Prelude to Foundation

Seldon nodded.

“We have holovision receivers up here, so he knew it was cloudy—worse than usual—and I guess he was hoping there would be something wrong with the instruments so that it would be their fault and not that of his theory. So far, though, they haven’t found anything out of the way.”

“And that’s why he looks so unhappy.”

“Well, he never looks happy.”

Seldon looked about, squinting. Despite the clouds, the light was harsh. He became aware that the surface under his feet was not quite horizontal. He was standing on a shallow dome and as he looked outward there were other domes in all directions, with different widths and heights.

“Upperside seems to be irregular,” he said.

“Mostly, I think. That’s the way it worked out.”

“Any reason for it?”

“Not really. The way I’ve heard it explained—I looked around and asked, just as you did, you know—was that originally the people on Trantor domed in places, shopping malls, sports arenas, things like that, then whole towns, so that there were lots of domes here and there, with different heights and different widths. When they all came together, it was all uneven, but by that time, people decided that’s the way it ought to be.”

“You mean that something quite accidental came to be viewed as a tradition?”

“I suppose so—if you want to put it that way.”

(If something quite accidental can easily become viewed as a tradition and be made unbreakable or nearly so, thought Seldon, would that be a law of psychohistory? It sounded trivial, but how many other laws, equally trivial, might there be? A million? A billion? Were there a relatively few general laws from which these trivial ones could be derived as corollaries? How could he say? For a while, lost in thought, he almost forgot the biting wind.)

Clowzia was aware of that wind, however, for she shuddered and said, “It’s very nasty. It’s much better under the dome.”

“Are you a Trantorian?” asked Seldon.

“That’s right.”

Seldon remembered Randa’s dismissal of Trantorians as agoraphobic and said, “Do you mind being up here?”

“I hate it,” said Clowzia, “but I want my degree and my specialty and status and Dr. Leggen says I can’t get it without some field work. So here I am, hating it, especially when it’s so cold. When it’s this cold, by the way, you wouldn’t dream that vegetation actually grows on these domes, would you?”

“It does?” He looked at Clowzia sharply, suspecting some sort of practical joke designed to make him look foolish. She looked totally innocent, but how much of that was real and how much was just her baby face?

“Oh sure. Even here, when it’s warmer. You notice the soil here? We keep it swept away because of our work, as I said, but in other places it accumulates here and there and is especially deep in the low places where the domes meet. Plants grow in it.”

“But where does the soil come from?”

“When the domes covered just part of the planet, the wind deposited soil on them, little by little. Then, when Trantor was all covered and the living levels were dug deeper and deeper, some of the material dug up, if suitable, would be spread over the top.”

“Surely, it would break down the domes.”

“Oh no. The domes are very strong and they’re supported almost everywhere. The idea was, according to a book-film I viewed, that they were going to grow crops Upperside, but it turned out to be much more practical to do it inside the dome. Yeast and algae could be cultivated within the domes too, taking the pressure off the usual crops, so it was decided to let Upperside go wild. There are animals on Upperside too—butterflies, bees, mice, rabbits. Lots of them.”

“Won’t the plant roots damage the domes?”

“In thousands of years they haven’t. The domes are treated so that they repel the roots. Most of the growth is grass, but there are trees too. You’d be able to see for yourself if this were the warm season or if we were farther south or if you were up in a spaceship.” She looked at him with a sidewise flick of her eyes, “Did you see Trantor when you were coming down from space?”

“No, Clowzia, I must confess I didn’t. The hypership was never well placed for viewing. Have you ever seen Trantor from space?”

She smiled weakly. “I’ve never been in space.”

Seldon looked about. Gray everywhere.

“I can’t make myself believe it,” he said. “About vegetation Upperside, I mean.”

“It’s true, though. I’ve heard people say—Otherworlders, like yourself, who did see Trantor from space—that the planet looks green, like a lawn, because it’s mostly grass and underbrush. There are trees too, actually. There’s a copse not very far from here. I’ve seen it. They’re evergreens and they’re up to six meters high.”

“Where?”

“You can’t see it from here. It’s on the other side of a dome. It’s—”

The call came out thinly. (Seldon realized they had been walking while they had been talking and had moved away from the immediate vicinity of the others.) “Clowzia. Get back here. We need you.”

Clowzia said, “Uh-oh. Coming. —Sorry, Dr. Seldon, I have to go.” She ran off, managing to step lightly despite her lined boots.

Had she been playing with him? Had she been filling the gullible foreigner with a mess of lies for amusement’s sake? Such things had been known to happen on every world and in every time. An air of transparent honesty was no guide either; in fact, successful taletellers would deliberately cultivate just such an air.

So could there really be six-meter trees Upperside? Without thinking much about it, he moved in the direction of the highest dome on the horizon. He swung his arms in an attempt to warm himself. And his feet were getting cold.

Clowzia hadn’t pointed. She might have, to give him a hint of the direction of the trees, but she didn’t. Why didn’t she? To be sure, she had been called away.

The domes were broad rather than high, which was a good thing, since otherwise the going would have been considerably more difficult. On the other hand, the gentle grade meant trudging a distance before he could top a dome and look down the other side.

Eventually, he could see the other side of the dome he had climbed. He looked back to make sure he could still see the meteorologists and their instruments. They were a good way off, in a distant valley, but he could see them clearly enough. Good.

He saw no copse, no trees, but there was a depression that snaked about between two domes. Along each side of that crease, the soil was thicker and there were occasional green smears of what might be moss. If he followed the crease and if it got low enough and the soil was thick enough, there might be trees.

He looked back, trying to fix landmarks in his mind, but there were just the rise and fall of domes. It made him hesitate and Dors’s warning against his being lost, which had seemed a rather unnecessary piece of advice then, made more sense now. Still, it seemed clear to him that the crease was a kind of road. If he followed it for some distance, he only had to turn about and follow it back to return to this spot.

He strode off purposefully, following the rounded crease downward. There was a soft rumbling noise above, but he didn’t give it any thought. He had made up his mind that he wanted to see trees and that was all that occupied him at the moment.

The moss grew thicker and spread out like a carpet and here and there grassy tufts had sprung up. Despite the desolation Upperside, the moss was bright green and it occurred to Seldon that on a cloudy, overcast planet there was likely to be considerable rain.

The crease continued to curve and there, just above another dome, was a dark smudge against the gray sky and he knew he had found the trees.

Then, as though his mind, having been liberated by the sight of those trees, could turn to other things, Seldon took note of the rumble he had heard before and had, without thinking, dismissed as the sound of