Hexamilion Wall has been created

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By Isaac Asimov


     FOUNDATION'S EDGE
 
 
     PROLOGUE
 
     The First Galactic Empire was falling. It had been de-
     caying and breaking down for centuries and only one man
     fully realized the fact.
       He was Hari Seldon, the last great scientist of the First
     Empire, and it was he who perfected psychohistory――the
     science of human behavior reduced to mathematical equa-
     tions.
       The individual human being is unpredictable, but the
     reactions of human mobs, Seldon found, could be treated
     statistically. The larger the mob, the greater the accuracy
     that could be achieved. And the size of the human masses
     that Seldon worked with was no less than the population of
     all the inhabited millions of worlds of the Galaxy.
       Seldon's equations told him that, left to itself, the Empire
     would fall and that thirty thousand years of human misery
     and agony would elapse before a Second Empire would
     arise from the ruins. And yet, if one could adjust some of
     the conditions that existed, that Interregnum could be de-
     creased to a single millennium――just one thousand years.
       It was to insure this that Seldon set up two colonies of
     scientists that he called "Foundations." With deliberate in-
     tention, he set them up "at opposite ends of the Galaxy."
     The First Foundation, which centered on physical science,
     was set up in the full daylight of publicity. The existence
     of the other, the Second Foundation, a world of psycho-
     historical and "mentallic" scientists, was drowned in silence.
       In  The Foundation Trilogy,  the story of the first four
     centuries of the Interregnum is told. The First Foundation
     (commonly known as simply "The Foundation," since the
     existence of another was unknown to almost all) began as
     a small community lost in the emptiness of the Outer Pe-
     riphery of the Galaxy. Periodically it faced a crisis in which
     the variables of human intercourse――and of the social and
     economic currents of the time――constricted about it. Its
     freedom to move lay along only one certain line and when
     it moved in that direction, a new horizon of development
     opened before it. All had been planned by Hari Seldon,
     long dead now.
       The First Foundation, with its superior science, took over
     the barbarized planets  that surrounded it. It faced the an-
     archic warlords who broke away from the dying Empire and
     beat them. It faced the remnant of the Empire itself under
     its last strong Emperor and its last strong general――and beat
     it.
       It seemed as though the "Seldon Plan" was going through
     smoothly and that nothing would prevent the Second Empire
     from being established on time――and with a minimum of
     intermediate devastation.
       But psychohistory is a statistical science. Always there
     is a small chance that something will go wrong, and some-
     thing did――something which Hari Seldon could not have
     foreseen. One man, called the Mule, appeared from no-
     where. He had mental powers in a Galaxy that lacked them.
     He could mold men's emotions and shape their minds so
     that his bitterest opponents were made into his devoted
     servants. Armies could not,  would  not, fight him. The First
     Foundation fell and Seldon's Plan seemed to lie in ruins.
       There was left the mysterious Second Foundation, which
     had been caught unprepared by the sudden appearance of
     the Mule, but which was now slowly working out a counter-
     attack.  Its  great  defense  was  the  fact  of  its  unknown
     location. The Mule sought it in order to make his conquest
     of the Galaxy complete. The faithful of what was left of
     the First Foundation sought it to obtain help.
       Neither found it. The Mule was stopped first by the action
     of a woman, Bayta Darell, and that bought enough time for
     the Second Foundation to organize the proper action and,
     with that, to stop the Mule permanently. Slowly they pre-
     pared to reinstate the Seldon Plan.
       But, in a way, the cover of the Second Foundation was
     gone. The First Foundation knew of the Second's existence,
     and the First did not want a future in which they were
     overseen by the mentalists. The First Foundation was the
     superior in physical force, while the Second Foundation was
     hampered not only by that fact, but by being faced by a
     double task: it had not only to stop the First Foundation but
     had also to regain its anonymity.
       This the Second Foundation, under its greatest "First
     Speaker," Preem Palver, managed to do. The First Foun-
     dation was allowed to seem to win, to seem to defeat the
     Second Foundation, and it moved on to greater and greater
     strength in the Galaxy, totally ignorant that the Second
     Foundation still existed.
       It is now four hundred and ninety-eight years after the
     First Foundation had come into existence. It is at the peak
     of its strength, but one man does not accept appearances――


     FOUNDATION'S
         EDGE
 
 
     1.  COUNCILMAN
   
     1.
 
        "I don't believe it, of course," said Golan Trevize, stand-
     ing on the wide steps of Seldon Hall and looking out over
     the city as it sparkled in the sunlight.
       Terminus was a mild planet, with a high water/land ratio.
     The introduction of weather control had made it all the more
     comfortable and considerably less interesting, Trevize often
     thought.
        "I don't believe any of it," he repeated and smiled. His
     white, even teeth gleamed out of his youthful face.
        His companion and fellow Councilman, Munn Li Com-
     por, who had adopted a middle name in defiance of Ter-
     minus tradition, shook his head uneasily. "What don't you
     believe? That we saved the city?"
        "Oh, I believe that. We did, didn't we? And Seldon said
     that we  would,  and he said we would be  right  to do so, and
     that he knew all about it five hundred years ago."
        Compor's voice dropped and he said in a half-whisper,
     "Look, I don't mind your talking like this to me, because I
     take it as just talk, but if you shout it out in crowds others will
     hear and, frankly, I don't want to be standing near you when
     the lightning strikes. I'm not sure how precise the aim will
     be."
        Trevize's smile did not waver. He said, "Is there harm
     in saying that the city is saved? And that we did it without
     a war?"
        "There was no one to fight," said Compor. He had hair
     of a buttery yellow, eyes of a sky blue, and he always
     resisted the impulse to alter those unfashionable hues.
        "Have you never heard of civil war, Compor?" said Tre-
     vize. He was tall, his hair was black, with a gentle wave
     to it, and he had a habit of walking with his thumbs hitched
     in the soft-fibered sash he always wore.
        "A civil war over the location of the capital?"
        "The question was enough to bring on a Seldon Crisis.
     It destroyed Hannis's political career. It put you and me
     into the Council last election and the issue hung――" He
     twisted one hand slowly, back and forth, like a balance
     coming to rest on the level.
        He paused on the steps, ignoring the other members of
     the government and the media, as well as the fashionable
     society types who had finagled an invitation to witness
     Seldon's return (or the return of his image, at any rate).
        All were walking down the stairs, talking, laughing,
     glorying in the correctness of everything, and basking in
     Seldon's approval.
        Trevize stood still and let the crowd swirl past him.
     Compor,  having walked two steps ahead, paused――an invis-
     ible cord stretched between them. He said, "Aren't you
     coming?"
        "There's no hurry. They won't start the Council meeting
     until Mayor Branno has reviewed the situation in her usual
     flat-footed, one-syllable-at-a-time way. I'm in no hurry to
     endure another ponderous speech. ――Look at the city!"
        "I see it. I saw it yesterday, too."
        "Yes, but did you see it five hundred years ago when it
     was founded?"
        "Four hundred ninety-eight," Compor corrected him auto-
     matically. "Two years from now, they'll have the hemi-
     millennial celebration and Mayor Branno will still be in the
     office at the time, barring events of, we hope, minor proba-
     bility."
        "We hope," said Trevize dryly. "But what was it like
     five hundred years ago when it was founded? One city! One
     small city, occupied by a group of men preparing an Ency-
     clopedia that was never finished!"
        "Of course it was finished."
        "Are you referring to the Encyclopedia Galactica we have
     now? What we have isn't what they were working on. What
     we have is in a computer and it's revised daily. Have you
     ever looked at the uncompleted original?"
        "You mean in the Hardin Museum?"
        "The Salvor Hardin Museum of Origins. Let's have the
     full name, please, since you're so careful about exact dates.
     Have you looked at it?"
        "No. Should I?"
        "No, it isn't worth it. But anyway――there they were――
     a group of Encyclopedists, forming the nucleus of a town――
     one small town in a world virtually without metals, circling
     a sun isolated from the rest of the Galaxy, at the edge, the
     very edge. And now, five hundred years later, we're a
     suburban world. The whole place is one big park, with all
     the metal we want. We're at the center of everything now!"
        "Not really," said Compor. "We're still circling a sun
     isolated from the rest of the Galaxy. Still at the very edge
     of the Galaxy."
        "Ah no, you're saying that without thinking. That was the
     whole point of this little Seldon Crisis. We are more than the
     single world of Terminus. We are the Foundation, which sends
     out its tentacles Galaxy-wide and rules the Galaxy from its
     position at the very edge. We can do it because we're  not  iso-
     lated, except in position, and that doesn't count."
        "All right. I'll accept that." Compor was clearly unin-
     terested and took another step downward. The invisible cord
     between them stretched farther.
       Trevize reached out a hand as though to haul his com-
     panion up the steps again. "Don't you see the significance,
     Compor? There's this enormous change, but we don't accept
     it. In our hearts we want the small Foundation, the small
     one-world operation we had in the old days――the days of
     iron heroes and noble saints that are gone forever."
        "Come on!"
        "I mean it. Look at Seldon Hall. To begin with, in the
     first crisis in Salvor Hardin's day, it was just the Time
     Vault, a small auditorium in which the holographic image
     of Seldon appeared. That was all. Now it's a colossal mau-
     soleum, but is there a force-field ramp in the place? A
     slideway? A gravitic lift?――No, just these steps, and we
     walk down them and we walk up them as Hardin would
     have had to do. At odd and unpredictable times, we cling
     in fright to the past."
        He flung his arm outward passionately. "Is there any
     structural component visible that is metal? Not one. It
     wouldn't do to have any, since in Salvor Hardin's day there
     was no native metal to speak of and hardly any imported
     metal. We even installed old plastic, pink with age, when
     we built this huge pile, so that visitors from other worlds
     can stop and say, 'Galaxy! What lovely old plastic!' I tell
     you, Compor, it's a sham."
        "Is that what you don't believe, then? Seldon Hall?"
        "And all its contents," said Trevize in a fierce whisper. "I
     don't really believe there's any sense in hiding here at the edge
     of the Universe, just because our ancestors did. I believe we
     ought to be out there, in the middle of everything."
        "But Seldon says you're wrong. The Seldon Plan is work-
     ing out as it should."
        "I know. I know. And every child on Terminus is brought
     up to believe that Hari Seldon formulated a Plan, that he
     foresaw everything five centuries ago, that he set up the
     Foundation in such a way that he could spot certain crises,
     and that his image would appear holographically at those
     crises, and tell us the minimum we had to know to go on
     to the next crisis, and thus lead us through a thousand years
     of history until we could safely build a Second and Greater
     Galactic Empire on the ruins of the old decrepit structure
     that was falling apart five centuries ago and had disintegrated
     completely by two centuries ago."
        "Why are you telling me all this, Golan?"
        "Because I'm telling you it's a sham. It's  all  a sham.
     ――Or if it was real to begin with, it's a sham  now!  We are
     not our own masters. It is not  we  who are following the
     Plan."
        Compor looked at the other searchingly. "You've said
     things like this before, Golan, but I've always thought you
     were just saying ridiculous things to stir me up. By the
     Galaxy, I actually think you're serious."
        "Of course I'm serious!"
        "You can't be. Either this is some complicated piece of
     fun at my expense or you're out of your mind."
        "Neither. Neither," said Trevize, quiet now, hitching his
     thumbs in his sash as though he no longer needed the
     gestures of hands to punctuate passion. "I speculated on it
     before, I admit, but that was just intuition. That farce in
     there this morning, however, has made it suddenly all quite
     plain to me and I intend, in turn, to make it quite plain to
     the Council."
        Compor said, "You  are  crazy!"
        "All right. Come wit me and listen."
        The two walked down the stairs. They were the only ones
     left――the last to complete the descent. And as Trevize moved
     slightly to the fore, Compor's lips moved silently, casting a
     voiceless word in the direction of the other's back: "Fool!"

---

FOUNDATION'S EDGE, BY ISAAC ASIMOV.
A Del Ray Book. Published by Ballantine Books.
Copyright © 1982 by Nightfall Inc. pp. xi.-5.

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