Isaac Asimov - Foundation

Fulham spoke suddenly. “What do you mean—‘indicate the problem’? We know the problem.”

Hardin whirled on him. “You think you do? You think Anacreon is all Hari Seldon is likely to be worried about. I disagree! I tell you, gentlemen, that as yet none of you has the faintest conception of what is really going on.”

“And you do?” questioned Pirenne, hostilely.

“I think so!” Hardin jumped up and pushed his chair away. His eyes were cold and hard. “If there’s one thing that’s definite, it is that there’s something smelly about the whole situation; something that is bigger than anything we’ve talked about yet. Just ask yourself this question: Why was it that among the original population of the Foundation not one first-class psychologist was included, except Bor Alurin? And he carefully refrained from training his pupils in more than the fundamentals.”

A short silence and Fara said: “All right. Why?”

“Perhaps because a psychologist might have caught on to what this was all about—and too soon to suit Hari Seldon. As it is, we’ve been stumbling about, getting misty glimpses of the truth and no more. And that is what Hari Seldon wanted.”

He laughed harshly. “Good day, gentlemen!”

He stalked out of the room.

Mayor Hardin chewed at the end of his cigar. It had gone out but he was past noticing that. He hadn’t slept the night before and he had a good idea that he wouldn’t sleep this coming night. His eyes showed it.

He said wearily, “And that covers it?”

“I think so.” Yohan Lee put a hand to his chin. “How does it sound?”

“Not too bad. It’s got to be done, you understand, with impudence. That is, there is to be no hesitation; no time to allow them to grasp the situation. Once we are in a position to give orders, why, give them as though you were born to do so, and they’ll obey out of habit. That’s the essence of a coup.”

“If the Board remains irresolute for even—”

“The Board? Count them out. After tomorrow, their importance as a factor in Terminus affairs won’t matter a rusty half-credit.”

Lee nodded slowly. “Yet it is strange that they’ve done nothing to stop us so far. You say they weren’t entirely in the dark.”

“Fara stumbles at the edges of the problem. Sometimes he makes me nervous. And Pirenne’s been suspicious of me since I was elected. But, you see, they never had the capacity of really understanding what was up. Their whole training has been authoritarian. They are sure that the Emperor, just because he is the Emperor, is all-powerful. And they are sure that the Board of Trustees, simply because it is the Board of Trustees acting in the name of the Emperor, cannot be in a position where it does not give the orders. That incapacity to recognize the possibility of revolt is our best ally.”

He heaved out of his chair and went to the water cooler. “They’re not bad fellows, Lee, when they stick to their Encyclopedia—and we’ll see that that’s where they stick in the future. They’re hopelessly incompetent when it comes to ruling Terminus. Go away now and start things rolling. I want to be alone.”

He sat down on the corner of his desk and stared at the cup of water.

Space! If only he were as confident as he pretended! The Anacreonians were landing in two days and what had he to go on but a set of notions and half-guesses as to what Hari Seldon had been driving at these past fifty years? He wasn’t even a real, honest-to-goodness psychologist—just a fumbler with a little training trying to outguess the greatest mind of the age.

If Fara were right; if Anacreon were all the problem Hari Seldon had foreseen; if the Encyclopedia were all he was interested in preserving—then what price coup d’état ?

He shrugged and drank his water.

The Vault was furnished with considerably more than six chairs, as though a larger company had been expected. Hardin noted that thoughtfully and seated himself wearily in a corner just as far from the other five as possible.

The Board members did not seem to object to that arrangement. They spoke among themselves in whispers, which fell off into sibilant monosyllables, and then into nothing at all. Of them all, only Jord Fara seemed even reasonably calm. He had produced a watch and was staring at it somberly.

Hardin glanced at his own watch and then at the glass cubicle—absolutely empty—that dominated half the room. It was the only unusual feature of the room, for aside from that there was no indication that somewhere a computer was splitting off instants of time toward that precise moment when a muon stream would flow, a connection be made and—

The lights went dim!

They didn’t go out, but merely yellowed and sank with a suddenness that made Hardin jump. He had lifted his eyes to the ceiling lights in startled fashion, and when he brought them down the glass cubicle was no longer empty.

A figure occupied it—a figure in a wheelchair!

It said nothing for a few moments, but it closed the book upon its lap and fingered it idly. And then it smiled, and the face seemed all alive.

It said, “I am Hari Seldon.” The voice was old and soft.

Hardin almost rose to acknowledge the introduction and stopped himself in the act.

The voice continued conversationally: “As you see, I am confined to this chair and cannot rise to greet you. Your grandparents left for Terminus a few months back in my time and since then I have suffered a rather inconvenient paralysis. I can’t see you, you know, so I can’t greet you properly. I don’t even know how many of you there are, so all this must be conducted informally. If any of you are standing, please sit down; and if you care to smoke, I wouldn’t mind.” There was a light chuckle. “Why should I? I’m not really here.”

Hardin fumbled for a cigar almost automatically, but thought better of it.

Hari Seldon put away his book—as if laying it upon a desk at his side—and when his fingers let go, it disappeared.

He said: “It is fifty years now since this Foundation was established—fifty years in which the members of the Foundation have been ignorant of what it was they were working toward. It was necessary that they be ignorant, but now the necessity is gone.

“The Encyclopedia Foundation, to begin with, is a fraud, and always has been!”

There was a sound of a scramble behind Hardin and one or two muffled exclamations, but he did not turn around.

Hari Seldon was, of course, undisturbed. He went on: “It is a fraud in the sense that neither I nor my colleagues care at all whether a single volume of the Encyclopedia is ever published. It has served its purpose, since by it we extracted an imperial charter from the Emperor, by it we attracted the hundred thousand humans necessary for our scheme, and by it we managed to keep them preoccupied while events shaped themselves, until it was too late for any of them to draw back.

“In the fifty years that you have worked on this fraudulent project—there is no use in softening phrases—your retreat has been cut off, and you have now no choice but to proceed on the infinitely more important project that was, and is, our real plan.

“To that end we have placed you on such a planet and at such a time that in fifty years you were maneuvered to the point where you no longer have freedom of action. From now on, and into the centuries, the path you must take is inevitable. You will be faced with a series of crises, as you are now faced with the first, and in each case your freedom of action will become similarly circumscribed so that you will be forced along one, and only one, path.

“It is that path which our psychology has worked out—and for a reason.