Hari Seldon sat back in his chair, the vertical back giving as he did so and allowing him to assume a half-reclining position. His hands were behind his head and his eyes were unfocused. His breathing was very soft, indeed.

Dors Venabili was at the other end of the room, with her viewer turned off and the microfilms back in place. She had been through a rather concentrated period of revision of her opinions on the Florina Incident in early Trantorian history and she found it rather restful to withdraw for a few moments and to speculate on what it was that Seldon was considering.

It had to be psychohistory. It would probably take him the rest of his life, tracking down the byways of this semichaotic technique, and he would end with it incomplete, leaving the task to others (to Amaryl, if that young man had not also worn himself out on the matter) and breaking his heart at the need to do that.

Yet it gave him a reason for living. He would live longer with the problem filling him from end to end—and that pleased her. Someday she would lose him, she knew, and she found that the thought afflicted her. It had not seemed it would at the start, when her task had been the simple one of protecting him for the sake of what he knew.

When had it become a matter of personal need? How could there be so personal a need? What was there about the man that caused her to feel uneasy when he was not in her sight, even when she knew he was safe so that the deeply ingrained orders within her were not called into action? His safety was all that she had been ordered to be concerned with. How did the rest intrude itself?

She had spoken of it to Demerzel long before, when the feeling had made itself unmistakable.

He had regarded her gravely and said, “You are complex, Dors, and there are no simple answers. In my life there have been several individuals whose presence made it easier for me to think, pleasanter to make my responses. I have tried to judge the ease of my responses in their presence and the unease of my responses in their final absence to see whether I was the net gainer or loser. In the process, one thing became plain. The pleasantness of their company outweighed the regret of their passing. On the whole, then, it is better to experience what you experience now than not to.”

She thought: Hari will someday leave a void, and each day that someday is closer, and I must not think of it.

It was to rid herself of the thought that she finally interrupted him. “What are you thinking of, Hari?”

“What?” Seldon focused his eyes with an apparent effort.

“Psychohistory, I assume. I imagine you’ve traced another blind pathway.”

“Well now. That’s not on my mind at all.” He laughed suddenly.