Free Foundation by Isaac Asimov Page B

didn’t, and I have the record, and that’s that. I took that record, had it copied out and sent that to Holk for analysis, also.”
    Lundin Crast said, “And where is the analysis?”
    “That,” replied Hardin, “is the interesting thing. The analysis was the most difficult of the three by all odds. When Holk, after two days of steady work, succeeded in eliminating meaningless statements, vague gibberish, useless qualifications—in short, all the goo and dribble—he found he had nothing left. Everything canceled out.
    “Lord Dorwin, gentlemen, in five days of discussion
didn’t
say one
damned thing
, and said it so you never noticed.
There
are the assurances you had from your precious Empire.”
    Hardin might have placed an actively working stench bomb on the table and created no more confusion than existed after his last statement. He waited, with weary patience, for it to die down.
    “So,” he concluded, “when you sent threats—and that’s what they were—concerning Empire action to Anacreon, you merely irritated a monarch who knew better. Naturally, his ego would demand immediate action, and the ultimatum is the result—which brings me to my original statement. We have one week left and what do we do now?”
    “It seems,” said Sutt, “that we have no choice but to allow Anacreon to establish military bases on Terminus.”
    “I agree with you there,” replied Hardin, “but what do we do toward kicking them off again at the first opportunity?”
    Yate Fulham’s mustache twitched. “That sounds as if you have made up your mind that violence must be used against them.”
    “Violence,” came the retort, “is the last refuge of the incompetent. But I certainly don’t intend to lay down the welcome mat and brush off the best furniture for their use.”
    “I still don’t like the way you put that,” insisted Fulham. “It is a dangerous attitude; the more dangerous because we have noticed lately that a sizable section of the populace seems to respond to all your suggestions just so. I might as well tell you, Mayor Hardin, that the board is not quite blind to your recent activities.”
    He paused and there was general agreement. Hardin shrugged.
    Fulham went on: “If you were to inflame the City into an act of violence, you would achieve elaborate suicide—and we don’t intend to allow that. Our policy has but one cardinal principle, and that is the Encyclopedia. Whatever we decide to do or not to do will be so decided because it will be the measure required to keep that Encyclopedia safe.”
    “Then,” said Hardin, “you come to the conclusion that we must continue our intensive campaign of doing nothing.”
    Pirenne said bitterly: “You have yourself demonstrated that the Empire cannot help us; though how and why it can be so, I don’t understand. If compromise is necessary—”
    Hardin had the nightmarelike sensation of running at top speed and getting nowhere. “There
is
no compromise! Don’t you realize that this bosh about military bases is a particularly inferior grade of drivel? Haut Rodric told us what Anacreon was after—outright annexation and imposition of its own feudal system of landed estates and peasant-aristocracy economy upon us. What is left of our bluff of nuclear power may force them to move slowly, but they will move nonetheless.”
    He had risen indignantly, and the rest rose with him—except for Jord Fara.
    And then Jord Fara spoke. “Everyone will please sit down. We’ve gone quite far enough, I think. Come, there’s no use looking so furious, Mayor Hardin; none of us have been committing treason.”
    “You’ll have to convince me of that!”
    Fara smiled gently. “You know you don’t mean that. Let me speak!”
    His little shrewd eyes were half closed, and the perspiration gleamed on the smooth expanse of his chin. “There seems no point in concealing that the Board has come to the decision that the real solution to the Anacreonian problem lies in what