1 THE SEARCH BEGINS 1. "Why did I do it?" asked Golan Trevize. It wasn't a new question. Since he had arrived at Gaia, he had asked it of himself frequently. He would wake up from a sound sleep in the pleasant coolness of the night and find the question sounding noiselessly in his mind, like a tiny drumbeat: Why did I do it? Why did I do it? Now, though, for the first time, he managed to ask it of Dom, the ancient of Gaia. Dom was well aware of Trevize's tension for he could sense the fabric of the Councilman's mind. He did not respond to it. Gaia must in no way ever touch Trevize's mind, and the best way of remaining immune to the temptation was to painstakingly ignore what he sensed. "Do what, Trev?" he asked. He found it difficult to use more than one syllable in addressing a person, and it didn't matter. Trevize was growing somewhat used to that. "The decision I made," said Trevize. "Choosing Gaia as the future." "You were right to do so," said Dom, seated, his aged deep-set eyes looking earnestly up at the man of the Foundation, who was standing. "You say I am right," said Trevize impatiently. "I/we/Gaia know you are. That's your worth to us. You have the capacity for making the right decision on incomplete data, and you have made the decision. You chose Gaia! You rejected the anarchy of a Galactic Empire built on the technology of the First Foundation, as well as the anarchy of a Galactic Empire built on the mentalics of the Second Foundation. You decided that neither could be long stable. So you chose Gaia." "Yes," said Trevize. "Exactly! I chose Gaia, a superorganism; a whole planet with a mind and personality in common, so that one has to say 'I/we/Gaia' as an invented pronoun to express the inexpressible." He paced the floor restlessly. "And it will become eventually Galaxia, a super-superorganism embracing all the swarm of the Milky Way." He stopped, turned almost savagely on Dom, and said, "I feel I'm right, as you feel it, but you want the coming of Galaxia, and so are satisfied with the decision. There's something in me, however, that doesn't want it, and for that reason I'm not satisfied to accept the rightness so easily. I want to know why I made the decision, I want to weigh and judge the rightness and be satisfied with it. Merely feeling right isn't enough. How can I know I am right? What is the device that makes me right?" "I/we/Gaia do not know how it is that you come to the right decision. Is it important to know that as long as we have the decision?" "You speak for the whole planet, do you? For the common consciousness of every dewdrop, of every pebble, of even the liquid central core of the planet?" "I do, and so can any portion of the planet in which the intensity of the common consciousness is great enough." "And is all this common consciousness satisfied to use me as a black box? Since the black box works, is it unimportant to know what is inside? --That doesn't suit me. I don't enjoy being a black box. I want to know what's inside. I want to know how and why I chose Gaia and Galaxia as the future, so that I can rest and be at peace." "But why do you dislike or distrust your decision so?" Trevize drew a deep breath and said slowly, in a low and forceful voice, "Because I don't want to be part of a superorganism. I don't want to be a dispensable part to be done away with whenever the superorganism judges that doing away would be for the good of the whole." Dom looked at Trevize thoughtfully. "Do you want to change your decision, then, Trev? You can, you know." "I long to change the decision, but I can't do that merely because I dislike it. To do something now, I have t Excerpted from Foundation and Earth by Isaac Asimov All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.