Foundation and Earth

that is being held in our honor. I gather the Alphans are very proud of their music.”

Trevize grimaced. “Their pride will in no way make the music sound better to our ears.”

“Hear me out,” said Bliss. “I gather that their pride is that they play expertly on very archaic instruments. Very archaic. We may get some information about Earth by way of them.”

Trevize’s eyebrows shot up. “An interesting thought. And that reminds me that both of you may already have information. Janov, did you see this Monolee that Hiroko told us about?”

“Indeed I did,” said Pelorat. “I was with him for three hours and Hiroko did not exaggerate. It was a virtual monologue on his part and when I left to come to lunch, he clung to me and would not let me go until I promised to return whenever I could in order that I might listen to him some more.”

“And did he say anything of interest?”

“Well, he, too—like everybody else—insisted that Earth was thoroughly and murderously radioactive; that the ancestors of the Alphans were the last to leave and that if they hadn’t, they would have died. —And, Golan, he was so emphatic that I couldn’t help believing him. I’m convinced that Earth is dead, and that our entire search is, after all, useless.”

79.

Trevize sat back in his chair, staring at Pelorat, who was sitting on a narrow cot. Bliss, having risen from where she had been sitting next to Pelorat, looked from one to the other.

Finally, Trevize said, “Let me be the judge as to whether our search is useless or not, Janov. Tell me what the garrulous old man had to say to you—in brief, of course.”

Pelorat said, “I took notes as Monolee spoke. It helped reinforce my role as scholar, but I don’t have to refer to them. He was quite stream-of-consciousness in his speaking. Each thing he said would remind him of something else, but, of course, I have spent my life trying to organize information in the search of the relevant and significant, so that it’s second nature for me now to be able to condense a long and incoherent discourse—”

Trevize said gently, “Into something just as long and incoherent? To the point, dear Janov.”

Pelorat cleared his throat uneasily. “Yes, certainly, old chap. I’ll try to make a connected and chronological tale out of it. Earth was the original home of humanity and of millions of species of plants and animals. It continued so for countless years until hyperspatial travel was invented. Then the Spacer worlds were founded. They broke away from Earth, developed their own cultures, and came to despise and oppress the mother planet.

“After a couple of centuries of this, Earth managed to regain its freedom, though Monolee did not explain the exact manner in which this was done, and I dared not ask questions, even if he had given me a chance to interrupt, which he did not, for that might merely have sent him into new byways. He did mention a culture-hero named Elijah Baley, but the references were so characteristic of the habit of attributing to one figure the accomplishments of generations that there was little value in attempting to—”

Bliss said, “Yes, Pel dear, we understand that part.”

Again, Pelorat paused in midstream and reconsidered. “Of course. My apologies. Earth initiated a second wave of settlements, founding many new worlds in a new fashion. The new group of Settlers proved more vigorous than the Spacers, outpaced them, defeated them, outlasted them, and, eventually, established the Galactic Empire. During the course of the wars between the Settlers and the Spacers—no, not wars, for he used the word ‘conflict,’ being very careful about that—the Earth became radioactive.”

Trevize said, with clear annoyance, “That’s ridiculous, Janov. How can a world become radioactive? Every world is very slightly radioactive to one degree or another from the moment of formation, and that radioactivity slowly decays. It doesn’t become radioactive.”

Pelorat shrugged. “I’m only telling you what he said. And he was only telling me what he had heard—from someone who only told him what he had heard—and so on. It’s folk-history, told and retold over the generations, with who knows what distortions creeping in at each retelling.”

“I understand that, but are there no books, documents, ancient histories which have frozen the story at an early time and which could give us something more accurate than the present tale?”

“Actually, I managed to ask that question, and the answer is no. He said vaguely that there were books about it in ancient times and that they had long ago been lost, but that what he was telling us was what had been in those books.”

“Yes, well distorted. It’s the same story. In every world we go to, the records of Earth have, in one way or another, disappeared. —Well, how did he say the radioactivity began on Earth?”

“He didn’t, in any detail. The closest he came to saying so was that the Spacers were responsible, but then I gathered that the Spacers were the demons on whom the people of Earth blamed all misfortune. The radioactivity—”

A clear voice overrode him here. “Bliss, am I a Spacer?”

Fallom was standing in the narrow doorway between the two rooms, hair tousled and the nightgown she was wearing (designed to fit Bliss’s more ample proportions) having slid off one shoulder to reveal an undeveloped breast.

Bliss said, “We worry about eavesdroppers outside and we forget the one inside. —Now, Fallom, why do you say that?” She rose and walked toward the youngster.

Fallom said, “I don’t have what they have,” she pointed at the two men, “or what you have, Bliss. I’m different. Is that because I’m a Spacer?”

“You are, Fallom,” said Bliss soothingly, “but little differences don’t matter. Come back to bed.”

Fallom became submissive as she always did when Bliss willed her to be so. She turned and said, “Am I a demon? What is a demon?”

Bliss said over her shoulder, “Wait one moment for me. I’ll be right back.”

She was, within five minutes. She was shaking her head. “She’ll be sleeping now till I wake her. I should have done that before, I suppose, but any modification of the mind must be the result of necessity.” She added defensively, “I can’t have her brood on the differences between her genital equipment and ours.”

Pelorat said, “Someday she’ll have to know she’s hermaphroditic.”

“Someday,” said Bliss, “but not now. Go on with the story, Pel.”

“Yes,” said Trevize, “before something else interrupts us.”

“Well, Earth became radioactive, or at least its crust did. At that time, Earth had had an enormous population that was centered in huge cities that existed for the most part underground—”

“Now, that,” put in Trevize, “is surely not so. “It must be local patriotism glorifying the golden age of a planet, and the details were simply a distortion of Trantor in its golden age, when it was the Imperial capital of a Galaxy-wide system of worlds.”

Pelorat paused, then said, “Really, Golan, you mustn’t teach me my business. We mythologists know very well that myths and legends contain borrowings, moral lessons, nature cycles, and a hundred other distorting influences, and we labor to cut them away and get to what might be a kernel of truth. In fact, these same techniques must be applied to the most sober histories, for no one writes the clear and apparent truth—if such a thing can even be said to exist. For now, I’m telling you more or less what Monolee told me, though I suppose I am adding distortions of my own, try as I might not to do so.”

“Well, well,” said Trevize. “Go on, Janov. I meant no offense.”

“And I’ve taken none. The huge cities, assuming they existed, crumbled and shrank as the radioactivity slowly grew more intense until the population was but a remnant of what it had been, clinging precariously to regions that were relatively radiation-free. The population was kept down by rigid birth control and by the euthanasia of people over sixty.”

“Horrible,” said Bliss indignantly.

“Undoubtedly,” said Pelorat, “but that is what they did, according to Monolee, and that might be true, for it is certainly not complimentary to the Earthpeople and it is not likely that an uncomplimentary lie would be made up. The Earthpeople, having been despised and oppressed by the Spacers, were now despised and oppressed by the Empire, though here we may have exaggeration there out of self-pity, which is a very seductive emotion. There is