16
Raych was listening with an agonized impatience that he was trying not to show. He was sitting in an improvised cell, deep in the warrens of Billibotton, having been accompanied through alleys he no longer remembered. (
The man with him, clad in the green of the Joranumite Guard, was either a missionary, a brainwasher, or a kind of theologian-
“If the people of Dahl want to enjoy equality, they must show themselves worthy of it. Good rule, quiet behavior, seemly pleasures are all requirements. Aggressiveness and the bearing of knives are the accusations others make against us to justify their intolerance. We must be clean in word and—”
Raych broke in. “I agree with you, Guardsman Nee, every word. —But I must see Mr. Joranum.”
Slowly the guardsman shook his head. “You can’t ’less you got some appointment, some permission.”
“Look, I’m the son of an important professor at Streeling University, a mathematics professor.”
“Don’t know no professor. —I thought you said you was from Dahl.”
“Of course I am. Can’t you tell the way I talk?”
“And you got an old man who’s a professor at a big University? That don’t sound likely.”
“Well, he’s my foster father.”
The guardsman absorbed that and shook his head. “You know anyone in Dahl?”
“There’s Mother Rittah. She’ll know me.” (She had been very old when she had known him. She might be senile by now—or dead.)
“Never heard of her.”
(Who else? He had never known anyone likely to penetrate the dim consciousness of this man facing him. His best friend had been another youngster named Smoodgie—or at least that was the only name he knew him by. Even in his desperation, Raych could not see himself saying: “Do you know someone my age named Smoodgie?”)
Finally he said, “There’s Yugo Amaryl.”
A dim spark seemed to light Nee’s eyes. “Who?”
“Yugo Amaryl,” said Raych eagerly. “He works for my foster father at the University.”
“He a Dahlite, too? Everyone at the University Dahlites?”
“Just he and I. He was a heatsinker.”
“What’s he doing at the University?”
“My father took him out of the heatsinks eight years ago.”
“Well— I’ll send someone.”
Raych had to wait. Even if he escaped, where would he go in the intricate alleyways of Billibotton without being picked up instantly?
Twenty minutes passed before Nee returned with the corporal who had arrested Raych in the first place. Raych felt a little hope; the corporal, at least, might conceivably have some brains.
The corporal said, “Who is this Dahlite you know?”
“Yugo Amaryl, Corporal, a heatsinker who my father found here in Dahl eight years ago and took to Streeling University with him.”
“Why did he do that?”
“My father thought Yugo could do more important things than heatsink, Corporal.”
“Like what?”
“Mathematics. He—”
The corporal held up his hand. “What heatsink did he work in?”
Raych thought for a moment. “I was only a kid then, but it was at C-2, I think.”
“Close enough. C-3.”
“Then you know about him, Corporal?”
“Not personally, but the story is famous in the heatsinks and I’ve worked there, too. And maybe that’s how you’ve heard of it. Have you any evidence that you really know Yugo Amaryl?”
“Look. Let me tell you what I’d like to do. I’m going to write down my name on a piece of paper and my father’s name. Then I’m going to write down one word. Get in touch—any way you want—with some official in Mr. Joranum’s group—Mr. Joranum will be here in Dahl tomorrow—and just read him my name, my father’s name, and the one word. If nothing happens, then I’ll stay here till I rot, I suppose, but I don’t think that will happen. In fact, I’m sure that they will get me out of here in three seconds and that you’ll get a promotion for passing along the information. If you refuse to do this, when they find out I am here—and they will—you will be in the deepest possible trouble. After all, if you know that Yugo Amaryl went off with a big-shot mathematician, just tell yourself that same big-shot mathematician is my father. His name is Hari Seldon.”
The corporal’s face showed clearly that the name was not unknown to him.
He said, “What’s the one word you’re going to write down?”
“Psychohistory.”
The corporal frowned. “What’s that?”
“That doesn’t matter. Just pass it along and see what happens.”
The corporal handed him a small sheet of paper, torn out of a notebook. “All right. Write it down and we’ll see what happens.”
Raych realized that he was trembling. He wanted very much to know what would happen. It depended entirely on who it was that the corporal would talk to and what magic the word would carry with it.
17
Hari Seldon watched the raindrops form on the wrap-around windows of the Imperial ground-car and a sense of nostalgia stabbed at him unbearably.
It was only the second time in his eight years on Trantor that he had been ordered to visit the Emperor in the only open land on the planet—and both times the weather had been bad. The first time, shortly after he had arrived on Trantor, the bad weather had merely irritated him. He had found no novelty in it. His home world of Helicon had its share of storms, after all, particularly in the area where he had been brought up.
But now he had lived for eight years in make-believe weather, in which storms consisted of computerized cloudiness at random intervals, with regular light rains during the sleeping hours. Raging winds were replaced by zephyrs and there were no extremes of heat and cold—merely little changes that made you unzip the front of your shirt once in a while or throw on a light jacket. And he had heard complaints about even so mild a deviation.
But now Hari was seeing real rain coming down drearily from a cold sky—and he had not seen such a thing in years—and he loved it; that was the thing. It reminded him of Helicon, of his youth, of relatively carefree days, and he wondered if he might persuade the driver to take the long way to the Palace.
Impossible! The Emperor wanted to see him and it was a long enough trip by ground-car, even if one went in a straight line with no interfering traffic. The Emperor, of course, would not wait.
It was a different Cleon from the one Seldon had seen eight years before. He had put on about ten pounds and there was a sulkiness about his face. Yet the skin around his eyes and cheeks looked pinched and Hari recognized the results of one too many microadjustments. In a way, Seldon felt sorry for Cleon—for all his might and Imperial sway, the Emperor was powerless against the passage of time.
Once again Cleon met Hari Seldon alone—in the same lavishly furnished room of their first encounter. As was the custom, Seldon waited to be addressed.
After briefly assessing Seldon’s appearance, the Emperor said in an ordinary voice, “Glad to see you, Professor. Let us dispense with formalities, as we did on the former occasion on which I met you.”
“Yes, Sire,” said Seldon stiffly. It was not always safe to be informal, merely because the Emperor ordered you to be so in an effusive moment.
