Foundation and Empire 1. Search For Magicians

BEL RIOSE In his relatively unaw ars c atomic number 18r, Riose earned the c all(prenominal)(prenominal) of The Last of the olympians and earned it well. A record of his campaigns reveals him to be the equal of Peurifoy in strategic ability and his superior perhaps in his ability to advancele men. That he was natural(p) in the eld of the decline of pudding st sensation made it all thusce distant unrealistic for him to equal Peurifoys record as a conqueror. Yet he had his chance when, the rootage of the conglomerates generals to do so, he desexualize ab let start the arse squ bely encyclopedia galactica*All quotations from the encyclopedia Galactica here reproduced argon shrinkn from the 116th mutation published in 1020 F.E. by the Encyclopedia Galactica Publishing Co., Terminus, with permission of the publishers.barn Riose traveled without bodyguard, which is non what court etiquette prescribes for the head of a fleet stationed in a but-sullen star(pr edicate) system on the Marches of the Galactic conglomerate. a lotover Bel Riose was progeny and spanking energetic enough to be displace as faithful the leftover of the cosmos as possible by an stoical and calculating court and curious besides. eerie and improbable tales fancifully-repeated by hundreds and murkily-kn avow to grammes intrigued the get going cogency the possibility of a military stake engaged the other deuce. The combination was overpowering.He was out of the dowdy ground-car he had appropriated and at the introduction of the fading slicesion that was his destination. He waited. The photonic eye that spanned the doorway was subsisting, entirely when the door opened it was by hand.Bel Riose smiled at the senior gay. I am Riose-I recognize you. The aging man re main(prenominal)ed bolt and unsurprised in his place. Your business?Riose withdrew a step in a motility of submission. One of peace. If you atomic number 18 Ducem Barr, I pick out the favor of conversation.Ducem Barr stepped aside and in the indoor of the ho mapping the walls glowed into life, The general entered into twenty-four hourslight.He affected the wall of the h octogenarian, then stargond at his fingertips. You beat this on Siwenna?Barr smiled thinly. non elsewhere, I believe. I keep this in repair myself as well as I can. I must apologize for your wait at the door. The automatic device registers the presence of a visitor just now will no longer open the door.Your repairs fall short? The generals joint was faintly mocking.P humanistic discipline be no longer available. If you will sit, sir. You drinkable tea?On Siwenna? My serious sir, it is socially impossible not to drink it here.The oldish patrician retreated noiselessly with a slow bow that was part of the grandiloquent legacy left by the nobility of the last centurys better age.Riose looked subsequently his hosts departing figure, and his analyze urbanity grew a bit uncertain at the processs. His education had been purely military his beget standardizedwise. He had, as the cliche&8218 has it, faced last more times but always death of a genuinely(prenominal) familiar and tangible nature, Consequently, there is no inconsistency in the fact that the hero-worship lion of the Twentieth Fleet matte up chilled in the suddenly musty zephyr of an ancient room.The general recognized the minor(ip) black-ivroid boxes that lined the shelves to be books. Their titles were unfamiliar. He guessed that the sizeable structure at one leftover of the room was the receiver that transmuted the books into sight-and-sound on demand. He had never seen one in subroutine but he had heard of them. formerly he had been told that long before, during the golden ages when the imperium had been co-extensive with the perfect galax, nine houses out of all ten had such receivers and such rows of books. exactly there were frame ins to watch now books were for old men. And half the stories told about the old age were mythical anyway. More than half.The tea arrived, and Riose place himself. Ducem Barr lifted his form. To your honor.Thank you. To yours.Ducem Barr articulate deliberately, You atomic number 18 say to be juvenility. Thirty-five? mount enough. Thirty-four.In that case, said Barr, with soft emphasis, I could not begin better than by informing you regretfully that I am not in the possession of sexual love charms, potions, or philtres. Nor am I in the least capable of influencing the favors of any young lady as may spell to you.I book no exigency of artificial aids in that respect, sir. The complacence undeniably present in the generals voice was stirred with amusement. Do you receive many requests for such commodities?Enough. Unfortunately, an uninformed public tends to defer scholarship with thaumaturgery, and love life seems to be that factor which requires the hugest quantity of magical tinkering.And so would seem most natural. merely I differ. I connect scholarship with zip fastener but the intends of answering catchy questions.The Siwennian considered somberly, You may be as unlawful as theyThat may turn out or not. The young general set d give birth his cup in its fl be sheath and it re sateed. He dropped the offered flavor-capsule into it with a gauzy splash. Tell me then, patrician, who are the magicians? The real ones.Barr seemed galvanise at a title long-unused. He said, there are no magicians.But people intercommunicate of them. Siwenna crawls with the tales of them. in that respect are cults organism built about them. There is many strange connection amid it and those groups among your countrymen who dream and drivel of ancient days and what they call liberty and autonomy. Eventually the motion might be make a risk to the State.The old man shook his head. wherefore ask me? Do you smell rebellion, with myself at the head?Riose shrugged, Never. Never. Oh, it is not a in guaranteeect ion completely ridiculous. Your start was an exile in his day you yourself a patriot and a chauvinist in yours. It is indelicate in me as a customer to touch it, but my business here requires it. And yet a conspiracy now? I doubt it. Siwenna has had the spirit beat out of it these three generations.The old man replied with difficulty, I shall be as indelicate a host as you a guest. I shall remind you that once a vicereine thought as you did of the spiritless Siwennians. By the orders of that viceroy my don became a ephemeral pauper, my brothers martyrs, and my sister a suicide. Yet that viceroy died a death sufficiently grand at the hands of these same slavish Siwennians.Ah, yes, and there you touch nearly on something I could wish to severalize. For three days the mysterious death of that viceroy has been no mystery to me. There was a young soldier of his personal guard whose actions were of interest. You were that soldier, but there is no need of details, I think.Barr wa s quiet. None. What do you propose?That you answer my questions.Not under threats. I am old enough for life not to mean particularly overmuch.My good sir, these are bad times, said Riose, with meaning, and you perk up children and friends. You birth a country for which you have mouthed phrases of love and fury in the past. Come, if I should decide to use force, my aim would not be so poor as to strike you.Barr said coldly, What do you want?Riose held the empty cup as he spoke. Patrician, listen to me. These are days when the most successful soldiers are those whose function is to lead the dress parades that lift through the imperial palace rationality on feast days and to escort the sparkling pleasure ships that carry His proud Splendor to the summer planets. I I am a failure. I am a failure at cardinal-four, and I shall stay a failure. Because, you see, I like to fight.Thats why they sent me here. Im too difficult at court. I dont fit in with the etiquette. I offend the d andies and the lord admirals, but Im too good a draw of ships and men to be disposed of shortly be being marooned in space. So Siwenna is the substitute. Its a frontier serviceman a rebellious and a barren province. It is far off, far enough away to satisfy all.And so I moulder. There are no rebellions to stamp down, and the border viceroys do not revolt lately, at least, not since His Imperial Majestys late father of glorious memory made an recitation of Mountel of Paramay.A strong Emperor, muttered Barr.Yes, and we need more of them. He is my master remember that. These are his interests I guard.Barr shrugged unconcernedly. How does all this relate to the pass on?Ill show you in two words. The magicians Ive mentioned buzz off from beyond-out there beyond the frontier guards, where the stars are scattered thinly- Where the stars are scattered thinly, quoted Barr, And the cold of space seeps in.Is that poetry? Riose frowned. Verse seemed dizzy at the moment. In any case, th eyre from the fringe from the only quarter where I am free to fight for the glory of the Emperor.And thus serve His Imperial Majestys interests and satisfy your own love of a good fight.Exactly. But I must know what I fight and there you can befriend.How do you know?Riose nibbled casually at a cakelet. Because for three years I have traced every rumor, every myth, every breathing place concerning the magicians and of all the library of information I have gathered, only two free facts are unanimously agreed upon, and are hence certainly true. The kickoff is that the magicians come from the edge of the Galaxy opposite Siwenna the bite is that your father once met a magician, alive and actual, and spoke with him.The aged Siwennian stared unblinkingly, and Riose continued, You had better tell me what you know-Barr said thoughtfully, It would be interesting to tell you certain things. It would be a psychohistoric essay of my own.What kind of experiment?Psychohistoric. The old m an had an unpleasant edge to his smile. Then, crisply, Youd better have more tea. Im going to make a bit of a speech.He leaned far back into the soft cushions of his chair. The wall-lights had softened to a pink-ivory glow, which mellowed even the soldiers hard profile.Ducem Barr began, My own knowledge is the result of two accidents the accidents of being born(p) the son of my father, and of being born the native of my country. It begins over cardinal years ago, shortly after the neat Massacre, when my father was a fugitive in the forests of the South, slice I was a gunner in the viceroys personal fleet. This same viceroy, by the way, who had coherent the Massacre, and who died such a cruel death thereafter.Barr smiled grimly, and continued, My father was a Patrician of the pudding stone and a Senator of Siwenna. His name was Onum Barr.Riose interrupted impatiently, I know the circumstances of his exile very well. You neednt elaborate upon it.The Siwennian ignored him and proc eeded without deflection. During his exile a wanderer came upon him a merchant from the edge of the Galaxy a young man who spoke a strange accent, knew cipher of recent Imperial history, and who was protected by an individual force-shield.An individual force-shield? Riose glared. You speak extravagance. What informant could be powerful enough to sublimate a shield to the size of a single man? By the gigantic Galaxy, did he carry five thousand myria-tons of nuclear power-source about with him on a exact wheeled gocart?Barr said quietly, This is the magician of whom you hear whispers, stories and myths. The name magician is not softly earned. He carried no generator large enough to be seen, but not the heaviest weapon you can carry in your hand would have as much as creased the shield he bore.Is this all the story there is? Are the magicians born of maunderings of an old man broken by suffering and exile?The story of the magicians antedated even my father, sir. And the proof is more concrete. After exit my father, this merchant that men call a magician visited a Tech-man at the urban center to which my father had guided him, and there he left a shield-generator of the type he wore. That generator was retrieved by my father after his return from exile upon the execution of the damn viceroy. It took a long time to go out-The generator hangs on the wall behind you, sir. It does not work. It never worked but for the first two days but if youll look at it, you will see that no one in the Empire ever designed it.Bel Riose reached for the belt of linked admixture that clung to the curved wall. It came away with a little sucking noise as the trivial adhesion-field broke at the touch of his hand. The rounded at the apex of the belt held his attention. It was the size of a walnut.This- he said.Was the generator, nodded Barr. But it was the generator. The incomprehensible of its workings are beyond find now. Sub-electronic investigations have shown it to be fused into a single lump of metal and not all the most careful study of the diffraction patterns have sufficed to distinguish the discrete split that had existed before fusion.Then your proof still lingers on the frothy border of words sanction by no concrete render.Barr shrugged. You have demanded my knowledge of me and threatened its extortion by force. If you get hold of to meet it with skepticism, what is that to me? Do you want me to give out?Go on said the general, harshly.I continued my fathers researches after he died, and then the second accident I mentioned came to help me, for Siwenna was well known to Hari Seldon.And who is Hari Seldon?Hari Seldon was a scientist of the find of the Emperor, Daluben IV. He was a psychohistorian the last and superlative of them all. He once visited Siwenna, when Siwenna was a abundant commercial center, rich in the arts and sciences.Hmph, muttered Riose, sourly, where is the stagnant planet that does not learn to have been a land of exuberant wealth in older days?The days I speak of are the days of two centuries ago, when the Emperor yet ruled to the uttermost star when Siwenna was a world of the interior and not a semi- barbarous border province. In those days, Hari Seldon foresaw the decline of Imperial power and the eventual barbarization of the entire Galaxy.Riose laughed suddenly. He foresaw that? Then he foresaw wrong, my good scientist. I suppose you call yourself that. Why, the Empire is more powerful now than it has been in a millennium. Your old eyes are blinded by the cold devastation of the border. Come to the inside worlds some day come to the warmth and the wealth of the center.The old man shook his head somberly. Circulation ceases first at the outer edges. It will take a while yet for the chemical decomposition reaction to reach the heart. That is, the apparent, intelligible-to-all decay, as distinct from the inner decay that is an old story of some fifteen centuries.And so this Hari Se ldon foresaw a Galaxy of uniform barbarism, said Riose, good-humoredly. And what then, eh?So he established two foundations at the total opposing ends of the Galaxy Foundations of the best, and the youngest, and the strongest, there to breed, grow, and develop. The worlds on which they were placed were chosen carefully as were the times and the surroundings. All was arranged in such a way that the incoming as foreseen by the unalterable mathematics of psychohistory would involve their early isolation from the main body of Imperial civilization and their gradual growth into the germs of the Second Galactic Empire cutting an inevitable barbarian interregnum from thirty thousand years to scarcely a single thousand.And where did you find out all this? You seem to know it in detail.I dont and never did, said the patrician with composure. It is the direful result of the piecing together of certain evidence discovered by my father and a little more found by myself. The basis is flims y and the superstructure has been romanticized into existence to fill the huge gaps. But I am convinced that it is essentially true.You are easy convinced.Am I? It has taken 40 years of research.Hmph. Forty years I could settle the question in forty days. In fact, I believe I ought to. It would be different.And how would you do that?In the obvious way. I could become an explorer. I could find this Foundation you speak of and observe with my eyes. You say there are two?The records speak of two. Supporting evidence has been found only for one, which is understandable, for the other is at the extreme end of the long axis of the Galaxy.Well, well visit the near one. The general was on his feet, adjusting his belt.You know where to go? asked Barr.In a way. In the records of the last viceroy but one, he whom you slay so effectively, there are fly-by-night tales of outer barbarians. In fact, one of his daughters was assumption in marriage to a barbarian prince. Ill find my way.He hel d out a hand. I thank you for your hospitality.Ducem Barr touched the hand with his fingers and bowed formally. Your visit was a great honor.As for the information you gave me, continued Bel Riose, Ill know how to thank you for that when I return.Ducem Barr followed his guest submissively to the outer door and said quietly to the disappearing ground-car, And if you return.