Foundation's Edge (7 page)

He felt like the “boy” that she had called him.

He was to be exiled with a historian who kept “dear fellowing” him and who seemed to be in a noiseless fit of joy over beginning a Galactic search for-Earth?

What in the name of the Mule’s grandmother was Earth?

He had asked. Of course! He had asked upon the moment of its mention.

He had said, “Pardon me, Professor. I am ignorant of your specialty and I trust you won’t be annoyed if I ask for an explanation in simple terms. What is Earth?”

Pelorat stared at him gravely while twenty seconds moved slowly past. He said, “It is a planet. The original planet. The one on which human beings first appeared, my dear fellow.”

Trevize stared. “First appeared? From where?”

“From nowhere. It’s the planet on which humanity developed through evolutionary processes from lower animals.”

Trevize thought about it, then shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

An annoyed expression crossed Pelorat’s face briefly. He cleared his throat and said, “There was a time when Terminus had no human beings upon it. It was settled by human beings from other worlds. You know that, I suppose?”

“Yes, of course,” said Trevize impatiently. He was irritated at the other’s sudden assumption of pedagogy.

“Very well. This is true of all the other worlds. Anacreon, Santanni, Kalgan - all of them. They were all, at some time in the past, founded. People arrived there from other worlds. It’s true even of Trantor. It may have been a great metropolis for twenty thousand years, but before that it wasn’t.”

“Why, what was it before that?”

“Empty? At least of human beings.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

“It’s true. The old records show it.”

“Where did the people come from who first settled Trantor?”

“No one is certain. There are hundreds of planets which claim to have been populated in the dim mists of antiquity and whose people present fanciful tales about the nature of the first arrival of humanity. Historians tend to dismiss such things and to brood over the `Origin Question.

“What is that? I’ve never heard of it.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. It’s not a popular historical problem now, I admit, but there was a time during the decay of the Empire when it roused a certain interest among intellectuals. Salvor Hardin mentions it briefly in his memoirs. It’s the question of the identity and location of the one Planet from which it all started. If ,we look backward in time, humanity flows inward from the most recently established worlds to older ones, to still older ones, until all concentrates on one-the original.”

Trevize thought at once of the obvious flaw in the argument. “Might there not have been a large number of originals?”

“Of course not. All human beings all over the Galaxy are of a single species. A single species cannot originate on more than one planet. Quite impossible.”

“How do you know?”

“In the first place-” Pelorat ticked off the first finger of his left hand with the first finger of his right, and then seemed to think better of what would undoubtedly have been a long and intricate exposition. He put both hands at his side and said with great earnestness, “My dear fellow, I give you my word of honor.”

Trevize bowed formally and said, “I would not dream of doubting it, Professor Pelorat. Let us say, then, that there is one planet of origin, but might there not be hundreds who lay claim to the honor?”

“There not only might be, there are. Yet every claim is without merit. Not one of those hundreds that aspire to the credit of priority shows any trace of a prehyperspatial society, let alone any trace of human evolution from prehuman organisms.”

“Then are you saying that there is a planet of origin, but that, for some reason, it is not making the claim?”

“You have hit it precisely.”

“And you are going to search for it?”

“We are. That is our mission. Mayor Branno has arranged it all. You will pilot our ship to Trantor.”

“To Trantor? It’s not the planet of origin. You said that much a while ago.”

“Of course Trantor isn’t. Earth is.”

“Then why aren’t you telling me to pilot the ship to Earth?”

“I am not making myself clear. Earth is a legendary name. It is enshrined in ancient myths. It has no meaning we can be certain of, but it is convenient to use the word as a one-syllable synonym for `the planet of origin of the human species.’ just which planet in real space is the one we are defining as `Earth’ is not known.”

“Will they know on Trantor?”

“I hope to find information there, certainly. Trantor possesses the Galactic Library, the greatest in the system.”

“Surely that Library has been searched by those people you said were interested in the `Origin Question’ in the time of the First Empire.”

Pelorat nodded thoughtfully, “Yes, but perhaps not well enough. I have learned a great deal about the `Origin Question’ that perhaps the Imperials of five centuries back did not know. I might search the old records with greater understanding, you see. I have been thinking about this for a long time and I have an excellent possibility in mind.”

“You have told Mayor Branno all this, I imagine, and she approves?”

“Approves? My dear fellow, she was ecstatic. She told me that Trantor was surely the place to find out all I needed to know.”

“No doubt,” muttered Trevize.

That was part of what occupied him that night. Mayor Branno was sending him out to find out what he could about the Second Foundation. She was sending him with Pelorat so that he might mask his real aim with the pretended search for Earth-a search that could carry him anywhere in the Galaxy. It was a perfect cover, in fact, and he admired the Mayor’s ingenuity.

But Trantor? Where was the sense in that? Once they were on Trantor, Pelorat would find his way into the Galactic Library and would never emerge. With endless stacks of books, films, and recordings, with innumerable computerizations and symbolic representations, he would surely never want to leave.

Besides that -

Ebling Mis had once gone to Trantor, in the Mule’s time. The story was that he had found the location of the Second Foundation there and had died before he could reveal it. But then, so had Arkady Darell, and she had succeeded in locating the Second Foundation. But the location she had found was on Terminus itself, and there the nest of Second Foundationers was wiped out. Wherever the Second Foundation was now would be elsewhere, so what more had Trantor to tell? If be were looking for the Second Foundation, it was best to go anywhere but Trantor.

Besides that -

What further plans Branno had, he did not know, but he was not in the mood to oblige her. Branno had been ecstatic, had she, about a trip to Trantor? Well, if Branno wanted Trantor, they were not going to Trantor! -Anywhere else. -But not Trantor!

And worn out, with the night verging toward dawn, Trevize fell at last into a fitful slumber.

Mayor Branno had had a good day on the one following the arrest of Trevize. She had been extolled far beyond her deserts and the incident was never mentioned.

Nevertheless, she knew well that the Council would soon emerge from its paralysis and that questions would be raised. She would have to act quickly. So, putting a great many matters to one side, she pursued the matter of Trevize.

At the time when Trevize and Pelorat were discussing Earth, Branno was facing Councilman Munn Li Compor in the Mayoralty Office. As he sat across the desk from her, perfectly at ease, she appraised him once again.

He was smaller and slighter than Trevize and only two years older. Both were freshmen Councilmen, young and brash, and that must have been the only thing that held them together, for they were different in all other respects.

Where Trevize seemed to radiate a glowering intensity, Compor shone with an almost serene self-confidence. Perhaps it was his blond hair and blue eyes, not at all common among Foundationers. They lent him an almost feminine delicacy that (Branno judged) made him less attractive to women than Trevize was. He was clearly vain of his looks, though, and made the most of them, wearing his hair rather long and making sure that it was carefully waved. He wore a faint blue shadowing under his eyebrows to accentuate the eye color. (Shadowing of various tints had become common among men these last ten years.)

He was no womanizer. He lived sedately with his wife, but had not yet registered parental intent and was not known to have a clandestine second companion. That, too, was different from Trevize, who changed housemates as often as he changed the loudly colored sashes for which he was notorious.

There was little about either young Councilman that Kodell’s department had not uncovered, and Kodell himself sat quietly in one corner of the room, exuding a comfortable good cheer as always.

Branno said, “Councilman Compor, you have done the Foundation good service, but unfortunately for yourself, it is not of the sort that can be praised in public or repaid in ordinary fashion.”

Compor smiled. He had white and even teeth, and Branno idly wondered, for one flashing moment if all the inhabitants of the Sirius Sector looked like that. Compor’s tale of stemming from that particular, rather peripheral, region went back to his maternal grandmother, who had also been blond-haired and blue-eyed and who had maintained that her mother was from the Sirius Sector. According to Kodell, however, there was no hard evidence in favor of that.

Women being what they were, Kodell had said, she might well have claimed distant and exotic ancestry to add to her glamour and her already formidable attractiveness.

“Is that how women are?” Branno had asked drily, and Kodell had smiled and muttered that he was referring to ordinary women, of course.

Compor said, “It is not necessary that the people of the Foundation know of my service-only that you do.”

“I know and I will not forget. What I also will not do is to let you assume that your obligations are now over. You have embarked on a complicated course and you must continue. We want more about Trevize.”

“I have told you all I know concerning him.”

“That may be what you would have me believe. That may even be what you truly believe yourself. Nevertheless, answer my questions. Do you know a gentleman named Janov Pelorat?”

For just a moment Compor’s forehead creased, then smoothed itself almost at once. He said carefully, “I might know him if I were to see him, but the name does not seem to cause any association within me.”

“He is a scholar.”

Compor’s mouth rounded into a rather contemptuous but unsounded “Oh?” as though he were surprised that the Mayor would expect him to know scholars.

Branno said, “Pelorat is an interesting person who, for reasons of his own, has the ambition of visiting Trantor. Councilman Trevize will accompany him. Now, since you have been a good friend of Trevize and .perhaps know his system of thinking, tell me- Do you think Trevize will consent to go to Trantor?”

Compor said, “If you see to it that Trevize gets on the ship, and if the ship is piloted to Trantor, what can he do but go there? Surely you don’t suggest he will mutiny and take over the ship.”

“You don’t understand. He and Pelorat will be alone on the ship and it will be Trevize at the controls.”

“You are asking whether he would go voluntarily to Trantor?”

“Yes, that is what I am asking.”

“Madam Mayor, how can I possibly know what he will do?”

“Councilman Compor, you have been close to Trevize. You know his belief in the existence of the Second Foundation. Has he never spoken to you of his theories as to where it might exist, where it might be found?”

“Never, Madam Mayor.”

“Do you think he will find it?”

Compor chuckled. “I think the Second Foundation, whatever it was and however important it might have been, was wiped out in the time of Arkady Darell. I believe her story.”

“Indeed? In that case, why did you betray your friend? If he were searching for something that does not exist, what harm could he have done by propounding his quaint theories?”

Compor said, “It is not the truth alone that can harm. His theories may have been merely quaint, but they might have succeeded in unsettling the people of Terminus and, by introducing doubts and fears as to the Foundation’s role in the great drama of Galactic history, have weakened its leadership of the Federation and its dreams of a Second Galactic Empire. Clearly you thought this yourself, or you would not have seized him on the floor of the Council, and you would not now be forcing him into exile without trial. Why have you done so, if I may ask, Mayor?”

“Shall we say that I was cautious enough to wonder if there were some faint chance that he might be right, and that the expression of his views might be actively and directly dangerous?”

Compor said nothing.

Branno said, “I agree with you, but I am forced by the responsibilities of my position to consider the possibility. Let me ask you again if you have any indication as to where he might think the Second Foundation exists, and where he might go.”

“I have none.”

“He has never given you any hints in that direction?”

“No, of course not.”

“Never? Don’t dismiss the thought easily. Think! Never?”

“Never,” said Compor firmly.

“No hints? No joking remarks? No doodles? No thoughtful abstractions at moments that achieve significance as you look back on them?”

“None. I tell you, Madam Mayor, his dreams of the Second Foundation are the most nebulous starshine. You know it, and you but waste your time and your emotions in your concern over it.”

“You are not by some chance suddenly changing sides again and protecting the friend you delivered into my hands?”

“No,” said Compor. “I turned him over to you for what seemed to me to be good and patriotic reasons. I have no reason to regret the action, or to change my attitude.”

“Then you can give me no hint as to where he might go once he has a ship at his disposal?”

“As I have already said-“

“And yet, Councilman,” and here the lines of the Mayor’s face so folded as to make her seem wistful, “I would like to know where he goes.”