Prelude to Foundation

Seldon looked up and found the embarrassed face of Lisung Randa peering at him around the edge of the alcove opening. Seldon knew Randa, had been introduced to him by Dors, and had dined with him (and with others) on several occasions. Randa, an instructor in psychology, was a little man, short and plump, with a round cheerful face and an almost perpetual smile. He had a sallow complexion and the narrowed eyes so characteristic of people on millions of worlds. Seldon knew that appearance well, for there were many of the great mathematicians who had borne it, and he had frequently seen their holograms. Yet on Helicon he had never seen one of these Easterners. (By tradition they were called that, though no one knew why; and the Easterners themselves were said to resent the term to some degree, but again no one knew why.)

“There’s millions of us here on Trantor,” Randa had said, smiling with no trace of self-consciousness, when Seldon, on first meeting him, had not been able to repress all trace of startled surprise. “You’ll also find lots of Southerners-dark skins, tightly curled hair. Did you ever see one?”

“Not on Helicon,” muttered Seldon.

“All Westerners on Helicon, eh? How dull! But it doesn’t matter. Takes all kinds.” (He left Seldon wondering at the fact that there were Easterners, Southerners, and Westerners, but no Northerners. He had tried finding an answer to why that might be in his reference searches and had not succeeded.) And now Randa’s good-natured face was looking at him with an almost ludicrous look of concern. He said, “Are you all right, Seldon?”

Seldon stared. “Yes, of course. Why shouldn’t I be?”

“I’m just going by sounds, my friend. You were screaming.”

“Screaming?” Seldon looked at him with offended disbelief.

“Not loud. Like this.” Randa gritted his teeth and emitted a strangled high-pitched sound from the back of his throat. “If I’m wrong, I apologize for this unwarranted intrusion on you. Please forgive me.”

Seldon hung his head. “You’re forgiven, Lisung. I do make that sound sometimes, I’m told. I assure you it’s unconscious. I’m never aware of it.”

“Are you aware why you make it?”

“Yes. Frustration. Frustration.”

Randa beckoned Seldon closer and lowered his voice further. “We’re disturbing people. Let’s come out to the lounge before we’re thrown out.”

In the lounge, over a pair of mild drinks, Randa said, “May I ask you, as a matter of professional interest, why you are feeling frustration?”

Seldon shrugged. “Why does one usually feel frustration? I’m tackling something in which I am making no progress.”

“But you’re a mathematician, Hari. Why should anything in the history library frustrate you?”

“What were you doing here?”

“Passing through as part of a shortcut to where I was going when I heard you… moaning. Now you see”-and he smiled-“it’s no longer a shortcut, but a serious delay-one that I welcome, however.”

“I wish I were just passing through the history library, but I’m trying to solve a mathematical problem that requires some knowledge of history and I’m afraid I’m not handling it well.”

Randa stared at Seldon with an unusually solemn expression on his face, then he said, “Pardon me, but I must run the risk of offending you now. I’ve been computering you.”

“Computering me!” Seldon’s eyes widened. He felt distinctly angry.

“I have offended you. But, you know, I had an uncle who was a mathematician. You might even have heard of him: Kiangtow Randa.”

Seldon drew in his breath. “Are you a relative of that Randa?”

“Yes. He is my father’s older brother and he was quite displeased with me for not following in his footsteps-he has no children of his own. I thought somehow that it might please him that I had met a mathematician and I wanted to boast of you-if I could-so I checked what information the mathematics library might have.”

“I see. And that’s what you were really doing there. Well-I’m sorry. I don’t suppose you could do much boasting.”

“You suppose wrong. I was impressed. I couldn’t make heads or tails of the subject matter of your papers, but somehow the information seemed to be very favorable. And when I checked the news files, I found you were at the Decennial Convention earlier this year. So… what’s ‘psychohistory,’ anyway? Obviously, the first two syllables stir my curiosity.”

“I see you got that word out of it.”

“Unless I’m totally misled, it seemed to me that you can work out the future course of history.”

Seldon nodded wearily, “That, more or less, is what psychohistory is or, rather, what it is intended to be.”

“But is it a serious study?” Randa was smiling. “You don’t just throw sticks?”

“Throw sticks?”