Prelude to Foundation

“Who knows, Hari? A lifelong obsession, I suppose. Or else it’s the game… the maneuvering for power, without any real longing for the power itself. Probably if he had the power and took over Demerzel’s place or even the Imperial throne itself, he would feel disappointed because the game would be over. Of course he might, if he was still alive, begin the subsequent game of keeping power, which might be just as difficult and just as satisfying.”

Seldon shook his head. “It strikes me that no one could possibly want to be Emperor.”

“No sane person would, I [free], but the ‘Imperial wish,’ as it is frequently called, is like a disease that, when caught, drives out sanity. And the closer you get to high office, the more likely you are to catch the disease. With each ensuing promotion-”

“The disease grows still more acute. Yes, I can see that. But it also seems to me that Trantor is so huge a world, so interlocking in its needs and so conflicting in its ambitions, that it makes up the major part of the inability of the Emperor to rule. Why doesn’t he just leave Trantor and establish himself on some simpler world?”

Dors laughed. “You wouldn’t ask that if you knew your history. Trantor is the Empire through thousands of years of custom. An Emperor who is not at the Imperial Palace is not the Emperor. He is a place, even more than a person.” Seldon sank into silence, his face rigid, and after a while Dors asked, “What’s the matter, Hari?”

“I’m thinking,” he said in a muffled voice. “Ever since you told me that hand-on-thigh story, I’ve had fugitive thoughts that-Now your remark about the Emperor being a place rather than a person seems to have struck a chord.”

“What kind of chord?”

Seldon shook his head. “I’m still thinking. I may be all wrong.” His glance at Dors sharpened, his eyes coming into focus. “In any case, we ought to go down and have breakfast. We’re late and I don’t think Mistress Tisalver is in a good enough humor to have it brought in for us.”

“You optimist,” said Dors. “My own feeling is that she’s not in a good enough humor to want us to stay-breakfast or not. She wants us out of here.”

“That may be, but we’re paying her.”

“Yes, but I suspect she hates us enough by now to scorn our credits.”

“Perhaps her husband will feel a bit more affectionate concerning the rent.”

“If he has a single word to say, Hari, the only person who would be more surprised than me to hear it would be Mistress Tisalver.-Very well, I’m ready.”

And they moved down the stairs to the Tisalver portion of the apartment to find the lady in question waiting for them with less than breakfast-and with considerably more too.

78.

Casilia Tisalver stood ramrod straight with a tight smile on her round face and her dark eyes glinting. Her husband was leaning moodily against the wall. In the center of the room were two men who were standing stiffly upright, as though they had noticed the cushions on the floor but scorned them. Both had the dark crisp hair and the chick black mustache to be expected of Dahlites. Both were thin and both were dressed in dark clothes so nearly alike that they were surely uniforms. There was thin white piping up and over the shoulders and down the sides of the tubular trouser legs. Each had, on the right side of his chest, a rather dim Spaceship-and-Sun, the symbol of the Galactic Empire on every inhabited world of the Galaxy, with, in this case, a dark “D” in the center of the sun.

Seldon realized immediately that these were two members of the Dahlite security forces.

“What’s all this?” said Seldon sternly.

One of the men stepped forward. “I am Sector Officer Lanel Russ. This is my partner, Gebore Astinwald.”

Both presented glittering identification holo-tabs. Seldon didn’t bother looking at them. “What it is you want?”

Russ said calmly, “Are you Hari Seldon of Helicon?”

“I am.”

“And are you Dors Venabili of Cinna, Mistress?”

“I am,” said Dors.

“I’m here to investigate a complaint that one Hari Seldon instigated a riot yesterday.”

“I did no such thing,” said Seldon.

“Our information is,” said Russ, looking at the screen of a small computer pad, “that you accused a newsman of being an Imperial agent, thus instigating a riot against him.”

Dors said, “It was I who said he was an Imperial agent, Officer. I had reason to think he was. It is surely no crime to express one’s opinion. The Empire has freedom of speech.”

“That does not cover an opinion deliberately advanced in order to instigate a riot.”

“How can you say it was, Officer?”

At this point, Mistress Tisalver interposed in a shrill voice, “I can say it, Officer. She saw there was a crowd present, a crowd of gutter people who were just looking for trouble. She deliberately said he was an Imperial agent when she knew nothing of the sort and she shouted it to the crowd to stir them up. It was plain that she knew what she was doing.”

“Casilia,” said her husband pleadingly, but she cast one look at him and he said no more.

Russ turned to Mistress Tisalver. “Did you lodge the complaint, Mistress?”