It was not till nearly midnight, that he entered the living room again.
Pelleas Anthor was still there, twiddling at the controls of the video. The footsteps behind him caused him to glance over his shoulder.
“Hi. Aren’t you in bed yet? I’ve been spending hours on the video, trying to get something other than bulletins. It seems the F.S. Hober Mallow is delayed in course and hasn’t been heard from”
“Really? What do they suspect?”
“What do you think? Kalganian skulduggery. There are reports that Kalganian vessels were sighted in the general space sector in which the Hober Mallow was last heard from?”
Darell shrugged, and Anthor rubbed his forehead doubtfully.
“Look doc,” he said, “why don’t you go to Trantor?”
“Why should I?”
“Because “You’re no good to us here. You’re not yourself. You can’t be. And you could accomplish a purpose by going to Trantor, too. The old Imperial Library with the complete records of the Proceedings of the Seldon Commission are there–”
“No! The Library has been picked clean and it hasn’t helped anyone.”
“It helped Ebling Mis once.”
“How do you know? Yes, he said he found the Second Foundation, and my mother killed him five seconds later as the only way to keep him from unwittingly revealing its location to the Mule. But in doing so, she also, you realize, made it impossible ever to tell whether Mis really did know the location. After all, no one else has ever been able to deduce the truth from those records.”
“Ebling Mis, if you’ll remember, was working under the driving impetus of the Mule’s mind.”
“I know that, too, but Mis’ mind was, by that very token, in an abnormal state. Do you and I know anything about the properties of a mind under the emotional control of another; about its abilities and shortcomings? In any case, I will not go to Trantor.”
Anthor frowned, “Well, why the vehemence? I merely suggested it as – well, by Space, I don’t understand you. You look ten years older. You’re obviously having a hellish time of it. You’re not doing anything of value here. If I were you, I’d go and get the girl.”
“Exactly! It’s what I want to do, too. That’s why I won’t do it. Look, Anthor, and try to understand. You’re playing – we’re both playing – with something completely beyond our powers to fight. In cold blood, if you have any, you know that, whatever you may think in your moments of quixoticism.
“For fifty years, we’ve known that the Second Foundation is the real descendent and pupil of Seldonian mathematics. What that means, and you know that, too, is that nothing in the Galaxy happens which does not play a part in their reckoning. To us, all life is a series of accidents, to be met with by improvisations To them, all life is purposive and should be met by precalculation.
“But they have their weakness. Their work is statistical and only the mass action of humanity is truly inevitable. Now how I play a part, as an individual, in the foreseen course of history, I don’t know. Perhaps I have no definite part, since the Plan leaves individuals to indeterminacy and free will. But I am important and they – they, you understand – may at least have calculated my probable reaction. So I distrust, my impulses, my desires, my probable reactions.
“I would rather present them with an improbable reaction. I will stay here, despite the fact that I yearn very desperately to leave. “No! Because I yearn very desperately to leave.”
The younger man smiled sourly. “You don’t know your own mind as well as they might. Suppose that – knowing you – they might count on what you think, merely think, is the improbable reaction, simply by knowing in advance what your line of reasoning would be.”
“In that case, there is no escape. For if I follow the reasoning you have just outlined and go to Trantor, they may have foreseen that, too. There is an endless cycle of double-double-double-double-crosses. No matter how far I follow that cycle, I can only either go or stay. The intricate act of luring my daughter halfway across the Galaxy cannot be meant to make me stay where I am, since I would most certainly have stayed if they had done nothing. It can only be to make me move, and so I will stay.