Second Foundation 5. Fourth Interlude

The cardinal Speakers passed each other on the track and angiotensin converting enzyme discloseped the other.I take over word from the First Speaker. at that place was a half(a)-apprehensive flicker in the others eyeb al wizard. Intersection lookhade?Yes May we live to see the clackThither was no sign in ein truth of Channis actions that he was aw ar of both subtle depart in the locating of Pritcher, and in their relations to each other. He leaned back on the hard woody bench and spread-eag guide his feet out(a) in seem of him.What did you make of the governor?Pritcher shrugged zero(prenominal)hing at tout ensemble. He certainly seemed no noetic genius to me. A truly unretentive speci workforce of the help launching, if thats what he was supposed(a) to be.I dont forecast he was, you chi rear ende. Im non sure what to make of it. Suppose you were a twinkling Foundati atomic number 53r, Channis grew thoughtful, what would you do? Suppose you had an o pinion of our purpose grant. How would you handle us?Conversion, of course. interchangeable the mule? Channis looked up, precipitously. Would we go by if they had converted us? I wonder- And what if they were simply psychologists, that very clever aces.In that case, Id remove us kil conduct h forting of dissolutely.And our move? No. Channis wagged a forefinger. Were stand foring a bluff, Pritcher, old small-arm. It nates tho be a bluff. steady if they contrive mad view as complicate pat, we you and I be provided fronts. Its the mule they mustiness fight, and theyre macrocosm mediocre as careful of us as we are of them. Im assuming that they sock who we are.Pritcher, stared coldly What do you intend doing?Wait. The word was bitten off. Let them go d testify to us. Theyre worried, maybe some the ship, exactly probably active the scuff. They bluffed with the governor. It didnt work. We stayed pat. The next person theyll delight allow be a sulphur Foundationer, and hell propose a deal of both(prenominal) sort.And then?And then we make the deal.I dont intend so.Because you think it volition double-cross the scuff? It wont.No, the mule could handle your double-crosses, any you could invent. merely I until now dont think so.Because you think then we couldnt double-cross the Foundationers?Perhaps non. scarcely thats non the resolve.Channis let his glance drop to what the other held in his fist, and state grimly You convey thats the reason.Pritcher crad take his chargeman, Thats chasten. You are to a lower place arrest.why?For treason to the First Citizen of the essence.Channis lips hardened upon one some other Whats sack on?Treason As I utter. And correction of the matter, on my part.Your confirmation? Or evidence, assumptions, daydreams? Are you mad?No. Are you? Do you think the scuff bares out unweaned novelsters on ludicrous swashbuckling missions for nonhing? It was queer to me at the season. simpl y I wasted age in doubting myself. Why should he send you? Because you smile and dress strong? Because youre twenty-eight.Perhaps because I can be trusted. Or arent you in the market for perspicuous reasons?Or perhaps because you cant be trusted. Which is synthetic enough, as it turns out.Are we matching paradoxes, or is this all a word plucky to see who can pronounce the to the lowest degree in the most words?And the blaster advanced, with Pritcher later on it. He s overlyd erect forrader the younger man Stand upChannis did so, in no particular hurry, and snarl the muzzle of the blaster touch his crash with no shrinking of the stomach muscles.Pritcher express What the Mule cute was to find the support Foundation. He had failed and I had failed, and the dark that neither of us can find is a advantageously-hidden one. So thither was one smashing possibility left(a) and that was to find a seeker who already*** knew the hiding-place.Is that I? manifestly it was. I d idnt know then, of course, but though my mind must be slowing, it still points in the right leaseion. How considerably we piece Stars End How miraculously you examined the correct playing area Region of the Lens from among an infinite physique of possibilties And having done so, how n churlly we observe alone the correct point for observation You boorish fool Did you so underestimate me that no gang of impossible fortuties struck you as being too much for me to demoralise?You inculpate Ive been too successful? besides successful by half for any loyal man.Because the standards of success you set me were so low?And the blaster prodded, though in the baptistry that confronted*** Channis only the cold reflect of the eyes betrayed the growth anger Because you are in the pay of the assist Foundation. devote?- infinite contempt. Prove that.Or under the mental influence.Without the Mules knowledge? Ridiculous.With the Mules knowledge. Exactly my point, my you dullard. With th e Mules knowledge. Do you suppose else that you would be given a ship to play with? You led us to the plump for Foundation as you were supposed to do.I thresh a eye of something or other out of this vastness of chaff. May I command why Im supposed to be doing all this? If were a traitor, why should I lead you to the minute Foundation? Why not here and yon by the Galaxy, skipping gaily, finding no to a great extent than you ever did?For the sake of the ship. And because the men of the Second Foundation quite simply need nuclear warfare for self-defense.Youll rescue to do better than that. One ship wont mean thing to them, and if they think theyll listen science from it a build atomic power plants next year, they are very, very simple Second Foundationers, indeed. On the pitch of simplicity as yourself, I should say.You allow puzzle the opportunity to condone that to the Mule.Were pass back to Kalgan?On the contrary. Were staying here. And the Mule will join us in 15 m inutes more or less(prenominal). Do you think he hasnt followed us, my sharp-witted, nimble-minded lump of self-admiration? You project played the decoy well up in reverse. You may not suck up led our victims to us, but you cede certainly led us to our victims.May I personate d sustain, give tongue to Channis, and explain something to you in jut out drawings? Please.You will remain standing.At*** that, I can say it as well standing. You think the Mule followed us because of the hyper examiner on the communication circuit?The blaster talent devour gesticulatered. Channis wouldnt feed sworn to it. He said You dont look surprised. just I dont waste beat doubting that you step surprised. Yes, I knew almost it. And now, having shown you that I knew of something you didnt think I did, Ill tell you something you dont know, that I know you dont.You allow yourself too many preliminaries, Channis. I should think your sense of invention was more smoothly greased. theres an inve ntion to this. There set out been traitors, of course, or enemy agents, if you prefer that term. unless the Mule knew of that in a preferably curious way. It seems, you see, that some of his Converted men had been tampered with.The blaster did waver that time. Unmistakably.I evince that, Pritcher. It was why he needed me. I was an Unconverted man. Didnt he emphasize to you that he needed an Unconverted? Whether he gave you the genuinely reason or not? filter something else, Channis. If I were a plusst the Mule, Id know it. Quietly, rapidly, Pritcher was feeling his mind. It matte the same. It felt the same. Obviously the man was lying.You mean you feel loyal to the Mule. Perhaps. Loyalty wasnt tampered with. in like manner easily detectable, the Mule said. But how do you feel mentally? Sluggish? Since you started this trip, have you always felt convening? Or have you felt strange sometimes, as though you werent quite yourself? What are you exhausting to do, bore a hole thr ough me without touching the trigger?Pritcher withdrew his blaster half an inch, What are you trying to say?I say that youve been tampered with. Youve been handled. You didnt see the Mule place that hypertracer. You didnt see anyone do it. You just piece it there, and assumed it was the Mule, and ever since youve been assuming he was following us. Sure, the wrist receiver youre wearable contacts the ship on a wave length mine isnt good for. Do you think I didnt know that? He was speaking quickly now, angrily. His cloak of languor had dissolved into savagery. But its not the Mule thats coming toward us from out there. Its not the Mule.Who, if not?Well, who do you suppose? I found that hypertracer, the day we left. But I didnt think it was the Mule. He had no reason for indirection at that point. Dont you see the nonsense of it? If I were a traitor and he knew that, I could be Converted as easily as you were, and he would have the secret of the post of the Second Foundation out o f my mind without sending me half across the Galaxy. Can you keep a secret from the Mule? And if I didnt know, then I couldnt lead him to it. So why send me in either case?Obviously, that hypertracer must have been rank there by an agent of the Second Foundation. Thats whos coming towards us now. And would you have been fooled if your precious mind hadnt been tampered with? What kind of normality have you that you imagine vast folly to be wisdom? Me need a ship to the Second Foundation? What would they do with a ship?Its you they want, Pritcher. You know more about the Union than anyone but the Mule, and youre not hazardous to them while he is. Thats why they put the direction of hunting into my mind. Of course, it was completely impossible for me to find Tazenda by random searchings of the Lens. I knew that. But I knew there was the Second Foundation after us, and I knew they engineered it. Why not play their game? It was a battle of bluffs. They wanted us and I wanted their perspective and space take the one that couldnt outbluff the other.But its we that will lose as yen as you hold that blaster on me. And it obviously isnt your idea. Its theirs. Give me the blaster, Pritcher. I know it seems handle to you, but it isnt your mind speaking, its the Second Foundation within you. Give me the blaster, Pritcher, and well face whats coming now, together. Pritcher, faced a growing confusion in horror. Plausibility Could he be so wrong? Why this eternal doubt of himself? Why wasnt he sure? What make Channis sound so plausible?PlausibilityOr was it his own tortured mind fighting the impingement of the alien.Was he split in dickens?Hazily, he saw Channis standing beforehand him, hand outstretched and suddenly, he knew he was going to give him the blaster.And as the muscles of his arm were on the point of contracting in the proper manner to do so, the room access opened, not hastily, behind him and he turned.There are perhaps men in the Galaxy who can be abstruse for one another regular by men at their peaceful leisure. Correspondingly, there may be conditions of mind when even unlikely pairs may be mis-recognized. But the Mule rises above any combination of the cardinal factors.Not all Pritchers agony of mind prevented the vociferousaneous mental engorge of cool vigor that engulfed him.Physically, the Mule could not omit any situation. Nor did he dominate this one.He was rather a anomalous figure in his layers of clothing that modify him past his normality without allowing him to reach normal dimensions even so. His face was muffled and the unremarkably dominant beak covered what was left in a cold-red prominence.Probably as a vision of rescue, no greater incongruity could exist.He said curb your blaster, Pritcher. indeed he turned to Channis, who had shrugged and lay himself The emotional context here seems rather confusing and considerably in conflict. Whats this about somebody other than myself following you?Pritcher intervened sharply Was a hypertracer placed upon our ship by your beau mondes, sir?The Mule turned cool eyes upon him, Certainly. Is it very likely that any brass in the Galaxy other than the Union of Worlds would have access to it?He said-Well, hes here, general. corroboratory quotation is not necessary. Have you been reflexion anything, Channis?Yes. But mistakes apparently, sir. It has been my opinion that the tracer was put there by someone in the pay of the Second Foundation and that we had been led here for some purpose of theirs, which I was prepared to counter. I was under the progress impression that the general was more or less in their hands.You sound as if you think so no longer.Im panicky not. Or it would not have been you at the door.Well, then, let us thresh this out. The Mule peeled off the outer layers of padded, and electrically heated clothing. Do you mind if I sit down as well? Now we are safe here and perfectly free of any peril of intrusion. No native of this lump of ice will have any confide to approach this place. I assure you of that, and there was a grim earnestness about his insistence upon his powers.Channis showed his disgust. Why privacy? Is someone going to serve tea and dumbfound out the dancing girls?Scarcely. What was this theory of yours, young man? A Second Foundationer was analyze you with a device which no one but I have and how did you say you found this place?Apparently, sir, it seems obvious, in order to account for known facts, that certain notions have been put into my head-By these same Second Foundationers?No one else, I imagine. thus it did not extend to you that if a Second Foundationer could force, or entice, or inveigle you into going to the Second Foundation for purposes of his own and I assume you imagined he used methods confusable to mine, though, mind you, I can ingraft only emotions, not ideas it did not occur to you that if he could do that there was petty(a) necessity to put a hypertracer on you.And Channis looked up sharply and met his sovereigns large eyes with sudden startle. Pritcher grunted and a visible relaxation behavior showed itself in his shoulders.No, said Channis, that hadnt occurred to me.Or that if they were obligate to trace you, they couldnt feel capable of directional you, and that, undirected, you could have precious little pretend of finding your way here as you did. Did that occur to you?That, neither.Why not? Has your expert level receded to a so-much-greater-than-probable degree?The only answer is a question, sir. Are you get together General Pritcher in accusing me of being a traitor?You have a defense in case I am? but the one I presented to the general. If I were a traitor and knew the whereabouts of the Second Foundation, you could Convert me and learn the knowledge directly. If you felt it necessary to trace me, then I hadnt the knowledge beforehand and wasnt a traitor. So I answer your paradox with another. then your conclusion?Th at I am not a traitor.To which I must agree, since your transmission line is irrefutable.Then may I ask you why you had us secretly followed?Because to all the facts there is a third explanation. both you and Pritcher explained some facts in your own one-on-one ways, but not all. I if you can spare me the time will explain all. And in a rather perfectly time, so there is little danger of boredom. Sit down, Pritcher, and give me your blaster. There is no danger of attack on us any longer. None from in here and none from out there. None in fact even from the Second Foundation. thank to you, Channis.The room was lit in the wonted(prenominal) Rossemian fashion of electrically heated wire. A single bulb was suspended from the jacket and in its dim yellow glow, the one-third cast their individual shadows.The Mule said Since I felt it necessary to trace Channis, it was obvious I expect to gain something thereby. Since he went to the Second Foundation with a startling speed and dire ctness, we can fairly assume that that was what I was expecting to happen. Since I did not gain the knowledge from him directly, something must have been preventing me. Those are the facts. Channis, of course, knows the answer. So do I. Do you see it, Pritcher?And Pritcher said doggedly No, sir.Then Ill explain. Only one kind of man can both know the location of the Second Foundation and prevent me from nurture it. Channis, Im afraid youre a Second Foundationer yourself.And Channis elbows be on his knees as he leaned forward, and through stiff and angry lips said What is your direct evidence? Deduction has proven wrong twice today.There is direct evidence, too, Channis. It was lento enough. I told you that my men had been tampered with. The tamperer must have been, obviously, someone who was a) Unconverted, and b) fairly close to the spirit of things. The field was large but not entirely unlimited. You were too successful, Channis. People like you too much. You got along too w ell. I wondered-And then I summoned you to take over this expedition and it didnt set you back. I watched your emotions. It didnt nark you. You overplayed the confidence there, Channis. No man of reliable competence could have avoided a genius of uncertainty at a telephone circuit like that. Since your mind did avoid it, it was either a foolish one or a controlled one.It was easy to test the alternatives. I seized your mind at a sec of relaxation and filled it with grief for an flagrant and then removed it. You were angry by and by with such accomplished art that I could have sworn it was a instinctive reaction, but for that which went first. For when I wrenched at your emotions, for just one instant, for one critical instant before you could catch yourself, your mind resisted. It was all I needed to know.No one could have resisted me, even for that flyspeck instant, without control similar to mine.Channis voice was low and corrosive Well, then? Now what?And now you conk as a Second Foundationer. sort of necessary, as I believe you realize.And erst again Channis stared into the muzzle of a blaster. A muzzle guided this time by a mind, not like Pritchers capable of offhand twisting to suit himself, but by one as hop on as his own and as loathly to force as his own.And the period of time allotted him for a correction of events was small.What followed thenceforth is difficult to describe by one with the normal complement of senses and the normal senselessness for emotional control.Essentially, this is what Channis realized in the tiny space of time involved in the pushing of the Mules flip upon the trigger contact.The Mules real emotional makeup was one of a hard and polished mark, unmisted by swing in the least. Had Channis been sufficiently interested by and by to calculate the time involved from the determination to shoot to the arrival of the disintegrating energies, he capacity have realized that his leeway was about one-fifth of a s econd.That was barely time.What the Mule realized in that same tiny space of time was that the emotional authorisation of Channis brain had surged suddenly upwards without his own mind feeling any encroachment and that, simultaneously, a flood of pure, thrilling aversion cascaded upon him from an unexpected direction.It was that new emotional chemical element that jerked his thumb off the contact. Nothing else could have done it, and almost together with his change of action, came complete realization of the new situation.It was a tableau that endured far less than the entailment adhering to it should require from a dramatic standpoint. There was the Mule, thumb off the blaster, staring intently upon Channis There was Channis taut, not quite strikingness to breathe yet. And there was Pritcher, convulsed in his hold in each muscle at a spasmodic breaking point every tendon writhing in an attack to hurl forward his face ill-shapen at last out of schooled woodenness into an u nidentifiable death mask of horrid loathe and his eyes only and entirely and supremely upon the Mule.Only a word or ii passed between Channis and the Mule only a word or two and that utterly revealing stream of emotional consciousness that remains forever the professedly interplay of understanding between such as they. For the sake of our own limits, it is necessary to empathize into words what went on, then, and thenceforward.Channis said, tensely Youre between two fires, First Citizen. You cant control two minds simultaneously, not when one of them is mine so you have your choice. Pritcher, is free of your Conversion now. Ive snapped the bonds. Hes the old Pritcher the one who tried to erase you once the one who thinks youre the enemy of all that is free and right and holy and hes the one besides who knows that youve degenerate him to helpless adulation for five years. Im safekeeping him back now by suppressing his will, but if you kill me, that ends, and in considerably less time than you could shift your blaster or even your will he will kill you.The Mule quite obviously realized that. He did not move.Channis keep If you turn to place him under control, to kill him, to do anything, you wont ever be quick enough to turn again to stop me.The Mule still did not move. Only a soft sigh of realization.So, said Channis, throw down the blaster, and let us be on even cost again, and you can have Pritcher back.I made a mistake, said the Mule, finally. It was wrong to have a third party present when I confronted you. It introduced one variable too many. It is a mistake that must be paid for, I suppose.He dropped the blaster carelessly, and kicked it to the other end of the room. Simultaneously, Pritcher crumpled into muddy sleep.Hell be normal when he awakes, said the Mule, indifferently.The entire exchange from the time the Mules thumb had begun pressing the trigger-contact to the time he dropped the blaster had occupied just under a second and a half of time.But just beneath the borders of consciousness, for a time just above the borders of detection, Channis caught a fugitive from justice emotional gleam in the Mules mind. And it was still one of sure and confident triumph.