“Nevertheless, Hari, you know and I know that this is not the real reason you turned me down. And don’t tell me that it’s because Leyel Forska’s presence on. Terminus would call undue attention to the project. You already have so much attention from the government that you can hardly breathe.”
“You are unpleasantly persistent, Leyel. I don’t like even having this conversation.”
“That’s too bad, Hari. I want to be part of your project. I would contribute to it more than any other person who might join it. I’m the one who plunged back into the oldest and most valuable archives and exposed the shameful amount of data loss that had arisen from neglect. I’m the one who launched the computerized extrapolation of shattered documents that your Encyclopedia-”
“Absolutely depends on. Our work would be impossible without your accomplishments.”
“And yet you turned me down, and with a crudely flattering note. “
“I didn’t mean to give offense, Leyel.”
“You also didn’t mean to tell the truth. But you will tell me, Hari, or I’ll simply go to Terminus anyway. “
“The Commission of Public Safety has given my Foundation absolute control over who mayor may not come to Terminus. “
“Hari. You know perfectly well that all I have to do is hint to some lower-level functionary that I want to go to Terminus. Chen will hear of it within minutes, and within an hour he’ll grant me an exception to your charter. If I did that, and if you fought it, you’d lose your charter. You know that. If you want me not to go to Terminus, it isn’t enough to forbid me; You must persuade me that I ought not to be there.”
Hari closed his eyes and sighed. “I don’t think you’re willing to be persuaded, Leyel. Go if you must. “
For a moment Leyel wondered if Hari was giving in. But no, that was impossible, not so easily. “Oh, yes, Hari, but then I’d find myself cut off from everybody else on Terminus except my own serving people. Fobbed off with useless assignments. Cut out of the real meetings. “
“That goes without saying,” said Hari. “You are not part of the Foundation, you will not be, you cannot be. And if you try to use your wealth and influence to force your way in, you will succeed only in annoying the Foundation, not in joining it. Do you understand me?”
Only too well, thought Leyel in shame. Leyel knew perfectly well the limitations of power, and it was beneath him to have tried to bluster his way into getting something that could only be given freely. “Forgive me, Hari. I wouldn’t have tried to force you. You know I don’t do that sort of thing. “
“I know you’ve never done it since we’ve been friends, Leyel. I was afraid that I was teaming something new about you.” Hari sighed. He turned away for a long moment, then turned back with a different look on his face, a different kind of energy in his voice. Leyel knew that look, that vigor. It meant Hari was taking him more deeply into his confidence. “Leyel, you have to understand, I’m not just creating an encyclopedia on Terminus.”
Immediately Leyel grew worried. It had taken a great deal of Leyel’s influence to persuade the government not to have Hari Seldon summarily exiled when he first started disseminating copies of his treatises about the impending fall of the Empire. They were sure Seldon was plotting treason, and had even put him on trial, where Seldon finally persuaded them that all he wanted to do was create the Encyclopedia Galactica, the repository of all the wisdom of the Empire. Even now, if Seldon confessed some ulterior motive, the government would move against him. It was to be assumed that the Pubs-Public Safety Office-were recording this entire conversation. Even Leyel’s influence couldn’t stop them if they had a confession from Hari’s own mouth.
“No, Leyel, don’t be nervous. My meaning is plain enough. For the Encyclopedia Galactica to succeed, I have to create a thriving city of scholars on Terminus. A colony full of men and women with fragile egos and unstemmable ambition, all of them trained in vicious political infighting at the most dangerous and terrible schools of bureaucratic combat in the Empire-the universities. “
“Are you actually telling me you won’t let me join your Foundation because I never attended one of those pathetic universities? My self-education is worth ten times their lockstep force-fed pseudoleaming.”
“Don’t make your antiuniversity speech to me, Leyel. I’m saying that one of my most important concerns in staffing the Foundation is compatibility. I won’t bring anyone to Terminus unless I believe he-or she-would be happy there.”
The emphasis Hari put on the word she suddenly made everything clearer. “This isn’t about me at all, is it?” Leyel said. “It’s about Deet.”
Hari said nothing.
“You know she doesn’t want to go. You know she prefers to remain on Trantor. And that’s why you aren’t taking me! Is that it?”
Reluctantly, Hari conceded the point. “It does have something to do with Deet, yes. “
“Don’t you know how much the Foundation means to me?” demanded Leyel. “Don’t you know how much I’d give up to be part of your work?”
Hari sat there in silence for a moment. Then he murmured, “Even Deet?”
Leyel almost blurted out an answer. Yes, of course, even Deet, anything for this great work.
But Hari’s measured gaze stopped him. One thing Leyel had known since they first met at a conference back in their youth was that Hari would not stand for another man’s self-deception. They had sat next to each other at a presentation by a demographer who had a considerable reputation at the time. Leyel watched as Hari destroyed the poor man’s thesis with a few well-aimed questions. The demographer was furious. Obviously he had not seen the flaws in his own argument-but now that they had been shown to him, he refused to admit that they were flaws at all.
Afterward, Hari had said to Leyel, “I’ve done him a favor.”
“How, by giving him someone to hate?” said Leyel.
“No. Before, he believed his own unwarranted conclusions. He had deceived himself. Now he doesn’t believe them.”
“But he still propounds them.”
“So-now he’s more of a liar and less of a fool. I have improved his private integrity. His public morality I leave up to him. “
Leyel remembered this and knew that if he told Hari he could give up Deet for any reason, even to join the Foundation, it would be worse than a lie. It would be foolishness.
“It’s a terrible thing you’ve done,” said Leyel. “You know that Deet is part of myself. I can’t give her up to join your Foundation. But now for the rest of our lives together I’ll know that I could have gone, if not for her. You’ve given me wormwood and gall to drink, Hari.”
Hari nodded slowly. “I hoped that when you read my note you’d realize I didn’t want to tell you more. I hoped you wouldn’t come to me and ask. I can’t lie to you, Leyel. I wouldn’t if I could. But I did withhold information, as much as possible. To spare us both problems. “
“It didn’t work.”
“It isn’t Deet’s fault, Leyel. It’s who she is. She belongs on Trantor, not on Terminus. And you belong with her. It’s a fact, not a decision. We’ll never discuss this again.”
“No,” said Leyel.
They sat there for a long minute, gazing steadily at each other. Leyel wondered if he and Hari would ever speak again. No. Never again. I don’t ever want to see you again, Hari Seldon. You’ve made me regret the one unregrettable decision of my life-Deet. You’ve made me wish, somewhere in my heart, that I’d never married her. Which is like making me wish I’d never been born.
Leyel got up from his chair and left the room without a word. When he got outside, he turned to the reception room in general, where several people were waiting to see Seldon. “Which of you are mine? ‘ he asked.
Two women and one man stood up immediately.
“Fetch me a secure car and a driver.”
Without a glance at each other, one of them left on the errand. The others fell in step beside Leyel. Subtlety and discretion were over for the moment. Leyel had no wish to mingle with the people of Trantor now. He only wanted to go home.
Hari Seldon left his office by the back way and soon found his way to Chandrakar Matt’s cubicle in the Department of Library Relations. Chanda looked up and waved, then effortlessly slid her chair back until it was in the exact position required. Hari picked up a chair from the neighboring cubicle and, again without showing any particular care, set it exactly where it had to be.
Immediately the computer installed inside Chanda’s lector recognized the configuration. It recorded Hari’s costume of the day from three angles and superimposed the information on a long-stored holoimage of Chanda and Hari conversing pleasantly. Then, once Hari was seated, it began displaying the hologram. The hologram exactly matched the positions of the real Hari and Chanda, so that infrared sensors would show no discrepancy between image and fact. The only thing different was the faces-the movement of lips, blinking of eyes, the expressions. Instead of matching the words Hari and Chanda were actually saying, they matched the words being pushed into the air outside the cubicle-a harmless, randomly chosen series of remarks that took into account recent events so that no one would suspect that it was a canned conversation.