Kleise may have worked in secret, yet he had to have men working for him and with him. He had subjects whose brains he probed. He had a University that backed him. All these were weaknesses.
Kleise could not understand that; and he, Darell, could not explain that. They parted enemies. It was well; they had to. He had to leave in surrender – in case someone watched.
Where Kleise worked with charts; Darell worked with mathematical concepts in the recesses of his mind. Kleise worked with many; Darell with none. Kleise in a University; Darell in the quiet of a suburban house.
And he was almost there.
A Second Foundationer is not human as far as his cerebrum is concerned. The cleverest physiologist, the most subtle neurochemist might detect nothing – yet the difference must be there.
And since the difference was one of the mind, it was there that it must be detectable.
Given a man like the Mule – and there was no doubt that the Second Foundationers had the Mule’s powers, whether inborn or acquired – with the power of detecting and controlling human emotions, deduce from that the electronic circuit required, and deduce from that the last details of the encephalograph on which it could not help but be betrayed.
And now Kleise had returned into his life, in the person of his ardent young pupil, Anthor.
Folly! Folly! With his graphs and charts of people who had been tampered with. He had learned to detect that years ago, but of what use was it. He wanted the arm; not the tool. Yet he had to agree to join Anthor, since it was the quieter course.
Just as now he would become Administrator of Research and Development. It was the quieter course! And so he remained a conspiracy within a conspiracy.
The thought of Arcadia teased him for a moment, and he shuddered away from it. Left to himself, it would never have happened. Left to himself, no one would ever have been endangered but himself. Left to himself–
He felt the anger rising-against the dead Kleise, the living Anthor, all the well-meaning fools–
Well, she could take care of herself. She was a very mature little girl.
She could take care of herself!
It was a whisper in his mind–
Yet could she?
At the moment, that Dr. Darell told himself mournfully that she could, she was sitting in the coldly austere anteroom of the Executive Offices of the First Citizen of the Galaxy. For half an hour she had been sitting there, her eyes sliding slowly about the walls. There had been two armed guards at the door when she had entered with Homir Munn. They hadn’t been there the other times.
She was alone, now, yet she sensed the unfriendliness of the very furnishings of the room. And for the first time.
Now, why should that be?
Homir was with Lord Stettin. Well, was that wrong?
It made her furious. In similar situations in the book-films and the videos, the hero foresaw the conclusion, was prepared for it when it came, and she – she just sat there. Anything could happen. Anything! And she just sat there.
Well, back again. Think it back. Maybe something would come.
For two weeks, Homir had nearly lived inside the Mule’s palace. He had taken her once, with Stettin’s permission. It was large and gloomily massive, shrinking from the touch of life to lie sleeping within its ringing memories, answering the footsteps with a hollow boom or a savage clatter. She hadn’t liked it.
Better the great, gay highways of the capital city; the theaters and spectacles of a world essentially poorer than the Foundation, yet spending more of its wealth on display.
Homir would return in the evening, awed–
“It’s a dream-world for me,” he would whisper. “If I could only chip the palace down stone by stone, layer by layer of the aluminum sponge. If I could carry it back to Terminus– What a museum it would make.”
He seemed to have lost that early reluctance. He was eager, instead; glowing. Arcadia knew that by the one sure sign; he practically never stuttered throughout that period.