Foundation and Empire - Isaac Asimov [56]
“But nothing impends. Nothing hangs over us.” Indbur almost wrung his hands for anxiety. With a sudden spasmodic recrudescence of ferocity, he screamed, “Will you get off my desk and let me put it in order? How do you expect me to think?”
Mis, startled, lifted heavily and moved aside.
Indbur replaced objects in their appropriate niches with a feverish motion. He was speaking quickly, “You have no right to come here like this. If you had presented your theory—”
“It is not a theory.”
“I say it is a theory. If you had presented it together with your evidence and arguments, in appropriate fashion, it would have gone to the Bureau of Historical Sciences. There it could have been properly treated, the resulting analyses submitted to me, and then, of course, proper action would have been taken. As it is, you’ve vexed me to no purpose. Ah, here it is.”
He had a sheet of transparent, silvery paper in his hand which he shook at the bulbous psychologist beside him.
“This is a short summary I prepare myself—weekly—of foreign matters in progress. Listen—we have completed negotiations for a commercial treaty with Mores, continue negotiations for one with Lyonesse, sent a delegation to some celebration or other on Bonde, received some complaint or other from Kalgan and we’ve promised to look into it, protested some sharp trade practices in Asperta and they’ve promised to look into it—and so on and so on.” The mayor’s eyes swarmed down the list of coded notations, and then he carefully placed the sheet in its proper place in the proper folder in the proper pigeonhole.
“I tell you, Mis, there’s not a thing there that breathes anything but order and peace—”
The door at the far, long end opened, and, in far too dramatically coincident a fashion to suggest anything but real life, a plainly costumed notable stepped in.
Indbur half-rose. He had the curiously swirling sensation of unreality that comes upon those days when too much happens. After Mis’s intrusion and wild fumings there now came the equally improper, hence disturbing, intrusion unannounced, of his secretary, who at least knew the rules.
The secretary kneeled low.
Indbur said, sharply, “Well!”
The secretary addressed the floor, “Excellence, Captain Han Pritcher of Information, returning from Kalgan, in disobedience to your orders, has according to prior instructions—your order X20-513—been imprisoned, and awaits execution. Those accompanying him are being held for questioning. A full report has been filed.”
Indbur, in agony, said, “A full report has been received. Well!”
“Excellence, Captain Pritcher has reported, vaguely, dangerous designs on the part of the new warlord of Kalgan. He has been given, according to prior instructions—your order X20-651—no formal hearing, but his remarks have been recorded and a full report filed.”
Indbur screamed, “A full report has been received. Well!”
“Excellence, reports have within the quarter-hour been received from the Salinnian frontier. Ships identified as Kalganian have been entering Foundation territory, unauthorized. The ships are armed. Fighting has occurred.”
The secretary was bent nearly double. Indbur remained standing. Ebling Mis shook himself, clumped up to the secretary, and tapped him sharply on the shoulder.
“Here, you’d better have them release this Captain Pritcher, and have him sent here. Get out.”
The secretary left, and Mis turned to the mayor, “Hadn’t you better get the machinery moving, Indbur? Four months, you know.”
Indbur remained standing, glaze-eyed. Only one finger seemed alive—and it traced rapid jerky traingles on the smooth desktop before him.
16
CONFERENCE
When the twenty-seven independent Trading worlds, united only by their distrust of the mother planet of the Foundation, concert an assembly among themselves, and each is big with a pride grown of its smallness, hardened by its own insularity, and embittered by eternal danger—there are preliminary negotiations to be overcome of a pettiness sufficiently staggering to heartsicken the most persevering.
It is