Second Foundation - Isaac Asimov [87]
“I?” Munn laughed loudly and joyously. For some reason, he had not stuttered in months. “I hadn’t a thing to do with it. It was Arcadia. By the by, Darell, how is she? She’s coming back from Trantor, I heard?”
“You heard correctly,” said Darell, quietly. “Her ship should dock within the week.” He looked, with veiled eyes, at the others, but there were only confused, amorphous exclamations of pleasure. Nothing else.
Turbor said, “Then it’s over, really. Who would have predicted all this last spring? Munn’s been to Kalgan and back. Arcadia’s been to Kalgan and Trantor and is coming back. We’ve had a war and won it, by Space. They tell you that the vast sweeps of history can be predicted, but doesn’t it seem conceivable that all that has just happened, with its absolute confusion to those of us who lived through it, couldn’t possibly have been predicted?”
“Nonsense,” said Anthor, acidly. “What makes you so triumphant, anyway? You talk as though we have really won a war, when actually we have won nothing but a petty brawl which has served only to distract our minds from the real enemy.”
There was an uncomfortable silence, in which only Homir Munn’s slight smile struck a discordant note.
And Anthor struck the arm of his chair with a balled and fury-filled fist, “Yes, I refer to the Second Foundation. There is no mention of it and, if I judge correctly, every effort to have no thought of it. Is it because the fallacious atmosphere of victory that palls over this world of idiots is so attractive that you feel you must participate? Turn somersaults then, handspring your way into a wall, pound one another’s back and throw confetti out the window. Do whatever you please, only get it out of your system—and when you are quite done and you are yourselves again, return and let us discuss that problem which exists now precisely as it did last spring when you sat here with eyes cocked over your shoulders for fear of you knew not what. Do you really think that the Mind-masters of the Second Foundation are less to be feared because you have beat down a foolish wielder of spaceships?”
He paused, red-faced and panting.
Munn said quietly, “Will you hear me speak now, Anthor? Or do you prefer to continue your role as ranting conspirator?”
“Have your say, Homir,” said Darell, “but let’s all of us refrain from over-picturesqueness of language. It’s a very good thing in its place, but at present, it bores me.”
Homir Munn leaned back in his armchair and carefully refilled his glass from the decanter at his elbow.
“I was sent to Kalgan,” he said, “to find out what I could from the records contained in the Mule’s palace. I spent several months doing so. I seek no credit for that accomplishment. As I have indicated, it was Arcadia whose ingenuous intermeddling obtained the entry for me. Nevertheless, the fact remains that to my original knowledge of the Mule’s life and times, which, I submit, was not small, I have added the fruits of much labor among primary evidence which has been available to no one else.
“I am, therefore, in a unique position to estimate the true danger of the Second Foundation; much more so than is our excitable friend here.”
“And,” grated Anthor, “what is your estimate of that danger?”
“Why, zero.”
A short pause, and Elvett Semic asked with an air of surprised disbelief, “You mean zero danger?”
“Certainly. Friends, there is no Second Foundation!”
Anthor’s eyelids closed slowly and he sat there, face pale and expressionless.
Munn continued, attention-centering and loving it, “And what is more, there was never one.”
“On what,” asked Darell, “do you base this surprising conclusion?”
“I deny,” said Munn, “that it is surprising. You all know the story of the Mule’s search for the Second Foundation. But what do you know of the intensity of that search—of the single-mindedness of it? He had tremendous resources at his disposal and he spared none of them. He was single-minded—and yet he failed. No