Isaac Asimov - Foundation

“I have gone over that Visual Record some fifty times since. I have it here with me now, and will repeat the job a fifty-first time in your presence right now.”

The mayor pounded monotonously for order, as the chamber lost its equilibrium and the gallery roared. In five million homes on Terminus, excited observers crowded their receiving sets more closely, and at the prosecutor’s own bench, Jorane Sutt shook his head coldly at the nervous high priest, while his eyes blazed fixedly on Mallow’s face.

The center of the chamber was cleared, and the lights burnt low. Ankor Jael, from his bench on the left, made the adjustments, and with a preliminary click, a holographic scene sprang to view; in color, in three-dimensions, in every attribute of life but life itself.

There was the missionary, confused and battered, standing between the lieutenant and the sergeant. Mallow’s image waited silently, and then men filed in, Twer bringing up the rear.

The conversation played itself out, word for word. The sergeant was disciplined, and the missionary was questioned. The mob appeared, their growl could be heard, and the Revered Jord Parma made his wild appeal. Mallow drew his gun, and the missionary, as he was dragged away, lifted his arms in a mad, final curse and a tiny flash of light came and went.

The scene ended, with the officers frozen at the horror of the situation, while Twer clamped shaking hands over his ears, and Mallow calmly put his gun away.

The lights were on again; the empty space in the center of the floor was no longer even apparently full. Mallow, the real Mallow of the present, took up the burden of his narration:

“The incident, you see, is exactly as the prosecution has presented it—on the surface. I’ll explain that shortly. Jaim Twer’s emotions through the whole business show clearly a priestly education, by the way.

“It was on that same day that I pointed out certain incongruities in the episode to Twer. I asked him where the missionary came from in the midst of the near-desolate tract we occupied at the time. I asked further where the gigantic mob had come from with the nearest sizable town a hundred miles away. The prosecution has paid no attention to such problems.

“Or to other points; for instance, the curious point of Jord Parma’s blatant conspicuousness. A missionary on Korell, risking his life in defiance of both Korellian and Foundation law, parades about in a very new and very distinctive priestly costume. There’s something wrong there. At the time, I suggested that the missionary was an unwitting accomplice of the Commdor, who was using him in an attempt to force us into an act of wildly illegal aggression, to justify, in law , his subsequent destruction of our ship and of us.

“The prosecution has anticipated this justification of my actions. They have expected me to explain that the safety of my ship, my crew, my mission itself were at stake and could not be sacrificed for one man, when that man would, in any case, have been destroyed, with us or without us. They reply by muttering about the Foundation’s ‘honor’ and the necessity of upholding our ‘dignity’ in order to maintain our ascendancy.

“For some strange reason, however, the prosecution has neglected Jord Parma himself,—as an individual. They brought out no details concerning him; neither his birthplace, nor his education, nor any detail of previous history. The explanation of this will also explain the incongruities I have pointed out in the Visual Record you have just seen. The two are connected.

“The prosecution has advanced no details concerning Jord Parma because it cannot . That scene you saw by Visual Record seemed phony because Jord Parma was phony. There never was a Jord Parma. This whole trial is the biggest farce ever cooked up over an issue that never existed. ”

Once more he had to wait for the babble to die down. He said, slowly:

“I’m going to show you the enlargement of a single still from the Visual Record. It will speak for itself. Lights again, Jael.”

The chamber dimmed, and the empty air filled again with frozen figures in ghostly, waxen illusion. The officers of the Far Star struck their stiff, impossible attitudes. A gun pointed from Mallow’s rigid hand. At his left, the Revered Jord Parma, caught in mid-shriek, stretched his claws upward, while the falling sleeves hung halfway.

And from the missionary’s hand there was that little gleam that in the previous showing had flashed and gone. It was a permanent glow now.

“Keep your eye on that light on his hand,” called Mallow from the shadows. “Enlarge that scene, Jael!”

The tableau bloated—quickly. Outer portions fell away as the missionary drew towards the center and became a giant. Then there was only a hand and an arm, and then only a hand, which filled everything and remained there in immense, hazy tautness.

The light had become a set of fuzzy, glowing letters: K S P.

“That,” Mallow’s voice boomed out, “is a sample of tattooing, gentlemen. Under ordinary light it is invisible, but under ultraviolet light—with which I flooded the room in taking this Visual Record—it stands out in high relief. I’ll admit it is a naive method of secret identification, but it works on Korell, where UV light is not to be found on street corners. Even in our ship, detection was accidental.

“Perhaps some of you have already guessed what K S P stands for. Jord Parma knew his priestly lingo well and did his job magnificently. Where he had learned it, and how, I cannot say, but K S P stands for ‘Korellian Secret Police.’ ”

Mallow shouted over the tumult, roaring against the noise, “I have collateral proof in the form of documents brought from Korell, which I can present to the council if required.

“And where is now the prosecution’s case? They have already made and re-made the monstrous suggestion that I should have fought for the missionary in defiance of the law, and sacrificed my mission, my ship, and myself to the ‘honor’ of the Foundation.

“ But to do it for an impostor?

“Should I have done it then for a Korellian secret agent tricked out in the robes and verbal gymnastics probably borrowed of an Anacreonian exile? Would Jorane Sutt and Publis Manlio have had me fall into a stupid, odious trap—”

His hoarsened voice faded into the featureless background of a shouting mob. He was being lifted onto shoulders, and carried to the mayor’s bench. Out the windows, he could see a torrent of madmen swarming into the square to add to the thousands there already.

Mallow looked about for Ankor Jael, but it was impossible to find any single face in the incoherence of the mass. Slowly he became aware of a rhythmic, repeated shout that was spreading from a small beginning, and pulsing into insanity:

“Long live Mallow—long live Mallow—long live Mallow—”

Ankor Jael blinked at Mallow out of a haggard face. The last two days had been mad, sleepless ones.

“Mallow, you’ve put on a beautiful show, so don’t spoil it by jumping too high. You can’t seriously consider running for mayor. Mob enthusiasm is a powerful thing, but it’s notoriously fickle.”

“Exactly!” said Mallow, grimly, “so we must coddle it, and the best way to do that is to continue the show.”

“Now what?”

“You’re to have Publis Manlio and Jorane Sutt arrested—”

“What!”

“Just what you hear. Have the mayor arrest them! I don’t care what threats you use. I control the mob,—for today, at any rate. He won’t dare face them.”

“But on what charge, man?”

“On the obvious one. They’ve been inciting the priesthood of the outer planets to take sides in the factional quarrels of the Foundation. That’s illegal, by Seldon. Charge them with ‘endangering the state.’ And I don’t care about a conviction any more than they did in my case. Just get them out of circulation until I’m mayor.”