Foundation and Empire (20 page)

“And how did they get here?” asked Bayta, logically. “What are the chances of a random meeting of two given ships in space?”

“What’s that to do with it?” demanded Toran, hotly. “It would only show we’ve been followed.”

“Followed?” hooted Bayta. “Through hyperspace?”

Ebling Mis interposed wearily, “That can be done – given a good ship and a great pilot. But the possibility doesn’t impress me.”

“I haven’t been masking my trail,” insisted Toran. “I’ve been building up take-off speed on the straight. A blind man could have calculated our route.”

“The blazes he could,” cried Bayta. “With the cockeyed jumps you are making, observing our initial direction didn’t mean a thing. We came out of the jump wrong-end forwards more than once.”

“We’re wasting time,” blazed Toran, with gritted teeth. “It’s a Foundation ship under the Mule. It’s stopped us. It’s searched us. It’s had Magnifico – alone – with me as hostage to keep the rest of you quiet, in case you suspected. And we’re going to bum it out of space right now.”

“Hold on now,” and Ebling Mis clutched at him. “Are you going to destroy us for one ship you think is an enemy? Think, man, would those scuppers chase us over an impossible route half through the bestinkered Galaxy, look us over, and then let us go?”

“They’re still interested in where we’re going.”

“Then why stop us and put us on our guard? You can’t have it both ways, you know.”

“I’ll have it my way. Let go of me, Ebling, or I’ll knock you down.”

Magnifico leaned forward from his balanced perch on his favorite chair back. His long nostrils flared with excitement. “I crave your pardon for my interruption, but my poor mind is of a sudden plagued with a queer thought.”

Bayta anticipated Toran’s gesture of annoyance, and added her grip to Ebling’s. “Go ahead and speak, Magnifico. We will all listen faithfully.”

Magnifico said, “In my stay in their ship what addled wits I have were bemazed and bemused by a chattering fear that befell men. Of a truth I have a lack of memory of most that happened. Many men staring at me, and talk I did not understand. But towards the last – as though a beam of sunlight had dashed through a cloud rift – there was a face I knew. A glimpse, the merest glimmer – and yet it glows in my memory ever stronger and brighter.”

Toran said, “Who was it?”

“That captain who was with us so long a time ago, when first you saved me from slavery.”

It had obviously been Magnifico’s intention to create a sensation, and the delighted smile that curled broadly in the shadow of his proboscis, attested to his realization of the intention’s success.

“Captain … Han … Pritcher?” demanded Mis, sternly. “You’re sure of that? Certain sure now?”

“Sir, I swear,” and he laid a bone-thin hand upon his narrow chest. “I would uphold the truth of it before the Mule and swear it in his teeth, though all his power were behind him to deny it.”

Bayta said in pure wonder, “Then what’s it all about?” The clown faced her eagerly, “My lady, I have a theory. It came upon me, ready made, as though the Galactic Spirit had gently laid it in my mind.” He actually raised his voice above Toran’s interrupting objection.

“My lady,” he addressed himself exclusively to Bayta, “if this captain had, like us, escaped with a ship; if he, like us, were on a trip for a purpose of his own devising; if he blundered upon us – he would suspect us of following and waylaying him, as we suspect him of the like. What wonder he played this comedy to enter our ship?”

“Why would he want us in his ship, then?” demanded Toran. “That doesn’t fit.”

“Why, yes, it does,” clamored the clown, with a flowing inspiration. “He sent an underling who knew us not, but who described us into his microphone. The listening captain would be struck at my own poor likeness – for, of a truth there are not many in this great Galaxy who bear a resemblance to my scantiness. I was the proof of the identity of the rest of you.”

“And so he leaves us?”

“What do we know of his mission, and the secrecy thereof? lie has spied us out for not an enemy and having it done so, must he needs think it wise to risk his plan by widening the knowledge thereof?”

Bayta said slowly, “Don’t be stubborn, Torie. It does explain things.”

“It could be,” agreed Mis.

Toran seemed helpless in the face of united resistance. Something in the clown’s fluent explanations bothered him. Something was wrong. Yet he was bewildered and, in spite of himself, his anger ebbed.

“For a while,” he whispered, “I thought we might have had one of the Mule’s ships.”

And his eyes were dark with the pain of Haven’s loss.

The others understood.

NEOTRANTOR The small planet of Delicass, renamed after the Great Sack, was for nearly a century, the seat of the last dynasty of the First Empire. It was a shadow world and a shadow Empire and its existence is only of legalistic importance. Under the first of the Neotrantorian dynasty….

ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA

Neotrantor was the name! New Trantor! And when you have said the name you have exhausted at a stroke all the resemblances of the new Trantor to the great original. Two parsecs away, the sun of Old Trantor still shone and the Galaxy’s Imperial Capital of the previous century still cut through space in the silent and eternal repetition of its orbit.

Men even inhabited Old Trantor. Not many – a hundred million, perhaps, where fifty years before, forty billions had swarmed. The huge, metal world was in jagged splinters. The towering thrusts of the multi-towers from the single world-girdling base were torn and empty – still bearing the original blastholes and firegut – shards of the Great Sack of forty years earlier.

It was strange that a world which had been the center of a Galaxy for two thousand years – that had ruled limitless space and been home to legislators and rulers whose whims spanned the parsecs – could die in a month. It was strange that a world which had been untouched through the vast conquering sweeps and retreats of a millennia, and equally untouched by the civil wars and palace revolutions of other millennia – should lie dead at last. It was strange that the Glory of the Galaxy should be a rotting corpse.

And pathetic!

For centuries would yet pass before the mighty works of fifty generations of humans would decay past use. Only the declining powers of men, themselves, rendered them useless now.

The millions left after the billions had died tore up the gleaming metal base of the planet and exposed soil that had not felt the touch of sun in a thousand years.

Surrounded by the mechanical perfections of human efforts, encircled by the industrial marvels of mankind freed of the tyranny of environment – they returned to the land. In the huge traffic clearings, wheat and corn grew. In the shadow of the towers, sheep grazed.

But Neotrantor existed – an obscure village of a planet drowned in the shadow of mighty Trantor, until a heart-throttled royal family, racing before the fire and flame of the Great Sack sped to it as its last refuge – and held out there, barely, until the roaring wave of rebellion subsided. There it ruled in ghostly splendor over a cadaverous remnant of Imperium.

Twenty agricultural worlds were a Galactic Empire!

Dagobert IX, ruler of twenty worlds of refractory squires and sullen peasants, was Emperor of the Galaxy, Lord of the Universe.

Dagobert IX had been twenty-five on the bloody day he arrived with his father upon Neotrantor. His eyes and mind were still alive with the glory and the power of the Empire that was. But his son, who might one day be Dagobert X, was born on Neotrantor.

Twenty worlds were all he knew.

Jord Commason’s open air car was the finest vehicle of its type on all Neotrantor – and, after all, justly so. It did not end with the fact that Commason was the largest landowner on Neotrantor. It began there. For in earlier days he had been the companion and evil genius of a young crown prince, restive in the dominating grip of a middle-aged emperor. And now he was the companion and still the evil genius of a middle-aged crown prince who hated and dominated an old emperor.

So Jord Commason, in his air car, which in mother-of-pearl finish and gold-and-lumetron ornamentation needed no coat of arms as owner’s identification, surveyed the lands that were his, and the miles of rolling wheat that were his, and the huge threshers and harvesters that were his, and the tenant-farmers and machine-tenders that were his – and considered his problems cautiously.

Beside him, his bent and withered chauffeur guided the ship gently through the upper winds and smiled.

Jord Commason spoke to the wind, the air, and the sky, “You remember what I told you, Inchney?”

Inchney’s thin gray hair wisped lightly in the wind. His gap-toothed smile widened in its thin-lipped fashion and the vertical wrinkles of his cheeks deepened as though he were keeping an eternal secret from himself. The whisper of his voice whistled between his teeth.

“I remember, sire, and I have thought.”

“And what have you thought, Inchney?” There was an impatience about the question.

Inchney remembered that he had been young and handsome, and a lord on Old Trantor. Inchney remembered that he was a disfigured ancient on Neotrantor, who lived by grace of Squire Jord Commason, and paid for the grace by lending his subtlety on request. He sighed very softly.

He whispered again, “Visitors from the Foundation, sire, are a convenient thing to have. Especially, sire, when they come with but a single ship, and but a single fighting man. How welcome they might be.”

“Welcome?” said Commason, gloomily. “Perhaps so. But those men are magicians and may be powerful.”

“Pugh,” muttered Inchney, “the mistiness of distance hides the truth. The Foundation is but a world. Its citizens are but men. If you blast them, they die.”

Inchney held the ship on its course – A river was a winding sparkle below. He whispered, “And is there not a man they speak of now who stirs the worlds of the Periphery?”

Commason was suddenly suspicious. “What do you know of this?”

There was no smile on his chauffeur’s face. “Nothing, sire. It was but an idle question.”

The squire’s hesitation was short. He said, with brutal directness, “Nothing you ask is idle, and your method of acquiring knowledge will have your scrawny neck in a vise yet. But – I have it! This man is called the Mule, and a subject of his had been here some months ago on a … matter of business. I await another … now … for its conclusion.”

“And these newcomers? They are not the ones you want, perhaps?”

“They lack the identification they should have.”

“It has been reported that the Foundation has been captured–“

“I did not tell you that.”

“It has been so reported,” continued Inchney, coolly, “and if that is correct, then these may be refugees from the destruction, and may be held for the Mule’s man out of honest friendship.”

“Yes?” Commason was uncertain.

“And, sire, since it is well-known that the friend of a conqueror is but the last victim, it would be but a measure of honest self-defense. For there are such things as psychic probes, and here we have four Foundation brains. There is much about the Foundation it would be useful to know, much even about the Mule. And then the Mule’s friendship would be a trifle the less overpowering.”

Commason, in the quiet of the upper air, returned with a shiver to his first thought. “But if the Foundation has not fallen. If the reports are lies. It is said that it has been foretold it can not fall.”

“We are past the age of soothsayers, sire.”

“And yet if it did not fall, Inchney. Think! If it did not fall. The Mule made me promises, indeed–” He had gone too far, and backtracked. “That is, he made boasts. But boasts are wind and deeds are hard.”

Inchney laughed noiselessly. “Deeds are hard indeed, until begun. One could scarcely find a further fear than a Galaxy-end Foundation.”

“There is still the prince,” murmured Commason, almost to himself.

“He deals with the Mule also, then, sire?”

Commason could not quite choke down the complacent shift of features. “Not entirely. Not as I do. But he grows wilder, more uncontrollable. A demon is upon him. If I seize these people and he takes them away for his own use – for he does not lack a certain shrewdness – I am not yet ready to quarrel with him.” He frowned and his heavy cheeks bent downwards with dislike.

“I saw those strangers for a few moments yesterday,” said the gray chauffeur, irrelevantly, “and it is a strange woman, that dark one. she walks with the freedom of a man and she is of a startling paleness against the dark luster of hair.” There was almost a warmth in the husky whisper of the withered voice, so that Commason turned toward him in sudden surprise.

Inchney continued, “The prince, I think, would not find his shrewdness proof against a reasonable compromise. You could have the rest, if you left him the girl–“

A light broke upon Commason, “A thought! Indeed a thought! Inchney, turn back! And Inchney, if all turns well, we will discuss further this matter of your freedom.”

It was with an almost superstitious sense of symbolism that Commason found a Personal Capsule waiting for him in his private study when he returned. It had arrived by a wavelength known to few. Commason smiled a fat smile. The Mule’s man was coming and the Foundation had indeed fallen.

Bayta’s misty visions, when she had them, of an Imperial palace, did not jibe with the reality, and inside her, there was a vague sense of disappointment. The room was small, almost plain, almost ordinary. The palace did not even match the mayor’s residence back at the Foundation – and Dagobert IX –

Bayta had definite ideas of what an emperor ought to look like. He ought not look like somebody’s benevolent grandfather. He ought not be thin and white and faded – or serving cups of tea with his own hand in an expressed anxiety for the comfort of his visitors.

But so it was.

Dagobert IX chuckled as he poured tea into her stiffly outheld cup.

“This is a great pleasure for me, my dear. It is a moment away from ceremony and courtiers. I have not had the opportunity for welcoming visitors from my outer provinces for a time now. My son takes care of these details now that I’m older. You haven’t met my son? A fine boy. Headstrong, perhaps. But then he’s young. Do you care for a flavor capsule? No?”

Toran attempted an interruption, “Your imperial majesty–“

“Yes?”

“Your imperial majesty, it has not been our intention to intrude upon you–“

“Nonsense, there is no intrusion. Tonight there will be the official reception, but until then, we are free. Let’s see, where did you say you were from? It seems a long time since we had an official reception. You said you were from the Province of Anacreon?”

“From the Foundation, your imperial majesty!”

“Yes, the Foundation. I remember now. I had it located. It is in the Province of Anacreon. I have never been there. My doctor forbids extensive traveling. I don’t recall any recent reports from my viceroy at Anacreon. How are conditions there?” he concluded anxiously.

“Sire,” mumbled Toran, “I bring no complaints.”

“That is gratifying. I will commend my viceroy.”

Toran looked helplessly at Ebling Mis, whose brusque voice rose. “Sire, we have been told that it will require your permission for us to visit the Imperial University Library on Trantor.”

“Trantor?” questioned the emperor, mildly, “Trantor?”

Then a look of puzzled pain crossed his thin face. “Trantor?” he whispered. “I remember now. I am making plans now to return there with a flood of ships at my back. You shall come with me. Together we will destroy the rebel, Gilmer. Together we shall restore the empire!”

His bent back had straightened. His voice had strengthened. For a moment his eyes were hard. Then, he blinked and said softly, “But Gilmer is dead. I seem to remember – Yes. Yes! Gilmer is dead! Trantor is dead – For a moment, it seemed – Where was it you said you came from?”

Magnifico whispered to Bayta, “Is this really an emperor? For somehow I thought emperors were greater and wiser than ordinary men.”

Bayta motioned him quiet. She said, “If your imperial majesty would but sign an order permitting us to go to Trantor, it would avail greatly the common cause.”

“To Trantor?” The emperor was blank and uncomprehending.

“Sire, the Viceroy of Anacreon, in whose name we speak, sends word that Gilmer is yet alive–“

“Alive! Alive!” thundered Dagobert. “Where? It will be war!”

“Your imperial majesty, it must not yet be known. His whereabouts are uncertain. The viceroy sends us to acquaint you of the fact, and it is only on Trantor that we may find his hiding place. Once discovered–“

“Yes, yes – He must be found–” The old emperor doddered to the wall and touched the little photocell with a trembling finger. He muttered, after an ineffectual pause, “My servants do not come. I can not wait for them.”

He was scribbling on a blank sheet, and ended with a flourished “D.” He said, “Gilmer will yet learn the power of his emperor. Where was it you came from? Anacreon? What are the conditions there? Is the name of the emperor powerful?”

Bayta took the paper from his loose fingers, “Your imperial majesty is beloved by the people. Your love for them is widely known.”

“I shall have to visit my good people of Anacreon, but my doctor says … I don’t remember what he says, but–” He looked up, his old gray eyes sharp, “Were you saying something of Gilmer?”

“No, your imperial majesty.”

“He shall not advance further. Go back and tell your people that. Trantor shall hold! My father leads the fleet now, and the rebel vermin Gilmer shall freeze in space with his regicidal rabble.”

He staggered into a seat and his eyes were blank once more. “What was I saying?”

Toran rose and bowed low, “Your imperial majesty has been kind to us, but the time allotted us for an audience is over. “

For a moment, Dagobert IX looked like an emperor indeed as he rose and stood stiff-backed while, one by one, his visitors retreated backward through the door

–to where twenty armed men intervened and locked a circle about them.

A hand-weapon flashed–

To Bayta, consciousness returned sluggishly, but without the “Where am I?” sensation. She remembered clearly the odd old man who called himself emperor, and the other men who waited outside. The arthritic tingle in her finger joints meant a stun pistol.

She kept her eyes closed, and listened with painful attention to the voices.

There were two of them. One was slow and cautious, with a slyness beneath the surface obsequity. The other was hoarse and thick, almost sodden, and blurted out in viscous spurts. Bayta liked neither.

The thick voice was predominant.