"Asimov, Isaac - 2. Foundation and Empire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

"The generator hangs on the wall behind you, sir. It does not work. It never
worked but for the first two days; but if you'll look at it, you will see that
no one in the Empire ever designed it."
Bel Riose reached for the belt of linked metal that clung to the curved wall. It
came away with a little sucking noise as the tiny adhesion-field broke at the
touch of his hand. The ellipsoid at the apex of the belt held his attention. It
was the size of a walnut.
"This–" he said.
"Was the generator," nodded Barr. "But it was the generator. The secret of its
workings are beyond discovery now. Sub-electronic investigations have shown it
to be fused into a single lump of metal and not all the most careful study of
the diffraction patterns have sufficed to distinguish the discrete parts that
had existed before fusion."
"Then your 'proof' still lingers on the frothy border of words backed by no
concrete evidence."
Barr shrugged. "You have demanded my knowledge of me and threatened its
extortion by force. If you choose to meet it with skepticism, what is that to
me? Do you want me to stop?"
"Go on!" said the general, harshly.
"I continued my father's researches after he died, and then the second accident
I mentioned came to help me, for Siwenna was well known to Hari Seldon."
"And who is Hari Seldon?"
"Hari Seldon was a scientist of the reign of the Emperor, Daluben IV. He was a
psychohistorian; the last and greatest of them all. He once visited Siwenna,
when Siwenna was a great commercial center, rich in the arts and sciences."
"Hmph," muttered Riose, sourly, "where is the stagnant planet that does not
claim to have been a land of overflowing wealth in older days?"
"The days I speak of are the days of two centuries ago, when the Emperor yet
ruled to the uttermost star; when Siwenna was a world of the interior and not a
semi-barbarian border province. In those days, Hari Seldon foresaw the decline
of Imperial power and the eventual barbarization of the entire Galaxy."
Riose laughed suddenly. "He foresaw that? Then he foresaw wrong, my good
scientist. I suppose you call yourself that. Why, the Empire is more powerful
now than it has been in a millennium. Your old eyes are blinded by the cold
bleakness of the border. Come to the inner worlds some day; come to the warmth
and the wealth of the center."
The old man shook his head somberly. "Circulation ceases first at the outer
edges. It will take a while yet for the decay to reach the heart. That is, the
apparent, obvious-to-all decay, as distinct from the inner decay that is an old
story of some fifteen centuries."
"And so this Hari Seldon foresaw a Galaxy of uniform barbarism," said Riose,
good-humoredly. "And what then, eh?"
"So he established two foundations at the extreme opposing ends of the Galaxy –
Foundations of the best, and the youngest, and the strongest, there to breed,
grow, and develop. The worlds on which they were placed were chosen carefully;
as were the times and the surroundings. All was arranged in such a way that the
future as foreseen by the unalterable mathematics of psychohistory would involve
their early isolation from the main body of Imperial civilization and their
gradual growth into the germs of the Second Galactic Empire – cutting an
inevitable barbarian interregnum from thirty thousand years to scarcely a single