Trantor to maintain contact with Terminus up to the moment of Hari's death. Leyel
should have known better. Even alive, Hari wouldn't have cared who came to his
funeral. And now, dead, he cared even less. Leyel didn't believe his friend lived on
in some ethereal plane, watching carefully and taking attendance at the services.
No, Leyel simply felt he had to be there, felt he had to speak. Not for Hari,
really. For himself. To continue to be himself, Leyel had to make some kind of
public gesture toward Hari Seldon and all he had stood for.
Who heard? Not many. Deet, who thought his eulogy was too mild by half. Hari's
staff, who were quite aware of the danger and winced at each of Leyel's list of
Hari's accomplishments. Naming them-- and emphasizing that only Seldon had the
vision to do these great works-- was, inherently a criticism of the level of
intelligence and integrity in the Empire. The Pubs were listening, too. They noted
that Leyel clearly agreed with Hari Seldon about the certainty of the Empire's
fall-- that in fact as a galactic empire it had probably already fallen, since its
authority was no longer coextensive with the Galaxy.
If almost anyone else had said such things, to such a small audience, it would
have been ignored, except to keep him from getting any job requiring a security
clearance. But when the head of the Forska family came out openly to affirm the
correctness of the views of a man who had been tried before the Commission of Public
Safety-- that posed a greater danger to the Commission than Hari Seldon.
For, as head of the Forska family, if Leyel Forska wanted, he could be one of the
great players on the political stage, could have a seat on the Commission along with
Rom Divart and Linge Chen. Of course, that would also have meant constantly watching
for assassins-- either to avoid them or to hire them-- and trying to win the
allegiance of various military strongmen in the far-flung reaches of the Galaxy.
Leyel's grandfather had spent his life in such pursuits, but Leyel's father had
declined, and Leyel himself had thoroughly immersed himself in science and never so
much as inquired about politics.
Until now. Until he made the profoundly political act of paying for Hari Seldon's
funeral and then speaking at it. What would he do next? There were a thousand
would-be warlords who would spring to revolt if a Forska promised what would-be
emperors so desperately needed: a noble sponsor, a mask of legitimacy, and money.
Did Linge Chen really believe that Leyel meant to enter politics at his advanced
age? Did he really think Leyel posed a threat?
Probably not. If he had believed it, he would surely have had Leyel killed, and no
doubt all his children as well, leaving only one of his minor grandchildren, whom
Chen would carefully control through the guardians he would appoint, thereby
acquiring control of the Forska fortune as well as his own.
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Instead, Chen only believed that Leyel might cause trouble. So he took what were,
for him, mild steps.
That was why Rom came to visit Leyel again, a week after the funeral.
Leyel was delighted to see him. "Not on somber business this time, I hope," he
said. "But such bad luck-- Deet's at the library again, she practically lives there
now, but she'd want to-"
"Leyel." Rom touched Leyel's lips with his fingers.
So it was somber business after all. Worse than somber. Rom recited what had to be
a memorized speech.
"The Commission of Public Safety has become concerned that in your declining
years--"
Leyel opened his mouth to protest, but again Rom touched his lips to silence him.
"That in your declining years, the burdens of the Forska estates are distracting
you from your exceptionally important scientific work. So great is the Empire's need
for the new discoveries and understanding your work will surely bring us, that the
Commission of Public Safety has created the office of Forska Trustee to oversee all
the Forska estates and holdings. You will, of course, have unlimited access to these
funds for your scientific work here on Trantor, and funding will continue for all
the archives and libraries you have endowed. Naturally, the Commission has no desire
for you to thank us for what is, after all, our duty to one of our noblest citizens,
but if your well-known courtesy required you to make a brief public statement of
gratitude it would not be inappropriate."
Leyel was no fool. He knew how things worked. He was being stripped of his fortune
and being placed under arrest on Trantor. There was no point in protest or
remonstrance, no point even in trying to make Rom feel guilty for having brought him
such a bitter message. Indeed, Rom himself might be in great danger-- if Leyel so
much as hinted that he expected Rom to come to his support, his dear friend might
also fall. So Leyel nodded gravely, and then carefully framed his words of reply.
"Please tell the Commissioners how grateful I am for their concern on my behalf.
It has been a long long time since anyone went to the trouble of easing my burdens.
I accept their kind offer. I am especially glad because this means that now I can
pursue my studies unencumbered."
Rom visibly relaxed. Leyel wasn't going to cause trouble. "My dear friend, I will
sleep better knowing that you are always here on Trantor, working freely in the
library or taking your leisure in the parks."
So at least they weren't going to confine him to his apartment. No doubt they
would never let him off-planet, buit it wouldn't hurt to ask. "Perhaps I'll even
have time now to visit my grandchildren now and then."
"Oh, Leyel, you and I are both too old to enjoy hyperspace any more. Leave that
for the youngsters-- they can come visit you whenever they want. And sometimes they
can stay home, while their parents come to see you."
Thus Leyel learned that if any of his children came to visit him, their children
would be held hostage, and vice versa. Leyel himself would never leave Trantor
again.
"So much the better," said Leyel. "I'll have time to write several books I've been
meaning to publish."
"The Empire waits eagerly for every scientific treatise you publish." There was a
slight emphasis on the word "scientific." "But I hope you won't bore us with one of
those tedious autobiographies."
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Leyel agreed to the restriction easily enough. "I promise, Rom. You know better
than anyone else exactly how boring my life has always been."
"Come now. My life's the boring one, Leyel, all this government claptrap and
bureaucratic bushwa. You've been at the forefront of scholarship and learning.
Indeed, my friend, the Commission hopes you'll honor us by giving us first look at
every word that comes out of your scriptor."
"Only if you promise to read it carefully and point out any mistakes I might
make." No doubt the Commission intended only to censor his work to remove political
material-- which Leyel had never included anyway. But Leyel had already resolved
never to publish anythin
g again, at least as long as Linge Chen was Chief
Commissioner. The safest thing Leyel could do now was to disappear, to let Chen
forget him entirely-- it would be egregiously stupid to send occasional articles to
Chen, thus reminding him that Leyel was still around.
But Rom wasn't through yet. "I must extend that request to Deet's work as well. We
really want first look at it-- do tell her so."
"Deet?" For the first time Leyel almost let his fury show. Why should Deet be
punished because of Leyel's indiscretion? "Oh, she'll be too shy for that, Rom-- she
doesn't think her work is important enough to deserve any attention from men as busy
as the Commissioners. They'll think you only want to see her work because she's my
wife-- she's always annoyed when people patronize her."
"You must insist, then, Leyel," said Rom. "I assure you, her studies of the
functions of the Imperial bureaucracy have long been interesting to the Commission
for their own sake."
Ah. Of course. Chen would never have allowed a report on the workings of
government to appear without making sure it wasn't dangerous. Censorship of Deet's
writings wouldn't be Leyel's fault after all. Or at least not entirely.
"I'll tell her that, Rom. She'll be flattered. But won't you stay and tell her
yourself? I can bring you a cup of peshat, we ran talk about old times--"
Leyel would have been surprised if Rom had stayed. No, this interview had been at
least as hard on Rom as it had been on him. The very fact that Rom had been forced
into being the Commission's messenger to his childhood friend was a humiliating
reminder that the Chens were in the ascendant over the Divarts. But as Rom bowed and
left, it occuffed to Leyel that Chen might have made a mistake. Humiliating Rom this
way, forcing him to place his dearest friend under arrest like this-- it might be
the straw to break the camel's back. After all, though no one had ever been able to
find out who hired the assassin who killed Rom's father, and no one had ever learned
who denounced Rom's grandfather, leading to his execution by the paranoid Emperor
Wassiniwak, it didn't take a genius to realize that the House of Chen had profited
most from both events.
"I wish I could stay," said Rom. "But duty calls. Still, you can be sure I'll
think of you often. Of course, I doubt I'll think of you as you are now, you old
wreck. I'll remember you as a boy, when we used to tweak our tutor-- remember the
time we recoded his lector, so that for a whole week explicit pornography kept
coming up on the display whenever the door of his room opened?"
Leyel couldn't help laughing. "You never forget anything, do you!"
"The poor fool. He never figured out that it was us! Old times. Why couldn't we
have stayed young forever?" He embraced Leyel and then swiftly left.
Linge Chen, you fool, you have reached too far. Your days are numbered. None of
the Pubs who were listening in on their conversation could possibly know that Rom
and Leyel had never teased their tutor-- and that they had never done anything to
his lector. It was just Rom's way of letting Leyel know that they were still allies,
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still keeping secrets together-- and that someone who had authority over both of
them was going to be in for a few nasty surprises.
It gave Leyel chills, thinking about what might come of all this. He loved Rom
Divart with all his heart, but he also knew that Rom was capable of biding his time
and then killing swiftly, efficiently, coldly. Linge Chen had just started his
latest six-year term of office, but Leyel knew he'd never finish it. And the next
Chief Commissioner would not be a Chen.
Soon, though, the enormity of what had been done to him began to sink in. He had
always thought that his fortune meant little to him-- that he would be the same man
with or without the Forska estates. But now he began to realize that it wasn't true,
that he'd been lying to himself all along. He had known since childhood how
despicable rich and powerful men could be-- his father had made sure he saw and
understood how cruel men became, when their money persuaded them they had a right to
use others however they wished. So Leyel had learned to despise his own birthright,
and, starting with his father, had pretended to others that he could make his way
through the world solely by wit and diligence, that he would have been exactly the
same man if he had grown up in a common family, with a common education. He had done
such a good job of acting as if he didn't care about his wealth that he came to
believe it himself.
Now he realized that Forska estates had been an invisible part of himself all
along, as if they were extensions of his body, as if he could flex a muscle and
cargo ships would fly, he could blink and mines would be sunk deep into the earth,
he could sigh and all over the Galaxy there would be a wind of change that would
keep blowing until everything was exactly as he wanted it. Now all those invisible
limbs and senses had been amputated. Now he was crippled-- he had only as many arms
and legs and eyes as any other human being.
At last he was what he had always pretended to be. An ordinary, powerless man. He
hated it.
For the flrst hours after Rom left, Leyel pretended he could take all this in
stride. He sat at the lector and spun through the pages smoothly-- without
anythifig,on the pages registering in his memory. He kept wishing Deet were there so
Deet was not there, because one sympathetic touch of her hand would push him over
the edge, make it impossible to contain his emotion.
Finally he could not help himself. Thinking of Deet, of their children and
grandchildren, of all that had been lost to them because he had made an empty
gesture to a dead friend, he threw himself to the softened floor and wept bitterly.
Let Chen listen to recordings of what the spy beam shows of this! Let him savor his
victory! I'll destroy him somehow, my staff is still loyal to me, I'll put together
an army, I'll hire assassins of my own, I'll make contact with Admiral Sipp, and
then Chen will be the one to sob, crying out for mercy as I disfigure him the way he
has mutilated me--
Fool.
Leyel rolled over onto his back, dried his face on his sleeve, then lay there,
eyes closed, calming himself. No vengeance. No politics. That was Rom's business,
not Leyel's. Too late for him to enter the game now-- and who would help him,
anyway, now that he had already lost his power? There was nothing to be done.
Leyel didn't really want to do anything, anyway. Hadn't they guaranteed that his
archives and libraries would continue to be funded? Hadn't they guaranteed him
unlimited research funds? And wasn't that all he had cared about anyway? He had long
since turned over all the Forska operations to his subordinates-- Chen's trustee
would simply do the same job. And Leyel's children wouldn't suffer much-- he had
raised them with the same values that he had grown up with, and so they all pursued
careers unrelated to the Forska holdings. They were true chil
dren of their father
and mother-- they wouldn't have any self-respect if they didn't earn their own way
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in the world. No doubt they'd be disappointed by having their inheritance snatched
away. But they wouldn't be destroyed.
I am not ruined. All the lies that Rom told are really true, only they didn't
realize it. All that matters in my life, I still have. I really don't care about my
fortune. It's just the way I lost it that made me so furious. I can go on and be the
same person I always was. This will even give me an opportunity to see who my true
friends are-- to see who still honors me for my scientific achievements, and who
despises me for my poverty.
By the time Deet got home from the library-- late, as was usual these days-- Leyel
was hard at work, reading back through all the research and speculation on
protohuman behavior, trying to see ff there was anything other than half-assed
guesswork and pompous babble. He was so engrossed in his reading that he spent the
first fifteen minutes after she got home telling her of the hilarious stupidities he
had found in the day's reading and then sharing a wonderful, impossible thought he
had had.
"What if the human species isn't the only branch to evolve on our family tree?
What if there's some other primate species that looks exactly like us, but can't
interbreed with us, that functions in a completely different way, and we don't even
know it, we all think everybody's just like us, but here and there all over the
Empire there are whole towns, cities, maybe even worlds of people who secretly
aren't human at all."
"But Leyel, my overwrought husband, if they look just like us and act just like
us, then they are human."
"But they don't act exactly like us. There's a difference. A completely different
set of rules and assumptions. Only they don't know that we're different, and we
don't know that they're different. Or even if we suspect it, we're never sure. Just
two different species, living side by side and never guessing it."
She kissed him. "You poor fool, that isn't speculation, it already exists. You
have just described the relationship between males and females. Two completely
different species, completely unintelligible to each other, living side by side and