Isaac Asimov - Prelude to Foundation

“I imagine,” said Seldon, “that it helps relieve pressure as well. They work off all their resentments, enjoy all the smug self-satisfaction a young revolutionary would have, and by the time they take their place in the Imperial hierarchy, they are ready to settle down into conformity and obedience.”

Dors nodded. “You may be right. In any case, the government, for all these reasons, carefully preserves the freedom of the universities. It’s not a matter of their being forbearing at all—only clever.”

“And if you’re not going to be an administrator, Dors, what are you going to be?”

“A historian. I’ll teach, put book-films of my own into the programming.”

“Not much status, perhaps.”

“Not much money, Hari, which is more important. As for status, that’s the sort of push and pull I’d just as soon avoid. I’ve seen many people with status, but I’m still looking for a happy one. Status won’t sit still under you; you have to continually fight to keep from sinking. Even Emperors manage to come to bad ends most of the time. Someday I may just go back to Cinna and be a professor.”

“And a Trantorian education will give you status.”

Dors laughed. “I suppose so, but on Cinna who would care? It’s a dull world, full of farms and with lots of cattle, both four-legged and two-legged.”

“Won’t you find it dull after Trantor?”

“Yes, that’s what I’m counting on. And if it gets too dull, I can always wangle a grant to go here or there to do a little historical research. That’s the advantage of my field.”

“A mathematician, on the other hand,” said Seldon with a trace of bitterness at something that had never before bothered him, “is expected to sit at his computer and think. And speaking of computers—” He hesitated. Breakfast was done and it seemed to him more than likely she had some duties of her own to attend to.

But she did not seem to be in any great hurry to leave. “Yes? Speaking of computers?”

“Would I be able to get permission to use the history library?”

Now it was she who hesitated. “I think that can be arranged. If you work on mathematics programming, you’ll probably be viewed as a quasi-member of the faculty and I could ask for you to be given permission. Only—”

“Only?”

“I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but you’re a mathematician and you say you know nothing about history. Would you know how to make use of a history library?”

Seldon smiled. “I suppose you use computers very much like those in a mathematics library.”

“We do, but the programming for each specialty has quirks of its own. You don’t know the standard reference book-films, the quick methods of winnowing and skipping. You may be able to find a hyperbolic interval in the dark . . .”

“You mean hyperbolic integral,” interrupted Seldon softly.

Dors ignored him. “But you probably won’t know how to get the terms of the Treaty of Poldark in less than a day and a half.”

“I suppose I could learn.”

“If . . . if . . .” She looked a little troubled. “If you want to, I can make a suggestion. I give a week’s course—one hour each day, no credit—on library use. It’s for undergraduates. Would you feel it beneath your dignity to sit in on such a course—with undergraduates, I mean? It starts in three weeks.”

“You could give me private lessons.” Seldon felt a little surprised at the suggestive tone that had entered his voice.

She did not miss it. “I dare say I could, but I think you’d be better off with more formal instruction. We’ll be using the library, you understand, and at the end of the week you will be asked to locate information on particular items of historical interest. You will be competing with the other students all through and that will help you learn. Private tutoring will be far less efficient, I assure you. However, I understand the difficulty of competing with undergraduates. If you don’t do as well as they, you may feel humiliated. You must remember, though, that they have already studied elementary history and you, perhaps, may not have.”

“I haven’t. No ‘may’ about it. But I won’t be afraid to compete and I won’t mind any humiliation that may come along—if I manage to learn the tricks of the historical reference trade.”

It was clear to Seldon that he was beginning to like this young woman and that he was gladly seizing on the chance to be educated by her. He was also aware of the fact that he had reached a turning point in his mind.

He had promised Hummin to attempt to work out a practical psychohistory, but that had been a promise of the mind and not the emotions. Now he was determined to seize psychohistory by the throat—if he had to—in order to make it practical. That, perhaps, was the influence of Dors Venabili.

Or had Hummin counted on that? Hummin, Seldon decided, might well be a most formidable person.

Cleon I had finished dinner, which, unfortunately, had been a formal state affair. It meant he had to spend time talking to various officials—not one of whom he knew or recognized—in set phrases designed to give each one his stroke and so activate his loyalty to the crown. It also meant that his food reached him but lukewarm and had cooled still further before he could eat it.

There had to be some way of avoiding that. Eat first, perhaps, on his own or with one or two close intimates with whom he could relax and then attend a formal dinner at which he could merely be served an imported pear. He loved pears. But would that offend the guests who would take the Emperor’s refusal to eat with them as a studied insult?

His wife, of course, was useless in this respect, for her presence would but further exacerbate his unhappiness. He had married her because she was a member of a powerful dissident family who could be expected to mute their dissidence as a result of the union, though Cleon devoutly hoped that she, at least, would not do so. He was perfectly content to have her live her own life in her own quarters except for the necessary efforts to initiate an heir, for, to tell the truth, he didn’t like her. And now that an heir had come, he could ignore her completely.

He chewed at one of a handful of nuts he had pocketed from the table on leaving and said, “Demerzel!”

“Sire?”

Demerzel always appeared at once when Cleon called. Whether he hovered constantly in earshot at the door or he drew close because the instinct of subservience somehow alerted him to a possible call in a few minutes, he did appear and that, Cleon thought idly, was the important thing. Of course, there were those times when Demerzel had to be away on Imperial business. Cleon always hated those absences. They made him uneasy.

“What happened to that mathematician? I forget his name.”

Demerzel, who surely knew the man the Emperor had in mind, but who perhaps wanted to study how much the Emperor remembered, said, “What mathematician is it that you have in mind, Sire?”

Cleon waved an impatient hand. “The fortune-teller. The one who came to see me.”

“The one we sent for?”

“Well, sent for, then. He did come to see me. You were going to take care of the matter, as I recall. Have you?”

Demerzel cleared his throat. “Sire, I have tried to.”

“Ah! That means you have failed, doesn’t it?” In a way, Cleon felt pleased. Demerzel was the only one of his Ministers who made no bones of failure. The others never admitted failure, and since failure was nevertheless common, it became difficult to correct. Perhaps Demerzel could afford to be more honest because he failed so rarely. If it weren’t for Demerzel, Cleon thought sadly, he might never know what honesty sounded like. Perhaps no Emperor ever knew and perhaps that was one of the reasons that the Empire—