the next morning, dressed from the waist down, having washed and shaved, seldon knocked on the door that led to dorss adjoining room and said in a moderate voice, "open the door, dors."

she did. the short reddish-gold curls of her hair were still wet and she too was dressed only from the waist down.

seldon stepped back in embarrassed alarm. dors looked down at the swell of her breasts indifferently and wrapped a towel around her head. "what is it?" she asked.

seldon said, looking off to his right, "i was going to ask you about wye."

dors said very naturally, "about why in connection with what? and for goodness sake, dont make me talk to your ear. surely, youre not a virgin."

seldon said in a hurt tone, "i was merely trying to be polite. if you dont mind, i certainly dont. and its not why about what. im asking about the wye sector."

"why do you want to know? or, if you prefer: why wye?"

"look, dors, im serious. every once in a while, the wye sector is mentioned--the mayor of wye, actually. hummin mentioned him, you did, davan did. i dont know anything about either the sector or the mayor."

"im not a native trantorian either, hari. i know very little, but youre welcome to what i do know. wye is near the south pole--quite large, very populous--"

"very populous at the south pole?"

"were not on helicon, hari. or on cinna either. this is trantor. everything is underground and underground at the poles or underground at the equator is pretty much the same. of course, i imagine they keep their day-night arrangements rather extreme--long days in their summer, long nights in their winter--almost as it would be on the surface. the extremes are just affectation; theyre proud of being polar."

"but upperside they must be cold, indeed."

"oh yes. the wye upperside is snow and ice, but it doesnt lie as thickly there as you might think. if it did, it might crush the dome, but it doesnt and that is the basic reason for wyes power."

she turned to her mirror, removed the towel from her head, and threw the dry-net over her hair, which, in a matter of five seconds, gave it a pleasant sheen. she said, "you have no idea how glad i am not to be wearing a skincap," as she put on the upper portion of her clothing.

"what has the ice layer to do with wyes power?"

"think about it. forty billion people use a great deal of power and every calorie of it eventually degenerates into heat and has to be gotten rid of. its piped to the poles, particularly to the south pole, which is the more developed of the two, and is discharged into space. it [melts] most of the ice in the process and im sure that accounts for trantors clouds and rains, no matter how much the meteorology boggins insist that things are more complicated than that."

"does wye make use of the power before discharging it?"

"they may, for all i know. i havent the slightest idea, by the way, as to the technology involved in discharging the heat, but im talking about political power. if dahl were to stop producing usable energy, that would certainly inconvenience trantor, but there are other sectors that produce energy and can up their production and, of course, there is stored energy in one form or another. eventually, dahl would have to be dealt with, but there would be time. wye, on the other hand--"

"yes?"

"well, wye gets rid of at least 90 percent of all the heat developed on trantor and there is no substitute. if wye were to shut down its heat emission, the temperature would start going up all over trantor."

"in wye too."

"[yes], but since wye is at the south pole, it can arrange an influx of cold air. it wouldnt do much good, but wye would last longer than the rest of trantor. the point is, then, that wye is a very touchy problem for the emperor and the mayor of wye is--or at least can be--extremely powerful."

"and what kind of a person is the present mayor of wye?"

"that i dont know. what ive occasionally heard would make it seem that he is very old and pretty much a recluse, but hard as a hypership hull and still cleverly maneuvering for power."

"why, i wonder? if hes that old, he couldnt hold the power for long."

"who knows, hari? a lifelong obsession, i suppose. or else its the game ... the maneuvering for power, without any real longing for the power itself. probably if he had the power and took over demerzels place or even the imperial throne itself, he would feel disappointed because the game would be over. of course he might, if he was still alive, begin the subsequent game of keeping power, which might be just as difficult and just as satisfying."

seldon shook his head. "it strikes me that no one could possibly want to be emperor."

"no sane person would, i [free], but the imperial wish, as it is frequently called, is like a disease that, when caught, drives out sanity. and the closer you get to high office, the more likely you are to catch the disease. with each ensuing promotion--"

"the disease grows still more acute. yes, i can see that. but it also seems to me that trantor is so huge a world, so interlocking in its needs and so conflicting in its ambitions, that it makes up the major part of the inability of the emperor to rule. why doesnt he just leave trantor and establish himself on some simpler world?"

dors laughed. "you wouldnt ask that if you knew your history. trantor is the empire through thousands of years of custom. an emperor who is not at the imperial palace is not the emperor. he is a place, even more than a person." seldon sank into silence, his face rigid, and after a while dors asked, "whats the matter, hari?"

"im thinking," he said in a muffled voice. "ever since you told me that hand-on-thigh story, ive had fugitive thoughts that--now your remark about the emperor being a place rather than a person seems to have struck a chord."

"what kind of chord?"

seldon shook his head. "im still thinking. i may be all wrong." his glance at dors sharpened, his eyes coming into focus. "in any case, we ought to go down and have breakfast. were late and i dont think mistress tisalver is in a good enough humor to have it brought in for us."

"you optimist," said dors. "my own feeling is that shes not in a good enough humor to want us to stay--breakfast or not. she wants us out of here."

"that may be, but were paying her."

"yes, but i suspect she hates us enough by now to scorn our credits."

"perhaps her husband will feel a bit more affectionate concerning the rent."

"if he has a single word to say, hari, the only person who would be more surprised than me to hear it would be mistress tisalver.--very well, im ready."

and they moved down the stairs to the tisalver portion of the apartment to find the lady in question waiting for them with less than breakfast--and with considerably more too.