Second Foundation f-5

by Isaac Asimov

  Arcadia scrabbled what remained of her wits together. She could not tell them the truth. She could tell nobody the truth—And yet she was too worn to invent a useful lie.

  She said, whisperingly, “I’m better, now.”

  “Good,” said Mamma. “Now tell me why you’re in trouble. You did nothing wrong? Of course, whatever you did, we’ll help you; but tell us the truth.”

  “For a friend from Trantor, anything,” added Pappa, expansively, “eh, Mamma?”

  “Shut your mouth, Pappa,” was the response, without rancor.

  Arcadia was groping in her purse. That, at least, was still hers, despite the rapid clothes-changing forced upon her in Lady Callia’s apartments. She found what she was looking for and handed it to Mamma.

  “These are my papers,” she said, diffidently. It was shiny, synthetic parchment which had been issued her by the Foundation’s ambassador on the day of her arrival and which had been countersigned by the appropriate Kalganian official. It was large, florid, and impressive. Mamma looked at it helplessly, and passed it to Pappa, who absorbed its contents with an impressive pursing of the lips.

  He said, “You’re from the Foundation?”

  “Yes. But I was born in Trantor. See, it says that—”

  “Ah-hah. It looks all right to me. You’re named Arcadia, eh? That’s a good Trantorian name. But where’s your uncle? It says here you came in the company of Homir Munn, uncle.”

  “He’s been arrested,” said Arcadia, drearily.

  “Arrested!”—from the two of them at once. “What for?” asked Mamma. “He did something?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. We were just on a visit. Uncle Homir had business with Lord Stettin but—” She needed no effort to act a shudder. It was there.

  Pappa was impressed. “With Lord Stettin. Mm-m-m, your uncle must be a big man.”

  “I don’t know what it was all about, but Lord Stettin wanted me to stay—” She was recalling the last words of Lady Callia, which had been acted out for her benefit. Since Callia, as she now knew, was an expert, the story could do for a second time.

  She paused, and Mamma said interestedly, “And why you?”

  “I’m not sure. He . . . he wanted to have dinner with me all alone, but I said no, because I wanted Uncle Homir along. He looked at me funny and kept holding my shoulder.”

  Pappa’s mouth was a little open, but Mamma was suddenly red and angry. “How old are you, Arcadia?”

  “Fourteen and a half, almost.”

  Mamma drew a sharp breath and said, “That such people should be let live. The dogs in the streets are better. You’re running from him, dear, is not?”

  Arcadia nodded.

  Mamma said, “Pappa, go right to Information and find out exactly when the ship to Trantor comes to berth. Hurry!”

  But Pappa took one step and stopped. Loud metallic words were booming overhead, and five thousand pairs of eyes looked startledly upwards.

  “Men and women,” it said, with sharp force. “The airport is being searched for a dangerous fugitive, and it is now surrounded. No one can enter and no one can leave. The search will, however, be conducted with great speed and no ships will reach or leave berth during the interval, so you will not miss your ship. I repeat, no one will miss his ship. The grid will descend. None of you will move outside your square until the grid is removed, as otherwise we will be forced to use our neuronic whips.”

  During the minute or less in which the voice dominated the vast dome of the spaceport’s waiting room, Arcadia could not have moved if all the evil in the Galaxy had concentrated itself into a ball and hurled itself at her.

  They could mean only her. It was not even necessary to formulate that idea as a specific thought. But why—

  Callia had engineered her escape. And Callia was of the Second Foundation. Why, then, the search now? Had Callia failed? Could Callia fail? Or was this part of the plan, the intricacies of which escaped her?

  For a vertiginous moment, she wanted to jump up and shout that she gave up, that she would go with them, that . . . that—

  But Mamma’s hand was on her wrist. “Quick! Quick! We’ll go to the ladies room before they start.”

  Arcadia did not understand. She merely followed blindly. They oozed through the crowd, frozen as it was into clumps, with the voice still booming through its last words.

  The grid was descending now, and Pappa, open-mouthed, watched it come down. He had heard of it and read of it, but had never actually been the object of it. It glimmered in the air, simply a series of cross-hatched and tight radiation-beams that set the air aglow in a harmless network of flashing light.

  It always was so arranged as to descend slowly from above in order that it might represent a falling net with all the terrific psychological implications of entrapment.

  It was at waist-level now, ten feet between glowing lines in each direction. In his own hundred square feet, Pappa found himself alone, yet the adjoining squares were crowded. He felt himself conspicuously isolated but knew that to move into the greater anonymity of a group would have meant crossing one of those glowing lines, stirring an alarm, and bringing down the neuronic whip.

  He waited.

  He could make out, over the heads of the eerily quiet and waiting mob, the far-off stir that was the line of policemen covering the vast floor area, lighted square by lighted square.

  It was a long time before a uniform stepped into his square and carefully noted its co-ordinates into an official notebook.

  “Papers!”

  Pappa handed them over, and they were flipped through in expert fashion.

  “You’re Preem Palver, native of Trantor, on Kalgan for a month, returning to Trantor. Answer, yes or no.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “What’s your business on Kalgan?”

  “I’m trading representative of our farm co-operative. I’ve been negotiating terms with the Department of Agriculture on Kalgan.”

  “Um-m-m. Your wife is with you? Where is she? She is mentioned in your papers.”

  “Please. My wife is in the—” He pointed.

  “Hanto,” roared the policeman. Another uniform joined him.

  The first one said, dryly, “Another dame in the can, by the Galaxy. The place must be busting with them. Write down her name.” He indicated the entry in the papers which gave it.

  “Anyone else with you?”

  “My niece.”

  “She’s not mentioned in the papers.”

  “She came separately.”

  “Where is she? Never mind, I know. Write down the niece’s name, too, Hanto. What’s her name? Write down Arcadia Palver. You stay right here, Palver. We’ll take care of the women before we leave.”

  Pappa waited interminably. And then, long, long after, Mamma was marching toward him, Arcadia’s hand firmly in hers, the two policemen trailing behind her.

  They entered Pappa’s square, and one said, “Is this noisy old woman your wife?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Pappa, placatingly.

  “Then you’d better tell her she’s liable to get into trouble if she talks the way she does to the First Citizen’s police.” He straightened his shoulders angrily. “Is this your niece?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want her papers.”

  Looking straight at her husband, Mamma slightly, but no less firmly, shook her head.

  A short pause, and Pappa said with a weak smile, “I don’t think I can do that.”

  “What do you mean you can’t do that?” The policeman thrust out a hard palm. “Hand it over.”

  “Diplomatic immunity,” said Pappa, softly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I said I was trading representative of my farm co-operative. I’m accredited to the Kalganian government as an official foreign representative and my papers prove it. I showed them to you and now I don’t want to be bothered anymore.”

  For a moment, the policeman was taken aback. “
I’ve got to see your papers. It’s orders.”

  “You go away,” broke in Mamma, suddenly. “When we want you, we’ll send for you, you . . . you bum.”

  The policeman’s lips tightened. “Keep your eye on them, Hanto. I’ll get the lieutenant.”

  “Break a leg!” called Mamma after him. Someone laughed, and then choked it off suddenly.

  The search was approaching its end. The crowd was growing dangerously restless. Forty-five minutes had elapsed since the grid had started falling and that is too long for best effects. Lieutenant Dirige threaded his way hastily, therefore, toward the dense center of the mob.

  “Is this the girl?” he asked wearily. He looked at her and she obviously fitted the description. All this for a child.

  He said, “Her papers, if you please?”

  Pappa began, “I have already explained—”

  “I know what you have explained, and I’m sorry,” said the lieutenant, “but I have my orders, and I can’t help them. If you care to make a protest later, you may. Meanwhile, if necessary, I must use force.”

  There was a pause, and the lieutenant waited patiently.

  Then Pappa said, huskily, “Give me your papers, Arcadia.”

  Arcadia shook her head in panic, but Pappa nodded his head. “Don’t be afraid. Give them to me.”

  Helplessly she reached out and let the documents change hands. Pappa fumbled them open and looked carefully through them, then handed them over. The lieutenant in his turn looked through them carefully. For a long moment, he raised his eyes to rest them on Arcadia, and then he closed the booklet with a sharp snap.

  “All in order,” he said. “All right, men.”

  He left, and in two minutes, scarcely more, the grid was gone, and the voice above signified a back-to-normal. The noise of the crowd, suddenly released, rose high.

  Arcadia said: “How . . . how—”

  Pappa said, “Sh-h. Don’t say a word. Let’s better go to the ship. It should be in the berth soon.”

  They were on the ship. They had a private stateroom and a table to themselves in the dining room. Two light-years already separated them from Kalgan, and Arcadia finally dared to broach the subject again.

  She said, “But they were after me, Mr. Palver, and they must have had my description and all the details. Why did he let me go?”

  And Pappa smiled broadly over his roast beef. “Well, Arcadia, child, it was easy. When you’ve been dealing with agents and buyers and competing co-operatives, you learn some of the tricks. I’ve had twenty years or more to learn them in. You see, child, when the lieutenant opened your papers, he found a five-hundred-credit bill inside, folded up small. Simple, no?”

  “I’ll pay you back— Honest, I’ve got lots of money.”

  “Well,” Pappa’s broad face broke into an embarrassed smile, as he waved it away. “For a countrywoman—”

  Arcadia desisted. “But what if he’d taken the money and turned me in anyway. And accused me of bribery.”

  “And give up five hundred credits? I know these people better than you do, girl.”

  But Arcadia knew that he did not know people better. Not these people. In her bed that night, she considered carefully, and knew that no bribe would have stopped a police lieutenant in the matter of catching her unless that had been planned. They didn’t want to catch her, yet had made every motion of doing so, nevertheless.

  Why? To make sure she left? And for Trantor? Were the obtuse and soft-hearted couple she was with now only a pair of tools in the hands of the Second Foundation, as helpless as she herself?

  They must be!

  Or were they?

  It was all so useless. How could she fight them? Whatever she did, it might only be what those terrible omnipotents wanted her to do.

  Yet she had to outwit them. Had to. Had to! Had to!!

  16

  BEGINNING OF WAR

  For reason or reasons unknown to members of the Galaxy at the time of the era under discussion, Intergalactic Standard Time defines its fundamental unit, the second, as the time in which light travels 299,776 kilometers. 86,400 seconds are arbitrarily set equal to one Intergalactic Standard Day; and 365 of these days to one Intergalactic Standard Year.

  Why 299,776?— Or 86,400?— Or 365?

  Tradition, says the historian, begging the question. Because of certain and various mysterious numerical relationships, say the mystics, cultists, numerologists, metaphysicists. Because the original home-planet of humanity had certain natural periods of rotation and revolution from which those relationships could be derived, say a very few.

  No one really knew.

  Nevertheless, the date on which the Foundation cruiser the Hober Mallow met the Kalganian squadron headed by the Fearless, and, upon refusing to allow a search party to board, was blasted into smoldering wreckage was 185; 11692 G.E. That is, it was the 185th day of the 11,692nd year of the Galactic Era which dated from the accession of the first Emperor of the traditional Kamble dynasty. It was also 185; 455 S.E.—dating from the birth of Seldon—or 185; 376 F.E.—dating from the establishment of the Foundation. On Kalgan it was 185; 76 F.C.—dating from the establishment of the First Citizenship by the Mule. In each case, of course, for convenience, the year was so arranged as to yield the same day number regardless of the actual day upon which the era began.

  And, in addition to all the millions of worlds of the Galaxy, there were millions of local times, based on the motions of their own particular heavenly neighbors.

  But whichever you choose: 185; 11692-455-376-76—or anything—it was this day which historians later pointed to when they spoke of the start of the Stettinian war.

  Yet to Dr. Darell, it was none of these at all. It was simply and quite precisely the thirty-second day since Arcadia had left Terminus.

  What it cost Darell to maintain stolidity through these days was not obvious to everyone.

  But Elvett Semic thought he could guess. He was an old man and fond of saying that his neuronic sheaths had calcified to the point where his thinking processes were stiff and unwieldy. He invited and almost welcomed the universal underestimation of his decaying powers by being the first to laugh at them. But his eyes were none the less seeing for being faded; his mind none the less experienced and wise for being no longer agile.

  He merely twisted his pinched lips and said, “Why don’t you do something about it?”

  The sound was a physical jar to Darell, under which he winced. He said, gruffly, “Where were we?”

  Semic regarded him with grave eyes. “You’d better do something about the girl.” His sparse, yellow teeth showed in a mouth that was open in inquiry.

  But Darell replied coldly, “The question is: Can you get a Symes-Molff Resonator in the range required?”

  “Well, I said I could and you weren’t listening—”

  “I’m sorry, Elvett. It’s like this. What we’re doing now can be more important to everyone in the Galaxy than the question of whether Arcadia is safe. At least, to everyone but Arcadia and myself, and I’m willing to go along with the majority. How big would the Resonator be?”

  Semic looked doubtful, “I don’t know. You can find it somewheres in the catalogues.”

  “About how big? A ton? A pound? A block long?”

  “Oh, I thought you meant exactly. It’s a little jigger.” He indicated the first joint of his thumb. “About that.”

  “All right, can you do something like this?” He sketched rapidly on the pad he held in his lap, then passed it over to the old physicist, who peered at it doubtfully, then chuckled.

  “Y’know, the brain gets calcified when you get as old as I am. What are you trying to do?”

  Darell hesitated. He longed desperately, at the moment, for the physical knowledge locked in the other’s brain, so that he need not put his thought into words. But the longing was useless, and he explained.

  Semic was shaking his head. “You’d need hyper-relays. The only things that would work fas
t enough. A thundering lot of them.”

  “But it can be built?”

  “Well, sure.”

  “Can you get all the parts? I mean, without causing comment? In line with your general work.”

  Semic lifted his upper lip. “Can’t get fifty hyper-relays. I wouldn’t use that many in my whole life.”

  “We’re on a defense project, now. Can’t you think of something harmless that would use them? We’ve got the money.”

  “Hm-m-m. Maybe I can think of something.”

  “How small can you make the whole gadget?”

  “Hyper-relays can be had micro-size . . . wiring . . . chips—Space, you’ve got a few hundred circuits there.”

  “I know. How big?”

  Semic indicated with his hands.

  “Too big,” said Darell. “I’ve got to swing it from my belt.”

  Slowly, he was crumpling his sketch into a tight ball. When it was a hard, yellow grape, he dropped it into the ash tray and it was gone with the tiny white flare of molecular decomposition.

  He said, “Who’s at your door?”

  Semic leaned over his desk to the little milky screen above the door signal. He said, “The young fellow, Anthor. Someone with him, too.”

  Darell scraped his chair back. “Nothing about this, Semic, to the others yet. It’s deadly knowledge, if they find out, and two lives are enough to risk.”

  Pelleas Anthor was a pulsing vortex of activity in Semic’s office, which, somehow, managed to partake of the age of its occupant. In the slow turgor of the quiet room, the loose, summery sleeves of Anthor’s tunic seemed still a-quiver with the outer breezes.

  He said, “Dr. Darell, Dr. Semic—Orum Dirige.”

  The other man was tall. A long straight nose that lent his thin face a saturnine appearance. Dr. Darell held out a hand.

  Anthor smiled slightly. “Police Lieutenant Dirige,” he amplified. Then, significantly, “Of Kalgan.”

  And Darell turned to stare with force at the young man. “Police Lieutenant Dirige of Kalgan,” he repeated, distinctly. “And you bring him here. Why?”