Second Foundation - Isaac Asimov [35]
Even the phrase, “Oh, golly,” somehow breathed glamour when the Transcriber was done with it.
But just the same she had to get it right, so she sat up straight in her chair, placed her first draft before her in businesslike fashion, and began again, crisply and clearly; her abdomen flat, her chest lifted, and her breathing carefully controlled. She intoned, with dramatic fervor:
“The Future of Seldon’s Plan.
“The Foundation’s past history is, I am sure, well-known to all of us who have had the good fortune to be educated in our planet’s efficient and well-staffed school system.
(There! That would start things off right with Miss Erlking, that mean old hag.)
That past
history is largely the past history of the great Plan of Hari Seldon. The two are one. But the question in the mind of most people today is whether this Plan will continue in all its great wisdom, or whether it will be foully destroyed, or, perhaps, has been so destroyed already.
“To understand this, it may be best to pass quickly over some of the highlights of the Plan as it has been revealed to humanity thus far.
(This part was easy because she had taken Modern History the semester before.)
“In the days, nearly four centuries ago, when the First Galactic Empire was decaying into the paralysis that preceded final death, one man—the great Hari Seldon—foresaw the approaching end. Through the science of psychohistory, the intrissacies of whose mathematics has long since been forgotten,
(She paused in a trifle of doubt. She was sure that “intricacies” was pronounced with soft c’s but the spelling didn’t look right. Oh, well, the machine couldn’t very well be wrong—)
he and the men
who worked with him are able to foretell the course of the great social and economic currents sweeping the Galaxy at the time. It was possible for them to realize that, left to itself, the Empire would break up, and that thereafter there would be at least thirty thousand years of anarchic chaos prior to the establishment of a new Empire.
“It was too late to prevent the great Fall, but it was still possible, at least, to cut short the intermediate period of chaos. The Plan was, therefore, evolved whereby only a single millennium would separate the Second Empire from the First. We are completing the fourth century of that millennium, and many generations of men have lived and died while the Plan has continued its inexorable workings.
“Hari Seldon established two Foundations at the opposite ends of the Galaxy, in a manner and under such circumstances as would yield the best mathematical solution for his psychohistorical problem. In one of these, our Foundation, established here on Terminus, there was concentrated the physical science of the Empire, and through the possession of that science, the Foundation was able to withstand the attacks of the barbarous kingdoms which had broken away and become independent, out at the fringe of the Empire.
“The Foundation, indeed, was able to conquer in its turn these short-lived kingdoms by means of the leadership of a series of wise and heroic men like Salvor Hardin and Hober Mallow who were able to interpret the Plan intelligently and to guide our land through its
(She had written “intricacies” here also, but decided not to risk it a second time.)
complica-
tions. All our planets still revere their memories although centuries have passed.
“Eventually, the Foundation established a commercial system which controlled a large portion of the Siwennian and Anacreonian sectors of the Galaxy, and even defeated the remnants of the old Empire under its last great general, Bel Riose. It seemed that nothing could now stop the workings of Seldon’s Plan. Every crisis that Seldon had planned had come at its appropriate time and had been solved, and with each solution the Foundation had taken another giant stride toward Second Empire and peace.
“And