Forward the Foundation

"Yes, it is," said Wanda, staring carefully at the equations that (she didn't know) represented possible futures. "I don't like that part, though. I think it's wrong." She pointed at a colorful equation to her left.

"Wrong? Why do you say it's wrong" said Amaryl, frowning.

"Because it's not… pretty. I'd do it a different way."

Amaryl cleared his throat. "Well, I'll try to fix it up." And he moved closer to the equation in question, staring at it in his owlish fashion.

Wanda said, "Thank you very much, Uncle Yugo, for showing me your pretty lights. Maybe someday I'll understand what they mean."

"That's all right," said Amaryl. "I hope you feel better."

"A little, thanks," and, after flashing the briefest of smiles, she left the room.

Amaryl stood there, feeling a trifle hurt. He didn't like having the Prime Radiant's product criticized-not even by a twelve-year-old girl who knew no better.

And as he stood there, he had no idea whatsoever that the psychohistorical revolution had begun.

4

That afternoon Amaryl went to Hari Seldon's office at Streeling University. That in itself was unusual, for Amaryl virtually never left his own office, even to speak with a colleague just down the hall.

"Hari," said Amaryl, frowning and looking puzzled. "Something very odd has happened. Very peculiar."

Seldon looked at Amaryl with deepest sorrow. He was only fifty-three, but he looked much older, bent, worn down to almost transparency. When forced, he had undergone doctors' examinations and the doctors had all recommended that he leave his work for a period of time (some said permanently) and rest. Only this, the doctors said, might improve his health. Otherwise-Seldon shook his head. "Take him away from his work and he'll die all the sooner-and unhappier. We have no choice."

And then Seldon realized that, lost in such thoughts, he was not hearing Amaryl speak.

He said, "I'm sorry, Yugo. I'm a little distracted. Begin again."

Amaryl said, "I'm telling you that something very odd has happened. Very peculiar."

"What is it, Yugo?"

"It was Wanda. She came in to see me-very sad, very upset."

"Why?"

"Apparently it's the new baby."

"Oh yes," Hari said with more than a trace of guilt in his voice.

"So she said and cried on my shoulder-I actually cried a bit, too, Hari. And then I thought I'd cheer her up by showing her the Prime Radiant." Here Amaryl hesitated, as if choosing his next words carefully.

"Go on, Yugo. What happened?"

"Well, she stared at all the lights and I magnified a portion, actually Section 428254. You're acquainted with that?"

Seldon smiled. "No, Yugo, I haven't memorized the equations quite as well as you have."

"Well, you should," said Amaryl severely. "How can you do a good job if-But never mind that. What I'm trying to say is that Wanda pointed to a part of it and said it was no good. It wasn't pretty. "

"Why not? We all have our personal likes and dislikes."

"Yes, of course, but I brooded about it and I spent some time going over it and, Hari, there was something wrong with it. The programming was inexact and that area, the precise area to which Wanda pointed, was no good. And, really, it wasn't pretty."

Seldon sat up rather stiffly, frowning. "Let me get this straight, Yugo. She pointed to something at random, said it was no good, and she was right?"

"Yes. She pointed, but it wasn't at random; she was very deliberate."

"But that's impossible."

"But it happened. I was there."

"I'm not saying it didn't happen. I'm saying it was just a wild coincidence."

"Is it? Do you think, with all your knowledge of psychohistory, you could take one glance at a new set of equations and tell me that one portion is no good?"

Seldon said, "Well then, Yugo, how did you come to expand that particular portion of the equations? What made you choose that piece for magnification?"

Amaryl shrugged. "That was coincidence-if you like. I just fiddled with the controls."

"That couldn't be coincidence," muttered Seldon. For a few moments he was lost in thought, then he asked the question that pushed forward the psychohistorical revolution that Wanda had begun.

He said, "Yugo, did you have any suspicions about those equations beforehand? Did you have any reason to believe there was something wrong with them?"

Amaryl fiddled with the sash of his unisuit and seemed embarrassed. "Yes, I think I did. You see-"

"You think you did?"

"I know I did. I seemed to recall when I was setting it up-it's a new section, you know-my fingers seemed to glitch on the programmer. It looked all right then, but I guess I kept worrying about it inside. I remember thinking it looked wrong, but I had other things to do and I just let it go. But then when Wanda happened to point to precisely the area I had been concerned about, I decided to check up on her-otherwise I would just have let it go as a childish statement."

"And you turned on that very fragment of the equations to show Wanda. As though it were haunting your unconscious mind."

Amaryl shrugged. "Who knows?"