"Good! Good!" Forell was expansively pleased. "Then you imply the Empire can never threaten us again."
"It seems to me so," agreed Barr. "Frankly, Cleon may not live out the year, and there's going to be a disputed succession almost as a matter of course, which might mean the last civil war for the Empire."
"Then," said Forell, "there are no more enemies."
Barr was thoughtful. "There's a Second Foundation."
"At the other end of the Galaxy? Not for centuries."
Devers turned suddenly at this, and his face was dark as he faced Forell. "There are internal enemies, perhaps."
"Are there?" asked Forell, coolly. "Who, for instance?"
"People, for instance, who might like to spread the wealth a bit, and keep it from concentrating too much out of the hands that work for it. See what I mean?"
Slowly, Forell's gaze lost its contempt and grew one with the anger of Devers' own.
Part II The Mule
11. Bride And Groom
THE MULE Less is known of "The Mule" than of any character of comparable significance to Galactic history. Even the period of his greatest renown is known to us chiefly through the eyes of his antagonists and, principally, through those of a young bride...
Encyclopedia Galactica
Bayta's first sight of Haven was entirely the contrary of spectacular. Her husband pointed it out - a dull star lost in the emptiness of the Galaxy's edge. It was past the last sparse clusters, to where straggling points of light gleamed lonely. And even among these it was poor and inconspicuous.
Toran was quite aware that as the earliest prelude to married life, the Red Dwarf lacked impressiveness and his lips curled self-consciously. "I know, Bay - It isn't exactly a proper change, is it? I mean from the Foundation to this."
"A horrible change, Toran. I should never have married you."
And when his face looked momentarily hurt, before he caught himself, she said with her special "cozy" tone, "All right, silly. Now let your lower lip droop and give me that special dying-duck look - the one just before you're supposed to bury your head on my shoulder, while I stroke your hair full of static electricity. You were fishing for some drivel, weren't you? You were expecting me to say 'I'd be happy anywhere with you, Toran!' or 'The interstellar depths themselves would be home, my sweet, were you but with me!' Now you admit it."
She pointed a finger at him and snatched it away an instant before his teeth closed upon it.
He said, "If I surrender, and admit you're right, will you prepare dinner?"
She nodded contentedly. He smiled, and just looked at her.
She wasn't beautiful on the grand scale to others - he admitted that - even if everybody did look twice. Her hair was dark and glossy, though straight, her mouth a bit wide - but her meticulous, close-textured eyebrows separated a white, unlined forehead from the warmest mahogany eyes ever filled with smiles.
And behind a very sturdily-built and staunchly-defended facade of practical, unromantic, hard-headedness towards life, there was just that little pool of softness that would never show if you poked for it, but could be reached if you knew just how - and never let on that you were looking for it.
Toran adjusted the controls unnecessarily and decided to relax. He was one interstellar jump, and then several milli-microparsecs "on the straight" before manipulation by hand was necessary. He leaned over backwards to look into the storeroom, where Bayta was juggling appropriate containers.
There was quite a bit of smugness about his attitude towards Bayta - the satisfied awe that marks the triumph of someone who has been hovering at the edge of an inferiority complex for three years.
After all he was a provincial - and not merely a provincial, but the son of a renegade Trader. And she was of the Foundation itself - and not merely that, but she could trace her ancestry back to Mallow.
And with all that, a tiny quiver underneath. To take her back to Haven, with its rock-world and cave-cities was bad enough. To have her face the traditional hostility of Trader for Foundation - nomad for city dweller - was worse.
Still - After supper, the last jump!
Haven was an angry crimson blaze, and the second planet was a ruddy patch of light with atmosphere-blurred rim and a half-sphere of darkness. Bayta leaned over the large view table with its spidering of crisscross lines that centered Haven II neatly.
She said gravely, "I wish I had met your father first. If he takes a dislike to me-"
"Then," said Toran matter-of-factly, "you would be the first pretty girl to inspire that in him. Before he lost his arm and stopped roving around the Galaxy, he - Well, if you ask him about it, he'll talk to you about it till your ears wear down to a nubbin. After a while I got to thinking that he was embroidering; because he never told the same story twice the same way-"
Haven II was rushing up at them now. The landlocked sea wheeled ponderously below them, slate-gray in the lowering dimness and lost to sight, here and there, among the wispy clouds. Mountains jutted raggedly along the coast.
The sea became wrinkled with nearness and, as it veered off past the horizon just at the end, there was one vanishing glimpse of shore-hugging ice fields.
Toran grunted under the fierce deceleration, "Is your suit locked?"
Bayta's plump face was round and ruddy in the incasing sponge-foam of the internally-heated, skin-clinging costume.
The ship lowered crunchingly on the open field just short of the lifting of the plateau.
They climbed out awkwardly into the solid darkness of the outer-galactic night, and Bayta gasped as the sudden cold bit, and the thin wind swirled emptily. Toran seized her elbow and nudged her into an awkward run over the smooth, packed ground towards the sparking of artificial light in the distance.