Second Foundation(23)

The Mule drew back and muttered: "Not enough. You do not pass the test after all. Your despair is pretense. Your fear is not the broad overwhelming that adheres to the destruction of an ideal, but the puny seeping fear of personal destruction."

And the Mule's weak hand seized Channis by the throat in a puny grip that Channis was somehow unable to break.

"You are my insurance, Channis. You are my director and safeguard against any underestimation I may make." The Mule's eyes bore down upon him. Insistent- Demanding-

"Have I calculated rightly, Channis? Have I outwitted your men of the Second Foundation? Tazenda is destroyed, Channis, tremendously destroyed; so why is your despair pretense? Where is the reality? I must have reality and truth! Talk, Channis talk. Have I penetrated then, not deeply enough? Does the danger still exist? Talk, Channis. Where have I done wrong?"

Channis felt the words drag out of his mouth. They did not come willingly. He clenched his teeth against them. He bit his tongue. He tensed every muscle of his throat.

And they came out - gasping - pulled out by force and tearing his throat and tongue and teeth on the way.

"Truth," he squeaked, "truth-"

"Yes, truth. What is left to be done?"

"Seldon founded Second Foundation here. Here, as I said. I told no lie. The psychologists arrived and took control of the native population."

"Of Tazenda?" The Mule plunged deeply into the flooding torture of the other's emotional upwellings - tearing at them brutally. "It is Tazenda I have destroyed. You know what I want. Give it to me."

"Not Tazenda. I said Second Foundationers might not be those apparently in power; Tazenda is the figurehead-" The words were almost unrecognizable, forming themselves against every atom of will of the Second Foundationer, "Rossem - Rossem - Rossem is the world-"

The Mule loosed his grip and Channis dropped into a huddle of pain and torture.

"And you thought to fool me?" said the Mule, softly.

"You were fooled." It was the last dying shred of resistance in Channis.

"But not long enough for you and yours. I am in communication with my Fleet. And after Tazenda can come Rossem. But first-"

Channis felt the excruciating darkness rise against him, and the automatic lift of his arm to his tortured eyes could not ward it off. It was a darkness that throttled, and as he felt his tom, wounded mind reeling backwards, backwards into the everlasting black - there was that final picture of the triumphant Mule - laughing matchstick - that long, fleshy nose quivering with laughter.

The sound faded away. The darkness embraced him lovingly.

It ended with a cracking sensation that was like the jagged glare of a lightning flash, and Channis came slowly to earth while sight returned painfully in blurry transmission through tear-drenched eyes.

His head ached unbearably, and it was only with a stab of agony that he could bring up a hand to it.

Obviously, he was alive. Softly, like feathers caught up in an eddy of air that had passed, his thoughts steadied and drifted to rest. He felt comfort suck in - from outside. Slowly, torturedly, he bent his neck - and relief was a sharp pang.

For the door was open; and the First Speaker stood just inside the threshold. He tried to speak, to shout, to warn - but his tongue froze and he knew that a part of the Mule's mighty mind still held him and clamped all speech within him.

He bent his neck once more. The Mule was still in the room. He was angry and hot-eyed. He laughed no longer, but his teeth were bared in a ferocious smile.

Channis felt the First Speaker's mental influence moving gently over his mind with a healing touch and then there was the numbing sensation as it came into contact with the Mule's defense for an instant of struggle and withdrew.

The Mule said gratingly, with a fury that was grotesque in his meagre body: "Then another comes to greet me." His agile mind reached its tendrils out of the room- out- out-

"You are alone," he said.

And the First Speaker interrupted with an acquiescence: "I am thoroughly alone. It is necessary that I be alone, since it was I who miscalculated your future five years ago. There would be a certain satisfaction to me in correcting that matter without aid. Unfortunately, I did not count on the strength of your Field of Emotional Repulsion that surrounded this place. It took me long to penetrate. I congratulate you upon the skill with which it was constructed."

"Thank you for nothing," came the hostile rejoinder. "Bandy no compliments with me. Have you come to add your brain splinter to that of yonder cracked pillar of your realm?"

The First Speaker smiled: "Why, the man you call Bail Channis performed his mission well, the more so since he was not your mental equal by far. I can see, of course, that you have mistreated him, yet it may be that we may restore him fully even yet. He is a brave man, sir. He volunteered for this mission although we were able to predict mathematically the huge chance of damage to his mind - a more fearful alternative than that of mere physical crippling."

Channis' mind pulsed futilely with what he wanted to say and couldn't; the warning he wished to shout and was unable to. He could only emit that continuous stream of fear- fear-

The Mule was calm. "You know, of course, of the destruction of Tazenda."

"I do. The assault by your fleet was foreseen."

Grimly: "Yes, so I suppose. But not prevented, eh?"