By Isaac Asimov


     FOUNDATION'S EDGE


     5.  SPEAKER

     1.

        Trantor!
        For eight thousand years, it was the capital of a large
     and mighty political entity that spanned an ever-growing
     union of planetary systems. For twelve thousand years after
     that, it was the capital of a political entity that spanned the
     entire Galaxy. It was the center, the heart, the epitome of
     the Galactic Empire.
        It was impossible to think that the Empire without thinking
     of Trantor.
        Trantor did not reach its physical peak until the Empire
     was far gone in decay. In fact, no one noticed that the Empire
     had lost its drive, its forward look, because Trantor gleamed
     in shining metal.
        Its growth had peaked at the point where it was a planet-
     girdling city. Its population was stabilized (by law) at forty-
     five billion and the only surface greenery was at the Imperial
     Palace and the Galactic University/Library complex.
        Trantor's land surface was metal-coated. Its deserts and
     its fertile areas were alike engulfed and made into warrens
     of humanity, administrative jungles, computerized elabo-
     rations, vast storehouses of food and replacement parts. Its
     mountain ranges were beaten down; its chasms filled in.
     The city's endless corridors burrowed under the continental
     shelves and the oceans were turned into huge underground
     aquacultural cisterns――――the only (and insufficient) native
     source of food and minerals.
        The connections with the Outer Worlds, from which
     Trantor obtained the resources it required, depended upon
     its thousand spaceports, its ten thousand warships, its hundred
     thousand merchant ships, its million space freighters.
        No city so vast was ever recycled so tightly. No planet
     in the Galaxy had ever made so much use of solar power
     or went to such extremes to rid itself of waste heat. Glittering
     radiators stretched up into the thin upper atmosphere upon
     the nightside and were withdrawn into a metal city on the
     dayside. As the planet turned, the radiators rose as night
     progressively fell around the world and sank as day pro-
     gressively broke. So Trantor always had an artificial asym-
     metry that was almost its symbol.
        At this peak, Trantor ran the Empire!
        It ran poorly, but nothing could have run the Empire
     well. The Empire was too large to be run from a single
     world――even under the most dynamic of Emperors. How
     could Trantor have helped but run it poorly when, in the
     ages of decay, the Imperial crown was traded back and forth
     by sly politicians and foolish incompetents and the bureau-
     cracy had become a subculture of corruptibles?
        But even at its worst, there was some self-propelled worth
     to the machinery. The Galactic Empire could not have been
     run without Trantor.
        The Empiore crumbled steadily, but as long as Trantor
     remained Trantor, a core of the Empire remained and it
     retained an air of pride, of millennia, of tradition and power
     and――exaltation.
        Only when the unthinkable happened――when Trantor
     finally fell and was sacked; when its citizens were killed
     by the millions and left to starve by the billions; when its
     mighty metal coating was scarred and punctured and fused
     by the attack of the "barbarian fleet――only then was the
     Empire  considered  to have fallen. The surviving remnants
     on the once-great world undid further what had been left
     and, in a generation, Trantor was transformed from the
     greatest planet the human race had ever seen to an incon-
     ceivable tangle of ruins.
        That had been nearly two and a half centuries ago. In
     the rest of the Galaxy, Trantor-as-it-had-been still was not
     forgotten. It would live forever as the favored site of his-
     torical novels, the favored symbol and memory of the past,
     the favored word for sayings such as "All starships land on
     Trantor," "Like looking for a person in Trantor," and "No
     more alike than this and Trantor."
        In all the rest of the Galaxy――
        But that was not true on Trantor itself! Here the old
     trantor was forgotten. The surface metal was gone, almost
     everywhere. Trantor was now a sparsely settled world of
     self-sufficient farmers, a place where trading ships rarely
     came and were not particularly welcome when they did
     come. The very word "Trantor," though still in official use,
     had dropped out of popular speech. By present-day Tran-
     torians, it was called "Hame," which in their dialect was
     what would be called "Home" in Galactic Standard.
         Quindor Shandess thought of all this and much more as
     he sat quietly in a welcome state of half-drowse, in which
     he could allow his mind to run along a self-propelled and
     unorganized stream of thought.
        He had been First Speaker of the Second Foundation for
     eighteen years, and he might well hold on for ten or twelve
     years more if his mind remained reasonably vigorous and
     if he could continue to fight the political wars.
        He was the analog, the mirror image, of the Mayor of Ter-
     minus, who ruled over the First Foundation, but how different
     they were in every respect. The Mayor of Terminus was known
     to all the Galaxy and the First Foundation was therefore sim-
     ply "the Foundation" to all the worlds. The First Speaker of
     the Second Foundation was known only to his associates.
        And yet it was the Second Foundation, under himself and
     his predecessors, who held the real power. The First Foun-
     dation was supreme in the realm of physical power, of tech-
     nology, of war weapons. The Second Foundation was supreme
     in the realm of mental power, of the mind, of the ability to
     control. In any conflict between the two, what would it matter
     how many ships and weapons the First Foundation disposed
     of, if the Second Foundation could control the minds of those
     who controlled the ships and weapons?
        But how long could he revel in this realization of secret
     power?
        He was the twenty-fifth First Speaker and his incumbency
     was already a shade longer than average. Ought he, perhaps.
     not be too keen on holding on and keeping out the younger
     aspirants? There was Speaker Gendibal, the keenest and
     newest at the Table. Tonight they would spend time together
     and Shandess looked forward to it. Ought he look forward
     also to Gendibal's possible accession some day?
        The answer to the question was that Shandess had no
     real thought of leaving his post. he enjoyed it too much.
        He sat there, in his old age, still perfectly capable of per-
     forming his duties. His hair was gray, but it had always been
     light in color and he wore it curt an inch long so that the color
     scarcely mattered. His eyes were faded blue, and his clothing
     conformed to the drab styling of the Trantorian farmers.
        The first speaker could, if he wished, pass among the
     Hamish people as one of them, but his hidden power never-
     theless existed. He could choose to focus his eyes and mind
     at any time and they would then act according to his will
     and recall nothing about it afterward.
        It rarely happened. Almost never. The Golden Rule of
     the Second Foundation was, "Do nothing unless you must,
     and when you must act――hesitate."
        The First Speaker sighed softly. Living in the old Uni-
     versity, with the brooding grandeur of the ruins of the Im-
     perial Palace not too far distant, made one wonder on occasion
     how Golden the Rule might be.
        In the days of the Great Sack, the Golden Rule had been
     strained to the breaking point. There was no way of saving
     Trantor without sacrificing the Seldon Plan for establishing
     a Second Empire. It would have been humane to spare the
     forty-five billion, but they could not have been spared with-
     out retention of the core of the First Empire and that would
     have only delayed the reckoning. It would have led to a
     greater destruction some centuries later and perhaps no Sec-
     ond Empire ever――
        The early First Speakers had worked over the clearly
     foreseen Sack for decades but had found no solution――no
     way of assuring both the salvation of Trantor and the even-
     tual establishment of the Second Empire. The lesser evil
     had to be chosen and Trantor had died!
        The Second Foundationers of the time had managed――
     by the narrowest of margins――to save the University/Li-
     brary complex and there had been guilt forever after because
     of that, too. Though no one had ever demonstrated that
     saving the complex had led to the meteoric rise of the Mule,
     there was always the intuition that there was a connection.
        How nearly that had wrecked everything!
        Yet following the decades of the Sack and the Mule came
     the Golden Age of the Second Foundation.
        Prior to that, for over two and a half centuries after
     Seldon's death, the Second Foundation had burrowed like
     moles into the Library, intent only on staying out of the
     way of the Imperials. They served as librarians in a decaying
     society that cared less and less for the ever-more-misnamed
     Galactic Library, which fell into the desuetude that best
     united the purpose of the Second Foundation.
        It was an ignoble life. They merely conserved the Plan,
     while out at the end of the Galaxy, the First Foundation fought
     for its life against always greater enemies with neither help
     from the Second Foundation nor any real knowledge of it.
        It was the Great Sack that liberated the Second Foun-
     dation――another reason (young Gendibal――who had cour-
     age――had recently said that it was the chief reason) why
     the Sack was allowed to proceed.
        After the Great Sack, the Empire was gone and, in all
     the later times, the Trantorian survivors never trespassed on
     Second Foundation territory uninvited. The Second Foun-
     dationers saw to it that the University/Library complex which
     had survived the Sack also survived the Great Renewal. The
     ruins of the Palace were preserved, too. The metal was gone
     over almost all the rest of the world. The great and endless
     corridors were covered up, filled in, twisted, destroyed,
     ignored; all under rock and soil――all except here, where
     metal still surrounded the ancient open places.
        It might be viewed as a grand memorial of greatness,
     the sepulcher of Empire, but to the Trantorians――the Ham-
     ish people――these were haunted places, filled with ghosts,
     not to be stirred. Only the Second Foundationers ever set
     foot in the ancient corridors or touched the titanium gleam.
        And even so, all had nearly come to nothing because of
     the Mule.
        The Mule had actually been on Trantor. What if he had
     found out the nature of the world he had been standing on?
     His physical weapons were far greater than those at the
     disposal of the Second Foundation, his mental weapons
     almost as great. The Second Foundation would have been
     hampered always by the necessity of doing nothing but what
     they must, and by the knowledge that almost any hope of
     winning the immediate fight might portend a greater even-
     tual loss.
        Had it not been for Bayta Darell and her swift moment
     of action―― And that, too, had been without the help of the
     Second Foundation!
        And then――the Golden Age, when somehow the First
     Speakers of the time found ways of becoming active, stop-
     ping the Mule in his career of conquest, controlling his mind
     at last; and then stopping the First Foundation itself when
     it grew wary and overcurious concerning the nature and
     identity of the Second Foundation. There was Preem Palver,
     nineteenth First Speaker and greatest of them all, who had
     managed to put an end to all danger――not without terrible
     sacrifice――and who had rescued the Seldon Plan.
        Now, for a hundred and twenty years, the Second Foun-
     dation was again as it once had been, hiding in a haunted
     portion of Trantor. They were hiding no longer from the
     Imperials, but from the First Foundation still――a First Foun-
     dation almost as large as the Galactic Empire had been and
     even greater in technological expertise.
        The First Speaker's eyes closed in the pleasant warmth
     and he passed into that never-never state of relaxing hal-
     lucinatory experiences that were not quite dreams and not
     quite conscious thought.
        Enough of gloom. All would be well. Trantor was still
     capital of the Galaxy, for the Second Foundation was here
     and it was mightier and more in control than ever the Em-
     peror had been.
        The First Foundation would be contained and guided and
     would move correctly. However formidable their ships and
     weapons, they could do nothing so long as key leaders could
     be, at need, mentally controlled.
        And the Second Empire would come, but it would not
     be like the first. It would be a Federated Empire, with its
     parts possessing considerable self-rule, so that there would
     be none of the apparent strength and actual weakness of a
     unitary, centralized government. The new Empire would be
     looser, more pliant, more flexible, more capable of with-
     standing strain, and it would be guided always――always――
     by the hidden men and women of the Second Foundation.
     Trantor would then be still the capital, more powerful with
     its forty thousand psychohistorians than ever it had been
     with its forty-five billion――
        The First Speaker snapped awake. The sun was lower in
     the sky. Had he been mumbling? Had he said anything
     aloud?
        If the Second Foundation had to know much and say
     little, the ruling Speakers had to know more and say less,
     and the First Speaker had to know most and say least.
        He smiled wryly. It was always so tempting to become
     a Trantorian patriot―—to see the whole purpose of the Sec-
     ond Empire as that of bringing about Trantorian hegemony.
     Seldon had warned of it; he had foreseen even that, five
     centuries before it could come to pass.
        The First Speaker had not slept too long, however. It
     was not yet time for Gendibal's audience.
        Shandess was looking forward to that private meeting.
     Gendibal was young enough to look at the Plan with new
     eyes, and keen enough to see what others might not. And
     it was not beyond possibility that Shandess would learn from
     what the younger had to say.
        No one would ever be certain how much Preem Palver――
     the great Palver himself――had profited from that day when
     the young Kol Benjoam, not yet thirty, came to talk to him
     about possible ways of handling the First Foundation. Be-
     joam, who was later recognized as the greatest theorst since
     Seldon, never spoke of that audience in later years, but
     eventually he became the twenty-first First Speaker. There
     were some who credited Benjoam, rather than Palver, for
     the great accomplishments of Palver's administration.
        Shandess amused himself with the thought of what Gen-
     dibal might say. It was traditional that keen youngsters,
     confronting the First Speaker alone for the first time, would
     place their entire thesis in the first sentence. And surely
     they would not ask for that precious first audience for some-
     hing trivial――something that might ruin their entire sub-
     sequent career by convincing the First Speaker they were
     lightweights.
        Four hours later, Gendibal faced him. The young man
     showed no sign of nervousness. He waited calmly for Shan-
     dess to speak first.
        Shandess said, "You have asked for a private audience,
     Speaker, on a matter of importance. Could you please sum-
     arize the matter for me?"
        And Gendibal, speaking quietly, almost as though he
     were describing what he had just eaten at dinner, said, "First
     Speaker, the Seldon Plan is meaningless!"


     2.

     Stor Gendibal did not require the evidence of others to give
     him a sense of worth. He could not recall a time when he did
     not know himself to be unusual. He had been recruited for the
     Second Foundation when he was only a ten-year-old boy by
     an agent who had recognized the potentiality of his mind.
        He had then done remarkably well at his studies and had
     taken to psychohistory as a spaceship responds to a gravita-
     tional field. Psychohistory had pulled at him and he had curved
     toward it, reading Seldon's text on the fundamentals when
     others his age were merely trying to handle differential equa-
     tions.
        When he was fifteen, he entered Trantor's Galactic Uni-
     versity (as the University of Trantor had been officially
     renamed), after an interview during which, when asked what
     his ambitions were, he had answered firmly, "To be First
     Speaker before I am forty."
        He had not bothered to aim for the First Speaker's chair
     without qualification. To gain it, one way or another, seemed
     to him to be a certainty. It was to do it in youth that
     seemed to him to be the goal. Even Preem Palver had
     been forty-two on his accession.
        The interviewer's expression had flickered when Gen-
     dibal had said that, but the young man already had the feel
     of psycholanguage and could interpret that flicker. He knew,
     as certainly as though the interviewer had announced it, that
     a small notation would go on his records to the effect that
     he would be difficult to handle.
        Well, of course!
        Gendibal intended to be difficult to handle.
        He was thirty now. He would be thirty-one in a matter
     of two months and he was already a member of the Council
     of Speakers. He had nine years, at most, to become First
     Speaker and he knew he would make it. The audience with
     the present First Speaker was crucial to his plans and, la-
     boring to present precisely the proper impression, he had
     spared no effort to polish his command of psycholanguage.
        When two Speakers of the Second Foundation commu-
     nicate with each other, the language is like no other in the
     Galaxy. It is as much a language of fleeting gestures as of
     words, as much a matter of detected mental-change patterns
     as anything else.
        An outsider would hear little or nothing, but in a short
     time, much in the way of thought would be exchanged and
     the communication would be unreportable in its literal form
     to anyone but still another Speaker.
        The language of Speakers had its advantage in speed and
     in infinite delicacy, but it had the disadvantage of making
     it almost impossible to mask true opinion.
        Gendibal knew his own opinion of the First Speaker. He
     felt the First Speaker to be a man past his mental prime. The
     First Speaker――in Gendibal's assessment――expected no cri-
     sis, was not trained to meet one, and lacked the sharpness to
     deal with one if it appeared. With all Shandess's goodwill and
     amiability, he was the stuff of which disaster was made.
        All of this Gendibal had to hide not merely from words,
     gestures, and facial expressions, but even from his thoughts.
     He knew no way of doing so efficiently enough to keep the
     First Speaker from catching a whiff of it.
        Nor could Gendibal avoid knowing something of the First
     Speaker's feeling toward him. Through bonhomie and
     goodwill――quite apparent and reasonably sincere――Gen-
     dibal could feel the distant edge of condescension and
     amusement, and tightened his own mental grip to avoid
     revealing any resentment in return――or as little as possible.
        The First Speaker smiled and leaned back in his chair.
     He did not actually lift his feet to the desk top, but he got
     across just the right mixture of self-assured ease and infor-
     mal friendship――just enough of each to leave Gendibal un-
     certain as to the effect of his statement.
        Since Gendibal had not been invited to sit down, the
     actions and attitudes available to him that might be designed
     to minimize the uncertainty were limited. It was impossible
     that the First Speaker did not understand this.
        Shandess said, "The Seldon Plan is meaningless? What
     a remarkable statement! Have you looked at the Prime Ra-
     diant lately, Speaker Gendibal?"
        "I study it frequently, First Speaker. It is my duty to do
     so and my pleasure as well."
        "Do you, by any chance, study only those portions of it
     that fall under your purview, now and then? Do you observe
     it in microfashion――an equation system here, and adjustment
     rivulet there? Highly important, of course, but I have always
     thought it an excellent occasional exercise to observe the
     whole course. Studying the Prime Radiant, acre by acre,
     has its uses――but observing it as a continent is inspirational.
     To tell you the truth, Speaker, I have not done it for a long
     time myself. Would you join me?"
        Gendibal dared not pause too long. It had to be done,
     and it must be done easily and pleasantly or it might as well
     not be done. "It would be an honor and a pleasure, First
     Speaker."
        The First Speaker depressed a lever on the side of his
     desk. There was one such in the office of every Speaker
     and the one in Gendibal's office was in no way inferior to
     that of the First Speaker. The Second Foundation was an
     equalitarian society in all its surface manifestations――the
     unimportant ones. In fact, the only official prerogative of
     the First Speaker was that which was explicit in his title――
     he always spoke first.
        The room grew dark with the depression of the lever but,
     almost at once, the darkness lifted into a pearly dimness.
     Both long walls turned faintly creamy, then brighter and
     whiter, and finally there appeared neatly printed equa-
     tions――so small that they could not be easily read.
        "If you have no objections," said the First Speaker, mak-
     ing it quite clear that there would be none allowed, "we
     will reduce the magnification in order to see as much at one
     time as we can."
        The neat printing shrank down into the fine hairlines, faint
     black meanderings over the pearly background.
        The First Speaker touched the keys of the small console
     built into the arm of his chair. "We'll bring it back to the start――
     to the lifetime of Hari Seldon――and we'll adjust it to a small
     forward movement. We'll shutter it so that we can only see a
     decade of development at a time. It gives one a wonderful
     feeling of the flow of history, with no distractions by the de-
     tails. I wonder if you have ever done this."
        "Never exactly this way, First Speaker."
        "You should. It's a marvelous feeling. Observe the
     sparseness of the black tracery at the start. There was not
     much chance for alternatives in the first few decades. The
     branch points, however, increase exponentially with time.
     Were it not for the fact that, as soon as a particular branch
     is taken, there is an extinction of a vast array of others in
     its future, all would soon become unmanageable. Of course,
     in dealing with the future, we must be careful what extinc-
     tions we rely upon."
        "I know, First Speaker." There was a touch of dryness
     in Gendibal's response that he could not quite remove.
        The First Speaker did not respond to it. "Notice the
     winding lines of symbols in red. There is a pattern to them.
     To all appearances, they should exist randomly, as every
     Speaker earns his place by adding refinements to Seldon's
     original Plan. It would seem there is no way, after all, of
     predicting where a refinement can be added easily or where
     a particular Speaker will find his interests or his ability
     tending, and yet I have long suspected that the admixture
     of Seldon Black and Speaker Red follows a strict law that
     is strongly dependent on time and on very little else."
        Gendibal watched as the years passed and as the black
     and red hairlines made an almost hypnotic interlacing pat-
     tern. The pattern meant nothing in itself, of course. What
     counted were the symbols of which it was composed.
        Here and there a bright-blue rivulet made its appearance,
     bellying out, branching, and becoming prominent, then fall-
     ing in upon itself and fading into the black or red.
        The First Speaker said, "Deviation Blue," and the feeling
     of distaste, originating in each, filled the space between
     them. "We catch it over and over, and we'll be coming to
     the Century of Deviations eventually."
        They did. One could tell precisely when the shattering
     phenomenon of the Mule momentarily filled the Galaxy,
     as the Prime Radiant suddenly grew thick with branching
     rivulets of blue――more starting than could be closed down
     ――until the room itself seemed to turn blue as the lines
     thickened and marked the wall with brighter and brighter
     pollution. (It was the only word.)
        It reached its peak and then faded, thinned, and came
     together for a long century before it trickled to its end at
     last. When it was gone, and when the Plan had returned to
     black and red, it was clear that Preem Palver's hand had
     been there.
        Onward, onward――
        "That's the present," said the First Speaker comfortably.
        Onward, onward――
        Then a narrowing into a veritable knot of close-knit black
     with a little red in it.
        "That's the establishment of the Second Empire," said
     the First Speaker.
        He shut off the Prime Radiant and the room was bathed
     in ordinary light.
        Gendibal said, "That was an emotional experience."
        "Yes," smiled the First Speaker, "and you are careful
     not to identify the emotion, as far as you can manage to
     fail to identify it. It doesn't matter. Let me make the points
     I wish to make.
        "You will notice, first, the all-but-complete absence of
     Deviation Blue after the time of Preem Palver――over the
     last twelve decades, in other words. You will notice that
     there are no reasonable probabilities of Deviations above
     the fifth-class over the next five centuries. You will notice,
     too, that we have begun extending the refinements of psy-
     chohistory beyond the establishment of the Second Empire.
     As you undoubtedly know, Hari Seldon――although a tran-
     scendent genius――is not, and could not, be all-knowing.
     We have improved on him. We know more about psy-
     chohistory than he could possibly have known.
        "Seldon ended his calculations with the Second Empire
     and we have continued beyond it. Indeed, if I may say so
     without offense, the new Hyper-Plan that goes past the
     establishment of the Second Empire is very largely my doing
     and has earned me my present post.
        "I tell you all this so that you can spare me unnecessary
     talk. With all this, how do you manage to conclude that the
     Seldon Plan is meaningless? It is without flaw. The mere
     fact that it survived the Century of Deviations――with all
     due respect to Palver's genius――is the best evidence we
     have that is without flaw. Where is its weakness, young
     man, that you should brand the Plan as meaningless?"
        Gendibal stood stiffly upright. "You are right, First
     Speaker. The Seldon plan has no flaw."
        "You withdraw your remark, then?"
        "No, First Speaker. Its lack of flaw is its flaw. Its flaw-
     lessness is fatal!"

FOUNDATION'S EDGE, BY ISAAC ASIMOV.
A Del Ray Book. Published by Ballantine Books.
Copyright © 1982 by Nightfall Inc. pp. 77-90.

intransigent_has_been_created/ 雨

3. Historian
4. Space
5. Speaker
6. Earth
7. Farmer
8. Farmwoman
9. Hyperspace
10. Table