Foundation

The room clerk said, ‘Good weather. Come to think of it, I do believe it’s the dry season now.’ He added, conversationally, ‘I don’t bother with the outside myself. The last time I was in the open was three years ago. You see it once, you know, and that’s all there is to it – here’s your ticket. Special elevator in the rear. It’s marked “To the Tower”. Just take it.’

The elevator was of the new sort that ran by gravitic repulsion. Gaal entered and others flowed in behind him. The operator closed a contact. For a moment, Gaal felt suspended in space as gravity switched to zero, and then he had weight again in small measure as the elevator accelerated upward. Deceleration followed and his feet left the floor. He squawked against his will.

The operator called out, ‘Tuck your feet under the railing. Can’t you read the sign?’

The others had done so. They were smiling at him as he madly and vainly tried to clamber back down the wall. Their shoes pressed upward against the chromium of the railings that stretched across the floor in parallels set two feet apart. He had noticed those railings on entering and had ignored them.

Then a hand reached out and pulled him down.

He gasped his thanks as the elevator came to a halt.

He stepped out upon an open terrace bathed in a white brilliance that hurt his eyes. The man, whose helping hand he had just now been the recipient of, was immediately behind him.

The man said, kindly, ‘Plenty of seats.’

Gaal closed his mouth, he had been gaping, and said, ‘It certainly seems so.’ He started for them automatically, then stopped.

He said, ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll just stop a moment at the railing. I – I want to look a bit.’

The man waved him on, good-naturedly, and Gaal leaned out over the shoulder-high railing and bathed himself in all the panorama.

He could not see the ground. It was lost in the ever-increasing complexities of man-made structures. He could see no horizon other than that of metal against sky, stretching out to almost uniform greyness, and he knew it was so over all the land-surface of the planet. There was scarcely any motion to be seen – a few pleasure-craft lazed against the sky – but all the busy traffic of billions of men were going on, he knew, beneath the metal skin of the world.

There was no green to be seen; no green, no soil, no life other than man. Somewhere on the world, he realized vaguely, was the Emperor’s palace, set amid one hundred square miles of natural soil, green with trees, rainbowed with flowers. It was a small island amid an ocean of steel, but it wasn’t visible from where he stood. It might be ten thousand miles away. He did not know.

Before very long, he must have his tour!

He sighed noisily, and realized finally that he was on Trantor at last; on the planet which was the centre of all the Galaxy and the kernel of the human race. He saw none of its weaknesses. He saw no ships of food landing. He was not aware of a jugular vein delicately connecting the forty billion of Trantor with the rest of the Galaxy. He was conscious only of the mightiest deed of man; the complete and almost contemptuously final conquest of a world.

He came away a little blank-eyed. His friend of the elevator was indicating a seat next to himself and Gaal took it.

The man smiled, ‘My name is Jerril. First time on Trantor?’

‘Yes, Mr Jerril.’

‘Thought so. Jerril’s my first name. Trantor gets you if you’ve got the poetic temperament. Trantorians never come up here, though. They don’t like it. Gives them nerves.’

‘Nerves! – my name’s Gaal, by the way. Why should it give them nerves? It’s glorious.’

‘Subjective matter of opinion, Gaal. If you’re born in a cubicle and grow up in a corridor, and work in a cell, and vacation in a crowded sun-room, then coming up into the open with nothing but sky over you might just give you a nervous breakdown. They make the children come up here once a year, after they’re five. I don’t know if it does any good. They don’t get enough of it, really, and the first few times they scream themselves into hysteria. They ought to start as soon as they’re weaned and have the trip once a week.’

He went on, ‘Of course, it doesn’t really matter. What if they never come out at all? They’re happy down there and they run the Empire. How high up do you think we are?’

He said, ‘Half a mile?’ and wondered if that sounded naïve.

It must have, for Jerril chuckled a little. He said, ‘No. Just five hundred feet.’

‘What? But the elevator took about—?’

‘I know. But most of the time it was just getting up to ground level. Trantor is tunnelled over a mile down. It’s like an iceberg. Nine-tenths of it is out of sight. It even works itself out a few miles into the sub-ocean soil at the shore-lines. In fact, we’re down so low that we can make use of the temperature difference between ground level and a couple of miles under to supply us with all the energy we need. Did you know that?’

‘No, I thought you used atomic generators.’

‘Did once. But this is cheaper.’

‘I imagine so.’

‘What do you think of it all?’ For a moment, the man’s good nature evaporated into shrewdness. He looked almost sly.

Gaal fumbled. ‘Glorious,’ he said, again.

‘Here on vacation? Travelling? Sightseeing?’

‘Not exactly. At least, I’ve always wanted to visit Trantor but I came here primarily for a job.’

‘Oh?’

Gaal felt obliged to explain further, ‘With Dr Seldon’s project at the University of Trantor.’

‘Raven Seldon?’

‘Why, no. The one I mean is Hari Seldon – the psychohistorian Seldon. I don’t know of any Raven Seldon.’

‘Hari’s the one I mean. They call him Raven. Slang, you know. He keeps predicting disaster.’

‘He does?’ Gaal was genuinely astonished.

‘Surely, you must know.’ Jerril was not smiling. ‘You’re coming to work for him, aren’t you?’

‘Well, yes, I’m a mathematician. Why does he predict disaster? What kind of disaster?’

‘What kind would you think?’

‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t have the least idea. I’ve read the papers Dr Seldon and his group have published. They’re on mathematical theory.’

‘Yes, the ones they publish.’

Gaal felt annoyed. He said, ‘I think I’ll go to my room now. Very pleased to have met you.’

Jerril waved his arm indifferently in farewell.

Gaal found a man waiting for him in his room. For a moment, he was too startled to put into words the inevitable, ‘What are you doing here?’ that came to his lips.

The man rose. He was old and almost bald and he walked with a limp, but his eyes were very bright and blue.

He said, ‘I am Hari Seldon,’ an instant before Gaal’s befuddled brain placed the face alongside the memory of the many times he had seen it in pictures.

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