Pelorat looked down at the floor, as though fearing to meet the other's eyes. He said, “I have had a wife, Golan. I have known women. Yet they have never been very important to me. Interesting. Pleasant. Never very important. Yet, this one…”

“Who? Bliss?”

“She's different, somehow—to me.”

“By Terminus, Janov, she knows every word you're saying.”

“That makes no difference. She knows anyhow.—I want to please her. I will undertake this task, whatever it is; run any risk, take any responsibility, on the smallest chance that it will make her—think well of me.”

“Janov, she's a child.”

“She's not a child—and what you think of her makes no difference to me.”

“Don't you understand what you must seem to her?”

“An old man? What's the difference? She's part of a greater whole and I am not—and that alone builds an insuperable wall between us. Don't you think I know that? But I don't ask anything of her but that she…”

“Think well of you?”

“Yes. Or whatever else she can make herself feel for me.”

“And for that you will do my job?—But Janov, haven't you been listening. They don't want you; they want me for some space-ridden reason I can't understand.”

“If they can't have you and if they must have someone, I will be better than nothing, surely.”

Trevize shook his head. “I can't believe that this is happening. Old age is overtaking you and you have discovered youth. Janov, you're trying to be a hero, so that you can die for that body.”

“Don't say that, Golan. This is not a fit subject for humor.” Trevize tried to laugh, but his eyes met Pelorat's grave face and he cleared his throat instead. He said, “You're right. I apologize. Call her in, Janov. Call her in.”

Bliss entered, shrinking a little. She said in a small voice, “I'm sorry, Pel. You cannot substitute. It must be Trevize or no one.”

Trevize said, “Very well. I'll be calm. Whatever it is, I'll try to do it. Anything to keep Janov from trying to play the romantic hero at his age.”

“I know my age,” muttered Pelorat.

Bliss approached him slowly, placed her hand on his shoulder. “Pel, I—I think well of you.”

Pelorat looked away. “It's all right, Bliss. You needn't be kind.”

“I'm not being kind, Pel. I think—very well of you.”

Dimly, then more strongly, Sura Novi knew that she was Suranoviremblastiran and that when she was a child, she had been known as Su to her parents and Vito her friends.

She had never really forgotten, of course, but the facts were, on occasion, buried deep within her. Never had it been buried as deeply or for as long as in this last month, for never had she been so close for so long to a mind so powerful.

But now it was time. She did not will it herself. She had no need to. The vast remainder of her was pushing her portion of itself to the surface, for the sake of the global need.

Accompanying that was a vague discomfort, a kind of itch that was rapidly overwhelmed by the comfort of selfness unmasked. Not in years had she been so close to the globe of Gaia.

She remembered one of the life-forms she had loved on Gaia as a child. Having understood its feelings then as a dim part of her own, she recognized her own sharper ones now. She was a butterfly emerging from a cocoon.

Stor Gendibal stared sharply and penetratingly at Novi—and with such surprise that he came within a hair of loosening his grip upon Mayor Branno. That he did not do so was, perhaps, the result of a sudden support from without that steadied him and that, for the moment, he ignored.

He said, “What do you Know of Councilman Trevize, Novi?” And then, in cold disturbance at the sudden and growing complexity of her mind, he cried out, “What are you?”

He attempted to seize hold of her mind and found it impenetrable. At that moment, he recognized that his hold on Branno was supported by a grip stronger than his own. He repeated, “What are you?”

There was a hint of the tragic on Novi's face. “Master,” she said, “Speaker Gendibal. My true name is Suranoviremblastiran and I am Gaia.”

It was all she said in words, but Gendibal, in sudden fury, had intensified his own mental aura and with great skill, now that his blood was up, evaded the strengthening bar and held Branno on his own and more strongly than before, while he gripped Novi's mind in a tight and silent struggle.

She held him off with equal skill, but she could not keep her mind closed to him—or perhaps she did not wish to.

He spoke to her as he would to another Speaker. “You have played a part, deceived me, lured me here, and you are one of the species from which the Mule was derived.”

“The Mule was an aberration, Speaker. I/we are not Mules. I/we are Gaia.”

The whole essence of Gaia was described in what she complexly communicated, far more than it could have been in any number of words.

“A whole planet alive,” said Gendibal.

“And with a mentalic field greater as a whole than is yours as an individual. Please do not resist with such force. I fear the danger of harming you, something I do not wish to do.”

“Even as a living planet, you are not stronger than the sum of my colleagues on Trantor. We, too, are, in a way, a planet alive.”

“Only some thousands of people in mentalic co-operation, Speaker, and you cannot draw upon their support, for I have blocked it off. Test that and you will see.”

“What is it you plan to do, Gaia?”

“I would hope, Speaker, that you would call me Novi. What I do now I do as Gaia, but I am Novi also—and with reference to you, I am only Novi.”

“What is it you plan to do, Gaia?”

There was the trembling mentalic equivalent of a sigh and Novi said, “We will remain in triple stalemate. You will hold Mayor Branno through her shield, and I will help you do so, and we will not tire. You, I suppose, will maintain your grip on me, and I will maintain mine on you, and neither one of us will tire there either. And so it will stay.”

“To what end?”

“As I have told you.—We are waiting for Councilman Trevize of Terminus. It is he who will break the stalemate—as he chooses.”

The computer on board the Far Star located the two ships and Golan Trevize displayed them together on the split screen.

They were both Foundation vessels. One was precisely like the Far Star and was undoubtedly Compor's ship. The other was larger and far more powerful.

He turned toward Bliss and said, “Well, do you know what's going on? Is there anything you can now tell me?”

“Yes! Do not be alarmed! They will not harm you.”

“Why is everyone convinced I'm sitting here all a—tremble with panic?” Trevize demanded petulantly.

Pelorat said hastily, “Let her talk, Golan. Don't snap at her.”

Trevize raised his arms in a gesture of impatient surrender. “I will not snap. Speak, lady.”

Bliss said, “On the large ship is the ruler of your Foundation. With her…”

Trevize said in astonishment, “The ruler? You mean Old Lady Branno?”

“Surely that is not her title,” said Bliss, her lips twitching a little in amusement. “But she is a woman, yes.” She paused a little, as though listening intently to the rest of the general organism of which she was part. “Her name is Harlabranno. It seems odd to have only four syllables when one is so important on her world, but I suppose non-Gaians have their own ways.”

“I suppose,” said Trevize dryly. “You would call her Brann, I think. But what is she doing here? Why isn't she back on. I see. Gaia has maneuvered her here, too. Why?”

Bliss did not answer that question. She said, “With her is Lionokodell, five syllables, though her underling. It seems a lack of respect. He is an important official of your world. With them are four others who control the ship's weapons. Do you want their names?”

“No. I take it that on the other ship there is one man, Munn Li Compor, and that he represents the Second Foundation. You've brought both Foundations together, obviously. Why?”