Foundation

Sutt discusses with Foundation high priest and foreign secretary Publis Manlio the possibility that the presence of enemy nuclear weapons signals a new Seldon Crisis. Manlio doubts it, but Sutt explains that the possibility of treachery within Foundation ranks makes the situation urgent.

Sutt believes the trading guild is too independent to be trusted, and that this must be corrected while resolving the current crisis. Sutt says the mayor is “entirely negative” and makes a point of “evading responsibility” (175), and that perhaps a new political party might stir things up and get a new mayor elected. That mayor, says Sutt, should be Secretary Manlio.

Mallow meets with trader Jaim Twer, a leader in the movement to get traders onto the Terminus City Council. Twer wants Mallow, a great public speaker, to foment a defeat of the anti-trader Action Party. Mallow, however, must leave shortly on Foundation business. On a hunch, he invites Twer to join him, and Twer accepts.

Korell’s leader, Asper Argo, despises the Foundation, its high-tech offerings, and its priests. Despite his planet’s increasing decrepitude post-Empire, he rejects Foundation help and tightly controls its traders. Mallow’s ship, the Far Star, has been at a remote airport for a week, awaiting an audience with the government. Mallow’s crew grows restive, but they must wait, as must the Korellians: Any initial move by either side will betray their ignorance. The stalemate breaks when an injured priest gains entry to the Far Star. Mallow immediately orders the crew to battle stations. He examines the priest, the reverend Jord Parma, and calls a meeting. The priest, apparently dazed by his injuries, beseeches Mallow to save him from the locals. A crowd of Korellians swarms around the ship. Mallow tells the priest that he broke convention by visiting a planet where he is banned. A lieutenant reports that a member of the crowd is a government official; Mallow says to tell him that he can have the priest if he approaches the ship alone. Twer protests; Mallow shuts him up.

Mallow orders his men to release the priest to the official. Parma raises his arms in protest and screeches religious curses; as he does so, a tiny flash of light issues from him. He’s released to the official.

Mallow explains privately to Twer that the entire episode seems suspicious. A large crowd appeared out of nowhere but the nearest city is 100 miles away. Had Mallow kept the priest, it would have been an act of war, and the Korellians would have blasted the ship. Mallow receives a message inviting him to visit the planet’s ruler. He shows it to Twer: “I think we passed a test” (187).

Mallow meets with Argo, Korell’s “Commdor.” They sit in his heavily guarded palace garden as he declares himself beloved by his people. Mallow offers pleasantries about how wonderful Argo is, while privately thinking Argo is a disgusting dictator. Argo wants trade with the Foundation, but he objects to the priestly religion that comes with it. Mallow replies that money is his religion, and that riches can flow to the Commdor through many channels.

As an example, he places a chain around a servant girl’s waist; the girl flicks a switch on it and is bathed in a lovely, luminescent glow. Mallow retrieves the waist chain and presents it to the Commdor as a gift for his wife that requires no priests to work it. The Foundation can sell as many of these as the leader wants, and he can resell them for ten times the price. Also available are wondrous “household gadgets” that the Commdor can sell to the commoners, and he can purchase them from Mallow with goods—iron, bauxite, tobacco—that he has in abundance. Mallow also sells devices to increase the productivity of Korellian steel factories. All of this comes without priestly intervention.

The Commdora, resentful of her forced marriage to the Korellian Commdor, berates him for dealing with the Foundation traders. Argo places the new chain around her waist and switches it on; a luxurious glow surrounds and enchants her. He promises her more where this came from. She silences her complaints.

The next day, Mallow and Twer discuss the complete lack of evidence that there are any nucleic devices on Korell. Shortly, they’ll visit the steel foundry, the most likely place for signs of nuclear tech. That the visit is so easily arranged suggests they will find no such evidence. Either the planet has no nucleics or they’re well hidden in military outposts.

At the factory, Mallow demonstrates to a group of nobles his handheld nuclear shears, planes, and drills that can carve through thick metal sheets with ease. He also joins two metal pipes, the splice nearly invisible. Guards lean in, straining to see, and Mallow notices that their sidearms are nuclear, and they bear the emblem of the old Empire. Believed gone for the past 150 years, the Empire still exists, and is now reasserting itself.

Back in space, Mallow turns over control of the Far Star to a senior lieutenant. He gives the lieutenant an envelope, a microfilm, and a spherical Time Capsule. He directs the officer to fly the ship to the planet listed in the envelope, and wait two months; if Mallow has not rendezvoused by then, the lieutenant must fly to Terminus and hand the capsule to the Federation. Mallow exits the ship on a lifeboat.

In a lonely shack on a far, barren corner of the planet Siwenna, Mallow meets Onum Barr, an elderly patrician who lost his position and most of his family when the local viceroy tried to stage a coup against the Emperor. Most of the planet’s population was looted and murdered to put blame on the residents and hide the Emperor’s political weakness.

Mallow asks if Siwenna’s aging nucleics still function; Barr says yes, but they’re managed by hereditary “tech-men” who won’t permit visitors and are immune to all but the largest bribes. Mallow says there are more things than money that can turn loyalty. Barr gives him his passport—he does not need it anymore—and warns him to avoid speaking, as his accent and verbal mannerisms give him away as an outsider. As thanks for his help, Barr receives from Mallow a package of condensed foods that, though alien, taste good and last a long time.

The tech-man at the nuclear power plant speaks contemptuously of Mallow’s mention of a bribe until Mallow tells him he can offer the man something the Emperor himself doesn’t possess. He asks the man to shoot him with a ray gun and observe the energy shield that deflects the shot. The tech-man does so, and the shot dissipates against the dim glow of Mallow’s body shield. Mallow gives him a waist-chain shield generator; the tech-man clips it on, flips the power switch, sets his own weapon to its lowest setting, and fires a blast at his hand, which is unharmed.

Mallow asks for a complementary tour of the plant’s nuclear generators. The tech-man hesitates, and Mallow suggests that he has a weapon that can penetrate the tech-man’s new shield. The tech-man gestures for Mallow to follow him.

Mallow tours the power plant. Silently, touching nothing, he observes the place in detail. They depart, and Mallow asks what the tech-man does if the generators break down; the tech-man replies that they never do, and that they were “built for eternity” (214). Mallow asks whether the tech-man could repair the generators if they were sabotaged; the tech-man will not answer but angrily berates Mallow and orders him to leave. Mallow reunites with his ship and guides it back to Terminus. After a few days, the tech-man’s shield goes dead.

A year passes. In his mansion on Terminus, Mallow talks to the retired education minister, Ankor Jael, about helping Mallow win a seat on the Council. Jael warns him that Sutt, now a Council member, is the shrewdest politician on the planet and will resist Mallow’s effort, which will likely fail anyway because Mallow is a native of far-off Smyrna. Jael suggests Twer as campaign manager, but Mallow replies that he needs a more experienced politico like Jael.

Sutt arrives and Mallow has Jael hide in the next room to listen. Sutt asks how Mallow acquired so much wealth. Mallow says it is from trades with the Korellian Commdor, the profits split 50-50 with the Foundation. Mallow reminds Sutt that, save for the relic nuclear side arms of Korellian guards, there are no signs of nucleics on Korell. Sutt objects because Mallow’s trades occurred without priests. Mallow retorts that outlying star systems learned of the religious scheme and resist all efforts to admit priests. Sutt threatens to imprison Mallow for the murder of the priest he turned over to the Korellians; Mallow scoffs. As he departs, Sutt promises Mallow will shortly be arrested.

Jael says Sutt probably knows the Foundation’s religion strategy is defunct, but he can still use its immense power to make an example of Mallow and even make himself king. Mallow admits that Sutt has a case against him—Sutt’s spy, Twer, is a witness—but that he cannot win if Mallow’s actions were entirely legal. Jael ripostes that Sutt does not have to win in court but only in the minds of Terminus’s vast working population, who will condemn Mallow as a coward who sacrificed a priest. Mallow might even lose his trading license and citizenship.

On the fourth day of Hober Mallow’s murder trial, the Council chambers are filled to capacity with officials and onlookers. The trial is broadcast to the many planets under Foundation control. Mallow declares that the prosecution’s description of his betrayal of the priest on Korell is accurate but incomplete. Jaim Twer was introduced to him as a trader, yet Mallow had never heard of him and brought Twer on the mission to keep him close. Despite his claim of Foundation schooling, Twer doesn’t know what a Seldon Crisis is. (This last point is censored from the broadcast everywhere but on Terminus.) Therefore, Twer is really a priest who spies for Sutt. When the other priest came onboard Mallow’s ship at Korell, Mallow took the precaution of recording the encounter. Jael plays the 3-D recording, which shows the entire episode.

Neglected by the prosecution are several odd facts, including the presence of an undercover priest in glaringly obvious robes, and a large crowd that forms suddenly at a very remote airport. The murdered priest, Jord Parma, wasn’t a priest at all. Jael magnifies a frame from the video that shows that Parma has a tattoo on his hand consisting of three letters—”KSP”—the initials of the Korellian Secret Police. The Council room erupts into chaos. Mallow shouts that he also has documents that prove that the priest was a Korellian agent. The prosecution’s case rests on the idea that Mallow should have sacrificed his ship for the honor of the Foundation’s religion when in fact the priest was an imposter. Spectators rush forward, place Mallow on their shoulders, and chant “Long live Mallow—long live Mallow—long live Mallow—” (230).

Riding high on public enthusiasm, Mallow tells Jael to arrest both Sutt and foreign secretary Manlio on charges of state endangerment. Mallow does not care about a conviction but wants to sideline the two politicians until Mallow can win the election for mayor and become high priest. He’s the only one who can steer the Foundation through the coming crisis.

He tells Jael that Korell will eventually declare war and use the nuclear weapons it has cadged from sources within the diminished Empire. Mallow believes, though, that he can resolve the crisis by having the Foundation do “Nothing.”

Nearly three years later, the Commdora scolds Argo for dithering about declaring war against the Foundation and their “cargoes of toys and trash” (233). He answers that he cannot attack their planet, but that there will be a war. Satisfied, the Commdora hopes this will increase Argo’s power and that they might someday advance to the court of the viceroy. Privately, Argo hopes that a victory might free him from dependence on the Commdora’s father—and that she might finally be disposable.

Onboard the Foundation cruiser Dark Nebula, the watch lieutenant’s visiplate shows a gigantic spaceship fast approaching; it bears the markings of the Empire. The lieutenant sends a distress signal to the Foundation.

Hober Mallow—two years into his term as mayor of Terminus, and two years into an interplanetary war with Korell made up of minor skirmishes and major stalemates—chats with Jael about Sutt’s religionist campaign to retake the mayor’s office. Jael believes Mallow has practically handed the mayoralty over to his opponents with his honest reports about the Foundation’s difficult situation.

Sutt arrives to negotiate. He warns Mallow to wage all-out war against Korell or lose the next election. Mallow says a clear Foundation victory would force the imperial viceroy to consider the Foundation a growing military threat and to launch an attack against it. Mallow suggests that this latest Seldon Crisis must be solved not with heroics, but by using the large forces at the command of the Foundation, especially interplanetary trade. Even without priests, whose time clearly has come and gone, the Foundation creates dependencies with its power sources and useful gadgets, while the fading Empire can only provide gigantic ships and can no longer service the old nuclear plants that will become useless when they begin to fail. Sutt threatens Mallow with a coup; Mallow has Sutt arrested. Jael says Mallow just made Sutt into a martyr; Mallow replies that he can withdraw trade from any sector that goes against the Foundation. Both sides depend on trade; power will shift to the hands of merchant princes.

Jael asks what the future will be like; Mallow says only Seldon knew. He adds that, just as trade replaced the priests, something someday will replace the traders.