Isaac Asimov - Second Foundation

Stettin returned, “She is a remnant of an interlude that has lasted too long. It will end soon. Fourteen, you say?”

Homir stared at him with a brand-new horror!

Arcadia started at the noiseless opening of a door—jumping at the jangling sliver of movement it made in the corner of her eye. The finger that crooked frantically at her met no response for long moments, and then, as if in response to the cautions enforced by the very sight of that white, trembling figure, she tiptoed her way across the floor.

Their footsteps were a taut whisper in the corridor. It was the Lady Callia, of course, who held her hand so tightly that it hurt, and for some reason, she did not mind following her. Of the Lady Callia, at least, she was not afraid.

Now, why was that?

They were in a boudoir now, all pink fluff and spun sugar. Lady Callia stood with her back against the door.

She said, “This was our private way to me . . . to my room, you know, from his office. His, you know.” And she pointed with a thumb, as though even the thought of him were grinding her soul to death with fear.

“It’s so lucky . . . it’s so lucky—” Her pupils had blackened out the blue with their size.

“Can you tell me—” began Arcadia timidly.

And Callia was in frantic motion. “No, child, no. There is no time. Take off your clothes. Please. Please. I’ll get you more, and they won’t recognize you.”

She was in the closet, throwing useless bits of flummery in reckless heaps upon the ground, looking madly for something a girl could wear without becoming a living invitation to dalliance.

“Here, this will do. It will have to. Do you have money? Here, take it all—and this.” She was stripping her ears and fingers. “Just go home—go home to your Foundation.”

“But Homir . . . my uncle.” She protested vainly through the muffling folds of the sweet-smelling and luxurious spun-metal being forced over her head.

“He won’t leave. Poochie will hold him forever, but you mustn’t stay. Oh, dear, don’t you understand?”

“No.” Arcadia forced a standstill, “I don’t understand.”

Lady Callia squeezed her hands tightly together. “You must go back to warn your people there will be war. Isn’t that clear?” Absolute terror seemed paradoxically to have lent a lucidity to her thoughts and words that was entirely out of character. “Now come!”

Out another way! Past officials who stared after them, but saw no reason to stop one whom only the Lord of Kalgan could stop with impunity. Guards clicked heels and presented arms when they went through doors.

Arcadia breathed only on occasion through the years the trip seemed to take—yet from the first crooking of the white finger to the time she stood at the outer gate, with people and noise and traffic in the distance, was only twenty-five minutes.

She looked back, with a sudden frightened pity. “I . . . I . . . don’t know why you’re doing this, my lady, but thanks—What’s going to happen to Uncle Homir?”

“I don’t know,” wailed the other. “Can’t you leave? Go straight to the spaceport. Don’t wait. He may be looking for you this very minute.”

And still Arcadia lingered. She would be leaving Homir; and, belatedly, now that she felt the free air about her, she was suspicious. “But what do you care if he does?”

Lady Callia bit her lower lip and muttered, “I can’t explain to a little girl like you. It would be improper. Well, you’ll be growing up and I . . . I met Poochie when I was sixteen. I can’t have you about, you know.” There was a half-ashamed hostility in her eyes.

The implications froze Arcadia. She whispered: “What will he do to you when he finds out?”

And she whimpered back: “I don’t know,” and threw her arm to her head as she left at a half-run, back along the wide way to the mansion of the Lord of Kalgan.

But for one eternal second, Arcadia still did not move, for in that last moment before Lady Callia left, Arcadia had seen something. Those frightened, frantic eyes had momentarily—flashingly—lit up with a cold amusement.

A vast, inhuman amusement.

It was much to see in such a quick flicker of a pair of eyes, but Arcadia had no doubt of what she saw.

She was running now—running wildly—searching madly for an unoccupied public booth at which one could press a button for public conveyance.

She was not running from Lord Stettin; not from him or from all the human hounds he could place at her heels—not from all his twenty-seven worlds rolled into a single gigantic phenomenon, hallooing at her shadow.

She was running from a single, frail woman who had helped her escape. From a creature who had loaded her with money and jewels; who had risked her own life to save her. From an entity she knew, certainly and finally, to be a woman of the Second Foundation.

An air-taxi came to a soft clicking halt in the cradle. The wind of its coming brushed against Arcadia’s face and stirred at the hair beneath the softly-furred hood Callia had given her.

“Where’ll it be, lady?”

She fought desperately to low-pitch her voice to make it not that of a child. “How many spaceports in the city?”

“Two. Which one ya want?”

“Which is closer?”

He stared at her: “Kalgan Central, lady.”

“The other one, please. I’ve got the money.” She had a twenty-Kalganid note in her hand. The denomination of the note made little difference to her, but the taxi-man grinned appreciatively.

“Anything ya say, lady. Sky-line cabs take ya anywhere.”

She cooled her cheek against the slightly musty upholstery. The lights of the city moved leisurely below her.

What should she do? What should she do?

It was in that moment that she knew she was a stupid, stupid little girl, away from her father, and frightened. Her eyes were full of tears, and deep down in her throat, there was a small, soundless cry that hurt her insides.

She wasn’t afraid that Lord Stettin would catch her. Lady Callia would see to that. Lady Callia! Old, fat, stupid, but she held on to her lord, somehow. Oh, it was clear enough, now. Everything was clear.

That tea with Callia at which she had been so smart. Clever little Arcadia! Something inside Arcadia choked and hated itself. That tea had been maneuvered, and then Stettin had probably been maneuvered so that Homir was allowed to inspect the palace after all. She , the foolish Callia, had wanted it so, and arranged to have smart little Arcadia supply a foolproof excuse, one which would arouse no suspicions in the minds of the victims, and yet involve a minimum of interference on her part.

Then why was she free? Homir was a prisoner, of course—

Unless—

Unless she went back to the Foundation as a decoy—a decoy to lead others into the hands of . . . of them .

So she couldn’t return to the Foundation—

“Spaceport, lady.” The air-taxi had come to a halt. Strange! She hadn’t even noticed.

What a dream-world it was.

“Thanks,” she pushed the bill at him without seeing anything and was stumbling out the door, then running across the springy pavement.

Lights. Unconcerned men and women. Large gleaming bulletin boards, with the moving fingers that followed every single spaceship that arrived and departed.

Where was she going? She didn’t care. She only knew that she wasn’t going to the Foundation! Anywhere else at all would suit.

Oh, thank Seldon, for that forgetful moment—that last split-second when Callia wearied of her act because she had to do only with a child and had let her amusement spring through.

And then something else occurred to Arcadia, something that had been stirring and moving at the base of her brain ever since the flight began—something that forever killed the fourteen in her.