Foundation’s Friends

“This makes us human? Nursery rhymes?”

“They’re all part of the same community! Across all the empty space between the stars, there are still co

“But these are the ideas you already rejected, Leyel. Language and community and-”

“No! No, not just language, not just tribes of chimpanzees chattering at each other. Stories, epic tales that define a community, mythic tales that teach us how the world works, we use them to create each other. We became a different species, we became human, because we found a way to extend gestation beyond the womb, a way to give each child ten thousand parents that he’ll never meet face-to-face.”

Then, at last, Leyel fell silent, trapped by the inadequacy of his words. They couldn’t tell what he had seen in his mind. If they didn’t already understand, they never would.

“Yes,” said Zay. “I think indexing your paper was a very good idea. “

Leyel sighed and lay back down on the bed. “I shouldn’t have tried.”

“On the contrary, you’ve succeeded,” said Zay. Deet shook her head. Leyel knew why-Deet was trying to signal Zay that she shouldn’t attempt to soothe Leyel with false praise.

“Don’t hush me, Deet. I know what I’m saying. I may not know Leyel as well as you do, but I know truth when I hear it. In a way, I think Hari knew it instinctively. That’s why he insisted on all his silly holodisplays, forcing the poor citizens of Terminus to put up with his pontificating every few years. It was his way of continuing to create them, of remaining alive within them. Making them feel like their lives had purpose behind them. Mythic and epic story, both at once. They’ll all carry a bit of Hari Seldon within them just the way that children carry their parents with them to the grave. “

At first Leyel could only hear the idea that Hari would have approved of his ideas of human origin. Then he began to realize that there was much more to what Zay had said than simple affirmation.

“You knew Hari Seldon?”

“A little,” said Zay.

“Either tell him or don’t,” said Deet. “You can’t take him this far in, and not bring him the rest of the way.”

“I knew Hari the way you know Deet,” said Zay.

“No,” said Leyel. “He would have mentioned you.”

“Would he? He never mentioned his students.”

“He had thousands of students.”

“I know, Leyel. I saw them come and fill his lecture halls and listen to the half-baked fragments of psychohistory that he taught them. But then he’d come away, here to the library, into a room where the Pubs never go, where he could speak words that the Pubs would never hear, and there he’d teach his real students. Here is the only place where the science of psychohistory lives on, where Deet’s ideas about the formation of community actually have application, where your own vision of the origin of humanity will shape our calculations for the next thousand years. “

Leyel was dumbfounded. “In the Imperial Library? Hari had his own college here in the library?”

“Where else? He had to leave us at the end, when it was time to go public with his predictions of the Empire’s fall. Then the Pubs started watching him in earnest, and in order to keep them from finding us, he couldn’t ever come back here again. It was the most terrible thing that ever happened to us. As if he died, for us, years before his body died. He was part of us, Leyel, the way that you and Deet are part of each other. She knows. She joined us before he left.”

It stung. To have had such a great secret, and not to have been included. “Why Deet, and not me?”

“Don’t you know, Leyel? Our little community’s survival was the most important thing. As long as you were Leyel Forska, master of one of the greatest fortunes in history, you couldn’t possibly be part of this-it would have provoked too much comment, too much attention. Deet could come, because Commissioner Chen wouldn’t care that much what she did-he never takes spouses seriously, just one of the ways he proves himself to be a fool.”

“But Hari always meant for you to be one of us,” said Deet. “His worst fear was that you’d go off half-cocked and force your way into the First Foundation, when all along he wanted you in this one. The Second Foundation.”

Leyel remembered his last interview with Hari. He tried to remember-did Hari ever lie to him? He told him that Deet couldn’t go to Terminus-but now that took on a completely different meaning. The old fox! He never lied at all, but he never told the truth, either.

Zay went on. “It was tricky, striking the right balance, encouraging you to provoke Chen just enough that he’d strip away your fortune and then forget you, but not so much that he’d have you imprisoned or killed.”

“You were making that happen?”

“No, no, Leyel. It was going to happen anyway, because you’re who you are and Chen is who he is. But there was a range of possibility, somewhere between having you and Deet tortured to death on the one hand, and on the other hand having you and Rom conspire to assassinate Chen and take control of the Empire. Either of those extremes would have made it impossible for you to be part of the Second Foundation. Hari was convinced-and so is Deet, and so am I-that you belong with us. Not dead. Not in politics. Here.”

It was outrageous, that they should make such choices for him, without telling him. How could Deet have kept it secret all this time? And yet they were so obviously correct. If Hari had told him about this Second Foundation, Leyel would have been eager, proud to join it. Yet Leyel couldn’t have been told, couldn’t have joined them until Chen no longer perceived him as a threat.

“What makes you think Chen will ever forget me?”

“Oh, he’s forgotten you, all right. In fact, I’d guess that by tonight he’ll have forgotten everything he ever knew.”

“What do you mean?”

“How do you think we’ve dared to speak so openly today, after keeping silence for so long? After all, we aren’t in Indexing now.”

Leyel felt a thrill of fear run through him. “They can hear us?”

“If they were listening. At the moment, though, the Pubs are very busy helping Rom Divart solidify his control of the Commission of Public Safety. And if Chen hasn’t been taken to the radiation chamber, he soon will be.”

Leyel couldn’t help himself. The news was too glorious-he sprang up from his bed, almost danced at the news. “Rom ‘s doing it! After all these years-overthrowing the old spider!”

“It’s more important than mere justice or revenge,” said Zay. “We’re absolutely certain that a significant number of governors and prefects and military commanders will refuse to recognize the overlordship of the Commission of Public Safety. It will take Rom Divart the rest of his life just to put down the most dangerous of the rebels. In order to concentrate his forces on the great rebels and pretenders close to Trantor, he’ll grant an unprecedented degree of independence to many, many worlds on the periphery. To all intents and purposes, those outer worlds will no longer be part of the Empire. Imperial authority will not touch them, and their taxes will no longer flow inward to Trantor. The Empire is no longer Galactic. The death of Commissioner Chen-today-will mark the begi

“So soon after Hari’s death. Already his predictions are coming true. “

“Oh, it isn’t just coincidence, “ said Zay. “One of our agents was able to influence Chen just enough to ensure that he sent Rom Divart in person to strip you of your fortune. That was what pushed Rom over the edge and made him carry out this coup. Chen would have fallenor died-sometime in the next year and a half no matter what we did. But I’ll admit we took a certain pleasure in using Hari’s death as a trigger to bring him down a little early, and under circumstances that allowed us to bring you into the library. “

“We also used it as a test,” said Deet. “We’re trying to find ways of influencing individuals without their knowing it. It’s still very crude and haphazard, but in this case we were able to influence Chen with great success. We had to do it-your life was at stake, and so was the chance of your joining us.”

“I feel like a puppet,” said Leyel.

“Chen was the puppet,” said Zay. “You were the prize. “

“That’s all nonsense,” said Deet. “Hari loved you. I love you. You’re a great man. The Second Foundation had to have you. And everything you’ve said and stood for all your life made it clear that you were hungry to be part of our work. Aren’t you?”.

“Yes,” said Leyel. Then he laughed. “The index!”

“What’s so fu

“And it was wonderful, transforming, hypnotic. To take all these people and put them together as if they were a single mind, far wiser in its intuition than anyone could ever be alone. The most intensely unified, the most powerful human community that’s ever existed. If it’s our capacity for storytelling that makes us human, then perhaps our capacity for indexing will make us something better than human.”

Deet patted Zay’s hand. “Pay no attention to him, Zay. This is clearly the mad enthusiasm of a proselyte.”

Zay raised an eyebrow. “ I’m still waiting for him to explain why the index made him laugh. “

Leyel obliged her. “Because all the time, I kept thinking-how could librarians have done this? Mere librarians! And now I discover that these librarians are all of Hari Seldon’s prize students. My questions were indexed by psychohistorians!”

“Not exclusively. Most of us are librarians. Or machinists, or custodians, or whatever-the psychologists and psychohistorians are rather a thin current in the stream of the library. At first they were seen as outsiders. Researchers. Users of the library, not members of it. That’s what Deet’s work has been for these last few years-trying to bind us all together into one community. She came here as a researcher too, remember? Yet now she has made everyone’s allegiance to the library more important than any other loyalty. It’s working beautifully too, Leyel, you’ll see. Deet is a marvel.”