In all the rest of the Galaxy-
But that was not true on Trantor itself! Here the old Trantor was forgotten. The surface metal seas gone, almost everywhere. Trantor was now a sparsely settled world of self-sufficient farmers, a place where trading ships rarely came and were not particularly welcome when they did come. The very word "Trantor," though still in official use, had dropped out of popular speech. By present-day Trantorians, it was called "Name," which in their dialect was what would be called "Hame" in Galactic Standard.
Quindor Shandess thought of all this and much more as he sat quietly in a welcome state of half-drowse, in which he could allow his mind to run along a self-propelled and unorganized stream of thought.
He had been First Speaker of the Second Foundation for eighteen years, and he might well hold on for ten or twelve years more if his mind remained reasonably vigorous and if he could continue to fight the political wars.
He was the analog, the mirror image, of the Mayor of Terminus, who ruled over the First Foundation, but how different they were in every respect. The Mayor of Terminus was known to all the Galaxy and the First Foundation was therefore simply "the Foundation" to all the worlds. The First Speaker of the Second Foundation was known only to his associates.
And yet it was the Second Foundation, under himself and his predecessors, who held the real power. The First Foundation was supreme in the realm of physical power, of technology, of war weapons. The Second Foundation was supreme in the realm of mental power, of the mind, of the ability to control. In any conflict between the two, what would it matter how many ships and weapons the First Foundation disposed of, if the Second Foundation could control the minds of those who controlled the ships and weapons?
But how long could he revel in this realization of secret power?
He was the twenty-fifth First Speaker and his incumbency was already a shade longer than average. Ought he, perhaps, not be too keen on holding on and keeping out the younger aspirants? There was Speaker Gendibal, the keenest and newest at the Table. Tonight they would spend time together and Shandess looked forward to it. Ought he look forward also to Gendibal's possible accession some day?
The answer to the question was that Shandess had no real thought of leaving his post. He enjoyed it too much.
He sat there, in his old age, still perfectly capable of performing his duties. His hair was gray, but it had always been light in color and he wore it cut an inch long so that the color scarcely mattered. His eyes were a faded blue and his clothing conformed to the drab styling of the Trantorian farmers.
The First Speaker could, if he wished, pass among the Hamish people as one of them, but his hidden power nevertheless existed. He could choose to focus his eyes and mind at any time and they would then act according to his will and recall nothing about it afterward.
It rarely happened. Almost never. The Golden Rule of the Second Foundation was, "Do nothing unless you must, and when you must act-hesitate."
The First Speaker sighed softly. Living in the old University, with the brooding grandeur of the ruins of the Imperial Palace not too far distant, made one wonder on occasion how Golden the Rule might be.
In the days of the Great Sack, the Golden Rule had been strained to the breaking point. There was no way of saving Trantor without sacrificing the Seldon Plan for establishing a Second Empire. It would have been humane to spare the forty-five billion, but they could not have been spared without retention of the core of the First Empire and that would have only delayed the reckoning. If would have led to a greater destruction some centuries later and perhaps no Second Empire ever.
The early First Speakers had worked over the clearly foreseen Sack for decades but had found no solution-no way of assuring both the salvation of Trantor and the eventual establishment of the Second Empire. The lesser evil had to be chosen and Trantor had died!
The Second Foundatianers of the time had managed-by the narrowest of margins-to save the University/Library complex and there had been guilt forever after because of that, too. Though no one had ever demonstrated that saving the complex had led to the of the Mule, there was always the intuition that there was a connection.
How nearly that had wrecked everything!
Yet following the decades of the Sack acrd the Mule came the Golden Age of the Second Foundation.
Prior to that, for over two and a half centuries after Seldon's death, the Second Foundation had burrowed like moles into the Library, intent only on staying out of the way of the Imperials. They served as librarians in a decaying society that cared less and less for the ever-more-misnamed Galactic Library, which fell into the desuetude that best suited the purpose of the Second Foundationers.
It was an ignoble life. They merely conserved the Plan, while out at the end of the Galaxy, the First Foundation fought for its life against always greater enemies with neither help from the Second Foundation nor any real knowledge of it.
It was the Great Sack that liberated the Second Foundation-another reason (young Gendibal-who had courage-had recently said that it was the chief reason) why the Sack was allowed to proceed.
After the Great Sack, the Empire was gone and, in all the later times, the Trantorian survivors never trespassed on Second Foundation territory uninvited. The Second Foundationers saw to it that the University/Library complex which had survived the Sack also survived the Great Renewal. The ruins of the Palace were preserved, too. The metal was gone over almost all the rest of the world. The great and endless corridors were covered up, filled in, twisted, destroyed, ignored; all under rock and soil-all except here, where metal still surrounded the ancient open places.
It might be viewed as a grand memorial of greatness, the sepulcher of Empire, but to the Trantorians-the Hamish people-these were haunted places, filled with ghosts, not to be stirred. Only the Second Foundationers ever set foot in the ancient corridors or touched the titanium gleam.
And even so, all had nearly come to nothing because of the Mule.
The Mule had actually been on Trantor. What if he had found out the nature of the world he had been standing on? His physical weapons were far greater than those at the disposal of the Second Foundation, his mental weapons almost as great. The Second Foundation would have been hampered always by the necessity of doing nothing but what they must, and by the knowledge that almost any hope of tinning the immediate fight might portend a greater eventual loss.
Had it not been for Banta Darell and her swift moment of action- And that, too, had been without the help of the Second Foundation?
And then-the Golden Age, when somehow the First Speakers of the time found ways of becoming active, stopping the Mule in his career of conquest, controlling his mind at last; and then stopping the First Foundation itself when it grew wary and overcurious concerning the nature and identity of the Second Foundation. There was Preem Palver, nineteenth First Speaker and greatest of them all, who had managed to put an end to all danger-not without terrible sacrifice-and who had rescued the Seldon Plan.
Now, for a hundred and twenty years, the Second Foundation was again as it once had been, hiding in a haunted portion of Trantor. They were hiding no longer from the Imperials, but from the First Foundation still-a First Foundation almost as large as the Galactic Empire had been and even greater in technological expertise.
The First Speaker's eyes closed in the pleasant warmth and he passed into that never-never state of relaxing hallucinatory experiences that were not quite dreams and not quite conscious thought.