Isaac Asimov (29 page)

“Simple words in Galactic Standard. How long has it been your aim to get rid of Hari Seldon?”

“Always! Always! Is that so hard to understand? We deserve revenge for what he did to JoJo. Even if he hadn’t done that, since he’s the First Minister we’d have to put him out of the way.”

“But it’s Cleon—
Cleon
—that must be brought down. If not only he, then at least he in addition to Seldon.”

“Why does a figurehead concern you?”

“You weren’t born yesterday. I’ve never had to explain
my part in this because you’re not so ignorant a fool as not to know. What can I possibly care about your plans if they don’t include a replacement on the throne?”

Namarti laughed. “Of course. I’ve known for a long time that you look upon me as your footstool; your way of climbing up to the Imperial throne.”

“Would you expect anything else?”

“Not at all. I will do the planning, take the chances, and then, when all is quite done, you gather in the reward. It makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does make sense, for the reward will be yours, too. Won’t you become the First Minister? Won’t you be able to count on the full support of a new Emperor, one who is filled with gratitude? Won’t I be”—his face twisted with irony as he spat out the words—”the new figurehead?”

“Is that what you plan to be? A figurehead?”

“I plan to be the Emperor. I supplied money when you had none. I supplied the cadre when you had none. I supplied the respectability you needed to build a large organization here in Wye. I can still withdraw everything I’ve brought in.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Do you want to risk it? Don’t think you can treat me as you treated Kaspalov, either. If anything happens to me, Wye will become uninhabitable for you and yours, and you will find that no other sector will supply you with what you need.”

Namarti sighed. “Then you insist on having the Emperor killed.”

“I didn’t say ‘killed.’ I said brought down. The details I leave to you.” The last was accompanied by an almost dismissive wave of the hand, a flick of the wrist, as if he were already sitting on the Imperial throne.

“And then you’ll be Emperor?”

“Yes.”

“No, you won’t. You’ll be dead—and not at my hands, either. Andorin, let me teach you some of the facts of life. If Cleon is killed, then the matter of the succession comes up and, to avoid civil war, the Imperial Guard will at once kill every member of the Wyan mayoral family they can find; you, first of all. On the other hand, if only the First Minister is killed, you will be safe.”

“Why?”

“A First Minister is only a First Minister. They come and go. It is possible that Cleon himself may have grown tired of him and arranged the killing. Certainly, we would see to it that rumors of this sort are spread. The Imperial Guard would hesitate and would give us a chance to put the new government into place. Indeed, it is quite possible that they would themselves be grateful for the end of Seldon.”

“And with the new government in place, what am I to do? Keep on waiting? Forever?”

“No. Once I’m First Minister, there will be ways of dealing with Cleon. I may even be able to do something with the Imperial Guard and use them as my instruments. I will then manage to find some safe way of getting rid of Cleon, and replacing him with you.”

Andorin burst out, “Why should you?”

Namarti said, “What do you mean, why should I?”

“You have a personal grudge against Seldon. Once he is gone, why should you run the unnecessary risks at the highest level? You will make your peace with Cleon and I will have to retire to my crumbling estate and my impossible dreams. And perhaps to play it safe, you will have me killed.”

Namarti said, “No! Cleon was born to the throne. He comes from several generations of Emperors—the proud Entun dynasty. He would be very difficult to handle, a plague. You, on the other hand, would come to the throne as a member of a new dynasty, without any strong ties to tradition, for the previous Wyan Emperors were, you will admit, totally undistinguished. You will be seated on a shaky throne and will need someone to support you—
me
. And I will need someone who is dependent upon me and whom I can therefore handle
—you
. —Come, Andorin, ours is not a marriage of love, which fades in a year; it is a marriage of convenience, which can last lifelong. Let us trust each other.”

“You swear I will be Emperor.”

“What good would swearing do if you couldn’t trust my word? Let us say I would find you an extraordinarily useful Emperor, and I would want you to replace Cleon as soon as that can safely be managed. Now introduce me to your man who you think will be the perfect tool for your purposes.”

“Very well. And remember what makes him different. I have studied him. He’s a not-very-bright idealist. He will
do what he’s told, unconcerned by danger, unconcerned by second thoughts. And he exudes a kind of trustworthiness so that his victim will trust him even if he has a blaster in his hand.”

“I find that impossible to believe.”

“Wait till you meet him,” said Andorin.

“What’s this about new gardeners?” said Seldon angrily. This time, he did not ask Gruber to sit down.

Gruber’s eyes blinked rapidly. He was in a panic at having been recalled so unexpectedly. “New gardeners?” he stammered.

“You said, ‘all the new gardeners.’ Those were your words. What new gardeners?”

Gruber was astonished. “Sure, if there is a new Chief Gardener, there will be new gardeners. It is the custom.”

“I have never heard of this.”

“The last time we had a change of Chief Gardeners, you were not First Minister. It is likely you were not even on Trantor.”

“But what’s it all about?”

“Well, gardeners are never discharged. Some die. Some grow too old and are pensioned off and replaced. Still, by the time a new Chief Gardener is ready for his duties, at least half the staff is aged and beyond their best years. They are all pensioned off, generously, and new gardeners are brought in.”

“For youth.”

“Partly, and partly because by that time there are usually new plans for the gardens, and it is new ideas and new schemes we must have. There are almost five hundred square kilometers in the gardens and parklands, and it usually takes some years to reorganize it, and it is myself who will have to supervise it all. Please, First Minister.” Gruber was gasping. “Surely, a clever man like your own self can find a way to change the blessed Emperor’s mind.”

Seldon paid no attention. His forehead was creased in concentration. “Where do the new gardeners come from?”

“There are examinations on all the worlds—there are always people waiting to serve as replacements. They’ll be coming in by the hundreds in a dozen batches. It will take me a year, at the least—”

“From where do they come? From where?”

“From any of a million worlds. We want a variety of horticultural knowledge. Any citizen of the Empire can qualify.”

“From Trantor, too?”

“No, not from Trantor. There is no one from Trantor in the gardens.” His voice grew contemptuous. “You can’t get a gardener out of Trantor. The parks they have here under the dome aren’t gardens. They are potted plants, and the animals are in cages. Trantorians, poor specimens that they are, know nothing about open air, free water, and the true balance of nature.”

“All right, Gruber. I will now give you a job. It will be up to you to get me the names of every new gardener scheduled to arrive over the coming weeks. Everything about them. Name. World. Identification number. Education. Experience. Everything. I want it here on my desk just as quickly as possible. I’m going to send people to help you. People with machines. What kind of a computer do you use?”

“Only a simple one for keeping track of plantings and species and things like that.”

“All right. The people I will have helping you will be able to do anything you can’t do. I can’t tell you how important this is.”

“If I should do this—”

“Gruber, this is not the time to make bargains. Fail me, and you will not be Chief Gardener. Instead, you will be discharged without a pension.”

Alone again, he barked into his communication wire. “Cancel all appointments for the rest of the afternoon.”

He then let his body flop in his chair, feeling every bit of his fifty years, and more, feeling his headache worsen. For years, for decades, security had been built about the Imperial Palace Grounds, thicker, more solid, more impenetrable, as each new layer and each new device was added.

—And every once in a while, hordes of strangers were let into the grounds. No questions asked, probably, but: Can you garden?

The stupidity involved was too colossal to grasp.

And he had barely caught it in time. Or had he? Was he, even now, too late?

Gleb Andorin gazed at Namarti through half-closed eyes. He never liked the man, but there were times when
he liked him less than he usually did, and this was one of those times. Why should Andorin, a Wyan of royal birth (that’s what it amounted to, after all) have to work with this parvenu, this near-psychotic paranoid?

Andorin knew why, and he had to endure, even when Namarti was once again in the process of telling the story of how he had built up the Party during a period of ten years to its present pitch of perfection. Did he tell this to everyone, over and over? Or was it just Andorin who was his chosen vessel for the receipt of it?

Namarti’s face seemed to shine with malignant glee as he said, in an odd singsong, as though it were a matter of rote, “—so year after year, I worked on those lines, even through hopelessness and uselessness, building an organization, chipping away at confidence in the government, creating and intensifying dissatisfaction. When there was the banking crisis and the week of the moratorium, I—” He paused suddenly. “I’ve told you this many times, and you’re sick of hearing it, aren’t you?”

Andorin’s lips twitched in a brief, dry smile. Namarti was not such an idiot as not to know the bore he was; he just couldn’t help it. Andorin said, “You’ve told me this many times.” He allowed the remainder of the question to hang in the air, unanswered. The answer, after all, was an obvious affirmative. There was no need to face him with it.

A slight flush crossed Namarti’s sallow face. He said, “But it could have gone on forever, the building, the chipping, without ever coming to a point, if I hadn’t had the proper tool in my hands. And without any effort on my part, the tool came to me.”

“The gods brought you Planchet,” said Andorin, neutrally.

“You’re right. There will be a group of gardeners entering the Imperial Palace Grounds soon.” He paused and seemed to savor the thought. “Men and women. Enough to serve as a mask for the handful of our operatives who will accompany them. Among them will be you—and Planchet. And what will make you and Planchet unusual is that you will be carrying blasters.”

“Surely,” said Andorin, with deliberate malice behind a polite expression, “we’ll be stopped at the gates and held for questioning. Bringing an illicit blaster onto the Palace Grounds—”

“You won’t be stopped,” said Namarti, missing the malice.
“You won’t be searched. That’s been arranged. You will all be greeted as a matter of course by some Palace Official. I don’t know who would ordinarily be in charge of that task—the Third Assistant Chamberlain in Charge of Grass and Leaves, for all I know—but in this case, it will be Seldon himself. The great mathematician will hurry out to greet the new gardeners and welcome them to the Grounds.”

“You’re sure of that, I suppose.”

“Of course I am. It’s all been arranged. He will learn, at more or less the last minute, that his son is among those listed as new gardeners, and it will be impossible for him to refrain from coming out to see him. And when Seldon appears, Planchet will raise his blaster. Our people will raise the cry of ‘Treason.’ In the confusion and hurly-burly, Planchet will kill Seldon, and you will kill Planchet. You will then drop your blaster and leave. There are those who will help you leave. It’s been arranged.”

“Is it absolutely necessary to kill Planchet?”

Namarti frowned. “Why? Do you object to one killing and not to another? When Planchet recovers, do you wish him to tell the authorities all he knows about us? Besides, this is a family feud we are arranging. Don’t forget that Planchet is, in actual fact, Raych Seldon. It will look as though the two had fired simultaneously, or as though Seldon had given orders that if his son made any hostile move, he was to be shot down. We will see to it that the family angle will be given full publicity. It will be reminiscent of the bad old days of the Bloody Emperor Manowell. The people of Trantor would surely be repelled by the sheer wickedness of the deed. That, piled on top of all the inefficiencies and breakdowns they’ve been witnessing and living through, will raise the cry for a new government, and no one will be able to refuse them, least of all the Emperor. And then we’ll step in.”

Raych had no trouble seeing that he was being treated with special care. The whole group of would-be gardeners were now quartered in one of the hotels in the Imperial Sector, although not one of the prime hotels, of course.

They were an odd lot, from fifty different worlds, but Raych had little chance to speak to any of them. Andorin, without being too obvious about it, kept him apart from the others.

Raych wondered why. It depressed him. In fact, he had
been feeling somewhat depressed since he had left Wye. It interfered with his thinking process and he fought it, but not with entire success.

Andorin was himself wearing rough clothes and was attempting to look like a workman. He would be playing the part of a gardener as a way of running the show—whatever the show might be.

Raych felt ashamed that he had not been able to penetrate the nature of that “show.” They had closed in on him and prevented all communication, so he hadn’t had the chance to warn his father. They might be doing this for every Trantorian who had been pushed into the group, for all he knew, just as an extreme precaution. Raych estimated that there might be a dozen Trantorians among the group, all of them Namarti’s people, of course, men and women both.