Foundation's Edge

Isaac Asimov

• Publisher: HarperVoyager
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780007381159
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Science Fiction
• Index: Literature

1

Councilman

1

‘I don’t believe it, of course,’ said Golan Trevize, standing on the wide steps of Seldon Hall and looking out over the city as it sparkled in the sunlight.

Terminus was a mild planet, with a high water/land ratio. The introduction of weather control had made it all the more comfortable and considerably less interesting, Trevize often thought.

‘I don’t believe any of it,’ he repeated and smiled. His white, even teeth gleamed out of his youthful face.

His companion and fellow Councilman, Munn Li Compor, who had adopted a middle name in defiance of Terminus tradition, shook his head uneasily. ‘What don’t you believe? That we saved the city?’

‘Oh, I believe that. We did, didn’t we? And Seldon said that we would, and he said we would be right to do so, and that he knew all about it five hundred years ago.’

Compor’s voice dropped and he said in a half-whisper, ‘Look, I don’t mind your talking like this to me, because I take it as just talk, but if you shout it out in crowds others will hear and, frankly, I don’t want to be standing near you when the lightning strikes. I’m not sure how precise the aim will be.’

Trevize’s smile did not waver. He said, ‘Is there harm in saying that the city is saved? And that we did it without a war?’

‘There was no one to fight,’ said Compor. He had hair of a buttery yellow, eyes of a sky blue, and he always resisted the impulse to alter those unfashionable hues.

‘Have you never heard of civil war, Compor?’ said Trevize. He was tall, his hair was black, with a gentle wave to it, and he had a habit of walking with his thumbs hitched into the soft-fibred sash he always wore.

‘A civil war over the location of the capital?’

‘The question was enough to bring on a Seldon Crisis. It destroyed Hannis’s political career. It put you and me into the Council last election and the issue hung –’ He twisted one hand slowly, back and forth, like a balance coming to rest on the level.

He paused on the steps, ignoring the other members of the government and the media, as well as the fashionable society types who had finagled an invitation to witness Seldon’s return (or the return of his image, at any rate).

All were walking down the stairs, talking, laughing, glorying in the correctness of everything, and basking in Seldon’s approval.

Trevize stood still and let the crowd swirl past him. Compor, having walked two steps ahead, paused – an invisible cord stretching between them. He said, ‘Aren’t you coming?’

‘There’s no hurry. They won’t start the Council meeting until Mayor Branno has reviewed the situation in her usual flat-footed, one-syllable-at-a-time way. I’m in no hurry to endure another ponderous speech. – Look at the city!’

‘I see it. I saw it yesterday, too.’

‘Yes, but did you see it five hundred years ago when it was founded?’

‘Four hundred ninety-eight,’ Compor corrected him automatically. ‘Two years from now, they’ll have the hemimillennial celebration and Mayor Branno will still be in the office at the time, barring events of, we hope, minor probability.’

‘We hope,’ said Trevize dryly. ‘But what was it like five hundred years ago when it was founded? One city! One small city, occupied by a group of men preparing an Encyclopedia that was never finished!’

‘Of course it was finished.’

‘Are you referring to the Encyclopedia Galactica we have now? What we have isn’t what they were working on. What we have is in a computer and it’s revised daily. Have you ever looked at the uncompleted original?’

‘You mean in the Hardin Museum?’

‘The Salvor Hardin Museum of Origins. Let’s have the full name, please, since you’re so careful about exact dates. Have you looked at it?’

‘No. Should I?’

‘No, it isn’t worth it. But anyway – there they were – a group of Encyclopedists, forming the nucleus of a town – one small town in a world virtually without metals, circling a sun isolated from the rest of the Galaxy, at the edge, the very edge. And now, five hundred years later, we’re a suburban world. The whole place is one big park, with all the metal we want. We’re at the centre of everything now!’

‘Not really,’ said Compor. ‘We’re still circling a sun isolated from the rest of the Galaxy. Still at the very edge of the Galaxy.’

‘Ah no, you’re saying that without thinking. That was the whole point of this little Seldon Crisis. We are more than the single world of Terminus. We are the Foundation, which sends out its tentacles Galaxy-wide and rules that Galaxy from its position at the very edge. We can do it because we’re not isolated, except in position, and that doesn’t count.’

‘All right. I’ll accept that.’ Compor was clearly uninterested and took another step downward. The invisible cord between them stretched farther.

Trevize reached out a hand as though to haul his companion up the steps again. ‘Don’t you see the significance, Compor? There’s this enormous change, but we don’t accept it. In our hearts we want the small Foundation, the small one-world operation we had in the old days – the days of iron heroes and noble saints that are gone forever.’

‘Come on!’

‘I mean it. Look at Seldon Hall. To begin with, in the first crises in Salvor Hardin’s day, it was just the Time Vault, a small auditorium in which the holographic image of Seldon appeared. That was all. Now it’s a colossal mausoleum, but is there a force-field ramp in the place? A slideway? A gravitic lift? – No, just these steps, and we walk down them and we walk up them as Hardin would have had to do. At odd and unpredictable times, we cling in fright to the past.’

He flung his arm outward passionately. ‘Is there any structural component visible that is metal? Not one. It wouldn’t do to have any since in Salvor Hardin’s day there was no native metal to speak of and hardly any imported metal. We even installed old plastic, pink with age, when we built this huge pile, so that visitors from other worlds can stop and say, “Galaxy! What lovely old plastic!” I tell you, Compor, it’s a sham.’

‘Is that what you don’t believe, then? Seldon Hall?’

‘And all its contents,’ said Trevize in a fierce whisper. ‘I don’t really believe there’s any sense in hiding here at the edge of the Universe, just because our ancestors did. I believe we ought to be out there, in the middle of everything.’

‘But Seldon says you’re wrong. The Seldon Plan is working out as it should.’

‘I know. I know. And every child on Terminus is brought up to believe that Hari Seldon formulated a Plan, that he foresaw everything five centuries ago, that he set up the Foundation in such a way that he could spot certain crises, and that his image would appear holographically at those crises, and tell us the minimum we had to know to go on to the next crisis, and thus lead us through a thousand years of history until we could safely build a Second and Greater Galactic Empire on the ruins of the old decrepit structure that was falling apart five centuries ago and had disintegrated completely by two centuries ago.’

‘Why are you telling me all this, Golan?’

‘Because I’m telling you it’s a sham. It’s all a sham. – Or if it was real to begin with, it’s a sham now! We are not our own masters. It is not we who are following the Plan.’

Compor looked at the other searchingly. ‘You’ve said things like this before, Golan, but I’ve always thought you were just saying ridiculous things to stir me up. By the Galaxy, I actually think you’re serious.’

‘Of course I’m serious!’

‘You can’t be. Either this is some complicated piece of fun at my expense or you’re out of your mind.’

‘Neither. Neither,’ said Trevize, quiet now, hitching his thumbs into his sash as though he no longer needed the gestures of hands to punctuate passion. ‘I speculated on it before, I admit, but that was just intuition. That farce in there this morning, however, has made it suddenly all quite plain to me and I intend, in turn, to make it quite plain to the Council.’

Compor said, ‘You are crazy!’

‘All right. Come with me and listen.’

The two walked down the stairs. They were the only ones left – the last to complete the descent. And as Trevize moved slightly to the fore, Compor’s lips moved silently, casting a voiceless word in the direction of the other’s back: ‘Fool!’

2

Mayor Harla Branno called the session of the Executive Council to order. Her eyes had looked with no visible sign of interest at the gathering; yet no one there doubted that she had noted all who were present and all who had not yet arrived.

Her grey hair was carefully arranged in a style that was neither markedly feminine nor imitation masculine. It was simply the way she wore it, no more. Her matter-of-fact face was not notable for beauty, but somehow it was never for beauty that one searched there.

She was the most capable administrator on the planet. No one could, or did, accuse her of the brilliance of the Salvor Hardins and the Hober Mallows whose histories enlivened the first two centuries of the Foundation’s existence, but neither would anyone associate her with the follies of the hereditary Indburs who had ruled the Foundation just prior to the time of the Mule.

Her speeches did not stir men’s minds, nor did she have a gift for the dramatic gesture, but she had a capacity for making quiet decisions and sticking by them as long as she was convinced she was right. Without any obvious charisma, she had the knack of persuading the voters those quiet decisions would be right.

Since by the Seldon doctrine, historical change is to a large degree difficult to swerve (always barring the unpredictable, something most Seldonists forget, despite the wrenching incident of the Mule), the Foundation might have retained its capital on Terminus under any conditions. That is a ‘might’, however. Seldon, in his just-finished appearance as a five-century-old simulacrum, had calmly placed the probability of remaining on Terminus at 87.2 percent.

Nevertheless, even to Seldonists, that meant there was a 12.8 percent chance that the shift to some point closer to the centre of the Foundation Federation would have been made, with all the dire consequences that Seldon had outlined. That this one-out-of-eight chance did not take place was surely due to Mayor Branno.

It was certain she would not have allowed it. Through periods of considerable unpopularity, she had held to her decision that Terminus was the traditional seat of the Foundation and there it would remain. Her political enemies had caricatured her strong jaw (with some effectiveness, it had to be admitted) as an underslung granite block.

And now Seldon had backed her point of view and, for a while at least, that would give her an overwhelming political advantage. She had been reported to have said a year earlier that if in the coming appearance Seldon did back her, she would consider her task successfully completed. She would then retire and take up the role of elder statesperson, rather than risk the dubious results of further political wars.

No one had really believed her. She was at home in the political wars to an extent few before her had been, and now that Seldon’s image had come and gone there was no hint of retirement about her.

She spoke in a perfectly clear voice with an unashamed Foundation accent (she had once served as Ambassador to Mandress, but had not adopted the old Imperial style of speech that was so fashionable now – and was part of what had been a quasi-Imperial drive to the Inner Provinces).

She said, ‘The Seldon Crisis is over and it is a tradition, and a wise one, that no reprisals of any kind – either in deed or in speech – be taken against those who supported the wrong side. Many honest people believed they had good reason for wanting that which Seldon did not want. There is no point in humiliating them to the point where they can retrieve their self-respect only by denouncing the Seldon Plan itself. In turn, it is a strong and desirable custom that those who supported the lost side accept the loss cheerfully and without further discussion. The issue is behind us, on both sides, forever.’

She paused, gazed levelly at the assembled faces for a moment, then went on, ‘Half the time has passed, people of the Council – half the thousand-year stretch between Empires. It has been a time of difficulties, but we have come a long way. We are, indeed, almost a Galactic Empire already and there remain no external enemies of consequence.

‘The Interregnum would have endured thirty thousand years, were it not for the Seldon Plan. After thirty thousand years of disintegration, it might be there would be no strength left with which to for...