raych seldon felt extraordinarily contented, for it was the first dinner en famille that he had had in some months with the two people he thought of as his father and mother. he knew perfectly well that they were not his parents in any biological sense, but it didn't matter. he merely smiled at them with complete love.

the surroundings were not as warm as they had been at streeling in the old days, when their home had been small and intimate, a virtual gem in the larger setting of the university. now, unfortunately, nothing could hide the grandeur of the first minister's palace suite.

raych sometimes stared at himself in the mirror and wondered how it could be. he was not tall, only 163 centimeters in height, distinctly shorter than either parent. he was rather stocky but muscular-and not fat, with black hair and the distinctive dahlite mustache that he kept as dark and as thick as possible.

in the mirror he could still see the street urchin he had once been before the chanciest of great chances had dictated his meeting with hari and dors. seldon had been much younger then and his appearance now made it plain that raych himself was almost as old now as seldon had been when they met. amazingly, dors had hardly changed at all. she was as sleek and fit as the day raych had first showed hari and dors the way to mother rittah's in billibotton. and he, raych, born to poverty and misery, was now a member of the civil service, a small cog in the ministry of population.

seldon said, "how are things going at the ministry, raych? any progress?"

"some, dad. the laws are passed. the court decisions are made. speeches are pronounced. still, it's difficult to move people. you can preach brotherhood all you want, but no one feels like a brother. what gets me is that the dahlites are as bad as any of the others. they want to be treated as equals, they say, and so they do, but, given a chance, they have no desire to treat others as equals."

dors said, "it's all but impossible to change people's minds and hearts, raych. it's enough to try and perhaps eliminate the worst of the injustices."

"the trouble is," said seldon, "that through most of history, no one's been working on this problem. human beings have been allowed to fester in the delightful game of i'm-better-than-you and cleaning up that mess isn't easy. if we allow things to follow their own bent and grow worse for a thousand years, we can't complain if it takes, say, a hundred years to work an improvement."

"sometimes, dad," said raych, "i think you gave me this job to punish me."

seldon's eyebrows raised. "what motivation could i have had to punish you?"

"for feeling attracted to joranum's program of sector equality and for greater popular representation in government."

"i don't blame you for that. these are attractive suggestions, but you know that joranum and his gang were using it only as a device to gain power. afterward-"

"but you had me entrap him, despite my attraction to his views."

seldon said, "it wasn't easy for me to ask you to do that."

"and now you keep me working at the implementation of joranum's program, just to show me how hard the task is in reality."

seldon said to dors, "how do you like that, dors? the boy attributes to me a kind of sneaky underhandedness that simply isn't part of my character."

"surely," said dors with the ghost of a smile playing at her lips, "you are attributing no such thing to your father."

"not really. in the ordinary course of life, there's no one straighter than you, dad. but if you have to, you know you can stack the cards. isn't that what you hope to do with psychohistory?"

seldon said sadly, "so far, i've done very little with psychohistory."

"too bad. i keep thinking that there is some sort of psychohistorical solution to the problem of human bigotry."

"maybe there is, but, if so, i haven't found it."

when dinner was over, seldon said, "you and i, raych, are going to have a little talk now."

"indeed?" said dors. "i take it i'm not invited."

"ministerial business, dors."

"ministerial nonsense, hari. you're going to ask the poor boy to do something i wouldn't want him to do."

seldon said firmly, "i'm certainly not going to ask him to do anything he doesn't want to do."

raych said, "it's all right, mom. let dad and me have our talk. i promise i'll tell you all about it afterward."

dors's eyes rolled upward. "you two will plead `state secrets.' i know

"as a matter of fact," said seldon firmly, "that's exactly what i must discuss. and of the first magnitude. i'm serious, dors."

dors rose, her lips tightening. she left the room with one final injunction. "don't throw the boy to the wolves, hari."

and after she was gone, seldon said quietly, "i'm afraid that throwing you to the wolves is exactly what i'll have to do, raych."