Foundation f-3

by Isaac Asimov

  Mallow breathed deeply. “As a spy?”

  “Not at all. As a trader—but with your eyes open. If you can find out where the power is coming from—I might remind you, since you’re a Smyrnian, that two of those lost trade ships had Smyrnian crews.”

  “When do I start?”

  “When will your ship be ready?”

  “In six days.”

  “Then that’s when you start. You’ll have all the details at the Admiralty.”

  “Right!” The trader rose, shook hands roughly, and strode out.

  Sutt waited, spreading his fingers gingerly and rubbing out the pressure; then shrugged his shoulders and stepped into the mayor’s office.

  The mayor deadened the visiplate and leaned back. “What do you make of it, Sutt?”

  “He could be a good actor,” said Sutt, and stared thoughtfully ahead.

  2

  It was evening of the same day, and in Jorane Sutt’s bachelor apartment on the twenty-first floor of the Hardin Building, Publis Manlio was sipping wine slowly.

  It was Publis Manlio in whose slight, aging body were fulfilled two great offices of the Foundation. He was Foreign Secretary in the mayor’s cabinet, and to all the outer suns, barring only the Foundation itself, he was, in addition, Primate of the Church, Purveyor of the Holy Food, Master of the Temples, and so forth almost indefinitely in confusing but sonorous syllables.

  He was saying, “But he agreed to let you send out that trader. It is a point.”

  “But such a small one,” said Sutt. “It gets us nothing immediately. The whole business is the crudest sort of stratagem, since we have no way of foreseeing it to the end. It is a mere paying out of rope on the chance that somewhere along the length of it will be a noose.”

  “True. And this Mallow is a capable man. What if he is not an easy prey to dupery?”

  “That is a chance that must be run. If there is treachery, it is the capable men that are implicated. If not, we need a capable man to detect the truth. And Mallow will be guarded. Your glass is empty.”

  “No, thanks. I’ve had enough.”

  Sutt filled his own glass and patiently endured the other’s uneasy reverie.

  Of whatever the reverie consisted, it ended indecisively, for the primate said suddenly, almost explosively, “Sutt, what’s on your mind?”

  “I’ll tell you, Manlio.” His thin lips parted. “We’re in the middle of a Seldon crisis.”

  Manlio stared, then said softly, “How do you know? Has Seldon appeared in the Time Vault again?”

  “That much, my friend, is not necessary. Look, reason it out. Since the Galactic Empire abandoned the Periphery, and threw us on our own, we have never had an opponent who possessed nuclear power. Now, for the first time, we have one. That seems significant even if it stood by itself. And it doesn’t. For the first time in over seventy years, we are facing a major domestic political crisis. I should think the synchronization of the two crises, inner and outer, puts it beyond all doubt.”

  Manlio’s eyes narrowed. “If that’s all, it’s not enough. There have been two Seldon crises so far, and both times the Foundation was in danger of extermination. Nothing can be a third crisis till that danger returns.”

  Sutt never showed impatience. “That danger is coming. Any fool can tell a crisis when it arrives. The real service to the state is to detect it in embryo. Look, Manlio, we’re proceeding along a planned history. We know that Hari Seldon worked out the historical probabilities of the future. We know that some day we’re to rebuild the Galactic Empire. We know that it will take a thousand years or thereabouts. And we know that in the interval we will face certain definite crises.

  “Now the first crisis came fifty years after the establishment of the Foundation, and the second, thirty years later than that. Almost seventy-five years have gone since. It’s time, Manlio, it’s time.”

  Manlio rubbed his nose uncertainly. “And you’ve made your plans to meet this crisis?”

  Sutt nodded.

  “And I,” continued Manlio, “am to play a part in it?”

  Sutt nodded again. “Before we can meet the foreign threat of atomic power, we’ve got to put our own house in order. These traders—”

  “Ah!” The primate stiffened, and his eyes grew sharp.

  “That’s right. These traders. They are useful, but they are too strong—and too uncontrolled. They are Outlanders, educated apart from religion. On the one hand, we put knowledge into their hands, and on the other, we remove our strongest hold upon them.”

  “If we can prove treachery?”

  “If we could, direct action would be simple and sufficient. But that doesn’t signify in the least. Even if treason among them did not exist, they would form an uncertain element in our society. They wouldn’t be bound to us by patriotism or common descent, or even by religious awe. Under their secular leadership, the outer provinces, which, since Hardin’s time, look to us as the Holy Planet, might break away.”

  “I see all that, but the cure—”

  “The cure must come quickly, before the Seldon crisis becomes acute. If nuclear weapons are without and disaffection within, the odds might be too great.” Sutt put down the empty glass he had been fingering. “This is obviously your job.”

  “Mine?”

  “I can’t do it. My office is appointive and has no legislative standing.”

  “The mayor—”

  “Impossible. His personality is entirely negative. He is energetic only in evading responsibility. But if an independent party arose that might endanger re-election, he might allow himself to be led.”

  “But, Sutt, I lack the aptitude for practical politics.”

  “Leave that to me. Who knows, Manlio? Since Salvor Hardin’s time, the primacy and the mayoralty have never been combined in a single person. But it might happen now—if your job were well done.”

  3

  And at the other end of town, in homelier surroundings, Hober Mallow kept a second appointment. He had listened long, and now he said cautiously, “Yes, I’ve heard of your campaigns to get trader representation in the council. But why me, Twer?”

  Jaim Twer, who would remind you any time, asked or unasked, that he was in the first group of Outlanders to receive a lay education at the Foundation, beamed.

  “I know what I’m doing,” he said. “Remember when I met you first, last year.”

  “At the Trader’s Convention.”

  “Right. You ran the meeting. You had those rednecked oxen planted in their seats, then put them in your shirtpocket and walked off with them. And you’re all right with the Foundation masses, too. You’ve got glamour—or, at any rate, solid adventure-publicity, which is the same thing.”

  “Very good,” said Mallow, dryly. “But why now?”

  “Because now’s our chance. Do you know that the Secretary of Education has handed in his resignation? It’s not out in the open yet, but it will be.”

  “How do you know?”

  “That—never mind—” He waved a disgusted hand. “It’s so. The Actionist party is splitting wide open, and we can murder it right now on a straight question of equal rights for traders; or, rather, democracy, pro- and anti-.”

  Mallow lounged back in his chair and stared at his thick fingers. “Uh-uh. Sorry, Twer. I’m leaving next week on business. You’ll have to get someone else.”

  Twer stared. “Business? What kind of business?”

  “Very super-secret. Triple-A priority. All that, you know. Had a talk with the mayor’s own secretary.”

  “Snake Sutt?” Jaim Twer grew excited. “A trick. The son-of-a-spacer is getting rid of you. Mallow—”

  “Hold on!” Mallow’s hand fell on the other’s balled fist. “Don’t go into a blaze. If it’s a trick, I’ll be back some day for the reckoning. If it isn’t, your snake, Sutt, is playing into our hands. Listen, there’s a Seldon crisis coming up.”

  Mallow waited for a reaction but it never came. Twer merely stared. “What’s
a Seldon crisis?”

  “Galaxy!” Mallow exploded angrily at the anticlimax. “What the blue blazes did you do when you went to school? What do you mean anyway by a fool question like that?”

  The elder man frowned, “If you’ll explain—”

  There was a long pause, then, “I’ll explain.” Mallow’s eyebrows lowered, and he spoke slowly. “When the Galactic Empire began to die at the edges, and when the ends of the Galaxy reverted to barbarism and dropped away, Hari Seldon and his band of psychologists planted a colony, the Foundation, out here in the middle of the mess, so that we could incubate art, science, and technology, and form the nucleus of the Second Empire.”

  “Oh, yes, yes—”

  “I’m not finished,” said the trader, coldly. “The future course of the Foundation was plotted according to the science of psychohistory, then highly developed, and conditions arranged so as to bring about a series of crises that will force us most rapidly along the route to future Empire. Each crisis, each Seldon crisis, marks an epoch in our history. We’re approaching one now—our third.”

  Twer shrugged. “I suppose this was mentioned in school, but I’ve been out of school a long time—longer than you.”

  “I suppose so. Forget it. What matters is that I’m being sent out into the middle of the development of this crisis. There’s no telling what I’ll have when I come back, and there is a council election every year.”

  Twer looked up. “Are you on the track of anything?”

  “No.”

  “You have definite plans?”

  “Not the faintest inkling of one.”

  “Well—”

  “Well, nothing. Hardin once said: ‘To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.’ I’ll improvise.”

  Twer shook his head uncertainly, and they stood, looking at each other.

  Mallow said, quite suddenly, but quite matter-of-factly, “I tell you what, how about coming with me? Don’t stare, man. You’ve been a trader before you decided there was more excitement in politics. Or so I’ve heard.”

  “Where are you going? Tell me that.”

  “Towards the Whassallian Rift. I can’t be more specific till we’re out in space. What do you say?”

  “Suppose Sutt decides he wants me where he can see me.”

  “Not likely. If he’s anxious to get rid of me, why not of you as well? Besides which, no trader would hit space if he couldn’t pick his own crew. I take whom I please.”

  There was a queer glint in the older man’s eyes, “All right. I’ll go.” He held out his hand. “It’ll be my first trip in three years.”

  Mallow grasped and shook the other’s hand. “Good! All fired good! And now I’ve got to round up the boys. You know where the Far Star docks, don’t you? Then show up tomorrow. Good-by.”

  4

  Korell is that frequent phenomenon in history: the republic whose ruler has every attribute of the absolute monarch but the name. It therefore enjoyed the usual despotism unrestrained even by those two moderating influences in the legitimate monarchies: regal “honor” and court etiquette.

  Materially, its prosperity was low. The day of the Galactic Empire had departed, with nothing but silent memorials and broken structures to testify to it. The day of the Foundation had not yet come—and in the fierce determination of its ruler, the Commdor Asper Argo, with his strict regulation of the traders and his stricter prohibition of the missionaries, it was never coming.

  The spaceport itself was decrepit and decayed, and the crew of the Far Star were drearily aware of that. The moldering hangars made for a moldering atmosphere and Jaim Twer itched and fretted over a game of solitaire.

  Hober Mallow said thoughtfully, “Good trading material here.” He was staring quietly out the viewport. So far, there was little else to be said about Korell. The trip here was uneventful. The squadron of Korellian ships that had shot out to intercept the Far Star had been tiny, limping relics of ancient glory or battered, clumsy hulks. They had maintained their distance fearfully, and still maintained it, and for a week now, Mallow’s requests for an audience with the local government had been unanswered.

  Mallow repeated, “Good trading here. You might call this virgin territory.”

  Jaim Twer looked up impatiently, and threw his cards aside. “What the devil do you intend doing, Mallow? The crew’s grumbling, the officers are worried, and I’m wondering—”

  “Wondering? About what?”

  “About the situation. And about you. What are we doing?”

  “Waiting.”

  The old trader snorted and grew red. He growled, “You’re going it blind, Mallow. There’s a guard around the field and there are ships overhead. Suppose they’re getting ready to blow us into a hole in the ground.”

  “They’ve had a week.”

  “Maybe they’re waiting for reinforcements.” Twer’s eyes were sharp and hard.

  Mallow sat down abruptly. “Yes, I’d thought of that. You see, it poses a pretty problem. First, we got here without trouble. That may mean nothing, however, for only three ships out of better than three hundred went a-glimmer last year. The percentage is low. But that may mean also that the number of their ships equipped with nuclear power is small, and that they dare not expose them needlessly, until that number grows.

  “But it could mean, on the other hand, that they haven’t nuclear power after all. Or maybe they have and are keeping undercover, for fear we know something. It’s one thing, after all, to piratize blundering, light-armed merchant ships. It’s another to fool around with an accredited envoy of the Foundation when the mere fact of his presence may mean the Foundation is growing suspicious.

  “Combine this—”

  “Hold on, Mallow, hold on.” Twer raised his hands. “You’re just about drowning me with talk. What’re you getting at? Never mind the in-betweens.”

  “You’ve got to have the in-betweens, or you won’t understand, Twer. We’re both waiting. They don’t know what I’m doing here and I don’t know what they’ve got here. But I’m in the weaker position because I’m one and they’re an entire world—maybe with atomic power. I can’t afford to be the one to weaken. Sure it’s dangerous. Sure there may be a hole in the ground waiting for us. But we knew that from the start. What else is there to do?”

  “I don’t—Who’s that, now?”

  Mallow looked up patiently, and tuned the receiver. The visiplate glowed into the craggy face of the watch sergeant.

  “Speak, sergeant.”

  The sergeant said, “Pardon, sir. The men have given entry to a Foundation missionary.”

  “A what?” Mallow’s face grew livid.

  “A missionary, sir. He’s in need of hospitalization, sir—”

  “There’ll be more than one in need of that, sergeant, for this piece of work. Order the men to battle stations.”

  Crew’s lounge was almost empty. Five minutes after the order, even the men on the off-shift were at their guns. It was speed that was the great virtue in the anarchic regions of the interstellar space of the Periphery, and it was in speed above all that the crew of a master trader excelled.

  Mallow entered slowly, and stared the missionary up and down and around. His eye slid to Lieutenant Tinter, who shifted uneasily to one side and to Watch-Sergeant Demen, whose blank face and stolid figure flanked the other.

  The Master Trader turned to Twer and paused thoughtfully. “Well, then, Twer, get the officers here quietly, except for the co-ordinators and the trajectorian. The men are to remain at stations till further orders.”

  There was a five-minute hiatus, in which Mallow kicked open the doors to the lavatories, looked behind the bar, pulled the draperies across the thick windows. For half a minute he left the room altogether, and when he returned he was humming abstractedly.

  Men filed in. Twer followed, and closed the door silently.

  Mallow said quietly, “First, who let this man in without orders from me?”

  T
he watch sergeant stepped forward. Every eye shifted. “Pardon, sir. It was no definite person. It was a sort of mutual agreement. He was one of us, you might say, and these foreigners here—”

  Mallow cut him short. “I sympathize with your feelings, sergeant, and understand them. These men, were they under your command?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When this is over, they’re to be confined to individual quarters for a week. You yourself are relieved of all supervisory duties for a similar period. Understood?”

  The sergeant’s face never changed, but there was the slightest droop to his shoulders. He said, crisply, “Yes, sir.”

  “You may leave. Get to your gun-station.”

  The door closed behind him and the babble rose.

  Twer broke in. “Why the punishment, Mallow? You know that these Korellians kill captured missionaries.”

  “An action against my orders is bad in itself whatever other reasons there may be in its favor. No one was to leave or enter the ship without permission.”

  Lieutenant Tinter murmured rebelliously, “Seven days without action. You can’t maintain discipline that way.”

  Mallow said icily, “I can. There’s no merit in discipline under ideal circumstances. I’ll have it in the face of death, or it’s useless. Where’s this missionary? Get him here in front of me.”

  The trader sat down, while the scarlet-cloaked figure was carefully brought forward.

  “What’s your name, reverend?”

  “Eh?” The scarlet-robed figure wheeled towards Mallow, the whole body turning as a unit. His eyes were blankly open and there was a bruise on one temple. He had not spoken, nor, as far as Mallow could tell, moved during all the previous interval.