Forward the Foundation - Isaac Asimov [17]
"But still- Why?"
"Because I suspect Joranum doesn't want people to know where he really comes from."
"Why not? All worlds in the Empire are equal, both by laws and by custom."
"I don't know about that. These high-ideal theories are somehow never borne out in real life."
"Then where does he come from? Do you have any idea at all?"
"Yes. Which brings us back to this matter of hair."
"What about hair?"
"I sat there with Joranum, staring at him and feeling uneasy, without knowing why I was feeling uneasy. Then finally I realized that it was his hair that made me uneasy. There was something about it, a life, a gloss . . . a perfection to it that I've never seen before. And then I knew. His hair is artificial and carefully grown on a scalp that ought to be innocent of such things."
"Ought to be?" Dors's eyes narrowed. It was clear that she suddenly understood. "Do you mean-"
"Yes, I do mean. He's from the past-centered, mythology-ridden Mycogen Sector of Trantor. That's what he's been laboring to hide."
10
Dors Venabili thought coolly about the matter. It was her only mode of thought-cool. Not for her the hot flashes of emotion.
She closed her eyes to concentrate. It had been eight years since she and Hari had visited Mycogen and they hadn't been there long. There had been little to admire there except the food.
The pictures arose. The harsh, puritanical, male-centered society; the emphasis on the past; the removal of all body hair, a painful process deliberately self-imposed to make themselves different so that they would "know who they were"; their legends; their memories (or fancies) of a time when they ruled the Galaxy, when their lives were prolonged, when robots existed.
Dors opened her eyes and said, "Why, Hari?"
"Why what, dear?"
"Why should he pretend not to be from Mycogen?"
She didn't think he would remember Mycogen in greater detail than she; in fact, she knew he wouldn't, but his mind was better than hers-different, certainly. Hers was a mind that only remembered and drew the obvious inferences in the fashion of a mathematic line of deduction. He had a mind that leaped unexpectedly. Seldon liked to pretend that intuition was solely the province of his assistant, Yugo Amaryl, but Dors was not fooled by that. Seldon liked to pose as the unworldly mathematician who stared at the world out of perpetually wondering eyes, but she was not fooled by that, either.
"Why should he pretend not to be from Mycogen?" she repeated as he sat there, his eyes lost in an inward look that Dors always associated with his attempt to squeeze one more tiny drop of usefulness and validity out of the concepts of psycho-history.
Seldon said finally, "It's a harsh society, a limiting society. There are always those who chafe over its manner of dictating every action and every thought. There are always those who find they cannot entirely be broken to the harness, who want the greater liberties available in the more secular world outside. It's understandable."
"So they force the growth of artificial hair?"
"No, not generally. The average Breakaway-that's what the Mycogenians call the deserters and they despise them, of course-wears a wig. It's much simpler but much less effective. Really serious Breakaways grow false hair, I'm told. The process is difficult and expensive but is almost unnoticeable. I've never come across it before, though I've heard of it. I've spent years studying all eight hundred sectors of Trantor, trying to work out the basic rules and mathematics of psychohistory. I have little enough to show for it, unfortunately, but I have learned a few things."
"But why, then, do the Breakaways have to hide the fact that they're from Mycogen? They're not persecuted that I know of."
"No, they're not. In fact, there's no general impression that Mycogenians are inferior. It's worse than that. The Mycogenians aren't taken seriously. They're intelligent-everyone admits that-highly educated, dignified, cultured, wizards with food, almost frightening in their capacity