Prelude to Foundation

She said cheerfully, “But you’re worried about the quality of the food, is that it? Well, don’t be. Being an Outworlder myself, I can understand your feelings about the strong infusion of microfood into everything, but the University menus aren’t bad. In the faculty dining room, at least. The students suffer a bit, but that serves to harden them.”

She rose and turned to the door, but stopped when Seldon could not keep himself from saying, “Are you a member of the faculty?”

She turned and smiled at him impishly. “Don’t I look old enough? I got my doctorate two years ago at Cinna and I’ve been here ever since. In two weeks, I’ll be thirty.”

“Sorry,” said Seldon, smiling in his turn, “but you can’t expect to look twenty-four and not raise doubts as to your academic status.”

“Aren’t you nice?” said Dors and Seldon felt a certain pleasure wash over him. After all, he thought, you can’t exchange pleasantries with an attractive woman and feel entirely like a stranger.

18.

Dors was right. Breakfast was by no means bad. There was something that was unmistakably eggy and the meat was pleasantly smoked. The chocolate drink (Trantor was strong on chocolate and Seldon did not mind that) was probably synthetic, but it was tasty and the breakfast rolls were good. He felt is only right to say as much. “This has been a very pleasant breakfast. Food. Surroundings. Everything.”

“I’m delighted you think so,” said Dors.

Seldon looked about. There were a bank of windows in one wall and while actual sunlight did not enter (he wondered if, after a while, he would learn to be satisfied with diffuse daylight and would cease to look for patches of sunlight in a room), the place was light enough. In fact, it was quite bright, for the local weather computer had apparently decided is was time for a sharp, clear day.

The cables were arranged for four apiece and most were occupied by the full number, but Dors and Seldon remained alone at theirs. Dors had called over some of the men and women and had introduced them. All had been polite, but none had joined them. Undoubtedly, Dors intended that to be so, but Seldon did not see how she managed to arrange it.

He said, “You haven’t introduced me to any mathematicians, Dors.”

“I haven’t seen any that I know. Most mathematicians start the day early and have classes by eight. My own feeling is that any student so foolhardy as to take mathematics wants to get that part of the course over with as soon as possible.”

“I take it you’re not a mathematician yourself.”

“Anything but,” said Dors with a short laugh. “Anything. History is my field. I’ve already published some studies on the rise of Trantor-I mean the primitive kingdom, not this world. I suppose that will end up as my field of specialization-Royal Trantor.”

“Wonderful,” said Seldon.

“Wonderful?” Dors looked at him quizzically. “Are you interested in Royal Trantor too?”

“In a way, yes. That and other things like that. I’ve never really studied history and I should have.”

“Should you? If you had studied history, you’d scarcely have had time to study mathematics and mathematicians are very much needed-especially at this University. We’re full to here with historians,” she said, raising her hand to her eyebrows, “and economists and political scientists, but we’re short on science and mathematics. Chetter Hummin pointed that out to me once. He called it the decline of science and seemed to think it was a general phenomenon.”

Seldon said, “Of course, when I say I should have studied history, I don’t mean that I should have made it a life work. I meant I should have studied enough to help me in my mathematics. My field of specialization is the mathematical analysis of social structure.”

“Sounds horrible.”

“In a way, it is. It’s very complicated and without my knowing a great deal more about how societies evolved it’s hopeless. My picture is too static, you see.”

“I can’t see because I know nothing about it. Chetter told me you were developing something called psychohistory and that it was important. Have I got it right? Psychohistory?”

“That’s right. I should have called it ‘psychosociology,’ but it seemed to me that was too ugly a word. Or perhaps I knew instinctively that a knowledge of history was necessary and then didn’t pay sufficient attention to my thoughts.”

“Psychohistory does sound better, but I don’t know what it is.”

“I scarcely do myself.” He brooded a few minutes, looking at the woman on the other side of the table and feeling that she might make this exile of his seem a little less like an exile. He thought of the other woman he had known a few years ago, but blocked it off with a determined effort. If he ever found another companion, it would have to be one who understood scholarship and what it demanded of a person.

To get his mind onto a new track, he said, “Chetter Hummin told me that the University is in no way troubled by the government.”

“He’s right.”