Second Foundation

Bail Channis sat in the small white-tiled room and allowed his mind to relax. He was content to live in the present. There were the walls and the window and the grass outside. They had no names. They were just things. There was a bed and a chair an books that developed themselves idly on the screen at the foot of his bed. There was the nurse who brought him his food.

At first he had made efforts to piece together the scraps of things he had heard. Such as those two men talking together.

One had said: "Complete aphasia now. It’s cleaned out, and I think without damage. It will only be necessary to return the recording of his original brain-wave makeup."

He remembered the sounds by rote, and for some reason they seemed peculiar sounds - as if they meant something. But why bother.

Better to watch the pretty changing colors on the screen at the foot of the thing he lay on.

And then someone entered and did things to him and for a long time, he slept.

And when that had passed, the bed was suddenly a bed and he knew he was in a hospital, and the words he remembered made sense.

He sat up: "What's happening?"

The First Speaker was beside him, "You're on the Second Foundation, and you have your mind back - your original mind."

"Yes! Yes!" Channis came to the realization that he was himself, and there was incredible triumph and joy in that.

"And now tell me," said the First Speaker, "do you know where the Second Foundation is now?"

And the truth came flooding down in one enormous wave and Channis did not answer. Like Ebling Mis before him, he was conscious of only one vast, numbing surprise.

Until he finally nodded, and said: "By the Stars of the Galaxy - now, I know."

Part II Search By The Foundation

7. Arcadia

DARELL, ARKADY novelist, born 11, 5, 362 F.E., died 1, 7, 443 F.E. Although primarily a writer of fiction, Arkady Darell is best known for her biography of her grandmother, Bayta Darell. Based on first-hand information, it has for centuries served as a primary source of information concerning the Mule and his times… Like "Unkeyed Memories", her novel "Time and Time and Over" is a stirring reflection of the brilliant Kalganian society of the early Interregnum, based, it is said, on a visit to Kalgan in her youth…

Encyclopedia Galactica

Arcadia Darell declaimed firmly into the mouthpiece of her transcriber:

"The Future of Seldon's Plan, by A. Darell" and then thought darkly that some day when she was a great writer, she would write all her masterpieces under the pseudonym of Arkady. Just Arkady. No last name at all.

"A. Darell" would be just the sort of thing that she would have to put on all her themes for her class in Composition and Rhetoric - so tasteless. All the other kids had to do it, too, except for Olynthus Dam, because the class laughed so when he did it the first time, And "Arcadia" was a little girls name, wished on her because her great-grandmother had been called that; her parents just had no imagination at all.

Now that she was two days past fourteen, you'd think they'd recognize the simple fact of adulthood and call her Arkady. Her lips tightened as she thought of her father looking up from his book-viewer just long enough to say, "But if you're going to pretend you're nineteen, Arcadia, what will you do when you're twenty-five and all the boys think you're thirty?"

From where she sprawled across the arms and into the hollow of her own special armchair, she could see the mirror on her dresser. Her foot was a little in the way because her house slipper kept twirling about her big toe, so she pulled it in and sat up with an unnatural straightness to her neck that she felt sure, somehow, lengthened it a full two inches into slim regality.

For a moment, she considered her face thoughtfully - too fat. She opened her jaws half an inch behind closed lips, and caught the resultant trace of unnatural gauntness at every angle. She licked her lips with a quick touch of tongue and let them pout a bit in moist softness. Then she let her eyelids droop in a weary, worldly way- Oh, golly if only her cheeks weren't that silly pink.

She tried putting her fingers to the outer corners of her eye and tilting the lids a bit to get that mysterious exotic languor of the women of the inner star systems, but her hands were in the way and she couldn't see her face very well.