Foundation

TRADERS—... With psychohistoric inevitability, economic control of the Foundation grew. The traders grew rich; and with riches came power....

It is sometimes forgotten that Hober Mallow began life as an ordinary trader. It is never forgotten that he ended it as the first of the Merchant Princes....

“Listen, there’s a Seldon crisis coming up.”

Mallow waited for a reaction but it never came. Twer merely stared. “What’s a Seldon crisis?”

“Galaxy!” Mallow exploded angrily at the anticlimax, “What the blue blazes did you do when you went to school? What do you mean anyway by a fool question like that?”

“There have been stories percolating through space. They travel strange paths and become distorted with every parsec,—but when I was young there was a small ship of strange men, who did not know our customs and could not tell where they came from. They talked of magicians at the edge of the Galaxy; magicians who glowed in the darkness, who flew unaided through the air, and whom weapons would not touch.

“We laughed. I laughed, too. I forgot it till today. But you glow in the darkness, and I don’t think my blaster, if I had one, would hurt you. Tell me, can you fly through air as you sit there now?”

“And time enough, too,” said Mallow, indifferently, “for a policy outdated, dangerous and impossible. However well your religion has succeeded in the Four Kingdoms, scarcely another world in the Periphery has accepted it. At the time we seized control of the Kingdoms, there were a sufficient number of exiles, Galaxy knows, to spread the story of how Salvor Hardin used the priesthood and the superstition of the people to overthrow the independence and power of the secular monarchs. And if that wasn’t enough, the case of Askone two decades back made it plain enough. There isn’t a ruler in the Periphery now that wouldn’t sooner cut his own throat than let a priest of the Foundation enter the territory.”

Jael swallowed dryly, “How? What are you going to do?”

“Nothing.”

Jael smiled uncertainly, “Really! All of that!”

But Mallow’s answer was incisive, “When I’m boss of this Foundation, I’m going to do nothing. One hundred percent of nothing, and that is the secret of this crisis.”

“This is a Seldon crisis we’re facing, Sutt, and Seldon crises are not solved by individuals but by historic forces. Hari Seldon, when he planned our course of future history, did not count on brilliant heroics but on the broad sweeps of economics and sociology. So the solutions to the various crises must be achieved by the forces that become available to us at the time.

“In this case, —trade!”