Foundation and Empire

"Shut up," said Mis, ferociously, "and listen. If this thing here," and his palm came down heavily on the metal of the bound data, "is a mess of my reports - throw it out. Any report I write goes up through some twenty-odd officials, gets to you, and then sort of winds down through twenty more. That's fine if there's nothing you don't want kept secret. Well, I've got something confidential here. It's so confidential, even the boys working for me haven't got wind of it. They did the work, of course, but each just a little unconnected piece - and I put it together. You know what the Time Vault is?"

Indbur nodded his head, but Mis went on with loud enjoyment of the situation, "Well, I'll tell you anyhow because I've been sort of imagining this unprintable situation for a "Ga-LAX-y, of a long time; I can read your mind, you puny fraud. You've got your hand right near a little knob that'll call in about five hundred or so armed men to finish me off, but you're afraid of what I know - you're afraid of a Seldon Crisis. Besides which, if you touch anything on your desk, I'll knock your unprintable head off before anyone gets here. You and your bandit father and pirate grandfather have been blood-sucking the Foundation long enough anyway."

"This is treason," gabbled Indbur.

"It certainly is," gloated Mis, "but what are you going to do about it? Let me tell you about the Time Vault. That Time Vault is what Hari Seldon placed here at the beginning to help us over the rough spots. For every crisis, Seldon has prepared a personal simulacrum to help - and explain. Four crises so far - four appearances. The first time he appeared at the height of the first crisis. The second time, he appeared at the moment just after the successful evolution of the second crisis. Our ancestors were there to listen to him both times. At the third and fourth crises, he was ignored - probably because he was not needed, but recent investigations - not included in those reports you have - indicate that he appeared anyway, and at the proper times. Get it?"

He did not wait for any answer. His cigar, a tattered, dead ruin was finally disposed of, a new cigar groped for, and lit. The smoke puffed out violently.

He said, "Officially I've been trying to rebuild the science of psychohistory. Well, no one man is going to do that, and it won't get done in any one century, either. But I've made advances in the more simple elements and I've been able to use it as an excuse to meddle with the Time Vault. What I have done, involves the determination, to a pretty fair kind of certainty, of the exact date of the next appearance of Hari Seldon. I can give you the exact day, in other words, that the coming Seldon Crisis, the fifth, will reach its climax. "

"How far off?" demanded Indbur, tensely.

And Mis exploded his bomb with cheerful nonchalance,

"Four months," he said. "Four unprintable months, less two days."

"Four months," said Indbur, with uncharacteristic vehemence. "Impossible."

"Impossible, my unprintable eye."

"Four months? Do you understand what that means? For a crisis to come to a head in four months would mean that it has been preparing for years."

"And why not? Is there a law of Nature that requires the process to mature in the full light of day?"

"But nothing impends. Nothing hangs over us." Indbur almost wrung his hands for anxiety. With a sudden spasmodic recrudescence of ferocity, he screamed, "Will you get off my desk and let me put it in order? How do you expect me to think?"

Mis, startled, lifted heavily and moved aside.

Indbur replaced objects in their appropriate niches with a feverish motion. He was speaking quickly, "You have no right to come here like this. If you had presented your theory-"

"It is not a theory."

"I say it is a theory. If you had presented it together with your evidence and arguments, in appropriate fashion, it would have gone to the Bureau of Historical Sciences. There it could have been properly treated, the resulting analyses submitted to me, and then, of course, proper action would have been taken. As it is, you've vexed me to no purpose. Ah, here it is."

He had a sheet of transparent, silvery paper in his hand which he shook at the bulbous psychologist beside him.

"This is a short summary I prepare myself - weekly - of foreign matters in progress. Listen - we have completed negotiations for a commercial treaty with Mores, continue negotiations for one with Lyonesse, sent a delegation to some celebration or other on Bonde, received some complaint or other from Kalgan and we've promised to look into it, protested some sharp trade practices in Asperta and they've promised to look into it - and so on and so on." The mayor's eyes swarmed down the list of coded notations, and then he carefully placed the sheet in its proper place in the proper folder in the proper pigeonhole.

I tell you, Mis, there's not a thing there that breathes anything but order and peace-"