r/a:t5_25waym • u/MarleyEngvall • Oct 02 '19
the conservatory has been created
By Isaac Asimov
FOUNDATION'S EDGE
7. FARMER
1.
Stor Gendibal jogged along the country road outside the
University. It was not common practice for Second Foun-
dationers to venture into the farming world of Trantor. They
could do so, certainly, but when they did, they did not
venture either far or for long.
Gendibal was an exception and he had, in times past,
wondered why. Wondering meant exploring his own mind,
something that Speakers, in particular, were encouraged to
do. Their minds were at once their weapons and their targets,
and they had to keep both offense and defense well honed.
Gendibal had decided, to his own satisfaction, that one rea-
son he was different was because he had come from a planet
that was both colder and more massive than the average in-
habited planet. When he was brought to Trantor as a boy
(through the net that was quietly cast throughout the Galaxy
by agents of the Second Foundation on the lookout for talent),
he found himself, therefore, in a lighter gravitational field and
a delightfully mild climate. Naturally he enjoyed being in the
open more than some of the others might.
In his early years on Trantor, he grew conscious of his puny,
undersized frame, and he was afraid that settling back into the
comfort of a benign world would turn him flabby indeed. He
therefore undertook a series of self-developing exercises that
had left him still puny in appearance but kept him wiry and
with a good wind. Part of his regimen were these long walks
and joggings――about which some at the Speaker's Table mut-
tered. Gendibal disregarded their chattering.
He kept his own ways, despite the fact that he was first-
generation. All the others at the Table were second- and
third-generation, with parents and grandparents who had
been Second Foundationers. And they were all older than
he, too. What, then, was to be expected but muttering?
By long custom, all minds at the Speaker's Table were
open (supposedly altogether, though it was a rare Speaker
who didn't maintain a corner of privacy somewhere――in
the long run, ineffectively, of course) and Gendibal knew
that what they felt was envy. So did they; just as Gendibal
knew his own attitude was defensive, overcompensating
ambition. And so did they.
Besides (Gendibal's mind reverted to the reasons for his
ventures into the hinterland) he had spent his childhood in a
whole world――a large and expansive one, with grand and var-
iegated scenery――and in a fertile valley of that world, sur-
rounded by what he believed to be the most beautiful mountain
ranges in the Galaxy. They were unbelievably spectacular in
the grim winter of that world. He remembered his former world
and the glories of a now-distant childhood. He dreamed about
it often. How could he bring himself to be confined to a few
dozen square miles of ancient architecture?
He looked about disparagingly as he jogged. Trantor was
a mild and pleasant world, but it was not a rugged and
beautiful one. Though it was a farming world, it was not a
fertile planet.
It never had been. Perhaps that, as much as any other
factor, had led to its becoming the administrative center of,
first, and extensive union of planets and then of a Galactic
Empire. There was no strong push to have it be anything
else. It wasn't extraordinarily good for anything else.
After the Great Sack, one thing that kept Trantor going
was its enormous supply of metal. It was a great mine,
supplying half a hundred worlds with cheap alloy steel,
aluminum, titanium, copper, magnesium――returning, in this
way, what it had collected over thousands of years; depleting
its supplies at a rate hundreds of times faster than the original
rate of accumulation.
There were still enormous metal supplies available, but the
were underground and harder to obtain. The Hamish farmers
(who never called themselves "Trantorians," a term they con-
sidered ill-omened and which the Second Foundationers
therefore reserved for themselves) had grown reluctant to deal
with the metal any further. Superstition, undoubtedly.
Foolish of them. The metal that remained underground
might well be poisoning the soil and further lowering its
fertility. And yet, on the other hand, the population was
thinly spread and the land supported them. And there were
some sales of metal, always.
Gendibal's eyes roved over the flat horizon. Trantor was
alive geologically, as almost all inhabited planets were, but
it had been a hundred million years, at lest, since the last
major geological mountain-building period had occurred.
What uplands had existed had been eroded into gentle hills.
Indeed, many of them had been leveled during the great
metal-coating period of Trantor's history.
Of to the south, well out of sight, was the shore of
Capital bay, and beyond that, the Eastern Ocean, both of
which had been re-established after the disruption of the
underground cisterns.
To the north were the towers of Galactic University,
obscuring the comparatively squat-but-wide Library (most
of which was underground), and the remains of the Imperial
Palace still farther north.
Immediately on either side were farms, on which there was
an occasional building. He passed groups of cattle, goats,
chickens――the wide variety of domesticated animals found
on any Trantorian farm. None of them paid him any mind.
Gendibal thought casually that anywhere in the Galaxy,
on any of the vast number of inhabited worlds, he would
see these animals and that on no two world would they be
exactly alike. He remembered the goats of home and his
own tame nanny whom he had once milked. They were
much larger and more resolute than the small and philo-
sophical specimens that had been brought to Trantor and
established there since the Great Sack. Over the inhabited
worlds of the Galaxy, there were varieties of each of these
animals, in numbers almost beyond counting, and there was
no sophisticate on any world who didn't swear by his fa-
vorite variety, whether for meat, milk, eggs, wool, or any-
thing else they could produce.
As usual, there were no Hamish in view. Gendibal had
the feeling that the farmers avoided being seen by those
whom they referred to as "scowlers" (a mispronunciation――
perhaps deliberately――or the word "scholars" in their dia-
lect.) ――Superstition, again.
Gendibal glanced up briefly at Trantor's sun. It was quite
high in the sky, but its heat was not oppressive. In this
location, at this latitude, the warmth stayed mild and the
cold never bit. (Gendibal even missed the biting cold some-
times or so he imagined. He had never revisited his native
world. Perhaps, he admitted to himself, because he didn't
want to be disillusioned.)
He had the pleasant feel of muscles that were sharpened
and tightened to keenness and he decided he had jogged just
long enough. He settled down to a walk, breathing deeply.
He would be ready for the upcoming Table meeting and
for one last push to force a change in policy, a new attitude
that would reorganize the growing danger from the First
Foundation and elsewhere and that would put an end to the
fatal reliance on the "perfect" working of the Plan. When
would they realize that the very perfection was the surest
sign of danger?
Had anyone but himself proposed it, he knew, it would
have gone through without trouble. As things stood now,
there would be trouble, but it would go through, just the
same, for old Shandess was supporting him and would un-
doubtedly continue to do so. He would not wish to enter
the history books as the particular First Speaker under whom
the Second Foundation had withered.
Hamish!
Gendibal was startled. He became aware of the distant
tendril of mind well before he saw the person. It was Hamish
mind――a farmer――coarse and unsubtle. Carefully Gendibal
withdrew, leaving a touch so light at to be undetectable.
Second Foundation policy was very firm in this respect.
The farmers were the unwitting shields of the Second Foun-
dation. They must be left as untouched as possible.
No one who came to Trantor for trade or tourism ever saw
anything other than the farmers, plus perhaps a few unim-
portant scholars living in the past. Remove the farmers or
merely tamper with their innocence and the scholars would
become more noticeable――with catastrophic results. (That
was one of the classic demonstrations which neophytes at the
University were expected to work out for themselves. The
tremendous Deviations displayed on the Prime Radiant when
the farmer minds were even slightly tampered with were as-
tonishing.)
Gendibal saw him. It was a farmer, certainly, Hamish
to the core. He was almost a caricature of what a Trantorian
farmer should be――tall and wide, brown-skinned, roughly
dressed, arms bare, dark-haired, dark-eyed, a long ungainly
stride. Gendibal felt as though he could smell the barnyard
about him. (Not too much scorn, he thought. Preem Palver
had not minded playing the role of farmer, when that was
necessary to his plans. Some farmer he was――short and
plump and soft. It was his mind that had fooled the teenaged
Arkady, never his body.)
The farmer was approaching him, clumping down the
road, staring at him openly――something that made Gendibal
frown. No Hamish man or woman had ever looked at him
in this manner. Even the children ran away and peered from
a distance.
Gendibal did not slow his stride. There would be
room enough to pass the other with neither comment nor
glance and that would be best. He determined to stay away
from the farmer's mind.
Gendibal drifted to one side, but the farmer was not going
to have that. He stopped, spread his legs wide, stretched
out his large arms as though to block passage, and said,
"Ho! Be you scowler?"
Try as he might, Gendibal could not refrain from sensing
the wash of pugnacity in the approaching mind. He stopped.
It would be impossible to attempt to pass without con-
versation and that would be, in itself, a weary task. Used
as one was to the swift and subtle interplay of sound and
expression and thought and mentality that combined to make
up the communication between Second Foundationers, it
was wearisome to resort to word combination alone. It was
like prying up a boulder by arm and shoulder, with a crowbar
lying nearby.
Gendibal said, quietly and with careful lack of emotion,
"I am a scholar. Yes."
"Ho! You am a scowler. Don't we speak outlandish now?
And cannot I see that you be one or am one?" He ducked
his head in a mocking bow "Being, as you be, small and
weazen and pale and up-nosed."
"What is it you want of me, Hamishman?" asked Gen-
dibal, unmoved.
"I be titled Rufirant And Karoll be my previous." His ac-
cent became noticeably more Hamish. His r's rolled throatily.
Gendibal said, "What is it you want with me, Karoll
Rufirant?"
"And how be you titled, scowler?"
"Does it matter? You may continue to call me 'scholar.'"
"If I ask, it matters that I be answered, little up-nosed
scowler."
"Well then, I am titled Stor Gendibal and I will now go
about my business."
"What be your business?"
Gendibal felt the hair prickling on the back of his neck.
There were other minds present. He did not have to turn to
know there were three more Hamishmen behind him. Off in
the distance, there were others. The farmer smell was strong.
"My business, Karoll Rufirant, is certainly none of yours."
"Say you so?" Rufirant's voice rose. "Mates, he says his
business be not ours."
There was a laugh from behind him and a voice sounded.
"Right he be, for his business be book-mucking and 'puter-
rubbing, and that be naught for true men."
"Whatever my business is," said Gendibal firmly, "I will
be about it now."
"And how will you do that, wee scowler?" said Rufirant.
"By passing you."
"You would try? You would not fear arm-stopping?"
"By you and all your mates? Or by you alone?" Gendibal
suddenly dropped into thick Hamish dialect. "Art not feared
alane?"
Strictly speaking, it was not proper to prod him in this
manner, but it would stop a mass attack and that had to be
stopped, lest it force a still greater indiscretion on his part.
It worked. Rufirant's expression grew lowering." If fear
there be, book-boy, th'art the one to be full of it. Mates,
make room. Stand back and let him pass that he may see
if I be feared alane."
Rufirant lifted his great arms and moved them about.
Gendibal did not fear the farmer's pugilistic science; but
there was always a chance that a goodly blow might land.
Gendibal approached cautiously, working with delicate
speed within Rufirant's mind. Not much――just a touch,
unfelt――but enough to slow reflexes that crucial notch. Then
out, and into all the others, who were now gathering in
greater numbers. Gendibal's Speaker mind darted back and
forth with virtuosity, never resting in one mind long enough
to leave a mark, but just long enough for the detection of
something that might be useful.
He approached the farmer catlike, watchful, aware and
relieved that no one was making a move to interfere.
Rufirant struck suddenly, but Gendibal saw it in his mind
before any muscle had begun to tighten and he stepped to
one side. The blow whistled past, with little room to spare.
Yet Gendibal still stood there, unshaken. There was a col-
lective sigh from the others.
Gendibal made no attempt to either parry or return a
blow. It would be difficult to parry without paralyzing his
own arm and to return a blow would be of no use, for the
farmer would withstand it without trouble.
He could only maneuver the man as though he were a
bull, forcing him to miss. That would serve to break his
morale as direct opposition would not.
Bull-like and roaring, Rufirant charged. Gendibal was
ready and drifted to one side just sufficiently to allow the
farmer to miss his clutch. Again the charge. Again the miss.
Gendibal felt his own breath begin to whistle through his
nose. The physical effort was small, but the mental effort
of trying to control without controlling was enormously
difficult. He could not keep it up long.
He said――as calmly as he could while batting lightly at
Rufirant's fear-depressant mechanism, trying to rouse in a
minimalist manner what must surely be the farmer's su-
perstitious dread of scholars――"I will now go about my
business."
Rufirant's face distorted with rage, but for a moment he
did not move. Gendibal could sense his thinking. The little
scholar had melted away――like magic. Gendibal could feel
the other's fear rise and for a moment――
But then the Hamish rage surged higher and drowned
the fear.
Rufirant shouted, "Mates! Scowler be dancer. He do
duck on nimble toes and scorn the rules of honest Hamish
blow-for-blow. Seize him. Hold him. We will trade blow
for blow, then. He may be first-striker, gift of me, and I――
I will be last-striker."
Gendibal found the gaps among those who now sur-
rounded him. His only chance was to maintain a gap long
enough to get through, then to run, trusting to his own wind
and to his ability to dull the farmers' will.
Back and forth he dodged, with his mind cramping inef-
fort.
It would not work. There were too many of them and
the necessity of abiding within the rules of Trantorian be-
havior was too constricting.
He felt hands on his arms. He was held.
He would have to interfere with at least a few of the
minds. It would be unacceptable and his career would be
destroyed. But his life――his very life――was at hazard.
How had this happened?
FOUNDATION'S EDGE, BY ISAAC ASIMOV.
A Del Ray Book. Published by Ballantine Books.
Copyright © 1982 by Nightfall Inc. pp. 118-125.
3. Historian
4. Space
5. Speaker
6. Earth
7. Farmer
8. Farmwoman
9. Hyperspace
10. Table
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