Prelude to Foundation (9 page)

“This atmosphere of decay,” said Seldon angrily, “is
your
impression. Is it possible that you are wrong?”

Hummin stopped and for a moment appeared thoughtful. Then he said, “Yes, I might be wrong. I am speaking only from intuition, from guesses. What I need is a working technique of psychohistory.”

Seldon shrugged and did not take the bait. He said, “I don’t have such a technique to give you. —But suppose you’re right. Suppose the Empire
is
running down and will eventually stop and fall apart. The human species will still exist.”

“Under what conditions, man? For nearly twelve thousand years, Trantor, under strong rulers, has largely kept the peace. There’ve been interruptions to that—rebellions, localized civil wars, tragedy in plenty—but,
on the whole and over large areas, there has been peace. Why is Helicon so pro-Imperium? Your world, I mean. Because it is small and would be devoured by its neighbors were it not that the Empire keeps it secure.”

“Are you predicting universal war and anarchy if the Empire fails?”

“Of course. I’m not fond of the Emperor or of the Imperial institutions in general, but I don’t have any substitute for it. I don’t know what else will keep the peace and I’m not ready to let go until I have something else in hand.”

Seldon said, “You talk as though you are in control of the Galaxy.
You are
not ready to let go?
You
must have something else in hand? Who are you to talk so?”

“I’m speaking generally, figuratively,” said Hummin. “I’m not worried about Chetter Hummin personally. It might be said that the Empire will last my time; it might even show signs of improvement in my time. Declines don’t follow a straight-line path. It may be a thousand years before the final crash and you might well imagine I would be dead then and, certainly, I will leave no descendants. As far as women are concerned, I have nothing but the occasional casual attachment and I have no children and intend to have none. I have given no hostages to fortune. —I looked you up after your talk, Seldon. You have no children either.”

“I have parents and two brothers, but no children.” He smiled rather weakly. “I was very attached to a woman at one time, but it seemed to her that I was attached more to my mathematics.”

“Were you?”

“It didn’t seem so to me, but it seemed so to her. So she left.”

“And you have had no one since?”

“No. I remember the pain too clearly as yet.”

“Well then, it might seem we could both wait out the matter and leave it to other people, well after our time, to suffer. I might have been willing to accept that
earlier, but no longer. For now I
have
a tool; I
am
in command.”

“What’s your tool?” asked Seldon, already knowing the answer.

“You!” said Hummin.

And because Seldon had known what Hummin would say, he wasted no time in being shocked or astonished. He simply shook his head and said, “You are quite wrong. I am no tool fit for use.”

“Why not?”

Seldon sighed. “How often must I repeat it? Psychohistory is not a practical study. The difficulty is fundamental. All the space and time of the Universe would not suffice to work out the necessary problems.”

“Are you certain of that?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“There’s no question of your working out the entire future of the Galactic Empire, you know. You needn’t trace out in detail the workings of every human being or even of every world. There are merely certain questions you must answer: Will the Galactic Empire crash and, if so, when? What will be the condition of humanity afterward? Can anything be done to prevent the crash or to ameliorate conditions afterward? These are comparatively simple questions, it seems to me.”

Seldon shook his head and smiled sadly. “The history of mathematics is full of simple questions that had only the most complicated of answers—or none at all.”

“Is there nothing to be done? I can see that the Empire is falling, but I can’t prove it. All my conclusions are subjective and I cannot show that I am not mistaken. Because the view is a seriously unsettling one, people would prefer not to believe my subjective conclusion and nothing will be done to prevent the Fall or even to cushion it. You could
prove
the coming Fall or, for that matter, disprove it.”

“But that is exactly what I cannot do. I can’t find you proof where none exists. I can’t make a mathematical
system practical when it isn’t. I can’t find you two even numbers that will yield an odd number as a sum, no matter how vitally you—or all the Galaxy—may need that odd number.”

Hummin said, “Well then, you’re part of the decay. You’re ready to accept failure.”

“What choice have I?”

“Can’t you
try
? However useless the effort may seem to you to be, have you anything better to do with your life? Have you some worthier goal? Have you a purpose that will justify you in your own eyes to some greater extent?”

Seldon’s eyes blinked rapidly. “Millions of worlds. Billions of cultures. Quadrillions of people. Decillions of interrelationships. —And you want me to reduce it to order.”

“No, I want you to
try
. For the sake of those millions of worlds, billions of cultures, and quadrillions of people. Not for the Emperor. Not for Demerzel. For humanity.”

“I will fail,” said Seldon.

“Then we will be no worse off. Will you try?”

And against his will and not knowing why, Seldon heard himself say, “I will try.” And the course of his life was set.

The journey came to its end and the air-taxi moved into a much larger lot than the one at which they had eaten. (Seldon still remembered the taste of the sandwich and made a wry face.)

Hummin turned in his taxi and came back, placing his credit slip in a small pocket on the inner surface of
his shirt. He said, “You’re completely safe here from anything outright and open. This is the Streeling Sector.”

“Streeling?”

“It’s named for someone who first opened up the area to settlement, I imagine. Most of the sectors are named for someone or other, which means that most of the names are ugly and some are hard to pronounce. Just the same, if you try to have the inhabitants here change Streeling to Sweetsmell or something like that, you’ll have a fight on your hands.”

“Of course,” said Seldon, sniffing loudly, “it isn’t exactly Sweetsmell.”

“Hardly anywhere in Trantor is, but you’ll get used to it.”

“I’m glad we’re here,” said Seldon. “Not that I like it, but I got quite tired sitting in the taxi. Getting around Trantor must be a horror. Back on Helicon, we can get from any one place to any other by air, in far less time than it took us to travel less than two thousand kilometers here.”

“We have air-jets too.”

“But in that case—”

“I could arrange an air-taxi ride more or less anonymously. It would have been much more difficult with an air-jet. And regardless of how safe it is here, I’d feel better if Demerzel didn’t know exactly where you were.

—As a matter of fact, we’re not done yet. We’re going to take the Expressway for the final stage.”

Seldon knew the expression. “One of those open monorails moving on an electromagnetic field, right?”

“Right.”

“We don’t have them on Helicon. Actually, we don’t need them there. I rode on an Expressway the first day I was on Trantor. It took me from the airport to the hotel. It was rather a novelty, but if I were to use it all the time, I imagine the noise and crowds would become overpowering.”

Hummin looked amused. “Did you get lost?”

“No, the signs were useful. There was trouble getting on and off, but I was helped. Everyone could tell I was an Outworlder by my clothes, I now realize. They seemed eager to help, though; I guess because it was amusing to watch me hesitate and stumble.”

“As an expert in Expressway travel by now, you will neither hesitate nor stumble.” Hummin said it pleasantly enough, though there was a slight twitch to the corners of his mouth. “Come on, then.”

They sauntered leisurely along the walkway, which was lit to the extent one might expect of an overcast day and that brightened now and then as though the sun occasionally broke through the clouds. Automatically, Seldon looked upward to see if that were indeed the case, but the “sky” above was blankly luminous.

Hummin saw this and said, “This change in brightness seems to suit the human psyche. There are days when the street seems to be in bright sunlight and days when it is rather darker than it is now.”

“But no rain or snow?”

“Or hail or sleet. No. Nor high humidity nor bitter cold. Trantor has its points, Seldon, even now.”

There were people walking in both directions and there were a considerable number of young people and also some children accompanying the adults, despite what Hummin had said about the birthrate. All seemed reasonably prosperous and reputable. The two sexes were equally represented and the clothing was distinctly more subdued than it had been in the Imperial Sector. His own costume, as chosen by Hummin, fit right in. Very few were wearing hats and Seldon thankfully removed his own and swung it at his side.

There was no deep abyss separating the two sides of the walkway and as Hummin had predicted in the Imperial Sector, they were walking at what seemed to be ground level. There were no vehicles either and Seldon pointed this out to Hummin.

Hummin said, “There are quite a number of them in
the Imperial Sector because they’re used by officials. Elsewhere, private vehicles are rare and those that are used have separate tunnels reserved for them. Their use is not really necessary, since we have Expressways and, for shorter distances, moving corridors. For still shorter distances, we have walkways and we can use our legs.”

Seldon heard occasional muted sighs and creaks and saw, some distance off, the endless passing of Expressway cars.

“There it is,” he said, pointing.

“I know, but let us move on to a boarding station. There are more cars there and it is easier to get on.”

Once they were safely ensconced in an Expressway car, Seldon turned to Hummin and said, “What amazes me is how quiet the Expressways are. I realize that they are mass-propelled by an electromagnetic field, but it seems quiet even for that.” He listened to the occasional metallic groan as the car they were on shifted against its neighbors.

“Yes, it’s a marvelous network,” said Hummin, “but you don’t see it at its peak. When I was younger, it was quieter than it is now and there are those who say that there wasn’t as much as a whisper fifty years ago—though I suppose we might make allowance for the idealization of nostalgia.”

“Why isn’t it that way now?”

“Because it isn’t maintained properly. I told you about decay.”

Seldon frowned. “Surely, people don’t sit around and say, ‘We’re decaying. Let’s let the Expressways fall apart.’ ”

“No, they don’t. It’s not a purposeful thing. Bad spots are patched, decrepit coaches refurbished, magnets replaced. However, it’s done in more slapdash fashion, more carelessly, and at greater intervals. There just aren’t enough credits available.”

“Where have the credits gone?”

“Into other things. We’ve had centuries of unrest.

The navy is much larger and many times more expensive than it once was. The armed forces are much better-paid, in order to keep them quiet. Unrest, revolts, and minor blazes of civil war all take their toll.”

“But it’s been quiet under Cleon. And we’ve had fifty years of peace.”

“Yes, but soldiers who are well-paid would resent having that pay reduced just because there is peace. Admirals resist mothballing ships and having themselves reduced in rank simply because there is less for them to do. So the credits still go—unproductively—to the armed forces and vital areas of the social good are allowed to deteriorate. That’s what I call decay. Don’t you? Don’t you think that eventually you would fit that sort of view into your psychohistorical notions?”

Seldon stirred uneasily. Then he said, “Where are we going, by the way?”

“Streeling University.”

“Ah, that’s why the sector’s name was familiar. I’ve heard of the University.”

“I’m not surprised. Trantor has nearly a hundred thousand institutions of higher learning and Streeling is one of the thousand or so at the top of the heap.”

“Will I be staying there?”

“For a while. University campuses are unbreachable sanctuaries, by and large. You will be safe there.”

“But will I be welcome there?”

“Why not? It’s hard to find a good mathematician these days. They might be able to use you. And you might be able to use them too—and for more than just a hiding place.”

“You mean, it will be a place where I can develop my notions.”

“You have promised,” said Hummin gravely.

“I have promised to
try
,” said Seldon and thought to himself that it was about like promising to try to make a rope out of sand.

Conversation had run out after that and Seldon watched the structures of the Streeling Sector as they passed. Some were quite low, while some seemed to brush the “sky.” Wide crosspassages broke the progression and frequent alleys could be seen.

At one point, it struck him that though the buildings rose upward they also swept downward and that perhaps they were deeper than they were high. As soon as the thought occurred to him, he was convinced it was true.

Occasionally, he saw patches of green in the background, farther back from the Expressway, and even small trees.

He watched for quite a while and then became aware that the light was growing dimmer. He squinted about and turned to Hummin, who guessed the question.

“The afternoon is waning,” he said, “and night is coming on.”

Seldon’s eyebrows raised and the corners of his mouth turned downward. “That’s impressive. I have a picture of the entire planet darkening and then, some hours from now, lighting up again.”

Hummin smiled his small, careful smile. “Not quite, Seldon. The planet is never turned off altogether—or turned on either. The shadow of twilight sweeps across the planet gradually, followed half a day later by the slow brightening of dawn. In fact, the effect follows the actual day and night above the domes quite closely, so that in higher altitudes day and night change length with the seasons.”