Foundation's Edge Part 11

"Why is it a must?"

"For one thing, Earth was once the only inhabited world, so naturally its day and year would be standard and would very likely remain standard out of social inertia as other worlds were populated. Then, too, the model I produced was that of an Earth that rotated on its axis in just twenty-four Galactic Standard Hours and that revolved about its sun in just one Galactic Standard Year."

"Might that not be coincidence?"

Pelorat laughed. "Now it is you who are talking coincidence. Would you care to lay a wager on such a thing happening by coincidence?"

"Well well," muttered Trevize.

"In fact, there's more to it. There's an archaic measure of time that's called the month-"

"I've heard of it."

"It, apparently, about fits the period of revolution of Earth's satellite about Earth. However-'

"Yes?"

"Well, one rather astonishing factor of the model is that the satellite I just mentioned is huge-over one quarter the diameter of the Earth itself."

"Never heard of such a thing, Janov. There isn't a populated planet in the Galaxy with a satellite like that."

"But that's good," said Pelorat with animation. "If Earth is a unique world in its production of variegated species and the evolution of intelligence, then we want some physical uniqueness."

"But what could a large satellite have to do with variegated species, intelligence, and all that?"

"Well now, there you hit a difficulty. I don't really know. But it's worth examination, don't you think?"

Trevize rose to his feet and folded his arms across his chest. "But what's the problem, then? Look up the statistics on inhabited planets and find one that has a period of rotation and of revolution that are exactly one Galactic Standard Day and one Galactic Standard Year in length, respectively. And if it also has a gigantic satellite, you'd have what you want. I presume, from your statement that you 'have an excellent possibility in mind,' that you've done just this, and that you have your world."

Pelorat looked disconcerted. "Well, now, that's not exactly what happened. I did look through the statistics, or at least I had it done by the astronomy department and-well, to put it bluntly, there's no such world."

Trevize sat down again abruptly. "But that means your whole argument falls to the ground."

"Not quite, it seems to me."

"What do you mean, not quite? You produce a model with all sorts of detailed descriptions and you can't find anything that fits. Your model is useless, then. You must start from the beginning."

"No. It just means that the statistics on populated planets are incomplete. After all, there are tens of millions of them and some are very obscure worlds. For instance, there is no good data on the population of nearly half. And concerning six hundred and forty thousand populated worlds there is almost no information other than their names and sometimes the location. Some galactographers have estimated that there may be up to ten thousand inhabited planets that aren't listed at all. The worlds prefer it that way, presumably. During the Imperial Era, it might have helped them avoid taxation."

"And in the centuries that followed," said Trevize cynically. "It might have helped them serve as home bases for pirates, and that might have, on occasion, proved more enriching than ordinary trade."

"I 'wouldn't know about that," said Pelorat doubtfully.

Trevize said, "Just the same, it seems to me that Earth would have to be on the list of inhabited planets, whatever its own desires. It would be the oldest of them all, by definition, and it could not have been overlooked in the early centuries of Galactic civilization. And once on the list, it would stay on. Surely we could count on social inertia there."

Pelorat hesitated and looked anguished. "Actually, there-there is a planet named Earth on the list of inhabited planets."

Trevize stared. "I'm under the impression that you told me a while ago that Earth was not on the list?"

"As Earth, it is not. There is, however, a planet named Gaia."

"What has that got to do with it? Gahyah?"

"It's spelled GA-I-A. It means 'Earth."'

"Why should it mean Earth, Janov, any more than anything else? The name is meaningless to me."

Pelorat's ordinarily expressionless face came close to a grimace. "I'm not sure you'll believe this- If I go by my a.n.a.lysis of the myths, there were several different, mutually unintelligible, languages on Earth."

"What?"

"Yes. After all, we have a thousand different ways of speaking across the Galaxy-"

"Across the Galaxy, there are certainly dialectical variations, but these are not mutually unintelligible. And even if understanding some of them is a matter of difficulty, we all share Galactic Standard."

"Certainly, but there is constant interstellar travel. What if some world was in isolation for a prolonged period?"

"But you're talking of Earth. A single planet. Where's the isolation?"

"Earth is the planet of origin, don't forget, where humanity must at one time have been primitive beyond imagining. Without interstellar travel, without computers, without technology at all, struggling up from nonhuman ancestors."

"This is so ridiculous."

Pelorat hung his head in embarra.s.sment at that. "There is perhaps no use discussing this, old chap. I never have managed to make it convincing to anyone. My own fault, I'm sure."

Trevize was at once contrite. "Janov, I apologize. I spoke without thinking. These are views, after all, to which I am not accustomed. You have been developing your theories for over thirty years, while I've been introduced to them all at once. You must make allowances. -Look, I'll imagine that we have primitive people on Earth who speak two completely different, mutually unintelligible, languages."'

"Half a dozen, perhaps," said Pelorat diffidently. "Earth may have been divided into several large land ma.s.ses and it may be that there were, at first, no communications among them. The inhabitants of each land ma.s.s might have developed an individual language."

Trevize said with careful gravity, "And on each of these land ma.s.ses, once they grew cognizant of one another, they might have argued an 'origin Question' and wondered on which one human beings had first arisen from other animals."

"They might very well, Golan. It would be a very natural att.i.tude for them to have."

"And in one of those languages, Gaia means Earth. And the word 'Earth' itself is derived from another one of those languages."

"Yes, yes: '

"And while Galactic Standard is the language that descended from the particular language in which 'Earth' means 'Earth,' the people of Earth for some reason call their planet 'Gala' from another of their languages."

"Exactly! You are indeed quick, Golan."

"But it seems to me that there's no need to make a mystery of this. If Gaia is really Earth, despite the difference in names, then Gala, by your previous argument, ought to have a period of rotation of just one Galactic Day, a period of revolution of just one Galactic Year, and a giant satellite that revolves about it in just one month."

"Yes, it would have to be so."

"Well then, does it or doesn't it fulfill these requirements?"

"Actually I can't say. The information isn't given in the tables."

"Indeed? Well, then, Janov, shall we go to Gaia and time its periods and stare at its satellite?"

"I would like to, Golan," Pelorat hesitated. "The trouble is that the location isn't given exactly, either."

"You mean, all you have is the name and nothing more, and that is your excellent possibility?"

"But that is just why I want to visit the Galactic Library!"

"Well, wait. You say the table doesn't give the location exactly. Does it give any information at all?"

"It lists it in the Saysh.e.l.l Sector-and adds a question mark."

"Well, then- Janov, don't be downcast. We will go to the Saysh.e.l.l Sector and somehow we will find Gaia!"

CHAPTER SEVEN

FARMER

STOR GENDIBAL JOGGED ALONG THE COUNTRY ROAD OUTSIDE THE UNIVERSITY. It was not common practice for Second Foundationers to venture into the farming world of Trantor. They could do so, certainly, but when they did, they did not venture either far or for long.

Gendibal was an exception and he had, in times past, wondered why. Wondering meant exploring his own mind, something that Speakers, in particular, were encouraged to do. Their minds were at once their weapons and their targets, and they had to keep both offense and defense well honed.

Gendibal had decided, to his own satisfaction, that one reason he was different was because he had come from a planet that was both colder and more ma.s.sive than the average inhabited planet. When he was brought to Trantor as a boy (through the net that was quietly cast throughout the Galaxy by agents of the Second Foundation on the lookout for talent), he found himself, therefore, in a lighter gravitational field and a delightfully mild climate. Naturally he enjoyed being in the open more than some of the others might.

In his early years on Trantor, he grew conscious of his puny, undersized frame, and he was afraid that settling back into the comfort of a benign world would turn him flabby indeed. He therefore undertook a series of self-developing exercises that had left him still puny in appearance but kept hint wiry and with a good wind. Part of his regimen were these long walks arid joggings-about which some at the Speaker's Table muttered. Gendibal disregarded their chattering.

He kept his own ways, despite the fact that he was first-generation. All the others at the Table were second- and third-generation, with parents and grandparents who had been Second Foundationers. And they were all older than he, too. What, then, was to be expected but muttering?

By long custom, all minds at the Speaker's Table were open (supposedly altogether, though it was a rare Speaker who didn't maintain a comer of privacy somewhere-in the long run, ineffectively, of course) and Gendibal knew that what they felt was envy. So did they; just as Gendibal knew his own att.i.tude was defensive, overcompensating ambition. And so did they.

Besides (Gendibal's mind reverted to the reasons for his ventures into the hinterland) he had spent his childhood in a whole world-a large and expansive one, with grand and variegated scenery-and in a fertile valley of that world, surrounded by what he believed to be the most beautiful mountain ranges in the Galaxy. They were unbelievably spectacular in the grim winter of that world. He remembered his former world and the glories of a now-distant childhood. He dreamed about it often. How could he bring himself to be confined to a few dozen square miles of ancient architecture?

He looked about disparagingly as he jogged. Trantor was a mild and pleasant world, but it was not a rugged and beautiful one. Though it was a farming world, it was not a fertile planet.

It never had been. Perhaps that, as much as any other factor, had led to its becoming the administrative center of, first, an extensive union of planets and then of a Galactic Empire. There was no strong push to have it be anything else. It wasn't extraordinarily good for anything else.

After the Great Sack, one thing that kept Trantor going was its enormous supply of metal. It was a great mine, supplying half a hundred worlds with cheap alloy steel, aluminum, t.i.tanium, copper, magnesium - returning, in this way, what it had collected over thousands of years; depleting its supplies at a rate hundreds of times faster than the original rate of acc.u.mulation.

There were still enormous metal supplies available, but they were underground and harder to obtain. The Hamish farmers (who never called themselves "Trantorians," a term they considered ill-omened and which the Second Foundationers therefore reserved for themselves) had grown reluctant to deal with the metal any further. Superst.i.tion, undoubtedly.

Foolish of them. The metal that remained underground might well be poisoning the soil and further lowering its fertility. And yet, on the other hand, the population was thinly spread and the land supported them. And there were some sales of metal, always.

Gendibal's eyes roved over the fiat horizon. Trantor was alive geologically, as almost all inhabited planets were, but it had been a hundred million years, at least, since the last major geological mountain-building period had occurred. What uplands existed had been eroded into gentle hills. Indeed, many of them had been leveled during the great metal-coating period of Trantor's history.

Off to the south, well out of sight, was the sh.o.r.e of Capital Bay, and beyond that, the Eastern Ocean, both of which had been re-established after the disruption of the underground cisterns.

To the north were the towers of Galactic University, obscuring the comparatively squat-but-wide Library (most of which was underground), and the remains of the Imperial Palace still farther north.

Immediately on either side were farms, on which there was an occasional building. He pa.s.sed groups of cattle, goats, chickens-the wide variety of domesticated animals found on any Trantorian farm. None of them paid him any mind.

Gendibal thought casually that anywhere in the Galaxy, on any of the vast number of inhabited worlds, he would see these animals and that on no two worlds would they be exactly alike. He remembered the goats of home and his own tame nanny whom he had once milked. They were much larger and more resolute than the small and philosophical specimens that had been brought to Trantor and established there since the Great Sack. Over the inhabited worlds of the Galaxy, there were varieties of each of these animals, in numbers almost beyond counting, and there was no sophisticate on any world who didn't swear by his favorite variety, whether for meat, milk, eggs, wool, or anything else they could produce.

As usual, there were no Hamish in view. Gendibal had the feeling that the farmers avoided being seen by those whom they referred to as "scowlers" (a misp.r.o.nunciation-perhaps deliberately-of the word "scholars" in their dialect). -Superst.i.tion, again.

Gendibal glanced up briefly at Trantor's sun. It was quite high in the sky, but its heat was not oppressive. In this location, at this lat.i.tude, the warmth saved mild and the cold never bit. (Gendibal ever. missed the biting cold sometimes or so he imagined. He had never revisited his native world. Perhaps, he admitted to himself, because he didn't want to be disillusioned.) He had the pleasant feel of muscles that were sharpened and tightened to keenness and he decided he had jogged just long enough. He settled down to a walk, breathing deeply.

He would be ready for the upcoming Table meeting and for one last push to force a change in policy, a new att.i.tude that would recognize the growing danger from the First Foundation and elsewhere and that would put an end to the fatal reliance on the "perfect" working of the Plan. When would they realize that the very perfection was the surest sign of danger?

Had anyone but himself proposed it, he knew, it would have gone through without trouble. As things stood now, there would be trouble, but it would go through, just the same, for old Shandess was supporting him and would undoubtedly continue to do so. He would not wish to enter the history books as the particular First Speaker under whom the Second Foundation had withered.

Hamish!

Gendibal was startled. He became aware of the distant tendril of mind well before he saw the person. It was Hamish mind-a farmer -coa.r.s.e and unsubtle. Carefully Gendibal withdrew, leaving a touch so light as to be undetectable. Second Foundation policy was very firm in this respect. The farmers were the unwitting shields of the Second Foundation. They must be left as untouched as possible.

No one who came to Trantor for trade or tourism ever saw anything other than the farmers, plus perhaps a few unimportant scholars living in the past. Remove the farmers or merely tamper with their innocence and the scholars would become more noticeable-with catastrophic results. (That was one of the cla.s.sic demonstrations which neophytes at the University were expected to work out for themselves. The tremendous Deviations displayed on the Prime Radiant when the farmer minds were even slightly tampered with were astonishing.) Gendibal saw him. It was a farmer, certainly, Hamish to the core. He was almost a caricature of what a Trantorian farmer should be tall and wide, brown-skinned, roughly dressed, arms bare, dark-haired, dark-eyed, a long ungainly stride. Gendibal felt as though he could smell the barnyard about him. (Not too much scorn, he thought. Preem Palver had not minded playing the role of farmer, when that was necessary to his plans. Some farmer he was-short and plump and soft. It was his mind that had fooled the teenaged Arkady, never his body.) The farmer was approaching him, clumping down the road, staring at him openly-something that made Gendibal frown. No Hamish man or woman had ever looked at him in this manner. Even the children ran away and peered from a distance.

Gendibal did not slow his own stride. There would be room enough to pa.s.s the other with neither comment nor glance and that would be best. He determined to stay away from the farmer's mind.

Gendibal drifted to one side, but the farmer was not going to have that. He stopped, spread his legs wide, stretched out his large arms as though to block pa.s.sage, and said, "Ho! Be you scowler?"

Try as he might, Gendibal could not refrain from sensing the wash of pugnacity in the approaching mind. He stopped. It would be impossible to attempt to pa.s.s by without conversation and that would be, in itself, a weary task. Used as one was to the swift and subtle interplay of sound and expression and thought and mentality that combined to make up the communication between Second Foundationers, it was wearisome to resort to word combination alone. It was like prying up a boulder by arm and shoulder, with a crowbar lying nearby.

Gendibal said, quietly and with careful lack of emotion, "I am a scholar. Yes."

"Ho! You am a scowler. Don't we speak outlandish now? And cannot I see that you be one or am one?" He ducked his head in a mocking bow. "Being, as you be, small and weazen and pale and upnosed."

"What is it you want of me, Hamishman?" asked Gendibal, unmoved.

"I be t.i.tled Rufirant. And Karoll be my previous." His accent became noticeably more Hamish. His r's rolled throatily.

Gendibal said, "What is it you want with me, Karoll Rufirant?"

"And how be you t.i.tled, scowler?"

"Does it matter? You may continue to call me 'scholar."'

"If I ask, it matters that I be answered, little up-nosed scowler."

"Well then, I am t.i.tled Stor Gendibal and I will now go about my business."