Foundation and Empire - Isaac Asimov [87]
Bayta struggled with a strange emotion and then caught herself in a mental gasp. Almost, it reminded her of the time in the Time Vault, of those last days on Haven. It was that horrible, cloying, clinging spiderweb of honor and despair. She shrunk beneath it oppressed.
The music dinned upon her, laughing horribly, and the writhing terror at the wrong end of the telescope in the small circle of light was lost as she turned feverishly away. Her forehead was wet and cold.
The music died. It must have lasted fifteen minutes, and a vast pleasure at its absence flooded Bayta. Light glared, and Magnifico’s face was close to hers, sweaty, wild-eyed, lugubrious.
“My lady,” he gasped, “how fare you?”
“Well enough,” she whispered, “but why did you play like that?”
She became aware of the others in the room. Toran and Mis were limp and helpless against the wall, but her eyes skimmed over them. There was the prince, lying strangely still at the foot of the table. There was Commason, moaning wildly through an open, drooling mouth.
Commason flinched, and yelled mindlessly, as Magnifico took a step toward him.
Magnifico turned, and with a leap, turned the others loose.
Toran lunged upwards and with eager, taut fists seized the landowner by the neck, “You come with us. We’ll want you—to make sure we get to our ship.”
Two hours later, in the ship’s kitchen, Bayta served a walloping homemade pie, and Magnifico celebrated the return to space by attacking it with a magnificent disregard of table manners.
“Good, Magnifico?”
“Um-m-m-m!”
“Magnifico?”
“Yes, my lady?”
“What was it you played back there?”
The clown writhed, “I . . . I’d rather not say. I learned it once, and the Visi-Sonor is of an effect upon the nervous system most profound. Surely, it was an evil thing, and not for your sweet innocence, my lady.”
“Oh, now, come, Magnifico. I’m not as innocent as that. Don’t flatter so. Did I see anything like what they saw?”
“I hope not. I played it for them only. If you saw, it was but the rim of it—from afar.”
“And that was enough. Do you know you knocked the prince out?”
Magnifico spoke grimly through a large, muffling piece of pie. “I killed him, my lady.”
“What?” She swallowed, painfully.
“He was dead when I stopped, or I would have continued. I cared not for Commason. His greatest threat was death or torture. But, my lady, this prince looked upon you wickedly, and—” he choked in a mixture of indignation and embarrassment.
Bayta felt strange thoughts come and repressed them sternly. “Magnifico, you’ve got a gallant soul.”
“Oh, my lady.” He bent a red nose into his pie, but somehow did not eat.
Ebling Mis stared out the port. Trantor was near—its metallic shine fearfully bright. Toran was standing there, too.
He said with dull bitterness, “We’ve come for nothing, Ebling. The Mule’s man precedes us.”
Ebling Mis rubbed his forehead with a hand that seemed shriveled out of its former plumpness. His voice was an abstracted mutter.
Toran was annoyed. “I say those people know the Foundation has fallen. I say—”
“Eh?” Mis looked up, puzzled. Then, he placed a gentle hand upon Toran’s wrist, in complete oblivion of any previous conversation, “Toran, I . . . I’ve been looking at Trantor. Do you know . . . I have the queerest feeling . . . ever since we arrived on Neotrantor. It’s an urge, a driving urge that’s pushing and pushing inside. Toran, I can do it; I know I can do it. Things are becoming clear in my mind—they have never been so clear.”
Toran stared—and shrugged. The words brought him no confidence.
He said, tentatively, “Mis?”
“Yes?”
“You didn’t see a ship come down on Neotrantor as we left?”
Consideration was brief. “No.”
“I did. Imagination, I suppose, but it could have been that Filian ship.”
“The one with Captain Han Pritcher on it?”
“The one with space knows who