Isaac Asimov - Foundation and Empire

But the answer was literal this time, for Mis’s body came plunging through with a bellow, and a shake of a fist at the ones who were still holding tatters of his cloak.

Indbur motioned them away with a solemn, displeased frown, and Mis bent to pick up his ruin of a hat, shake about a quarter of the gathered dirt off it, thrust it under his armpit, and say:

“Look here, Indbur, those unprintable minions of yours will be charged for one good cloak. Lots of good wear left in this cloak.” He puffed and wiped his forehead with just a trace of theatricality.

The mayor stood stiff with displeasure, and said haughtily from the peak of his five-foot-two, “It has not been brought to my attention, Mis, that you have requested an audience. You have certainly not been assigned one.”

Ebling Mis looked down at his mayor with what was apparently shocked disbelief, “Ga-LAX-y, Indbur, didn’t you get my note yesterday? I handed it to a flunky in purple uniform day before. I would have handed it to you direct, but I know how you like formality.”

“Formality!” Indbur turned up exasperated eyes. Then, strenuously, “Have you ever heard of proper organization? At all future times you are to submit your request for an audience, properly made out in triplicate, at the government office intended for the purpose. You are then to wait until the ordinary course of events brings you notification of the time of audience to be granted. You are then to appear, properly clothed—properly clothed, do you understand—and with proper respect, too. You may leave.”

“What’s wrong with my clothes?” demanded Mis, hotly. “Best cloak I had till those unprintable fiends got their claws on it. I’ll leave just as soon as I deliver what I came to deliver. Ga-LAX-y, if it didn’t involve a Seldon Crisis, I would leave right now.”

“Seldon Crisis!” Indbur exhibited first interest. Mis was a great psychologist—a democrat, boor, and rebel certainly, but a psychologist, too. In his uncertainty, the mayor even failed to put into words the inner pang that stabbed suddenly when Mis plucked a casual bloom, held it to his nostrils expectantly, then flipped it away with a wrinkled nose.

Indbur said coldly, “Would you follow me? This garden wasn’t made for serious conversation.”

He felt better in his built-up chair behind his large desk from which he could look down on the few hairs that quite ineffectually hid Mis’s pink scalp-skin. He felt much better when Mis cast a series of automatic glances about him for a nonexistent chair and then remained standing in uneasy shifting fashion. He felt best of all when in response to a careful pressure of the correct contact, a liveried underling scurried in, bowed his way to the desk, and laid thereon a bulky, metal-bound volume.

“Now, in order,” said Indbur, once more master of the situation, “to make this unauthorized interview as short as possible, make your statement in the fewest possible words.”

Ebling Mis said unhurriedly, “You know what I’m doing these days?”

“I have your reports here,” replied the mayor, with satisfaction, “together with authorized summaries of them. As I understand it, your investigations into the mathematics of psychohistory have been intended to duplicate Hari Seldon’s work and, eventually, trace the projected course of future history, for the use of the Foundation.”

“Exactly,” said Mis, dryly. “When Seldon first established the Foundation, he was wise enough to include no psychologists among the scientists placed here—so that the Foundation has always worked blindly along the course of historical necessity. In the course of my researches, I have based a good deal upon hints found at the Time Vault.”

“I am aware of that, Mis. It is a waste of time to repeat.”

“I’m not repeating,” blared Mis, “because what I’m going to tell you isn’t in any of those reports.”

“How do you mean, not in the reports?” said Indbur, stupidly. “How could—”

“Ga-LAX-y! Let me tell this my own way, you offensive little creature. Stop putting words into my mouth and questioning my every statement or I’ll tramp out of here and let everything crumble around you. Remember, you unprintable fool, the Foundation will come through because it must, but if I walk out of here now— you won’t.”

Dashing his hat on the floor, so that clods of earth scattered, he sprang up the stairs of the dais on which the wide desk stood and shoving papers violently, sat down upon a corner of it.

Indbur thought frantically of summoning the guard, or using the built-in blasters of his desk. But Mis’s face was glaring down upon him and there was nothing to do but cringe the best face upon it.

“Dr. Mis,” he began, with weak formality, “you must—”

“Shut up,” said Mis, ferociously, “and listen. If this thing here,” and his palm came down heavily on the metal of the bound data, “is a mess of my reports—throw it out. Any report I write goes up through some twenty-odd officials, gets to you, and then sort of winds down through twenty more. That’s fine if there’s nothing you don’t want kept secret. Well, I’ve got something confidential here. It’s so confidential, even the boys working for me haven’t got wind of it. They did the work, of course, but each just a little unconnected piece—and I put it together. You know what the Time Vault is?”

Indbur nodded his head, but Mis went on with loud enjoyment of the situation, “Well, I’ll tell you anyhow because I’ve been sort of imagining this unprintable situation for a Ga-LAX-y of a long time; I can read your mind, you puny fraud. You’ve got your hand right near a little knob that’ll call in about five hundred or so armed men to finish me off, but you’re afraid of what I know—you’re afraid of a Seldon Crisis. Besides which, if you touch anything on your desk, I’ll knock your unprintable head off before anyone gets here. You and your bandit father and pirate grandfather have been blood-sucking the Foundation long enough anyway.”

“This is treason,” gabbled Indbur.

“It certainly is,” gloated Mis, “but what are you going to do about it? Let me tell you about the Time Vault. That Time Vault is what Hari Seldon placed here at the beginning to help us over the rough spots. For every crisis, Seldon has prepared a personal simulacrum to help—and explain. Four crises so far—four appearances. The first time he appeared at the height of the first crisis. The second time, he appeared at the moment just after the successful evolution of the second crisis. Our ancestors were there to listen to him both times. At the third and fourth crises, he was ignored—probably because he was not needed, but recent investigations— not included in those reports you have—indicate that he appeared anyway, and at the proper times. Get it?”

He did not wait for any answer. His cigar, a tattered, dead ruin, was finally disposed of, a new cigar groped for, and lit. The smoke puffed out violently.

He said, “Officially I’ve been trying to rebuild the science of psychohistory. Well, no one man is going to do that , and it won’t get done in any one century, either. But I’ve made advances in the more simple elements and I’ve been able to use it as an excuse to meddle with the Time Vault. What I have done, involves the determination, to a pretty fair kind of certainty, of the exact date of the next appearance of Hari Seldon. I can give you the exact day, in other words, that the coming Seldon Crisis, the fifth, will reach its climax.”

“How far off?” demanded Indbur, tensely.

And Mis exploded his bomb with cheerful nonchalance, “Four months,” he said. “Four unprintable months, less two days.”