Second Foundation(52)

To suffice? To overflow, and drench, and drown.

Arcadia Darell, dressed in borrowed clothes, standing on a borrowed planet in a borrowed situation of what seemed even to be a borrowed life, wanted earnestly the safety of the womb. She didn't know that was what she wanted. She only knew that the very openness of the open world was a great danger. She wanted a closed spot somewhere - somewhere far - somewhere in an unexplored nook of the universe - where no one would ever look.

And there she was, age fourteen plus, weary enough for eighty plus, frightened enough for five minus.

What stranger of the hundreds that brushed past her - actually brushed past her, so that she could feel their touch - was a Second Foundationer? What stranger could not help but instantly destroy her for her guilty knowledge - her unique knowledge - of knowing where the Second Foundation was?

And the voice that cut in on her was a thunderclap that iced the scream in her throat into a voiceless slash.

"Look, miss," it said, irritably, "are you using the ticket machine or are you just standing there?"

It was the first she realized that she was standing in front of a ticket machine. You put a high denomination bill into the clipper which sank out of sight. You pressed the button below your destination and a ticket came out together with the correct change as determined by an electronic scanning device that never made a mistake. It was a very ordinary thing and there is no cause for anyone to stand before it for five minutes.

Arcadia plunged a two-hundred credit into the clipper, and was suddenly aware of the button labeled "Trantor." Trantor, dead capital of the dead Empire - the planet on which she was born. She pressed it in a dream. Nothing happened, except that the red letters flicked on and off, reading 172.18- 172.18- 172.18-

It was the amount she was short. Another two-hundred credit. The ticket was spit out towards her. It came loose when she touched it, and the change tumbled out afterward.

She seized it and ran. She felt the man behind her pressing close, anxious for his own chance at the machine, but she twisted out from before him and did not look behind.

Yet there was nowhere to run. They were all her enemies.

Without quite realizing it, she was watching the gigantic, glowing signs that puffed into the air: Steffani, Anacreon, Fermus- There was even one that ballooned, Terminus, and she longed for it, but did not dare-

For a trifling sum, she could have hired a notifier which could have been set for any destination she cared and which would, when placed in her purse, make itself heard only to her, fifteen minutes before take-off time. But such devices are for people who are reasonably secure, however; who can pause to think of them.

And then, attempting to look both ways simultaneously, she ran head-on into a soft abdomen. She felt the startled outbreath and grunt, and a hand come down on her arm. She writhed desperately but lacked breath to do more than mew a bit in the back of her throat.

Her captor held her firmly and waited. Slowly, he came into focus for her and she managed to look at him. He was rather plump and rather short. His hair was white and copious, being brushed back to give a pompadour effect that looked strangely incongruous above a round and ruddy face that shrieked its peasant origin.

"What's the matter?" he said finally, with a frank and twinkling curiosity. "You look scared."

"Sorry," muttered Arcadia in a frenzy. "I've got to go. Pardon me."

But he disregarded that entirely, and said, "Watch out, little girl. You'll drop your ticket." And he lifted it from her resistless white fingers and looked at it with every evidence of satisfaction.

"I thought so," he said, and then bawled in bull-like tones, "Mommuh!"

A woman was instantly at his side, somewhat more short, somewhat more round, somewhat more ruddy. She wound a finger about a stray gray lock to shove it beneath a well-outmoded hat.

"Pappa," she said, reprovingly, "why do you shout in a crowd like that? People look at you like you were crazy. Do you think you are on the farm?"

And she smiled sunnily at the unresponsive Arcadia, and added, "He has manners like a bear." Then, sharply, "Pappa, let go the little girl. What are you doing?"

But Pappa simply waved the ticket at her. "Look," he said, "she's going to Trantor."

Mamma's face was a sudden beam, "You're from Trantor? Let go her arm, I say, Pappa." She turned the overstuffed valise she was carrying onto its side and forced Arcadia to sit down with a gentle but unrelenting pressure. "Sit down," she said, "and rest your little feet. It will be no ship yet for an hour and the benches are crowded with sleeping loafers. You are from Trantor?"

Arcadia drew a deep breath and gave in. Huskily, she said, "I was born there."

And Mamma clapped her hands gleefully, "One month we've been here and till now we met nobody from home. This is very nice. Your parents-" she looked about vaguely.

"I'm not with my parents," Arcadia said, carefully.

"All alone? A little girl like you?" Mamma was at once a blend of indignation and sympathy, "How does that come to be?"

"Mamma," Pappa plucked at her sleeve, "let me tell you. There's something wrong. I think she's frightened." His voice, though obviously intended for a whisper was quite plainly audible to Arcadia. "She was running - I was watching her - and not looking where she was going. Before I could step out of the way, she bumped into me. And you know what? I think she's in trouble."