Isaac Asimov - Second Foundation

With a lunge, Anthor was upon him. There was the sharp crack of bone against bone, and Homir was limp and flaccid with that look of fear frozen on his face.

Anthor rose shakily, and said, “We’d better tie and gag him. Later, we can decide what to do.” He brushed his long hair back.

Turbor said, “How did you guess there was something wrong with him?”

Anthor turned sardonically upon him. “It wasn’t difficult. You see, I happen to know where the Second Foundation really is .”

Successive shocks have a decreasing effect—

It was with actual mildness that Semic asked, “Are you sure? I mean, we’ve just gone through this sort of business with Munn—”

“This isn’t quite the same,” returned Anthor. “Darell, the day the war started, I spoke to you most seriously. I tried to have you leave Terminus. I would have told you then what I will tell you now, if I had been able to trust you.”

“You mean you have known the answer for half a year?” smiled Darell.

“I have known it from the time I learned that Arcadia had left for Trantor.”

And Darell started to his feet in sudden consternation. “What had Arcadia to do with it? What are you implying?”

“Absolutely nothing that is not plain on the face of all the events we know so well. Arcadia goes to Kalgan and flees in terror to the traditional center of the Galaxy, rather than return home. Lieutenant Dirige, our best agent on Kalgan, is tampered with. Homir Munn goes to Kalgan and he is tampered with. The Mule conquered the Galaxy, but, queerly enough, he made Kalgan his headquarters, and it occurs to me to wonder if he was conqueror or, perhaps, tool. At every turn, we meet with Kalgan, Kalgan—nothing but Kalgan, the world that somehow survived untouched all the struggles of the warlords for over a century.”

“Your conclusion, then.”

“Is obvious,” Anthor’s eyes were intense. “The Second Foundation is on Kalgan.”

Turbor interrupted. “I was on Kalgan, Anthor. I was there last week. If there was any Second Foundation on it, I’m mad. Personally, I think you’re mad.”

The young man whirled on him savagely. “Then you’re a fat fool. What do you expect the Second Foundation to be? A grammar school? Do you think that Radiant Fields in tight beams spell out ‘Second Foundation’ in green and purple along the incoming spaceship routes? Listen to me, Turbor. Wherever they are, they form a tight oligarchy. They must be as well hidden on the world on which they exist, as the world itself is in the Galaxy as a whole.”

Turbor’s jaw muscles writhed. “I don’t like your attitude, Anthor.”

“That certainly disturbs me,” was the sarcastic response. “Take a look about you here on Terminus. We’re at the center—the core—the origin of the First Foundation with all its knowledge of physical science. Well, how many of the population are physical scientists? Can you operate an Energy Transmitting Station? What do you know of the operation of a hypernuclear motor? Eh? The number of real scientists on Terminus—even on Terminus—can be numbered at less than one percent of the population.

“And what then of the Second Foundation where secrecy must be preserved. There will still be less of the cognoscenti, and these will be hidden even from their own world.”

“Say,” said Semic, carefully. “We just licked Kalgan—”

“So we did. So we did,” said Anthor, sardonically. “Oh, we celebrate that victory. The cities are still illuminated; they are still shooting off fireworks; they are still shouting over the televisors. But now, now, when the search is on once more for the Second Foundation, where is the last place we’ll look; where is the last place anyone will look? Right? Kalgan!

“We haven’t hurt them, you know; not really. We’ve destroyed some ships, killed a few thousands, torn away their Empire, taken over some of their commercial and economic power—but that all means nothing. I’ll wager that not one member of the real ruling class of Kalgan is in the least discomfited. On the contrary, they are now safe from curiosity. But not from my curiosity. What do you say, Darell?”

Darell shrugged his shoulders. “Interesting. I’m trying to fit it in with a message I received from Arcadia two months ago.”

“Oh, a message?” asked Anthor. “And what was it?”

“Well, I’m not certain. Five short words. But it’s interesting.”

“Look,” broke in Semic, with a worried interest, “there’s something I don’t understand.”

“What’s that?”

Semic chose his words carefully, his old upper lip lifting with each word as if to let them out singly and reluctantly. “Well, now, Homir Munn was saying just a while ago that Hari Seldon was faking when he said that he had established a Second Foundation. Now you’re saying that it’s not so; that Seldon wasn’t faking, eh?”

“Right, he wasn’t faking. Seldon said he had established a Second Foundation and so he had.”

“All right, then, but he said something else, too. He said he established the two Foundations at opposite ends of the Galaxy. Now, young man, was that a fake—because Kalgan isn’t at the opposite end of the Galaxy.”

Anthor seemed annoyed, “That’s a minor point. That part may well have been a cover-up to protect them. But after all, think— What real use would it serve to have the Mind-masters at the opposite end of the Galaxy? What is their function? To help preserve the Plan. Who are the main card players of the Plan? We, the First Foundation. Where can they best observe us, then, and serve their own ends? At the opposite end of the Galaxy? Ridiculous! They’re reasonably close, actually, and that is much more sensible.”

“I like that argument,” said Darell. “It makes sense. Look here, Munn’s been conscious for some time and I propose we loose him. He can’t do any harm, really.”

Anthor looked rebellious, but Homir was nodding vigorously. Five seconds later he was rubbing his wrists just as vigorously.

“How do you feel?” asked Darell.

“Rotten,” said Munn, sulkily, “but never mind. There’s something I want to ask this bright young thing here. I’ve heard what he’s had to say, and I’d just like permission to wonder what we do next.”

There was a queer and incongruous silence.

Munn smiled bitterly. “Well, suppose Kalgan is the Second Foundation. Who on Kalgan are they? How are you going to find them? How are you going to tackle them if you find them, eh?”

“Ah,” said Darell, “I can answer that, strangely enough. Shall I tell you what Semic and I have been doing this past half-year? It may give you another reason, Anthor, why I was anxious to remain on Terminus all this time.”

“In the first place,” he went on, “I’ve been working on encephalographic analysis with more purpose than any of you may suspect. Detecting Second Foundation minds is a little more subtle than simply finding a Tamper Plateau—and I did not actually succeed. But I came close enough.

“Do you know, any of you, how emotional control works? It’s been a popular subject with fiction writers since the time of the Mule and much nonsense has been written, spoken, and recorded about it. For the most part, it has been treated as something mysterious and occult. Of course, it isn’t. That the brain is the source of a myriad of tiny electromagnetic fields, everyone knows. Every fleeting emotion varies those fields in more or less intricate fashion, and everyone should know that, too.

“Now it is possible to conceive a mind which can sense these changing fields and even resonate with them. That is, a special organ of the cerebrum can exist which can take on whatever field-pattern it may detect. Exactly how it would do this, I have no idea, but that doesn’t matter. If I were blind, for instance, I could still learn the significance of photons and energy quanta and it could be reasonable to me that the absorption of a photon of such energy could create chemical changes in some organ of the body such that its presence would be detectable. But, of course, I would not be able, thereby, to understand color.