And every once in a while, hordes of strangers were let into the grounds. No questions asked, probably, but one: "Can you garden?"

The stupidity involved was too colossal to grasp.

And he had barely caught it in time. Or had he? Was he, even now, too late?

Gleb Andorin gazed at Namarti through half-closed eyes. He never liked the man, but there were times when he liked him less than he usually did and this was one of those times. Why should Andorin, a Wyan of royal birth (that's what it amounted to, after all) have to work with this parvenu, this near-psychotic paranoid?

Andorin knew why and he had to endure, even when Namarti was once again in the process of telling the story of how he had built up the movement during a period of ten years to its present pitch of perfection. Did he tell this to everyone, over and over? Or was it just Andorin who was his chosen vessel?

Namarti's face seemed to shine with malignant glee as he said, in an odd singsong, as though it were a matter of rote, "Year after year. I worked on those lines, even through hopelessness and uselessness, building an organization, chipping away at confidence in the government, creating and intensifying dissatisfaction. When there was the banking crisis and the week of the moratorium, I-"

He paused suddenly. "I've told you this many times and you're sick of hearing it, aren't you?"

Andorin's lips twitched in a brief dry smile. Namarti was not such an idiot as not to know what a bore he was; he just couldn't help it. Andorin said, "You've told me this many times." He allowed the remainder of the question to hang in the air, unanswered. The answer, after all, was an obvious affirmative. There was no need to face him with it.

A slight flush crossed Namarti's sallow face. He said, "But it could have gone on forever-the building, the chipping, without ever coming to a point-if I hadn't had the proper tool in my hands. And without any effort on my part, the tool came to me."

"The gods brought you Planchet," said Andorin neutrally.

"You're right. There will be a group of gardeners entering the Imperial Palace grounds soon." He paused and seemed to savor the thought.

"Men and women. Enough to serve as a mask for the handful of our operatives who will accompany them. Among them will be you-and Planchet. And what will make you and Planchet unusual is that you will be carrying blasters."

"Surely," said Andorin with deliberate malice behind a polite expression, "we'll be stopped at the gates and held for questioning. Bringing an illicit blaster onto the Palace grounds-"

"You won't be stopped," said Namarti, missing the malice. "You won't be searched. That's been arranged. You will all be greeted as a matter of course by some Palace official. I don't know who would ordinarily be in charge of that task-the Third Assistant Chamberlain in Charge of Grass and Leaves, for all I know-but in this case, it will be Seldon himself. The great mathematician will hurry out to greet the new gardeners and welcome them to the grounds."

"You're sure of that, I suppose."

"Of course, I am. It's all been arranged. He will learn, at more or less the last minute, that his foster son is among those listed as new gardeners and it will be impossible for him to refrain from coming out to see him. And when Seldon appears, Planchet will raise his blaster. Our people will raise the cry of 'Treason!' In the confusion and hurly-burly, Planchet will kill Seldon and then you will kill Planchet. You will then drop your blaster and leave. There are those who will help you leave. It's been arranged."

"Is it absolutely necessary to kill Planchet?"

Namarti frowned. "Why? Do you object to one killing and not to another? When Planchet recovers, do you wish him to tell the authorities all he knows about us? Besides, this is a family feud we are arranging. Don't forget that Planchet is, in actual fact, Raych Seldon. It will look as though the two had fired simultaneously-or as though Seldon had given orders that if his son made any hostile move, he was to be shot down. We will see to it that the family angle will be given full publicity. It will be reminiscent of the bad old days of the Bloody Emperor Manowell. The people of Trantor will surely be repelled by the sheer wickedness of the deed. That, piled on top of all the inefficiencies and breakdowns they've been witnessing and living through, will raise the cry for a new government-and no one will be able to refuse them, least of all the Emperor. And then we'll step in."

"Just like that?"

"No, not just like that. I don't live in a dream world. There is likely to be some interim government, but it will fail. We'll see to it that it fails and we'll come out in the open and revive the old Joranumite arguments that the Trantorians have never forgotten. And in time-in not too much time-I will be First Minister."

"And I?"

"Will eventually be the Emperor."

Andorin said, "The chance of all this working is small. This is arranged. That is arranged. The other thing is arranged. All of it has to come together and mesh perfectly or it will fail. Somewhere, someone is bound to mess up. It's an unacceptable risk."

"Unacceptable? For whom? For you?"

"Certainly. You expect me to make certain that Planchet will kill his father and you expect me to then kill Planchet. Why me? Aren't there tools worth less than I who might more easily be risked?"

"Yes, but to choose anyone else would make failure certain. Who but you has so much riding on this mission that there is no chance you will turn back in a fit of vapors at the last minute?"

"The risk is enormous."

"Isn't it worth it to you? You're playing for the Imperial throne."

"And what risk are you taking, Chief? You will remain here, quite comfortable, and wait to hear the news."

Namarti's lip curled. "What a fool you are, Andorin! What an Emperor you will make! Do you suppose I take no risk because I will be here? If the gambit fails, if the plot miscarries, if some of our people are taken, do you think they won't tell everything they know? If you were somehow caught, would you face the tender treatment of the Imperial Guard without ever telling them about me?

"And with a failed assassination attempt at hand, do you suppose they won't comb Trantor to find me? Do you suppose that in the end they will fail to find me? And when they do find me, what do you suppose I will have to face at their hands? Risk? I run a worse risk than any of you, just sitting here doing nothing. It boils down to this, Andorin. Do you or do you not wish to be Emperor?"

Andorin said in a low voice, "I wish to be Emperor." And so things were set in motion.

Raych had no trouble seeing that he was being treated with special care. The whole group of would-be gardeners was now quartered in one of the hotels in the Imperial Sector, although not one of the prime hotels, of course.

The gardeners were an odd lot, from fifty different worlds, but Raych had little chance to speak to any of them. Andorin, without being too obvious about it, had managed to keep him apart from the others.

Raych wondered why. It depressed him. In fact, he had been feeling somewhat depressed since he had left Wye. It interfered with his thinking process and he fought it-but not with entire success.

Andorin was himself wearing rough clothes and was attempting to look like a workman. He would be playing the part of a gardener as a way of running the "show"-whatever the "show" might be.

Raych felt ashamed that he had not been able to penetrate the nature of that "show." They had closed in on him and prevented all communication, so he hadn't even had the chance to warn his father. They might be doing this for every Trantorian who had been pushed into the group, for all he knew, just as an extreme precaution. Raych estimated that there might be a dozen Trantorians among them, all of them Namarti's people, of course, men and women both.

What puzzled him was that Andorin treated him with what was almost affection. He monopolized him, insisted on having all his meals with him, treated him quite differently from the way in which he treated anyone else.

Could it be because they had shared Manella? Raych did not know enough about the mores of the Wye Sector to be able to tell whether there might not be a polyandrous touch to their society. If two men shared a woman, did that make them, in a way, fraternal? Did it create a bond?

Raych had never heard of such a thing, but he knew better than to suppose he had a grasp of even a tiny fraction of the infinite subtleties of galactic societies-even of Trantorian societies.

But now that his mind had brought him back to Manella, he dwelled on her for a while. He missed her terribly and it occurred to him that missing her might be the cause of his depression, though, to tell the truth, what he was feeling now, as he was finishing lunch with Andorin, was almost despair-though he could think of no cause for it.

Manella!

She had said she wanted to visit the Imperial Sector and presumably she could wheedle Andorin to her liking. He was desperate enough to ask a foolish question. "Mr. Andorin, I keep wondering if maybe you brought Miss Dubanqua along with you. Here, to the Imperial Sector."

Andorin looked utterly astonished. Then he laughed gently. "Manella? Do you see her doing any gardening? Or even pretending she could? No no, Manella is one of those women invented for our quiet moments. She has no function at all, otherwise." then "Why do you ask, Planchet?"**

Raych shrugged. "I don't know. It's sort of dull around here. I sort of thought-" His voice trailed away.

Andorin watched him carefully. Finally he said, "Surely you're not of the opinion that it matters much which woman you are involved with? I assure you it doesn't matter to her which man she's involved with. Once this is over, there will be other women. Plenty of them."

"When will this be over?"

"Soon. And you're going to be part of it in a very important way." Andorin watched Raych narrowly.

Raych said, "How important? Aren't I gonna be just-a gardener?" His voice sounded hollow and he found himself unable to put a spark in it.