Isaac Asimov: Foundation and Empire

Ducem Barr rose. He said flatly, “Such help as I could give you means nothing. So I will make you free of it in the face of your strenuous demand.”

“I will be the judge of its meaning.”

“No, I am serious. Not all the might of the Empire could avail to crush this pygmy world.”

“Why not?” Bel Riose’s eyes glistened fiercely. “No, stay where you are. I’ll tell you when you may leave. Why not? If you think I underestimate this enemy I have discovered, you are wrong. Patrician,” he spoke reluctantly, “I lost a ship on my return. I have no proof that it fell into the hands of the Foundation; but it has not been located since and were it merely an accident, its dead hulk should certainly have been found along the route we took. It is not an important loss—less than the tenth part of a fleabite, but it may mean that the Foundation has already opened hostilities. Such eagerness and such disregard for consequences might mean secret forces of which I know nothing. Can you help me then by answering a specific question? What is their military power?”

“I haven’t any notion.”

“Then explain yourself on your own terms. Why do you say the Empire cannot defeat this small enemy?”

The Siwennian seated himself once more and looked away from Riose’s fixed glare. He spoke heavily, “Because I have faith in the principles of psychohistory. It is a strange science. It reached mathematical maturity with one man, Hari Seldon, and died with him, for no man since has been capable of manipulating its intricacies. But in that short period, it proved itself the most powerful instrument ever invented for the study of humanity. Without pretending to predict the actions of individual humans, it formulated definite laws capable of mathematical analysis and extrapolation to govern and predict the mass action of human groups.”

“So—”

“It was that psychohistory which Seldon and the group he worked with applied in full force to the establishment of the Foundation. The place, time, and conditions all conspire mathematically and so, inevitably, to the development of a Second Galactic Empire.”

Riose’s voice trembled with indignation. “You mean that this art of his predicts that I would attack the Foundation and lose such and such a battle for such and such a reason? You are trying to say that I am a silly robot following a predetermined course into destruction.”

“No,” replied the old patrician, sharply. “I have already said that the science had nothing to do with individual actions. It is the vaster background that has been foreseen.”

“Then we stand clasped tightly in the forcing hand of the Goddess of Historical Necessity.”

“Of Psycho historical Necessity,” prompted Barr, softly.

“And if I exercise my prerogative of freewill? If I choose to attack next year, or not to attack at all? How pliable is the Goddess? How resourceful?”

Barr shrugged. “Attack now or never; with a single ship, or all the force in the Empire; by military force or economic pressure; by candid declaration of war or by treacherous ambush. Do whatever you wish in your fullest exercise of freewill. You will still lose.”

“Because of Hari Seldon’s dead hand?”

“Because of the dead hand of the mathematics of human behavior that can neither be stopped, swerved, nor delayed.”

The two faced each other in deadlock, until the general stepped back.

He said simply, “I’ll take that challenge. It’s a dead hand against a living will.”

CLEON II. . . . commonly called “The Great.” The last strong Emperor of the First Empire, he is important for the political and artistic renaissance that took place during his long reign. He is best known to romance, however, for his connection with Bel Riose, and to the common man, he is simply “Riose’s Emperor.” It is important not to allow events of the last year of his reign to overshadow forty years of . . .

Cleon II was Lord of the Universe. Cleon II also suffered from a painful and undiagnosed ailment. By the queer twists of human affairs, the two statements are not mutually exclusive, nor even particularly incongruous. There have been a wearisomely large number of precedents in history.

But Cleon II cared nothing for such precedents. To meditate upon a long list of similar cases would not ameliorate personal suffering an electron’s worth. It soothed him as little to think that where his great-grandfather had been the pirate ruler of a dust-speck planet, he himself slept in the pleasure palace of Ammenetik the Great, as heir of a line of Galactic rulers stretching backward into a tenuous past. It was at present no source of comfort to him that the efforts of his father had cleansed the realm of its leprous patches of rebellion and restored it to the peace and unity it had enjoyed under Stanel VI; that, as a consequence, in the twenty-five years of his reign, not one cloud of revolt had misted his burnished glory.

The Emperor of the Galaxy and the Lord of All whimpered as he lolled his head backward into the invigorating plane of force about his pillows. It yielded in a softness that did not touch, and at the pleasant tingle, Cleon relaxed a bit. He sat up with difficulty and stared morosely at the distant walls of the grand chamber. It was a bad room to be alone in. It was too big. All the rooms were too big.

But better to be alone during these crippling bouts than to endure the prinking of the courtiers, their lavish sympathy, their soft, condescending dullness. Better to be alone than to watch those insipid masks behind which spun the tortuous speculations on the chances of death and the fortunes of the succession.

His thoughts hurried him. There were his three sons; three straight-backed youths full of promise and virtue. Where did they disappear on these bad days? Waiting, no doubt. Each watching the other; and all watching him.

He stirred uneasily. And now Brodrig craved audience. The low-born, faithful Brodrig; faithful because he was hated with a unanimous and cordial hatred that was the only point of agreement between the dozen cliques that divided his court.

Brodrig—the faithful favorite, who had to be faithful, since unless he owned the fastest speed-ship in the Galaxy and took to it the day of the Emperor’s death, it would be the radiation-chamber the day after.

Cleon II touched the smooth knob on the arm of his great divan, and the huge door at the end of the room dissolved to transparency.

Brodrig advanced along the crimson carpet, and knelt to kiss the Emperor’s limp hand.

“Your health, sire?” asked the Privy Secretary in a low tone of becoming anxiety.

“I live,” snapped the Emperor with exasperation, “if you can call it life where every scoundrel who can read a book of medicine uses me as a blank and receptive field for his feeble experiments. If there is a conceivable remedy, chemical, physical, or nuclear, which has not yet been tried, why then, some learned babbler from the far corners of the realm will arrive tomorrow to try it. And still another newly discovered book, or forgery more like, will be used as authority.

“By my father’s memory,” he rumbled savagely, “it seems there is not a biped extant who can study a disease before his eyes with those same eyes. There is not one who can count a pulse-beat without a book of the ancients before him. I’m sick and they call it ‘unknown.’ The fools! If in the course of millennia, human bodies learn new methods of falling askew, it remains uncovered by the studies of the ancients and incurable forevermore. The ancients should be alive now, or I then.”

The Emperor ran down to a low-breathed curse while Brodrig waited dutifully. Cleon II said peevishly, “How many are waiting outside?”