Foundation and Earth - Isaac Asimov [166]
Fallom became submissive as she always did when Bliss willed her to be so. She turned and said, “Am I a demon? What is a demon?”
Bliss said over her shoulder, “Wait one moment for me. I’ll be right back.”
She was, within five minutes. She was shaking her head. “She’ll be sleeping now till I wake her. I should have done that before, I suppose, but any modification of the mind must be the result of necessity.” She added defensively, “I can’t have her brood on the differences between her genital equipment and ours.”
Pelorat said, “Someday she’ll have to know she’s hermaphroditic.”
“Someday,” said Bliss, “but not now. Go on with the story, Pel.”
“Yes,” said Trevize, “before something else interrupts us.”
“Well, Earth became radioactive, or at least its crust did. At that time, Earth had had an enormous population that was centered in huge cities that existed for the most part underground—”
“Now, that,” put in Trevize, “is surely not so. It must be local patriotism glorifying the golden age of a planet, and the details were simply a distortion of Trantor in its golden age, when it was the Imperial capital of a Galaxy-wide system of worlds.”
Pelorat paused, then said, “Really, Golan, you mustn’t teach me my business. We mythologists know very well that myths and legends contain borrowings, moral lessons, nature cycles, and a hundred other distorting influences, and we labor to cut them away and get to what might be a kernel of truth. In fact, these same techniques must be applied to the most sober histories, for no one writes the clear and apparent truth—if such a thing can even be said to exist. For now, I’m telling you more or less what Monolee told me, though I suppose I am adding distortions of my own, try as I might not to do so.”
“Well, well,” said Trevize. “Go on, Janov. I meant no offense.”
“And I’ve taken none. The huge cities, assuming they existed, crumbled and shrank as the radioactivity slowly grew more intense until the population was but a remnant of what it had been, clinging precariously to regions that were relatively radiation-free. The population was kept down by rigid birth control and by the euthanasia of people over sixty.”
“Horrible,” said Bliss indignantly.
“Undoubtedly,” said Pelorat, “but that is what they did, according to Monolee, and that might be true, for it is certainly not complimentary to the Earthpeople and it is not likely that an uncomplimentary lie would be made up. The Earthpeople, having been despised and oppressed by the Spacers, were now despised and oppressed by the Empire, though here we may have exaggeration there out of self-pity, which is a very seductive emotion. There is the case—”
“Yes, yes, Pelorat, another time. Please go on with Earth.”
“I beg your pardon. The Empire, in a fit of benevolence, agreed to substitute imported radiation-free soil and to cart away the contaminated soil. Needless to say, that was an enormous task which the Empire soon tired of, especially as this period (if my guess is right) coincided with the fall of Kandar V, after which the Empire had many more things to worry about than Earth.
“The radioactivity continued to grow more intense, the population continued to fall, and finally the Empire, in another fit of benevolence, offered to transplant the remnant of the population to a new world of their own—to this world, in short.
“At an earlier period, it seems an expedition had stocked the ocean so that by the time the plans for the transplantation of Earthpeople were being developed, there was a full oxygen atmosphere and an ample supply of food on Alpha. Nor did any of the worlds of the Galactic Empire covet this world because there is a certain natural antipathy to planets that circle stars of a binary system. There are so few suitable planets in such a system, I suppose, that even suitable ones are rejected because of the assumption that there must be something wrong with them. This is a common thought-fashion. There is the well-known case, for instance, of—”
“Later