Foundation's Edge

Gendibal was amused. “They call themselves the Foundation. Have you ever heard of the Foundation?”

(He caught himself wondering what the Hamish knew or did not know of the Galaxy and why it never occurred to the Speakers to wonder about such things. —Or was it only he who had never wondered about such things—only he who assumed that the Hamish cared for nothing more than grubbing in the soil.)

Novi shook her head thoughtfully. “I have never heard of it, Master. When the schoolmaster taught me letter-lore—how to read, I mean—he told me there were many other worlds and told me the names of some. He said our Hamish world had the proper name of Trantor and that it once ruled all the worlds. He said Trantor was covered with gleaming iron and had an Emperor who was an all-master.”

Her eyes looked up at Gendibal with a shy merriment. “I unbelieve most of it, though. There are many stories the word-spinners tell in the meeting-halls in the time of longer nights. When I was a small girl, I believed them all, but as I grew older, I found that many of them were not true. I believe very few now; perhaps none. Even schoolmasters tell unbelievables.”

“Just the same, Novi, that particular story of the schoolmaster is true—but it was long ago. Trantor was indeed covered by metal and had indeed an Emperor who ruled all the Galaxy. Now, however, it is the people of the Foundation who will someday rule all the worlds. They grow stronger all the time.”

“They will rule all, Master?”

“Not immediately. In five hundred years.”

“And they will master the masters as well?”

“No, no. They will rule the worlds. We will rule them—for their safety and the safety of all the worlds.”

Novi was frowning again. She said, “Master, do these people of the Foundation have many of these remarkable ships?”

“I imagine so, Novi.”

“And other things that are very—astonishing?”

“They have powerful weapons of all kinds.”

“Then, Master, can they not take all the worlds now?”

“No, they cannot. It is not yet time.”

“But why can they not? Would the masters stop them?”

“We wouldn’t have to, Novi. Even if we did nothing, they could not take all the worlds.”

“But what would stop them?”

“You see,” began Gendibal, “there is a plan that a wise man once devised—”

He stopped, smiled slightly, and shook his head. “It is hard to explain, Novi. Another time, perhaps. In fact, when you see what will happen before we ever see Trantor again, you may even understand without my explaining.”

“What will happen, Master?”

“I am not sure, Novi. But all will happen well.”

He turned away and prepared to make contact with Compor. And, as he did so, he could not quite keep an inner thought from saying: At least I hope so.

He was instantly angry with himself, for he knew the source of that foolish and weakening drift of thought. It was the picture of the elaborate and enormous Foundation might in the shape of Compor’s ship and it was his chagrin at Novi’s open admiration of it.

Stupid! How could he let himself compare the possession of mere strength and power with the possession of the ability to guide events? It was what generations of Speakers had called “the fallacy of the hand at the throat.”

To think that he was not yet immune to its allures.

2.

Munn Li Compor was not in the least sure as to how he ought to comport himself. For most of his life, he had had the vision of all-powerful Speakers existing just beyond his circle of experience—Speakers, with whom he was occasionally in contact and who had, in their mysterious grip, the whole of humanity.

Of them all, it had been Stor Gendibal to whom, in recent years, he had turned for direction. It was not even a voice he had encountered most times, but a mere presence in his mind—hyperspeech without a hyper-relay.

In this respect, the Second Foundation had gone far beyond the Foundation. Without material device, but just by the educated and advanced power of the mind alone, they could reach across the parsecs in a manner that could not be tapped, could not be infringed upon. It was an invisible, indetectable network that held all the worlds fast through the mediation of a relatively few dedicated individuals.

Compor had, more than once, experienced a kind of uplifting at the thought of his role. How small the band of which he was one; how enormous an influence they exerted. —And how secret it all was. Even his wife knew nothing of his hidden life.

And it was the Speakers who held the strings—and this one Speaker, this Gendibal, who might (Compor thought) be the next First Speaker, the more-than-Emperor of a more-than-Empire.

Now Gendibal was here, in a ship of Trantor, and Compor fought to stifle his disappointment at not having such a meeting take place on Trantor itself.

Could that be a ship of Trantor? Any of the early Traders who had carried the Foundation’s wares through a hostile Galaxy would have had a better ship than that. No wonder it had taken the Speaker so long to cover the distance from Trantor to Sayshell.

It was not even equipped with a unidock mechanism that would have welded the two ships into one when the cross-transfer of personnel was desired. Even the contemptible Sayshellian fleet was equipped with it. Instead, the Speaker had to match velocities and then cast a tether across the gap and swing along it, as in Imperial days.

That was it, thought Compor gloomily, unable to repress the feeling. The ship was no more than an old- fashioned Imperial vessel—and a small one at that.

Two figures were moving across the tether—one of them so clumsily that it was clear it had never attempted to maneuver through space before.

Finally they were on board and removed their space suits. Speaker Stor Gendibal was of moderate height and of unimpressive appearance; he was not large and powerful, nor did he exude an air of learning. His dark, deep-set eyes were the only indication of his wisdom. But now the Speaker looked about with a clear indication of being in awe himself.

The other was a woman as tall as Gendibal, plain in appearance. Her mouth was open in astonishment as she looked about.

3.

Moving across the tether had not been an entirely unpleasant experience for Gendibal. He was not a spaceman—no Second Foundationer was—but neither was he a complete surface worm, for no Second Foundationer was allowed to be that. The possible need for space flight was, after all, always looming above them, though every Second Foundationer hoped the need would arise only infrequently. (Preem Palver—the extent of whose space travels was legendary—had once said, ruefully, that the measure of the success of a Speaker was the fewness of the times he was compelled to move through space in order to assure the success of the Plan.)

Gendibal had had to use a tether three times before. This was his fourth use and even if he had felt tension over the matter, it would have disappeared in his concern for Sura Novi. He needed no mentalics to see that stepping into nothingness had totally upset her.

“I be afeared, Master,” she said when he explained what would have to be done. “It be naughtness into which I will make footstep.” If nothing else, her sudden descent into thick Hamish dialect showed the extent of her