“Well then, I am titled Stor Gendibal and I will now go about my business.”

“What be your business?”

Gendibal felt the hair prickling on the back of his neck. There were other minds present. He did not have to turn to know there were three more Hamishmen behind him. Off in the distance, there were others. The farmer smell was strong.

“My business, Karoll Rufirant, is certainly none of yours.”

“Say you so?” Rufirant's voice rose. “Mates, he says his business be not ours.”

There was a laugh from behind him and a voice sounded. “Right he be, for his business be book-mucking and 'puter-rubbing, and that be naught for true men.”

“Whatever my business is,” said Gendibal firmly, “I will be about it now.”

“And how will you do that, wee scowler?” said Rufirant.

“By passing you.”

“You would try? You would not fear arm-stopping?”

“By you and all your mates? Or by you alone?” Gendibal suddenly dropped into thick Hamish dialect. “Art not feared alone?”

Strictly speaking, it was not proper to prod him in this manner, but it would stop a mass attack and that had to be stopped, lest it force a still greater indiscretion on his part.

It worked. Rufirant's expression grew lowering. “If fear there be, bookboy, th'art the one to be full of it. Mates, make room. Stand back and let him pass that he may see if I be feared alane.”

Rufirant lifted his great arms and moved them about. Gendibal did not fear the farmer's pugilistic science; but there was always a chance that a goodly blow might land.

Gendibal approached cautiously, working with delicate speed within Rufirant's mind. Not much—just a touch, unfelt—but enough to slow reflexes that crucial notch. Then out, and into all the others, who were now gathering in greater numbers. Gendibal's Speaker mind darted back and forth with virtuosity, never resting in one mind long enough to leave a mark, but just long enough for the detection of something that might be useful.

He approached the farmer catlike, watchful, aware and relieved that no one was making a move to interfere.

Rufirant struck suddenly, but Gendibal saw it in his mind before any muscle had begun to tighten and he stepped to one side. The blow whistled past, with little room to spare. Yet Gendibal still stood there, unshaken. There was a collective sigh from the others.

Gendibal made no attempt to either parry or return a blow. It would be difficult to parry without paralyzing his own arm and to return a blow would be of no use, far the farmer would withstand it without trouble.

He could only maneuver the man as though he were a bull, forcing him to miss. That would serve to break his morale as direct opposition would not.

Bull-like and roaring, Rufirant charged. GendibaI was ready and drifted to one side just sufficiently to allow the farmer to miss his clutch. Again the charge. Again the miss.

GendibaI felt his own breath begin to whistle through his nose. The physical effort was small, but the mental effort of trying to control without controlling was enormously difficult. He could not keep it up long.

He said—as calmly as he could while batting lightly at Rufirant's fear-depressant mechanism, trying to rouse in a minimalist manner what must surely be the farmer's superstitious dread of scholars—“I will now go about my business.”

Rufirant's face distorted with rage, but for a moment he did not move. Gendibal could sense his thinking. The little scholar had melted away like magic. Gendibal could feel the other's fear rise and for a moment

But then the Hamish rage surged higher and drowned the fear.

Rufirant shouted, “Mates! Scowler he dancer. He do duck on nimble toes and scorns the rules of honest Hamish blow-for-blow. Seize him. Hold him. We will trade blow for blow, then. He may be firststriker, gift of me, and I—I will be last-striker.”

Gendibal found the gaps among those who now surrounded him. His only chance was to maintain a gap long enough to get through, then to run, trusting to his own wind and to his ability to dull the farmers' will.

Back and forth he dodged, with his mind cramping in effort.

It would rat work. There were too many of them and the necessity of abiding within the rules of Trantorian behavior was too constricting.

He felt hands on his arms. He was held.

He would have to interfere with at least a few of the minds. It would be unacceptable and his cancer would be destroyed. But his life—his very life—was at hazard.

How had this happened?

The meeting of the Table was not complete.

It was not the custom to wait if any Speaker were late. Nor, thought Shandess, was the Table in a mood to wait, in any case. Stor Gendibal was the youngest and far from sufficiently aware of the fact. He acted as though youth were in itself a virtue and age a matter of negligence on the part of those who should know better. Gendibal was not popular with the other Speakers. He was not, in point of fact, entirely popular with Shandess himself. But popularity was not at issue here.

Delora Delarmi broke in on his reverie. She was looking at him out of wide blue eyes, her round face—with its accustomed air of innocence and friendliness—masking an acute mind (to all but other Second Foundationers of her own rank) and ferocity of concentration.

She said, smiling, “First Speaker, do we wait longer?” (The meeting had not yet been formally called to order so that, strictly speaking, she could open the conversation, though another might have waited for Shandess to speak first by right of his title.)

Shandess looked at her disarmingly, despite the slight breach in courtesy. “Ordinarily we would not, Speaker Delarmi, but since the Table meets precisely to hear Speaker Gendibal, it is suitable to stretch the rules.”

“Where is he, First Speaker?”

“That, Speaker Delarmi, I do not know.”

Delarmi looked about the rectangle of faces. There was the First Speaker and what should have been eleven other Speakers.—Only twelve. Through five centuries, the Second Foundation had expanded its powers and its duties, but all attempts to expand the Table beyond twelve had failed.

Twelve it had been after Seldon's death, when the second First Speaker (Seldon himself had always been considered as having been the first of the line) had established it, and twelve it still was.

Why twelve? That number divided itself easily into groups of identical size. It was small enough to consult as a whole and large enough to do work in subgroups. More would have been too unwieldy; fewer, too inflexible.

So went the explanations. In fact, no one knew why the number had been chosen—or why it should be immutable. But then, even the Second Foundation could find itself a slave to tradition.

It took Delarmi only a flashing moment to have her mind twiddle the matter as she looked from face to face, and mind to mind, and then, sardonically, at the empty seat—the junior seat.

She was satisfied that there was no sympathy at all with Gendibal. The young man, she had always felt, had all the charm of a centipede and was best treated as one. So far, only his unquestioned ability and talent had kept anyone from openly proposing trial for expulsion. (Only two Speakers had been impeached—but not convicted—in the hemimillennial history of the Second Foundation.)

The obvious contempt, however, of missing a meeting of the Table was worse than many an offense and Delarmi was pleased to sense that the mood for trial had moved forward rather more than a notch.

She said, “First Speaker, if you do not know the whereabouts of Speaker Gendibal, I would be pleased to tell you.”

“Yes, Speaker?”

“Who among us does not know that this young man” (she used no honorific in speaking of him, and it was something that everyone noted, of course) “finds business among the Hamish continually? What that business might be, I do not ask, but he is among them now and his concern with them is clearly important enough to take precedence over this Table.”