by Isaac Asimov
Stettin returned, “She is a remnant of an interlude that has lasted too long. It will end soon. Fourteen, you say?”
Homir stared at him with a brand-new horror!
Arcadia started at the noiseless opening of a door—jumping at the jangling sliver of movement it made in the corner of her eye. The finger that crooked frantically at her met no response for long moments, and then, as if in response to the cautions enforced by the very sight of that white, trembling figure, she tiptoed her way across the floor.
Their footsteps were a taut whisper in the corridor. It was the Lady Callia, of course, who held her hand so tightly that it hurt, and for some reason, she did not mind following her. Of the Lady Callia, at least, she was not afraid.
Now, why was that?
They were in a boudoir now, all pink fluff and spun sugar. Lady Callia stood with her back against the door.
She said, “This was our private way to me . . . to my room, you know, from his office. His, you know.” And she pointed with a thumb, as though even the thought of him were grinding her soul to death with fear.
“It’s so lucky . . . it’s so lucky—” Her pupils had blackened out the blue with their size.
“Can you tell me—” began Arcadia timidly.
And Callia was in frantic motion. “No, child, no. There is no time. Take off your clothes. Please. Please. I’ll get you more, and they won’t recognize you.”
She was in the closet, throwing useless bits of flummery in reckless heaps upon the ground, looking madly for something a girl could wear without becoming a living invitation to dalliance.
“Here, this will do. It will have to. Do you have money? Here, take it all—and this.” She was stripping her ears and fingers. “Just go home—go home to your Foundation.”
“But Homir . . . my uncle.” She protested vainly through the muffling folds of the sweet-smelling and luxurious spun-metal being forced over her head.
“He won’t leave. Poochie will hold him forever, but you mustn’t stay. Oh, dear, don’t you understand?”
“No.” Arcadia forced a standstill, “I don’t understand.”
Lady Callia squeezed her hands tightly together. “You must go back to warn your people there will be war. Isn’t that clear?” Absolute terror seemed paradoxically to have lent a lucidity to her thoughts and words that was entirely out of character. “Now come!”
Out another way! Past officials who stared after them, but saw no reason to stop one whom only the Lord of Kalgan could stop with impunity. Guards clicked heels and presented arms when they went through doors.
Arcadia breathed only on occasion through the years the trip seemed to take—yet from the first crooking of the white finger to the time she stood at the outer gate, with people and noise and traffic in the distance, was only twenty-five minutes.
She looked back, with a sudden frightened pity. “I . . . I . . . don’t know why you’re doing this, my lady, but thanks—What’s going to happen to Uncle Homir?”
“I don’t know,” wailed the other. “Can’t you leave? Go straight to the spaceport. Don’t wait. He may be looking for you this very minute.”
And still Arcadia lingered. She would be leaving Homir; and, belatedly, now that she felt the free air about her, she was suspicious. “But what do you care if he does?”
Lady Callia bit her lower lip and muttered, “I can’t explain to a little girl like you. It would be improper. Well, you’ll be growing up and I . . . I met Poochie when I was sixteen. I can’t have you about, you know.” There was a half-ashamed hostility in her eyes.
The implications froze Arcadia. She whispered: “What will he do to you when he finds out?”
And she whimpered back: “I don’t know,” and threw her arm to her head as she left at a half-run, back along the wide way to the mansion of the Lord of Kalgan.
But for one eternal second, Arcadia still did not move, for in that last moment before Lady Callia left, Arcadia had seen something. Those frightened, frantic eyes had momentarily—flashingly—lit up with a cold amusement.
A vast, inhuman amusement.
It was much to see in such a quick flicker of a pair of eyes, but Arcadia had no doubt of what she saw.
She was running now—running wildly—searching madly for an unoccupied public booth at which one could press a button for public conveyance.
She was not running from Lord Stettin; not from him or from all the human hounds he could place at her heels—not from all his twenty-seven worlds rolled into a single gigantic phenomenon, hallooing at her shadow.
She was running from a single, frail woman who had helped her escape. From a creature who had loaded her with money and jewels; who had risked her own life to save her. From an entity she knew, certainly and finally, to be a woman of the Second Foundation.
An air-taxi came to a soft clicking halt in the cradle. The wind of its coming brushed against Arcadia’s face and stirred at the hair beneath the softly-furred hood Callia had given her.
“Where’ll it be, lady?”
She fought desperately to low-pitch her voice to make it not that of a child. “How many spaceports in the city?”
“Two. Which one ya want?”
“Which is closer?”
He stared at her: “Kalgan Central, lady.”
“The other one, please. I’ve got the money.” She had a twenty-Kalganid note in her hand. The denomination of the note made little difference to her, but the taxi-man grinned appreciatively.
“Anything ya say, lady. Sky-line cabs take ya anywhere.”
She cooled her cheek against the slightly musty upholstery. The lights of the city moved leisurely below her.
What should she do? What should she do?
It was in that moment that she knew she was a stupid, stupid little girl, away from her father, and frightened. Her eyes were full of tears, and deep down in her throat, there was a small, soundless cry that hurt her insides.
She wasn’t afraid that Lord Stettin would catch her. Lady Callia would see to that. Lady Callia! Old, fat, stupid, but she held on to her lord, somehow. Oh, it was clear enough, now. Everything was clear.
That tea with Callia at which she had been so smart. Clever little Arcadia! Something inside Arcadia choked and hated itself. That tea had been maneuvered, and then Stettin had probably been maneuvered so that Homir was allowed to inspect the palace after all. She, the foolish Callia, had wanted it so, and arranged to have smart little Arcadia supply a foolproof excuse, one which would arouse no suspicions in the minds of the victims, and yet involve a minimum of interference on her part.
Then why was she free? Homir was a prisoner, of course—
Unless—
Unless she went back to the Foundation as a decoy—a decoy to lead others into the hands of . . . of them.
So she couldn’t return to the Foundation—
“Spaceport, lady.” The air-taxi had come to a halt. Strange! She hadn’t even noticed.
What a dream-world it was.
“Thanks,” she pushed the bill at him without seeing anything and was stumbling out the door, then running across the springy pavement.
Lights. Unconcerned men and women. Large gleaming bulletin boards, with the moving fingers that followed every single spaceship that arrived and departed.
Where was she going? She didn’t care. She only knew that she wasn’t going to the Foundation! Anywhere else at all would suit.
Oh, thank Seldon, for that forgetful moment—that last split-second when Callia wearied of her act because she had to do only with a child and had let her amusement spring through.
And then something else occurred to Arcadia, something that had been stirring and moving at the base of her brain ever since the flight began—something that forever killed the fourteen in her.
And she knew that she must escape.
That above all. Though they located every conspirator on the Foundation; though they caught her own father; she could n
ot, dared not, risk a warning. She could not risk her own life—not in the slightest—for the entire realm of Terminus. She was the most important person in the Galaxy. She was the only important person in the Galaxy.
She knew that even as she stood before the ticket-machine and wondered where to go.
Because in all the Galaxy, she and she alone, except for they themselves, knew the location of the Second Foundation.
15
THROUGH THE GRID
TRANTOR By the middle of the Interregnum, Trantor was a shadow. In the midst of the colossal ruins, there lived a small community of farmers . . .
ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA
There is nothing, never has been anything, quite like a busy spaceport on the outskirts of a capital city of a populous planet. There are the huge machines resting mightily in their cradles. If you choose your time properly, there is the impressive sight of the sinking giant dropping to rest or, more hair-raising still, the swiftening departure of a bubble of steel. All processes involved are nearly noiseless. The motive power is the silent surge of nucleons shifting into more compact arrangements—
In terms of area, ninety-five percent of the port has just been referred to. Square miles are reserved for the machines, and for the men who serve them and for the calculators that serve both.
Only five percent of the port is given over to the floods of humanity to whom it is the way station to all the stars of the Galaxy. It is certain that very few of the anonymous many-headed stop to consider the technological mesh that knits the spaceways. Perhaps some of them might itch occasionally at the thought of the thousands of tons represented by the sinking steel that looks so small off in the distance. One of those cyclopean cylinders could, conceivably, miss the guiding beam and crash half a mile from its expected landing point—through the glassite roof of the immense waiting room perhaps—so that only a thin organic vapor and some powdered phosphates would be left behind to mark the passing of a thousand men.
It could never happen, however, with the safety devices in use; and only the badly neurotic would consider the possibility for more than a moment.
Then what do they think about? It is not just a crowd, you see. It is a crowd with a purpose. That purpose hovers over the field and thickens the atmosphere. Lines queue up; parents herd their children; baggage is maneuvered in precise masses—people are going somewhere.
Consider then the complete psychic isolation of a single unit of this terribly intent mob that does not know where to go; yet at the same time feels more intensely than any of the others possibly can the necessity of going somewhere, anywhere! Or almost anywhere!
Even lacking telepathy or any of the crudely definite methods of mind touching mind, there is a sufficient clash in atmosphere, in intangible mood, to suffice for despair.
To suffice? To overflow, and drench, and drown.
Arcadia Darell, dressed in borrowed clothes, standing on a borrowed planet in a borrowed situation of what seemed even to be a borrowed life, wanted earnestly the safety of the womb. She didn’t know that was what she wanted. She only knew that the very openness of the open world was a great danger. She wanted a closed spot somewhere—somewhere far—somewhere in an unexplored nook of the universe—where no one would ever look.
And there she was, age fourteen plus, weary enough for eighty plus, frightened enough for five minus.
What stranger of the hundreds that brushed past her—actually brushed past her, so that she could feel their touch—was a Second Foundationer? What stranger could not help but instantly destroy her for her guilty knowledge—her unique knowledge—of knowing where the Second Foundation was?
And the voice that cut in on her was a thunderclap that iced the scream in her throat into a voiceless slash.
“Look, miss,” it said, irritably, “are you using the ticket-machine or are you just standing there?”
It was the first she realized that she was standing in front of a ticket-machine. You put a high-denomination bill into the clipper which sank out of sight. You pressed the button below your destination and a ticket came out together with the correct change as determined by an electronic scanning device that never made a mistake. It was a very ordinary thing and there was no cause for anyone to stand before it for five minutes.
Arcadia plunged a two-hundred credit into the clipper, and was suddenly aware of the button labeled, “Trantor.” Trantor, dead capital of the dead Empire—the planet on which she was born. She pressed it in a dream. Nothing happened, except that the red letters flicked on and off, reading 172.18—172.18—172.18—
It was the amount she was short. Another two-hundred credit. The ticket was spit out toward her. It came loose when she touched it, and the change tumbled out afterward.
She seized it and ran. She felt the man behind her pressing close, anxious for his own chance at the machine, but she twisted out from before him and did not look behind.
Yet there was nowhere to run. They were all her enemies.
Without quite realizing it, she was watching the gigantic, glowing signs that puffed into the air: Steffani, Anacreon, Fermus— There was even one that ballooned Terminus, and she longed for it, but did not dare—
For a trifling sum, she could have hired a notifier which could have been set for any destination she cared and which would, when placed in her purse, make itself heard only to her, fifteen minutes before take-off time. But such devices are for people who are reasonably secure, however; who can pause to think of them.
And then, attempting to look both ways simultaneously, she ran head-on into a soft abdomen. She felt the startled outbreath and grunt, and a hand come down on her arm. She writhed desperately but lacked breath to do more than mew a bit in the back of her throat.
Her captor held her firmly and waited. Slowly, he came into focus for her and she managed to look at him. He was rather plump and rather short. His hair was white and copious, being brushed back to give a pompadour effect that looked strangely incongruous above a round and ruddy face that shrieked its peasant origin.
“What’s the matter?” he said finally, with a frank and twinkling curiosity. “You look scared.”
“Sorry,” muttered Arcadia in a frenzy. “I’ve got to go. Pardon me.”
But he disregarded that entirely, and said, “Watch out, little girl. You’ll drop your ticket.” And he lifted it from her resistless white fingers and looked at it with every evidence of satisfaction.
“I thought so,” he said, and then bawled in bull-like tones, “Mommuh!”
A woman was instantly at his side, somewhat more short, somewhat more round, somewhat more ruddy. She wound a finger about a stray gray lock to shove it beneath a well-outmoded hat.
“Pappa,” she said, reprovingly, “why do you shout in a crowd like that? People look at you like you were crazy. Do you think you are on the farm?”
And she smiled sunnily at the unresponsive Arcadia, and added, “He has manners like a bear.” Then, sharply, “Pappa, let go the little girl. What are you doing?”
But Pappa simply waved the ticket at her. “Look,” he said, “she’s going to Trantor.”
Mamma’s face was a sudden beam, “You’re from Trantor? Let go her arm, I say, Pappa.” She turned the overstuffed valise she was carrying onto its side and forced Arcadia to sit down with a gentle but unrelenting pressure. “Sit down,” she said, “and rest your little feet. It will be no ship yet for an hour and the benches are crowded with sleeping loafers. You are from Trantor?”
Arcadia drew a deep breath and gave in. Huskily, she said, “I was born there.”
And Mamma clapped her hands gleefully, “One month we’ve been here and till now we met nobody from home. This is very nice. Your parents—” she looked about vaguely.
“I’m not with my parents,” Arcadia said, carefully.
“All alone? A little girl like you?” Mamma was at once a blend of indignation and sympathy, “How does that come to be?”
“Mamma,” Pappa pluc
ked at her sleeve, “let me tell you. There’s something wrong. I think she’s frightened.” His voice, though obviously intended for a whisper, was quite plainly audible to Arcadia. “She was running—I was watching her—and not looking where she was going. Before I could step out of the way, she bumped into me. And you know what? I think she’s in trouble.”
“So shut your mouth, Pappa. Into you, anybody could bump.” But she joined Arcadia on the valise, which creaked wearily under the added weight, and put an arm about the girl’s trembling shoulder. “You’re running away from somebody, sweetheart? Don’t be afraid to tell me. I’ll help you.”
Arcadia looked across at the kind gray eyes of the woman and felt her lips quivering. One part of her brain was telling her that here were people from Trantor, with whom she could go, who could help her remain on that planet until she could decide what next to do, where next to go. And another part of her brain, much the louder, was telling her in jumbled incoherence that she did not remember her mother, that she was weary to death of fighting the universe, that she wanted only to curl into a little ball with strong, gentle arms about her, that if her mother had lived, she might . . . she might—
And for the first time that night, she was crying; crying like a little baby, and glad of it; clutching tightly at the old-fashioned dress and dampening a corner of it thoroughly, while soft arms held her closely and a gentle hand stroked her curls.
Pappa stood helplessly looking at the pair, fumbling futilely for a handkerchief which, when produced, was snatched from his hand. Mamma glared an admonition of quietness at him. The crowds surged about the little group with the true indifference of disconnected crowds everywhere. They were effectively alone.
Finally, the weeping trickled to a halt, and Arcadia smiled weakly as she dabbed at red eyes with the borrowed handkerchief. “Golly,” she whispered, “I—”
“Shhh. Shhh. Don’t talk,” said Mamma, fussily, “just sit and rest for a while. Catch your breath. Then tell us what’s wrong, and you’ll see, we’ll fix it up, and everything will be all right.”