Foundation you expected to find? Pritcher spoke much of your other attempt at finding it, and of your psychologist tool, Ebling Mis. He babbled a bit sometimes under my . . . uh . . . slight encouragement. Think back on Ebling Mis, First Citizen.”

“Why should I?” Confidence!

Channis felt that confidence edge out into the open, as if with the passage of time, any anxiety the Mule might be having was increasingly vanishing.

He said, firmly restraining the rush of desperation: “You lack curiosity, then? Pritcher told me of Mis’ vast surprise at something . There was his terribly drastic urging for speed, for a rapid warning of the Second Foundation. Why? Why? Ebling Mis died. The Second Foundation was not warned. And yet the Second Foundation exists.”

The Mule smiled in real pleasure, and with a sudden and surprising dash of cruelty that Channis felt advance and suddenly withdraw: “But apparently the Second Foundation was warned. Else how and why did one Bail Channis arrive on Kalgan to handle my men and to assume the rather thankless task of outwitting me? The warning came too late, that is all.”

“Then,” and Channis allowed pity to drench outward from him, “you don’t even know what the Second Foundation is, or anything of the deeper meaning of all that has been going on.”

To gain time!

The Mule felt the other’s pity, and his eyes narrowed with instant hostility. He rubbed his nose in his familiar four-fingered gesture, and snapped: “Amuse yourself, then. What of the Second Foundation?”

Channis spoke deliberately, in words rather than in emotional symbology. He said: “From what I have heard, it was the mystery that surrounded the Second Foundation that most puzzled Mis. Hari Seldon founded his two units so differently. The First Foundation was a splurge that in two centuries dazzled half the Galaxy. And the Second was an abyss that was dark.

“You won’t understand why that was, unless you can once again feel the intellectual atmosphere of the days of the dying Empire. It was a time of absolutes, of the great final generalities, at least in thought. It was a sign of decaying culture, of course, that dams had been built against the further development of ideas. It was his revolt against these dams that made Seldon famous. It was that one last spark of youthful creation in him that lit the Empire in a sunset glow and dimly foreshadowed the rising sun of the Second Empire.”

“Very dramatic. So what?”

“So he created his Foundations according to the laws of psychohistory, but who knew better than he that even those laws were relative? He never created a finished product. Finished products are for decadent minds. His was an evolving mechanism and the Second Foundation was the instrument of that evolution. We, First Citizen of your Temporary Union of Worlds, we are the guardians of Seldon’s Plan. Only we!”

“Are you trying to talk yourself into courage,” inquired the Mule, contemptuously, “or are you trying to impress me? For the Second Foundation, Seldon’s Plan, the Second Empire all impresses me not the least, nor touches any spring of compassion, sympathy, responsibility, nor any other source of emotional aid you may be trying to tap in me. And in any case, poor fool, speak of the Second Foundation in the past tense, for it is destroyed.”