CHAPTER TWELVE.

AGENT

Munn Li Compor, councilman of Terminus, looked uncertain as he extended his right hand to Trevize.

Trevize looked at the hand sternly and did not take it. He said, apparently to open air, “I am in no position to create a situation in which I may find myself arrested for disturbing the peace on a foreign planet, but I will do so anyway if this individual comes a step closer.”

Compor stopped abruptly, hesitated, and finally said in a low voice after glancing uncertainly at Pelorat, “Am I to have a chance to talk? To explain? Will you listen?”

Pelorat looked from one to the other with a slight frown on his long face. He said, “What's all this, Golan? Have we come to this far world and at once met someone you know?”

Trevize's eyes remained firmly fixed on Compor, but he twisted his body slightly to make it clear that he was talking to Pelorat. Trevize said, “This—human being—we would judge that much from his shape—was once a friend of mine on Terminus. As is my habit with my friends, I trusted him. I told him my views, which were perhaps not the kind that should have received a general airing. He told them to the authorities in great detail, apparently, and did not take the trouble to tell me he had done so. For that reason, I walked neatly into a trap and now I find myself in exile. And now this—human being—wishes to be recognized as a friend.”

He turned to Compor full on and brushed his fingers through his hair, succeeding only in disarranging the curls further. “See here, you. I do have a question for you. What are you doing here? Of all the worlds in the Galaxy on which you could be, why are you on this one? And why now?”

Compor's hand, which had remained outstretched throughout Trevize's speech, now fell to his side and the smile left his face. The air of self-confidence, which was ordinarily so much a part of him, was gone and in its absence he looked younger than his thirty-four years and a bit woebegone. “I'll explain,” he said, “but only from the start!”

Trevize looked about briefly. “Here? You really want to talk about it here? In a public place? You want me to knock you down here after I've listened to enough of your lies?”

Compor lifted both hands now, palms facing each other. “It's the safest place, believe me.” And then, checking himself and realizing what the other was about to say, added hurriedly, “Or don't believe me, it doesn't matter. I'm telling the truth. I've been on the planet several hours longer than you and I've checked it out. This is some particular day they have here on Sayshell. It's a day for meditation, for some reason. Almost everyone is at home—or should be.—You see how empty this place is. You don't suppose it's like this every day.”

Pelorat nodded and said, “I was wondering why it was so empty, at that.” He leaned toward Trevize's ear and whispered, “Why not let him talk, Golan? He looks miserable, poor chap, and he may be trying to apologize. It seems unfair not to give him the chance to do so. ',

Trevize said, “Dr. Pelorat seems anxious to hear you. I'm willing to oblige him, but you'll oblige me if you're brief about it. This may be a good day on which to lose my temper. If everyone is meditating, any disturbance I cause may not produce the guardians of the law. I may not be so lucky tomorrow. Why waste an opportunity?”

Compor said in a strained voice, “Look, if you want to take a poke at me, do so. I won't even defend myself, see? Go ahead, hit me—but listen!”

“Go ahead and talk, then. I'll listen for a while.”

“In the first place, Golan…”

“Address me as Trevize, please. I am not on first-name terms with you.”

“In the first place, Trevize, you did too good a job convincing me of your views…”

“You hid that well. I could have sworn you were amused by me.”

“I tried to be amused to hide from myself the fact that you were being extremely disturbing.—Look, let us sit down up against the wall. Even if the place is empty, some few may come in and I don't think we ought to be needlessly conspicuous.”

Slowly the three men walked most of the length of the large room. Compor was smiling tentatively again, but remained carefully at more than arm's length from Trevize.

They sat each on a seat that gave as their weight was placed upon it and molded itself into the shape of their hips and buttocks. Pelorat looked surprised and made as though to stand up.

“Relax, Professor,” said Compor. “I've been through this already. They're in advance of us in some ways. It's a world that believes in small comforts.”

He turned to Trevize, placing one arm over the back of his chair and speaking easily now. “You disturbed me. You made me feel the Second Foundation did exist, and that was deeply upsetting. Consider the consequences if they did. Wasn't it likely that they might take care of you somehow? Remove you as a menace? And if I behaved as though I believed you, I might be removed as well. Do you see my point?”

“I see a coward.”

“What good would it do to be storybook brave?” said Compor warmly, his blue eyes widening in indignation. “Can you or I stand up to an organization capable of molding our minds and emotions? The only way we could fight effectively would be to hide our knowledge to begin with.”

“So you hid it and were safe?—Yet you didn't hide it from Mayor Branno, did you? Quite a risk there.”

“Yes! But I thought that was worth it. Just talking between ourselves might do nothing more than get ourselves mentally controlled

–or our memories erased altogether. If I told the Mayor, on the other hand.—She knew my father well, you know. My father and I were immigrants from Smyrno and the Mayor had a grandmother who…”

“Yes yes,” said Trevize impatiently, “and several generations farther back you can trace ancestry to the Sirius Sector. You've told all that to everyone you know. Get on with it, Compor!”

“Well, I had her ear. If I could convince the Mayor that there was danger, using your arguments, the Federation might take some action. We're not as helpless as we were in the days of the Mule and—at the worst—this dangerous knowledge would be spread more widely and we ourselves would not be in as much specific danger.”

Trevize said sardonically, “Endanger the Foundation, but keep ourselves safe. That's good patriotic stuff.”

“That would be at the worst. I was counting on the best.” His forehead had become a little damp. He seemed to be straining against Trevize's immovable contempt.

“And you didn't tell me of this clever plan of yours, did you?”

“No, I didn't and I'm sorry about that, Trevize. The Mayor ordered me not to. She said she wanted to know everything you knew but that you were the sort of person who would freeze if you knew that your remarks were being passed on.”

“How right she was!”

“I didn't know—I couldn't guess—I had no way of conceiving that she was planning to arrest you and throw you off the planet.”

“She was waiting for the right political moment, when my status as Councilman would not protect me. You didn't foresee that?”

“How could I? You yourself did not.”

“Had I known that she knew my views, I would have.” Compor said with a sudden trace of insolence, “That's easy enough to say—in hindsight.”

“And what is it you want of me here? Now that you have a bit of hindsight, too.”

“To make up for all this. To make up for the harm I unwittingly —unwittingly—did you.”

“Goodness,” said Trevize dryly. “How kind of you! But you haven't answered my original question. How did you come to be here? How do you happen to be on the very planet I am on?”

Compor said, “There's no complicated answer necessary for that. I followed you!”

“Through hyperspace? With my ship making Jumps in series?” Compor shook his head. “No mystery. I have the same kind of a ship you do, with the same kind of computer. You know I've always had this trick of being able to guess in which direction through hyperspace a ship would go. It's not usually a very good guess and I'm wrong two times out of three, but with the computer I'm much better. And you hesitated quite a bit at the start and gave me a chance to evaluate the direction and speed in which you were going before entering hyperspace. I fed the data—together with my own intuitive extrapolations—into the computer and it did the rest.”