So did the Utopian’s. He retracted the snakes, like inhaled smoke. “If you’ll excuse me, I have progress to progress.”

“Of course.” Dominic dismissed Voltaire with a bored wave. “I might call you if I find anything else useful.”

The Utopian paused in the doorway. “You should register Foster as a formal client. Security aside, you know Madame doesn’t like you giving it away.”

Carlyle clutched her wrap, as if to assure herself it was intact. “We haven’t—”

“You could do the registration for us, couldn’t you, Seldon?” Dominic asked, almost sweetly. “That would be much more convenient.”

“I could…”

“What do you say, Foster?” Dominic invited. “Wouldst thou like to let the Utopian handle thy registration, while we finish our session? There was another question thou wert about to ask, was there not?”

Watching through Carlyle’s tracker I could see Voltaire gazing at her, intense eyes trying to advise in silence, but the vizor’s electric shimmer would not let them seem earnest.

Carlyle took a deep breath. “I’ll stay.”

I saw Dominic swallow down their surge of victory drool.

Voltaire turned away. “As you prefer.”

This is no rescue! Giving the monster everything he wanted! Thou hast mocked me, Mycroft, inviting me to pray when thou knewest what outcome waited.

Ah, reader, I understand it is your kindness which fills you with this hubris, but it is hubris still. You presume, not only to advise your Maker, but to demand that He respond to your advice by revising the infinite and perfect Plan of His Creation precisely as you—with your flawed and finite wisdom—recommend?

Thou, hypocrite, art the one who invited me to pray in the first place.

True, reader, and I too succumbed at the time to that universal human hubris we call prayer. I prayed for a smaller thing, that Carlyle might find Dominic in some more kindly mood, a gentled doom; one tainted by parricide dares ask no more. But if I have encouraged you, reader—a nobler creature, worthier of our Maker’s ear—to raise your thoughts in prayer, it was not to deceive you, not to mockingly declare that our Creator is a deaf, unyielding Clockmaker after all. No. He hears, our Maker, all of our advice, I know He does, and Acts on it, as suits His Will. His Plan. Which is not our plan. I bade you pray because He answers sometimes, in His distant way, and when He doesn’t, it always means something to be heard—the prisoner shouting his last words from the gallows understands that. I will not offer you philosophy’s old comforts, what the theologians cramming Dominic’s shelves repeat so many times. I will not say that Providence requires trust, and patience, that what seems cruel from our limited perspective will turn out to be for the best in the end. I will not tell you that He left Carlyle to Dominic because it was somehow better for Carlyle, or the wider world, or you. There is a Will behind this universe, reader, that I know. There are miracles, and a Divinity behind those miracles, Who has a Plan, but have you ever, reader, heard me claim that that Plan is benevolent?