Isaac Asimov - Forward the Foundation

But did the gateway exist at all? Raych was the only one, it seemed to Seldon, who could possibly manage to worm himself into Joranum’s confidence, but was Raych the proper tool for the purpose? He was a Dahlite and sympathetic to Joranum. How far could Seldon trust him?

Horrible! Raych was his son —and Seldon had never had occasion to mistrust Raych before.

If Seldon doubted the efficacy of his notion, if he feared that it might explode matters prematurely or move them desperately in the wrong direction, if he was filled with an agonizing doubts as to whether Raych could be entirely trusted to fulfill his part suitably, he nevertheless had no doubt—no doubt whatever—as to what Dors’s reaction would be when presented with the fait accompli .

And he was not disappointed—if that was quite the word to express his emotion.

Yet, in a manner, he was disappointed, for Dors did not raise her voice in horror as he had somehow thought she would, as he had prepared himself to withstand.

But how was he to know? She was not as other women were and he had never seen her truly angry. Perhaps it was not in her to be truly angry—or what he would consider to be truly angry.

She was merely cold-eyed and spoke with low-voiced bitter disapproval. “You sent him to Dahl? Alone?” Very softly. Questioningly.

For a moment Seldon quailed at the quiet voice. Then he said firmly, “I had to. It was necessary.”

“Let me understand. You sent him to that den of thieves, that haunt of assassins, that conglomeration of all that is criminal?”

“Dors! You anger me when you speak like that. I would expect only a bigot to use those stereotypes.”

“You deny that Dahl is as I have described?”

“Of course. There are criminals and slums in Dahl. I know that very well. We both know that. But not all of Dahl is like that. And there are criminals and slums in every sector, even in the Imperial Sector and in Streeling.”

“There are degrees, are there not? One is not ten. If all the worlds are crime-ridden, if all the sectors are crime-ridden, Dahl is among the worst, is it not? You have the computer. Check the statistics.”

“I don’t have to. Dahl is the poorest sector on Trantor and there is a positive correlation between poverty, misery, and crime. I grant you that.”

“You grant me that! And you sent him alone? You might have gone with him, or asked me to go with him, or sent half a dozen of his schoolmates with him. They would have welcomed a respite from their work, I’m sure.”

“What I need him for requires that he be alone.”

“And what do you need him for?”

But Seldon was stubbornly silent about that.

Dors said, “Has it come to this? You don’t trust me?”

“It’s a gamble. I alone dare take the risk. I can’t involve you or anyone else.”

“But it’s not you taking the risk. It’s poor Raych.”

“He’s not taking any risk,” said Seldon impatiently. “He’s twenty years old, young and vigorous and as sturdy as a tree—and I don’t mean the saplings we have here under glass on Trantor. I’m talking about a good solid tree in the Heliconian forests. And he’s a Twister, which the Dahlites aren’t.”

“You and your Twisting,” said Dors, her coldness not thawing one whit. “You think that’s the answer to everything. The Dahlites carry knives. Every one of them. Blasters, too, I’m sure.”

“I don’t know about blasters. The laws are pretty strict when it comes to blasters. As for knives, I’m positive Raych carries one. He even carries a knife on campus here, where it’s strictly against the law. Do you think he won’t have one in Dahl?”

Dors remained silent.

Seldon was also silent for a few minutes, then decided it might be time to placate her. He said, “Look, I’ll tell you this much. I’m hoping he’ll see Joranum, who will be visiting Dahl.”

“Oh? And what do you expect Raych to do? Fill him with bitter regrets over his wicked politics and send him back to Mycogen?”

“Come. Really. If you’re going to take this sardonic attitude, there’s no use discussing it.” He looked away from her, out the window at the blue-gray sky under the dome. “What I expect him to do”—and his voice faltered for a moment—“is save the Empire.”

“To be sure. That would be much easier.”

Seldon’s voice firmed. “It’s what I expect . You have no solution. Demerzel himself has no solution. He as much as said that the solution rests with me. That’s what I’m striving for and that’s what I need Raych for in Dahl. After all, you know that ability of his to inspire affection. It worked with us and I’m convinced it will work with Joranum. If I am right, all may be well.”

Dors’s eyes widened a trifle. “Are you now going to tell me that you are being guided by psychohistory?”

“No. I’m not going to lie to you. I have not reached the point where I can be guided in any way by psychohistory, but Yugo is constantly talking about intuition—and I have mine.”

“Intuition! What’s that? Define it!”

“Easily. Intuition is the art, peculiar to the human mind, of working out the correct answer from data that is, in itself, incomplete or even, perhaps, misleading.”

“And you’ve done it.”

And Seldon said with firm conviction, “Yes, I have.”

But to himself, he thought what he dared not share with Dors. What if Raych’s charm were gone? Or, worse, what if the consciousness of being a Dahlite became too strong for him?

Billibotton was Billibotton—dirty, sprawling, dark, sinuous Billibotton—exuding decay and yet full of a vitality that Raych was convinced was to be found nowhere else on Trantor. Perhaps it was to be found nowhere else in the Empire, though Raych knew nothing, firsthand, of any world but Trantor.

He had last seen Billibotton when he was not much more than twelve, but even the people seemed to be the same; still a mixture of the hangdog and the irreverent; filled with a synthetic pride and a grumbling resentment; the men marked by their dark rich mustaches and the women by their sacklike dresses that now looked tremendously slatternly to Raych’s older and more worldly wise eyes.

How could women with dresses like that attract men? —But it was a foolish question. Even when he was twelve, he had had a pretty clear idea of how easily and quickly they could be removed.

So he stood there, lost in thought and memory, passing along a street of store windows and trying to convince himself that he remembered this particular place or that and wondering if, among them all, there were people he did remember who were now eight years older. Those, perhaps, who had been his boyhood friends—and he thought uneasily of the fact that, while he remembered some of the nicknames they had pinned on each other, he could not remember any real names.

In fact, the gaps in his memory were enormous. It was not that eight years was such a long time, but it was two-fifths of the lifetime of a twenty-year-old and his life since leaving Billibotton had been so different that all before it had faded like a misty dream.

But the smells were there. He stopped outside a bakery, low and dingy, and smelled the coconut icing that reeked through the air—that he had never quite smelled elsewhere. Even when he had stopped to buy tarts with coconut icing, even when they were advertised as “Dahl-style,” they had been faint imitations—no more.

He felt strongly tempted. Well, why not? He had the credits and Dors was not there to wrinkle her nose and wonder aloud how clean—or, more likely, not clean—the place might be. Who worried about clean in the old days?