“The High Council hasn’t acted. Until they do”

“Your friends will assume the best,” she said mildly.

“These are my friends?” Hari eyed the crowd suspiciously.

“They’re smiling.”

So they were. One called, “Hail the Prof Minister!” and others laughed.

“Is that my nickname now?”

“Well, it’s not a bad one.”

“Why do they flock so?”

“People are drawn to power.”

“I’m still just a professor!”

To offset his irritation, Dors chuckled at him, a wifely reflex. “There’s an ancient saying, ‘These are the times that fry men’s souls.”‘

“You have a bit of historical wisdom for everything.”

“It’s one of the few perks that come with being an historian. “

Someone called, “Hey, Math Minister!”

Hari said, “I don’t like that name any better.”

“Get used to it. You’ll be called worse.”

They passed by the great Streeling fountain and Hari took refuge in a moment of contemplating its high, arching waters. The splashes drowned out the crowd and he could almost imagine he was back in his simple, happy life. Then he had only had to worry about psychohistory and Streeling University infighting. That snug little world had vanished, perhaps forever, the moment Cleon decided to make him a figure in Imperial politics.

The fountain was glorious, yet even it reminded him of the vastness that lay beneath such simplicities. Here the tinkling streams broke free, but their flight was momentary. Trantor’s waters ran in mournful dark pipes, down dim passages scoured by ancient engineers. A maze of fresh water arteries and sewage veins twined through the eternal bowels. These bodily fluids of the planet had passed through uncountable trillions of kidneys and throats, had washed away sins, been toasted with at marriages and births, had carried off the blood of murders and the vomit of terminal agonies. They flowed on in their deep night, never knowing the clean vapor joy of unfettered weather, never free of man’s hand.

They were trapped. So was he.

Their party reached the Mathist Department and ascended. Dors rose through the traptube beside him, a breeze fluttering her hair amiably, the effect quite flattering. The Specials took up watchful, rigid positions outside.

Just as he had for the last week, Hari tried again with the captain. “Look, you don’t really need to keep a dozen men sitting out here-”

“I’ll be the judge of that, Academician sir, if you please.”

Hari felt frustrated at the waste of it. He noticed a young Specialman eyeing Dors, whose uni-suit revealed while still covering. Something made him say, “Well then, I will thank you to have your men keep their eyes where they belong!”

The captain looked startled. He glared at the offending man and stomped over to reprimand him. Hari felt a spark of satisfaction. Going in the entrance to his office, Dors said, ‘‘I’ll try to dress more strictly.”

“No, no, I’m just being stupid. I shouldn’t let tiny things like that bother me.”

She smiled prettily. “Actually, I rather liked it.”

“You did? Me being stupid?”

“Your being protective.”

Dors had been assigned years before to watch over him, by Eto Demerzel. Hari reflected that he had gotten used to that role of hers, little noticing that it conflicted in a deep, unspoken way with her also being a woman. Dors was utterly self-reliant, but she had qualities which sometimes did not easily jibe with her duty. Being his wife, for example.

“I will have to do it more often,” he said lightly.

Still, he felt a pang of guilt about making trouble for the Specialmen. Their being here was certainly not their idea; Cleon had ordered it. No doubt they would far rather be off somewhere saving the Empire with sweat and valor.

They went through the high, arched foyer of the Mathist Department, Hari nodding to the staff. Dors went into her own office and he hurried into his suite with an air of an animal retreating into its burrow. He collapsed into his airchair, ignoring the urgent message holo that hung a meter from his face.

A wave erased it as Yugo Amaryl came in through the connecting e-stat portal. The intrusive, bulky portal was also the fruit of Cleon’s security order. The Specials had installed the shimmering weapons-nulling fields everywhere. They lent an irksome, prickly smell of ozone to the air. One more intrusion of Reality, wearing the mask of Politics.

Yugo’s grin split his broad face. “Got some new results.”

“Cheer me up, show me something splendid.”

Yugo sat on Hari’s broad, empty desk, one leg dangling. “Good mathematics is always true and beautiful.”

“Certainly. But it doesn’t have to be true in the sense that ordinary people mean. It can say nothing whatever about the world.”

“You’re making me feel like a dirty engineer.”

Hari smiled. “You were once, remember?”

“Don’t I!”

“Maybe you’d rather be sweating it out as a heatsinker?”

Hari had found Yugo by chance eight years ago, just after arriving on Trantor, when he and Dors were on the run from Imperial agents. An hour’s talk had shown Hari that Yugo was an untutored genius at trans-representational analysis. Yugo had a gift, an unconscious lightness of touch. They had collaborated ever since. Hari honestly thought he had learned more from Yugo than the other way around.

“Ha!” Yugo clapped his big hands together three times, in the Dahlite manner of showing agreeable humor. “You can grouse about doing filthy, real-world work, but as long as it’s in a nice, comfortable office, I’m in paradise.”

“I shall have to turn most of the heavy lifting over to you, I fear.” Hari deliberately put his feet up on his desk. Might as well look casual, even if he didn’t feel that way. He envied Yugo’s heavy-bodied ease.

“This First Minister stuff?”

“It is getting worse. I have to go see the Emperor again.”

“The man wants you. Must be your craggy profile.”

“That’s what Dors thinks, too. I figure it’s my disarming smile. Anyway, he can’t have me.”

“He will.”

“If he forces the ministership on me, I shall do such a lousy job, Cleon will fire me.”

Yugo shook his head. “Not wise. Failed First Ministers are usually tried and executed.”

“You’ve been talking to Dors again.”

“She is a historian.”

“Yes, and we’re psychohistorians. Seekers of predictability.” Hari threw up his hands in exasperation. “Why doesn’t that count for anything?”

“Because nobody in the citadels of power has seen it work.”

“And they won’t. Once people think we can predict, we will never be free of politics.”

“You’re not free now,” Yugo said reasonably.

“Good friend, your worse trait is insisting on telling me the truth in a calm voice.”

“It saves knocking sense into your head. That would take longer.”

Hari sighed. “If only muscles helped with mathematics. You would be even better at it.”

Yugo waved the thought away. “You’re the key. You’re the idea man.”

“Well, this font of ideas hasn’t got a clue.”

“Ideas, they’ll come.”

“I never get a chance to work on psychohistory anymore!”

“And as First Minister-”

“It will be worse. Psychohistory will go”

“Nowhere, without you.”

“There will be some progress, Yugo. I am not vain enough to think everything depends on me.”

“It does.”

“Nonsense! There’s still you, the Imperial Fellows, and the staff.”

“We need leadership. Thinking leadership.”

“Well, I could continue to work here part of the time…”

Hari looked around his spacious office and felt a pang at the thought of not spending every day here, surrounded by his tools, tomes, and friends. As First Minister he would have a minor palace, but to him it would be mere empty, meaningless extravagance.

Yugo gave him a mocking grin. “First Minister is usually considered a full-time job.”