Isaac Asimov - Forward the Foundation

“Yes, of course, but I brooded about it and I spent some time going over it and, Hari, there was something wrong with it. The programming was inexact and that area, the precise area to which Wanda pointed, was no good. And, really, it wasn’t pretty.”

Seldon sat up rather stiffly, frowning. “Let me get this straight, Yugo. She pointed to something at random, said it was no good, and she was right ?”

“Yes. She pointed, but it wasn’t at random; she was very deliberate.”

“But that’s impossible.”

“But it happened. I was there.”

“I’m not saying it didn’t happen. I’m saying it was just a wild coincidence.”

“Is it? Do you think, with all your knowledge of psychohistory, you could take one glance at a new set of equations and tell me that one portion is no good?”

Seldon said, “Well then, Yugo, how did you come to expand that particular portion of the equations? What made you choose that piece for magnification?”

Amaryl shrugged. “ That was coincidence—if you like. I just fiddled with the controls.”

“That couldn’t be coincidence,” muttered Seldon. For a few moments he was lost in thought, then he asked the question that pushed forward the psychohistorical revolution that Wanda had begun.

He said, “Yugo, did you have any suspicions about those equations beforehand? Did you have any reason to believe there was something wrong with them?”

Amaryl fiddled with the sash of his unisuit and seemed embarrassed. “Yes, I think I did. You see—”

“You think you did?”

“I know I did. I seemed to recall when I was setting it up—it’s a new section, you know—my fingers seemed to glitch on the programmer. It looked all right then, but I guess I kept worrying about it inside. I remember thinking it looked wrong, but I had other things to do and I just let it go. But then when Wanda happened to point to precisely the area I had been concerned about, I decided to check up on her—otherwise I would just have let it go as a childish statement.”

“And you turned on that very fragment of the equations to show Wanda. As though it were haunting your unconscious mind.”

Amaryl shrugged. “Who knows?”

“And just before that, you were very close together, hugging, both crying.”

Amaryl shrugged again, looking even more embarrassed.

Seldon said, “I think I know what happened, Yugo. Wanda read your mind.”

Amaryl jumped, as though he had been bitten. “That’s impossible!”

Slowly Seldon said, “I once knew someone who had unusual mental powers of that sort”—and he thought sadly of Eto Demerzel or, as Seldon had secretly known him, Daneel—“only he was somewhat more than human. But his ability to read minds, to sense other people’s thoughts, to persuade people to act in a certain way—that was a mental ability. I think, somehow, that perhaps Wanda has that ability as well.”

“I can’t believe it,” said Amaryl stubbornly.

“I can,” said Seldon, “but I don’t know what to do about it.” Dimly he felt the rumblings of a revolution in psychohistorical research—but only dimly.

“Dad,” said Raych with some concern, “You look tired.”

“I dare say,” said Hari Seldon, “I feel tired. But how are you?”

Raych was forty-four now and his hair was beginning to show a bit of gray, but his mustache remained thick and dark and very Dahlite in appearance. Seldon wondered if he touched it up with dye, but it would have been the wrong thing to ask.

Seldon said, “Are you through with your lecturing for a while?”

“For a while. Not for long. And I’m glad to be home and see the baby and Manella and Wanda—and you, Dad.”

“Thank you. But I have news for you, Raych. No more lecturing. I’m going to need you here.”

Raych frowned. “What for?” On two different occasions he had been sent to carry out delicate missions, but those were back during the days of the Joranumite menace. As far as he knew, things were quiet now, especially with the overthrow of the junta and the reestablishment of a pale Emperor.

“It’s Wanda,” said Seldon.

“Wanda? What’s wrong with Wanda?”

“Nothing’s wrong with her, but we’re going to have to work out a complete genome for her—and for you and Manella as well—and eventually for the new baby.”

“For Bellis, too? What’s going on?”

Seldon hesitated. “Raych, you know that your mother and I always thought there was something lovable about you, something that inspired affection and trust.”

“I know you thought so. You said so often enough when you were trying to get me to do something difficult. But I’ll be honest with you. I never felt it.”

“No, you won over me and . . . and Dors.” (He had such trouble saying the name, even though four years had passed since her destruction.) “You won over Rashelle of Wye. You won over Jo-Jo Joranum. You won over Manella. How do you account for all that?”

“Intelligence and charm,” said Raych, grinning.

“Have you thought you might have been in touch with their—our—minds?”

“No, I’ve never thought that. And now that you mention it, I think it’s ridiculous. —With all due respect, Dad, of course.”

“What if I told you that Wanda seems to have read Yugo’s mind during a moment of crisis?”

“Coincidence or imagination, I should say.”

“Raych, I knew someone once who could handle people’s minds as easily as you and I handle conversation.”

“Who was that?”

“I can’t speak of him. Take my word for it, though.”

“Well—” said Raych dubiously.

“I’ve been at the Galactic Library, checking on such matters. There is a curious story, about twenty thousand years old and therefore back to the misty origins of hyperspatial travel. It’s about a young woman, not much more than Wanda’s age, who could communicate with an entire planet that circled a sun called Nemesis.”

“Surely a fairytale.”

“Surely. And incomplete, at that. But the similarity with Wanda is astonishing.”

Raych said, “Dad, what are you planning?”

“I’m not sure, Raych. I need to know the genome and I have to find others like Wanda. I have a notion that youngsters are born—not often but occasionally—with such mental abilities, but that, in general, it merely gets them in trouble and they learn to mask it. And as they grow up, their ability, their talent, is buried deep within their minds—sort of an unconscious act of self-preservation. Surely in the Empire or even just among Trantor’s forty billion, there must be more of that sort, like Wanda, and if I know the genome I want, I can test those I think may be so.”

“And what would you do with them if you found them, Dad?”

“I have the notion that they are what I need for the further development of psychohistory.”

Raych said, “And Wanda is the first of the type you know about and you intend to make a psychohistorian out of her?”

“Perhaps.”

“Like Yugo. —Dad, no!”

“Why no?”

“Because I want her to grow up like a normal girl and become a normal woman. I will not have you sitting her before the Prime Radiant and make her into a living monument to psychohistorical mathematics.”

Seldon said, “It may not come to that, Raych, but we must have her genome. You know that for thousands of years there have been suggestions that every human being have his genome on file. It’s only the expense that’s kept it from becoming standard practice; no one doubts the usefulness of it. Surely you see the advantages. If nothing else, we will know Wanda’s tendencies toward a variety of physiological disorders. If we had ever had Yugo’s genome, I am certain he would not now be dying. Surely we can go that far.”