Foundation's Edge - Isaac Asimov [84]
"Very well," said the First Speaker. "Proceed with your witness."
Gendibal said, "And you, Novi? Was it like you to interfere in a fight in this manner?"
Novi did not say anything for a moment. A small frown appeared between her thick eyebrows and then disappeared. She said, "I know not. I wish no harm to scowlers. I be driven, and without thought I in-middled myself." A pause, then, "I be do it over if need arise."
Gendibal said, "Novi, you will sleep now. You will think of nothing. You will rest and you will not even dream."
Novi mumbled for a moment. Her eyes closed and her head fell back against the headrest of her chair.
Gendibal waited a moment, then said, "First Speaker, with respect, follow me into this woman's mind. You will find it remarkably simple and symmetrical, which is fortunate, for what you will see might not have been visible otherwise. --Here--here! Do you observe? --If the rest of you will enter--it will be easier if it is done one at a time."
There was a rising buzz about the Table.
Gendibal said, "Is there any doubt among you?"
Delarmi said, "I doubt it, for--" She paused on the brink of what was--even for her--unsayable.
Gendibal said it for her. "You think I deliberately tampered with this mind in order to present false evidence? You think, therefore, that I am capable of bringing about so delicate an adjustment--one mental fiber clearly out of shape with nothing about it or its surroundings that is in the least disturbed? If I could do that, what need would I have to deal with any of you in this manner? Why subject myself to the indignity of a trial? Why labor to convince you? If I could do what is visible in this woman's mind, you would all be helpless before me unless you were well prepared. --The blunt fact is that none of you could manipulate a mind as this woman's has been manipulated. Neither can I. Yet it has been done."
He paused, looking at all the Speakers in turn, then fixing his gaze on Delarmi. He spoke slowly. "Now, if anything more is required, I will call in the Hamish farmer, Karoll Rufirant, whom I have examined and whose mind has also been tampered with in this manner."
"That will not be necessary," said the First Speaker, who was wearing an appalled expression. "What we have seen is mindshaking."
"In that case," said Gendibal, "may I rouse this Hamishwoman and dismiss her? I have arranged for there to be those outside who will see to her recovery."
When Novi had left, directed by Gendibal's gentle hold on her elbow, he said, "Let me quickly summarize. Minds can be--and have been--altered in ways that are beyond our power. In this way, the curators themselves could have been influenced to remove Earth material from the Library--without our knowledge or their own. We see how it was arranged that I should be delayed in arriving at a meeting of the Table. I was threatened; I was rescued. The result was that I was impeached. The result of this apparently natural concatenation of events is that I may be removed from a position of power--and the course of action which I champion and which threatens these people, whoever they are, may be negated."
Delarmi leaned forward. She was clearly shaken. "If this secret organization is so clever, how were you able to discover all this?"
Gendibal felt free to smile, now. "No credit to me," he said. "I lay no claim to expertise superior to that of other Speakers; certainly not to the First Speaker. However, neither are these Anti-Mules--as the First Speaker has rather engagingly called them--infinitely wise or infinitely immune to circumstance. Perhaps they chose this particular Hamishwoman as their instrument precisely because she needed very little adjustment. She was, of her own character, sympathetic to what she calls 'scholars,' and admired them intensely.
"But then, once this was over, her momentary contact with me strengthened her fantasy of