[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Even a marriage, even a good marriage like theirs-- his commitment might be absolute, but he could never trust hers so completely.Leyel had buried himself within the marriage, helping and serving and loving Deet with all his heart.She was wrong, completely wrong about his coming to Trantor.He hadn't come as a sacrifice, against his will, solely because she wanted to come.On the contrary: because she wanted so much to come, he also wanted to come, changing even his desires to coincide with hers.She commanded his very heart, because it was impossible for him not to desire anything that would bring her happiness.But she, no, she could not do that for him.If she went to Terminus, it would be as a noble sacrifice.She would never let him forget that she hadn't wanted to.To him, their marriage was his very soul.To Deet, their marriage was just a friendship with sex.Her soul belonged as much to these other women as to him.By dividing her loyalties, she fragmented them; none were strong enough to sway her deepest desires.Thus he discovered what he supposed all faithful men eventually discover-- that no human relationship is ever anything but tentative.There is no such thing as an unbreakable bond between people.Like the particles in the nucleus of the atom.They are bound by the strongest forces in the universe, and yet they can be shattered, they can break.Nothing can last.Nothing is, finally, what it once seemed to be.Deet and he had had a perfect marriage until there came a stress that exposed its imperfection.Anyone who thinks he has a perfect marriage, a perfect friendship, a perfect trust of any kind, he only believes this because the stress that will break it has not yet come.He might die with the illusion of happiness, but all he has proven is that sometimes death comes before betrayal.If you live long enough, betrayal will inevitably come.Such were the dark thoughts that filled Leyel's mind as he made his way through the maze of the city of Trantor.Leyel did not seal himself inside a private car when he went about in the planet-wide city.He refused the trappings of wealth; he insisted on experiencing the life of Trantor as an ordinary man.Thus his bodyguards were under strict instructions to remain discreet, interfering with no pedestrians except those carrying weapons, as revealed by a subtle and instantaneous scan.It was much more expensive to travel through the city this way, of course-- every time he stepped out the door of his simple apartment, nearly a hundred high-paid bribeproof employees went into action.A weaponproof car would have been much cheaper.But Leyel was determined not to be imprisoned by his wealth.So he walked through the corridors of the city, riding cabs and tubes, standing in lines like anyone else.He felt the great city throbbing with life around him.Yet such was his dark and melancholy mood today that the very life of the city filled him with a sense of betrayal and loss.Even you, great Trantor, the Imperial City, even you will be betrayed by the people who made you.Your empire will desert you, and you will become a pathetic remnant of yourself, plated with the metal of a thousand worlds and asteroids as a reminder that once the whole galaxy promised to serve you forever, and now you are abandoned.Hari Seldon had seen it.Hari Seldon understood the changeability of humankind.He knew that the great empire would fall, and so-- unlike the government, which depended on things remaining the same forever-- Hari Seldon could actually take steps to ameliorate the Empire's fall, to prepare on Terminus a womb for the rebirth of human greatness.Hari was creating the future.It was unthinkable that he could mean to cut Leyel Forska out of it.The Foundation, now that it had legal existence and Imperial funding, had quickly grown into a busy complex of offices in the four-thousand-year-old Putassuran Building.Because the Putassuran was originally built to house the Admiralty shortly after the great victory whose name it bore, it had an air of triumph, of monumental optimism about it-- rows of soaring arches, a vaulted atrium with floating bubbles of light rising and dancing in channeled columns of air.In recent centuries the building had served as a site for informal public concerts and lectures, with the offices used to house the Museum Authority.It had come empty only a year before Hari Seldon was granted the right to form his Foundation, but it seemed as though it had been built for this very purpose.Everyone was hurrying this way and that, always seeming to be on urgent business, and yet also happy to be part of a noble cause.There had been no noble causes in the Empire for a long, long time.Leyel quickly threaded his way through the maze that protected the Foundation's director from casual interruption.Other men and women, no doubt, had tried to see Hari Seldon and failed, put off by this functionary or that.Hari Seldon is a very busy man.Perhaps if you make an appointment for later.Seeing him today is out of the question.He's in meetings all afternoon and evening.Do call before coming next time.But none of this happened to Leyel Forska.All he had to do was say, "Tell Mr.Seldon that Mr.Forska wishes to continue a conversation." However much awe they might have of Hari Seldon, however they might intend to obey his orders not to be disturbed, they all knew that Leyel Forska was the universal exception.Even Linge Chen would be called out of a meeting of the Commission of Public Safety to speak with Forska, especially if Leyel went to the trouble of coming in person
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
