Trevize had over four hours to second-guess himself bitterly, striding restlessly across the floor for much of the period.

Why did he trust Compor?

Why not? He had seemed so clearly in agreement. -No, not that. He had seemed so ready to be argued into agreement. -No, not that, either. He had seemed so stupid, so easily dominated, so surely lacking a mind and opinions of his own that Trevize enjoyed the chance of using him as a comfortable sounding board. Compor had helped Trevize improve and hone his opinions. He had been useful and Trevize had trusted him for no other reason than that it had been convenient to do so.

But it was useless now to try to decide whether he ought to have seen through Compor. He should have followed the simple generalization: Trust n.o.body.

Yet can one go through life trusting n.o.body?

Clearly one had to.

And who would have thought that Branno would have had the audacity to pluck a Councilman out of the Council-and that not one of the other Councilmen would move to protect one of their own? Though they had disagreed with Trevize to their very hearts; though they would have been ready to bet their blood, drop by drop, on Branno's rightness; they should still, on principle, have interposed themselves against this violation of their prerogatives. Branno the Bronze she was sometimes called, and she certainly acted with metallic rigor-- Unless she herself was already in the grip- No! That way led to paranoia!

And yet- His mind tiptoed in circles, and had not broken out of uselessly repet.i.tive thought when the guards came.

"You will have to come with us, Councilman," the senior of the two said with unemotional gravity. His insignia showed him to be a lieutenant. He had a small scar on his right cheek, and he looked tired, as though he had been at his Job too long and had done too little-as might be expected of a soldier whose people had been at peace for over a century.

Trevize did not budge. "Your name, Lieutenant."

"I am Lieutenant Evander Sopellor, Councilman."

"You realize you are breaking the law, Lieutenant Sopellor. You cannot arrest a Councilman."

The lieutenant said, "We have our direct orders, sir."

"That does not matter. You cannot be ordered to arrest a Councilman. You must understand that you will be liable for court-martial as a result."

The lieutenant said, "You are not being arrested, Councilman."

"Then I don't have to go with you, do I?"

"We have been instructed to escort you to your home."

"I know the way."

"And to protect you en route."

"From what? -Or from whom?"

"From any mob that may gather."

"At midnight?"

"It is why we have waited for midnight, sir. -And now, sir, for your protection we must ask you to come with us. May I say-not as a threat but as a matter of information-that we are authorized to use force if necessary."

Trevize was aware of the neuronic whips with which they were armed. He rose with what he hoped was dignity. "To my home, then. -Or will I find out that you are going to take me to prison?"

"We have not been instructed to lie to you, sir," said the lieutenant with a pride of his own. Trevize became aware that he was in the presence of a professional man who would require a direct order before he would lie-and that even then his expression and his tone of voice would give him away.

Trevize said, "I ask your pardon, Lieutenant. I did not mean to imply that I doubted your word."

A ground-car was waiting for them outside. The street was empty and there was no sign of any human being, let alone a mob-but the lieutenant had been truthful. He had not said there was a mob outside or that one would form. He had referred to "any mob that may gather." He had only said "may."

The lieutenant had carefully kept Trevize between himself and the car. Trevize could not have twisted away and made a run for it. The lieutenant entered immediately after him and sat beside him in the back.

The car moved off.

Trevize said, "Once I am home, I presume I may then go about my business freely-that I may leave, for instance, if I choose."

"We have no order to interfere with you, Councilman, in any way, except insofar as we are ordered to protect you."

"Insofar? What does that mean in this case?"

"I am instructed to tell you that once you are home, you may not leave it. The streets are not safe for you and I am responsible for your safety."

"You mean I am under house arrest."

"I am not a lawyer, Councilman. I do not know what that means."

He gazed straight ahead, but his elbow made contact with Trevize's side. Trevize could not have moved, however slightly, without the lieutenant becoming aware of it.

The car stopped before Trevize's small house in the suburb of Flexner. At the moment, he lacked a housemate-Flavella having wearied of the erratic life that Council membership had forced upon him-so he expected no one to be waiting for him.

"Do I get out now?" Trevize asked.

"I will get out first, Councilman. We will escort you in."

"For my safety?"

"Yes, sir."

There were two guards waiting inside his front door. A night-light was gleaming, but the windows had been opacified and it was not visible from outside.

For a moment, he was indignant at the invasion and then he dismissed it with an inward shrug. If the Council could not protect him in the Council Chamber itself, then surely his house could not serve as his castle.

Trevize said, "How many of you do I have in here altogether? A regiment?"

"No, Councilman," came a voice, hard and steady. "Just one person aside from those you see, and I have been waiting for you long enough."

Harla Branno, Mayor of Terminus, stood in the door that led into the living room. "Time enough, don't you think, for us to talk?"

Trevize stared. "All this rigmarole to-"

But Branno said in a low, forceful voice. "Quiet, Councilman. -And you four, outside. Outside! -All will be well in here."

The four guards saluted and turned on their heels. Trevize and Branno were alone.

CHAPTER TWO

MAYOR

BRANNO HAD BEEN WAITING FOR AN HOUR, THINKING WEARILY. Technically speaking, she was guilty of breaking and entering. What's more, she had violated, quite unconst.i.tutionally, the rights of a Councilman. By the strict laws that held Mayors to account since the days of Indbur III and the Mute, nearly two centuries before-she was impeachable.

On this one day, however, for twenty-four hours she could do no wrong.

But it would pa.s.s. She stirred restlessly.

The first two centuries had been the Golden Age of the Foundation, the Heroic Era-at least in retrospect, if not to the unfortunates who had lived in that insecure time. Salvor Hardin and Hober Mallow had been the two great heroes, semideified to the point of rivaling the incomparable Hari Seldon himself. The three were a tripod on which all Foundation legend (and even Foundation history) rested.

In those days, though, the Foundation had been one puny world, with a tenuous hold on the Four Kingdoms and with only a dim awareness of the extent to which the Seldon Plan was holding its protective hand over it, caring for it even against the remnant of the mighty Galactic Empire.

And the more powerful the Foundation grew as a political and commercial ent.i.ty, the less significant its rulers and fighters had come to seem. Lathan Devers was almost forgotten. If he was remembered at all, it was for his tragic death in the slave mines, rather than for his unnecessary but successful fight against Bel Riose.

As for Bel Riose, the n.o.blest of the Foundation's adversaries, he too was nearly forgotten, overshadowed by the Mule, who alone among enemies had broken the Seldon Plan and defeated and ruled the Foundation. He alone was the Great Enemy-indeed, the last of the Greats.

It was little remembered that the Mule had been, in essence, defeated by one person-a woman, Bayta Darell-and that she had accomplished the victory without the help of anyone, -without even the support of the Seldon Plan. So, too, was it almost forgotten that her son and granddaughter, Toran and Arkady Darrell, had defeated the Second Foundation, leaving the Foundation, the First Foundation, supreme.

These latter-day victors were no longer heroic figures. The times had become too expansive to do anything but shrink heroes into ordinary mortals. Then, too, Arkady's biography of her grandmother had reduced her from a heroine to a figure of romance.

And since then there had been no heroes-not even figures of romance. The Kalganian war had been the last moment of violence engulfing the Foundation and that had been a minor conflict. Nearly two centuries of virtual peace! A hundred and twenty years without so much as a ship scratched.

It had been a good peace-Branno would not deny that-a profitable peace. The Foundation had not established a Second Galactic Empire-it was only halfway there by the Seldon Plan-but, as the Foundation Federation, it held a strong economic grip on over a third of the scattered political units of the Galaxy, and influenced what it didn't control. There were few places where "I am of the Foundation" was not met with respect. There was no one who ranked higher in all the millions of inhabited worlds than the Mayor of Terminus.

That was still the t.i.tle. It was inherited from the leader of a single small and almost disregarded city on a lonely world on the far edge of civilization, some five centuries before, but no one would dream of changing it or of giving it one atom more glory-in-sound. As it was, only the all-but-forgotten t.i.tle of Imperial Majesty could rival it in awe.

-Except on Terminus itself, where the powers of the Mayor were carefully limited. The memory of the Indburs still remained. It was not their tyranny that people could not forget but the fact that they had lost to the Mule.

And here she was, Harla Branno, the strongest to rule since the Mule's death (she knew that) and only the fifth woman to do so. On this day only had she been able to use her strength openly.

She had fought for her interpretation of what was right and what should be-against the dogged opposition of those who longed for the prestige-filled Interior of the Galaxy and for the aura of Imperial power-and she had won.

Not yet, she had said. Not yet! Jump too soon for the Interior and you will lose far this reason and for that. And Seldon had appeared and had supported her in language almost identical with her own.

It made her, for a time, in the eyes of all fine Foundation, as wise as Seldon himself. She knew they could forget that any hour, however.

And this young man dared to challenge her on this day of days.

And he dared to be right?

That was the danger of it. He was right? And by being right, he might destroy the Foundation!

And now she faced him and they were alone.

She said sadly, "Could you not have come to see me privately? Did you have to shout it all out in the Council Chamber in your idiotic desire to make a fool of me? What have you done, you mindless boy?"

Trevize felt himself flushing and fought to control his anger. The Mayor was an aging woman who would be sixty-three on her next birthday. He hesitated to engage in a shouting match with someone nearly twice his age.

Besides, she was well practiced in the political wars and knew that if she could place her opponent off-balance at the start then the battle was half-won. But it took an audience to make such a tactic effective and there was no audience before whom one might be humiliated. There were just the two of them.

So he ignored her words and did his best to survey her dispa.s.sionately. She was an old woman wearing the unis.e.x fashions which had prevailed for two generations now. They did not become her. The Mayor, the leader of the Galaxy-if leader there could be-was just a plain old woman who might easily have been mistaken for an old man, except that her iron-gray hair was tied tightly back, instead of being worn free in the traditional male style.

Trevize smiled engagingly. However much an aged opponent strove to make the epithet "boy" sound like an insult, this particular "boy" had the advantage of youth and good looks-and the full awareness of both.

He said, "It's true. I'm thirty-two and, therefore, a boy-in a manner of speaking. And I'm a Councilman and, therefore, ex officio, mindless. The first condition is unavoidable. For the second, I can only say I'm sorry."

"Do you know what you've done? Don't stand there and strive for wit. Sit down. Put your mind into gear, if you can, and answer me rationally."

"I know what I've done. I've told the truth as I've seen it."

"And on this day you try to defy me with it? On this one day when my prestige is such that I could pluck you out of the Council Chamber and arrest you, with no one daring to protest?"

"The Council will recover its breath and it will protest. They may be protesting now. And they will listen to me all the more for the persecution to which you are subjecting me."

"No one will listen to you, because if I thought you would continue what you have been doing, I would continue to treat you as a traitor to the full extent of the law."

"I would then have to be tried.. I'd have my day in court."

"Don't count on that. A Mayor's emergency powers are enormous, even if they are rarely used."

"On what grounds would you declare an emergency?"

"I'll invent the grounds. I have that much ingenuity left, and I do not fear taking the political risk. Don't push me, young man. We are going to come to an agreement here or you will never be free again. You will be imprisoned for the rest of your life. I guarantee it.

They stared at each other: Branno in gray, Trevize in multishade brown.

Trevize said, "What kind of an agreement?"

"Ah. You're curious. That's better. Then we can engage in conversation instead of confrontation. What is your point of view?"

"You know it well. You have been crawling in the mud with Councilman Compor, have you not?"

"I want to hear it from you-in the light of the Seldon Crisis just pa.s.sed."

"Very well, if that's what you want-Madam Mayor!" (He had been on the brink of saying "old woman.") "The image of Seldon was too correct, too impossibly correct after five hundred years. It's the eighth time he has appeared, I believe. On some occasions, no one was there to hear him. On at least one occasion, in the time of Indbur III, what he had to say was utterly out of synchronization with reality but that was in the time of the Mule, wasn't it? But when, on any of those occasions, was he as correct as he was now?"

Trevize allowed himself a small smile. "Never before, Madam Mayor, as far as our recordings of the past are concerned, has Seldon managed to describe the situation so perfectly, in all its smallest details."

Branno said, "Is it your suggestion that the Seldon appearance, the holographic image, is faked; that the Seldon recordings have been prepared by a contemporary such as myself, perhaps; that an actor was playing the Seldon role?"