CHAPTER EIGHT
FARMWOMAN
Thd Speakers sat about the table, frozen in their mental shielding. It was as though all - with one accord - had hidden their minds to avoid irrevocable insult to the First Speaker after his statement concerning Trevize. Surreptitiously they glanced toward Delarmi and even that gave away much. Of them all, she was best known for her irreverence - Even Gendibal paid more lip service to convention.
Delarmi was aware of the glances and she knew that she had no choice but to face up to this impossible situation. In fact, she did not want to duck the issue. In all the history of the Second Foundation, no First Speaker had ever been impeached for misanalysis (and behind the term, which she had invented as cover-up, was the unacknowledged incompetence). Such impeachment now became possible. She would not hang back.
"First Speaker!" she said softly, her thin, colorless lips more nearly invisible than usual in the general whiteness of her face. "You yourself say you have no basis for your opinion, that the psychohistorical mathematics show nothing Do you ask us to base a crucial decision on a mystical feeling?"
The First Speaker looked up, his forehead corrugated. He was aware of the universal shielding at the Table. He knew what it meant. He said coldly, "I do not hide the lack of evidence. I present you with nothing falsely. What I offer is the strongly intuitive feeling of a First Speaker, one with decades of experience who has spent nearly a lifetime in the close analysis of the Seldon Plan." He looked about him with a proud rigidity he rarely displayed, and one by one the mental shields softened and dropped. Delarmi's (when he turned to stare at her) was the last.
She said, with a disarming frankness that filled her mind as though nothing else had ever been there, "I accept your statement, of course, First Speaker. Nevertheless, I think you might perhaps want to reconsider. As you think about it now, having already expressed shame at having to fall back on intuition, would you wish your remarks to be stricken from the record if, in your judgment they should be..."
And Gendibal's voice cut in. "What are these remarks that should. be stricken from the record?"
Every pair of eyes turned in unison. Had their shields not been up during the crucial moments before, they would have been aware of his approach long before he was at the door.
"All shields up a moment ago? All unaware of my entrance?" said Gendibal sardonically. "What a commonplace meeting of the Table we have here. Was no one on their guard for my coming? Or did you all fully expect that I would not arrive?"
This outburst was a flagrant violation of all standards. For Gendibal to arrive late was bad enough. For him to then enter unannounced was worse. For him to speak before the First Speaker had acknowledged his attendance was worst of all.
The First Speaker turned to him. All else was superceded. The question of discipline came first.
"Speaker Gendibal," he said, "you are late. You arrive unannounced. You speak. Is there any reason why you should not be suspended from your seat for thirty days?"
"Of course. The move for suspension should not be considered until first we consider who it was that made it certain I would be late - and why." Gendibal's words were cool and measured, but his mind clothed his thoughts with anger and he did not care who sensed it.
Certainly Delarmi sensed it. She said forcefully, "This man is mad."
"Mad? This woman is mad to say so. Or aware of guilt. - First Speaker, I address myself to you and move a point of personal privilege," said Gendibal.
"Personal privilege of what nature, Speaker?"
"First Speaker, I accuse someone here of attempted murder."
The room exploded as every Speaker rose to his or her feet in a simultaneous babble of words, expression, and mentality.
The First Speaker raised his arms. He cried, "The Speaker must have his chance to express his point of personal privilege." He found himself forced to intensify his authority, mentally, in a manner most inappropriate to the place - yet there was no choice.
The babble quieted.
Gendibal waited unmoved until the silence was both audibly and mentally profound. He said, "On my way here, moving along a Hamish road at a distance and approaching at a speed that would have easily assured my arrival in good time for the meeting, I was stopped by several farmers and narrowly escaped being beaten, perhaps being killed. As it was, I was delayed and have but just arrived. May I point out, to begin with, that I know of no instance since the Great Sack that a Second Foundationer has been spoken to disrespectfully - let alone manhandled - by one of these Hamish people."
"Nor do I," said the First Speaker.
Delarmi cried out, "Second Foundationers do not habitually walk alone in Hamish territory! You invite this by doing so?"
"It is true," said Gendibal, "that I habitually walk alone in Hamish territory. I have walked there hundreds of times in every direction. Yet I have never been accosted before. Others do not walk with the freedom that I do, but no one exiles himself from the world or imprisons himself in the University and no one has ever been accosted. I recall occasions when Delarmi..." and then, as though remembering the honorific too late, he deliberately converted it into a deadly insult. "I mean to say, I recall when Speakeress Delarmi was in Hamish territory, at one time or another, and yet she was not accosted."
"Perhaps," said Delarmi, with eyes widened into a glare, "because I did not speak to them first and because I maintained my distance. Because I behaved as though I deserved respect, I was accorded it."
"Strange," said Gendibal, "and I was about to say that it was because you presented a more formidable appearance than I did. After all, few dare approach you even here. - But tell me, why should it be that of all times for interference, the Hamish would choose this day to face me, when I am to attend an important meeting of the Table?"