"that was good." said seldon explosively. "it was considerably better than the food graycloud brought--"

dors said reasonably, "you have to remember that grayclouds woman had to prepare it on short notice in the middle of the night." she paused and said, "i wish they would say wife. they make woman sound like such an appanage, like my house or my robe. it is absolutely demeaning."

"i know. its infuriating. but they might well make wife sound like an appanage as well. its the way they live and the sisters dont seem to mind. you and i arent going to change it by lecturing. anyway, did you see how the sisters did it?"

"yes, i did and they made everything seem very simple. i doubted i could remember everything they did, but they insisted i wouldnt have to. i could get away with mere heating. i gathered the bread had some sort of microderivative added to it in the baking that both raised the dough and lent it that crunchy consistency and warm flavor. just a hint of pepper, didnt you think?"

"i couldnt tell, but whatever it was, i didnt get enough. and the soup. did you recognize any of the vegetables?"

"no."

"and what was the sliced meat? could you tell?"

"i dont think it was sliced meat, actually. we did have a lamb dish back on cinna that it reminded me of."

"it was certainly not lamb."

"i said that i doubted it was meat aaaall.--i dont think anyone outside mycogen eats like this either. not even the emperor, im sure. whatever the mycogenians sell is, im willing to bet, near the bottom of the line. they save the best for themselves. we had better not stay here too long, hari. if we get used to eating like this, well never be able to acclimatize ourselves to the miserable stuff they have outside." she laughed.

seldon laughed too. he took another sip aaathe fruit juice, which tasted far more tantalizing than any fruit juice he had ever sipped before, and said, "listen, when hummin took me to the university, we stopped at a roadside diner and had some food that was heavily yeasted. it tasted like-- no, never mind what it tasted like, but i wouldnt have thought it conceivable, then, that microfood could taste like this. i wish the sisters were still here. it would have been polite to thank them."

"i think they were quite aware of how we would feel. i remarked on the wonderful smell while everything was warming and they said, quite complacently, that it would taste even better."

"the older one said that, i imagine."

"yes. the younger one giggled.--and theyll be back. theyre going to bring me a kirtle, so that i can go out to see the shops with them. and they made it clear i would have to wash my face if i was to be seen in public. they will show me where to buy some good-quality kirtles of my own and where i can buy ready-made meals of all kinds. all ill have to do is heaaathem up. they explained that decent sisters wouldnt do that, but would start from scratch. in fact, some of the meal they prepared for us was simply heated and they apologized for that. they managed to imply, though, that tribespeople couldnt be expected to appreciate true artistry in cooking, so that simply heating prepared food would do for us.--they seem to take it for granted, by the way, that i will be doing all the shopping and cooking."

"as we say at home, when in trantor, do as the trantorians do. "

"yes, i was sure that would be your attitude in this case."

"im only human," said seldon.

"the usual excuse," said dors with a small smile. seldon leaned back with a satisfactory well-filled feeling and said, "youve been on trantor for two years, dors, so you might understand a few things that i dont. is it your opinion thaaathis odd social system the mycogenians have is part of a supernaturalistic view they have?"

"supernaturalistic?"

"yes. would you have heard that this was so?"

"what do you mean by supernaturalistic?"

"the obvious. a belief in entities that are independent of natural law, that are not bound by the conservation of energy, for instance, or by the existence of a constant of action."

"i see. youre asking if mycogen is a religious community."

it was seldons turn. "religious?"

"yes. its an archaic term, but we historians use it--our study is riddled with archaic terms. religious is not precisely equivalent to supernaturalistic, though it contains richly supernaturalistic elements. i cant answer your specific question, however, because ive never made any special investigation of mycogen. still, from what little ive seen of the place and from my knowledge of religions in history, i wouldnt be surprised if the mycogenian society was religious in character."

"in that case, would it surprise you if mycogenian legends were also religious in character?"

"no, it wouldnt."

"and therefore not based on historical matter?"

"that wouldnt necessarily follow. the core of the legends might still be authentically historic, allowing for distortion and supernaturalistic intermixture."

"ah," said seldon and seemed to retire into his thoughts.

finally dors broke the silence that followed and said, "its not so uncommon, you know. there is a considerable religious element on many worlds. its grown stronger in the last few centuries as the empire has grown more turbulent. on my world of cinna, at least a quarter of the population is tritheistic."

seldon was again painfully and regretfully conscious of his ignorance of history. he said, "were there times in past history when religion was more prominent than it is today?"

"certainly. in addition, there are new varieties springing up constantly. the mycogenian religion, whatever it might be, could be relatively new and may be restricted to mycogen itself. i couldnt really tell without considerable study."

"but now we get to the point of it, dors. is it your opinion that women are more apt to be religious than men are?"

dors venabili raised her eyebrows. "im not sure if we can assume anything as simple as that." she thought a bit. "i suspect that those elements of a population that have a smaller stake in the material natural world are more apt to find solace in what you call supernaturalism--the poor, the disinherited, the downtrodden. insofar as supernaturalism overlaps religion, they may also be more religious. there are obviously many exceptions in both directions. many of the downtrodden may lack religion; many of the rich, powerful, and satisfied may possess it."

"but in mycogen," said seldon, "where the women seem to be treated as subhuman--would i be right in assuming they would be more religious than the men, more involved in the legends that the society has been preserving?"

"i wouldnt risk my life on it, hari, but id be willing to risk a weeks income on it."

"good," said seldon thoughtfully.

dors smiled at him. "theres a bit of your psychohistory, hari. rule number 47,854: the downtrodden are more religious than the satisfied."

seldon shook his head. "dont joke about psychohistory, dors. you know im not looking for tiny rules but for vast generalizations and for means of manipulation. i dont want comparative religiosity as the result of a hundred specific rules. i want something from which i can, after manipulation through some system of mathematicized logic, say, aha, this group of people will tend to be more religious than that group, provided that the following criteria are met, and that, therefore, when humanity meets with these stimuli, it will react with these responses. "

"how horrible," said dors. "you are picturing human beings as simple mechanical devices. press this button and you will get that twitch."

"no, because there will be many buttons pushing simultaneously to varying degrees and eliciting so many responses of different sorts that overall the predictions of the future will be statistical in nature, so that the individual human being will remain a free agent."

"how can you know this?"

"i cant," said seldon. "at least, i dont know it. i feel it to be so. it is what i consider to be the way things ought to be. if i can find the axioms, the fundamental laws of humanics, so to speak, and the necessary mathematical treatment, then i will have my psychohistory. i have proved that, in theory, this is possible--"

"but impractical, right?"

"i keep saying so."

a small smile curved dorss lips, "is that what you are doing, hari, looking for some sort of solution to this problem?"

"i dont know. i swear to you i dont know. but chetter hummin is so anxious to find a solution and, for some reason, i am anxious to please him. he is so persuasive a man."

"yes, i know."

seldon let that comment pass, although a small frown flitted across his face. seldon continued. "hummin insists the empire is decaying, that it will collapse, that psychohistory is the only hope for saving it--or cushioning it or ameliorating it--and that without it humanity will be destroyed or, at the very least, go through prolonged misery. he seems to place the responsibility for preventing that on me. now, the empire will certainly last my time, but if im to live at ease, i must lift that responsibility from my shoulders. i must convince myself--and even convince hummin--that psychohistory is not a practical way out that, despite theory, it cannot be developed. so i must follow up as many leads as i can and show that each one must fail."

"leads? like going back in history to a time when human society was smaller than it is now?"

"much smaller. and far less complex."

"and showing that a solution is still impractical?"

"yes."

"but who is going to describe the early world for you? if the mycogenians have some coherent picture of the primordial galaxy, sunmaster certainly wont reveal it to a tribesman. no mycogenian will. this is an ingrown society--how many times have we already said it?--and its members are suspicious of tribesmen to the point of paranoia. theyll tell us nothing."

"i will have to think of a way to persuade some mycogenians to talk. those sisters, for instance."

"they wont even hear you, male that you are, any more than sunmaster hears me. and even if they do talk to you, what would they know but a few catch phrases?"

"i must start somewhere."

dors said, "well, let me think. hummin says i must protect you and i interpret that as meaning i must help you when i can. what do i know about religion? thats nowhere near my specialty, you know. i have always dealt with economic forces, rather than philosophic forces, but you cant split history into neat little nonoverlapping divisions. for instance, religions tend to accumulate wealth when successful and that eventually tends to distort the economic development of a society. there, incidentally, is one of the numerous rules of human history that youll have to derive from your basic laws of humanics or whatever you called them. but ..."

and here, dorss voice faded away as she lapsed into thought. seldon watched her cautiously and dorss eyes glazed as though she was looking deep within herself.

finally she said, "this is not an invariable rule, but it seems to me that on many occasions, a religion has a book--or books--of significance; books that give their ritual, their view of history, their sacred poetry, and who knows what else. usually, those books are open to all and are a means of proselytization. sometimes they are secret."

"do you think mycogen has books of that sort?"

"to be truthful," said dors thoughtfully, "i have never heard of any. i might have if they existed openly--which means they either dont exist or are kept secret. in either case, it seems to me you are not going to see them."

"at least its a starting point," said seldon grimly.