Second Foundation(69)

Darell shrugged his shoulders. "Interesting. I'm trying to fit it in with a message I received from Arcadia a few months since."

"Oh, a message?" asked Anthor. "And what was it?"

"Well, I'm not certain. Five short words. But its interesting."

"Look," broke in Semic, with a worried interest, "there's something I don't understand."

"What's that?"

Semic chose his words carefully, his old upper lip lifting with each word as if to let them out singly and reluctantly. "Well, now, Homir Munn was saying just a while ago that Hari Seldon was faking when he said that he had established a Second Foundation. Now you're saying that it's not so; that Seldon wasn't faking, eh?"

"Right, he wasn't faking. Seldon said he had established a Second Foundation and so he had."

"All right, then, but he said something else, too. He said he established the two Foundations at opposite ends of the Galaxy. Now, young man, was that a fake - because Kalgan isn't at the opposite end of the Galaxy."

Anthor seemed annoyed, "That's a minor point. That part may well have been a cover up to protect them. But after all, think - What real use would it serve to have the Mind-masters at the opposite end of the Galaxy? What is their function? To help preserve the Plan. Who are the main card players of the Plan? We, the First Foundation. Where can they best observe us, then, and serve their own ends? At the opposite end of the Galaxy? Ridiculous! They're within fifty parsecs, actually, which is much more sensible."

"I like that argument," said Darell. "It makes sense. Look here, Munn's been conscious for some time and I propose we loose him. He can't do any harm, really."

Anthor looked rebellious, but Homir was nodding vigorously. Five seconds later he was rubbing his wrists just as vigorously.

"How do you feel?" asked Darell.

"Rotten," said Munn, sulkily, "but never mind. There's something I want to ask this bright young thing here. I've heard what he's had to say, and I'd just like permission to wonder what we do next."

There was a queer and incongruous silence.

Munn smiled bitterly. "Well, suppose Kalgan is the Second Foundation. Who on Kalgan are they? How are you going to find them? How are you going to tackle them if you find them, eh?"

"Ah," said Darell, "I can answer that, strangely enough. Shall I tell you what Semic and I have been doing this past half-year? It may give you another reason, Anthor, why I was anxious to remain on Terminus all this time."

"In the first place," he went on, "I've been working on encephalographic analysis with more purpose than any of you may suspect. Detecting Second Foundation minds is a little more subtle than simply finding a Tamper Plateau - and I did not actually succeed. But I came close enough.

"Do you know, any of you, how emotional control works? It's been a popular subject with fiction writers since the time of the Mule and much nonsense has been written, spoken, and recorded about it. For the most part, it has been treated as something mysterious and occult. Of course, it isn't. That the brain is the source of a myriad, tiny electromagnetic fields, everyone knows. Every fleeting emotion varies those fields in more or less intricate fashion, and everyone should know that, too.

"Now it is possible to conceive a mind which can sense these changing fields and even resonate with them. That is, a special organ of the cerebrum can exist which can take on whatever field-pattern it may detect. Exactly how it would do this, I have no idea, but that doesn't matter. if I were blind, for instance, I could still learn the significance of photons and energy quanta and it could be reasonable to me that the absorption of a photon of such energy could create chemical changes in some organ of the body such that its presence would be detectable. But, of course, I would not be able, thereby, to understand color.

"Do all of you follow?"

There was a firm nod from Anthor; a doubtful nod from the others.

"Such a hypothetical Mind Resonating Organ, by adjusting itself to the Fields emitted by other minds could perform what is popularly known as 'reading emotion' or even 'reading minds,' which is actually something even more subtle. It is but an easy step from that to imagining a similar organ which could actually force an adjustment on another mind. It could orient with its stronger Field the weaker one of another mind - much as a strong magnet will orient the atomic dipoles in a bar of steel and leave it magnetized thereafter.

"I solved the mathematics of Second Foundationism in the sense that I evolved a function that would predict the necessary combination of neuronic paths that would allow for the formation of an organ such as I have just described - but, unfortunately, the function is too complicated to solve by any of the mathematical tools at present known. That is too bad, because it means that I can never detect a Mind-worker by his encephalographic pattern alone.

"But I could do something else. I could, with Semic's help, construct what I shall describe as a Mental Static device. It is not beyond the ability of modem science to create an energy source that will duplicate an encephalograph-type pattern of electromagnetic field. Moreover, it can be made to shift at complete random, creating, as far as this particular mind-sense is concerned, a sort of 'noise' or 'static' which masks other minds with which it may be in contact.