Isaac Asimov - Prelude to Foundation

“Yes, I am,” said Seldon. “Why should I invent a false name?”

“The Empire wants you, does it not?”

Seldon shrugged. “I stay in places where the Empire cannot reach out to take me.”

“Not openly, but the Empire doesn’t have to work openly. I would urge you to disappear . . . really disappear.”

“Like you . . . as you say,” said Seldon, looking about with an edge of distaste. The room was as dead as the corridors he had walked through. It was musty through and through and it was overwhelmingly depressing.

“Yes,” said Davan. “You could be useful to us.”

“In what way?”

“You talked to a young man named Yugo Amaryl.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Amaryl tells me that you can predict the future.”

Seldon sighed heavily. He was tired of standing in this empty room. Davan was sitting on a cushion and there were other cushions available, but they did not look clean. Nor did he wish to lean against the mildew-streaked wall.

He said, “Either you misunderstood Amaryl or Amaryl misunderstood me. What I have done is to prove that it is possible to choose starting conditions from which historical forecasting does not descend into chaotic conditions, but can become predictable within limits. However, what those starting conditions might be I do not know, nor am I sure that those conditions can be found by any one person—or by any number of people—in a finite length of time. Do you understand me?”

“No.”

Seldon sighed again. “Then let me try once more. It is possible to predict the future, but it may be impossible to find out how to take advantage of that possibility. Do you understand?”

Davan looked at Seldon darkly, then at Dors. “Then you can’t predict the future.”

“Now you have the point, Master Davan.”

“Just call me Davan. But you may be able to learn to predict the future someday.”

“That is conceivable.”

“Then that’s why the Empire wants you.”

“No,” Seldon raised his finger didactically. “It’s my idea that that is why the Empire is not making an overwhelming effort to get me. They might like to have me if I can be picked up without trouble, but they know that right now I know nothing and that it is therefore not worth upsetting the delicate peace of Trantor by interfering with the local rights of this sector or that. That’s the reason I can move about under my own name with reasonable security.”

For a moment, Davan buried his head in his hands and muttered, “This is madness.” Then he looked up wearily and said to Dors, “Are you Master Seldon’s wife?”

Dors said calmly, “I am his friend and protector.”

“How well do you know him?”

“We have been together for some months.”

“No more?”

“No more.”

“Would it be your opinion he is speaking the truth?”

“I know he is, but what reason would you have to trust me if you do not trust him? If Hari is, for some reason, lying to you, might I not be lying to you equally in order to support him?”

Davan looked from one to the other helplessly. Then he said, “Would you, in any case, help us?”

“Who are ‘us’ and in what way do you need help?”

Davan said, “You see the situation here in Dahl. We are oppressed. You must know that and, from your treatment of Yugo Amaryl, I cannot believe you lack sympathy for us.”

“We are fully sympathetic.”

“And you must know the source of the oppression.”

“You are going to tell me that it’s the Imperial government, I suppose, and I dare say it plays its part. On the other hand, I notice that there is a middle class in Dahl that despises the heatsinkers and a criminal class that terrorizes the rest of the sector.”

Davan’s lips tightened, but he remained unmoved. “Quite true. Quite true. But the Empire encourages it as a matter of principle. Dahl has the potential for making serious trouble. If the heatsinkers should go on strike, Trantor would experience a severe energy shortage almost at once . . . with all that that implies. However, Dahl’s own upper classes will spend money to hire the hoodlums of Billibotton—and of other places—to fight the heatsinkers and break the strike. It has happened before. The Empire allows some Dahlites to prosper—comparatively—in order to convert them into Imperialist lackeys, while it refuses to enforce the arms-control laws effectively enough to weaken the criminal element.

“The Imperial government does this everywhere—and not in Dahl alone. They can’t exert force to impose their will, as in the old days when they ruled with brutal directness. Nowadays, Trantor has grown so complex and so easily disturbed that the Imperial forces must keep their hands off—”

“A form of degeneration,” said Seldon, remembering Hummin’s complaints.

“What?” said Davan.

“Nothing,” said Seldon. “Go on.”

“The Imperial forces must keep their hands off, but they find that they can do much even so. Each sector is encouraged to be suspicious of its neighbors. Within each sector, economic and social classes are encouraged to wage a kind of war with each other. The result is that all over Trantor it is impossible for the people to take united action. Everywhere, the people would rather fight each other than make a common stand against the central tyranny and the Empire rules without having to exert force.”

“And what,” said Dors, “do you think can be done about it?”

“I’ve been trying for years to build a feeling of solidarity among the peoples of Trantor.”

“I can only suppose,” said Seldon dryly, “that you are finding this an impossibly difficult and largely thankless task.”

“You suppose correctly,” said Davan, “but the party is growing stronger. Many of our knifers are coming to the realization that knives are best when they are not used on each other. Those who attacked you in the corridors of Billibotton are examples of the unconverted. However, those who support you now, who are ready to defend you against the agent you thought was a newsman, are my people. I live here among them. It is not an attractive way of life, but I am safe here. We have adherents in neighboring sectors and we spread daily.”

“But where do we come in?” asked Dors.

“For one thing,” said Davan, “both of you are Outworlders, scholars. We need people like you among our leaders. Our greatest strength is drawn from the poor and the uneducated because they suffer the most, but they can lead the least. A person like one of you two is worth a hundred of them.”

“That’s an odd estimate from someone who wishes to rescue the oppressed,” said Seldon.

“I don’t mean as people,” said Davan hastily. “I mean as far as leadership is concerned. The party must have among its leaders men and women of intellectual power.”

“People like us, you mean, are needed to give your party a veneer of respectability.”

Davan said, “You can always put something noble in a sneering fashion if you try. But you, Master Seldon, are more than respectable, more than intellectual. Even if you won’t admit to being able to penetrate the mists of the future—”

“Please, Davan,” said Seldon, “don’t be poetic and don’t use the conditional. It’s not a matter of admitting. I can’t foresee the future. Those are not mists that block the view but chrome steel barriers.”

“Let me finish. Even if you can’t actually predict with—what do you call it? —psychohistorical accuracy, you’ve studied history and you may have a certain intuitive feeling for consequences. Now, isn’t that so?”

Seldon shook his head. “I may have a certain intuitive understanding for mathematical likelihood, but how far I can translate that into anything of historical significance is quite uncertain. Actually, I have not studied history. I wish I had. I feel the loss keenly.”