Prelude to Foundation (33 page)

“No, I’ll do the buying. Credits may sanitize everything, but they more easily sanitize a tribeswoman. They’re so used to paying women little or no attention that they automatically pay me the same. —And here’s the clothing store I’ve been using.”

“I’ll wait out here. Get me a nice red sash—one that looks impressive.”

“Don’t pretend you’ve forgotten our decision. I’ll get two. And another white kirtle also … to
my
measurements.”

“Won’t they think it odd that a woman would be buying a white kirtle?”

“Of course not. They’ll assume I’m buying it for a male companion who happens to be my size. Actually, I don’t think they’ll bother with any assumptions at all as long as my credit tile is good.”

Seldon waited, half-expecting someone to come up and greet him as a tribesman or denounce him as one—more likely—but no one did. Those who passed him did so without a glance and even those who glanced in his direction moved on seemingly untouched. He was especially nervous about the gray kirtles—the women—walking by in pairs or, even worse, with a man. They were downtrodden, unnoticed, snubbed. How better to gain a brief notoriety than by shrieking at the sight of a tribesman? But even the women moved on.

They’re not expecting to see a tribesman, Seldon thought, so they don’t see one.

That, he decided, augured well for their forthcoming invasion of the Sacratorium. How much less would anyone expect to see tribespeople there and
how much more effectively would they therefore fail to see them!

He was in fairly good humor when Dors emerged.

“You have everything?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then let’s go back to the room, so you can change.”

The white kirtle did not fit her quite as well as the gray one did. Obviously, she could not have tried it on or even the densest shopkeeper would have been struck with alarm.

“How do I look, Hari?” she asked.

“Exactly like a boy,” said Seldon. “Now let’s try the sash … or obiah. I had better get used to calling it that.”

Dors, without her skincap, was shaking out her hair gratefully. She said sharply, “Don’t put it on now. We’re not going to parade through Mycogen with the sash on. The last thing we want to do is call attention to ourselves.”

“No no. I just want to see how it goes on.”

“Well, not that one. This one is better quality and more elaborate.”

“You’re right, Dors. I’ve got to gather in what attention there is. I don’t want them to detect you as a woman.”

“I’m not thinking of that, Hari. I just want you to look pretty.”

“A thousand thanks, but that’s impossible, I suspect. Now, let’s see, how does this work?”

Together, Hari and Dors practiced putting their obiahs on and taking them off, over and over again, until they could do it in one fluid motion. Dors taught Hari how to do it, as she had seen a man doing it the day before at the Sacratorium.

When Hari praised her for her acute observations, she blushed and said, “It’s really nothing, Hari, just something I noticed.”

Hari replied, “Then you’re a genius for noticing.”

Finally satisfied, they stood well apart, each survey
ing the other. Hari’s obiah glittered, a bright red dragonlike design standing out against a paler field of similar hue. Dors’s was a little less bold, had a simple thin line down the center, and was very light in color. “There,” she said, “just enough to show good taste.” She took it off.

“Now,” said Seldon, “we fold it up and it goes into one of the inner pockets. I have my credit tile—Hummin’s, really—and the key to this place in this one and here, on the other side, the Book.”

“
The
Book? Should you be carrying it around?”

“I must. I’m guessing that anyone going to the Sacratorium ought to have a copy of the Book with him. They may intone passages or have readings. If necessary, we’ll share the Book and maybe no one will notice. Ready?”

“I’ll never be ready, but I’m going with you.”

“It will be a tedious trip. Will you check my skincap and make sure no hair shows this time? And don’t scratch your head.”

“I won’t. You look all right.”

“So do you.”

“You also look nervous.”

And Seldon said wryly, “Guess why!”

Dors reached out impulsively and squeezed Hari’s hand, then drew back as if surprised at herself. Looking down, she straightened her white kirtle. Hari, himself a trifle surprised and peculiarly pleased, cleared his throat and said, “Okay, let’s go.”

They were not noticed.

Hari Seldon and Dors Venabili repeated the trip of the day before and this time no one gave them a second look. Hardly anyone even gave them a first look. On several occasions, they had to tuck their knees to one side to allow someone sitting on an inner seat to get past them and out. When someone got in, they quickly realized they had to move over if there was an inner empty seat.

This time they quickly grew tired of the smell of kirtles that were not freshly laundered because they were not so easily diverted by what went on outside.

But eventually they were there.

“That’s the library,” said Seldon in a low voice.

“I suppose so,” said Dors. “At least that’s the building that Mycelium Seventy-Two pointed out yesterday.”

They sauntered toward it leisurely.

“Take a deep breath,” said Seldon. “This is the first hurdle.”

The door ahead was open, the light within subdued. There were five broad stone steps leading upward. They stepped onto the lowermost one and waited several moments before they realized that their weight did not cause the steps to move upward. Dors grimaced very slightly and gestured Seldon upward.

Together they walked up the stairs, feeling embarrassed on behalf of Mycogen for its backwardness. Then, through a door, where, at a desk immediately inside was a man bent over the simplest and clumsiest computer Seldon had ever seen.

The man did not look up at them. No need, Seldon supposed. White kirtle, bald head—all Mycogenians looked so nearly the same that one’s eyes slid off them and that was to the tribespeople’s advantage at the moment.

The man, who still seemed to be studying something on the desk, said, “Scholars?”

“Scholars,” said Seldon.

The man jerked his head toward a door. “Go in. Enjoy.”

They moved inward and, as nearly as they could see, they were the only ones in this section of the library. Either the library was not a popular resort or the scholars were few or—most likely—both.

Seldon whispered, “I thought surely we would have to present some sort of license or permission form and I would have to plead having forgotten it.”

“He probably welcomes our presence under any terms. Did you ever see a place like this? If a place, like a person, could be dead, we would be inside a corpse.”

Most of the books in this section were print-books like
the
Book in Seldon’s inner pocket. Dors drifted along the shelves, studying them. She said, “Old books, for the most part. Part classic. Part worthless.”

“Outside books? Non-Mycogen, I mean?”

“Oh yes. If they have their own books, they must be kept in another section. This one is for outside research for poor little self-styled scholars like yester
day’s. —This is the reference department and here’s an Imperial Encyclopedia … must be fifty years old if a day … and a computer.”

She reached for the keys and Seldon stopped her. “Wait. Something could go wrong and we’ll be delayed.”

He pointed to a discreet sign above a free-standing set of shelves that glowed with the letters
TO THE SACR TORIUM
. The second
A
in
SACRATORIUM
was dead, possibly recently or possibly because no one cared. (The Empire, thought Sheldon,
was
in decay. All parts of it. Mycogen too.)

He looked about. The poor library, so necessary to Mycogenian pride, perhaps so useful to the Elders who could use it to find crumbs to shore up their own beliefs and present them as being those of sophisticated tribespeople, seemed to be completely empty. No one had entered after them.

Seldon said, “Let’s step in here, out of eyeshot of the man at the door, and put on our sashes.”

And then, at the door, aware suddenly there would be no turning back if they passed this second hurdle, he said, “Dors, don’t come in with me.”

She frowned. “Why not?”

“It’s not safe and I don’t want you to be at risk.”

“I am here to protect you,” she said with soft firmness.

“What kind of protection can you be? I can protect myself, though you may not think it. And I’d be handicapped by having to protect you. Don’t you see that?”

“You mustn’t be concerned about me, Hari,” said Dors. “Concern is
my
part.” She tapped her sash where it crossed in the space between her obscured breasts.

“Because Hummin asked you to?”

“Because those are my orders.”

She seized Seldon’s arms just above his elbow and, as always, he was surprised by her firm grip. She said, “I’m against this, Hari, but if you feel you must go in, then I must go in too.”

“All right, then. But if anything happens and you can wriggle out of it, run. Don’t worry about me.”

“You’re wasting your breath, Hari. And you’re insulting me.”

Seldon touched the entrance panel and the portal slid open. Together, almost in unison, they walked through.

A large room, all the larger because it was empty of anything resembling furniture. No chairs, no benches, no seats of any kind. No stage, no drapery, no decorations.

No lights, merely a uniform illumination of mild, unfocused light. The walls were not entirely blank. Periodically, arranged in spaced fashion at various heights and in no easy repetitive order, there were small, primitive, two-dimensional television screens, all of which were operating. From where Dors and Seldon stood, there was not even the illusion of a third dimension, not a breath of true holovision.

There were people present. Not many and nowhere together. They stood singly and, like the television monitors, in no easy repetitive order. All were white-kirtled, all sashed.

For the most part, there was silence. No one talked in the usual sense. Some moved their lips, murmuring softly. Those who walked did so stealthily, eyes downcast.

The atmosphere was absolutely funereal.

Seldon leaned toward Dors, who instantly put a finger to her lips, then pointed to one of the television monitors. The screen showed an idyllic garden bursting with blooms, the camera panning over it slowly.

They walked toward the monitor in a fashion that imitated the others—slow steps, putting each foot down softly.

When they were within half a meter of the screen, a soft insinuating voice made itself heard: “The garden of Antennin, as reproduced from ancient guidebooks and photographs, located in the outskirts of Eos. Note the—”

Dors said in a whisper Seldon had trouble catching over the sound of the set, “It turns on when someone is close and it will turn off if we step away. If we’re close enough, we can talk under cover, but don’t look at me and stop speaking if anyone approaches.”

Seldon, his head bent, his hands clasped before him (he had noted that this was a preferred posture), said, “Any moment I expect someone to start wailing.”

“Someone might. They’re mourning their Lost World,” said Dors.

“I hope they change the films every once in a while. It would be deadly to always see the same ones.”

“They’re all different,” said Dors, her eyes sliding this way and that. “They may change periodically. I don’t know.”

“Wait!” said Seldon just a hair’s breadth too loud. He lowered his voice and said, “Come this way.”

Dors frowned, failing to make out the words, but Seldon gestured slightly with his head. Again the stealthy walk, but Seldon’s footsteps increased in length as he felt the need for greater speed and Dors, catching up, pulled sharply—if very briefly—at his kirtle. He slowed.

“Robots here,” he said under the cover of the sound as it came on.

The picture showed the corner of a dwelling place with a rolling lawn and a line of hedges in the foreground and three of what could only be described as robots. They were metallic, apparently, and vaguely human in shape.

The recording said, “This is a view, recently
constructed, of the establishment of the famous Wendome estate of the third century. The robot you see near the center was, according to tradition, named Bendar and served twenty-two years, according to the ancient records, before being replaced.”