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a significant number of governors and prefects and military commanders will refuse to
recognize the overlordship of the Commission of Public Safety. It will take Rom Divart the
rest of his life just to put down the most dangerous of the rebels. In order to concentrate his
forces on the great rebels and pretenders close to Trantor, he'll grant an unprecedented
degree of independence to many, many worlds on the periphery. To all intents and
purposes, those outer worlds will no longer be part of the Empire. Imperial authority will not
touch them, and their taxes will no longer flow inward to Trantor. The Empire is no longer
Galactic. The death of Commissioner Chen-- today-- will mark the beginning of the fall of the
Galactic Empire, though no one but us will notice what it means for decades, even centuries
to come."
"So soon after Hari's death. Already his predictions are coming true."
"Oh, it isn't just coincidence," said Zay. "One of our agents was able to influence Chen just
enough to ensure that he sent Rom Divart in person to strip you of your fortune. That was
what pushed Rom over the edge and made him carry out this coup. Chen would have fallen--
or died-- sometime in the next year and a half no matter what we did. But I'll admit we took a
certain pleasure in using Hari's death as a trigger to bring him down a little early, and under
circumstances that allowed us to bring you into the library."
"We also used it as a test," said Deet. "We're trying to find ways of influencing individuals
without their knowing it. It's still very crude and haphazard, but in this case we were able to
influence Chen with great success. We had to do it-- your life was at stake, and so was the
chance of your joining us."
"I feel like a puppet," said Leyel.
"Chen was the puppet," said Zay. "You were the prize."
"That's all nonsense," said Deet. "Hari loved you, I love you. You're a great man. The
Second Foundation had to have you. And everything you've said and stood for all your life
made it clear that you were hungry to be part of our work. Aren't you?"
"Yes," said Leyel. Then he laughed. "The index!"
"What's so funny?" asked Zay, looking a little miffed. "We worked very hard on it."
"And it was wonderful, transforming, hypnotic. To take all these people and put them
together as if they were a single mind, far wiser in its intuition than anyone could ever be
alone. The most intensely unified, the most powerful human community that's ever existed. If
it's our capacity for storytelling that makes us human, then perhaps our capacity for indexing
will make us something better than human."
Deet patted Zay's hand. "Pay no attention to him, Zay. This is clearly the mad enthusiasm
of a proselyte."
Zay raised an eyebrow. "I'm still waiting for him to explain why the index made him laugh."
Leyel obliged her. "Because all the time, I kept thinking-- how could librarians have done
this? Mere librarians! And now I discover that these librarians are all of Hari Seldon's prize
students. My questions were indexed by psychohistorians!"
"Not exclusively. Most of us are librarians. Or machinists, or custodians, or whatever-- the
psychologists and psychohistorians are rather a thin current in the stream of the library. At
first they were seen as outsiders. Researchers. Users of the library, not members of it.
That's what Deet's work has been for these last few years-- trying to bind us all together into
one community. She came here as a researcher too, remember? Yet now she has made
everyone's allegiance to the library more important than any other loyalty. It's working
beautifully too, Leyel, you'll see. Deet is a marvel."
"We're all creating it together," said Deet. "It helps that the couple of hundred people I'm
trying to bring in are so knowledgeable and understanding of the human mind. They
understand exactly what I'm doing and then try to help me make it work. And it isn't fully
successful yet. As years go by, we have to see the psychology group teaching and
accepting the children of librarians and machinists and medical officers, in full equality with
their own, so that the psychologists don't become a ruling caste. And then intermarriage
between the groups. Maybe in a hundred years we'll have a truly cohesive community. This
is a democratic city-state we're building, not an academic department or a social club."
Leyel was off on his own tangent. It was almost unbearable for him to realize that there
were hundreds of people who knew Hari's work, while Leyel didn't. "You have to teach me!"
Leyel said. "Everything that Hari taught you, all the things that have been kept from me--"
"Oh, eventually, Leyel," said Zay. "At present, though, we're much more interested in what
you have to teach us. Already, I'm sure, a transcription of the things you said when you first
woke up is being spread through the library."
"It was recorded?" asked Leyel.
"We didn't know if you were going to go catatonic on us at any moment, Leyel. You have no
idea how you've been worrying us. Of course we recorded it-- they might have been your last
words."
"They won't be. I don't feel tired at all."
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