In the lounge, over a pair of mild drinks, Randa said, "May I ask you, as a matter of professional interest, why you are feeling frustration?"
Seldon shrugged. "Why does one usually feel frustration? I'm tackling something in which I am making no progress."
"But you're a mathematician, Hari. Why should anything in the history library frustrate you?"
"What were you doing here?"
"Passing through as part of a shortcut to where I was going when I heard you... moaning. Now you see"-and he smiled-"it's no longer a shortcut, but a serious delay-one that I welcome, however."
"I wish I were just passing through the history library, but I'm trying to solve a mathematical problem that requires some knowledge of history and I'm afraid I'm not handling it well."
Randa stared at Seldon with an unusually solemn expression on his face, then he said, "Pardon me, but I must run the risk of offending you now. I've been computering you."
"Computering me!" Seldon's eyes widened. He felt distinctly angry.
"I have offended you. But, you know, I had an uncle who was a mathematician. You might even have heard of him: Kiangtow Randa."
Seldon drew in his breath. "Are you a relative of that Randa?"
"Yes. He is my father's older brother and he was quite displeased with me for not following in his footsteps-he has no children of his own. I thought somehow that it might please him that I had met a mathematician and I wanted to boast of you-if I could-so I checked what information the mathematics library might have."
"I see. And that's what you were really doing there. Well-I'm sorry. I don't suppose you could do much boasting."
"You suppose wrong. I was impressed. I couldn't make heads or tails of the subject matter of your papers, but somehow the information seemed to be very favorable. And when I checked the news files, I found you were at the Decennial Convention earlier this year. So... what's 'psychohistory,' anyway? Obviously, the first two syllables stir my curiosity."
"I see you got that word out of it."
"Unless I'm totally misled, it seemed to me that you can work out the future course of history."
Seldon nodded wearily, "That, more or less, is what psychohistory is or, rather, what it is intended to be."
"But is it a serious study?" Randa was smiling. "You don't just throw sticks?"
"Throw sticks?"
"That's just a reference to a game played by children on my home planet of Hopara. The game is supposed to tell the future and if you're a smart kid, you can make a good thing out of it. Tell a mother that her child will grow up beautiful and marry a rich man and it's good for a piece of cake or a half-credit piece on the spot. She isn't going to wait and see if it comes true; you are rewarded just for saying it."
"I see. No, I don't throw sticks. Psychohistory is just an abstract study. Strictly abstract. It has no practical application at all, except-"
"Now we're getting to it. Exceptions are what are interesting."
"Except that I would like to work out such an application. Perhaps if I knew more about history-"
"Ah, that is why you are reading history?"
"Yes, but it does me no good," said Seldon sadly. "There is too much history and there is too little of it that is told."
"And that's what's frustrating you?"
Seldon nodded.
Randa said, "But, Hari, you've only been here a matter of weeks."
"True, but already I can see-"
"You can't see anything in a few weeks. You may have to spend your whole lifetime making one little advance. It may take many generations of work by many mathematicians to make a real inroad on the problem."
"I know that, Lisung, but that doesn't make me feel better. I want to make some visible progress myself."
"Well, driving yourself to distraction won't help either. If it will make you feel better, I can give you an example of a subject much less complex than human history that people have been working for I don't know how long without making much progress. I know because a group is working on it right here at the University and one of my good friends is involved. Talk about frustration! You don't know what frustration is!"
"What's the subject?" Seldon felt a small curiosity stirring within him.
"Meteorology."
"Meteorology!" Seldon felt revolted at the anticlimax.
"Don't make faces. Look. Every inhabited world has an atmosphere. Every world has its own atmospheric composition, its own temperature range, its own rotation and revolution rate, its own axial tipping, it's own land-water distribution. We've got twenty five million different problems and no one has succeeded in finding a generalization."
"... that's because atmospheric behavior easily enters a chaotic phase. Everyone knows that."
"So my friend Jenarr Leggen says. You've met him."
Seldon considered. "Tall fellow? Long nose? Doesn't speak much?"
"That's the one.-And Trantor itself is a bigger puzzle than almost any world. According to the records, it had a fairly normal weather pattern when it was first settled. Then, as the population grew and urbanization spread, more energy was used and more heat was discharged into the atmosphere. The ice cover contracted, the cloud layer thickened, and the weather got lousier. That encouraged the movement underground and set off a vicious cycle. The worse the weather got, the more eagerly the land was dug into and the domes built and the weather got still worse. Now the planet has become a world of almost incessant cloudiness and frequent rains-or snows when it's cold enough. The only thing is that no one can work it out properly. No one has worked out an analysis that can explain why the weather has deteriorated quite as it has or how one can reasonably predict the details of its day-to-day changes."