Foundation and Empire - Isaac Asimov [46]
“It’s the oldest argument in the books, Torie. What a waste of good reverie.”
“Is it? Follow it out. What’s Haven? Isn’t it part of the Foundation? If we become top dog, it’s still the Foundation winning, and only the current rulers losing.”
“Lots of difference between ‘we can’ and ‘we will.’ You’re just jabbering.”
Toran squirmed. “Nuts, Bay, you’re just in one of your sour, green moods. What do you want to spoil my fun for? I’ll just go to sleep if you don’t mind.”
But Bayta was craning her head, and suddenly—quite a non sequitur—she giggled, and removed her glasses to look down the beach with only her palm shading her eyes.
Toran looked up, then lifted and twisted his shoulders to follow her glance.
Apparently, she was watching a spindly figure, feet in air, who teetered on his hands for the amusement of a haphazard crowd. It was one of the swarming acrobatic beggars of the shore, whose supple joints bent and snapped for the sake of the thrown coins.
A beach guard was motioning him on his way and with a surprising one-handed balance, the clown brought a thumb to his nose in an upside-down gesture. The guard advanced threateningly and reeled backward with a foot in his stomach. The clown righted himself without interrupting the motion of the initial kick and was away, while the frothing guard was held off by a thoroughly unsympathetic crowd.
The clown made his way raggedly down the beach. He brushed past many, hesitated often, stopped nowhere. The original crowd had dispersed. The guard had departed.
“He’s a queer fellow,” said Bayta, with amusement, and Toran agreed indifferently. The clown was close enough now to be seen clearly. His thin face drew together in front into a nose of generous planes and fleshy tip that seemed all but prehensile. His long, lean limbs and spidery body, accentuated by his costume, moved easily and with grace, but with just a suggestion of having been thrown together at random.
To look was to smile.
The clown seemed suddenly aware of their regard, for he stopped after he had passed, and, with a sharp turn, approached. His large brown eyes fastened upon Bayta.
She found herself disconcerted.
The clown smiled, but it only saddened his beaked face, and when he spoke it was with the soft, elaborate phrasing of the Central Sectors.
“Were I to use the wits the good Spirits gave me,” he said, “then I would say this lady cannot exist—for what sane man would hold a dream to be reality. Yet rather would I not be sane and lend belief to charmed, enchanted eyes.”
Bayta’s own eyes opened wide. She said, “Wow!”
Toran laughed, “Oh, you enchantress. Go ahead, Bay, that deserves a five-credit piece. Let him have it.”
But the clown was forward with a jump. “No, my lady, mistake me not. I spoke for money not at all, but for bright eyes and sweet face.”
“Well, thanks,” then, to Toran, “Golly, you think the sun’s in his eyes?”
“Yet not alone for eyes and face,” babbled the clown, as his words hurled past each other in heightened frenzy, “but also for a mind, clear and sturdy—and kind as well.”
Toran rose to his feet, reached for the white robe he had crooked his arm about for four days, and slipped into it. “Now, bud,” he said, “suppose you tell me what you want, and stop annoying the lady.”
The clown fell back a frightened step, his meager body cringing. “Now, sure I meant no harm. I am a stranger here, and it’s been said I am of addled wits; yet there is something in a face that I can read. Behind this lady’s fairness, there is a heart that’s kind, and that would help me in my trouble for all I speak so boldly.”
“Will five credits cure your trouble?” said Toran, dryly, and held out the coin.
But the clown did not move to take it, and Bayta said, “Let me talk to him,