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business freely-that I may leave, for instance, if I choose.”
    “We have no order to interfere with you, Councilman, in any way, except insofar as we are ordered to protect you.”
    “Insofar? What does that mean in this case?”
    “I am instructed to tell you that once you are home, you may not leave it. The streets are not safe for you and I am responsible for your safety.”
    “You mean I am under house arrest.”
    “I am not a lawyer, Councilman. I do not know what that means.”
    He gazed straight ahead, but his elbow made contact with Trevize’s side. Trevize could not have moved, however slightly, without the lieutenant becoming aware of it.
    The car stopped before Trevize’s small house in the suburb of Flexner. At the moment, he lacked a housemate-Flavella having wearied of the erratic life that Council membership had forced upon him-so he expected no one to be waiting for him.
    “Do I get out now?” Trevize asked.
    “I will get out first, Councilman. We will escort you in.”
    “For my safety?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    There were two guards waiting inside his front door. A night-light was gleaming, but the windows had been opacified and it was not visible from outside.
    For a moment, he was indignant at the invasion and then he dismissed it with an inward shrug. If the Council could not protect him in the Council Chamber itself, then surely his house could not serve as his castle.
    Trevize said, “How many of you do I have in here altogether? A regiment?”
    “No, Councilman,” came a voice, hard and steady. “Just one person aside from those you see, and I have been waiting for you long enough.”
    Harla Branno, Mayor of Terminus, stood in the door that led into the living room. “Time enough, don’t you think, for us to talk?”
    Trevize stared. “All this rigmarole to-“
    But Branno said in a low, forceful voice. “Quiet, Councilman. -And you four, outside. Outside! -All will be well in here.”
    The four guards saluted and turned on their heels. Trevize and Branno were alone.
     

Foundation 4 - Foundation's Edge

CHAPTER TWO
    MAYOR
     
    BRANNO HAD BEEN WAITING FOR AN HOUR, THINKING WEARILY.  Technically speaking, she was guilty of breaking and entering. What’s more, she had violated, quite unconstitutionally, the rights of a Councilman. By the strict laws that held Mayors to account since the days of Indbur III and the Mute, nearly two centuries before-she was impeachable.
    On this one day, however, for twenty-four hours she could do no wrong.
    But it would pass. She stirred restlessly.
    The first two centuries had been the Golden Age of the Foundation, the Heroic Era-at least in retrospect, if not to the unfortunates who had lived in that insecure time. Salvor Hardin and Hober Mallow had been the two great heroes, semideified to the point of rivaling the incomparable Hari Seldon himself. The three were a tripod on which all Foundation legend (and even Foundation history) rested.
    In those days, though, the Foundation had been one puny world, with a tenuous hold on the Four Kingdoms and with only a dim awareness of the extent to which the Seldon Plan was holding its protective hand over it, caring for it even against the remnant of the mighty Galactic Empire.
    And the more powerful the Foundation grew as a political and commercial entity, the less significant its rulers and fighters had come to seem. Lathan Devers was almost forgotten. If he was remembered at all, it was for his tragic death in the slave mines, rather than for his unnecessary but successful fight against Bel Riose.
    As for Bel Riose, the noblest of the Foundation’s adversaries, he too was nearly forgotten, overshadowed by the Mule, who alone among enemies had broken the Seldon Plan and defeated and ruled the Foundation. He alone was the Great Enemy-indeed, the last of the Greats.
    It was little remembered that the Mule had been, in essence, defeated by one person-a woman, Bayta Darell-and that she had accomplished the