Foundation's Edge (34 page)

Quintesetz said, “I was delighted to be of use.”

“You have been and if there’s anything we can do in exchange, name it.”

Quintesetz laughed gently. “If the good J.P. will be so kind as to refrain from mentioning my name in connection with any writing he does on our mystery, that will be sufficient repayment.”

Pelorat said eagerly, “You would be able to get the credit you deserve—and perhaps be more appreciated—if you were allowed to visit Terminus and even, perhaps, remain there as a visiting scholar at our university for an extended period. We might arrange that. Sayshell might not like the Federation, but they might not like refusing a direct request that you be allowed to come to Terminus to attend, let us say, a colloquium on some aspect of ancient history.”

The Sayshellian half-rose. “Are you saying you can pull strings to arrange that?”

Trevize said, “Why, I hadn’t thought of it, but J.P. is perfectly right. That would be feasible—if we tried. And, of course, the more grateful you make us, the harder we will try.”

Quintesetz paused, then frowned. “What do you mean, sir?”

“All you have to do is tell us about Gaia, S.Q.,” said Trevize. And all the light in Quintesetz’s face died.

Quintesetz looked down at his desk. His hand stroked absent-mindedly at his short, tightly curled hair. Then he looked at Trevize and pursed his lips tightly. It was as though he were determined not to speak.

Trevize lifted his eyebrows and waited and finally Quintesetz said in a strangled sort of way, “it is getting indeed late—quite glemmering.”

Until then he had spoken in good Galactic, but now his words took on a strange shape as though the Sayshellian mode of speech were pushing past his classical education.

“Glemmering, S.Q.?”

“It is nearly full night.”

Trevize nodded. “I am thoughtless. And I am hungry, too. Could you please join us for an evening meal, S.Q., at our expense? We could then, perhaps, continue our discussion—about Gaia.”

Quintesetz rose heavily to his feet. He was taller than either of the two men from Terminus, but he was older and pudgier and his height did not lend him the appearance of strength. He seemed more weary than when they had arrived.

He blinked at them and said, “I forget my hospitality. You are Outworlders and it would not be fitting that you entertain me. Come to my home. It is on campus and not far and, if you wish to carry on a conversation, I can do so in a more relaxed manner there than here. My only regret” (he seemed a little uneasy) “is that I can offer you only a limited meal. My wife and I are vegetarians and if you are meat-eating, I can Only express my apologies and regrets.”

Trevize said, “J.P. and I will be quite content to forego our carnivorous natures for one meal. Your conversation will more than make up for it—I hope.”

“I can promise you an interesting meal, whatever the conversation,” said Quintesetz, “if your taste should run to our Sayshellian spices. My wife and I have made a rare study of such things.”

“I look forward to any exoticism you choose to supply, S.Q.,” said Trevize coolly, though Pelorat looked a little nervous at the prospect.

Quintesetz led the way. The three left the room and walked down an apparently endless corridor, with the Sayshellian greeting students and colleagues now and then, but making no attempt to introduce his companions. Trevize was uneasily aware that others stared curiously at his sash, which happened to be one of his gray ones. A subdued color was not something that was de rigueur in campus clothing, apparently.

Finally they stepped through the door and out into the open. It

was indeed dark and a little cool, with trees bulking in the distance and a rather rank stand of grass on either side of the walkway.

Pelorat came to a halt—with his back to the glimmer of lights that came from the building they had just left and from the glows that lined the walks of the campus. He looked straight upward.

“Beautiful!” he said. “There is a famous phrase in a verse by one of our better poets that speaks of ‘the speckle-shine of Sayshell’s soaring sky.”

Trevize gazed appreciately and said in a low voice, “Vie are from Terminus, S.Q., and my friend, at least, has seen no other skies. On Terminus, we see only the smooth dim fog of the Galaxy and a few barely visible stars. You would appreciate your own sky even more, had you lived with ours.”

Quintesetz said gravely, “We appreciate it to the full, I assure you. It’s not so much that we are in an uncrowded area of the Galaxy, but that the distribution of stars is remarkably even. I don’t think that you will find, anywhere in the Galaxy, first-magnitude stars so generally distributed. —And yet not too many, either. I have seen the skies of worlds that are inside the outer reaches of a globular cluster and there you will see too many bright stars. It spoils the darkness of the night sky and reduces the splendor considerably.”

“I quite agree with that,” said Trevize.

“Now I wonder,” said Quintesetz, “if you see that almost regular pentagon of almost equally bright stars. The Five Sisters, we call them. It’s in that direction, just above the line of trees. Do you see it?”

“I see it,” said Trevize. “Very attractive.”

“Yes,” said Quintesetz. “It’s supposed to symbolize success in love —and there’s no love letter that doesn’t end in a pentagon of dots to indicate a desire to make love. Each of the five stars stands for a different stage in the process and there are famous poems which have vied with each other in making each stage as explicitly erotic as possible. In my younger days, I attempted versifying on the subject myself and I wouldn’t have thought that the time would come when I would grow so indifferent to the Five Sisters, though I suppose it’s the common fate. —Do you see the dim star just about in the center of the Five Sisters.”

“That,” said Quintesetz, “is supposed to represent unrequited love. There is a legend that the star was once as bright as the rest, but faded with grief.” And he walked on rapidly.

The dinner, Trevize had been forced to admit to himself, was delightful. There was endless variety and the spicing and dressing were subtle but effective.

Trevize said, “All these vegetables—which have been a pleasure to eat, by the way—are part of the Galactic dietary, are they not, SQ.?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I presume, though, that there are indigenous forms of life, too.”

“Of course. Sayshell Planet was an oxygen world when the first settlers arrived, so it had to be life-bearing. And we have preserved some of the indigenous life, you may be sure. We have quite extensive natural parks in which both the flora and the fauna of Old Sayshell survive.”

Pelorat said sadly, “There you are in advance of us, S.Q. There was little land life on Terminus when human beings arrived and I’m afraid that for a long time no concerted effort was made to preserve the sea life, which had produced the oxygen that made Terminus habitable. Terminus has an ecology now that is purely Galactic in nature.”

“Sayshell,” said Quintesetz, with a smile of modest pride, “has a long and steady record of life-valuing.”

And Trevize chose that moment to say, “When we left your office, SQ., I believe it was your intention to feed us dinner and then tell us about Gaia.”

Quintesetz’s wife, a friendly woman—plump and quite dark, who had said little during the meal—looked up in astonishment, rose, and left the room without a word.

“My wife,” said Quintesetz uneasily, “is quite a conservative, I’m afraid, and is a bit uneasy at the mention of—the world. Please excuse her. But why do you ask about it?”

“Because it is important for J.P.’s work, I’m afraid.”

“But why do you ask it of me? We were discussing Earth, robots, the founding of Sayshell. What has all this to do with—what you ask?”

‘Perhaps nothing, and yet there are so many oddnesses about the matter. Why is your wife uneasy at the mention of Gaia? Why are you uneasy? Some talk of it easily enough. We have been told only today that Gaia is Earth itself and that it has disappeared into hyperspace because of the evil done by human beings.”

A look of pain crossed Quintesetz’s face. “Who told you that gibberish?”

“Someone I met here at the university.”

“That’s just superstition.”

“Then it’s not part of the central dogma of your legends concerning the Flight?”

“No, of course not. It’s just a fable that arose among the ordinary, uneducated people.”

“Are you sure?” asked Trevize coldly.

Quintesetz sat back in his chair and stared at the remnant of the meal before him. “Come into the living room,” he said. “My wife will not allow this room to be cleared and set to rights while we are here and discussing—this.”

“Are you sure it is just a fable?” repeated Trevize, once they had seated themselves in another room, before a window that bellied upward and inward to give a clear view of Sayshell’s remarkable night sky. The lights within the room glimmered down to avoid competition and Quintesetz’s dark countenance melted into the shadow.

Quintesetz said, “Aren’t you sure? Do you think that any world can dissolve into hyperspace? You must understand that the average person has only the vaguest notion of what hyperspace is.”

“The truth is,” said Trevize, “that I myself have only the vaguest notion of what hyperspace is and I’ve been through it hundreds of times.”

“Let me speak realities, then. I assure you that Earth—wherever it is—is not located within the borders of the Sayshell Union and that the world you mentioned is not Earth.”

“But even if you don’t know where Earth is, S.Q., you ought to know where the world I mentioned is. It is certainly within the borders of the Sayshell Union. We know that much, eh, Pelorat?”

Pelorat, who had been listening stolidly, started at being suddenly addressed and said, “If it comes to that, Golan, I know where it is.”

Trevize turned to look at him. “Since when, Janov?”

“Since earlier this evening, my dear Golan. You showed us the

Five Sisters, S.Q., on our way from your office to your house. You pointed out a dim star at the center of the pentagon. I’m positive that’s Gaia.”

Quintesetz hesitated—his face, hidden in the dimness, was beyond any chance of interpretation. Finally he said, “Well, that’s what our astronomers tell us—privately. It is a planet that circles that star.”

Trevize gazed contemplatively at Pelorat, but the expression on the professor’s face was unreadable. Trevize turned to Quintesetz, “Then tell us about that star. Do you have its co-ordinates?”

“I? No.” He was almost violent in his denial. “I have no stellar co-ordinates here. You can get it from our astronomy department, though I imagine not without trouble. No travel to that star is permitted.”

“Why not? It’s within your territory, isn’t it?”

“Spaciographically, yes. Politically, no.”

Trevize waited for something more to be said. When that didn’t come, he rose. “Professor Quintesetz,” he said formally, “I am not a policeman, soldier, diplomat, or thug. I am not here to force information out of you. Instead, I shall, against my will, go to our ambassador. Surely, you must understand that it is not I, for my own personal interest, that request this information. This is Foundation business and I don’t want to make an interstellar incident out of this. I don’t think the Sayshell Union would want to, either.”

Quintesetz said uncertainly, “What is this Foundation business?”

“That’s not something I can discuss with you. If Gaia is not something you can discuss with me, then we will transfer it all to the government level and, under the circumstances, it may be the worse for Sayshell. Sayshell has kept its independence of the Federation and I have no objection to that. I have no reason to wish Sayshell ill and I do not wish to approach our ambassador. In fact, I will harm my own career in doing so, for I am under strict instruction to get this information without making a government matter of it. Please tell me, then, if there is some firm reason why you cannot discuss Gaia. Will you be arrested or otherwise punished, if you speak? Will you tell me plainly that I have no choice but to go to the ambassadorial height?”

“No no,” said Quintesetz, who sounded utterly confused. “I know nothing about government matters. We simply don’t speak of that world.”

“Superstition?”

‘Well, yes! Superstition! —Skies of Sayshell, in what way am I better than that foolish person who told you that Gaia was in hyperspace—or than my wife who won’t even stay in a room where Gaia is mentioned and who may even have left the house for fear it will be smashed by—”

“Lightning?”

“By some stroke from afar. And I, even I, hesitate to pronounce the name. Gaia! Gaia! The syllables do not hurt! I am unharmed! Yet I hesitate. —But please believe me when I say that I honestly don’t know the co-ordinates for Gaia’s star. I can try to help you get it, if that will help, but let me tell you that we don’t discuss the world here in the Union. We keep hands and minds off it. I can tell you what little is known—really known, rather than supposed—and I doubt that you can learn anything more anywhere in these worlds of the Union.

“We know Gaia is an ancient world and there are some who think it is the oldest world in this sector of the Galaxy, but we are not certain. Patriotism tells us Sayshell Planet is the oldest; fear tells us Gaia Planet is. The only way of combining the two is to suppose that Gaia is Earth, since it is known that Sayshell was settled by Earthpeople.

“Most historians think—among themselves—that Gaia Planet was founded independently. They think it is not a colony of any world of our Union and that the Union was not colonized by Gaia. There is no consensus on comparative age, whether Gaia was settled before or after Sayshell was.”

Trevize said, “So far, what you know is nothing, since every possible alternative is believed by someone or other.”

Quintesetz nodded ruefully. “It would seem so. It was comparatively late in our history that we became conscious of the existence of Gaia. We had been preoccupied at first in forming the Union, then in fighting off the Galactic Empire, then in trying to find our proper role as an Imperial province and in limiting the power of the Viceroys.