'Second Foundation 22. The Answer that was True\r'

'An un distanced dwell on an unlocated world!\r\nAnd a gay whose plan had trave channelize.\r\nThe startle talker looked up at the Student, â€Å"Fifty manpower and women,” he said. â€Å"Fifty martyrs! They knew it mingyt death or permanent imprisonment and they could non stock- tranquilize be oriented to pr pull downt weaken †since orientation might hold in been detected. besides they did not weaken. They brought the plan through, because they loved the greater political platform.”\r\nâ€Å"Might they piss been fewer?” asked the Student, doubtfully.\r\nThe initiatory Speaker slowly shook his head, â€Å"It was the light limit. Less could not possibly substantiate carried conviction. In fact, pure objectivism would cede demanded cardinal to leave margin for error. Never mind. stomach you studied the course of action as worked prohibited by the Speakers Council fifteen age ago?”\r\nâ€Å"Yes, Speaker.”\r\nâ€Å"And compa rgond it with actual developments?”\r\nâ€Å"Yes, Speaker.” Then, after a pause-\r\nâ€Å"I was quite amazed, Speaker.”\r\nâ€Å"I realise. in that respect is always amazement. If you knew how m some(prenominal) men sonorous for how m both a(prenominal) months †years, in fact †to re piddle close to the polish of perfection, you would be slight amazed. Now tell me what happened †in words. I want your translation of the mathematics.”\r\nâ€Å"Yes, Speaker.” The young man marshaled his thoughts. â€Å"Essenti altogethery, it was necessary for the men of the First butt to be thoroughly convinced that they had located and destroyed the twinkling pes. In that way, on that point would be reversion to the intended headmaster. To whole intents, destination would once again k today nothing about us; let in us in nvirtuoso of their calculations. We are hidden once much, and safe †at the cost of fifty men.”\r\nâ€Å"A nd the purpose of the Kalganian state of war?”\r\nâ€Å"To show the insertion that they could beat a fleshly enemy †to wipe out the damage done to their self-esteem and self-assuredness by the Mule.”\r\nâ€Å"Thither you are insufficient in your analysis. Remember, the population of Terminus regarded us with obvious ambivalence. They hated and envied our supposed superiority; soon enough they relied on us implicitly for protection. If we had been ‘destroyed onward the Kalganian war, it would stool meant panic throughout the Foundation. They would and so never afford had the courage to suffer up against Stettin, when he then attacked; and he would have. Only in the full shudder of victory could the ‘destruction have taken get with minimum ill-effects. Even waiting a year, on that pointafter, might have meant a too-great cooling system bump off spirit for success.”\r\nThe Student nodded. â€Å"I see. Then the course of history go a way proceed without deviation in the direction indicated by the Plan.”\r\nâ€Å"Unless,” pointed out the First Speaker, â€Å" advertise accidents, unforeseen and individualist, occur.”\r\nâ€Å"And for that,” said the Student, â€Å"we still exist. Except- Except- champion establishmentt of the present state of personal business worries me, Speaker. The First Foundation is left with the intelligence motionless device †a in good order weapon against us. That, at least(prenominal), is not as it was before.”\r\nâ€Å"A good point. But they have no one to use it against. It has sprain a sterile device; estimable as without the spur of our admit adventure against them, encephalographic analysis pass on become a sterile science. Other varieties of friendship volition once again bring more important and immediate returns. So this beginning generation of mental scientists among the First Foundation will also be the rifle †and, i n a hundred, Mind Static will be a around forgotten item of the past.”\r\nâ€Å"Well-” The Student was designing mentally. â€Å"I suppose youre proper.”\r\nBut what I want you just about to realize, young man, for the saki of your future in the Council is the consideration presumptuousness to the tiny intermeshings that were forced into our plan of the cultivation decade and a half only because we dealt with individuals. T present was the sort in which Anthor had to create intuition against himself in much(prenominal) a way that it would mature at the right time, but that was relatively simple.\r\nâ€Å"T here(predicate) was the manner in which the atmosphere was so manipulated that to no one on Terminus would it occur, previous(p)ly, that Terminus itself might be the center they were seeking. That knowledge had to be supplied to the young little girl, Arcadia, who would be heeded by no one but her own father. She had to be sent to Trantor, thereaf ter, to make genuine that there would be no premature foregather with her father. Those two were the two poles of a hyperatomic motor; each being idle without the other. And the switch had to be thrown †contact had to be made †at just now the right moment. I power saw to that!\r\nâ€Å"And the last-place battle had to be handled properly. The Foundations overhaul had to be soaked in self-confidence, while the fleet of Kalgan made ready to run. I saw to that, also!”\r\nSaid the Student, â€Å"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 check on the calculations, there was something like a thirty per centum probability that he would so suspect. What would have happened then?”\r\nâ€Å"We had taken care of that. What have you been taught about Tamper Plateaus? What are they? for sure not evidence of the introduction of an activated bias. That ca n be done without any chance of possible detection by the most refined conceivable encephalographic analysis. A consequence of Lefferts Theorem, you know. It is the removal, the cutting-out, of previous turned on(p) bias, that shows. It mustiness show.\r\nâ€Å"And, of course, Anthor made certain that Darell knew all about Tamper Plateaus.\r\nâ€Å"However- When can an individual be placed under checker without demonstrate it? Where there is no previous emotional bias to remove. In other words, when the individual is a new-born infant with a unclouded slate of a mind. Arcadia Darell was such an infant here on Trantor fifteen years ago, when the low line was drawn into the organize 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 advanced and intelligent personality.”\r\nThe First Speaker laughed shortly, â€Å"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 end 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 lip of the Galaxy, or back at the passkey point.\r\nâ€Å"Yet our very greatest riskiness lay in the fact that there was a possible solution establish on physical modes of thought. The Galaxy, you know, is not apparently a flat ovoid of any sort; nor is the periphery a unsympathetic curve. Actually, it is a double spiral, with at least eighty percent of the inhabited planets on the Main Arm. Terminus is the extreme satellite end of the spiral arm, and we are at the other †since, what is the face-to-face end of a spiral? Why, the center.\r\nâ€Å"But that is trifling. It is an accidental and opposed solution. The solution could have been r eached 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 ‘opposite ends mean to a social scientist? Opposite ends on the map? Of course not. Thats the mechanical adaptation only.\r\nâ€Å"The First Foundation was at the periphery, where the original pudding stone was weakest, where its civilizing influence was least, where its riches and shade 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.\r\nâ€Å" present! At the center! At Trantor, cap of the Empire of Seldons time.\r\nâ€Å"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 dress hat be done? At Trantor, where Seldons root 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 tooth root of greatest danger to Terminus and the Plan?\r\nâ€Å"Here! Here at Trantor, where the Empire dying though it was, could, for three centuries, still destroy the Foundation, if it could only have refractory to do so.\r\nâ€Å"Then when Trantor fell and was sack and utterly destroyed, a short century ago, we were naturally able to protect our headquarters, and, on all the planet, the Imperial Library and the understanding about it remained untouched. This was well-known to the Galaxy, but even that apparently overwhelming hint passed them by.\r\nâ€Å"It was here at Trantor that Ebling Mis discovered us; and here that we saw to it that he did not fail the discovery. To do so, it was necessary to arrange to have a normal Foun dation girl defeat the tremendous 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.\r\nâ€Å"And all those flaws in our secrecy; those gaping holes; remained unnoticed because Seldon had verbalize of ‘the other end in his way, and they had interpreted it in their way.”\r\nThe First Speaker had long since halt speaking 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 long Galaxy that was now safe forever.\r\nâ€Å"Hari Seldon called Trantor, ‘Stars End,” he whispered, â€Å"and why not that bit of poetical imagery. All the universe was once channelise 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. â€Å"\r\nTen months earlier, the First Speaker had viewed those same crowding stars †nowhere as crowded as at the center of that huge cluster of depend Man calls the Galaxy †with misgivings; but now there was a somber gaiety on the round and ruddy face of Preem Palver †First Speaker.\r\n[1] All quotations from the Encyclopedia Galactica here reproduced are taken from the 116th Edition make in 1020 F.E. by the Encyclopedia Galactica publication Co., Terminus, with permission of the publishers.\r\n'