"But that is nothing new. The Mule's mutation is straightened out." In honest astonishment, "Haven't I told you? Have I forgotten to tell you?"
"Forgotten to tell us what?" put in Toran, quickly.
"About the Mule's mutation, of course. He tampers with emotions. Emotional control! I haven't told you? Now what made me forget?" Slowly, he sucked in his under lip and considered.
Then, slowly, life crept into his voice and his eyelids lifted wide, as though his sluggish brain had slid onto a well-greased single track. He spoke in a dream, looking between the two listeners rather than at them. "It is really so simple. It requires no specialized knowledge. In the mathematics of psychohistory, of course, it works out promptly, in a third-level equation involving no more - Never mind that. It can be put into ordinary words - roughly - and have it make sense, which isn't usual with psychohistorical phenomena.
"Ask yourselves - What can upset Hari Seldon's careful scheme of history, eh?" He peered from one to the other with a mild, questioning anxiety. "What were Seldon's original assumptions? First, that there would be no fundamental change in human society over the next thousand years.
"For instance, suppose there were a major change in the Galaxy's technology, such as finding a new principle for the utilization of energy, or perfecting the study of electronic neurobiology. Social changes would render Seldon's original equations obsolete. But that hasn't happened, has it now?"
"Or suppose that a new weapon were to be invented by forces outside the Foundation, capable of withstanding all the Foundation's armaments. That might cause a ruinous deviation, though less certainly. But even that hasn't happened. The Mule's Nuclear Field-Depressor was a clumsy weapon and could be countered. And that was the only novelty he presented, poor as it was.
"But there was a second assumption, a more subtle one! Seldon assumed that human reaction to stimuli would remain constant. Granted that the first assumption held true, then the second must have broken down! Some factor must be twisting and distorting the emotional responses of human beings or Seldon couldn't have failed and the Foundation couldn't have fallen. And what factor but the Mule?
"Am I right? Is there a flaw in the reasoning?"
Bayta's plump hand patted his gently. "No flaw, Ebling."
Mis was joyful, like a child. "This and more comes so easily. I tell you I wonder sometimes what is going on inside me. I seem to recall the time when so much was a mystery to me and now things are so clear. Problems are absent. I come across what might be one, and somehow, inside me, I see and understand. And my guesses, my theories seem always to be borne out. There's a drive in me... always onward... so that I can't stop... and I don't want to eat or sleep... but always go on... and on... and on-"
His voice was a whisper; his wasted, blue-veined hand rested tremblingly upon his forehead. There was a frenzy in his eyes that faded and went out.
He said more quietly, "Then I never told you about the Mule's mutant powers, did I? But then... did you say you knew about it?"
"It was Captain Pritcher, Ebling," said Bayta. "Remember?"
"He told you?" There was a tinge of outrage in his tone. "But how did he find out?"
"He's been conditioned by the Mule. He's a colonel now, a Mule's man. He came to advise us to surrender to the Mule, and he told us - what you told us."
"Then the Mule knows we're here? I must hurry - Where's Magnifico? Isn't he with you?"
"Magnifico's sleeping," said Toran, impatiently. "It's past midnight, you know."
"It is? Then - Was I sleeping when you came in?"
"You were," said Bayta decisively, "and you're not going back to work, either. You're getting into bed. Come on, Torie, help me. And you stop pushing at me, Ebling, because it's just your luck I don't shove you under a shower first. Pull off his shoes, Torie, and tomorrow you come down here and drag him out into the open air before he fades completely away. Look at you, Ebling, you'll be growing cobwebs. Are you hungry?"
Ebling Mis shook his head and looked up from his cot in a peevish confusion. "I want you to send Magnifico down tomorrow," he muttered.
Bayta tucked the sheet around his neck. "You'll have me down tomorrow, with washed clothes. You're going to take a good bath, and then get out and visit the farm and feel a little sun on you."
"I won't do it," said Mis weakly. "You hear me? I'm too busy."
His sparse hair spread out on the pillow like a silver fringe about his head. His voice was a confidential whisper. "You want that Second Foundation, don't you?"
Toran turned quickly and squatted down on the cot beside him. "What about the Second Foundation, Ebling?"
The psychologist freed an arm from beneath the sheet and his tired fingers clutched at Toran's sleeve. "The Foundations were established at a great Psychological Convention presided over by Hari Seldon. Toran, I have located the published minutes of that Convention. Twenty-five fat films. I have already looked through various summaries."
"Well?"
"Well, do you know that it is very easy to find from them the exact location of the First Foundation, if you know anything at all about psychohistory. It is frequently referred to, when you understand the equations. But Toran, nobody mentions the Second Foundation, There has been no reference to it anywhere."
Toran's eyebrows pulled into a frown. "It doesn't exist?"
"Of course it exists," cried Mis, angrily, "who said it didn't? But there's less talk of it. Its significance - and all about it - are better hidden, better obscured. Don't you see? It's the more important of the two. It's the critical one; the one that counts! And I've got the minutes of the Seldon Convention. The Mule hasn't won yet-"