Chapter 27 Chapter Twenty

Hari Seldon was in an alcove in the library that Dors Venabili had won for him, leaning back in a chair, dissatisfied. In fact, although that was the word he used in his mind, he also knew that "dissatisfied" was an underestimate of how he felt right now.He wasn't just dissatisfied, he was outraged.And he wasn't sure why he was angry, which added fuel to the flames of anger in his heart.Are you mad at history?Or are you angry with the authors and editors of those history books?Or the worlds and humanity that make history? It really didn't matter who the object of his anger was.The important thing is that the notes he took were useless, the new knowledge he learned was useless, everything was useless.

Today, he has been at the university for nearly six weeks.From the start he managed to find a computer terminal and work with it—with no guidance from anyone, just the intuition he had accumulated over years of studying mathematics.Although the progress is slow and not smooth, it is also fun to gradually find out which path to follow to find the answer to the question. Then came a week's course with Professor Dors, a course that taught him dozens of shortcuts and two embarrassing dilemmas at the same time.One included the side-eyed university students who seemed to disdain him for sensing his age: they all frowned a little whenever Dors used the title of "Doctor" frequently.

“I don’t want them to think,” she said, “that you’re an old student who never graduated, taking a history course.” "But you have evidently made it clear that it will suffice now to call me 'Seldon'." "No." Dors smiled suddenly. "Besides, I like to call you 'Dr. Seldon. I like to see you look uncomfortable." "You have a sadistic sense of humor." "Are you going to deprive me of the fun?" For some reason, this sentence made him laugh out loud.Needless to say, the normal reaction is of course to deny being sadistic, and he thought it was hilarious that she took the "kill" and immediately fought back.This thought naturally begs the question: "Do you play tennis at school?"

"We have tennis courts, but I can't play." "Very well, I will teach you. When I teach you how to play, I will call you Professor Vanabili." "That's what you called me in class anyway." "You won't believe how funny it sounds on the tennis court." "I might like it." "In that case, I'll try to find out what else you might like." "I see you have a satyr sense of humor." She purposely hit the smash in the same place, so he said, "Are you taking the fun out of me?" She smiled and said nothing.

Later, she performed surprisingly well on the tennis court. "Are you sure you've never played tennis?" he asked breathlessly after a round of practice. "Sure," she said. Another dilemma is more personal.When he learned the necessary skills of historical data query and first tried to use computer memory, he once (privately) had a bad nose.That's a completely different way of thinking than in mathematics.He thought it should be equally logical, since it could flow as he wished without contradiction and without error, but that logic was of a completely different brand from the one he was familiar with.

But with or without guidance, whether it is blocked or quickly entered, he just can't get any results. His irritation showed on the tennis court.Dors soon improved so much that he no longer had to feed her easy lobs just to give her time to judge the direction and distance of the incoming ball.It made it easy for him to forget that she was just a beginner, so he took out his anger on his swing and slammed the ball at her like a solid laser beam. She jogged to the net: "I can understand why you want to 'kill' me, I miss so many times, it must make you very annoyed. But, why did you let the ball miss my head by three centimeters? I mean I mean, you didn't even hit me on the hair, couldn't you kill better?"

Seldon was petrified and tried to explain, but all he could say was a series of incoherent words. She said, "Listen, I don't want to catch your balls today. So why don't we go shower and have a cup of tea or something, and then you can tell me what it is you're trying to kill If it weren't for my poor head, and if you didn't remove the culprit from your heart, it would be too dangerous for me to have you on the other side of the net and make me your target." Over tea, he said, "Dors, I've scanned countless histories, just scanned, browsed, and I haven't had time to do in-depth research. Even so. It's already obvious that all the film books are concentrated in the same few events."

"The pivotal event, the event that made history." "That's just an excuse. In fact, they copied each other. There are 25 million worlds in the galaxy, and perhaps only 25 of them are recorded in detail." Dors said, "You're only reading the general history of the galaxy. You should look up the special history of certain small worlds. On every world, no matter how small, schoolchildren have to learn the history of their own planet before they know that there are other worlds out there." A vast galaxy. Don't you yourself know more about Helicon at this moment than you do about The Rise of Trantor or 'Star Wars'?"

"That kind of knowledge has its limits," said Seldon in a dejected tone. "I know the geography of Helicon, the history of its development, and the evil behavior of the planet Janisek—that world is ours. Traditional enemies, but our teacher has specifically instructed that we should call them 'traditional opponents.' However, I have never learned that Helicon has any contribution to the general history of the galaxy." "Perhaps not at all." "Don't be silly, of course there is. Maybe Helicon hasn't been involved in any major space battles, major rebellions, or important peace treaties; maybe no contender for the throne has ever based Helicon, but some There must be subtle influences. Needless to say, what happens in any one place has effects everywhere else. But I can't find any data that would help me—Listen, Dors, in the realm of mathematics, Everything can be found in a computer, including what we know or discover in the past 20,000 years. But history is not the case, historians are always picking and picking, and everyone is always picking the same thing."

"But, Harry," said Dors, "mathematics is a human-invented structure of order in which one thing is fastened to another. There are definitions and postulates, all of which are known. It is...it is... …a whole. History, on the other hand, is an unconscious structure of the thoughts and actions of trillions of people, and the historian must pick and choose.” "Exactly," said Seldon, "but to derive the laws of psychohistory, I must know all history." "That way, you'd never be able to write down the laws of psychohistory." That was yesterday.Seldon was now slumped in a chair in the alcove, and he spent another day without success.He seemed to hear Dors's voice again: "Then you'll never be able to write the laws of psychohistory."

That's exactly what he had in mind at first.If Hummin hadn't firmly believed that this was not the case, if he hadn't had the uncanny ability to breathe his beliefs like flames upon Seldon, Seldon would have always thought the same. However, he couldn't really accept the advance or retreat.Is there no way out? He couldn't think of any solution.