by Isaac Asimov
"Oh?" He hesitated and then decided it would be only polite to ask. "What world are you from?"
"I'm from Cinna. Have you ever heard of it?"
He'd be caught out if he was polite enough to lie, Seldon decided, so he said, "No."
"I'm not surprised. It's probably of even less account than Helicon is. Anyway, to get back to the programming of mathematical teaching computers, I suppose that that can be done either proficiently or poorly."
"Absolutely."
"And you would do it proficiently."
"I would like to think so."
"There you are, then. The University will pay you for that, so lee's go out and eat. Did you sleep well, by the way?"
"Surprisingly, I did."
"And are you hungry?"
"Yes, but-" He hesitated.
She said cheerfully, "But you're worried about the quality of the food, is chat it? Well, don't be. Being an Outworlder myself, I can understand your feelings about the strong infusion of microfood into everything, but the University menus aren't bad. In the faculty dining room, at least. The students suffer a bit, but that serves to harden them."
She rose and turned to the door, but stopped when Seldon could not keep himself from saying, "Are you a member of the faculty?"
She turned and smiled at him impishly. "Don't I look old enough? I got my doctorate two years ago ac Cinna and I've been here ever since. In two weeks, I'll be thirty."
"Sorry," said Seldon, smiling in his turn, "but you can't expect to look twenty-four and not raise doubts as to your academic status."
"Aren't you nice?" said Dors and Seldon felt a certain pleasure wash over him. After all, he thought, you can't exchange pleasantries with an attractive woman and feel entirely like a stranger.
18.
Dors was right. Breakfast was by no means bad. There was something chat was unmistakably eggy and the meat was pleasantly smoked. The chocolate drink (Trantor was strong on chocolate and Seldon did not mind that) was probably synthetic, but it was tasty and the breakfast rolls were good.
He felt is only right to say as much. "This has been a very pleasant breakfast. Food. Surroundings. Everything."
"I'm delighted you think so," said Dors.
Seldon looked about. There were a bank of windows in one wall and while actual sunlight did not enter (he wondered if, after a while, he would learn to be satisfied with diffuse daylight and would cease to look for patches of sunlight in a room), the place was light enough. In face, it was quite bright, for the local weather computer had apparently decided is was time for a sharp, clear day.
The cables were arranged for four apiece and most were occupied by the full number, but Dors and Seldon remained alone at theirs. Dors had called over some of the men and women and had introduced them. All had been police, but none had joined them. Undoubtedly, Dors intended chat to be so, but Seldon did not see how she managed to arrange it.
He said, "You haven't introduced me to any mathematicians, Dors."
"I haven't seen any that I know. Most mathematicians start the day early and have classes by eight. My own feeling is chat any student so foolhardy as to take mathematics wants to get that part of the course over with as soon as possible."
"I take is you're not a mathematician yourself."
"Anything but," said Dors with a short laugh. "Anything. History is my field. I've already published some studies on the rise of Trantor-I mean the primitive kingdom, not this world. I suppose that will end up as my field of specialization-Royal Trantor."
"Wonderful," said Seldon.
"Wonderful?" Dors looked at him quizzically. "Are you interested in Royal Trantor too?"
"In a way, yes. That and other things like that. I've never really studied history and I should have."
"Should you? If you had studied history, you'd scarcely have had time to study mathematics and mathematicians are very much neededespecially at this University. We're full to here with historians," she said, raising her hand to her eyebrows, "and economists and political scientists, but we're short on science and mathematics. Chetter Hummin pointed that out to me once. He called it the decline of science and seemed to think it was a general phenomenon."
Seldon said, "Of course, when I say I should have studied history, I don't mean that I should have made it a life work. I meant I should have studied enough to help me in my mathematics. My field of specialization is the mathematical analysis of social structure."
"Sounds horrible."
"In a way, it is. It's very complicated and without my knowing a great deal more about how societies evolved it's hopeless. My picture is too static, you see."
"I can't see because I know nothing about it. Chetter told me you were developing something called psychohistory and that it was important. Have I got it right? Psychohistory?"
"That's right. I should have called it 'psychsociology,' but it seemed to me that was too ugly a word. Or perhaps I knew instinctively that a knowledge of history was necessary and then didn't pay sufficient attention to my thoughts."
"Psychohistory does sound better, but I don't know what it is."
"I scarcely do myself." He brooded a few minutes, looking at the woman on the other side of the table and feeling that she might make this exile of his seem a little less like an exile. He thought of the other woman he had known a few years ago, but blocked it off with a determined effort. If he ever found another companion, it would have to be one who understood scholarship and what it demanded of a person.
To get his mind onto a new track, he said, "Chetter Hummin told me that the University is in no way troubled by the government. "
"He's right."
Seldon shook his head. "That seems rather unbelievably forbearing of the Imperial government. The educational institutions on Helicon are by no means so independent of governmental pressures."
"Nor on Cinna. Nor on any Outworld, except perhaps for one or two of the largest. Trantor is another matter."
"Yes, but why?"
"Because it's the center of the Empire. The universities here have enormous prestige. Professionals are turned out by any university anywhere, but the administrators of the Empire-the high officials, the countless millions of people who represent the tentacles of Empire reaching into every corner of the Galaxy-are educated right here on Trantor."
"I've never seen the statistics-" began Seldon.
"Take my word for it. It is important that the officials of the Empire have some common ground, some special feeling for the Empire. And they can't all be native Trantorians or else the Outworlds would grow restless. For that reason, Trantor must attract millions of Outworlders for education here. It doesn't matter where they come from or what their home accent or culture may be, as long as they pick up the Trantorian patina and identify themselves with a Trantorian educational background. That's what holds the Empire together. The Outworlds are also less restive when a noticeable portion of the administrators who represent the Imperial government are their own people by birth and upbringing."
Seldon felt embarrassed again. This was something he had never given any thought to. He wondered if anyone could be a truly great mathematician if mathematics was all he knew. He said, "Is this common knowledge?"
"I suppose it isn't," said Dors after some thought. "There's so much knowledge to be had that specialists cling to their specialties as a shield against having to know anything about anything else. They avoid being drowned."
"Yet you know it."
"But that's my specialty. I'm a historian who deals with the rise of Royal Trantor and this administrative technique was one of the ways in which Trantor spread its influence and managed the transition from Royal Trantor to Imperial Trantor."
Seldon said, almost as though muttering to himself, "How harmful overspecialization is. It cuts knowledge at a million points and leaves it bleeding."
Dors shrugged. "What can one do? -But you see, if Trantor is going to attract Outworlders to Trantorian universities, it has to give
them something in return for uprooting themselves and going to a strange world with an incredibly artificial structure and unusual ways. I've been here two years and I'm still not used to it. I may never get used to it. But then, of course, I don't intend to be an administrator, so I'm not forcing myself to be a Trantorian.
"And what Trantor offers in exchange is not only the promise of a position with high status, considerable power, and money, of course, but also freedom. While students are having their -education, they are free to denounce the government, demonstrate against it peacefully, work out their own theories and points of view. They enjoy that and many come here so that they can experience the sensation of liberty."
"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."
Don laughed. "I suppose so, but on Clnna who would care? It's a dull world, full of farms and with lots of cattle, both four-legged and twolegged."
"Won't you find it dull after Trantor?"
"Yes, that's what I'm counting on. And if it gets coo 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 is was she who hesitated. "I chink chat can be arranged. If you work on mathematics programming, you'll probably be viewed as a quasimember 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." Seldom felt a little surprised ac 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 cricks of the historical reference trade."
It was clear to Seldom 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 face 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, Seldom decided, might well be a most formidable person.
19.
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 chat. Bat 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 sac 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 chat 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 cell the truth, he didn't like her. And now chat 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 cried 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 Demerz
el, 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--
He pulled his thoughts away and, suddenly nettled at the other's silence and wanting an admission, since he had just admired Demerzel's honesty in his mind, said sharply, "Well, you have failed, haven't you?"
Demerzel did not flinch. "Sire, I have failed in part. I felt that to have him here on Trantor where things are-difficult might present us with problems. It was easy to consider that he might be more conveniently placed on his home planet. He was planning to return to that home planet the next day, but there was always the chance of complications-of his deciding to remain on Trantor-so I arranged to have two young alley men place him on his plane that very day."
"Do you know alley men, Demerzel?" Cleon was amused.
"It is important, Sire, to be able to reach many kinds of people, for each type has its own variety of use-alley men not the least. As it happens, they did not succeed."
"And why was that?"
"Oddly enough, Seldon was able to fight them off."
"The mathematician could fight?"
"Apparently, mathematics and the martial arts are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I found out, not soon enough, that his world, Helicon, is noted for it-martial arts, not mathematics. The fact that I did not learn this earlier was indeed a failure, Sire, and I can only crave your pardon."
"But then, I suppose the mathematician left for his home planet the next day as he had planned."
"Unfortunately, the episode backfired. Taken aback by the event, he decided not to return to Helicon, but remained on Trantor. He may have been advised to this effect by a passerby who happened to be present on the occasion of the fight. That was another unlooked-for complication."
The Emperor Cleon frowned. "Then our mathematician-what it his name?"
"Seldon, Sire. Hari Seldon."
"Then this Seldon is out of reach."
"In a sense, Sire. We have traced his movements and he is now at Streeling University. While there, he is untouchable."