Prelude to Foundation (39 page)

Seldon said, “He recognized my face. He knows something about me. He can’t be
just
an anything. I’ll see him in my room.” And then, as Tisalver’s face didn’t soften, he added, “
My
room, for which rent is being paid. And you’ll be at work, out of the apartment.”

Tisalver said in a low voice, “It’s not me, Master Seldon. It’s my wife, Casilia. She won’t stand for it.”

“I’ll talk to her,” said Seldon grimly. “She’ll have to.”

Casilia Tisalver opened her eyes wide. “A heatsinker? Not in
my
apartment.”

“Why not? Besides, he’ll be coming to
my
room,” said Seldon. “At fourteen hundred.”

“I won’t have it,” said Mistress Tisalver. “This is what comes of going down to the heatsinks. Jirad was a fool.”

“Not at all, Mistress Tisalver. We went at my request and I was fascinated. I must see this young man, since that is necessary to my scholarly work.”

“I’m sorry if it is, but I won’t have it.”

Dors Venabili raised her hand. “Hari, let me take care of this. Mistress Tisalver, if Dr. Seldon must see someone in his room this afternoon, the additional person naturally means additional rent. We understand that. For today, then, the rent on Dr. Seldon’s room will be doubled.”

Mistress Tisalver thought about it. “Well, that’s decent of you, but it’s not only the credits. There’s the neighbors to think of. A sweaty, smelly heatsinker—”

“I doubt that he’ll be sweaty and smelly at fourteen hundred, Mistress Tisalver, but let me go on. Since Dr. Seldon
must
see him, then if he can’t see him here, he’ll have to see him elsewhere, but we can’t run here and there. That would be too inconvenient. Therefore, what we will have to do is to get a room elsewhere. It won’t be easy and we don’t want to do it, but we will have to. So we will pay the rent through today and leave and of course we will have to explain to Master Hummin why we have had to change the arrangements that he so kindly made for us.”

“Wait.” Mistress Tisalver’s face became a study of
calculation. “We wouldn’t like to disoblige Master Hummin … or you two. How long would this creature have to stay?”

“He’s coming at fourteen hundred. He must be at work at sixteen hundred. He will be here for less than two hours, perhaps considerably less. We will meet him outside, the two of us, and bring him to Dr. Seldon’s room. Any neighbors who see us will think he is an Outworlder friend of ours.”

Mistress Tisalver nodded her head. “Then let it be as you say. Double rent for Master Seldon’s room for today and the heatsinker will visit just this one time.”

“Just this one time,” said Dors.

But later, when Seldon and Dors were sitting in her room, Dors said, “Why
do
you have to see him, Hari? Is interviewing a heatsinker important to psychohistory too?”

Seldon thought he detected a small edge of sarcasm in her voice and he said tartly, “I don’t have to base everything on this huge project of mine, in which I have very little faith anyway. I am also a human being with human curiosities. We were down in the heatsinks for hours and you saw what the working people there were like. They were obviously uneducated. They were low-level individuals—no play on words intended—and yet here was one who recognized me. He must have seen me on holovision on the occasion of the Decennial Convention and he remembered the word ‘psychohistory.’ He strikes me as unusual—as out of place somehow—and I would like to talk to him.”

“Because it pleases your vanity to have become known even to heatsinkers in Dahl?”

“Well … perhaps. But it also piques my curiosity.”

“And how do you know he hasn’t been briefed and intends to lead you into trouble as has happened before.”

Seldon winced. “I won’t let him run his fingers through my hair. In any case, we’re more nearly prepared now, aren’t we? And I’m sure you’ll be with me. I
mean, you let me go Upperside alone, you let me go with Raindrop Forty-Three to the microfarms alone, and you’re not going to do that again, are you?”

“You can be absolutely sure I won’t,” said Dors.

“Well then, I’ll talk to the young man and you can watch out for traps. I have every faith in you.”

Amaryl arrived a few minutes before 1400, looking warily about. His hair was neat and his thick mustache was combed and turned up slightly at the edges. His T-shirt was startlingly white. He
did
smell, but it was a fruity odor that undoubtedly came from the slightly over-enthusiastic use of scent. He had a bag with him.

Seldon, who had been waiting outside for him, seized one elbow lightly, while Dors seized the other, and they moved rapidly into the elevator. Having reached the correct level, they passed through the apartment into Seldon’s room.

Amaryl said in a low hangdog voice, “Nobody home, huh?”

“Everyone’s busy,” said Seldon neutrally. He indicated the only chair in the room, a pad directly on the floor.

“No,” said Amaryl. “I don’t need that. One of you two use it.” He squatted on the floor with a graceful downward motion.

Dors imitated the movement, sitting on the edge of Seldon’s floor-based mattress, but Seldon dropped down rather clumsily, having to make use of his hands and unable, quite, to find a comfortable position for his legs.

Seldon said, “Well, young man, why do you want to see me?”

“Because you’re a mathematician. You’re the first mathematician I ever saw—close up—so I could touch him, you know.”

“Mathematicians feel like anyone else.”

“Not to me, Dr. … Dr. … Seldon?”

“That’s my name.”

Amaryl looked pleased. “I finally remembered. —You see, I want to be a mathematician too.”

“Very good. What’s stopping you?”

Amaryl suddenly frowned. “Are you serious?”

“I presume
something
is stopping you. Yes, I’m serious.”

“What’s stopping me is I’m a Dahlite, a
heatsinker
on Dahl. I don’t have the money to get an education and I can’t get the credits to get an education. A
real
education, I mean. All they taught me was to read and cipher and use a computer and then I knew enough to be a heatsinker. But I wanted more. So I taught myself.”

“In some ways, that’s the best kind of teaching. How did you do that?”

“I knew a librarian. She was willing to help me. She was a very nice woman and she showed me how to use computers for learning mathematics. And she set up a software system that would connect me with other libraries. I’d come on my days off and on mornings after my shift. Sometimes she’d lock me in her private room so I wouldn’t be bothered by people coming in or she would let me in when the library was closed. She didn’t know mathematics herself, but she helped me all she could. She was oldish, a widow lady. Maybe she thought of me as a kind of son or something. She didn’t have children of her own.”

(Maybe, thought Seldon briefly, there was some other emotion involved too, but he put the thought away. None of his business.)

“I liked number theory,” said Amaryl. “I worked some things out from what I learned from the computer and from the book-films it used to teach me
mathematics. I came up with some new things that weren’t in the book-films.”

Seldon raised his eyebrows. “That’s interesting. Like what?”

“I’ve brought some of them to you. I’ve never showed them to anyone. The people around me—” He shrugged. “They’d either laugh or be annoyed.
Once
I tried to tell a girl I knew, but she just said I was weird and wouldn’t see me anymore. Is it all right for me to show them to you?”

“Quite all right. Believe me.”

Seldon held out his hand and after a brief hesitation, Amaryl handed him the bag he was carrying.

For a long time, Seldon looked over Amaryl’s papers. The work was naïve in the extreme, but he allowed no smile to cross his face. He followed the demonstrations, not one of which was new, of course—or even nearly new—or of any importance.

But that didn’t matter.

Seldon looked up. “Did you do all of this yourself?”

Amaryl, looking more than half-frightened, nodded his head.

Seldon extracted several sheets. “What made you think of this?” His finger ran down a line of mathematical reasoning.

Amaryl looked it over, frowned, and thought about it. Then he explained his line of thinking.

Seldon listened and said, “Did you ever read a book by Anat Bigell?”

“On number theory?”

“The title was
Mathematical Deduction
. It wasn’t about number theory, particularly.”

Amaryl shook his head. “I never heard of him. I’m sorry.”

“He worked out this theorem of yours three hundred years ago.”

Amaryl looked stricken. “I didn’t know that.”

“I’m sure you didn’t. You did it more cleverly, though. It’s not rigorous, but—”

“What do you mean, ‘rigorous’?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Seldon put the papers back together in a sheaf, restored it to the bag, and said, “Make several copies of all this. Take one copy, have it dated by an official computer, and place it under computerized seal. My friend here, Mistress Venabili, can get you into Streeling University without tuition on some sort of scholarship. You’ll have to start at the beginning and take courses in other subjects than mathematics, but—”

By now Amaryl had caught his breath. “Into Streeling University? They won’t take me.”

“Why not? Dors, you can arrange it, can’t you?”

“I’m sure I can.”

“No, you can’t,” said Amaryl hotly. “They won’t take me. I’m from Dahl.”

“Well?”

“They won’t take people from Dahl.”

Seldon looked at Dors. “What’s he talking about?”

Dors shook her head. “I really don’t know.”

Amaryl said, “You’re an Outworlder, Mistress. How long have you been at Streeling?”

“A little over two years, Mr. Amaryl.”

“Have you ever seen Dahlites there—short, curly black hair, big mustaches?”

“There are students with all kinds of appearances.”

“But no Dahlites. Look again the next time you’re there.”

“Why not?” said Seldon.

“They don’t like us. We look different. They don’t like our mustaches.”

“You can shave your—” but Seldon’s voice died under the other’s furious glance.

“Never. Why should I? My mustache is my manhood.”

“You shave your beard. That’s your manhood too.”

“To my people it is the mustache.”

Seldon looked at Dors again and murmured, “Bald heads, mustaches … madness.”

“What?” said Amaryl angrily.

“Nothing. Tell me what else they don’t like about Dahlites.”

“They make up things not to like. They say we smell. They say we’re dirty. They say we steal. They say we’re violent. They say we’re
dumb
.”

“Why do they say all this?”

“Because it’s easy to say it and it makes
them
feel good. Sure, if we work in the heatsinks, we get dirty and smelly. If we’re poor and held down, some of us steal and get violent. But that isn’t the way it is with all of us. How about those tall yellow-hairs in the Imperial Sector who think they own the Galaxy—no, they
do
own the Galaxy. Don’t
they
ever get violent? Don’t
they
steal sometimes? If they did my job, they’d smell the way I do. If they had to live the way I have to, they’d get dirty too.”

“Who denies that there are people of all kinds in all places?” said Seldon.

“No one argues the matter! They just take it for granted. Master Seldon, I’ve got to get away from Trantor. I have no chance on Trantor, no way of earning credits, no way of getting an education, no way of becoming a mathematician, no way of becoming anything but what they say I am … a worthless nothing.” This last was said in frustration—and desperation.

Seldon tried to be reasonable. “The person I’m renting this room from is a Dahlite. He has a clean job. He’s educated.”

“Oh sure,” said Amaryl passionately. “There are some. They let a few do it so that they can say it can be done. And those few can live nicely as long as they stay in Dahl. Let them go outside and they’ll see how they’re treated. And while they’re in here they make themselves feel good by treating the rest of us like dirt. That makes them yellow-hairs in their own eyes. What did this nice person you’re renting this room from say when you told him you were bringing in a heatsinker? What did he say I would be like? They’re gone now … wouldn’t be in the same place with me.”

Seldon moistened his lips. “I won’t forget you. I’ll see to it that you’ll get off Trantor and into my own University in Helicon—once I’m back there myself.”

“Do you promise that? Your word of honor? Even though I’m a Dahlite?”

“The fact that you’re a Dahlite is unimportant to me. The fact that you are already a mathematician is! But I still can’t quite grasp what you’re telling me. I find it impossible to believe that there would be such unreasoning feeling against harmless people.”

Amaryl said bitterly, “That’s because you’ve never had any occasion to interest yourself in such things. It can all pass right under your nose and you wouldn’t smell a thing because it doesn’t affect
you
.”

Dors said, “Mr. Amaryl, Dr. Seldon is a mathematician like you and his head can sometimes be in the clouds. You must understand that. I am a historian, however. I know that it isn’t unusual to have one group of people look down upon another group. There are peculiar and almost ritualistic hatreds that have no rational justification and that can have their serious historical influence. It’s too bad.”

Amaryl said, “Saying something is ‘too bad’ is easy. You say you disapprove, which makes you a nice person, and then you can go about your own business and not be interested anymore. It’s a lot worse than ‘too bad.’ It’s against everything decent and natural. We’re all of us the same, yellow-hairs and black-hairs, tall and short, Easterners, Westerners, Southerners, and Outworlders. We’re all of us, you and I and even the Emperor, descended from the people of Earth, aren’t we?”

“Descended from
what
?” asked Seldon. He turned to look at Dors, his eyes wide.