Trevize said, "How many of you do I have in here altogether? A regiment?"
"No, Councilman," came a voice, hard and steady. "Just one person aside from those you see, and I have been waiting for you long enough."
Harla Branno, Mayor of Terminus, stood in the door that led into the living room. "Time enough, don't you think, for us to talk?"
Trevize stared. "All this rigmarole to..."
But Branno said in a low, forceful voice. "Quiet, Councilman. - And you four, outside. Outside! - All will be well in here."
The four guards saluted and turned on their heels. Trevize and Branno were alone.
CHAPTER TWO
MAYOR
Branno had been waiting for an hour, thinking wearily. Technically speaking, she was guilty of breaking and entering. What's more, she had violated, quite unconstitutionally, the rights of a Councilman. By the strict laws that held Mayors to account since the days of Indbur III and the Mute, nearly two centuries before - she was impeachable.
On this one day, however, for twenty-four hours she could do no wrong.
But it would pass. She stirred restlessly.
The first two centuries had been the Golden Age of the Foundation, the Heroic Era - at least in retrospect, if not to the unfortunates who had lived in that insecure time. Salvor Hardin and Hober Mallow had been the two great heroes, semideified to the point of rivaling the incomparable Hari Seldon himself. The three were a tripod on which all Foundation legend (and even Foundation history) rested.
In those days, though, the Foundation had been one puny world, with a tenuous hold on the Four Kingdoms and with only a dim awareness of the extent to which the Seldon Plan was holding its protective hand over it, caring for it even against the remnant of the mighty Galactic Empire.
And the more powerful the Foundation grew as a political and commercial entity, the less significant its rulers and fighters had come to seem. Lathan Devers was almost forgotten. If he was remembered at all, it was for his tragic death in the slave mines, rather than for his unnecessary but successful fight against Bel Riose.
As for Bel Riose, the noblest of the Foundation's adversaries, he too was nearly forgotten, overshadowed by the Mule, who alone among enemies had broken the Seldon Plan and defeated and ruled the Foundation. He alone was the Great Enemy - indeed, the last of the Greats.
It was little remembered that the Mule had been, in essence, defeated by one person - a woman, Bayta Darell - and that she had accomplished the victory without the help of anyone, - without even the support of the Seldon Plan. So, too, was it almost forgotten that her son and granddaughter, Toran and Arkady Darrell, had defeated the Second Foundation, leaving the Foundation, the First Foundation, supreme.
These latter-day victors were no longer heroic figures. The times had become too expansive to do anything but shrink heroes into ordinary mortals. Then, too, Arkady's biography of her grandmother had reduced her from a heroine to a figure of romance.
And since then there had been no heroes - not even figures of romance. The Kalganian war had been the last moment of violence engulfing the Foundation and that had been a minor conflict. Nearly two centuries of virtual peace! A hundred and twenty years without so much as a ship scratched.
It had been a good peace - Branno would not deny that - a profitable peace. The Foundation had not established a Second Galactic Empire - it was only halfway there by the Seldon Plan - but, as the Foundation Federation, it held a strong economic grip on over a third of the scattered political units of the Galaxy, and influenced what it didn't control. There were few places where "I am of the Foundation" was not met with respect. There was no one who ranked higher in all the millions of inhabited worlds than the Mayor of Terminus.
That was still the title. It was inherited from the leader of a single small and almost disregarded city on a lonely world on the far edge of civilization, some five centuries before, but no one would dream of changing it or of giving it one atom more glory-in-sound. As it was, only the all-but-forgotten title of Imperial Majesty could rival it in awe.
- Except on Terminus itself, where the powers of the Mayor were carefully limited. The memory of the Indburs still remained. It was not their tyranny that people could not forget but the fact that they had lost to the Mule.
And here she was, Harla Branno, the strongest to rule since the Mule's death (she knew that) and only the fifth woman to do so. On this day only had she been able to use her strength openly.
She had fought for her interpretation of what was right and what should be - against the dogged opposition of those who longed for the prestige - filled Interior of the Galaxy and for the aura of Imperial power - and she had won.
Not yet, she had said. Not yet! Jump too soon for the Interior and you will lose far this reason and for that. And Seldon had appeared and had supported her in language almost identical with her own.
It made her, for a time, in the eyes of all fine Foundation, as wise as Seldon himself. She knew they could forget that any hour, however.
And this young man dared to challenge her on this day of days.
And he dared to be right?
That was the danger of it. He was right? And by being right, he might destroy the Foundation!
And now she faced him and they were alone.
She said sadly, "Could you not have come to see me privately? Did you have to shout it all out in the Council Chamber in your idiotic desire to make a fool of me? What have you done, you mindless boy?"
Trevize felt himself flushing and fought to control his anger. The Mayor was an aging woman who would be sixty-three on her next birthday. He hesitated to engage in a shouting match with someone nearly twice his age.