Forward the Foundation - Isaac Asimov [16]
Dors shoved her reference material to one side and said, "What is this new penchant you have for paradox, which you always tell me you detest? What is this significance of insignificance?"
"Oh, I don't mind paradoxes when I perpetrate them. You see, Joranum comes from Nishaya."
"Ah, it's Joranum you're concerned with."
"Yes. I've been viewing some of his speeches-at Raych's insistence. They don't make very much sense, but the total effect can be almost hypnotic. Raych is very impressed by him."
"I imagine that anyone of Dahlite origins would be, Hari. Joranum's constant call for sector equality would naturally appeal to the downtrodden heatsinkers. You remember when we were in Dahl?"
"I remember it very well and of course I don't blame the lad. It just bothers me that Joranum comes from Nishaya."
Dors shrugged. "Well, Joranum has to come from somewhere and, conversely, Nishaya, like any other world, must send its people out at times, even to Trantor."
"Yes, but, as I've said, I've taken the trouble to investigate Nishaya. I've even managed to make hyperspatial contact with some minor official which cost a considerable quantity of credits that I cannot, in good conscience, charge to the department."
"And did you find anything that was worth the credits?"
"I rather think so. You know, Joranum is always telling little stories to make his points, stories that are legends on his home planet of Nishaya. That serves a good purpose for him here on Trantor, since it makes him appear to be a man of the people, full of homespun philosophy. Those tales litter his speeches. They make him appear to be from a small world, to have been brought up on an isolated farm surrounded by an untamed ecology. People like it, especially Trantorians, who would rather die than be trapped somewhere in an untamed ecology but who love to dream about one just the same."
"But what of it all?"
"The odd point is that not one of the stories was familiar to the person I spoke to on Nishaya."
"That's not significant, Hari. It may be a small world, but it's a world. What is current in Joranum's birth section of the world may not be current in whatever place your official came from."
"No no. Folktales, in one form or another, are usually worldwide. But aside from that, I had considerable trouble in understanding the fellow. He spoke Galactic Standard with a thick accent. I spoke to a few others on the world, just to check, and they all had the same accent."
"And what of that?"
"Joranum doesn't have it. He speaks a fairly good Trantorian. It's a lot better than mine, actually. I have the Heliconian stress on the letter `r.' He doesn't. According to the records, he arrived on Trantor when he was nineteen. It is just impossible, in my opinion, to spend the first nineteen years of your life speaking that barbarous Nishayan version of Galactic Standard and then come to Trantor and lose it. However long he's been here, some trace of the accent would have remained- Look at Raych and the way he lapses into his Dahlite way of speaking on occasion."
"What do you deduce from all this?"
"What I deduce-what I've been sitting here all evening, deducing like a deduction machine-is that Joranum didn't come from Nishaya at all. In fact, I think he picked Nishaya as the place to pretend to come from, simply because it is so backwoodsy, so out-of-the-way, that no one would think of checking it. He must have made a thorough computer search to find the one world least likely to allow him to be caught in a lie."
"But that's ridiculous, Hari. Why should he want to pretend to be from a world he did not come from? It would mean a great deal of falsification of records."
"And that's precisely what he has probably done. He probably has enough followers in the civil service to make that possible. Probably no one person has done as much in the way of revision and all of