Prelude to Foundation

Raych entered, looking about, clearly intimidated. The forefinger of his right hand reached for his upper lip as though wondering when he would begin to feel the first downy hairs there.

He turned to the clearly outraged Mistress Tisalver and bowed clumsily. “Thank ya, Missus. Ya got a lovely place.”

Then, as the door slammed behind him, he turned to Seldon and Dors with an air of easy connoisseurship. “Nice place, guys.”

“I’m glad you like it,” said Seldon solemnly. “How did you know we were here?”

“Followed ya. How’d ya think? Hey, lady”—he turned to Dors—“you don’t fight like no dame.”

“Have you watched many dames fight?” asked Dors, amused.

Raych rubbed his nose, “No, never seen none whatever. They don’t carry knives, except little ones to scare kids with. Never scared me.”

“I’m sure they didn’t. What do you do to make dames draw their knives?”

“Nothin’. You just kid around a little. You holler, ‘Hey, lady, lemme—’?”

He thought about it for a moment and said, “Nothin’.”

Dors said, “Well, don’t try that on me.”

“Ya kiddin’? After what ya did to Marron? Hey, lady, where’d you learn to fight that way?”

“On my own world.”

“Could ya teach me?”

“Is that what you came here to see me about?”

“Akchaly, no. I came to bring ya a kind of message.”

“From someone who wants to fight me?”

“No one wants to fight ya, lady. Listen, lady, ya got a reputation now. Everybody knows ya. You just walk down anywhere in old Billibotton and all the guys will step aside and let ya pass and grin and make sure they don’t look cross-eyed at ya. Oh, lady, ya got it made. That’s why he wants to see ya.”

Seldon said, “Raych, just exactly who wants to see us?”

“Guy called Davan.”

“And who is he?”

“Just a guy. He lives in Billibotton and don’t carry no knife.”

“And he stays alive, Raych?”

“He reads a lot and he helps the guys there when they get in trouble with the gov’ment. They kinda leave him alone. He don’t need no knife.”

“Why didn’t he come himself, then?” said Dors. “Why did he send you?”

“He don’t like this place. He says it makes him sick. He says all the people here, they lick the gov’ment’s—” He paused, looked dubiously at the two Outworlders, and said, “Anyway, he won’t come here. He said they’d let me in cause I was only a kid.” He grinned. “They almost didn’t, did they? I mean that lady there who looked like she was smellin’ somethin’?”

He stopped suddenly, abashed, and looked down at himself. “Ya don’t get much chance to wash where I come from.”

“It’s all right,” said Dors, smiling. “Where are we supposed to meet, then, if he won’t come here? After all— if you don’t mind—we don’t feel like going to Billibotton.”

“I told ya,” said Raych indignantly. “Ya get free run of Billibotton, I swear. Besides, where he lives no one will bother ya.”

“Where is it?” asked Seldon.

“I can take ya there. It ain’t far.”

“And why does he want to see us?” asked Dors.

“Dunno. But he says like this—” Raych half-closed his eyes in an effort to remember. “?‘Tell them I wanna see the man who talked to a Dahlite heatsinker like he was a human being and the woman who beat Marron with knives and didn’t kill him when she mighta done so.’ I think I got it right.”

Seldon smiled. “I think you did. Is he ready for us now?”

“He’s waiting.”

“Then we’ll come with you.” He looked at Dors with a trace of doubt in his eyes.

She said, “All right. I’m willing. Perhaps it won’t be a trap of some sort. Hope springs eternal—”

74

There was a pleasant glow to the evening light when they emerged, a faint violet touch and a pinkish edge to the simulated sunset clouds that were scudding along. Dahl might have complaints of their treatment by the Imperial rulers of Trantor, but surely there was nothing wrong with the weather the computers spun out for them.

Dors said in a low voice, “We seem to be celebrities. No mistake about that.”

Seldon brought his eyes down from the supposed sky and was immediately aware of a fair-sized crowd around the apartment house in which the Tisalvers lived.

Everyone in the crowd stared at them intently. When it was clear that the two Outworlders had become aware of the attention, a low murmur ran through the crowd, which seemed to be on the point of breaking out into applause.

Dors said, “Now I can see where Mistress Tisalver would find this annoying. I should have been a little more sympathetic.”

The crowd was, for the most part, poorly dressed and it was not hard to guess that many of the people were from Billibotton.

On impulse, Seldon smiled and raised one hand in a mild greeting that was met with applause. One voice, lost in the safe anonymity of the crowd, called out, “Can the lady show us some knife tricks?”

When Dors called back, “No, I only draw in anger,” there was instant laughter.

One man stepped forward. He was clearly not from Billibotton and bore no obvious mark of being a Dahlite. He had only a small mustache, for one thing, and it was brown, not black. He said, “Marlo Tanto of the ‘Trantorian HV News.’ Can we have you in focus for a bit for our nightly holocast?”

“No,” said Dors shortly. “No interviews.”

The newsman did not budge. “I understand you were in a fight with a great many men in Billibotton—and won.” He smiled. “That’s news, that is.”

“No,” said Dors. “We met some men in Billibotton, talked to them, and then moved on. That’s all there is to it and that’s all you’re going to get.”

“What’s your name? You don’t sound like a Trantorian.”

“I have no name.”

“And your friend’s name?”

“He has no name.”

The newsman looked annoyed, “Look, lady. You’re news and I’m just trying to do my job.”

Raych pulled at Dors’s sleeve. She leaned down and listened to his earnest whisper.

She nodded and straightened up again. “I don’t think you’re a newsman, Mr. Tanto. What I think you are is an Imperial agent trying to make trouble for Dahl. There was no fight and you’re trying to manufacture news concerning one as a way of justifying an Imperial expedition into Billibotton. I wouldn’t stay here if I were you. I don’t think you’re very popular with these people.”

The crowd had begun to mutter at Dors’s first words. They grew louder now and began to drift, slowly and in a menacing way, in the direction of Tanto. He looked nervously around and began to move away.

Dors raised her voice. “Let him go. Don’t anyone touch him. Don’t give him any excuse to report violence.”

And they parted before him.

Raych said, “Aw, lady, you shoulda let them rough him up.”