Foundation's Edge

by Isaac Asimov

  Trevize raised his eyebrows. “Your field may not be my field, Janov, but that doesn’t mean I’m totally ignorant.”

  “What else do you remember about what you call the Synapsifier, Councilman Compor?” asked Pelorat.

  “Nothing, and I won’t submit to any further cross-examination. Look, I followed you on orders from the Mayor. I was not ordered to make personal contact with you. I have done so only to warn you that you were followed and to tell you that you had been sent out to serve the Mayor’s purposes, whatever those might be. There was nothing else I should have discussed with you, but you surprised me by suddenly bringing up the matter of Earth. Well, let me repeat: Whatever there has existed there in the past—Bel Arvardan, the Synapsifier, whatever—that has nothing to do with what exists now. I’ll tell you again: Earth is a dead world. I strongly advise you to go to Comporellon, where you’ll find out everything you want to know. Just get away from here.”

  “And, of course, you will dutifully tell the Mayor that we’re going to Comporellon—and you’ll follow us to make sure. Or maybe the Mayor knows already. I imagine she has carefully instructed and rehearsed you in every word you have spoken to us here because, for her own purposes, it’s in Comporellon that she wants us. Right?”

  Compor’s face paled. He rose to his feet and almost stuttered in his effort to control his voice. “I’ve tried to explain. I’ve tried to be helpful. I shouldn’t have tried. You can drop yourself into a black hole, Trevize.”

  He turned on his heel and walked away briskly without looking back.

  Pelorat seemed a bit stunned. “That was rather tactless of you, Golan, old fellow. I could have gotten more out of him.”

  “No, you couldn’t,” said Trevize gravely. “You could not have gotten one thing out of him that he was not ready to let you have. Janov, you don’t know what he is—Until today, I didn’t know what he is.”

  3.

  PELORAT HESITATED TO DISTURB TREVIZE. TREVIZE sat motionless in his chair, deep in thought.

  Finally Pelorat said, “Are we just sitting here all night, Golan?”

  Trevize started. “No, you’re quite right. We’ll be better off with people around us. Come!”

  Pelorat rose. He said, “There won’t be people around us. Compor said this was some sort of meditation day.”

  “Is that what he said? Was there traffic when we came along the road in our ground-car?”

  “Yes, some.”

  “Quite a bit, I thought. And then, when we entered the city, was it empty?”

  “Not particularly. —Still, you’ve got to admit that this place has been empty.”

  “Yes, it has. I noticed that particularly. —But come, Janov, I’m hungry. There’s got to be someplace to eat and we can afford to find something good. At any rate, we can find a place in which we can try some interesting Sayshellian novelty or, if we lose our nerve, good standard Galactic fare. —Come, once we’re safely surrounded, I’ll tell you what I think really happened here.”

  4.

  TREVIZE LEANED BACK WITH A PLEASANT FEELING of renewal. The restaurant was not expensive by Terminus standards, but it was certainly novel. It was heated, in part, by an open fire over which food was prepared. Meat tended to be served in bite-sized portions—in a variety of pungent sauces—which were picked up by fingers that were protected from grease and heat by smooth, green leaves that were cold, damp, and had a vaguely minty taste.

  It was one leaf to each meat-bit and the whole was taken into the mouth. The waiter had carefully explained how it had to be done. Apparently accustomed to off-planet guests, he had smiled paternally as Trevize and Pelorat gingerly scooped at the steaming bits of meat, and was clearly delighted at the foreigners’ relief at finding that the leaves kept the fingers cool and cooled the meat, too, as one chewed.

  Trevize said, “Delicious!” and eventually ordered a second helping. So did Pelorat.

  They sat over a spongy, vaguely sweet dessert and a cup of coffee that had a caramelized flavor at which they shook dubious heads. They added syrup, at which the waiter shook his head.

  Pelorat said, “Well, what happened back there at the tourist center?”

  “You mean with Compor?”

  “Was there anything else there we might discuss?”

  Trevize looked about. They were in a deep alcove and had a certain limited privacy, but the restaurant was crowded and the natural hum of noise was a perfect cover.

  He said in a low voice, “Isn’t it strange that he followed us to Sayshell?”

  “He said he had this intuitive ability.”

  “Yes, he was all-collegiate champion at hypertracking. I never questioned that till today. I quite see that you might be able to judge where someone was going to Jump by how he prepared for it if you had a certain developed skill at it, certain reflexes—but I don’t see how a tracker can judge a Jump series. You prepare only for the first one; the computer does all the others. The tracker can judge that first one, but by what magic can he guess what’s in the computer’s vitals?”

  “But he did it, Golan.”

  “He certainly did,” said Trevize, “and the only possible way I can imagine him doing so is by knowing in advance where we were going to go. By knowing, not judging.”

  Pelorat considered that. “Quite impossible, my boy. How could he know? We didn’t decide on our destination till after we were on board the Far Star.”

  “I know that. —And what about this day of meditation?”

  “Compor didn’t lie to us. The waiter said it was a day of meditation when we came in here and asked him.”

  “Yes, he did, but he said the restaurant wasn’t closed. In fact, what he said was: ‘Sayshell City isn’t the backwoods. It doesn’t close down.’ People meditate, in other words, but not in the big town, where everyone is sophisticated and there’s no place for small-town piety. So there’s traffic and it’s busy—perhaps not quite as busy as on ordinary days—but busy.”

  “But, Golan, no one came into the tourist center while we were there. I was aware of that. Not one person entered.”

  “I noticed that, too. I even went to the window at one point and looked out and saw clearly that the streets around the center had a good scattering of people on foot and in vehicles—and yet not one person entered. The day of meditation made a good cover. We would not have questioned the fortunate privacy we had if I simply hadn’t made up my mind not to trust that son of two strangers.”

  Pelorat said, “What is the significance of all this, then?”

  “I think it’s simple, Janov. We have here someone who knows where we’re going as soon as we do, even though he and we are in separate spaceships, and we also have here someone who can keep a public building empty when it is surrounded by people in order that we might talk in convenient privacy.”

  “Would you have me believe he can perform miracles?”

  “Certainly. If it so happens that Compor is an agent of the Second Foundation and can control minds; if he can read yours and mine in a distant spaceship; if he can influence his way through a customs station at once; if he can land gravitically, with no border patrol outraged at his defiance of the radio beams; and if he can influence minds in such a way as to keep people from entering a building he doesn’t want entered.

  “By all the stars,” Trevize went on with a marked air of grievance, “I can even follow this back to graduation. I didn’t go on tour with him. I remember not wanting to. Wasn’t that a matter of his influence? He had to be alone. Where was he really going?”

  Pelorat pushed away the dishes before him, as though he wanted to clear a space about himself in order to have room to think. It seemed to be a gesture that signaled the busboy-robot, a self-moving table that stopped near them and waited while they placed their dishes and cutlery upon it.

  When they were alone, Pelorat said, “But that’s mad. Nothing has happened that could not have happened naturally. Once you get it into your head that somebody is controlling
events, you can interpret everything in that light and find no reasonable certainty anywhere. Come on, old fellow, it’s all circumstantial and a matter of interpretation. Don’t yield to paranoia.”

  “I’m not going to yield to complacency, either.”

  “Well, let us look at this logically. Suppose he was an agent of the Second Foundation. Why would he run the risk of rousing our suspicions by keeping the tourist center empty? What did he say that was so important that a few people at a distance—who would have been wrapped in their own concerns anyway—would have made a difference?”

  “There’s an easy answer to that, Janov. He would have to keep our minds under close observation and he wanted no interference from other minds. No static. No chance of confusion.”

  “Again, just your interpretation. What was so important about his conversation with us? It would make sense to suppose, as he himself insisted, that he met us only in order to explain what he had done, to apologize for it, and to warn us of the trouble that might await us. Why would he have to look further than that?”

  The small card-receptacle at the farther rim of the table glittered unobtrusively and the figures representing the cost of the meal flashed briefly. Trevize groped beneath his sash for his credit card which, with its Foundation imprint, was good anywhere in the Galaxy—or anywhere a Foundation citizen was likely to go. He inserted it in the appropriate slot. It took a moment to complete the transaction and Trevize (with native caution) checked on the remaining balance before returning it to its pocket.

  He looked about casually to make sure there was no undesirable interest in him on the faces of any of the few who still sat in the restaurant and then said, “Why look further than that? Why look further? That was not all he talked about. He talked about Earth. He told us it was dead and urged us very strongly to go to Comporellon. Shall we go?”

  “It’s something I’ve been considering, Golan,” admitted Pelorat.

  “Just leave here?”

  “We can come back after we check out the Sirius Sector.”

  “It doesn’t occur to you that his whole purpose in seeing us was to deflect us from Sayshell and get us out of here? Get us anywhere but here?”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. See here, they expected us to go to Trantor. That was what you wanted to do and maybe that’s what they counted on us doing. I messed things up by insisting we go to Sayshell, which is the last thing they wanted, and so now they have to get us out of here.”

  Pelorat looked distinctly unhappy. “But Golan, you are just making statements. Why don’t they want us on Sayshell?”

  “I don’t know, Janov. But it’s enough for me that they want us out. I’m staying. I’m not going to leave.”

  “But—but—Look, Golan, if the Second Foundation wanted us to leave, wouldn’t they just influence our minds to make us want to leave? Why bother reasoning with us?”

  “Now that you bring up the point, haven’t they done that in your case, Professor?” and Trevize’s eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion. “Don’t you want to leave?”

  Pelorat looked at Trevize in surprise. “I just think there’s some sense to it.”

  “Of course you would, if you’ve been influenced.”

  “But I haven’t been—”

  “Of course you would swear you hadn’t been if you had been.”

  Pelorat said, “If you box me in this way, there is no way of disproving your bare assertion. What are you going to do?”

  “I will remain in Sayshell. And you’ll stay here, too. You can’t navigate the ship without me, so if Compor has influenced you, he has influenced the wrong one.”

  “Very well, Golan. We’ll stay in Sayshell until we have independent reasons to leave. The worst thing we can do, after all—worse than either staying or going—is to fall out with each other. Come, old chap, if I had been influenced, would I be able to change my mind and go along with you cheerfully, as I plan to do now?”

  Trevize thought for a moment and then, as though with an inner shake, smiled and held out his hand. “Agreed, Janov. Now let’s get back to the ship and make another start tomorrow. —If we can think of one.”

  5.

  MUNN LI COMPOR DID NOT REMEMBER WHEN HE had been recruited. For one thing, he had been a child at the time; for another, the agents of the Second Foundation were meticulous in removing their traces as far as possible.

  Compor was an “Observer” and, to a Second Foundationer, he was instantly recognizable as such.

  It meant that Compor was acquainted with mentalics and could converse with Second Foundationers in their own fashion to a degree, but he was in the lowest rank of the hierarchy. He could catch glimpses of minds, but he could not adjust them. The education he had received had never gone that far. He was an Observer, not a Doer.

  It made him second-class at best, but he did not mind—much. He knew his importance in the scheme of things.

  During the early centuries of the Second Foundation, it had underestimated the task before it. It had imagined that its handful of members could monitor the entire Galaxy and that Seldon’s Plan, to be maintained, would require only the most occasional, the lightest touch, here and there.

  The Mule had stripped them of these delusions. Coming from nowhere, he had caught the Second Foundation (and, of course, the First—though that didn’t matter) utterly by surprise and had left them helpless. It took five years before a counterattack could be organized, and then only at the cost of a number of lives.

  With Palver a full recovery was made, again at a distressing cost, and he finally took the appropriate measures. The operations of the Second Foundation, he decided, must be enormously expanded without at the same time increasing the chances of detection unduly, so he instituted the corps of Observers.

  Compor did not know how many Observers were in the Galaxy or even how many there were on Terminus. It was not his business to know. Ideally there should be no detectable connection between any two Observers, so that the loss of one would not entail the loss of any other. All connections were with the upper echelons on Trantor.

  It was Compor’s ambition to go to Trantor someday. Though he thought it extremely unlikely, he knew that occasionally an Observer might be brought to Trantor and promoted, but that was rare. The qualities that made for a good Observer were not those that pointed toward the Table.

  There was Gendibal, for instance, who was four years younger than Compor. He must have been recruited as a boy, just as Compor was, but he had been taken directly to Trantor and was now a Speaker. Compor had no illusions as to why that should be. He had been much in contact with Gendibal of late and he had experienced the power of that young man’s mind. He could not have stood up against it for a second.

  Compor was not often conscious of a lowly status. There was almost never occasion to consider it. After all (as in the case of other Observers, he imagined) it was only lowly by the standards of Trantor. On their own non-Trantorian worlds, in their own non-mentalic societies, it was easy for Observers to obtain high status.

  Compor, for instance, had never had trouble getting into good schools or finding good company. He had been able to use his mentalics in a simple way to enhance his natural intuitive ability (that natural ability had been why he had been recruited in the first place, he was sure) and, in this way, to prove himself a star at hyperspatial pursuit. He became a hero at college and this set his foot on the first rung of a political career. Once this present crisis was over, there was no telling how much farther he might advance.

  If the crisis resolved itself successfully, as surely it would, would it not be recalled that it was Compor who had first noted Trevize—not as a human being (anyone could have done that) but as a mind?

  He had encountered Trevize in college and had seen him, at first, only as a jovial and quick-witted companion. One morning, however, he had stirred sluggishly out of slumber and, in the stream of consciousness that accompanied the never-never land of half-sleep, he fel
t what a pity it was that Trevize had never been recruited.

  Trevize couldn’t have been recruited, of course, since he was Terminus-born and not, like Compor, a native of another world. And even with that aside, it was too late. Only the quite young are plastic enough to receive an education into mentalics; the painful introduction of that art—it was more than a science—into adult brains, set rustily in their mold, was a thing of the first two generations after Seldon only.

  But then, if Trevize had been ineligible for recruiting in the first place and had outlived the possibility in the second, what had roused Compor’s concern over the matter?

  On their next meeting, Compor had penetrated Trevize’s mind deeply and discovered what it was that must have initially disturbed him. Trevize’s mind had characteristics that did not fit the rules he had been taught. Over and over, it eluded him. As he followed its workings, he found gaps—No, they couldn’t be actual gaps—actual leaps of non-existence. They were places where Trevize’s manner of mind dove too deeply to be followed.

  Compor had no way of determining what this meant, but he watched Trevize’s behavior in the light of what he had discovered and he began to suspect that Trevize had an uncanny ability to reach right conclusions from what would seem to be insufficient data.

  Did this have something to do with the gaps? Surely this was a matter of mentalism beyond his own powers—for the Table itself, perhaps. He had the uneasy feeling that Trevize’s powers of decision were unknown, in their full, to the man himself, and that he might be able to—

  To do what? Compor’s knowledge did not suffice. He could almost see the meaning of what Trevize possessed—but not quite. There was only the intuitive conclusion—or perhaps just a guess—that Trevize might be, potentially, a person of the utmost importance.

  He had to take the chance that this might be so and to risk seeming to be less than qualified for his post. After all, if he were correct—