Second Foundation 22. The Answer that was True

An unlocated room on an unlocated initiationAnd a man whose project had worked.The outset Speaker looked up at the Student, Fifty men and women, he said. Fifty martyrs They knew it meant death or immutable imprisonment and they could not even be oriented to prevent weaken since orientation might mother been detected. Yet they did not weaken. They brought the plan through, because they love the greater Plan.Might they rent been fewer? asked the Student, doubtfully.The First Speaker belatedly shook his head, It was the lower limit. Less could not possibly let carried conviction. In fact, pure objectivism would have demanded seventy-five to leave margin for error. Never mind. choose you studied the mannikin of action as worked out by the Speakers Council xv eld ago?Yes, Speaker.And compared it with actual cultivations?Yes, Speaker. thus, after a pause-I was quite amazed, Speaker.I tell apart. T here(predicate) is al elans amazement. If you knew how numerous men labor ed for how many a(prenominal) months years, in fact to bring closely the polish of perfection, you would be less(prenominal) amazed. Now tell me what happened in words. I want your translation of the mathematics.Yes, Speaker. The novel man marsha conduct his thoughts. Essenti onlyy, it was necessary for the men of the First installation to be soundly convinced that they had located and destroyed the endorse butt. In that way, there would be reversion to the int shoemakers lasted original. To all intents, address would at once again make love nothing about us include us in none of their calculations. We are hidden once more, and harmless at the cost of 50 men.And the purpose of the Kalganian war?To show the Foundation that they could beat a tangible enemy to wipe out the damage done to their self-esteem and self-assuredness by the Mule.There you are insufficient in your analysis. Remember, the population of Terminus regarded us with distinct ambivalence. They hated and envied our supposed superiority yet they relied on us implicitly for protection. If we had been destroyed before the Kalganian war, it would have meant panic throughout the Foundation. They would then never have had the courage to stand up against Stettin, when he then attacked and he would have. Only in the full flush of victory could the destruction have interpreted place with minimum ill-effects. Even waiting a year, thereafter, might have meant a too-great cooling off spirit for success.The Student nodded. I see. Then the course of history volition proceed without deviation in the focalization indicated by the Plan.Unless, tear downed out the First Speaker, further accidents, unforeseen and individual, occur.And for that, said the Student, we quiet down exist. Except- Except- One facet of the present state of affairs worries me, Speaker. The First Foundation is left with the Mind Static doodad a powerful apparatus against us. That, at least, is not as it was before.A good point. But they have no one to use it against. It has become a sterile device just as without the spur of our own menace against them, encephalographic analysis will become a sterile science. Other varieties of knowledge will once again bring more important and immediate returns. So this offset printing generation of mental scientists among the First Foundation will also be the last and, in a century, Mind Static will be a nearly forgotten item of the past.Well- The Student was calculating mentally. I suppose youre right.But what I want you most to realize, unripened man, for the sake of your future in the Council is the consideration given to the tiny intermeshings that were forced into our plan of the last decade and a half simply because we dealt with individuals. There was the demeanor in which Anthor had to create suspicion against himself in such a way that it would mature at the right time, but that was relatively simple.There was the flair in which the atmosphere was so manipulated that to no one on Terminus would it occur, unseasonablely, that Terminus itself might be the middle they were seeking. That knowledge had to be supplied to the young girl, Arcadia, who would be heeded by no one but her own father. She had to be sent to Trantor, thereafter, to make certain that there would be no premature contact with her father. Those two were the two poles of a hyperatomic motor each cosmos inactive without the other. And the switch had to be thrown contact had to be do at just the right moment. I saw to thatAnd the final date had to be handled properly. The Foundations authorize had to be soaked in self-confidence, while the fleet of Kalgan made ready to run. I saw to that, alsoSaid the Student, It seems to me, Speaker, that you I mean, all of us were counting on Dr. Darell not suspecting that Arcadia was our tool. According to my plosive consonant on the calculations, there was something like a thirty percent probability that he would so suspect. What would have happened then?We had taken care of that. What have you been taught about Tamper Plateaus? What are they? Certainly not evidence of the intro of an emotional bias. That can be done without any chance of viable detection by the most refined conceivable encephalographic analysis. A moment of Lefferts Theorem, you know. It is the removal, the cutting-out, of previous emotional bias, that shows. It must show.And, of course, Anthor made certain that Darell knew all about Tamper Plateaus.However- When can an individual be placed under crack without showing it? Where there is no previous emotional bias to remove. In other words, when the individual is a new-born infant with a blank slate of a mind. Arcadia Darell was such an infant here on Trantor fifteen years ago, when the first line was drawn into the structure of the plan. She will never know that she has been Controlled, and will be all the better for it, since her Control involved the development of a precocious and intelligent personality.The First Speaker laughed little(a)ly, In a sense, it is the irony of it all that is most amazing. For four hundred years, so many men have been blinded by Seldons words the other abate of the galaxy. They have brought their own peculiar, physical-science thought to the problem, measuring off the other end with protractors and rulers, ending up eventually either at a point in the periphery one hundred eighty degrees around the flange of the Galaxy, or back at the original point.Yet our very sterling(prenominal) risk of exposure lay in the fact that there was a practical solution based on physical modes of thought. The Galaxy, you know, is not simply a flat ovoid of any sort nor is the periphery a disagreeable curve. Actually, it is a double gyrate, with at least eighty percent of the dwell major planets on the Main Arm. Terminus is the extreme outer end of the reel arm, and we are at the other since, what is the paired end of a sp iral? Why, the center.But that is trifling. It is an accidental and irrelevant solution. The solution could have been reached immediately, if the questioners had but remembered that Hari Seldon was a social scientist not a physical scientist and adjusted their thought processes accordingly. What could black eye ends mean to a social scientist? Opposite ends on the map? Of course not. Thats the mechanical interpretation only.The First Foundation was at the periphery, where the original empire was weakest, where its civilizing make was least, where its wealth and culture were most nearly absent. And where is the social opposite end of the Galaxy? Why, at the place where the original Empire was strongest, where its civilizing influence was most, where its wealth and culture were most strongly present.Here At the center At Trantor, capital of the Empire of Seldons time.And it is so inevitable. Hari Seldon left the Second Foundation behind him to maintain, improve, and extend his work That has been known, or guessed at, for fifty years. But where could that vanquish be done? At Trantor, where Seldons group had worked, and where the data of decades had been accumulated. And it was the purpose of the Second Foundation to protect the Plan against enemies. That, too, was known And where was the source of greatest danger to Terminus and the Plan?Here Here at Trantor, where the Empire end though it was, could, for three centuries, still destroy the Foundation, if it could only have discrete to do so.Then when Trantor fell and was sacked and utterly destroyed, a short century ago, we were naturally able to protect our headquarters, and, on all the planet, the majestic Library and the grounds about it remained untouched. This was well-known to the Galaxy, but even that apparently overwhelming hint passed them by.It was here at Trantor that Ebling Mis discovered us and here that we saw to it that he did not survive the discovery. To do so, it was necessary to tell to have a normal Foundation girl defeat the terrific mutant powers of the Mule. Surely, such a phenomenon might have attracted suspicion to the planet on which it happened- It was here that we first studied the Mule and planned his crowning(prenominal) defeat. It was here that Arcadia was born and the train of events begun that led to the great return to the Seldon Plan.And all those flaws in our secrecy those gaping holes remained unnoticed because Seldon had spoken of the other end in his way, and they had interpreted it in their way.The First Speaker had long since stopped mouth to the Student. It was an exposition to himself, really, as he stood before the window, looking up at the incredible blaze of the firmament, at the huge Galaxy that was now safe forever.Hari Seldon called Trantor, Stars End, he whispered, and why not that bit of poetic imagery. All the creative activity was once guided from this rock all the apron strings of the stars led here. All roads lead to Trantor , says the old proverb, and that is where all stars end. Ten months earlier, the First Speaker had viewed those same crowding stars nowhere as crowded as at the center of that huge cluster of matter Man calls the Galaxy with misgivings but now there was a somber satisfaction on the round and ruddy face of Preem Palver First Speaker.1 All quotations from the cyclopaedia Galactica here reproduced are taken from the 116th Edition published in 1020 F.E. by the Encyclopedia Galactica Publishing Co., Terminus, with permission of the publishers.