Foundation's Edge (44 page)

“Nonhuman?”

“Not necessarily, I suppose. But interesting.”

A figure emerged.

Pelorat’s lips tightened for a moment and then he said in a disappointed voice, “Too bad. Human.”

“Not necessarily,” said Trevize calmly. “All we can make out is that there seem to be five projections. That could be a head, two arms, and two legs—but it might not be. —Wait!”

“What?”

“It moves more rapidly and smoothly than I expected. —Ah!”

“What?”

“There’s some sort of propulsion. It’s not rocketry, as nearly as I can tell, but neither is it hand over hand. Still, not necessarily human.”

There seemed an incredibly long wait despite the quick approach of the figure along the tether, but there was finally the noise of contact.

Trevize said, “It’s coming in, whatever it is. My impulse is to tackle it the minute it appears.” He balled a fist.

“I think we had better relax,” said Pelorat. “It may be stronger than we. It can control our minds. There are surely others on the ship. We had better wait till we know more about what we are facing.”

“You grow more and more sensible by the minute, Janov,” said Trevize, “and I, less and less.”

They could hear the airlock moving into action and finally the figure appeared inside the ship.

“About normal size,” muttered Pelorat. “The space suit could fit a human being.”

“I never saw or heard of such a design, but it doesn’t fall outside the limits of human manufacture, it seems to me. —It doesn’t say anything.”

The space-suited figure stood before them and a forelimb rose to the rounded helmet, which—if it were made of glass—possessed oneway transparency only. Nothing could be seen inside.

The limb touched something with a quick motion that Trevize did not clearly make out and the helmet was at once detached from the rest of the suit. It lifted off.

What was exposed was the face of a young and undeniably pretty woman.

Pelorat’s expressionless face did what it could to look stupefied. He said hesitantly, “Are you human?”

The woman’s eyebrows shot up and her lips pouted. There was no way of telling from the action whether she was faced with a strange language and did not understand or whether she understood and wondered at the question.

Her hand moved quickly to the left side of her suit, which opened in one piece as though it were on a set of hinges. She stepped out and the suit remained standing without content for a moment. Then, with a soft sigh that seemed almost human, it collapsed.

She looked even younger, now that she had stepped out. Her clothing was loose and translucent, with the skimpy items beneath visible as shadows. The outer robe reached to her knees.

She was small-breasted and narrow-waisted, with hips rounded and full. Her thighs, which were seen in shadow, were generous, but her legs narrowed to graceful ankles. Her hair was dark and shoulderlength, her eyes brown and large, her lips full and slightly asymmetric.

She looked down at herself and then solved the problem of her understanding of the language by saying, “Don’t I look human?”

She spoke Galactic Standard with just a trifle of hesitation, as though she were straining a bit to get the pronunciation quite right.

Pelorat nodded and said with a small smile, “I can’t deny it. Quite human. Delightfully human.”

The young woman spread her arms as though inviting closer examination. “I should hope so, gentleman. Men have died for this body.”

“I would rather live for it,” said Pelorat, finding a vein of gallantry which faintly surprised him.

“Good choice,” said the woman solemnly. “Once this body is attained, all sighs become sighs of ecstasy.”

She laughed and Pelorat laughed with her.

Trevize, whose forehead had puckered into a frown through this exchange, rapped out, “How old are you?”

The woman seemed to shrink a little. “Twenty-three— gentleman.”

“Why have you come? What is your purpose here?”

“I have come to escort you to Gaia.” Her command of Galactic Standard was slipping slightly and her vowels tended to round into diphthongs. She made “come” sound like “comb” and “Gaia” like “Gay-uh.”

“A girl to escort us.”

The woman drew herself up and suddenly she had the bearing of one in charge. “I,” she said, “am Gaia, as well as another. It was my stint on the station.”

“Your stint? Were you the only one on board?”

Proudly. “I was all that was needed.” “And is it empty now?”

“I am no longer on it, gentleman, but it is not empty. It is there.”

“It? To what do you refer?”

“To the station. It is Gaia. It doesn’t need me. It holds your ship.”

“Then what are you doing on the station?”

“It is my stint.”

Pelorat had taken Trevize by the sleeve and had been shaken off. He tried again. “Golan,” he said in an urgent half-whisper. “Don’t shout at her. She’s only a girl. Let me deal with this.”

Trevize shook his head angrily, but Pelorat said, “Young woman, what is your name?”

The woman smiled with sudden sunniness, as though responding to the softer tone. She said, “Bliss.”

“Bliss?” said Pelorat. “A very nice name. Surely that’s not all there is.”

“Of course not. A fine thing it would be to have one syllable. It would be duplicated on every section and we wouldn’t tell one from another, so that the men would be dying for the wrong body. Bussenobiarella is my name in full.”

“Now that’s a mouthful.”-

“What? Seven syllables? That’s not much. I have friends with fifteen syllables in their names and they never get done trying combinations for the friend-name. I’ve stuck with Bliss now ever since I turned fifteen. My mother called me ‘Nobby,’ if you can imagine such a thing.”

“In Galactic Standard, ‘bliss’ means ‘ecstasy’ or ‘extreme happiness,’” said Pelorat.

“In Gaian language, too. It’s not very different from Standard, and ‘ecstasy’ is the impression I intend to convey.”

“My name is Janov Pelorat.”

“I know that. And this other gentleman—the shouter—is Golan Trevize. We received word from Sayshell.”

Trevize said at once, his eyes narrow, “How did you receive word?”

Bliss turned to look at him and said calmly, “I didn’t. Gaia did.”

Pelorat said, “Miss Bliss, may my partner and myself speak Privately for a moment?”

“Yes, certainly, but we have to get on with it, you know.”

“I won’t take long.” He pulled hard at Trevize’s elbow and was reluctantly followed into the other room.

Trevize said in a whisper, “What’s all this? I’m sure she can hear us in here. She can probably read our minds, blast the creature.”

“Whether she can or can’t, we need a bit of psychological isolation for just a moment. Look, old chap, leave her alone. There’s nothing we can do, and there’s no use taking that out on her. There’s probably nothing she can do either. She’s just a messenger girl. Actually, as long as she’s on board, we’re probably safe; they wouldn’t have put her on board if they intended to destroy the ship. Keep bullying and perhaps they will destroy it—and us—after they take her off.”

“I don’t like being helpless,” said Trevize grumpily.

“Who does? But acting like a bully doesn’t make you less helpless. It just makes you a helpless bully. Oh, my dear chap, I don’t mean to be bullying you like this and you must forgive me if I’m excessively critical of you, but the girl is not to be blamed.”

“Janov, she’s young enough to be your youngest daughter.”

Pelorat straightened. “All the more reason to treat her gently. Nor do I know what you imply by the statement.”

Trevize thought a moment, then his face cleared. “Very well. You’re right. I’m wrong. It is irritating, though, to have them send a girl. They might have sent a military officer, for instance, and given us a sense of some value, so to speak. Just a girl? And she keeps placing responsibility on Gaia?”

“She’s probably referring to a ruler who takes the name of the planet as an honorific—or else she’s referring to the planetary council. We’ll find out, but probably not by direct questioning.”

“Men have died for her body!” said Trevize. “Huh! —She’s bottom-heavy!”

“No one is asking you to die for it, Golan,” said Pelorat gently. “Come! Allow her a sense of self-mockery. I consider it amusing and good-natured, myself.”

They found Bliss at the computer, bending down and staring at its component parts with her hands behind her back as though she feared touching it.

She looked up as they entered, ducking their heads under the low lintel. “This is an amazing ship,” she said. “I don’t understand half of what I see, but if you’re going to give me a greeting-present, this is it. It’s beautiful. It makes my ship look awful.”

Her face took on a look of ardent curiosity. “Are you really from the Foundation?”

“How do you know about the Foundation?” asked Pelorat.

“We learn about it in school. Mostly because of the Mule.”

“Why because of the Mule, Bliss?”

“He’s one of us, gentle— What syllable of your name may I use, gentleman?”

Pelorat said, “Either Jan or Pel. Which do you prefer?”

“He’s one of us, Pel,” said Bliss with a comradely smile. “He was born on Gaia, but no one seems to know where exactly.”

Trevize said, “I imagine he’s a Gaian hero, Bliss, eh?” He had become determinedly, almost aggressively, friendly and cast a placating glance in Pelorat’s direction. “Call me Trev,” he added.

“Oh no,” she said at once. “He’s a criminal. He left Gaia without permission, and no one should do that. No one knows how he did it. But he left, and I guess that’s why he came to a bad end. The Foundation beat him in the end.”

“The Second Foundation?” said Trevize.

“Is there more than one? I suppose if I thought about it I would know, but I’m not interested in history, really. The way I look at it is, I’m interested in what Gaia thinks best. If history just goes past me, it’s because there are enough historians or that I’m not well adapted to it. I’m probably being trained as a space technician myself. I keep being assigned to stints like this and I seem to like it and it stands to reason I wouldn’t like it if—”

She was speaking rapidly, almost breathlessly, and Trevize had to make an effort to insert a sentence. “Who’s Gaia?”

Bliss looked puzzled at that. “Just Gaia. —Please, Pel and Trev, let’s get on with it. We’ve got to get to the surface.”

“We’re going there, aren’t we?”

“Yes, but slowly. Gaia feels you can move much more rapidly if you use the potential of your ship. Would you do that?”

“We could,” said Trevize grimly. “But if I get the control of the ship back, wouldn’t I be more likely to zoom off in the opposite direction?”

Bliss laughed. “You’re funny. Of course, you can’t go in any direction Gaia doesn’t want you to go. But you can go faster in the direction Gaia does want you to go. See?”

“We see,” said Trevize, “and I’ll try to control my sense of humor. Where do I land on the surface?”

“It doesn’t matter. You just head downward and you’ll land at the right place. Gain will see to that.”

Pelorat said, “And will you stay with us, Bliss, and see that we are treated well?”

“I suppose I can do that. Let’s see now, the usual fee for my services—I mean that kind of services—can be entered on my balancecard.”

“And the other kind of services?”

Bliss giggled. “You’re a nice old man.” Pelorat winced.

Bliss reacted to the swoop down to Gaia with a naïve excitement. She said, “There’s no feeling of acceleration.”

“It’s a gravitic drive,” said Pelorat. “Everything accelerates together, ourselves included, so we don’t feel anything.”

“But how does it work, Pel?”

Pelorat shrugged. “I think Trev knows,” he said, “but I don’t think he’s really in a mood to talk about it.”

Trevize had dropped down Gaia’s gravity-well almost recklessly. The ship responded to his direction, as Bliss had warned him, in a partial manner. An attempt to cross the lines of gravitic force obliquely was accepted—but only with a certain hesitation. An attempt to rise upward was utterly ignored.

The ship was still not his.

Pelorat said mildly, “Aren’t you going downward rather rapidly, Golan?”

Trevize, with a kind of flatness to his voice, attempting to avoid anger (more for Pelorat’s sake, than anything else) said, “The young lady says that Gaia will take care of us.”

Bliss said, “Surely, Pel. Gaia wouldn’t let this ship do anything that wasn’t safe. Is there anything to eat on board?”

“Yes indeed,” said Pelorat. “What would you like?”

“No meat, Pel,” said Bliss in a businesslike way, “but I’ll take fish or eggs, along with any vegetables you might have.”

“Some of the food we have is Sayshellian, Bliss,” said Pelorat. “I’m not sure I know what’s in it, but you might like it.”

“Well, I’ll taste some,” said Bliss dubiously.

“Are the people on Gaia vegetarian?” asked Pelorat.

“A lot are.” Bliss nodded her head vigorously. “It depends on what nutrients the body needs in particular cases. Lately I haven’t been hungry for meat, so I suppose I don’t need any. And I haven’t been aching for anything sweet. Cheese tastes good, and shrimp. I think I probably need to lose weight.” She slapped her right buttock with a resounding noise. “I need to lose five or six pounds right here.”

“I don’t see why,” said Pelorat. “It gives you something comfortable to sit on.”

Bliss twisted to look down at her rear as best she might. “Oh well, it doesn’t matter. Weight goes up or down as it ought. I shouldn’t concern myself.”

Trevize was silent because he was struggling with the Far Star. He had hesitated a bit too long for orbit and the lower limits of the planetary exosphere were now screaming past the ship. Little by little, the ship was escaping from his control altogether. It was as though something else had learned to handle the gravitic engines. The Far Star, acting apparently by itself, curved upward into thinner air and slowed rapidly. It then took up a path on its own that brought it into a gentle downward curve.

Bliss had ignored the edgy sound of air resistance and sniffed delicately at the steam rising from the container. She said, “It must be all right, Pd, because if it weren’t, it wouldn’t smell right and I wouldn’t want to eat it.” She put a slim finger into it and then licked at the finger. “You guessed correctly, Pd. It’s shrimp or something like it. Good!”