Prelude to Foundation

“Why not?”

“Believe me. You don’t want to go there.”

“But I’d like to see Mother Rittah.”

Amaryl shook his head. “Can you use a knife?”

“For what purpose? What kind of knife?”

“A cutting knife. Like this.” Amaryl reached down to the belt that held his pants tight about his waist. A section of it came away and from one end there flashed out a knife blade, thin, gleaming, and deadly.

Dors’s hand immediately came down hard upon his right wrist.

Amaryl laughed. “I wasn’t planning to use it. I was just showing it to you.” He put the knife back in his belt. “You need one in self-defense and if you don’t have one or if you have one but don’t know how to use it, you’ll never get out of Billibotton alive. Anyway”—he suddenly grew very grave and intent—“are you really serious, Master Seldon, about helping me get to Helicon?”

“Entirely serious. That’s a promise. Write down your name and where you can be reached by hyper- computer. You have a code, I suppose.”

“My shift in the heatsinks has one. Will that do?”

“Yes.”

“Well then,” said Amaryl, looking up earnestly at Seldon, “this means I have my whole future riding on you, Master Seldon, so please don’t go to Billibotton. I can’t afford to lose you now.” He turned beseeching eyes on Dors and said softly, “Mistress Venabili, if he’ll listen to you, don’t let him go. Please.”

BILLIBOTTON

DAHL— .?.?.?Oddly enough, the best-known aspect of this sector is Billibotton, a semilegendary place about which innumerable tales have grown up. In fact, a whole branch of literature now exists in which heroes and adventurers (and victims) must dare the dangers of passing through Billibotton. So stylized have these stories become that the one well-known and, presumably, authentic tale involving such a passage, that of Hari Seldon and Dors Venabili, has come to seem fantastic simply by association?.?.?.

ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA

66

When Hari Seldon and Dors Venabili were alone, Dors asked thoughtfully, “Are you really planning to see this ‘Mother’ woman?”

“I’m thinking about it, Dors.”

“You’re an odd one, Hari. You seem to go steadily from bad to worse. You went Upperside, which seemed harmless enough, for a rational purpose when you were in Streeling. Then, in Mycogen, you broke into the Elders’ aerie, a much more dangerous task, for a much more foolish purpose. And now in Dahl, you want to go to this place, which that young man seems to think is simple suicide, for something altogether nonsensical.”

“I’m curious about this reference to Earth—and must know if there’s anything to it.”

Dors said, “It’s a legend and not even an interesting one. It is routine. The names differ from planet to planet, but the content is the same. There is always the tale of an original world and a golden age. There is a longing for a supposedly simple and virtuous past that is almost universal among the people of a complex and vicious society. In one way or another, this is true of all societies, since everyone imagines his or her own society to be too complex and vicious, however simple it may be. Mark that down for your psychohistory.”

“Just the same,” said Seldon, “I have to consider the possibility that one world did once exist. Aurora .?.?. Earth .?.?. the name doesn’t matter. In fact—”

He paused and finally Dors said, “Well?”

Seldon shook his head. “Do you remember the hand-on-thigh story you told me in Mycogen? It was right after I got the Book from Raindrop Forty-Three?.?.?. Well, it popped into my head one evening recently when we were talking to the Tisalvers. I said something that reminded me, for an instant—”

“Reminded you of what?”

“I don’t remember. It came into my head and went out again, but somehow every time I think of the single-world notion, it seems to me I have the tips of my fingers on something and then lose it.”

Dors looked at Seldon in surprise. “I don’t see what it could be. The hand-on-thigh story has nothing to do with Earth or Aurora.”

“I know, but this .?.?. thing .?.?. that hovers just past the edge of my mind seems to be connected with this single world anyway and I have the feeling that I must find out more about it at any cost. That .?.?. and robots.”

“Robots too? I thought the Elders’ aerie put an end to that.”

“Not at all. I’ve been thinking about them.” He stared at Dors with a troubled look on his face for a long moment, then said, “But I’m not sure.”

“Sure about what, Hari?”

But Seldon merely shook his head and said nothing more.

Dors frowned, then said, “Hari, let me tell you one thing. In sober history—and, believe me, I know what I’m talking about—there is no mention of one world of origin. It’s a popular belief, I admit. I don’t mean just among the unsophisticated followers of folklore, like the Mycogenians and the Dahlite heatsinkers, but there are biologists who insist that there must have been one world of origin for reasons that are well outside my area of expertise and there are the more mystical historians who tend to speculate about it. And among the leisure-class intellectuals, I understand such speculations are becoming fashionable. Still, scholarly history knows nothing about it.”

Seldon said, “All the more reason, perhaps, to go beyond scholarly history. All I want is a device that will simplify psychohistory for me and I don’t care what the device is, whether it is a mathematical trick or a historical trick or something totally imaginary. If the young man we’ve just talked to had had a little more formal training, I’d have set him on the problem. His thinking is marked by considerable ingenuity and originality—”

Dors said, “And you’re really going to help him, then?”

“Absolutely. Just as soon as I’m in a position to.”

“But ought you to make promises you’re not sure you’ll be able to keep?”

“I want to keep it. If you’re that stiff about impossible promises, consider that Hummin told Sunmaster Fourteen that I’d use psychohistory to get the Mycogenians their world back. There’s just about zero chance of that. Even if I work out psychohistory, who knows if it can be used for so narrow and specialized a purpose? There’s a real case of promising what one can’t deliver.”

But Dors said with some heat, “Chetter Hummin was trying to save our lives, to keep us out of the hands of Demerzel and the Emperor. Don’t forget that. And I think he really would like to help the Mycogenians.”

“And I really would like to help Yugo Amaryl and I am far more likely to be able to help him than I am the Mycogenians, so if you justify the second, please don’t criticize the first. What’s more, Dors”—and his eyes flashed angrily—“I really would like to find Mother Rittah and I’m prepared to go alone.”

“Never!” snapped Dors. “If you go, I go.”