Second Foundation - Isaac Asimov [80]
It had been solidified heartache. It had been blasphemy.
She had left, clangingly—running until her feet pounded softly on earth once more.
And then she could only look back longingly. She dared not disturb that mighty brooding once more.
Somewhere on this world, she knew, she had been born—near the old Imperial Library, which was the veriest Trantor of Trantor. It was the sacred of the sacred; the holy of holies! Of all the world, it alone had survived the Great Sack, and for a century it had remained complete and untouched, defiant of the universe.
There Hari Seldon and his group had woven their unimaginable web. There Ebling Mis pierced the secret, and sat numbed in his vast surprise, until he was killed to prevent the secret from going further.
There at the Imperial Library, her grandparents had lived for ten years, until the Mule died, and they could return to the reborn Foundation.
There at the Imperial Library, her own father returned with his bride to find the Second Foundation once again, but failed. There she had been born, and there her mother had died.
She would have liked to visit the Library again, but Preem Palver shook his round head. “It’s thousands of miles, Arkady, and there’s so much to do here. Besides, it’s not good to bother there. You know; it’s a shrine—”
But Arcadia knew that he had no desire to visit the Library; that it was a case of the Mule’s palace over again. There was this superstitious fear on the part of the pygmies of the present for the relics of the giants of the past.
Yet it would have been horrible to feel a grudge against the funny little man for that. She had been on Trantor now for over three months and in all that time, he and she—Pappa and Mamma—had been wonderful to her—
And what was her return? Why, to involve them in the common ruin. Had she warned them that she was marked for destruction, perhaps? No! She let them assume the deadly role of protectors.
Her conscience panged unbearably—yet what choice had she?
She stepped reluctantly down the stairs to breakfast. The voices reached her.
Preem Palver had tucked the napkin down his shirt collar with a twist of his plump neck and had reached for his poached eggs with an uninhibited satisfaction.
“I was down in the city yesterday, Mamma,” he said, wielding his fork and nearly drowning the words with a capacious mouthful.
“And what is down in the city, Pappa?” asked Mamma indifferently, sitting down, looking sharply about the table, and rising again for the salt.
“Ah, not so good. A ship came in from out Kalgan way with newspapers from there. It’s war there.”
“War! So! Well, let them break their heads, if they have no more sense inside. Did your paycheck come yet? Pappa, I’m telling you again. You warn old man Cosker this isn’t the only co-operative in the world. It’s bad enough they pay you what I’m ashamed to tell my friends, but at least on time they could be!”
“Time; shmime,” said Pappa, irritably. “Look, don’t make me silly talk at breakfast, it should choke me each bite in the throat,” and he wreaked havoc among the buttered toast as he said it. He added, somewhat more moderately, “The fighting is between Kalgan and the Foundation, and for two months, they’ve been at it.”
His hands lunged at one another in mock-representation of a space fight.
“Um-m-m. And what’s doing?”
“Bad for the Foundation. Well, you saw Kalgan; all soldiers. They were ready. The Foundation was not, and so—poof!”
And suddenly, Mamma laid down her fork and hissed, “Fool!”
“Huh?”
“Dumb-head! Your big mouth is always moving and wagging.”
She was pointing quickly and when Pappa looked over his shoulder, there was Arcadia, frozen in the doorway.
She said, “The Foundation is at war?”
Pappa looked helplessly at Mamma, then nodded.
“And they’re losing?”
Again the nod.
Arcadia felt the unbearable