Isaac Asimov - Foundation and Empire

“But over and over again, it worked against Foundation forces. It worked on the Foundation itself. Why? With our present knowledge, it is all illogical. So there must be factors of which we are not aware.”

“Treachery?”

“That’s rattle-pated nonsense, Randu. Unprintable twaddle. There wasn’t a man on the Foundation who wasn’t sure of victory. Who would betray a certain-to-win side.”

Randu stepped to the curved window and stared unseeingly out into the unseeable. He said, “But we’re certain to lose now, if the Mule had a thousand weaknesses; if he were a network of holes—”

He did not turn. It was as if the slump of his back, the nervous groping for one another of the hands behind him spoke. He said, “We escaped easily after the Time Vault episode, Ebling. Others might have escaped as well. A few did. Most did not. The Extinguishing Field could have been counteracted. It asked ingenuity and a certain amount of labor. All the ships of the Foundation Navy could have flown to Haven or other nearby planets to continue the fight as we did. Not one percent did so. In effect, they deserted to the enemy.

“The Foundation underground, upon which most people here seem to rely so heavily, has thus far done nothing of consequence. The Mule has been politic enough to promise to safeguard the property and profits of the great Traders and they have gone over to him.”

Ebling Mis said stubbornly, “The plutocrats have always been against us.”

“They always held the power, too. Listen, Ebling. We have reason to believe that the Mule or his tools have already been in contact with powerful men among the Independent Traders. At least ten of the twenty-seven Trading Worlds are known to have gone over to the Mule. Perhaps ten more waver. There are personalities on Haven itself who would not be unhappy over the Mule’s domination. It’s apparently an insurmountable temptation to give up endangered political power, if that will maintain your hold over economic affairs.”

“You don’t think Haven can fight the Mule?”

“I don’t think Haven will.” And now Randu turned his troubled face full upon the psychologist. “I think Haven is waiting to surrender. It’s what I called you here to tell you. I want you to leave Haven.”

Ebling Mis puffed up his plump cheeks in amazement. “Already?”

Randu felt horribly tired. “Ebling, you are the Foundation’s greatest psychologist. The real master-psychologists went out with Seldon, but you’re the best we have. You’re our only chance of defeating the Mule. You can’t do that here; you’ll have to go to what’s left of the Empire.”

“To Trantor?”

“That’s right. What was once the Empire is bare bones today, but something must still be at the center. They’ve got the records there, Ebling. You may learn more of mathematical psychology; perhaps enough to be able to interpret the clown’s mind. He will go with you, of course.”

Mis responded dryly, “I doubt if he’d be willing to, even for fear of the Mule, unless your niece went with him.”

“I know that. Toran and Bayta are leaving with you for that very reason. And, Ebling, there’s another, greater purpose. Hari Seldon founded two Foundations three centuries ago; one at each end of the Galaxy. You must find that Second Foundation. ”

The mayor’s palace—what was once the mayor’s palace—was a looming smudge in the darkness. The city was quiet under its conquest and curfew, and the hazy milk of the great Galactic Lens, with here and there a lonely star, dominated the sky of the Foundation.

In three centuries the Foundation had grown from a private project of a small group of scientists to a tentacular trade empire sprawling deep into the Galaxy and half a year had flung it from its heights to the status of another conquered province.

Captain Han Pritcher refused to grasp that.

The city’s sullen nighttime quiet, the darkened palace, intruder-occupied, were symbolic enough, but Captain Han Pritcher, just within the outer gate of the palace, with the tiny nuclear bomb under his tongue, refused to understand.

A shape drifted closer—the captain bent his head.

The whisper came deathly low, “The alarm system is as it always was, captain. Proceed! It will register nothing.”

Softly, the captain ducked through the low archway, and down the fountain-lined path to what had been Indbur’s garden.

Four months ago had been the day in the Time Vault, the fullness of which his memory balked at. Singly and separately the impressions would come back, unwelcome, mostly at night.

Old Seldon speaking his benevolent words that were so shatteringly wrong—the jumbled confusion—Indbur, with his mayoral costume incongruously bright about his pinched, unconscious face—the frightened crowds gathering quickly, waiting noiselessly for the inevitable word of surrender—the young man, Toran, disappearing out of a side door with the Mule’s clown dangling over his shoulder.

And himself, somehow out of it all afterward, with his car unworkable.

Shouldering his way along and through the leaderless mob that was already leaving the city—destination unknown.

Making blindly for the various rat holes which were—which had once been—the headquarters for a democratic underground that for eighty years had been failing and dwindling.

And the rat holes were empty.

The next day, black alien ships were momentarily visible in the sky, sinking gently into the clustered buildings of the nearby city. Captain Han Pritcher felt an accumulation of helplessness and despair drown him.

He started his travels in earnest.

In thirty days he had covered nearly two hundred miles on foot, changed to the clothing of a worker in the hydroponic factories whose body he found newly dead by the side of the road, grown a fierce beard of russet intensity—

And found what was left of the underground.

The city was Newton, the district a residential one of onetime elegance slowly edging towards squalor, the house an undistinguished member of a row, and the man a small-eyed, big-boned person whose knotted fists bulged through his pockets and whose wiry body remained unbudgingly in the narrow door opening.

The captain mumbled, “I come from Miran.”

The man returned the gambit, grimly. “Miran is early this year.”

The captain said, “No earlier than last year.”

But the man did not step aside. He said, “Who are you?”

“Aren’t you Fox?”

“Do you always answer by asking?”

The captain took an imperceptibly longer breath, and then said calmly, “I am Han Pritcher, Captain of the Fleet, and member of the Democratic Underground Party. Will you let me in?”

The Fox stepped aside. He said, “My real name is Orum Palley.”

He held out his hand. The captain took it.

The room was well kept, but not lavish. In one corner stood a decorative book-film projector, which to the captain’s military eyes might easily have been a camouflaged blaster of respectable caliber. The projecting lens covered the doorway, and such could be remotely controlled.

The Fox followed his bearded guest’s eyes, and smiled tightly. He said, “Yes! But only in the days of Indbur and his lackey-hearted vampires. It wouldn’t do much against the Mule, eh? Nothing would help against the Mule. Are you hungry?”

The captain’s jaw muscles tightened beneath his beard, and he nodded.

“It’ll take a minute if you don’t mind waiting.” The Fox removed cans from a cupboard and placed two before Captain Pritcher. “Keep your finger on it, and break them when they’re hot enough. My heat-control unit’s out of whack. Things like that remind you there’s a war on—or was on, eh?”