Prelude to Foundation f-1

by Isaac Asimov

  “Can you tell how many people are present?”

  “Certainly not by eye. You see, we’re getting a resultant of all the impacts.”

  “You say ‘not by eye.’ Can the resultant be analyzed into its components by the computer?”

  “I doubt it. These are minimal effects and you have to allow for the inevitable noise. The results would be untrustworthy.”

  “Well then. Move the time forward till the footstep indications stop. Can you make it fast-forward, so to speak?”

  “If I do—the kind of fast-forward you’re speaking of—then it will all just blur into a straight line with a slight haze above and below. What I can do is move it forward in fifteen-minute stages and study it quickly before moving on.”

  “Good. Do that!”

  Both watched the screen until Benastra said, “There’s nothing there now. See?”

  There was again a line with nothing but tiny uneven hiccups of noise.

  “When did the footsteps stop?”

  “Two hours ago. A trifle more.”

  “And when they stopped were there fewer than there were earlier?”

  Benastra looked mildly outraged. “I couldn’t tell. I don’t think the finest analysis could make a certain decision.”

  Dors pressed her lips together. Then she said, “Are you testing a transducer—is that what you called it—near the meteorological outlet?”

  “Yes, that’s where the instruments are and that’s where the meteorologists would have been.” Then, unbelievingly, “Do you want me to try others in the vicinity? One at a time?”

  “No. Stay on this one. But keep on going forward at fifteen-minute intervals. One person may have been left behind and may have made his way back to the instruments.”

  Benastra shook his head and muttered something under his breath.

  The screen shifted again and Dors said sharply, “What’s that?” She was pointing.

  “I don’t know. Noise.”

  “No. It’s periodic. Could it be a single person’s footsteps?”

  “Sure, but it could be a dozen other things too.”

  “It’s coming along at about the time of footsteps, isn’t it?” Then, after a while, she said, “Push it forward a little.”

  He did and when the screen settled down she said, “Aren’t those unevennesses getting bigger?”

  “Possibly. We can measure them.”

  “We don’t have to. You can see they’re getting bigger. The footsteps are approaching the transducer. Go forward again. See when they stop.”

  After a while Benastra said, “They stopped twenty or twenty-five minutes ago.” Then cautiously, “Whatever they are.”

  “They’re footsteps,” said Dors with mountain-moving conviction. “There’s a man up there and while you and I have been fooling around here, he’s collapsed and he’s going to freeze and die. Now don’t say, ‘Whatever they are!’ Just call Meteorology and get me Jenarr Leggen. Life or death, I tell you. Say so!”

  Benastra, lips quivering, had passed the stage where he could possibly resist anything this strange and passionate woman demanded.

  It took no more than three minutes to get Leggen’s hologram on the message platform. He had been pulled away from his dinner table. There was a napkin in his hand and a suspicious greasiness under his lower lip.

  His long face was set in a fearful scowl. “ ‘Life or death?’ What is this? Who are you?” Then his eye caught Dors, who had moved closer to Benastra so that her image would be seen on Jenarr’s screen. He said, “You again. This is simple harassment.”

  Dors said, “It is not. I have consulted Rogen Benastra, who is Chief Seismologist at the University. After you and your party had left Upperside, the seismograph shows clear footsteps of one person still there. It’s my student Hari Seldon, who went up there in your care and who is now, quite certainly, lying in a collapsed stupor and may not live long.

  “You will, therefore, take me up there right now with whatever equipment may be necessary. If you do not do so immediately, I shall proceed to University security—to the President himself, if necessary. One way or another I’ll get up there and if anything has happened to Hari because you delay one minute, I will see to it that you are hauled in for negligence, incompetence—whatever I can make stick—and will have you lose all status and be thrown out of academic life. And if he’s dead, of course, that’s manslaughter by negligence. Or worse, since I’ve now warned you he’s dying.”

  Jenarr, furious, turned to Benastra. “Did you detect—”

  But Dors cut in. “He told me what he detected and I’ve told you. I do not intend to allow you to bulldoze him into confusion. Are you coming? Now?”

  “Has it occurred to you that you may be mistaken?” said Jenarr, thin-lipped. “Do you know what I can do to you if this is a mischievous false alarm? Loss of status works both ways.”

  “Murder doesn’t,” said Dors. “I’m ready to chance a trial for malicious mischief. Are you ready to chance a trial for murder?”

  Jenarr reddened, perhaps more at the necessity of giving in than at the threat. “I’ll come, but I’ll have no mercy on you, young woman, if your student eventually turns out to have been safe within the dome these past three hours.”

  27

  The three went up the elevator in an inimical silence. Leggen had eaten only part of his dinner and had left his wife at the dining area without adequate explanation. Benastra had eaten no dinner at all and had possibly disappointed some woman companion, also without adequate explanation. Dors Venabili had not eaten either and she seemed the most tense and unhappy of the three. She carried a thermal blanket and two photonic founts.

  When they reached the entrance to Upperside, Leggen, jaw muscles tightening, entered his identification number and the door opened. A cold wind rushed at them and Benastra grunted. None of the three was adequately dressed, but the two men had no intention of remaining up there long.

  Dors said tightly, “It’s snowing.”

  Leggen said, “It’s wet snow. The temperature’s just about at the freezing point. It’s not a killing frost.”

  “It depends on how long one remains in it, doesn’t it?” said Dors. “And being soaked in melting snow won’t help.”

  Leggen grunted. “Well, where is he?” He stared resentfully out into utter blackness, made even worse by the light from the entrance behind him.

  Dors said, “Here, Dr. Benastra, hold this blanket for me. And you, Dr. Leggen, close the door behind you without locking it.”

  “There’s no automatic lock on it. Do you think we’re foolish?”

  “Perhaps not, but you can lock it from the inside and leave anyone outside unable to get into the dome.”

  “If someone’s outside, point him out. Show him to me,” said Leggen.

  “He could be anywhere.” Dors lifted her arms with a photonic fount circling each wrist.

  “We can’t look everywhere,” mumbled Benastra miserably.

  The founts blazed into light, spraying in every direction. The snowflakes glittered like a vast mob of fireflies, making it even more difficult to see.

  “The footsteps were getting steadily louder,” said Dors. “He had to be approaching the transducer. Where would it be located?”

  “I haven’t any idea,” snapped Leggen. “That’s outside my field and my responsibility.”

  “Dr. Benastra?”

  Benastra’s reply was hesitant. “I don’t really know. To tell you the truth, I’ve never been up here before. It was installed before my time. The computer knows, but we never thought to ask it that. —I’m cold and I don’t see what use I am up here.”

  “You’ll have to stay up here for a while,” said Dors firmly. “Follow me. I’m going to circle the entrance in an outward spiral.”

  “We can’t see much through the snow,” said Leggen.

  “I know that. If it wasn’t snowing, we’d have seen him by now. I’m sure of it. As it is, it may take a few minutes. We ca
n stand that.” She was by no means as confident as her words made it appear.

  She began to walk, swinging her arms, playing the light over as large a field as she could, straining her eyes for a dark blotch against the snow.

  And, as it happened, it was Benastra who first said, “What’s that?” and pointed.

  Dors overlapped the two founts, making a bright cone of light in the indicated direction. She ran toward it, as did the other two.

  They had found him, huddled and wet, about ten meters from the door, five from the nearest meteorological device. Dors felt for his heartbeat, but it was not necessary for, responding to her touch, Seldon stirred and whimpered.

  “Give me the blanket, Dr. Benastra,” said Dors in a voice that was faint with relief. She flapped it open and spread it out in the snow. “Lift him onto it carefully and I’ll wrap him. Then we’ll carry him down.”

  In the elevator, vapors were rising from the wrapped Seldon as the blanket warmed to blood temperature.

  Dors said, “Once we have him in his room, Dr. Leggen, you get a doctor—a good one—and see that he comes at once. If Dr. Seldon gets through this without harm, I won’t say anything, but only if he does. Remember—”

  “You needn’t lecture me,” said Leggen coldly. “I regret this and I will do what I can, but my only fault was in allowing this man to come Upperside in the first place.”

  The blanket stirred and a low, weak voice made itself heard.

  Benastra started, for Seldon’s head was cradled in the crook of his elbow. He said, “He’s trying to say something.”

  Dors said, “I know. He said, ‘What’s going on?’ ”

  She couldn’t help but laugh just a little. It seemed such a normal thing to say.

  28

  The doctor was delighted.

  “I’ve never seen a case of exposure,” he explained. “One doesn’t get exposed on Trantor.”

  “That may be,” said Dors coldly, “and I’m happy you have the chance to experience this novelty, but does it mean that you do not know how to treat Dr. Seldon?”

  The doctor, an elderly man with a bald head and a small gray mustache, bristled. “Of course, I do. Exposure cases on the Outer Worlds are common enough—an everyday affair—and I’ve read a great deal about them.”

  Treatment consisted in part of an antiviral serum and the use of a microwave wrapping.

  “This ought to take care of it,” the doctor said. “On the Outer Worlds, they make use of much more elaborate equipment in hospitals, but we don’t have that, of course, on Trantor. This is a treatment for mild cases and I’m sure it will do the job.”

  Dors thought later, as Seldon was recovering without particular injury, that it was perhaps because he was an Outworlder that he had survived so well. Dark, cold, even snow were not utterly strange to him. A Trantorian probably would have died in a similar case, not so much from physical trauma as from psychic shock.

  She was not sure of this, of course, since she herself was not a Trantorian either.

  And, turning her mind away from these thoughts, she pulled up a chair near to Hari’s bed and settled down to wait.

  29

  On the second morning Seldon stirred awake and looked up at Dors, who sat at his bedside, viewing a book-film and taking notes.

  In a voice that was almost normal, Seldon said, “Still here, Dors?”

  She put down the book-film. “I can’t leave you alone, can I? And I don’t trust anyone else.”

  “It seems to me that every time I wake up, I see you. Have you been here all the time?”

  “Sleeping or waking, yes.”

  “But your classes?”

  “I have an assistant who has taken over for a while.”

  Dors leaned over and grasped Hari’s hand. Noticing his embarrassment (he was, after all, in bed), she removed it.

  “Hari, what happened? I was so frightened.”

  Seldon said, “I have a confession to make.”

  “What is it, Hari?”

  “I thought perhaps you were part of a conspiracy—”

  “A conspiracy?” she said vehemently.

  “I mean, to maneuver me Upperside where I’d be outside University jurisdiction and therefore subject to being picked up by Imperial forces.”

  “But Upperside isn’t outside University jurisdiction. Sector jurisdiction on Trantor is from the planetary center to the sky.”

  “Ah, I didn’t know that. But you didn’t come with me because you said you had a busy schedule and, when I was getting paranoid, I thought you were deliberately abandoning me. Please forgive me. Obviously, it was you who got me down from there. Did anyone else care?”

  “They were busy men,” said Dors carefully. “They thought you had come down earlier. I mean, it was a legitimate thought.”

  “Clowzia thought so too?”

  “The young intern? Yes, she did.”

  “Well, it may still have been a conspiracy. Without you, I mean.”

  “No, Hari, it is my fault. I had absolutely no right to let you go Upperside alone. It was my job to protect you. I can’t stop blaming myself for what happened, for you getting lost.”

  “Now, wait a minute,” said Seldon, suddenly irritated. “I didn’t get lost. What do you think I am?”

  “I’d like to know what you call it. You were nowhere around when the others left and you didn’t get back to the entrance—or to the neighborhood of the entrance anyway—till well after dark.”

  “But that’s not what happened. I didn’t get lost just because I wandered away and couldn’t find my way back. I told you I was suspecting a conspiracy and I had cause to do so. I’m not totally paranoid.”

  “Well then, what did happen?”

  Seldon told her. He had no trouble remembering it in full detail; he had lived with it in nightmare for most of the preceding day.

  Dors listened with a frown. “But that’s impossible. A jet-down? Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. Do you think I was hallucinating?”

  “But the Imperial forces could not have been searching for you. They could not have arrested you Upperside without creating the same ferocious rumpus they would have if they had sent in a police force to arrest you on campus.”

  “Then how do you explain it?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Dors, “but it’s possible that the consequences of my failure to go Upperside with you might have been worse than they were and that Hummin will be seriously angry with me.”

  “Then let’s not tell him,” said Seldon. “It ended well.”

  “We must tell him,” said Dors grimly. “This may not be the end.”

  30

  That evening Jenarr Leggen came to visit. It was after dinner and he looked from Dors to Seldon several times, as though wondering what to say. Neither offered to help him, but both waited patiently. He had not impressed either of them as being a master of small talk.

  Finally he said to Seldon, “I’ve come to see how you are.”

  “Perfectly well,” said Seldon, “except that I’m a little sleepy. Dr. Venabili tells me that the treatment will keep me tired for a few days, presumably so I’m sure of getting needed rest.” He smiled. “Frankly, I don’t mind.”

  Leggen breathed in deeply, let it out, hesitated, and then, almost as though he was forcing the words out of himself, said, “I won’t keep you long. I perfectly understand you need to rest. I do want to say, though, that I am sorry it all happened. I should not have assumed—so casually—that you had gone down by yourself. Since you were a tyro, I should have felt more responsible for you. After all, I had agreed to let you come up. I hope you can find it in your heart to . . . forgive me. That’s really all I wish to say.”

  Seldon yawned, putting his hand over his mouth. “Pardon me. —Since it seems to have turned out well, there need be no hard feelings. In some ways, it was not your fault. I should not have wandered away and, besides, what happened was—”

  Dors in
terrupted. “Now, Hari, please, no conversation. Just relax. Now, I want to talk to Dr. Leggen just a bit before he goes. In the first place, Dr. Leggen, I quite understand you are concerned about how repercussions from this affair will affect you. I told you there would be no follow-up if Dr. Seldon recovered without ill effects. That seems to be taking place, so you may relax—for now. I would like to ask you about something else and I hope that this time I will have your free cooperation.”

  “I will try, Dr. Venabili,” said Leggen stiffly.

  “Did anything unusual happen during your stay Upperside?”

  “You know it did. I lost Dr. Seldon, something for which I have just apologized.”

  “Obviously I’m not referring to that. Did anything else unusual happen?”

  “No, nothing. Nothing at all.”

  Dors looked at Seldon and Seldon frowned. It seemed to him that Dors was trying to check on his story and get an independent account. Did she think he was imagining the search vessel? He would have liked to object heatedly, but she had raised a quieting hand at him, as though she was preventing that very eventuality. He subsided, partly because of this and partly because he really wanted to sleep. He hoped that Leggen would not stay long.

  “Are you certain?” said Dors. “Were there no intrusions from outside?”

  “No, of course not. Oh—”

  “Yes, Dr. Leggen?”

  “There was a jet-down.”

  “Did that strike you as peculiar?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Why not?”

  “This sounds very much as though I’m being cross-examined, Dr. Venabili. I don’t much like it.”

  “I can appreciate that, Dr. Leggen, but these questions have something to do with Dr. Seldon’s misadventure. It may be that this whole affair is more complicated than I had thought.”

  “In what way?” A new edge entered his voice. “Do you intend to raise new questions, requiring new apologies? In that case, I may find it necessary to withdraw.”