Isaac Asimov - Foundation and Empire

“The story of the magicians antedated even my father, sir. And the proof is more concrete. After leaving my father, this merchant that men call a magician visited a tech-man at the city to which my father had guided him, and there he left a shield-generator of the type he wore. That generator was retrieved by my father after his return from exile upon the execution of the bloody viceroy. It took a long time to find—

“The generator hangs on the wall behind you, sir. It does not work. It never worked but for the first two days; but if you’ll look at it, you will see that no one in the Empire ever designed it.”

Bel Riose reached for the belt of linked metal that clung to the curved wall. It came away with a little sucking noise as the tiny adhesion-field broke at the touch of his hand. The ellipsoid at the apex of the belt held his attention. It was the size of a walnut.

“This—” he said.

“Was the generator?” nodded Barr. “But it was the generator. The secret of its workings are beyond discovery now. Sub-electronic investigations have shown it to be fused into a single lump of metal and not all the most careful study of the diffraction patterns have sufficed to distinguish the discrete parts that had existed before fusion.”

“Then your ‘proof’ still lingers on the frothy border of words backed by no concrete evidence.”

Barr shrugged. “You have demanded my knowledge of me and threatened its extortion by force. If you choose to meet it with skepticism, what is that to me? Do you want me to stop?”

“Go on!” said the general, harshly.

“I continued my father’s researches after he died, and then the second accident I mentioned came to help me, for Siwenna was well known to Hari Seldon.”

“And who is Hari Seldon?”

“Hari Seldon was a scientist of the reign of the Emperor, Daluben IV. He was a psychohistorian; the last and greatest of them all. He once visited Siwenna, when Siwenna was a great commercial center, rich in the arts and sciences.”

“Hmph,” muttered Riose, sourly, “where is the stagnant planet that does not claim to have been a land of overflowing wealth in older days?”

“The days I speak of are the days of two centuries ago, when the Emperor yet ruled to the uttermost star; when Siwenna was a world of the interior and not a semi-barbarian border province. In those days, Hari Seldon foresaw the decline of Imperial power and the eventual barbarization of the entire Galaxy.”

Riose laughed suddenly. “He foresaw that? Then he foresaw wrong, my good scientist. I suppose you call yourself that. Why, the Empire is more powerful now than it has been in a millennium. Your old eyes are blinded by the cold bleakness of the border. Come to the inner worlds someday; come to the warmth and the wealth of the center.”

The old man shook his head somberly. “Circulation ceases first at the outer edges. It will take a while yet for the decay to reach the heart. That is, the apparent, obvious-to-all decay, as distinct from the inner decay that is an old story of some fifteen centuries.”

“And so this Hari Seldon foresaw a Galaxy of uniform barbarism,” said Riose, good-humoredly. “And what then, eh?”

“So he established two Foundations at the extreme opposing ends of the Galaxy—Foundations of the best, and the youngest, and the strongest, there to breed, grow, and develop. The worlds on which they were placed were chosen carefully; as were the times and the surroundings. All was arranged in such a way that the future as foreseen by the unalterable mathematics of psychohistory would involve their early isolation from the main body of Imperial civilization and their gradual growth into the germs of the Second Galactic Empire—cutting an inevitable barbarian interregnum from thirty thousand years to scarcely a single thousand.”

“And where did you find out all this? You seem to know it in detail.”

“I don’t and never did,” said the patrician with composure. “It is the painful result of the piecing together of certain evidence discovered by my father and a little more found by myself. The basis is flimsy and the superstructure has been romanticized into existence to fill the huge gaps. But I am convinced that it is essentially true.”

“You are easily convinced.”

“Am I? It has taken forty years of research.”

“Hmph. Forty years! I could settle the question in forty days. In fact, I believe I ought to. It would be—different.”

“And how would you do that?”

“In the obvious way. I could become an explorer. I could find this Foundation you speak of and observe with my eyes. You say there are two?”

“The records speak of two. Supporting evidence has been found only for one, which is understandable, for the other is at the extreme end of the long axis of the Galaxy.”

“Well, we’ll visit the near one.” The general was on his feet, adjusting his belt.

“You know where to go?” asked Barr.

“In a way. In the records of the last viceroy but one, he whom you murdered so effectively, there are suspicious tales of outer barbarians. In fact, one of his daughters was given in marriage to a barbarian prince. I’ll find my way.”

He held out a hand. “I thank you for your hospitality.”

Ducem Barr touched the hand with his fingers and bowed formally. “Your visit was a great honor.”

“As for the information you gave me,” continued Bel Riose, “I’ll know how to thank you for that when I return.”

Ducem Barr followed his guest submissively to the outer door and said quietly to the disappearing ground-car, “And if you return.”

FOUNDATION. . . . With forty years of expansion behind them, the Foundation faced the menace of Riose. The epic days of Hardin and Mallow had gone and with them were gone a certain hard daring and resolution. . . .

There were four men in the room, and the room was set apart where none could approach. The four men looked at each other quickly, then lengthily at the table that separated them. There were four bottles on the table and as many full glasses, but no one had touched them.

And then the man nearest the door stretched out an arm and drummed a slow, padding rhythm on the table.

He said, “Are you going to sit and wonder forever? Does it matter who speaks first?”

“Speak you first, then,” said the big man directly opposite. “You’re the one who should be the most worried.”

Sennett Forell chuckled with noiseless nonhumor. “Because you think I’m the richest. Well—Or is it that you expect me to continue as I have started? I don’t suppose you forget that it was my own Trade Fleet that captured this scout ship of theirs.”

“You had the largest fleet,” said a third, “and the best pilots; which is another way of saying you are the richest. It was a fearful risk; and would have been greater for one of us.”

Sennett Forell chuckled again. “There is a certain facility in risk-taking that I inherit from my father. After all, the essential point in running a risk is that the returns justify it. As to which, witness the fact that the enemy ship was isolated and captured without loss to ourselves or warning to the others.”

That Forell was a distant collateral relative of the late great Hober Mallow was recognized openly throughout the Foundation. That he was Mallow’s illegitimate son was accepted quietly to just as wide an extent.

The fourth man blinked his little eyes stealthily. Words crept out from between thin lips. “It is nothing to sleep over in fat triumph, this grasping of little ships. Most likely, it will but anger that young man further.”