“Almost got you at the end. Would have turned off defenses and seized you. Would have seen who was master. But you gave me dummy controls … suspected me all along–”
And finally he was asleep.
Turbor said, in awed tones, “How long did you suspect him, Darell?”
“Ever since he first came here,” was the quiet response. “He came from Kleise, he said. But I knew Kleise; and I knew on what terms we parted. He was a fanatic on the subject of the Second Foundation and I had deserted him. My own purposes were reasonable, since I thought it best and safest to pursue my own notions by myself. But I couldn’t tell Kleise that; and he wouldn’t have listened if I had. To him, I was a coward and a traitor, perhaps even an agent of the Second Foundation. He was an unforgiving man and from that time almost to the day of his death he had no dealings with me. Then, suddenly, in his last few weeks of life, he writes me – as an old friend – to greet his best and most promising pupil as a co-worker and begin again the old investigation.
“It was out of character. How could he possibly do such a thing without being under outside influence, and I began to wonder if the only purpose might not be to introduce into my confidence a real agent of the Second Foundation. Well, it was so–”
He sighed and closed his own eyes for a moment.
Semic put in hesitantly, “What will we do with all of them … these Second Foundation fellas?”
“I don’t know,” said Darell, sadly. “We could exile them, I suppose. There’s Zoranel, for instance. They can be placed there and the planet saturated with Mind Static. The sexes can be separated, or, better still, they can be sterilized – and in fifty years, the Second Foundation will be a thing of the past. Or perhaps a quiet death for all of them would be kinder.”
“Do you suppose,” said Turbor, “we could learn the use of this sense of theirs. Or are they born with it, like the Mule.”
“I don’t know. I think it is developed through long training, since there are indications from encephalography that the potentialities of it are latent in the human mind. But what do you want that sense for? It hasn’t helped them.”
He frowned.
Though he said nothing, his thoughts were shouting.
It had been too easy – too easy. They had fallen, these invincibles, fallen like book-villains, and he didn’t like it.
Galaxy! When can a man know he is not a puppet? How can a man know he is not a puppet?
Arcadia was coming home, and his thoughts shuddered away from that which he must face in the end.
She was home for a week, then two, and he could not loose the tight check upon those thoughts. How could he? She had changed from child to young woman in her absence, by some strange alchemy. She was his link to life; his fink to a bittersweet marriage that scarcely outlasted his honeymoon.
And then, late one evening, he said as casually as he could, “Arcadia, what made you decide that Terminus contained both Foundations?”
They had been to the theater; in the best seats with private trimensional viewers for each; her dress was new for the occasion, and she was happy.
She stared at him for a moment, then tossed it off. “Oh, I Don’t know, Father. It just came to me.”
A layer of ice thickened about Dr. Darell’s heart.
“Think,” he said, intensely. “This is important. What made you decide both Foundations were on Terminus.”
She frowned slightly. “Well, there was Lady Callia. I knew she was a Second Foundationer. Anthor said so, too.”
“But she was on Kalgan,” insisted Darell. “What made you decide on Terminus?”
And now Arcadia waited for several minutes before she answered. What had made her decide? What had made her decide?
She had the horrible sensation of something slipping just beyond her grasp.
She said, “She knew about things – Lady Callia did – and must have had her information from Terminus. Doesn’t that sound right, Father?