Foundation's Fear Read Online Free PDF Page B

date.”
    “Dahlites get a proportional share—”
    “And our neighbors, the Ratannanahs and the Quippons, they’re schemin’ against us.”
    “How so?”
    “There’re Dahlans in plenty other Sectors. They don’t get represented.”
    “You’re spoken for by our Streeling—”
    “Look, Hari, you’re a Helical. Wouldn’t understand. Plenty Sectors, they’re just places to sleep. Dahl is a people. ”
    “The Codes set forth rules for accommodating separate subcultures, ethnicities—”
    “They’re not workin’.”
    Hari saw from Yugo’s jutting jaw that this was not a point for graceful debate. He did know something of the slowly gathering constitutional crisis. The Codes had maintained a balance of forces for millennia, but only by innovative adaptation. Little of that seemed available now. “We agree on that. So how does our research bear upon Dahl?”
    “See, I took the socio-factor analysis and—”
    Yugo had an intuitive grasp of nonlinear equations. It was always a pleasure to watch his big hands cut the air, slicing through points and pounding objections to pulp. And the calculations were good, if a bit simple.
    The nuggets-and-knots work attracted little attention. It had made some in mathematics write him off as a promising young man who had never risen to hispotential. This was perfectly all right with Hari. Some mathists guessed that his true core research went unpublished; these he treated kindly but gave no hint of confirmation.
    “—so there’s a pressure-nugget buildin’ in Dahl, you bet,” Yugo finished.
    “Of course, glancing at the news holos shows that.”
    “Well, yeah—but I’ve proved it’s justified.”
    Hari kept his face composed; Yugo was really worked up about this. “You’ve shown one of the factors. But there are others in the knot equations.”
    “Well, sure, but everybody knows—”
    “What everybody knows doesn’t need much proof. Unless, of course, it’s wrong.”
    Yugo’s face showed a rush of emotions: surprise, concern, anger, hurt, puzzlement. “You don’t support Dahl, Hari?”
    “Of course I do, Yugo.” Actually, the truth was that Hari didn’t care. But that was too bald a point to make, with Yugo seeming wounded. “Look, the paper is fine. Publish.”
    “The three basic knot equations, they’re yours.”
    “No need to call them that.”
    “Sure, just like before. But your name goes on the paper.”
    Something tickled Hari’s mind, but he saw the right answer now was to reassure Yugo. “If you like.”
    Yugo went on about details of publication, and Hari let his eyes drift over the equations. Terms for representation in models of Trantorian democracy, value tables for social pressures, the whole apparatus. A bit stuffy. But reassuring to those who suspected that he was hiding his major results—as he was, of course.
    Hari sighed. Dahl was a festering political sore. Dahlites on Trantor mirrored the culture of the DahlGalactic Zone. Every powerful Zone had its own Sectors in Trantor, for influence-peddling and general pressuring.
    But Dahl was minor on the scale that he wanted to explore—simple, even trivial. The knot equations which described High Council representation were truncated forms of the immensely worse riddle of Trantor.
    All of Trantor—one teeming world, baffling in its sheer size, its intricate connections, meaningless coincidences, random juxtapositions, sensitive dependencies. His equations were still terribly inadequate for this shell which housed forty billion bustling souls.
    How much worse was the Empire!
    People, confronting bewildering complexity, tend to find their saturation level. They master the easy connections, local links, and rules of thumb. They push this until they meet a wall of complexity too thick and high and hard to grasp, to climb.
    There they stall. Gossip, consult, fret—and finally, gamble.
    The Empire of twenty-five million worlds was a problem greater even than understanding the whole rest