Prelude to Foundation - Isaac Asimov [43]
"You! Seldon!"
Seldon didn't quite like the tone of voice. He replied coolly, "Yes, Dr. Leggen?"
..Well, Dr. Seldon, then." He said it impatiently. "That little fellow Randa told me you are a mathematician."
"That's Wit...
..A good one?..
"I'd like to think so, but it's a hard thing to guarantee."
"And you're interested in intractable problems?"
Seldon said feelingly, "I'm stuck with one."
"I'm stuck with another. You're free to look about. If you have any questions, our intern, Clowzia, will help out. You might be able to help us."
"I would be delighted to, but I know nothing about meteorology...
"That's all right, Seldon. I just want you to get a feel for this thing and then I'd like to discuss my mathematics, such as it is."
"I'm at your service."
Leggen turned away, his long scowling fare looking grim. Then he turned back. "If you get cold-too cold-the elevator door is open. You just step in and touch the spot marked; UNIVERSITY BASE. It will take you down and the elevator will then return to us automatically. Clowzia will show you-if you forget."
"I won't forget."
This time he did leave and Seldon looked after him, feeling the cold wind knife through his sweater. Clowzia came back over to him, her face slightly reddened by that wind.
Seldon said, "Dr. Leggen seems annoyed. Or is that just his ordinary outlook on life?"
She giggled. "He does look annoyed most of the time, but right now he really is."
Seldon said very naturally, "Why?"
Clowzia looked over her shoulder, her long hair swirling. Then she said, "I'm not supposed to know, but I do just the same. Dr. Leggen had it all figured out that today, just at this time, there was going to be a break in the clouds and he'd been planning to make special measurements in sunlight. Only . . . well, look at the weather."
Seldon nodded.
"We have holovision receivers up here, so he knew it was cloudy worse than usual-and I guess he was hoping there would be something wrong with the instruments so that it would be their fault and not that of his theory. So far, though, they haven't found anything out of the way."
"And that's why he looks so unhappy."
"Well, he never looks happy. "
Seldon looked about, squinting. Despite the clouds, the light was harsh. He became aware that the surface under his feet was not quire horizontal. He was standing on a shallow dome and as he looked outward there were other domes in all directions, with different widths and heights.
"Upperside seems to be irregular," he said.
"Mostly, I think. Thai s the way it worked out."
"Any reason for it?"
"Not really. The way I've heard it explained-I looked around and asked, just as you did, you know-was that originally the people on Trantor domed in places, shopping malls, sports arenas, things like that, then whole towns, so that (here were lots of domes here and there, with different heights and different widths. When they all came together, it was all uneven, but by that time, people decided that's the way it ought to be."
"You mean that something quite accidental came to be viewed as a tradition?"
" I suppose so-if you want to put it that way."
(If something quite accidental can easily become viewed as a tradition and he made unbreakable or nearly so, thought Seldon, would that be a law of psychohistory? It sounded trivial, but how many other laws, equally trivial, might there be? A million? A billion? Were there a relatively few general laws from which these trivial ones could be derived as corollaries? How could he say? For a while, lost in thought, he almost forgot the biting wind.)
Clowzia was aware of that wind, however, for she shuddered and said, "It's very nasty. It's much better under the dome."
"Are you a Trantorian?" asked Seldon.
"That's right."
Seldon remembered Ranch's dismissal of Trantorians as agoraphobic and said, "Do you mind being up here?"
"I hate it," said Clowzia, "but I want my degree and my specialty and