General Tennar stared at Hari Seldon in a rather pop-eyed manner and his fingers tapped lightly at the desk where he sat.
"Thirty years," he said. "Thirty years and you are telling me you still have nothing to show for it?"
"Actually, General, twenty-eight years."
Tennar ignored that. "And all at government expense. Do you know how many billions of credits have been invested in your Project, Professor?"
"I haven't kept up, General, but we have records that could give me the answer to your question in seconds."
"And so have we. The government, Professor, is not an endless source of funds. These are not the old times. We don't have Cleon's old Free-and-easy attitude toward finances. Raising taxes is hard and we need credits for many things. I have called you here, hoping that you can benefit us in some way with your psychohistory. If you cannot, then I must tell you, quite frankly, that we will have to shut off the faucet. If you ran continue your research without government funding, do so, for unless you show me something that would make the expense worth it, you will have to do just that."
"General, you make a demand I cannot meet, but, if in response, you and government support, you will be throwing away the future. Give me wile and eventually-"
"Various governments have heard that `eventually' from you for decades. Isn't it true, Professor, that you say your psychohistory predicts that the junta is unstable, that my rule is unstable, that in a short time it will collapse?"
Seldon frowned. "The technique is not yet firm enough for me to say that this is something that psychohistory states."
"I put it to you that psychohistory does state it and that this is common knowledge within your Project."
"No," said Seldon warmly. "No such thing. It is possible that some among us have interpreted some relationships to indicate that the junta may be an unstable form of government, but there are other relationships that may easily be interpreted to show it is stable. That is the reason why we must continue our work. At the present moment it is all too easy to use incomplete data and imperfect reasoning to reach any conclusion we wish."
"But if you decide to present the conclusion that the government is unstable and say that psychohistory warrants it-even if it does not actually do so-will it not add to the instability?"
"It may very well do that, General. And if we announced that the government is stable, it may well add to the stability. I have had this very same discussion with Emperor Cleon on a number of occasions. It is possible to use psychohistory as a tool to manipulate the emotions of the people and achieve short-term effects. In the long run, however, the predictions are quite likely to prove incomplete or downright erroneous and psychohistory will lose all its credibility and it will be as though it had never existed."
"Enough! Tell me straight out! What do you think psychohistory shows about my government?"
"It shows, we think, that there are elements of instability in it, but we are not certain-and cannot be certain-exactly in what way this can be made worse or made better."
"In other words, psychohistory simply tells you what you would know without psychohistory and it is that in which government has invested uncounted piles of credits."
"The time will come when psychohistory will tell us what we could not know without it and then the investment will pay itself back many, many times over."
"And how long will it be before that time comes?"
"Not too long, I hope. We have been making rather gratifying progress in the last few years."
Tennar was tapping his fingernail on his desk again. "Not enough. Tell me something helpful now. Something useful."
Seldon pondered, then said, "I can prepare a detailed report for you, but it will take time."
"Of course it will. Days, months, years-and somehow it will never be written. Do you take me for a fool?"
"No, of course not, General. However, I don't want to be taken for a fool, either. I can tell you something that I will take sole responsibility for. I have seen it in my psychohistorical research, but I may have misinterpreted what I saw. However, since you insist-"
"I insist."
"You mentioned taxes a little while ago. You said raising taxes was difficult. Certainly. It is always difficult. Every government must do its work by collecting wealth in one form or another. The only two ways in which such credits can be obtained are, first, by robbing a neighbor, or second, persuading a government's own citizens to grant the credits willingly and peaceably.
"Since we have established a Galactic Empire that has been conducting its business in reasonable fashion for thousands of years, there is no possibility of robbing a neighbor, except as the result of an occasional rebellion and its repression. This does not happen often enough to support a government-and, if it did, the government would be too unstable to last long, in any case."
Seldon drew a deep breath and went on. "Therefore, credits must be raised by asking the citizens to hand over part of their wealth for government use. Presumably, since the government will then work efficiently, the citizens can better spend their credits in this way than to hoard it-each man to himself-while living in a dangerous and chaotic anarchy.
"However, though the request is reasonable and the citizenry is better off paying taxes as their price for maintaining a stable and efficient government, they are nevertheless reluctant to do so. In order to overcome this reluctance, governments must make it appear that they are not taking too many credits, and that they are considering each citizen's rights and benefits. In other words, they must lower the percentage taken out of low incomes; they must allow deductions of various kinds to be made before the tax is assessed, and so on.
"As time goes on, the tax situation inevitably grows more and more complex as different worlds, different sectors within each world, and different economic divisions all demand and require special treatment. Me result is that the tax-collecting branch of the government grows in size and complexity and tends to become uncontrollable. The average citizen cannot understand why or how much he is being taxed; what he can get away with and what he can't. The government and the tax agency itself are often in the dark as well.
"What's more, an ever-larger fraction of the funds collected must be put into running the overelaborate tax agency-maintaining records, pursuing tax delinquents-so the amount of credits available for good ,end useful purposes declines despite anything we can do.
"In the end, the tax situation becomes overwhelming. It inspires discontent and rebellion. The history books tend to ascribe these things to greedy businessmen, to corrupt politicians, to brutal warriors, to ambitious viceroys-but these are just the individuals who take advantage of the tax overgrowth."
The General said harshly, "Are you telling me that our tax system is overcomplicated?"
Seldon said, "If it were not, it would be the only one in history that wasn't, as far as I know. If there is one thing that psychohistory tells me is inevitable, it is tax overgrowth."
"And what do we do about it?"
"That I cannot tell you. It is that for which I would like to prepare a report that-as you say-may take a while to get ready."
"Never mind the report. The tax system is overcomplicated, isn't it? Isn't that what you are saying?"
"It is possible that it is," said Seldon cautiously.
"And to correct that, one must make the tax system simpler-as simple as possible, in fact."
"I would have to study-"
"Nonsense. The opposite of great complication is great simplicity. I don't need a report to tell me that."
"As you say, General," said Seldon.
At this point the General looked up suddenly, as though he had been called-as, indeed, he had been. His fists clenched and holovision images of Colonel Linn and Dors Venabili suddenly appeared in the room.
Thunderstruck, Seldon exclaimed, "Dors! What are you doing here?"
The General said nothing, but his brow furrowed into a frown.