Foundation and Empire 3. The Dead Hand

Bel Riose interrupted his annoyed stridings to look up hopefully when his aide entered. Any word of the Starlet?None. The scouting party has quartered space, b bely the instruments sacrifice detected nonhing. Commander Yume has reported that the Fleet is ready for an flying attack in retaliation.The familiar agitate his head. No, non for a guard ship. Not yet. Tell him to double Wait Ill write out the message. fall in it coded and transmitted by tight beam.He wrote as he talked and sack the paper at the waiting officer. Has the Siwennian arrived yet?Not yet.Well, impose to it that he is brought in here as soon as he does arrive.The aide saluted crisply and left. Riose resumed his caged stride.When the door opened a second time, it was Ducem Barr that stood on the thresh obsolescent. Slowly, in the footsteps of the ushering aide, he stepped into the garish room whose ceiling was an ornamented holographic model of the Galaxy, and in the center of which Bel Riose stood in f ield uniform.Patrician, good day The general pushed onward a chair with his foot and gestured the aide a management with a That door is to stay closed till I open it.He stood before the Siwennian, legs apart, hand grasping wrist behind his back, balancing himself slowly, thoughtfully, on the balls of his feet.Then, harshly, Patrician, are you a loyal subject of the Emperor?Barr, who had maintained an listless silence till then, wrinkled a noncommittal brow. I have no cause to love purplish rule.Which is a long counselling from avering that you would be a traitor.True. But the mere act of non being a traitor is also a long way from agreeing to be an active boosterer.Ordinarily also true. But to refuse your help at this point, express Riose, deliberately, go forth be considered treason and treated as such.Barrs eyebrows drew together. Save your verbal cudgels for your subordinates. A simple statement of your necessarily and wants ordain suffice me here.Riose sat down and c rossed his legs. Barr, we had an earlier parole half a year ago.About your magicians?Yes. You remember what I give tongue to I would do.Barr nodded. His arms rested limply in his lap. You were going to prattle them in their haunts, and youve been away these four months. Did you find them?Find them? That I did, cried Riose. His lips were remains as he spoke. It seemed to require effort to refrain from grinding molars. Patrician, they are non magicians they are devils. It is as far from belief as the outer(prenominal) galaxies from here. Conceive it It is a world the size of a handkerchief, of a fingernail with resources so petty, power so minute, a population so microscopic as would never suffice the close to backward worlds of the dusty prefects of the Dark Stars. up to at present with that, a people so proud and ambitious as to trance quietly and methodi omeny of Galactic rule.Why, they are so sure of themselves that they do not even hurry. They move slowly, phlegmatically they speak of necessary centuries. They take up worlds at leisure creep through systems with dawdling complacence.And they succeed. There is no one to stop them. They have built up a nasty trading community that curls its tentacles about the systems further than their toy ships dare r each(prenominal). For parsecs, their Traders which is what their agents call themselves penetrate.Ducem Barr interrupted the angry flow. How much of this information is definite and how much is manifestly fury?The soldier caught his breath and grew calmer. My fury does not blind me. I tell you I was in worlds nearer to Siwenna than to the Foundation, where the Empire was a romance of the distance, and where Traders were living truths. We ourselves were mistaken for Traders.The Foundation itself told you they aimed at Galactic dominion?Told me Riose was wild again. It was not a matter of telling me. The officials said nothing. They spoke lineage exclusively. But I spoke to ordinary men. I absor bed the ideas of the ordinary folk their manifest destiny, their calm acceptance of a great future. It is a thing that guttert be hidden a universal optimism they dont even discover to hide.The Siwennian openly displayed a certain quiet satisfaction. You will notice that so far it would seem to bear out quite accurately my reconstruction of events from the paltry data on the subject that I have gathered. It is no doubt, replied Riose with vexed sarcasm, a tri furthere to your analytical powers. It is also a favorable and bumptious commentary on the growing danger to the domains of His Imperial Majesty.Barr shrugged his unconcern, and Riose leaned forward suddenly, to seize the old mans shoulders and stare with curious gentleness into his eyes.He said, Now, patrician, none of that. I have no desire to be barbaric. For my part, the legacy of Siwennian enmity to the Imperium is an odious burden, and one which I would do everything in my power to transit out. But my province is the troops and interference in civil affairs is impossible. It would bring about my recall and ruin my usefulness at once. You see that? I survive you see that. Between yourself and myself then, let the atrocity of xl years ago be repaid by your vengeance upon its author and so forgotten. I need your help. I frankly admit it.There was a world of urgency in the young mans voice, moreover Ducem Barrs head shook gently and deliberately in a negative gesture.Riose said pleadingly, You dont under persist, patrician, and I doubt my ability to make you. I cant argue on your ground. Youre the scholar, not I. But this I can tell you. Whatever you think of the Empire, you will admit its great services. Its armed imbibes have committed isolated crimes, but in the main they have been a force for peace and civilization. It was the Imperial navy that created the Pax Imperium that ruled over all the Galaxy for thousands of years. product line the millennia of peace under the Sun-and-Spacesh ip of the Empire with the millennia of interstellar anarchy that preceded it. Consider the wars and devastations of those old days and tell me if, with all its faults, the Empire is not worth preserving.Consider, he drove on forcefully, to what the outer fringe of the Galaxy is reduced in these days of their breakaway and independence, and ask yourself if for the sake of a petty revenge you would reduce Siwenna from its position as a province under the rampart of a mighty Navy to a barbarian world in a barbarian Galaxy, all immersed in its fragmentary independence and its viridity degradation and misery.Is it so bad so soon? murmured the Siwennian.No, admitted Riose. We would be natural rubber ourselves no doubt, were our lifetimes quadrupled. But it is for the Empire I fight that, and a troops tradition which is something for myself alone, and which I can not transfer to you. It is a military tradition built on the Imperial institution which I serve.You are getting mystical, and I always find it difficult to penetrate some other persons mysticism.No matter. You understand the danger of this Foundation.It was I who pointed out what you call the danger before ever you headed outward from Siwenna.Then you realize that it must be stopped in embryo or perhaps not at all. You have known of this Foundation before anyone had heard of it. You know more(prenominal) about it than anyone else in the Empire. You probably know how it might best be attacked and you can probably forewarn me of its countermeasures. Come, let us be friends.Ducem Barr rose. He said flatly, Such help as I could give you authority nothing. So I will make you free of it in the reflexion of your strenuous demand.I will be the judge of its meaning.No, I am serious. Not all the might of the Empire could avail to crush this pygmy world.Why not? Bel Rioses eyes glistened fiercely. No, stay where you are. Ill tell you when you whitethorn leave. Why not? If you think I underestimate this enemy I have discovered, you are wrong. Patrician, he spoke reluctantly, I lost a ship on my return. I have no proof that it cut out into the hands of the Foundation but it has not been located since and were it merely an accident, its stone-dead hulk should, certainly have been found along the route we took. It is not an important loss less than the tenth part of a fleabite, but it may mean that the Foundation has already opened hostilities. Such fanaticism and such disregard for consequences might mean secret forces of which I know nothing. Can you help me then by answering a circumstantial question? What is their military power?I havent any notion.Then formulate yourself on your own terms. Why do you say the Empire can not defeat this small enemy?The Siwennian seated himself once more and looked away from Rioses fixed glare. He spoke heavily, Because I have doctrine in the principles of psychohistory. It is a strange science. It reached mathematical maturity with one man, Hari S eldon, and died with him, for no man since has been capable of manipulating its intricacies. But in that short period, it proved itself the most powerful instrument ever invented for the study of benevolentity. Without pretending to phone the actions of psyche humans, it formulated definite laws capable of mathematical analysis and extrapolation to govern and predict the mass action of human groups.So-It was that psychohistory which Seldon and the group he worked with applied in full force to the establishment of the Foundation. The place, time, and conditions all conspire mathematically and so, inevitably, to the discipline of a Second Galactic Empire.Rioses voice trembled with indignation. You mean that this art of his predicts that I would attack the Foundation and lose such and such a contest for such and such a reason? You are trying to say that I am a silly robot following a predetermined course into destruction.No, replied the old patrician, sharply. I have already said that the science had nothing to do with individual actions. It is the vaster background that has been foreseen.Then we stand clasped tightly in the forcing hand of the Goddess of Historical Necessity.Of Psychohistorical Necessity, prompted Barr, softly.And if I exercise my exemption of freewill? If I choose to attack next year, or not to attack at all? How pliable is the Goddess? How resourceful?Barr shrugged. Attack now or never with a single ship, or all the force in the Empire by military force or economic pressure by candid declaration of war or by treacherous ambush. Do whatever you wish in your fullest exercise of freewill. You will still lose.Because of Hari Seldons dead hand?Because of the dead hand of the mathematics of human behavior that can neither be stopped, swerved, nor delayed.The two faced each other in deadlock, until the general stepped back.He said simply, Ill take that challenge. Its a dead hand against a living will.