Dornick chuckled, though with a tone of weariness

“Of course we expected this, and planned for it. Commissioner Linge Chen has assigned the Special Police to prevent desertions. And our own mentalics are helping prod the volunteers’ to depart on their assigned ships. But it’s hard keeping track of over a hundred thousand people. Hari, you couldn’t count the petty aggravations!“

Gaal ruffled papers as he changed the subject.

“Your granddaughter sends her love from Star’s End. Wanda reports that the new mentalic colony seems to be settling down so well that she can come home soon. It’s a relief to have most of the mentalics off Trantor, at last. They were an unstable element. Now only the most trustworthy are left here in the city, and those are proving invaluable during preparations. So, we seem to have matters well in hand-”

Indeed. Hari scanned the accompanying appendix of psychohistorical symbols, attached to Gaal’s message, and saw that they fit the Plan nicely. Dornick and Wanda and the other members of the Fifty knew their jobs well.

After all, Hari had trained them.

He did not have to consult his personal copy of the Prime Radiant to know what must happen next. Soon, agents would be dispatched toward Anacreon and Smyrno, to ignite a smoldering process of secession in those remote provinces, setting the stage for the Foundation’s initial set of crises…the first of many leading, eventually, to a new and better civilization.

Of course the irony did not escape Hari-that he had spent his time as First Minister of the Empire smothering revolutions, and making sure that his successors would continue quashing all so-called “chaos worlds,” whenever those raging social upheavals threatened the human-social equilibrium. But these new rebellions that his followers must foment at the Periphery would be different. Led by ambitious local gentry seeking to augment their own royal grandeur, these insurrections would be classical in every way, fitting the equations with smooth precision.