Foundation's Edge f-6 Read online

  Her lower lip began to tremble under his scrutiny. He could sense her embarrassment and fright quite plainly and felt pity. She had, indeed, been of use to him yesterday and that was what counted.

  He said, in an attempt to be genial and soothing, “So you have come to see the—uh—Place of Scholars?”

  She opened her dark eyes wide (they were rather fine) and said, “Master, be not ired with me, but I come to be scowler own-self.”

  “You want to be a scholar?” Gendibal was thunderstruck. “My good woman—”

  He paused. How on Trantor could one explain to a completely unsophisticated farmwoman the level of intelligence, training, and mental stamina required to be what Trantorians called a “scowler”?

  But Sura Novi drove on fiercely. “I be a writer and a reader. I have read whole books to end and from beginning, too. And I have wish to be scowler. I do not wish to be farmer’s wife. I be no person for farm. I will not wed farmer or have farmer children.” She lifted her head and said proudly, “I be asked. Many times. I always say, ‘Nay.’ Politely, but ‘Nay.’ ”

  Gendibal could see plainly enough that she was lying. She had not been asked, but he kept his face straight. He said, “What will you do with your life if you do not marry?”

  Novi brought her hand down on the table, palm flat. “I will be scowler. I not be farmwoman.”

  “What if I cannot make you a scholar?”

  “Then I be nothing and I wait to die. I be nothing in life if I be not a scowler.”

  For a moment there was the impulse to search her mind and find out the extent of her motivation. But it would be wrong to do so. A Speaker did not amuse one’s self by rummaging through the helpless minds of others. There was a code to the science and technique of mental control—mentalics—as to other professions. Or there should be. (He was suddenly regretful he had struck out at the proctor.)

  He said, “Why not be a farmwoman, Novi?” With a little manipulation, he could make her content with that and manipulate some Hamish lout into being happy to marry her—and she to marry him. It would do no harm. It would be a kindness. —But it was against the law and thus unthinkable.

  She said, “I not be. A farmer is a clod. He works with earth-lumps, and he becomes earth-lump. If I be farmwoman, I be earth-lump, too. I will be timeless to read and write, and I will forget. My head,” she put her hand to her temple, “will grow sour and stale. No! A scowler be different. Thoughtful!” (She meant by the word, Gendibal noted, “intelligent” rather than “considerate.”)

  “A scowler,” she said, “live with books and with—with—I forget what they be name-said.” She made a gesture as though she were making some sort of vague manipulations that would have meant nothing to Gendibal—if he did not have her mind radiations to guide him.

  “Microfilms,” he said. “How do you know about microfilms?”

  “In books, I read of many things,” she said proudly.

  Gendibal could no longer fight off the desire to know more. This was an unusual Hamisher; he had never heard of one like this. The Hamish were never recruited, but if Novi were younger, say ten years old—

  What a waste! He would not disturb her; he would not disturb her in the least, but of what use was it to be a Speaker if one could not observe unusual minds and learn from them?

  He said, “Novi, I want you to sit there for a moment. Be very quiet. Do not say anything. Do not think of saying anything. Just think of falling asleep. Do you understand?”

  Her fright returned at once, “Why must I do this, Master?”

  “Because I wish to think how you might become a scholar.”

  After all, no matter what she had read, there was no possible way in which she could know what being a “scholar” truly meant. It was therefore necessary to find out what she thought a scholar was.

  Very carefully and with infinite delicacy he probed her mind; sensing without actually touching—like placing one’s hand on a polished metal surface without leaving fingerprints. To her a scholar was someone who always read books. She had not the slightest idea of why one read books. For herself to be a scholar—the picture in her mind was that of doing the labor she knew—fetching, carrying, cooking, cleaning, following orders—but on the University grounds where books were available and where she would have time to read them and, very vaguely, “to become learned.” What it amounted to was that she wanted to be a servant—his servant.

  Gendibal frowned. A Hamishwoman servant—and one who was plain, graceless, uneducated, barely literate. Unthinkable.

  He would simply have to divert her. There would have to be some way of adjusting her desires to make her content to be a farmwoman, some way that would leave no mark, some way about which even Delarmi could not complain.

  —Or had she been sent by Delarmi? Was all this a complicated plan to lure him into tampering with a Hamish mind, so that he might be caught and impeached?

  Ridiculous. He was in danger of growing paranoid. Somewhere in the simple tendrils of her uncomplicated mind, a trickle of mental current needed to be diverted. It would only take a tiny push.

  It was against the letter of the law, but it would do no harm and no one would ever notice.

  He paused.

  Back. Back. Back.

  Space! He had almost missed it!

  Was he the victim of an illusion?

  No! Now that his attention was drawn to it, he could make it out clearly. There was the tiniest tendril disarrayed—an abnormal disarray. Yet it was so delicate, so ramification-free.

  Gendibal emerged from her mind. He said gently, “Novi.”

  Her eyes focused. She said, “Yes, Master?”

  Gendibal said, “You may work with me. I will make you a scholar—”

  Joyfully, eyes blazing, she said, “Master—”

  He detected it at once. She was going to throw herself at his feet. He put his hands on her shoulders and held her tightly. “Don’t move, Novi. Stay where you are. —Stay!”

  He might have been talking to a half-trained animal. When he could see the order had penetrated, he let her go. He was conscious of the hard muscles along her upper arms.

  He said, “If you are to be a scholar, you must behave like one. That means you will have to be always quiet, always soft-spoken, always doing what I tell you to do. And you must try to learn to talk as I do. You will also have to meet other scholars. Will you be afraid?”

  “I be not afeared—afraid, Master, if you be with me.”

  “I will be with you. But now, first—I must find you a room, arrange to have you assigned a lavatory, a place in the dining room, and clothes, too. You will have to wear clothes more suitable to a scholar, Novi.”

  “These be all I—” she began miserably.

  “We will supply others.”

  Clearly he would have to get a woman to arrange for a new supply of clothing for Novi. He would also need someone to teach the Hamisher the rudiments of personal hygiene. After all, though the clothes she wore were probably her best and though she had obviously spruced herself up, she still had a distinct odor that was faintly unpleasant.

  And he would have to make sure that the relationship between them was understood. It was always an open secret that the men (and women, too) of the Second Foundation made occasional forays among the Hamish for their pleasure. If there was no interference with Hamish minds in the process, no one dreamed of making a fuss about it. Gendibal himself had never indulged in this, and he liked to think it was because he felt no need for sex that might be coarser and more highly spiced than was available at the University. The women of the Second Foundation might be pallid in comparison to the Hamish, but they were clean and their skins were smooth.

  But even if the matter were misunderstood and there were sniggers at a Speaker who not only turned to the Hamish but brought one into his quarters, he would have to endure the embarrassment. As it stood, this farmwoman, Sura Novi, was his key to victory in the inevitable forthcoming duel with Speaker
Delarmi and the rest of the Table.

  4.

  Gendibal did not see Novi again till after dinnertime, at which time she was brought to him by the woman to whom he had endlessly explained the situation—at least, the nonsexual character of the situation. She had understood—or, at least, did not dare show any indication of failure to understand, which was perhaps just as good.

  Novi stood before him now, bashful, proud, embarrassed, triumphant—all at once, in an incongruous mixture.

  He said, “You look very nice, Novi.”

  The clothes they had given her fit surprisingly well and there was no question that she did not look at all ludicrous. Had they pinched in her waist? Lifted her breasts? Or had that just been not particularly noticeable in her farmwoman clothing?

  Her buttocks were prominent, but not displeasingly so. Her face, of course, remained plain, but when the tan of outdoor life faded and she learned how to care for her complexion, it would not look downright ugly.

  By the Old Empire, that woman did think Novi was to be his mistress. She had tried to make her beautiful for him.

  And then he thought: Well, why not?

  Novi would have to face the Speaker’s Table—and the more attractive she seemed, the more easily he would be able to get his point across.

  It was with this thought that the message from the First Speaker reached him. It had the kind of appropriateness that was common in a mentalic society. It was called, more or less informally, the “Coincidence Effect.” If you think vaguely of someone when someone is thinking vaguely of you, there is a mutual, escalating stimulation which in a matter of seconds makes the two thoughts sharp, decisive, and, to all appearances, simultaneous.

  It can be startling even to those who understand it intellectually, particularly if the preliminary vague thoughts were so dim—on one side or the other (or both)—as to have gone consciously unnoticed.

  “I can’t be with you this evening, Novi,” said Gendibal. “I have scholar work to do. I will take you to your room. There will be some books there and you can practice your reading. I will show you how to use the signal if you need help with anything—and I will see you tomorrow.”

  5.

  Gendibal said politely, “First Speaker?”

  Shandess merely nodded. He looked dour and fully his age. He looked as though he were a man who did not drink, but who could use a stiff one. He said finally, “I ‘called’ you—”

  “No messenger. I presumed from the direct ‘call’ that it was important.”

  “It is. Your quarry—the First Foundationer—Trevize—”

  “Yes?”

  “He is not coming to Trantor.”

  Gendibal did not look surprised. “Why should he? The information we received was that he was leaving with a professor of ancient history who was seeking Earth.”

  “Yes, the legendary Primal Planet. And that is why he should be coming to Trantor. After all, does the professor know where Earth is? Do you? Do I? Can we be sure it exists at all, or ever existed? Surely they would have to come to this Library to obtain the necessary information—if it were to be obtained anywhere. I have until this hour felt that the situation was not at crisis level—that the First Foundationer would come here and that we would, through him, learn what we need to know.”

  “Which would certainly be the reason he is not allowed to come here.”

  “But where is he going, then?”

  “We have not yet found out, I see.”

  The First Speaker said pettishly, “You seem calm about it.”

  Gendibal said, “I wonder if it is not better so. You want him to come to Trantor to keep him safe and use him as a source of information. Will he not, however, prove a source of more important information, involving others still more important than himself, if he goes where he wants to go and does what he wants to do—provided we do not lose sight of him?”

  “Not enough!” said the First Speaker. “You have persuaded me of the existence of this new enemy of ours and now I cannot rest. Worse, I have persuaded myself that we must secure Trevize or we have lost everything. I cannot rid myself of the feeling that he—and nothing else—is the key.”

  Gendibal said intensely, “Whatever happens, we will not lose, First Speaker. That would only have been possible, if these Anti-Mules, to use your phrase again, had continued to burrow beneath us unnoticed. But we know they are there now. We no longer work blind. At the next meeting of the Table, if we can work together, we shall begin the counterattack.”

  The First Speaker said, “It was not the matter of Trevize that had me send out the call to you. The subject came up first only because it seemed to me a personal defeat. I had misanalyzed that aspect of the situation. I was wrong to place personal pique above general policy and I apologize. There is something else.”

  “More serious, First Speaker?”

  “More serious, Speaker Gendibal.” The First Speaker sighed and drummed his fingers on the desk while Gendibal stood patiently before it and waited.

  The First Speaker finally said, in a mild way, as though that would ease the blow, “At an emergency meeting of the Table, initiated by Speaker Delarmi—”

  “Without your consent, First Speaker?”

  “For what she wanted, she needed the consent of only three other Speakers, not including myself. At the emergency meeting that was then called, you were impeached, Speaker Gendibal. You have been accused as being unworthy of the post of Speaker and you must be tried. This is the first time in over three centuries that a bill of impeachment has been carried out against a Speaker—”

  Gendibal said, fighting to keep down any sign of anger, “Surely you did not vote for my impeachment yourself.”

  “I did not, but I was alone. The rest of the Table was unanimous and the vote was ten to one for impeachment. The requirement for impeachment, as you know, is eight votes including the First Speaker—or ten without him.”

  “But I was not present.”

  “You would not have been able to vote.”

  “I might have spoken in my defense.”

  “Not at that stage. The precedents are few, but clear. Your defense will be at the trial, which will come as soon as possible, naturally.”

  Gendibal bowed his head in thought. Then he said, “This does not concern me overmuch, First Speaker. Your initial instinct, I think, was right. The matter of Trevize takes precedence. May I suggest you delay the trial on that ground?”

  The First Speaker held up his hand. “I don’t blame you for not understanding the situation, Speaker. Impeachment is so rare an event that I myself have been forced to look up the legal procedures involved. Nothing takes precedence. We are forced to move directly to the trial, postponing everything else.”

  Gendibal placed his fists on the desk and leaned toward the First Speaker. “You are not serious?”

  “It is the law.”

  “The law can’t be allowed to stand in the way of a clear and present danger.”

  “To the Table, Speaker Gendibal, you are the clear and present danger. —No, listen to me! The law that is involved is based on the conviction that nothing can be more important than the possibility of corruption or the misuse of power on the part of a Speaker.”

  “But I am guilty of neither, First Speaker, and you knew it. This is a matter of a personal vendetta on the part of Speaker Delarmi. If there is misuse of power, it is on her part. My crime is that I have never labored to make myself popular—I admit that much—and I have paid too little attention to fools who are old enough to be senile but young enough to have power.”

  “Like myself, Speaker?”

  Gendibal sighed. “You see, I’ve done it again. I don’t refer to you, First Speaker. —Very well, then, let us have an instant trial, then. Let us have it tomorrow. Better yet, tonight. Let us get it over with and then pass on to the matter of Trevize. We dare not wait.”

  The First Speaker said, “Speaker Gendibal. I don’t think you understand the situation. We h
ave had impeachments before—not many, just two. Neither of those resulted in a conviction. You, however, will be convicted! You will then no longer be a member of the Table and you will no longer have a say in public policy. You will not, in fact, even have a vote at the annual meeting of the Assembly.”

  “And you will not act to prevent that?”

  “I cannot. I will be voted down unanimously. I will then be forced to resign, which I think is what the Speakers would like to see.”

  “And Delarmi will become First Speaker?”

  “That is certainly a strong possibility.”

  “But that must not be allowed to happen!”

  “Exactly! Which is why I will have to vote for your conviction.”

  Gendibal drew a deep breath. “I shall demand an instant trial.”

  “You must have time to prepare your defense.”

  “What defense? They will listen to no defense. Instant trial!”

  “The Table must have time to prepare their case.”

  “They have no case and will want none. They have me convicted in their minds and will require nothing more. In fact, they would rather convict me tomorrow than the day after—and tonight rather than tomorrow. Put it to them.”

  The First Speaker rose to his feet. They faced each other across the desk. The First Speaker said, “Why are you in such a hurry?”

  “The matter of Trevize will not wait.”

  “Once you are convicted and I am rendered feeble in the face of a Table united against me, what will have been accomplished?”