Delarmi said bitterly, “We run the risk, First Speaker, of having posterity laugh at us for belaboring the obvious. To continue the defense is your decision.”

Gendibal drew a deep breath. “In line with your decision, then, First Speaker, I wish to call a witness—a young woman I met three days ago and without whom I might not have reached the Table meeting at all, instead of merely being late.”

“Is the woman you speak of known to the Table?” asked the First Speaker.

“No, First Speaker. She is native to this planet.”

Delarmi's eyes opened wide. “A Hamishwoman?”

“Indeed! Just so!”

Delarmi said, “What have we to do with one of those? Nothing they say can be of any importance. They don't exist!”

Gendibal's lips drew back tightly over his teeth in something that could not possibly have been mistaken for a smile. He said sharply, “Physically all the Hamish exist. They are human beings and play their part in Seldon's Plan. In their indirect protection of the Second Foundation, they play a crucial part. I wish to dissociate myself from Speaker Delarmi's inhumanity and hope that her remark will be retained in the record and be considered hereafter as evidence for her possible unfitness for the position of Speaker.—Will the rest of the Table agree with the Speaker's incredible remark and deprive me of my witness?”

The First Speaker said, “Call your witness, Speaker.”

Gendibal's lips relaxed into the normal expressionless features of a Speaker under pressure. His mind was guarded and fenced in, but behind this protective barrier, he felt that the danger point had passed and that he had won.

Sura Novi looked strained. Her eyes were wide and her lower lip was faintly trembling. Her hands were slowly clenching and unclenching and her chest was heaving slightly. Her hair had been pulled back and braided into a bun; her sun-darkened face twitched now and then. Her hands fumbled at the pleats of her long skirt. She looked hastily around the Table—from Speaker to Speaker—her wide eyes filled with awe.

They glanced back at her with varying degrees of contempt and discomfort. Delarmi kept her eyes well above the top of Novi's head, oblivious to her presence.

Carefully Gendibal touched the skin of her mind, soothing and relaxing it. He might have done the same by patting her hand or stroking her cheek, but here, under these circumstances, that was impossible, of course.

He said, “First Speaker, I am numbing this woman's conscious awareness so that her testimony wilt not be distorted by fear. Will you please observe—will the rest of you, if you wish, join me and observe that I will, in no way, modify her mind?”

Novi had started back in terror at Gendibal's voice, and Gendibal was not surprised at that. He realized that she had never heard Second Foundationers of high rank speak among themselves. She had never experienced that odd swift combination of sound, tone, expression and thought. The terror, however, faded as quickly as it came, as he gentled her mind.

A look of placidity crossed her face.

“There is a chair behind you, Novi,” Gendibal said. “Please sit down.”

Novi curtsied in a small and clumsy manner and sat down, holding herself stiffly.

She talked quite clearly, but Gendibal made her repeat when her Hamish accent became too thick. And because he kept his own speech formal in deference to the Table, he occasionally had to repeat his own questions to her.

The tale of the fight between himself and Rufirant was described quietly and well.

Gendibal said, “Did you see all this yourself, Novi?”

“Nay, Master, or I would have sooner-stopped it. Rufirant be good fellow, but not quick in head.”

“But you described it all. How is that possible if you did not see it all?

“Rufirant be telling me thereof, on questioning. He be ashamed.”

“Ashamed? Have you ever known him to behave in this manner in earlier times?”

“Rufirant? Nay, Master. He be gentle, though he be large. He be no fighter and he be afeared of scowlers. He say often they are mighty and possessed of power.”

“ Why didn't he feel this way when he met me?”

“It be strange. It be not understood.” She shook her head. “He be not his ain self. I said to him, ‘Thou blubber-head. Be it your place to assault scowler?’ And he said, ‘I know not how it happened. It be like I am to one side, standing and watching not-I.’”

Speaker Cheng interrupted. “First Speaker, of what value is it to have this woman report what a man has told her? Is not the man available for questioning?”

Gendibal said, “He is. If, on completion of this woman's testimony, the Table wishes to hear more evidence, I will be ready to call Karoll Rufirant—my recent antagonist—to the stand. If not, the Table can move directly to judgment when I am done with this witness.”

“Very well,” said the First Speaker. “Proceed with your witness.”

Gendibal said, “And you, Novi? Was it like you to interfere in a fight in this manner?”

Novi did not say anything for a moment. A small frown appeared between her thick eyebrows and then disappeared. She said, “I know not. I wish no harm to scowlers. I be, driven, and without thought I inmiddled myself.” A pause, then., “I be do it over if need arise.”

Gendibal said, “Novi, you will sleep now. You will think of nothing. You will rest and you will not even dream.”

Novi mumbled for a moment. Her eyes closed and her head fell back against the headrest of her chair.

Gendibal waited a moment, then said, “First Speaker, with respect, follow me into this woman's mind. You will find it remarkably simple and symmetrical, which is fortunate, for what you will see might not have been visible otherwise.—Here—here! Do you observe?—If the rest of you will enter—it will be easier if it is done one at a time.”

There was a rising buzz about the Table.

Gendibal said, “Is there any doubt among you?”

Delarmi said, “I doubt it, for…” She paused on the brink of what was—even for her—unsayable.

Gendibal said it for her. “You think I deliberately tampered with this mind in order to present false evidence? You think, therefore, that I am capable of bringing about so delicate an adjustment—one mental fiber clearly out of shape with nothing about it or its surroundings that is in the least disturbed? If I could do that, what need would I have to deal with any of you in this manner? Why subject myself to the indignity of a trial? Why labor to convince you? If I could do what is visible in this woman's mind, you would all be helpless before me unless you were well prepared.—The blunt fact is that none of you could manipulate a mind as this woman's has been manipulated. Neither can I. Yet it has been done.”

He paused, looking at all the Speakers in turn, then fixing his gaze on Delarmi. He spoke slowly. “Now, if anything more is required, I will call in the Hamish farmer, Karoll Rufirant, whom I have examined and whose mind has also been tampered with in this manner.”

“That will not be necessary,” said the First Speaker, who was wearing an appalled expression. “What we have seen is mindshaking.”

“In that case,” said Gendibal, “may I rouse this Hamishwoman and dismiss her? I have arranged for there to be those outside who will see to her recovery.”

When Novi had left, directed by Gendibal's gentle hold on her elbow, be said, “Let me quickly summarize. Minds can be—and have been altered in ways that are beyond our power. In this way, the curators themselves could have been influenced to remove Earth material from the Library—without our knowledge or their own. We see how it was arranged that I should be delayed in arriving at a meeting of the Table. I was threatened; I was rescued. The result was that I was impeached. The result of this apparently natural concatenation of events is that I may be removed from a position of power—and the course of action which I champion and which threatens these people, whoever they are, may be negated.”