Seldon thought of his own still-trim figure and of the manner in which Dors strove to make him keep it that way.
Amaryl said, "What do I see? The Empire is in trouble."
"The Empire is always in trouble."
"Yes, but it's more specific. There's a possibility that we may have trouble at the center."
"At Trantor?"
"I presume. Or at the Periphery. Either there will be a bad situation here-perhaps civil war-or the outlying Outer Worlds will begin to break away."
"Surely it doesn't take psychohistory to point out these possibilities."
"The interesting thing is that there seems a mutual exclusivity. One or the other. The likelihood of both together is very small. Here! Look! It's your own mathematics. Observe!"
They bent over the Prime Radiant display for a long time.
Seldon said finally, "I fail to see why the two should be mutually exclusive."
"So do I, Hari, but where's the value of psychohistory if it shows us only what we would see anyway? This is showing us something we wouldn't see. What it doesn't show us is, first, which alternative is better, and second, what to do to make the better come to pass and depress the possibility of the worse."
Seldon pursed his lips, then said slowly, "I can tell you which alternative is preferable. Let the Periphery go and keep Trantor."
"Really?"
"No question. We must keep Trantor stable, if for no other reason than that we're here."
"Surely our own comfort isn't the decisive point."
"No, but psychohistory is. What good will it do us to keep the Periphery intact if conditions on Trantor force us to stop work on psychohistory? I don't say that we'll be killed, but we may be unable to work. The development of psychohistory is on what our fate will depend. As for the Empire, if the Periphery secedes it will only begin a disintegration that may take a long time to reach the core."
"Even if you're right, Hari, what do we do to keep Trantor stable?"
"To begin with, we have to think about it."
A silence fell between them and then Seldon said, "Thinking doesn't make me happy. What if the Empire is altogether on the wrong track and has been for all its history? I think of that every time I talk to Gruber."
"Who's Gruber?"
"Mandell Gruber. A gardener."
"Oh. The one who came running up with the rake to rescue you at the time of the assassination attempt?"
"Yes. I've always been grateful to him for that. He had only a rake against possibly other conspirators with blasters. That's loyalty. Anyhow, talking to him is like a breath of fresh air. I can't spend all my time talking to court officials and to psychohistorians."
"Thank you."
"Come! You know what I mean. Gruber likes the open. He wants the wind and the rain and the biting cold and everything else that raw weather can bring to him. I miss it myself sometimes."
"I don't. I wouldn't care if I never go out there."
"You were brought up under the dome-but suppose the Empire consisted of simple unindustrialized worlds, living by herding and farming, with thin populations and empty spaces. Wouldn't we all be better off?"
"It sounds horrible to me."
"I found some spare time to check it as best I could. It seems to me it's a case of unstable equilibrium. A thinly populated world of the type I describe either grows moribund and impoverished, falling off into an uncultured near-animal level-or it industrializes. It is standing on a narrow point and topples over in either direction and, as it just so happens, almost every world in the Galaxy has fallen over into industrialization."
"Because that's better."
"Maybe. But it can't continue forever. We're watching the results of the overtoppling now. The Empire cannot exist for much longer because it has-it has overheated. I can't think of any other expression. What will follow we don't know. If, through psychohistory, we manage to prevent the Fall or, more likely, force a recovery after the Fall, is that merely to ensure another period of overheating? Is that the only future humanity has, to push the boulder, like Sisyphus, up to the top of a hill, only to see it roll to the bottom again?"
"Who's Sisyphus?"
"A character in a primitive myth. Yugo, you must do more reading."
Amaryl shrugged. "So I can learn about Sisyphus? Not important. Perhaps psychohistory will show us a path to an entirely new society, one altogether different from anything we have seen, one that would be stable and desirable."
"I hope so," sighed Seldon. "I hope so, but there's no sign of it yet. For the near future, we will just have to labor to let the Periphery go. That will mark the beginning of the Fall of the Galactic Empire."
4
"And so I said," said Hari Seldon. " 'That will mark the beginning of the Fall of the Galactic Empire.' And so it will, Dors."
Dors listened, tight-lipped. She accepted Seldon's First Ministership as she accepted everything-calmly. Her only mission was to protect him and his psychohistory, but that task, she well knew, was made harder by his position. The best security was to go unnoticed and, as long as the Spaceship-and-Sun, the symbol of the Empire, shone down upon Seldon, all of the physical barriers in existence would be unsatisfactory.
The luxury in which they now lived-the careful shielding from spy beams, as well as from physical interference; the advantages to her own historical research of being able to make use of nearly unlimited funds-did not satisfy her. She would gladly have exchanged it all for their old quarters at Streeling University. Or, better yet, for a nameless apartment in a nameless sector where no one knew them.