Foundation's Edge - Isaac Asimov [83]
Delarmi's eyes opened wide. "A Hamish-woman?"
"Indeed! Just so!"
Delarmi said, "What have we to do with one of those? Nothing they say can be of any importance. They don't exist!"
Gendibal's lips drew back tightly over his teeth in something that could not possibly have been mistaken for a smile. He said sharply, "Physically all the Hamish exist. They are human beings and play their part in Seldon's Plan. In their indirect protection of the Second Foundation, they play a crucial part. I wish to dissociate myself from Speaker Delarmi's inhumanity and hope that her remark will be retained in the record and be considered hereafter as evidence for her possible unfitness for the position of Speaker. --Will the rest of the Table agree with the Speaker's incredible remark and deprive me of my witness?"
The First Speaker said, "Call your witness, Speaker."
Gendibal's lips relaxed into the normal expressionless features of a Speaker under pressure. His mind was guarded and fenced in, but behind this protective barrier, he felt that the danger point had passed and that he had won.
2.
SURA NOVI LOOKED STRAINED. HER EYES WERE wide and her lower lip was faintly trembling. Her hands were slowly clenching and unclenching and her chest was heaving slightly. Her hair had been pulled back and braided into a bun; her sun-darkened face twitched now and then. Her hands fumbled at the pleats of her long skirt. She looked hastily around the Table--from Speaker to Speaker--her wide eyes filled with awe.
They glanced back at her with varying degrees of contempt and discomfort. Delarmi kept her eyes well above the top of Novi's head, oblivious to her presence.
Carefully Gendibal touched the skin of her mind, soothing and relaxing it. He might have done the same by patting her hand or stroking her cheek, but here, under these circumstances, that was impossible, of course.
He said, "First Speaker, I am numbing this woman's conscious awareness so that her testimony will not be distorted by fear. Will you please observe--will the rest of you, if you wish, join me and observe that I will, in no way, modify her mind?"
Novi had started back in terror at Gendibal's voice, and Gendibal was not surprised at that. He realized that she had never heard Second Foundationers of high rank speak among themselves. She had never experienced that odd swift combination of sound, tone, expression and thought. The terror, however, faded as quickly as it came, as he gentled her mind.
A look of placidity crossed her face.
"There is a chair behind you, Novi," Gendibal said. "Please sit down."
Novi curtsied in a small and clumsy manner and sat down, holding herself stiffly.
She talked quite clearly, but Gendibal made her repeat when her Hamish accent became too thick. And because he kept his own speech formal in deference to the Table, he occasionally had to repeat his own questions to her.
The tale of the fight between himself and Rufirant was described quietly and well.
Gendibal said, "Did you see all this yourself, Novi?"
"Nay, Master, or I would have sooner-stopped it. Rufirant be good fellow, but not quick in head."
"But you described it all. How is that possible if you did not see it all?"
"Rufirant be telling me thereof, on questioning. He be ashamed."
"Ashamed? Have you ever known him to behave in this manner in earlier times?"
"Rufirant? Nay, Master. He be gentle, though he be large. He be no fighter and he be afeared of scowlers. He say often they are mighty and possessed of power."
"Why didn't he feel this way when he met me?"
"It be strange. It be not understood." She shook her head. "He be not his ain self. I said to him, 'Thou blubber-head. Be it your place to assault scowler?' And he said, 'I know not how it happened. It be like I am to one side, standing and watching not-I.' "
Speaker Cheng interrupted. "First Speaker, of what value is it to have this woman report what a man has told her? Is not the man available for questioning?"
Gendibal said, "He is. If, on completion of this woman's testimony, the Table wishes