“I’m willing to bet it is not,” the advocate said, and the peers chuckled and rustled among themselves.
Hari ignored the provocation, but kept silent until the advocate finally said, “Do go on.”
“Thank you. The coming destruction of Trantor is not an event in itself, isolated in the scheme of human development. It will be the climax to an intricate drama which was begun centuries ago and which is accelerating in pace continuously. I refer, gentlemen, to the developing decline and fall of the Galactic Empire.”
The peers shouted derision out loud, all in support of the Commissioners. They all had contracts and even marriage relations with the Chens. This was the blood the advocate had hoped to heat; and Hari’s the blood he hoped to spill, from Hari’s own lips.
The advocate, aghast, shouted over the tumult. “You are openly declaring that-”
“Treason!” the peers shouted over and over, a many-voiced, staccato bellow.
They’re not bored now. Hari thought.
Linge Chen waited for a few moments with gavel lifted. Then. slowly, in two downward jerks. he let drop and produced a mellifluous gong. The audience grew silent, but reserved the right to shuffle and rustle.
The advocate drew out his words in professional astonishment. “Do you realize. Dr. Seldon, that you are speaking of an Empire that has stood for twelve thousand years, through all the vicissitudes of the generations, and which has behind it the good wishes and love of a quadrillion human beings?”
Hari replied slowly, as if educating children. “I am aware both of the present status and the past history of the Empire. Without disrespect, I must claim a far better knowledge of it than any in this room.”
Several of the peers took exception to Hari’s words. This time, Chen gaveled them to quick silence, and even the shuffling ceased.
“And you predict its ruin?”
“It is a prediction which is made by mathematics. I pass no moral judgments. Personally. I regret the prospect. Even if the Empire were admitted to be a bad thing (an admission I do not make), the state of anarchy which would follow its fall would be worse.” Hari examined the peers, sought out individual faces, as he would have in a classroom. They met his eyes resentfully. He kept his tone level and reasonable. without drama. “It is that state of anarchy which my Project is pledged to fight. The fall of Empire. Gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity-a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.”
The peers listened closely. Hari thought he saw a glint of recognition in more than a few of the faces in that small crowd.
The advocate swooped again, hands out, incredulous. “Is it not obvious to anyone that the Empire is as strong as it ever was?”
The peers kept silent, and the Commissioners looked away. Hari had struck a nerve. Still, Chen did not seem to care.
“The appearance of strength is all about you,” Hari said. “It would seem to last forever. However, Mr. Advocate, the rotten tree trunk, until the very moment when the storm blast breaks it in two, has all the appearance of might it ever had. The storm blast whistles through the branches of the Empire even now. Listen with the ears of psychohistory, and you will hear the creaking.”
The advocate now became aware that the peers and the Commissioners were no longer impressed by his theatrics. Hari was having an effect on them. Every day they saw more tiles go out in the domed ceil, more decay in the transport systems-and the end of affordable luxuries imported from the restive food allies. Every day came news of systems tacitly opting out of the Imperial economy, to form their own self-sufficient and vastly more efficient units. He tried to recover his ground with a rebuke. “We are not here, Dr. Seldon, to lis-”
Hari leaped in. He faced the Commissioners. Boon lifted a finger, opened his lips, but Hari knew what he was doing. “The Empire will vanish and all its good with it. Its accumulated knowledge will decay and the order it has imposed will vanish. Interstellar wars will be endless; interstellar trade will decay; population will decline; worlds will lose touch with the main body of the Galaxy. -And so matters will remain.”
The professorial tone, brusque and matter-of-fact, seemed to stun the advocate, who was after all in his late youth, with many years ahead of him. He seemed to have lost track of his argument.
The peers were silent as frightened bats in the depths of a cave.
The advocate’s voice seemed hollow and small. “Surely, Professor Seldon, not…Forever?”
Hari had been preparing for this moment for decades. How many times had he rehearsed just such a scene in bed, before sleep? How many times had he wondered if he was falling into a martyr complex, anticipating such a scene?
A specific memory came to mind, distracting him for a moment: talking with Dors about what he would say when the Empire finally noticed him, finally became desperate enough and uneasy enough to accuse him of treason.
His throat tightened, and he took a small breath, concealing his distress, relaxing. Only a couple of seconds passed.
“Psychohistory, which can predict the fall, can make statements concerning the succeeding Dark Ages. The Empire, gentlemen, as has just been said, has stood twelve thousand years. The dark ages to come will endure not twelve, but thirty thousand years. A Second Empire will rise, but between it and our civilization will be one thousand generations of suffering humanity. We must fight that.”
The peers were transfixed.
The advocate, at a signal from the Commissioner to Chen’s right, pulled himself together and said briskly, if not with great strength, “You contradict yourself. You said earlier that you could not prevent the destruction of Trantor; hence, presumably, the fall;-the so-called fall of the Empire.”
“I do not say now that we can prevent the fall.” The advocate’s eyes almost pleaded with him to say something reassuring, not for Hari’s sake, but for the sake of his own children, his family.
Hari knew it was time to offer a touch of hope-and confirm the importance of his own services. “But it is not yet too late to shorten the interregnum which will follow. It is possible, gentlemen, to reduce the duration of anarchy to a single millennium, if my group is allowed to act now. We are at a delicate moment in history. The huge, onrushing mass of events must be deflected just a little-just a little-it cannot be much, but it may be enough to remove twenty-nine thousand years of misery from human history.”
The advocate found such timescales unsatisfying. “How do you propose to do this?”
“By saving the knowledge of the race. The sum of human knowing is beyond anyone man, any thousand men. With the destruction of our social fabric, science will be broken into a million pieces. Individuals will know much of exceedingly tiny facets of what there is to know. They will be helpless and useless by themselves. The bits of lore, meaningless, will not be passed on. They will be lost through the generations. But, if we now prepare a giant summary of all knowledge, it will never be lost. Coming generations will build on it, and will not have to rediscover it for themselves. One millennium will do the work of thirty thousand.”
“All this-”
“All my Project,” Hari said firmly, “my thirty thousand men with their wives and children, are devoting themselves to the preparation of an Encyclopedia Galactica. They will not complete it in their lifetimes. I will not even live to see it fairly begun. But by the time Trantor falls, it will be complete and copies will exist in every major library in the Galaxy.”