The answer came in little periods of noiseless vibration that barely lifted themselves above the sensory threshold.
Twice Pritcher asked: “Any communications at all yet?”
Twice the answer came: “None. We wait always.”
He got out of bed. It was cold in the room and he pulled the furry blanket around him as he sat in the chair and stared out at the crowding stars so different in the brightness and complexity of their arrangement from the even fog of the Galactic Lens that dominated the night sky of his native Periphery.
Somewhere there between the stars was the answer to the complications that overwhelmed him, and he felt the yearning for that solution to arrive and end things.
For a moment he wondered again if the Mule were right – if Conversion had robbed him of the firm sharp edge of self-reliance. Or was it simply age and the fluctuations of these last years?
He didn’t really care.
He was tired.
The governor of Rossem arrived with minor ostentation. His only companion was the uniformed man at the controls of the ground-car.
The ground-car itself was of lush design but to Pritcher it appeared inefficient. It turned clumsily; more than once it apparently balked at what might have been a too-rapid change of gears. It was obvious at once from its design that it ran on chemical, and not on atomic, fuel.
The Tazendian governor stepped softly on to the thin layer of snow and advanced between two lines of respectful Elders. He did not look at them but entered quickly. They followed after him.
From the quarters assigned to them, the two men of the Mule’s Union watched. He – the governor – was thickset, rather stocky, short, unimpressive.
But what of that?
Pritcher cursed himself for a failure of nerve. His face, to be sure, remained icily calm. There was no humiliation before Channis – but he knew very well that his blood pressure had heightened and his throat had become dry.
It was not a case of physical fear. He was not one of those dull-witted, unimaginative men of nerveless meat who were too stupid ever to be afraid – but physical fear he could account for and discount.
But this was different. It was the other fear.
He glanced quickly at Channis. The young man glanced idly at the nails of one hand and poked leisurely at some trifling unevenness.
Something inside Pritcher became vastly indignant. What had Channis to fear of mental handling?
Pritcher caught a mental breath and tried to think back. How had he been before the Mule had Converted him from the die-hard Democrat that he was. It was hard to remember. He could not place himself mentally. He could not break the clinging wires that bound him emotionally to the Mule. Intellectually, he could remember that he had once tried to assassinate the Mule but not for all the straining he could endure, could he remember his emotions at the time. That might be the self-defense of his own mind, however, for at the intuitive thought of what those emotions might have been – not realizing the details, but merely comprehending the drift of it – his stomach grew queasy.
What if the governor tampered with his mind?
What if the insubstantial mental tendrils of a Second Foundationer insinuated itself down the emotional crevices of his makeup and pulled them apart and rejoined them?
There had been no sensation the first time. There had been no pain, no mental jar – not even a feeling of discontinuity. He had always loved the Mule. If there had ever been a time long before – as long before as five short years – when he had thought he hadn’t loved him, that he had hated him – that was just a horrid illusion. The thought of that illusion embarrassed him.
But there had been no pain.
Would meeting the governor duplicate that? Would all that had gone before – all his service for the Mule – all his life’s orientation – join the hazy, other-life dream that held the word, Democracy. The Mule also a dream, and only to Tazenda, his loyalty–
Sharply, he turned away.