Forward the Foundation - Isaac Asimov [51]
"She's a historian, Sire. Lost in the past."
"She doesn't frighten you? She'd frighten me. I've been told how she treated that sergeant. One could almost be sorry for him."
"She grows savage on my behalf, Sire, but has not had occasion to do so lately. It's been very quiet."
The Emperor looked after the disappearing gardener. "Have we ever rewarded that man?"
"I have done so, Sire. He has a wife and two daughters and I have arranged that each daughter will have a sum of money put aside for the education of any children she may have."
"Very good. But he needs a promotion, I think. -Is he a good gardener?"
"Excellent, Sire."
"The Chief Gardener, Malcomber-I'm not quite sure I remember his name-is getting on and is, perhaps, not up to the job anymore. He is well into his late seventies. Do you think this Gruber might be able to take over?"
"I'm certain he can, Sire, but he likes his present job. It keeps him out in the open in all kinds of weather."
"A peculiar recommendation for a job. I'm sure he can get used to administration and I do need someone for some sort of renewal of the grounds. Hmmm. I must think upon this. Your friend Gruber may be just the man I need. -By the way, Seldon, what did you mean by saying it's been very quiet?"
"I merely meant, Sire, that there has been no sign of discord at the Imperial Court. The unavoidable tendency to intrigue seems to be as near a minimum as it is ever likely to get."
"You wouldn't say that if you were Emperor, Seldon, and had to contend with all these officials and their complaints. How can you tell me things are quiet when reports seem to reach me every other week of some serious breakdown here and there on Trantor?"
"These things are bound to happen."
"I don't recall such things happening so frequently in previous years."
"Perhaps that was because they didn't, Sire. The infrastructure grows older with time. To make the necessary repairs properly would take time, labor, and enormous expense. This is not a time when a rise in taxes will be looked on favorably."
"There's never any such time. I gather that the people are experiencing serious dissatisfaction over these breakdowns. It must stop and you must see to it, Seldon. What does psychohistory say?"
"It says what common sense says, that everything is growing older."
"Well, all this is quite spoiling the pleasant day for me. I leave it in your hands, Seldon."
"Yes, Sire," said Seldon quietly.
The Emperor strode off and Seldon thought that it was all spoiling the pleasant day for him, too. This breakdown at the center was the alternative he didn't want. But how was he to prevent it and switch the crisis to the Periphery?
Psychohistory didn't say.
7
Raych Seldon felt extraordinarily contented, for it was the first dinner en famille that he had had in some months with the two people he thought of as his father and mother. He knew perfectly well that they were not his parents in any biological sense, but it didn't matter. He merely smiled at them with complete love.
The surroundings were not as warm as they had been at Streeling in the old days, when their home had been small and intimate, a virtual gem in the larger setting of the University. Now, unfortunately, nothing could hide the grandeur of the First Minister's Palace suite.
Raych sometimes stared at himself in the mirror and wondered how it could be. He was not tall, only 163 centimeters in height, distinctly shorter than either parent. He was rather stocky but muscular-and not fat, with black hair and the distinctive Dahlite mustache that he kept as dark and as thick as possible.
In the mirror he could still see the street urchin he had once been before the chanciest of great chances had dictated his meeting with Hari and Dors. Seldon had been much younger then and his appearance now made it plain that Raych himself was almost as old now as Seldon had been when they met. Amazingly, Dors had hardly changed at all. She was as sleek and fit as the day Raych had first showed Hari and Dors the way to Mother Rittah's in Billibotton. And he, Raych,