Prelude to Foundation

“So I sent you, as you put it, chasing all over the face of Trantor with the dreaded Demerzel close on your heels at all times. That, I felt, would concentrate your mind powerfully. It would make psychohistory something exciting and much more than a mathematical game. You would try to work it out for the sincere idealist Hummin, where you would not for the Imperial flunky Demerzel. Also, you would get a glimpse of various sides of Trantor and that too would be helpful-certainly more helpful than living in an ivory tower on a far-off planet, surrounded entirely by fellow mathematicians. Was I right? Have you made progress?”

Seldon said, “In psychohistory? Yes, I did, Hummin. I thought you knew.”

“How should I know?”

“I told Dors.”

“But you hadn’t told me. Nevertheless, you tell me so now. That is good news.”

“Not entirely,” said Seldon. “I have made only the barest begi

“Is it the kind of begi

“I think so. You see, Hummin, from the start I have seen psychohistory as a science that depends on the interaction of twenty-five million worlds, each with an average population of four thousand million. It’s too much. There’s no way of handling something that complex. If I was to succeed at all, if there was to be any way of finding a useful psychohistory, I would first have to find a simpler system.

“So I thought I would go back in time and deal with a single world, a world that was the only one occupied by humanity in the dim age before the colonization of the Galaxy. In Mycogen they spoke of an original world of Aurora and in Dahl I heard word of an original world of Earth. I thought they might be the same world under different names, but they were sufficiently different in one key point, at least, to make that impossible. And it didn’t matter. So little was known of either one, and that little so obscured by myth and legend, that there was no hope of making use of psychohistory in co

He paused to sip at his cold juice, keeping his eyes firmly on Hummin’s face.

Hummin said, “Well? What then?”

“Meanwhile, Dors had told me something I call the hand-on-thigh story. It was of no i

“But as I traveled from the Imperial Sector to Streeling to Mycogen to Dahl to Wye, I observed for myself how different each was. The thought of Trantor-not as a world but as a complex of worlds-grew stronger, but still I didn’t see the crucial point.

“It was only when I listened to Rashelle-you see, it was good that I was finally captured by Wye and it was good that Rashelle’s rashness drove her into the grandiose schemes that she imparted to me-When I listened to Rashelle, as I said, she told me that all she wanted was Trantor and some immediately adjacent worlds. It was an Empire in itself, she said, and dismissed the outer worlds as ‘distant nothings.’

“It was then that, in a moment, I saw what I must have been harboring in my hidden thoughts for a considerable time. On the one hand, Trantor possessed an extraordinarily complex social system, being a populous world made up of eight hundred smaller worlds. It was in itself a system complex enough to make psychohistory meaningful and yet it was simple enough, compared to the Empire as a whole, to make psychohistory perhaps practical.

“And the Outer Worlds, the twenty-five million of them? They were ‘distant nothings.’ Of course, they affected Trantor and were affected by Trantor, but these were second-order effects. If I could make psychohistory work as a first approximation for Trantor alone, then the minor effects of the Outer Worlds could be added as later modifications. Do you see what I mean? I was searching for a single world on which to establish a practical science of psychohistory and I was searching for it in the far past, when all the time the single world I wanted was under my feet now.”

Hummin said with obvious relief and pleasure, “Wonderful!”

“But it’s all left to do, Hummin. I must study Trantor in sufficient detail. I must devise the necessary mathematics to deal with it. If I am lucky and live out a full lifetime, I may have the answers before I die. If not, my successors will have to follow me. Conceivably, the Empire may have fallen and splintered before psychohistory becomes a useful technique.”

“I will do everything I can to help you.”

“I know it,” said Seldon.

“You trust me, then, despite the fact I am Demerzel?”

“Entirely. Absolutely. But I do so because you are not Demerzel.”

“But I am,” insisted Hummin.

“But you are not. Your persona as Demerzel is as far removed from the truth as is your persona as Hummin.”

“What do you mean?” Hummin’s eyes grew wide and he backed away slightly from Seldon.

“I mean that you probably chose the name ‘Hummin’ out of a wry sense of what was fitting. ‘Hummin’ is a mispronunciation of ‘human,’ isn’t it?” Hummin made no response. He continued to stare at Seldon.

And finally Seldon said, “Because you’re not human, are you, ‘Hummin/Demerzel’? You’re a robot.”

Dors

SELDON, HARI-… it is customary to think of Hari Seldon only in co

As for his private life, it is a blank. Concerning his parents and siblings, we know a handful of factors, no more. His only son, Raych Seldon, is known to have been adopted, but how that came about is not known. Concerning his wife, we only know that she existed. Clearly, Seldon wanted to be a cipher except where psychohistory was concerned. It is as though he felt-or wanted it to be felt-that he did not live, he merely psychohistorified.

Hummin sat calmly, not a muscle twitching, still looking at Hari Seldon and Seldon, for his part, waited. It was Hummin, he thought, who should speak next.

Hummin did, but said merely, “A robot? Me?-By robot, I presume you mean an artificial being such as the object you saw in the Sacratorium in Mycogen.”

“Not quite like that,” said Seldon.

“Not metal? Not burnished? Not a lifeless simulacrum?” Hummin said it without any evidence of amusement.

“No. To be of artificial life is not necessarily to be made of metal. I speak of a robot indistinguishable from a human being in appearance.’. “If indistinguishable, Hari, then how do you distinguish?”

“Not by appearance.”

“Explain.”

“Hummin, in the course of my flight from yourself as Demerzel, I heard of two ancient worlds, as I told you-Aurora and Earth. Each seemed to be spoken of as a first world or an only world. In both cases, robots were spoken of, but with a difference.”

Seldon was staring thoughtfully at the man across the table, wondering if, in any way, he would give some sign that he was less than a man-or more. He said, “Where Aurora was in question, one robot was spoken of as a renegade, a traitor, someone who deserted the cause. Where Earth was in question, one robot was spoken of as a hero, one who represented salvation. Was it too much to suppose that it was the same robot?”