Isaac Asimov - Foundation and Empire

The captain took the hand and bowed lower, “Nothing like it. Dr. Mis, I understand, has been instrumental in bringing me here, but it’s only temporary. Back to home guard tomorrow. What time is it?”

It was three minutes of twelve!

Magnifico was the picture of misery and heart-sick depression. His body curled up, in his eternal effort at self-effacement. His long nose was pinched at the nostrils and his large, down-slanted eyes darted uneasily about.

He clutched at Bayta’s hand, and when she bent down, he whispered, “Do you suppose, my lady, that all these great ones were in the audience, perhaps, when I . . . when I played the Visi-Sonor?”

“Everyone, I’m sure,” Bayta assured him, and shook him gently. “And I’m sure they all think you’re the most wonderful player in the Galaxy and that your concert was the greatest ever seen, so you just straighten yourself and sit correctly. We must have dignity.”

He smiled feebly at her mock-frown and unfolded his long-boned limbs slowly.

It was noon—

—and the glass cubicle was no longer empty.

It was doubtful that anyone had witnessed the appearance. It was a clean break; one moment not there and the next moment there.

In the cubicle was a figure in a wheelchair, old and shrunken, from whose wrinkled face bright eyes shone, and whose voice, as it turned out, was the livest thing about him. A book lay face downward in his lap, and the voice came softly.

“I am Hari Seldon!”

He spoke through a silence, thunderous in its intensity.

“I am Hari Seldon! I do not know if anyone is here at all by mere sense-perception but that is unimportant. I have few fears as yet of a breakdown in the Plan. For the first three centuries the percentage probability of nondeviation is nine-four point two.”

He paused to smile, and then said genially, “By the way, if any of you are standing, you may sit. If any would like to smoke, please do. I am not here in the flesh. I require no ceremony.

“Let us take up the problem of the moment, then. For the first time, the Foundation has been faced, or perhaps, is in the last stages of facing, civil war. Till now, the attacks from without have been adequately beaten off, and inevitably so, according to the strict laws of psychohistory. The attack at present is that of a too-undisciplined outer group of the Foundation against the too-authoritarian central government. The procedure was necessary, the result obvious.”

The dignity of the high-born audience was beginning to break. Indbur was half out of his chair.

Bayta leaned forward with troubled eyes. What was the great Seldon talking about? She had missed a few of the words—

“—that the compromise worked out is necessary in two respects. The revolt of the Independent Traders introduces an element of new uncertainty in a government perhaps grown over-confident. The element of striving is restored. Although beaten, a healthy increase of democracy—”

There were raised voices now. Whispers had ascended the scale of loudness, and the edge of panic was in them.

Bayta said in Toran’s ear, “Why doesn’t he talk about the Mule? The Traders never revolted.”

Toran shrugged his shoulders.

The seated figure spoke cheerfully across and through the increasing disorganization:

“—a new and firmer coalition government was the necessary and beneficial outcome of the logical civil war forced upon the Foundation. And now only the remnants of the old Empire stand in the way of further expansion, and in them, for the next few years, at any rate, is no problem. Of course, I cannot reveal the nature of the next prob—”

In the complete uproar, Seldon’s lips moved soundlessly.

Ebling Mis was next to Randu, face ruddy. He was shouting. “Seldon is off his rocker. He’s got the wrong crisis. Were your Traders ever planning civil war?”

Randu said thinly, “We planned one, yes. We called it off in the face of the Mule.”

“Then the Mule is an added feature, unprepared for in Seldon’s psychohistory. Now what’s happened?”

In the sudden, frozen silence, Bayta found the cubicle once again empty. The nuclear glow of the walls was dead, the soft current of conditioned air absent.

Somewhere the sound of a shrill siren was rising and falling in the scale and Randu formed the words with his lips, “Space raid!”

And Ebling Mis held his wristwatch to his ears and shouted suddenly, “Stopped, by the Ga-LAX-y! Is there a watch in the room that is going?” His voice was a roar.

Twenty wrists went to twenty ears. And in far less than twenty seconds, it was quite certain that none were.

“Then,” said Mis, with a grim and horrible finality, “something has stopped all nuclear power in the Time Vault—and the Mule is attacking.”

Indbur’s wail rose high above the noise, “Take your seats! The Mule is fifty parsecs distant.”

“He was,” shouted back Mis, “a week ago. Right now, Terminus is being bombarded.”

Bayta felt a deep depression settle softly upon her. She felt its folds tighten close and thick, until her breath forced its way only with pain past her tightened throat.

The outer noise of a gathering crowd was evident. The doors were thrown open and a harried figure entered, and spoke rapidly to Indbur, who had rushed to him.

“Excellence,” he whispered, “not a vehicle is running in the city, not a communication line to the outside is open. The Tenth Fleet is reported defeated and the Mule’s ships are outside the atmosphere. The general staff—”

Indbur crumpled, and was a collapsed figure of impotence upon the floor. In all that hall, not a voice was raised now. Even the growing crowd without was fearful, but silent, and the horror of cold panic hovered dangerously.

Indbur was raised. Wine was held to his lips. His lips moved before his eyes opened, and the word they formed was, “Surrender!”

Bayta found herself near to crying—not for sorrow or humiliation, but simply and plainly out of a vast frightened despair. Ebling Mis plucked at her sleeve. “Come, young lady—”

She was pulled out of her chair, bodily.

“We’re leaving,” he said, “and take your musician with you.” The plump scientist’s lips were trembling and colorless.

“Magnifico,” said Bayta, faintly. The clown shrank in horror. His eyes were glassy.

“The Mule,” he shrieked. “The Mule is coming for me.”

He thrashed wildly at her touch. Toran leaned over and brought his fist up sharply. Magnifico slumped into unconsciousness and Toran carried him out potato-sack fashion.

The next day, the ugly, battle-black ships of the Mule poured down upon the landing fields of the planet Terminus. The attacking general sped down the empty main street of Terminus City in a foreign-made ground car that ran where a whole city of atomic cars still stood useless.

The proclamation of occupation was made twenty-four hours to the minute after Seldon had appeared before the former mighty of the Foundation.

Of all the Foundation planets, only the Independent Traders still stood, and against them the power of the Mule—conqueror of the Foundation—now turned itself.

The lonely planet, Haven—only planet of an only sun of a Galactic Sector that trailed raggedly off into intergalactic vacuum—was under siege.

In a strictly military sense, it was certainly under siege, since no area of space on the Galactic side further than twenty parsecs distance was outside range of the Mule’s advance bases. In the four months since the shattering fall of the Foundation, Haven’s communications had fallen apart like a spiderweb under the razor’s edge. The ships of Haven converged inwards upon the home world, and only Haven itself was now a fighting base.