Prelude to Foundation

He studied her. She was not very tall, average height for a woman, he judged. Her hair was a reddish-gold, though not very bright, and was arranged in shore curls about her head. (He had seen a number of women in Trantor with their hair so arranged. It was apparently a local fashion that would have been laughed at in Helicon.) She was not amazingly beautiful, but was quite pleasant to look at, this being helped by full lips that seemed to have a slight humorous curl to them. She was slim, well-built, and looked quite young. (Too young, he thought uneasily, to be of use perhaps.)

“Do I pass inspection?” she asked. (She seemed to have Hummin’s trick of guessing his thoughts, Seldon thought, or perhaps he himself lacked the trick of hiding them.)

He said, “I’m sorry. I seem to have been staring, but I’ve only been trying to evaluate you. I’m in a strange place. I know no one and have no friends.”

“Please, Dr. Seldon, count me as a friend. Mr. Hummin has asked me to take care of you.”

Seldon smiled ruefully. “You may be a little young for the job.”

“You’ll find I am not.”

“Well, I’ll try to be as little trouble as possible. Could you please repeat your name?”

“Dors Venabili.” She spelled the last name and emphasized the stress on the second syllable. “As I said, please call me Dors and if you don’t object too strenuously I will call you Hari. We’re quite informal here at the University and there is an almost self-conscious effort to show no signs of status, either inherited or professional.”

“Please, by all means, call me Hari.”

“Good. I shall remain informal then. For instance, the instinct for formality, if there is such a thing, would cause me to ask permission to sit down. Informally, however, I shall just sit.” She then sat down on the one chair in the room.

Seldon cleared his throat. “Clearly, I’m not at all in possession of my ordinary faculties. I should have asked you to sit.” He sat down on the side of his crumpled bed and wished he had thought to straighten it out somewhat-but he had been caught by surprise.

She said pleasantly, “This is how it’s going to work, Hari. First, we’ll go to breakfast at one of the University cafes. Then I’ll get you a room in one of the domiciles-a better room than this. You’ll have a window. Hummin has instructed me to get you a credit tile in his name, but it will take me a day or two to extort one out of the University bureaucracy. Until that’s done, I’ll be responsible for your expenses and you can pay me back later.-And we can use you. Chetter Hummin told me you’re a mathematician and for some reason there’s a serious lack of good ones at the University.”

“Did Hummin tell you that I was a good mathematician?”

“As a matter of fact, he did. He said you were a remarkable man-”

“Well.” Seldon looked down at his fingernails. “I would like to be considered so, but Hummin knew me for less than a day and, before that, he had heard me present a paper, the quality of which he has no way of judging. I think he was just being polite.”

“I don’t think so,” said Dors. “He is a remarkable person himself and has had a great deal of experience with people. I’ll go by his judgment. In any case, I imagine you’ll have a chance to prove yourself. You can program computers, I suppose.”

“Of course.”

“I’m talking about teaching computers, you understand, and I’m asking if you can devise programs to teach various phases of contemporary mathematics.”

“Yes, that’s part of my profession. I’m assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Helicon.”

She said, “Yes, I know. Hummin told me that. It means, of course, that everyone will know you are a non-Trantorian, but that will present no serious problems. We’re mainly Trantorian here at the University, but there’s a substantial minority of Outworlders from any number of different worlds and that’s accepted. I won’t say that you’ll never hear a planetary slur but actually the Outworlders are more likely to use them than the Trantorians. I’m an Outworlder myself, by the way.”

“Oh?” He hesitated and then decided it would be only polite to ask. “What world are you from?”

“I’m from Cinna. Have you ever heard of it?”

He’d be caught out if he was polite enough to lie, Seldon decided, so he said, “No.”

“I’m not surprised. It’s probably of even less account than Helicon is. Anyway, to get back to the programming of mathematical teaching computers, I suppose that that can be done either proficiently or poorly.”

“Absolutely.”

“And you would do it proficiently.”

“I would like to think so.”

“There you are, then. The University will pay you for that, so let’s go out and eat. Did you sleep well, by the way?”

“Surprisingly, I did.”

“And are you hungry?”

“Yes, but-” He hesitated.