Read Prelude to Foundation for Free Online Page B

aid of a stranger against two attackers? Idoubt I would have been able to handle them both on my own.”
    Hummin raised his hand in a deprecatory manner. “I wasn’t afraid of them. They’re just street-brawling lackeys. All I had to do was get my hands on them—and yours, too, of course.”
    “That’s a pretty deadly grip you have,” Seldon mused.
    Hummin shrugged. “You too.” Then, without changing his tone of voice, he said, “Come on, we’d better get out of here. We’re wasting time.”
    Seldon said, “Why do we have to get away? Are you afraid those two will come back?”
    “Not in their lifetime. But some of those brave people who cleared out of the park so quickly in their eagerness to spare themselves a disagreeable sight may have alerted the police.”
    “Fine. We have the hoodlums’ names. And we can describe them fairly well.”
    “Describe them? Why would the police want them?”
    “They committed an assault—”
    “Don’t be foolish. We don’t have a scratch. They’re virtually hospital bait, especially Alem.
We’re
the ones who will be charged.”
    “But that’s impossible. Those people witnessed the fact that—”
    “No people will be called. —Seldon, get this into your head. Those two came to find you—specifically
you
. They were told you were wearing Heliconian clothes and you must have been described precisely. Perhaps they were even shown a holograph. I suspect they were sent by the people who happen to control the police, so let’s not wait any longer.”
    Hummin hurried off, his hand gripping Seldon’s upper arm. Seldon found the grip impossible to shake and, feeling like a child in the hands of an impetuous nurse, followed.
    They plunged into an arcade and, before Seldon’seyes grew accustomed to the dimmer light, they heard the burring sound of a ground-car’s brakes.
    “There they are,” muttered Hummin. “Faster, Seldon.” They hopped onto a moving corridor and lost themselves in the crowd.

7
    Seldon had tried to persuade Hummin to take him to his hotel room, but Hummin would have none of that.
    “Are you mad?” he half-whispered. “They’ll be waiting for you there.”
    “But all my belongings are waiting for me there too.”
    “They’ll just have to wait.”
    And now they were in a small room in a pleasant apartment structure that might be anywhere for all that Seldon could tell. He looked about the one-room unit. Most of it was taken up by a desk and chair, a bed, and a computer outlet. There were no dining facilities or washstand of any kind, though Hummin had directed him to a communal washroom down the hall. Someone had entered before Seldon was quite through. He had cast one brief and curious look at Seldon’s clothes, rather than at Seldon himself, and had then looked away.
    Seldon mentioned this to Hummin, who shook his head and said, “We’ll have to get rid of your clothes. Too bad Helicon is so far out of fashion—”
    Seldon said impatiently, “How much of this might just be your imagination, Hummin? You’ve got me half-convinced and yet it may be merely a kind of … of—”
    “Are you groping for the word ‘paranoia’?”
    “All right, I am. This may be some strange paranoid notion of yours.”
    Hummin said, “Think about it, will you? I can’t argue it out mathematically, but you’ve seen the Emperor. Don’t deny it. He wanted something from you and you didn’t give it to him. Don’t deny that either. I suspect that details of the future are what he wants and you refused. Perhaps Demerzel thinks you’re only pretending not to have the details—that you’re holding out for a higher price or that someone else is bidding for it too. Who knows? I told you that if Demerzel wants you, he’ll get you wherever you are. I told you that before those two splitheads ever appeared on the scene. I’m a journalist
and
a Trantorian. I know how these things go. At one point, Alem said, ‘He’s the one we want.’ Do you remember