dors venabili thought coolly about the matter. it was her only mode of thought-cool. not for her the hot flashes of emotion.

she closed her eyes to concentrate. it had been eight years since she and hari had visited mycogen and they hadn't been there long. there had been little to admire there except the food.

the pictures arose. the harsh, puritanical, male-centered society; the emphasis on the past; the removal of all body hair, a painful process deliberately self-imposed to make themselves different so that they would "know who they were"; their legends; their memories (or fancies) of a time when they ruled the galaxy, when their lives were prolonged, when robots existed.

dors opened her eyes and said, "why, hari?"

"why what, dear?"

"why should he pretend not to be from mycogen?"

she didn't think he would remember mycogen in greater detail than she; in fact, she knew he wouldn't, but his mind was better than hers-different, certainly. hers was a mind that only remembered and drew the obvious inferences in the fashion of a mathematic line of deduction. he had a mind that leaped unexpectedly. seldon liked to pretend that intuition was solely the province of his assistant, yugo amaryl, but dors was not fooled by that. seldon liked to pose as the unworldly mathematician who stared at the world out of perpetually wondering eyes, but she was not fooled by that, either.

"why should he pretend not to be from mycogen?" she repeated as he sat there, his eyes lost in an inward look that dors always associated with his attempt to squeeze one more tiny drop of usefulness and validity out of the concepts of psycho-history.

seldon said finally, "it's a harsh society, a limiting society. there are always those who chafe over its manner of dictating every action and every thought. there are always those who find they cannot entirely be broken to the harness, who want the greater liberties available in the more secular world outside. it's understandable."

"so they force the growth of artificial hair?"

"no, not generally. the average breakaway-that's what the mycogenians call the deserters and they despise them, of course-wears a wig. it's much simpler but much less effective. really serious breakaways grow false hair, i'm told. the process is difficult and expensive but is almost unnoticeable. i've never come across it before, though i've heard of it. i've spent years studying all eight hundred sectors of trantor, trying to work out the basic rules and mathematics of psychohistory. i have little enough to show for it, unfortunately, but i have learned a few things."

"but why, then, do the breakaways have to hide the fact that they're from mycogen? they're not persecuted that i know of."

"no, they're not. in fact, there's no general impression that mycogenians are inferior. it's worse than that. the mycogenians aren't taken seriously. they're intelligent-everyone admits that-highly educated, dignified, cultured, wizards with food, almost frightening in their capacity to keep their sector prosperous-but no one takes them seriously. their beliefs strike people outside mycogen as ridiculous, humorous, unbelievably foolish. and that view clings even to mycogenians who are breakaways. a mycogenian attempt to seize power in the government would be crushed by laughter. being feared is nothing. being despised, even, can be lived with. but being laughed at-that's fatal. joranum wants to be first minister, so he must have hair, and, to be comfortable, he must represent himself as having been brought up on some obscure world as far from mycogen as he can possibly manage."

"surely there are some people who are naturally bald."

"never as completely depilated as mycogenians force themselves to be. on the outer worlds, it wouldn't matter much. but mycogen is a distant whisper to the outer worlds. the mycogenians keep themselves so much to themselves that it is a rare one, indeed, who has ever left trantor. here on trantor, though, it's different. people might be bald, but they usually have a fringe of hair that advertises them as nonmycogenian-or they grow facial hair. those very few who are completely hairless-usually a pathological condition-are out of luck. i imagine they have to go around with a doctor's certificate to prove they are not mycogenians."

dors, frowning slightly, said, "does this help us any?"

"i'm not sure."

"couldn't you let it be known that he is a mycegonian?"

"i'm not sure that could be done easily. he must have covered his tracks well and even if it could be done-"

"yes?"

seldon shrugged. "i don't want to invite an appeal to bigotry. the social situation on trantor is bad enough without running the risk of loosing passions that neither i nor anyone else could then control. if i do have to resort to the matter of mycogen, it will only be as a last resort."

"then you want minimalism, too."

"of course."

"then what will you do?"

"i made an appointment with demerzel. he may know what to do."

dors looked at him sharply. "hari, are you falling into the trap of expecting demerzel to solve every problem for you?"

"no, but perhaps he'll solve this one."

"and if he doesn't?"

"then i'll have to think of something else, won't i?"

"like what?"

a look of pain crossed seldon's face. "dors, i don't know. don't expect me to solve every problem, either."