by Isaac Asimov
Mallow continued:
“Who here can honestly state that any man with a lay education can possibly be ignorant of the nature of a Seldon crisis? There is only one type of education upon the Foundation that excludes all mention of the planned history of Seldon and deals only with the man himself as a semi-mythical wizard—
“I knew at that instant that Jaim Twer had never been a trader. I knew then that he was in holy orders and perhaps a full-fledged priest; and, doubtless, that for the three years he had pretended to head a political party of the traders, he had been a bought man of Jorane Sutt.
“At the moment, I struck in the dark. I did not know Sutt’s purposes with regard to myself, but since he seemed to be feeding me rope liberally, I handed him a few fathoms of my own. My notion was that Twer was to be with me on my voyage as unofficial guardian on behalf of Jorane Sutt. Well, if he didn’t get on, I knew well there’d be other devices waiting—and those others I might not catch in time. A known enemy is relatively safe. I invited Twer to come with me. He accepted.
“That, gentlemen of the council, explains two things. First, it tells you that Twer is not a friend of mine testifying against me reluctantly and for conscience’ sake, as the prosecution would have you believe. He is a spy, performing his paid job. Secondly, it explains a certain action of mine on the occasion of the first appearance of the priest whom I am accused of having murdered—an action as yet unmentioned, because unknown.”
Now there was a disturbed whispering in the council. Mallow cleared his throat theatrically, and continued:
“I hate to describe my feelings when I first heard that we had a refugee missionary on board. I even hate to remember them. Essentially, they consisted of wild uncertainty. The event struck me at the moment as a move by Sutt, and passed beyond my comprehension or calculation. I was at sea—and completely.
“There was one thing I could do. I got rid of Twer for five minutes by sending him after my officers. In his absence, I set up a Visual Record receiver, so that whatever happened might be preserved for future study. This was in the hope, the wild but earnest hope, that what confused me at the time might become plain upon review.
“I have gone over that Visual Record some fifty times since. I have it here with me now, and will repeat the job a fifty-first time in your presence right now.”
The mayor pounded monotonously for order, as the chamber lost its equilibrium and the gallery roared. In five million homes on Terminus, excited observers crowded their receiving sets more closely, and at the prosecutor’s own bench, Jorane Sutt shook his head coldly at the nervous high priest, while his eyes blazed fixedly on Mallow’s face.
The center of the chamber was cleared, and the lights burnt low. Ankor Jael, from his bench on the left, made the adjustments, and with a preliminary click, a holographic scene sprang to view; in color, in three-dimensions, in every attribute of life but life itself.
There was the missionary, confused and battered, standing between the lieutenant and the sergeant. Mallow’s image waited silently, and then men filed in, Twer bringing up the rear.
The conversation played itself out, word for word. The sergeant was disciplined, and the missionary was questioned. The mob appeared, their growl could be heard, and the Revered Jord Parma made his wild appeal. Mallow drew his gun, and the missionary, as he was dragged away, lifted his arms in a mad, final curse and a tiny flash of light came and went.
The scene ended, with the officers frozen at the horror of the situation, while Twer clamped shaking hands over his ears, and Mallow calmly put his gun away.
The lights were on again; the empty space in the center of the floor was no longer even apparently full. Mallow, the real Mallow of the present, took up the burden of his narration:
“The incident, you see, is exactly as the prosecution has presented it—on the surface. I’ll explain that shortly. Jaim Twer’s emotions through the whole business show clearly a priestly education, by the way.
“It was on that same day that I pointed out certain incongruities in the episode to Twer. I asked him where the missionary came from in the midst of the near-desolate tract we occupied at the time. I asked further where the gigantic mob had come from with the nearest sizable town a hundred miles away. The prosecution has paid no attention to such problems.
“Or to other points; for instance, the curious point of Jord Parma’s blatant conspicuousness. A missionary on Korell, risking his life in defiance of both Korellian and Foundation law, parades about in a very new and very distinctive priestly costume. There’s something wrong there. At the time, I suggested that the missionary was an unwitting accomplice of the Commdor, who was using him in an attempt to force us into an act of wildly illegal aggression, to justify, in law, his subsequent destruction of our ship and of us.
“The prosecution has anticipated this justification of my actions. They have expected me to explain that the safety of my ship, my crew, my mission itself were at stake and could not be sacrificed for one man, when that man would, in any case, have been destroyed, with us or without us. They reply by muttering about the Foundation’s ‘honor’ and the necessity of upholding our ‘dignity’ in order to maintain our ascendancy.
“For some strange reason, however, the prosecution has neglected Jord Parma himself,—as an individual. They brought out no details concerning him; neither his birthplace, nor his education, nor any detail of previous history. The explanation of this will also explain the incongruities I have pointed out in the Visual Record you have just seen. The two are connected.
“The prosecution has advanced no details concerning Jord Parma because it cannot. That scene you saw by Visual Record seemed phony because Jord Parma was phony. There never was a Jord Parma. This whole trial is the biggest farce ever cooked up over an issue that never existed.”
Once more he had to wait for the babble to die down. He said, slowly:
“I’m going to show you the enlargement of a single still from the Visual Record. It will speak for itself. Lights again, Jael.”
The chamber dimmed, and the empty air filled again with frozen figures in ghostly, waxen illusion. The officers of the Far Star struck their stiff, impossible attitudes. A gun pointed from Mallow’s rigid hand. At his left, the Revered Jord Parma, caught in mid-shriek, stretched his claws upward, while the falling sleeves hung halfway.
And from the missionary’s hand there was that little gleam that in the previous showing had flashed and gone. It was a permanent glow now.
“Keep your eye on that light on his hand,” called Mallow from the shadows. “Enlarge that scene, Jael!”
The tableau bloated—quickly. Outer portions fell away as the missionary drew towards the center and became a giant. Then there was only a hand and an arm, and then only a hand, which filled everything and remained there in immense, hazy tautness.
The light had become a set of fuzzy, glowing letters: K S P.
“That,” Mallow’s voice boomed out, “is a sample of tattooing, gentlemen. Under ordinary light it is invisible, but under ultraviolet light—with which I flooded the room in taking this Visual Record—it stands out in high relief. I’ll admit it is a naive method of secret identification, but it works on Korell, where UV light is not to be found on street corners. Even in our ship, detection was accidental.
“Perhaps some of you have already guessed what K S P stands for. Jord Parma knew his priestly lingo well and did his job magnificently. Where he had learned it, and how, I cannot say, but K S P stands for ‘Korellian Secret Police.’ ”
Mallow shouted over the tumult, roaring against the noise, “I have collateral proof in the form of documents brought from Korell, which I can present to the council if required.
“And where is now the prosecution’s case? They have already made and re-made the monstrous suggestion that I should have fought for the missionary in defiance of the law, and sacrificed my mission, my ship, and myself to the ‘honor’ of the Foundation.
“But to
do it for an impostor?
“Should I have done it then for a Korellian secret agent tricked out in the robes and verbal gymnastics probably borrowed of an Anacreonian exile? Would Jorane Sutt and Publis Manlio have had me fall into a stupid, odious trap—”
His hoarsened voice faded into the featureless background of a shouting mob. He was being lifted onto shoulders, and carried to the mayor’s bench. Out the windows, he could see a torrent of madmen swarming into the square to add to the thousands there already.
Mallow looked about for Ankor Jael, but it was impossible to find any single face in the incoherence of the mass. Slowly he became aware of a rhythmic, repeated shout that was spreading from a small beginning, and pulsing into insanity:
“Long live Mallow—long live Mallow—long live Mallow—”
15
Ankor Jael blinked at Mallow out of a haggard face. The last two days had been mad, sleepless ones.
“Mallow, you’ve put on a beautiful show, so don’t spoil it by jumping too high. You can’t seriously consider running for mayor. Mob enthusiasm is a powerful thing, but it’s notoriously fickle.”
“Exactly!” said Mallow, grimly, “so we must coddle it, and the best way to do that is to continue the show.”
“Now what?”
“You’re to have Publis Manlio and Jorane Sutt arrested—”
“What!”
“Just what you hear. Have the mayor arrest them! I don’t care what threats you use. I control the mob,—for today, at any rate. He won’t dare face them.”
“But on what charge, man?”
“On the obvious one. They’ve been inciting the priesthood of the outer planets to take sides in the factional quarrels of the Foundation. That’s illegal, by Seldon. Charge them with ‘endangering the state.’ And I don’t care about a conviction any more than they did in my case. Just get them out of circulation until I’m mayor.”
“It’s half a year till election.”
“Not too long!” Mallow was on his feet, and his sudden grip of Jael’s arm was tight. “Listen, I’d seize the government by force if I had to—the way Salvor Hardin did a hundred years ago. There’s still that Seldon crisis coming up, and when it comes I have to be mayor and high priest. Both!”
Jael’s brow furrowed. He said, quietly, “What’s it going to be? Korell, after all?”
Mallow nodded. “Of course. They’ll declare war, eventually, though I’m betting it’ll take another pair of years.”
“With nuclear ships?”
“What do you think? Those three merchant ships we lost in their space sector weren’t knocked over with compressed-air pistols. Jael, they’re getting ships from the Empire itself. Don’t open your mouth like a fool. I said the Empire! It’s still there, you know. It may be gone here in the Periphery but in the Galactic center it’s still very much alive. And one false move means that it, itself, may be on our neck. That’s why I must be mayor and high priest. I’m the only man who knows how to fight the crisis.”
Jael swallowed dryly. “How? What are you going to do?”
“Nothing.”
Jael smiled uncertainly. “Really! All of that!”
But Mallow’s answer was incisive. “When I’m boss of this Foundation, I’m going to do nothing. One hundred percent of nothing, and that is the secret of this crisis.”
16
Asper Argo, the Well-Beloved, Commdor of the Korellian Republic, greeted his wife’s entry by a hangdog lowering of his scanty eyebrows. To her at least, his self-adopted epithet did not apply. Even he knew that.
She said, in a voice as sleek as her hair and as cold as her eyes, “My gracious lord, I understand, has finally come to a decision upon the fate of the Foundation upstarts.”
“Indeed?” said the Commdor, sourly. “And what more does your versatile understanding embrace?”
“Enough, my very noble husband. You had another of your vacillating consultations with your councilors. Fine advisors.” With infinite scorn, “A herd of palsied purblind idiots hugging their sterile profits close to their sunken chests in the face of my father’s displeasure.”
“And who, my dear,” was the mild response, “is the excellent source from which your understanding understands all this?”
The Commdora laughed shortly. “If I told you, my source would be more corpse than source.”
“Well, you’ll have your own way, as always.” The Commdor shrugged and turned away. “And as for your father’s displeasure: I much fear me it extends to a niggardly refusal to supply more ships.”
“More ships!” She blazed away, hotly, “And haven’t you five? Don’t deny it. I know you have five; and a sixth is promised.”
“Promised for the last year.”
“But one—just one—can blast that Foundation into stinking rubble. Just one! One, to sweep their little pygmy boats out of space.”
“I couldn’t attack their planet, even with a dozen.”
“And how long would their planet hold out with their trade ruined, and their cargoes of toys and trash destroyed?”
“Those toys and trash mean money,” he sighed. “A good deal of money.”
“But if you had the Foundation itself, would you not have all it contained? And if you had my father’s respect and gratitude, would you not have more than ever the Foundation could give you? It’s been three years—more—since that barbarian came with his magic sideshow. It’s long enough.”
“My dear!” The Commdor turned and faced her. “I am growing old. I am weary. I lack the resilience to withstand your rattling mouth. You say you know that I have decided. Well, I have. It is over, and there is war between Korell and the Foundation.”
“Well!” The Commdora’s figure expanded and her eyes sparkled. “You learned wisdom at last, though in your dotage. And now when you are master of this hinterland, you may be sufficiently respectable to be of some weight and importance in the Empire. For one thing, we might leave this barbarous world and attend the viceroy’s court. Indeed we might.”
She swept out, with a smile, and a hand on her hip. Her hair gleamed in the light.
The Commdor waited, and then said to the closed door, with malignance and hate, “And when I am master of what you call the hinterland, I may be sufficiently respectable to do without your father’s arrogance and his daughter’s tongue. Completely—without!”
17
The senior lieutenant of the Dark Nebula stared in horror at the visiplate.
“Great Galloping Galaxies!” It should have been a howl, but it was a whisper instead. “What’s that?”
It was a ship, but a whale to the Dark Nebula’s minnow; and on its side was the Spaceship-and-Sun of the Empire. Every alarm on the ship yammered hysterically.
The orders went out, and the Dark Nebula prepared to run if it could, and fight if it must,—while down in the hyperwave room, a message stormed its way through hyperspace to the Foundation.
Over and over again! Partly a plea for help, but mainly a warning of danger.
18
Hober Mallow shuffled his feet wearily as he leafed through the reports. Two years of the mayoralty had made him a bit more housebroken, a bit softer, a bit more patient,—but it had not made him learn to like government reports and the mind-breaking officialese in which they were written.
“How many ships did they get?” asked Jael.
“Four trapped on the ground. Two unreported. All others accounted for and safe.” Mallow grunted. “We should have done better, but it’s just a scratch.”
There was no answer and Mallow looked up. “Does anything worry you?”
“I wish Sutt would get here,” was the almost irrelevant answer.
“Ah, yes, and now we’ll hear another lecture on the home front.”
“No, we won’t,” snapped Jael, “but you’re stubborn, Mallow. You may have worked out the foreign situation to the last detail but you’ve never given a care about what goes on here on the home planet.”
; “Well, that’s your job, isn’t it? What did I make you Minister of Education and Propaganda for?”
“Obviously to send me to an early and miserable grave, for all the co-operation you give me. For the last year, I’ve been deafening you with the rising danger of Sutt and his Religionists. What good will your plans be, if Sutt forces a special election and has you thrown out?”
“None, I admit.”
“And your speech last night just about handed the election to Sutt with a smile and a pat. Was there any necessity for being so frank?”
“Isn’t there such a thing as stealing Sutt’s thunder?”
“No,” said Jael, violently, “not the way you did it. You claim to have foreseen everything, and don’t explain why you traded with Korell to their exclusive benefit for three years. Your only plan of battle is to retire without a battle. You abandon all trade with the sectors of space near Korell. You openly proclaim a stalemate. You promise no offensive, even in the future. Galaxy, Mallow, what am I supposed to do with such a mess?”
“It lacks glamor?”
“It lacks mob emotion-appeal.”
“Same thing.”
“Mallow, wake up. You have two alternatives. Either you present the people with a dynamic foreign policy, whatever your private plans are, or you make some sort of compromise with Sutt.”
Mallow said, “All right, if I’ve failed the first, let’s try the second. Sutt’s just arrived.”
Sutt and Mallow had not met personally since the day of the trial, two years back. Neither detected any change in the other, except for that subtle atmosphere about each which made it quite evident that the roles of ruler and defier had changed.
Sutt took his seat without shaking hands.
Mallow offered a cigar and said, “Mind if Jael stays? He wants a compromise earnestly. He can act as mediator if tempers rise.”