Foundation’s Friends

“Oh…my…God!” I was totally impressed, but I wasn’t, you know, going insane or anything.

“Stars!” goes Segol in this kind of strangled voice.

“Surprise,” I go. I mean, he was a real melvin.

Now the mob started screaming and screeching and carrying on. They’d known the Stars were coming, but like they didn’t have any idea what stars really were, or how many of them there’d be, and all that. So even Sor looked haired, but I give him credit, he pulled himself together pretty fast. “Our salvation will be the destruction of the Observatory,” he goes. I mean, he couldn’t bring himself to look up at the stars anymore, and he had to kind of croak his speech out, but he made himself heard. “If we destroy the Observatory and everyone in it, the Stars will spare us. And we must begin with them.”

He was pointing at me and Segol. “That is so lame,” I go. “Don’t be stupid. There’s nothing to be-”

Sadly, I didn’t have the time to finish my explanation. The crowd was full-on crazy and ready to roust. When they charged, I felt a sudden calmness flood through me. I didn’t know what Segol was doing and I didn’t care. Old Betsy whistled through the air as I hacked and hewed at the waves of shrieking lunatics. Bodies piled up in front of me and on both sides. I took a couple of biffs and bruises, but I was too skillful and like too excellent for them to fight through my guard.

Of course, they had me outnumbered, and after a while I realized I was way tired. I wasn’t going to be able to handle all of them, so while I fought I tried to think up some, you know, strategy. And then I saw their leader over on the side of the road, kneeling down in the dark, with his face turned up to the sky where the eclipse was still chugging along and the stars were still blazing away. I started working my way toward him, wading through his nutty buddies with my broadsword cutting a swath before me.

Finally I was right beside him. I reached down and grabbed him by the neck of his robe and jerked him to his feet. “I am Sor!” he goes, like frothing a little in the corners of his mouth. He wasn’t all there anymore, okay?

“You’re sore,” I go. I let him go and he fell in a heap at my feet. “Tell your fruitcake army to stand still and shut up, or I’ll split your skull open and let the starlight in.”

Sor stared at me fearfully for a few seconds. Then he got to his feet and raised his arms. “Stand still and shut up!” he goes.

All the rest of the mob stopped what they were doing, which was mostly climbing over the stacks of bodies, trying to get to me.

“Good,” I go. “You have no reason to be afraid.”

Segol started babbling. I’d wondered what had happened to him. “Beenay guessed a dozen, maybe two dozen Stars. But this! The universe, the stars, the bigness!”

“Lagash is nothing, a speck of dust!” cried a voice from the mob.

“We’re nothing but insects, less than insects!”

“I want light! Let’s burn the Observatory!”

“We’re so small, and the Darkness is so huge! Our suns and our planet are insignificant!”

Well, these people had a serious problem. All of a sudden, they realized that there was a lot more to the universe than their precious Lagash. Then I had an idea that might keep these frenzied folks from thrashing all of their civilization and maybe save my own neck, too.

I go, “There’s no reason to be afraid. The stars are not what you think. I know. I come from a world that has studied them for many centuries.”

“She’s mad! The Stars have driven her insane!”

“Listen to her!” Segol goes. “She told me the same story long before the Stars appeared. She speaks the truth. “

“Yes,” I go, “there are other stars in the universe. That’s just something you ‘re going to have to learn to live with. But not as many as that.” I pointed up, and noticed that the eclipse had moved on past totality, and a teeny tiny thread of red light was starting to grow on one side of Beta.

“Then what are all those thousands of points of light?” goes Sor.

“Tonight is a night for revelations and strange truth,” I go. I’m always pretty good in a crisis like that. I can talk my way out of anything. Hey, you know that. You were my roommate, right? “Lagash, your six suns, and the other twelve stars in the universe are surrounded by a huge ball of ice. “

“Ice?” goes Segol. He sounded like he was having just a little bit of trouble buying it.

“Sure, ice, “ I go, acting kind of ticked off that he doubted me. “What did you think, that the universe just sort of went on and on forever? That’s so real, I’m totally sure.”

“A wall of ice,” Sor goes. “The Book of Revelations speaks of a Cave of Darkness. I don’t see why there can’t be a wall of ice as well.”

Now everyone had stopped trying to grab me by the throat. They were all like hanging on my every word, okay? “But what are the Stars?” someone goes.

“The Stars are an illusion,” I go. “What you see up there are only the reflections of the dozen real stars, shining on the craggy ice wall of the universe. “

There was this silence. I held my breath ‘cause everything would be totally cool if they believed me, but I’d have to start fighting for my life again if they didn’t. Five seconds passed, then ten. Then all at once they all went “ Ahhhh. “

Sor goes, “It’s the divine truth!” I saw tears ru

“Look!” goes Segol. “Beta! It’s coming back!”

Sor waved his arms around and got their attention. “Let’s hurry back to Saro City,” he goes. “We can spread the news and keep our brothers and sisters from burning our homes. The other suns will rise in a few hours, and then life must go on as before. We must tell the others what we’ve learned, and broadcast the information to everyone on Lagash.” Then they turned and marched away, without so much as a thank-you.

When we were alone again on the road, Segol came over to me. He had this big, spazzy grin on his face. “That was really something, my dear,” he goes.

“My name’s Maureen, and this is the last time I’m going to remind you. If you have trouble remembering that, you can call me Princess.” Well, Bitsy, I know I was sort of stretching the truth, but sometimes I liked to think of myself as sort of almost engaged to Prince Van of the Angry Red Planet. I mean” a woman’s reach should exceed her grasp, or what’s a mixer at Yale for?

“Then congratulations, Maureen. You were outstanding. You have saved us from centuries of Dark Ages. I think you’ll always be remembered in the history books of Lagash.”

I shrugged. “What can I say?” I go. “It’s like a gift.”

Segol nodded, then hung his head in shame. “I guess I owe you an apology, too. I wasn’t much help to you during the battle.”

“‘S all right,” I go. “You weren’t really ready for all those stars.” I was just being gracious, you know? I’d been a little zoned out, too, when I saw how many there were, but I got over it.

He looked back up at me, as grateful as that awful Akita puppy Daddy brought home for Pammy’s birthday. “Perhaps you’d permit me the honor,” he goes, “of asking for your hand in marriage.”

I was like too stu

He was disappointed, of course, but he’d live. “I understand. Would you answer a question, then?”

“Sure, as long as it’s not like way lewd or demeaning to all women. “

He took a deep breath and he goes, “Is it true? What you told the Cultists? Is it true that Lagash is in the center of a gigantic ball of ice?”

I laughed. I mean, how megadumb could he be? I wasn’t surprised that Sor 5 and his crowd swallowed that story, but I didn’t think a real astronomer would buy it. Then I realized that this was not the World of Superscience, after all, and that Segol was just a poor guy trying to understand like the laws of nature and everything. I couldn’t bring myself to weird him out any more than he already was. “Right, like totally,” I go. “Maybe someday your own Observatory will figure out the distance from Lagash to the ice wall. I used to know, but I forgot.”

“Thank you, Maureen,” he goes. Suddenly he’d gotten so humble it was ill. “I think we’d better hurry back to tell Aton and the others the news. Beenay and the rest of the photographers should have captured the Stars with their imaging equipment. They were all prepared, of course, but even so they may have given way to panic.” He looked down at the ground again, probably remembering how he’d bugged out of there in panic even before the stars came out.

“I’m sorry, Segol,” I go. “I can’t go back to the Observatory with you. I’m needed elsewhere. I’ve got to flash on back to Earth. If I wait much longer the eclipse will be over, the sky will get light, the stars will go out for another two thousand years, and I’ll never see my dear, dear friend Bitsy ever again. “ Sure, sweetie, even in this moment of awful tension, I thought of you. You believe me, don’t you?

Segol sighed. “I suppose you must go, then. I’ll never forget you, little la-I mean, Maureen.”

I gave him this sort of noblesse oblige smile, but I stopped short of getting all emotional and everything. “Farewell, Segol 154,” I go.”Tell the others that someday, when you’ve proved yourselves worthy, my people will welcome yours into the Federation of Planets. Until then, one last word of advice: try to discourage anyone who starts fiddling around with radio astronomy. I think it will make you all very, very unhappy.”

“Radio astronomy?” he goes. “How can you look at space with a radio?”

“Never mind, just remember what I said.” I raised one hand in the universal sign of “That’s all, folks.” Then I raised my supplicating arms to the stars, went eeny meeny miney mo, and whushed myself on out of there.

I’m sorry I had to listen to the whole story. By the time Maureen finished it, we had finished off all the strawberries, and a quiche with nothing in it is like tortellini salad without the tortellini. In the months that Josh and I had been together, he’d taught me a lot about food and everything. We didn‘t have supper any more, we dined. And then like I did the dishes.