“The gardener is an old friend? What is he? A mathematical colleague fallen on hard times?”

“No, Sire. Perhaps you remember the story. It was the time when” (he cleared his throat searching for the most tactful way to recall the incident) “the sergeant threatened my life shortly after I was appointed to my present post through your kindness.”

“The assassination attempt.” Cleon looked up to heaven as though seeking patience. “I don't know why everyone is so afraid of that word.”

“Perhaps,” said Seldon, smoothly, slightly despising himself for the ease with which he had come to be able to flatter, “the rest of us are more perturbed at the possibility of something untoward happening to our Emperor than you yourself are.”

Cleon smiled ironically. “I dare say. And what has this to do with Gruber? Is that his name?”

“Yes, Sire. Mandell Gruber. I'm sure you will recall, if you cast your mind back, that there was a gardener who came rushing up with a rake to defend me against the armed sergeant.”

“Ah, yes. Was he the gardener who did that?”

“He was the man, Sire. I've considered him a friend ever since, and I meet him almost every time I am on the grounds. I think he watches for me; feels proprietary toward me. And, of course, I feel kindly toward him.”

“I don't blame you. -And while we're on the subject, how is your formidable lady, Ms. Venabili? I don't see her often.”

“She's a historian, Sire. Lost in the past.”

“She doesn't frighten you? She'd frighten me. I've been told how she treated that sergeant. One could almost be sorry for him.”

“She grows savage on my behalf, Sire, but has not had occasion to do so lately. It's been very quiet.”

The Emperor looked after the disappearing gardener. “Have we ever rewarded that man?”

“I have done so, Sire. He has a wife and two daughters and I have arranged that each daughter will have a sum of money put aside for the education of any children she may have.”

“Very good. But he needs a promotion, I think. -Is he a good gardener?”

“Excellent, Sire.”

“The Chief Gardener, Malcomber-I'm not quite sure I remember his name-is getting on and is, perhaps, not up to the job any more. He is well into his late seventies. Do you think this Gruber might be able to take over?”

“I'm certain he can, Sire, but he likes his present job. It keeps him out in the open in all kinds of weathers.”

“A peculiar recommendation for a job. I'm sure he can get used to administration, and I do need someone for some sort of renewal of the grounds. Hmmm. I must think upon this. Your friend Gruber may be just the man I need. -By the way, Seldon, what did you mean by saying it's been very quiet?”

“I merely meant, Sire, that there has been no sign of discord at the Imperial Court. The unavoidable tendency to intrigue seems to be as near a minimum as it is ever likely to get.”

“You wouldn't say that if you were Emperor, Seldon, and had to contend with all these officials and their complaints.”

“They should bring these complaints to me, Sire.”

“They know my soft heart, Seldon, and avoid your harshness.”

“Sire!”

“Just joking. However, that's not what I mean. How can you tell me things are quiet when reports seem to reach me every other week of some serious breakdown here and there on Trantor?”

“These things are bound to happen.”

“I don't recall that such things happened so frequently in previous years.”

“Perhaps that was because they didn't, Sire. The infrastructure grows older with time. To make the necessary repairs properly would take time, labor, and enormous expense. This is not a time when a rise in taxes will be looked on favorably.”

“There's never any such time. I gather that the people are experiencing serious dissatisfaction over these breakdowns. It must stop and you must see to it, Seldon. What does Psychohistory say?”

“It says what common sense says, that everything is growing older.”

“Well, all this is quite spoiling the pleasant day for me. I leave it in your hands, Seldon.”

“Yes, Sire,” said Seldon submissively.

The Emperor strode off and Seldon thought that it was all spoiling the pleasant day for him, too. This breakdown at the center was the alternative he didn't want. But how was he to prevent it and switch the crisis to the Periphery?

Psychohistory didn't say.

Raych Seldon felt extraordinarily contented, for it was the first dinner en famille that he had had in some months with the two people he thought of as his father and mother. He knew perfectly well that they were not his parents in any biological sense, but it didn't matter. He merely smiled at them in complete love.

The surroundings were not as warm as they had been at Streeling in the old days, when their home had been small and intimate, and had sat like a comfortable gem in the larger setting of the university. Now, unfortunately, nothing could hide the grandeur of a Palace suite.

Raych sometimes stared at himself in the mirror and wondered how it could be. He was not tall, only 163 centimeters in height, distinctly shorter than either parent. He was rather stocky, but muscular, and not fat, with black hair and the distinctive Dahlite mustache that he kept as dark and as thick as possible.

In the mirror, he could still see the street-urchin he had once been before the chanciest of great chances had dictated his meeting with Seldon and Venabili. Seldon had been much younger then, and his appearance now made it plain that Raych himself was almost as old now as Seldon had been when they met.

Amazingly, his mother, Dors, had hardly changed at all. She was as sleek and fit as the day she and Hari were accosted by young Raych and his fellow Billibotton gang members. And he, Raych, born to poverty and misery, was now a member of the civil service, a small cog in the Ministry of Populations.

Seldon said, “How are things going at the Ministry, Raych? Any progress?”

“Some, Dad. The laws are passed. The court decisions are made. Speeches are pronounced. Still, it's difficult to move people. You can preach brotherhood all you want, but no one feels like a brother. What gets me is that the Dahlites are as bad as any of the others. They want to be treated as equals, they say, and so they do, but, given a chance, they have no desire to treat others as equals.”

Venabili said, “It's all but impossible to change people's minds and hearts, Raych. It's enough to try and perhaps eliminate the worst of the injustices.”

“The trouble is,” said Seldon, “that through most of history, no one's been working on this problem. Human beings have been allowed to fester in the delightful game of I'm-better-than-you, and cleaning up that mess isn't easy. If we allow things to follow their own bent and grow worse for a thousand years, we can't complain if it takes, say, one hundred years to work an improvement.”

“Sometimes, Dad,” said Raych, “I think you gave me this job to punish me.”

Seldon's eyebrows raised. “What motivation could I have had to punish you?”

“For feeling attracted to Joranum's program of sector-equality and for greater popular representation in government.”

“I don't blame you for that. These are attractive suggestions, but you know that Joranum and his gang were using it only as a device to gain power. Afterward-”

“But you had me entrap him despite my attraction to his views.”

Seldon said, “It wasn't easy for me to ask you to do that.”

“And now you keep me working at the implementation of Joranum's program, just to show me how hard the task is in reality.”

Seldon said to Venabili, “How do you like that, Dors? The boy attributes to me a kind of sneaky underhandedness that simply isn't part of my character.”