Isaac Asimov - Foundation

“It’s half a year till election.”

“Not too long!” Mallow was on his feet, and his sudden grip of Jael’s arm was tight. “Listen, I’d seize the government by force if I had to—the way Salvor Hardin did a hundred years ago. There’s still that Seldon crisis coming up, and when it comes I have to be mayor and high priest. Both!”

Jael’s brow furrowed. He said, quietly, “What’s it going to be? Korell, after all?”

Mallow nodded. “Of course. They’ll declare war, eventually, though I’m betting it’ll take another pair of years.”

“With nuclear ships?”

“What do you think? Those three merchant ships we lost in their space sector weren’t knocked over with compressed-air pistols. Jael, they’re getting ships from the Empire itself. Don’t open your mouth like a fool. I said the Empire! It’s still there, you know. It may be gone here in the Periphery but in the Galactic center it’s still very much alive. And one false move means that it, itself, may be on our neck. That’s why I must be mayor and high priest. I’m the only man who knows how to fight the crisis.”

Jael swallowed dryly. “How? What are you going to do?”

“Nothing.”

Jael smiled uncertainly. “Really! All of that!”

But Mallow’s answer was incisive. “When I’m boss of this Foundation, I’m going to do nothing. One hundred percent of nothing, and that is the secret of this crisis.”

Asper Argo, the Well-Beloved, Commdor of the Korellian Republic, greeted his wife’s entry by a hangdog lowering of his scanty eyebrows. To her at least, his self-adopted epithet did not apply. Even he knew that.

She said, in a voice as sleek as her hair and as cold as her eyes, “My gracious lord, I understand, has finally come to a decision upon the fate of the Foundation upstarts.”

“Indeed?” said the Commdor, sourly. “And what more does your versatile understanding embrace?”

“Enough, my very noble husband. You had another of your vacillating consultations with your councilors. Fine advisors.” With infinite scorn, “A herd of palsied purblind idiots hugging their sterile profits close to their sunken chests in the face of my father’s displeasure.”

“And who, my dear,” was the mild response, “is the excellent source from which your understanding understands all this?”

The Commdora laughed shortly. “If I told you, my source would be more corpse than source.”

“Well, you’ll have your own way, as always.” The Commdor shrugged and turned away. “And as for your father’s displeasure: I much fear me it extends to a niggardly refusal to supply more ships.”

“More ships!” She blazed away, hotly, “And haven’t you five? Don’t deny it. I know you have five; and a sixth is promised.”

“Promised for the last year.”

“But one—just one—can blast that Foundation into stinking rubble. Just one! One, to sweep their little pygmy boats out of space.”

“I couldn’t attack their planet, even with a dozen.”

“And how long would their planet hold out with their trade ruined, and their cargoes of toys and trash destroyed?”

“Those toys and trash mean money,” he sighed. “A good deal of money.”

“But if you had the Foundation itself, would you not have all it contained? And if you had my father’s respect and gratitude, would you not have more than ever the Foundation could give you? It’s been three years—more—since that barbarian came with his magic sideshow. It’s long enough.”

“My dear!” The Commdor turned and faced her. “I am growing old. I am weary. I lack the resilience to withstand your rattling mouth. You say you know that I have decided. Well, I have. It is over, and there is war between Korell and the Foundation.”

“Well!” The Commdora’s figure expanded and her eyes sparkled. “You learned wisdom at last, though in your dotage. And now when you are master of this hinterland, you may be sufficiently respectable to be of some weight and importance in the Empire. For one thing, we might leave this barbarous world and attend the viceroy’s court. Indeed we might.”

She swept out, with a smile, and a hand on her hip. Her hair gleamed in the light.

The Commdor waited, and then said to the closed door, with malignance and hate, “And when I am master of what you call the hinterland, I may be sufficiently respectable to do without your father’s arrogance and his daughter’s tongue. Completely—without!”

The senior lieutenant of the Dark Nebula stared in horror at the visiplate.

“Great Galloping Galaxies!” It should have been a howl, but it was a whisper instead. “What’s that?”

It was a ship, but a whale to the Dark Nebula ’s minnow; and on its side was the Spaceship-and-Sun of the Empire. Every alarm on the ship yammered hysterically.

The orders went out, and the Dark Nebula prepared to run if it could, and fight if it must,—while down in the hyperwave room, a message stormed its way through hyperspace to the Foundation.

Over and over again! Partly a plea for help, but mainly a warning of danger.

Hober Mallow shuffled his feet wearily as he leafed through the reports. Two years of the mayoralty had made him a bit more housebroken, a bit softer, a bit more patient,—but it had not made him learn to like government reports and the mind-breaking officialese in which they were written.

“How many ships did they get?” asked Jael.

“Four trapped on the ground. Two unreported. All others accounted for and safe.” Mallow grunted. “We should have done better, but it’s just a scratch.”

There was no answer and Mallow looked up. “Does anything worry you?”

“I wish Sutt would get here,” was the almost irrelevant answer.

“Ah, yes, and now we’ll hear another lecture on the home front.”

“No, we won’t,” snapped Jael, “but you’re stubborn, Mallow. You may have worked out the foreign situation to the last detail but you’ve never given a care about what goes on here on the home planet.”

“Well, that’s your job, isn’t it? What did I make you Minister of Education and Propaganda for?”

“Obviously to send me to an early and miserable grave, for all the co-operation you give me. For the last year, I’ve been deafening you with the rising danger of Sutt and his Religionists. What good will your plans be, if Sutt forces a special election and has you thrown out?”

“None, I admit.”

“And your speech last night just about handed the election to Sutt with a smile and a pat. Was there any necessity for being so frank?”

“Isn’t there such a thing as stealing Sutt’s thunder?”

“No,” said Jael, violently, “not the way you did it. You claim to have foreseen everything, and don’t explain why you traded with Korell to their exclusive benefit for three years. Your only plan of battle is to retire without a battle. You abandon all trade with the sectors of space near Korell. You openly proclaim a stalemate. You promise no offensive, even in the future. Galaxy, Mallow, what am I supposed to do with such a mess?”

“It lacks glamor?”

“It lacks mob emotion-appeal.”

“Same thing.”

“Mallow, wake up. You have two alternatives. Either you present the people with a dynamic foreign policy, whatever your private plans are, or you make some sort of compromise with Sutt.”

Mallow said, “All right, if I’ve failed the first, let’s try the second. Sutt’s just arrived.”

Sutt and Mallow had not met personally since the day of the trial, two years back. Neither detected any change in the other, except for that subtle atmosphere about each which made it quite evident that the roles of ruler and defier had changed.