“Yet—how long would the Empire last, even assuming no hostile powers outside, without the most rigid form of psychotechnocratic government? There are roughly three times ten to the fourteenth power humans in the Solarian Empire. The nonhuman aborigines have been pretty thoroughly exterminated, assimilated as helots, or otherwise rendered harmless, but there are still all those humans, with all the terrific variations and conflicting desires inherent in man and intensified by radically different planetary and consequently social environments. Can you imagine a situation where three hundred trillion humans went their own uncoordinated ways—with atomic energy, biotoxic weapons, and interstellar spaceships to back up their conflicting demands?”

“Yes, I can,” said Goram, “because after all it has happened—for nearly a thousand years before the Empire, there was virtual anarchy. And”—he leaned forward, the hard black glitter of his eyes nailing Heym—“that’s why we can’t take chances, with this experiment of yours or anything else—anything at all. In the anarchic centuries, with a much smaller population, there was horror—many planets were blasted back to savagery, or wiped out altogether. Have you seen the dead worlds? Black cinders floating in space, some still radioactive, battlegrounds of the ancient wars. The human barbarians beyond the Imperial borders are remnants of that age—some of them have spaceships, even a technology matching our own, but they think only of destruction—if they ever got past the marches, they’d blast and loot and fight till nothing was left. Not to mention the nonhuman border barbarians, or the rival empires always watching their chance, or the Magellanics sweeping in every century or so with weapons such as we never imagined. Just let any disrupting factor shake the strength and unity of the Empire and see how long it could last.”

“I realize that,” said Heym coldly. “After all, I am a psychologist. I know fully what a desperate need the establishment of the Empire filled. But I also know that it’s a dead end—its purpose of ultimate satisfied stasis cannot be realized in a basically dynamic cosmos. Actually, Imperial totalitarianism is simply the result of Imperial ignorance of a better way. We can only find that better way through research, and the project at Station Seventeen is the most promising of all the Foundation’s work. Unless we find some way out of our dilemma, the Empire is doomed—sooner or later, something will happen and we’ll go under.”

Goram’s eyes narrowed. “That’s near lese majesty,” he murmured.

Heym laughed, and gave the marshal a carefully gauged you-and-I-know-better-don’t-we look. “The Imperium is tolerant of local gods,” he said, “but the divinity of the Emperor must be acknowledged and is taught in all schools. Why? Because a state church, with the temporal ruler as the material incarnation of the Spirit, is another hold on the imagination of the people, another guarantee of subservience. So are local garrisons, political indoctrination, state control of commerce and travel, careful psychotechnic preparation and supervision of amusements, rigid limitation of birth but complete sexual freedom as an outlet, early selection and training of all promising children for government service—with unlimited opportunities for advancement within the established framework—and every other thing we can possibly control. If you stop to think about it—the Empire is founded on mediocrity.”