Foundation

near

“Hardin,” cried Wienis again, “order your priests back to their jobs.” Hardin looked up coolly. “Order them yourself, Wienis, and see who is playing with forces too great for whom. Right now, there’s not a wheel turning in Anacreon. There’s not a light burning, except in the temples. There’s not a drop of water running, except in the temples. On th

Hardin threw himself back in the chair. “You know, that’s the most interesting part of the whole business. I’ll admit I had thought his Lordship a most consummate donkey when I first met him—but it turned out that he was actually an accomplished diplomat and a most clever man. I took the liberty of recording all his statements.” There was a flurry,

was childish to feel disappointed, but childishness comes almost as naturally to a man as to a child, and there was a lump in Gaal’s throat.

Hardin looked up at him and grinned. “Have a cigar! How was the trip?” Verisof helped himself. “Interesting. There was a priest in the next cabin on his way here to take a special course in the preparation of radioactive synthetics—for the treatment of cancer, you know—” “Surely, he didn’t call it radioactive synthetics, now?” “I guess not! It was

apocryphal.

the rotten tree-trunk, until the very moment when the storm-blast breaks it in two, has all the appearance of might it ever had. The storm-blast whistles through the branches of the Empire even now.

The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity—a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.

“This goes beyond money, or markets. We have the science of the great Hari Seldon to prove that upon us depends the future empire of the Galaxy, and from the course that leads to that Imperium we cannot turn. The religion we have is our all-important instrument towards that end. With it we have brought the Four Kingdoms under our control, even at t