"The Mule did it."
"Exactly, and he was beyond calculation - and you are not. What is worse, the people know that you are not. So your ships go into battle fearing defeat in some unknown way. The insubstantial fabric of the Plan hangs over them so that they are cautious and look before they attack and wonder a little too much. While on the other side, that same insubstantial fabric fills the enemy with confidence, removes fear, maintains morale in the face of early defeats. Why not? The Foundation has always been defeated at first and has always won in the end.
"And your own morale, sir? You stand everywhere on enemy territory. Your own dominions have not been invaded; are still not in danger of invasion - yet you are defeated. You don't believe in the possibility, even, of victory, because you know there is none.
"Stoop, then, or you will be beaten to your knees. Stoop voluntarily, and you may save a remnant. You have depended on metal and power and they have sustained you as far as they could. You have ignored mind and morale and they have failed you. Now, take my advice. You have the Foundation man, Homir Munn. Release him. Send him back to Terminus and he will carry your peace offers."
Stettin's teeth ground behind his pale, set lips. But what choice had he?
On the first day of the new year, Homir Munn left Kalgan again. More than six months had passed since he had left Terminus and in the interim, a war had raged and faded.
He had come alone, but he left escorted. He had come a simple man of private life; he left the unappointed but nevertheless, actual, ambassador of peace.
And what had most changed was his early concern over the Second Foundation. He laughed at the thought of that: and pictured in luxuriant detail the final revelation to Dr. Darell, to that energetic, young competent, Anthor, to all of them-
He knew. He, Homir Munn, finally knew the truth.
20. "I Know..."
The last two months of the Stettinian war did not lag for Homir. In his unusual office as Mediator Extraordinary, he found himself the center of interstellar affairs, a role he could not help but find pleasing.
There were no further major battles - a few accidental skirmishes that could scarcely count - and the terms of the treaty were hammered out with little necessity for concessions on the part of the Foundation. Stettin retained his office, but scarcely anything else. His navy was dismantled; his possessions outside the home system itself made autonomous and allowed to vote for return to previous status, full independence or confederation within the Foundation, as they chose.
The war was formally ended on an asteroid in Terminus' own stellar system; site of the Foundation's oldest naval base. Lev Meirus signed for Kalgan, and Homir was an interested spectator.
Throughout all that period he did not see Dr. Darell, nor any of the others. But it scarcely mattered. His news would keep - and, as always, he smiled at the thought.
Dr. Darell returned to Terminus some weeks after VK day, and that same evening, his house served as the meeting place for the five men who, ten months earlier, had laid their first plans.
They lingered over dinner and then over wine as though hesitating to return again to the old subject.
It was Jole Turbor, who, peering steadily into the purple depths of the wineglass with one eye, muttered, rather than said, "Well, Homir, you are a man of affairs now, I see. You handled matters well."
"I?" Munn laughed loudly and joyously. For some reason, he had not stuttered in months. "I hadn't a thing to do with it. It was Arcadia. By the by, Darell, how is she? She's coming back from Trantor, I heard?"
"You heard correctly," said Darell, quietly. "Her ship should dock within the week." He looked, with veiled eyes, at the others, but there were only confused, amorphous exclamations of pleasure. Nothing else.
Turbor said, "Then it's over, really. Who would have predicted all this ten months ago. Munn's been to Kalgan and back. Arcadia's been to Kalgan and Trantor and is coming back. We've had a war and won it, by Space. They tell you that the vast sweeps of history can be predicted, but doesn't it seem conceivable that all that has just happened, with its absolute confusion to those of us who lived through it, couldn't possibly have been predicted."
"Nonsense," said Anthor, acidly. "What makes you so triumphant, anyway? You talk as though we have really won a war, when actually we have won nothing but a petty brawl which has served only to distract our minds from the real enemy."
There was an uncomfortable silence, in which only Homir Munn's slight smile struck a discordant note.
And Anthor struck the arm of his chair with a balled and furyfilled fist, "Yes, I refer to the Second Foundation. There is no mention of it and, if I judge correctly, every effort to have no thought of it. Is it because this fallacious atmosphere of victory that palls over this world of idiots is so attractive that you feel you must participate? Turn somersaults then, handspring your way into a wall, pound one another's back and throw confetti out the window. Do whatever you please, only get it out of your system - and when you are quite done and you are yourselves again, return and let us discuss that problem which exists now precisely as it did ten months ago when you sat here with eyes cocked over your shoulders for fear of you knew not what. Do you really think that the Mind-masters of the Second Foundation are less to be feared because you have beat down a foolish wielder of spaceships."
He paused, red-faced and panting.
Munn said quietly, "Will you hear me speak now, Anthor? Or do you prefer to continue your role as ranting conspirator?"
"Have your say, Homir," said Darell, "but let's all of us refrain from over-picturesqueness of language. It's a very good thing in its place, but at present, it bores me."