Second Foundation - Isaac Asimov [20]
“In fact, the world fascinates me. I have never seen a more forbidding one, yet I am convinced there is no suffering among the population and that their uncomplicated lives manage to contain a well-balanced happiness lacking in the sophisticated populations of the advanced centers.”
“Are you an admirer of peasant virtues, then?”
“The stars forbid.” Channis seemed amused at the idea. “I merely point out the significance of all this. Apparently, Tazenda is an efficient administrator—efficient in a sense far different from the efficiency of the old Empire or of the First Foundation, or even of our own Union. All these have brought mechanical efficiency to their subjects at the cost of more intangible values. Tazenda brings happiness and sufficiency. Don’t you see that the whole orientation of their domination is different? It is not physical, but psychological.”
“Really?” Pritcher allowed himself irony. “And the terror with which the Elders spoke of the punishment of treason by these kind-hearted psychologist administrators? How does that suit your thesis?”
“Were they the objects of the punishment? They speak of punishment only of others. It is as if knowledge of punishment has been so well implanted in them that punishment itself need never be used. The proper mental attitudes are so inserted into their minds that I am certain that not a Tazendian soldier exists on the planet. Don’t you see all this?”
“I’ll see perhaps,” said Pritcher, coldly, “when I see the governor. And what, by the way, if our mentalities are handled?”
Channis replied with brutal contempt: “You should be accustomed to that.”
Pritcher whitened perceptibly, and, with an effort, turned away. They spoke to one another no more that day.
It was in the silent windlessness of the frigid night, as he listened to the soft, sleeping motions of the other, that Pritcher silently adjusted his wrist-transmitter to the ultrawave region for which Channis’ was unadjustable and, with noiseless touches of his fingernail, contacted the ship.
The answer came in little periods of noiseless vibration that barely lifted themselves above the sensory threshold.
Twice Pritcher asked: “Any communications at all yet?”
Twice the answer came: “None. We wait always.”
He got out of bed. It was cold in the room and he pulled the furry blanket around him as he sat in the chair and stared out at the crowding stars so different in the brightness and complexity of their arrangement from the even fog of the Galactic Lens that dominated the night sky of his native Periphery.
Somewhere there between the stars was the answer to the complications that overwhelmed him, and he felt the yearning for that solution to arrive and end things.
For a moment he wondered again if the Mule were right—if Conversion had robbed him of the firm sharp edge of self-reliance. Or was it simply age and the fluctuations of these last years?
He didn’t really care.
He was tired.
The governor of Rossem arrived with minor ostentation. His only companion was the uniformed man at the controls of the ground-car.
The ground-car itself was of lush design but to Pritcher it appeared inefficient. It turned clumsily; more than once it apparently balked at what might have been a too-rapid change of gears. It was obvious at once from its design that it ran on chemical, and not on nuclear, fuel.
The Tazendian governor stepped softly onto the thin layer of snow and advanced between two lines of respectful Elders. He did not look at them