11. BRIDE AND GROOM

THE MULE Less is known of "The Mule" than of any character of comparable significance to Galactic history. Even the period of his greatest renown is known to us chiefly through the eyes of his antagonists and, principally, through those of a young bride....

ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA

Bayta's first sight of Haven was entirely the contrary of spectacular. Her husband pointed it out ?a dull star lost in the emptiness of the Galaxy's edge. It was past the last sparse clusters, to where straggling points of light gleamed lonely. And even among these it was poor and inconspicuous.

Toran was quite aware that as the earliest prelude to married life, the Red Dwarf lacked impressiveness and his lips curled self-consciously. "I know, Bay ?It isn't exactly a proper change, is it? I mean from the Foundation to this."

"A horrible change, Toran. I should never have married you."

And when his face looked momentarily hurt, before he caught himself, she said with her special "cozy" tone, "All right, silly. Now let your lower lip droop and give me that special dying-duck look ?the one just before you're supposed to bury your head on my shoulder, while I stroke your hair full of static electricity. You were fishing for some drivel, weren't you? You were expecting me to say 'I'd be happy anywhere with you, Toran!' or 'The interstellar depths themselves would be home, my sweet, were you but with me!' Now you admit it."

She pointed a finger at him and snatched it away an instant before his teeth closed upon it.

He said, "If I surrender, and admit you're right, will you prepare dinner?"

She nodded contentedly. He smiled, and just looked at her.

She wasn't beautiful on the grand scale to others ?he admitted that ?even if everybody did look twice. Her hair was dark and glossy, though straight, her mouth a bit wide ?but her meticulous, close-textured eyebrows separated a white, unlined forehead from the warmest mahogany eyes ever filled with smiles.

And behind a very sturdily-built and staunchly-defended facade of practical, unromantic, hard-headedness towards life, there was just that little pool of softness that would never show if you poked for it, but could be reached if you knew just how ?and never let on that you were looking for it.

Toran adjusted the controls unnecessarily and decided to relax. He was one interstellar jump, and then several milli-microparsecs "on the straight" before manipulation by hand was necessary. He leaned over backwards to look into the storeroom, where Bayta was juggling appropriate containers.

There was quite a bit of smugness about his attitude towards Bayta ?the satisfied awe that marks the triumph of someone who has been hovering at the edge of an inferiority complex for three years.

After all he was a provincial ?and not merely a provincial, but the son of a renegade Trader. And she was of the Foundation itself ?and not merely that, but she could trace her ancestry back to Mallow.

And with all that, a tiny quiver underneath. To take her back to Haven, with its rock-world and cave-cities was bad enough. To have her face the traditional hostility of Trader for Foundation ?nomad for city dweller ?was worse.

Still ?After supper, the last jump!

Haven was an angry crimson blaze, and the second planet was a ruddy patch of light with atmosphere-blurred rim and a half-sphere of darkness. Bayta leaned over the large view table with its spidering of crisscross lines that centered Haven II neatly.

She said gravely, "I wish I had met your father first. If he takes a dislike to me?

"Then," said Toran matter-of-factly, "you would be the first pretty girl to inspire that in him. Before he lost his arm and stopped roving around the Galaxy, he ?Well, if you ask him about it, he'll talk to you about it till your ears wear down to a nubbin. After a while I got to thinking that he was embroidering; because he never told the same story twice the same way?

Haven II was rushing up at them now. The landlocked sea wheeled ponderously below them, slate-gray in the lowering dimness and lost to sight, here and there, among the wispy clouds. Mountains jutted raggedly along the coast.

The sea became wrinkled with nearness and, as it veered off past the horizon just at the end, there was one vanishing glimpse of shore-hugging ice fields.

Toran grunted under the fierce deceleration, "Is your suit locked?"

Bayta's plump face was round and ruddy in the incasing sponge-foam of the internally-heated, skin-clinging costume.

The ship lowered crunchingly on the open field just short of the lifting of the plateau.

They climbed out awkwardly into the solid darkness of the outer-galactic night, and Bayta gasped as the sudden cold bit, and the thin wind swirled emptily. Toran seized her elbow and nudged her into an awkward run over the smooth, packed ground towards the sparking of artificial light in the distance.

The advancing guards met them halfway, and after a whispered exchange of words, they were taken onward. The wind and the cold disappeared when the gate of rock opened and then closed behind them. The warm interior, white with wall-light, was filled with an incongruous humming bustle. Men looked up from their desks, and Toran produced documents.

They were waved onward after a short glance and Toran whispered to his wife, "Dad must have fixed up the preliminaries. The usual lapse here is about five hours."

They burst into the open and Bayta said suddenly, "Oh, my?

The cave city was in daylight ?the white daylight of a young sun. Not that there was a sun, of course. What should have been the sky was lost in the unfocused glow of an over-all brilliance. And the warm air was properly thick and fragrant with greenery.

Bayta said, "Why, Toran, it's beautiful."

Toran grinned with anxious delight. "Well, now, Bay, it isn't like anything on the Foundation, of course, but it's the biggest city on Haven II ?twenty thousand people, you know ?and you'll get to like it. No amusement palaces, I'm afraid, but no secret police either."

"Oh, Torie, it's just like a toy city. It's all white and pink ?and so clean."

"Well? Toran looked at the city with her. The houses were two stories high for the most part, and of the smooth vein rock indigenous to the region. The spires of the Foundation were missing, and the colossal community houses of the Old Kingdoms ?but the smallness was there and the individuality; a relic of personal initiative in a Galaxy of mass life.

He snapped to sudden attention. "Bay ?There's Dad! Right there ?where I'm pointing, silly. Don't you see him?"

She did. It was just the impression of a large man, waving frantically, fingers spread wide as though groping wildly in air. The deep thunder of a drawn-out shout reached them. Bayta trailed her husband, rushing downwards over the close-cropped lawn. She caught sight of a smaller man, white-haired, almost lost to view behind the robust One-arm, who still waved and still shouted.

Toran cried over his shoulder, "It's my father's half-brother. The one who's been to the Foundation. You know."

They met in the grass, laughing and incoherent, and Toran's father let out a final whoop for sheer joy. He hitched at his short jacket and adjusted the metal-chased belt that was his one concession to luxury.

His eyes shifted from one of the youngsters to the other, and then he said, a little out of breath, "You picked a rotten day to return home, boy!"

"What? Oh, it is Seldon's birthday, isn't it?"

"It is. I had to rent a car to make the trip here, and dragoon Randu to drive it. Not a public vehicle to be had at gun's point."

His eyes were on Bayta now, and didn't leave. He spoke to her more softly, "I have the crystal of you right here ?and it's good, but I can see the fellow who took it was an amateur."

He had the small cube of transparency out of his jacket pocket and in the light the laughing little face within sprang to vivid colored life as a miniature Bayta.

"That one!" said Bayta. "Now I wonder why Toran should send that caricature. I'm surprised you let me come near you, sir."

"Are you now? Call me Fran. I'll have none of this fancy mess. For that, I think you can take my arm, and we'll go on to the car. Till now I never did think my boy knew what he was ever up to. I think I'll change that opinion. I think I'll have to change that opinion."

Toran said to his half uncle softly, "How is the old man these days? Does he still hound the women?"

Randu puckered up all over his face when he smiled. "When he can, Toran, when he can. There are times when he remembers that his next birthday will be his sixtieth, and that disheartens him. But he shouts it down, this evil thought, and then he is himself. He is a Trader of the ancient type. But you, Toran. Where did you find such a pretty wife?"

The young man chuckled and linked arms. "Do you want a three years' history at a gasp, uncle?"

It was in the small living room of the home that Bayta struggled out of her traveling cloak and hood and shook her hair loose. She sat down, crossing her knees, and returned the appreciative stare of this large, ruddy man.

She said, "I know what you're trying to estimate, and I'll help you; Age, twenty-four, height, five-four, weight, one-ten, educational specialty, history." She noticed that he always crooked his stand so as to hide the missing arm. But now Fran leaned close and said, "Since you mention it ?weight, one-twenty."

He laughed loudly at her flush. Then he said to the company in general, "You can always tell a woman's weight by her upper arm ?with due experience, of course. Do you want a drink, Bay?"

"Among other things," she said, and they left together, while Toran busied himself at the book shelves to check for new additions.

Fran returned alone and said, "She'll be down later."

He lowered himself heavily into the large comer chair and placed his stiff-jointed left leg on the stool before it. The laughter had left his red face, and Toran turned to face him.

Fran said, "Well, you're home, boy, and I'm glad you are. I like your woman. She's no whining ninny."

"I married her," said Toran simply.

"Well, that's another thing altogether, boy." His eyes darkened. "It's a foolish way to tie up the future. In my longer life, and more experienced, I never did such a thing."

Randu interrupted from the comer where he stood quietly. "Now Franssart, what comparisons are you making? Till your crash landing six years ago you were never in one spot long enough to establish residence requirements for marriage, And since then, who would have you?"

The one-armed man jerked erect in his seat and replied hotly, "Many, you snowy dotard?

Toran said with hasty tact, "It's largely a legal formality, Dad. The situation has its conveniences."

"Mostly for the woman," grumbled Fran.

"And even if so," agreed Randu, "it's up to the boy to decide. Marriage is an old custom among the Foundationers."

"The Foundationers are not fit models for an honest Trader," smoldered Fran.

Toran broke in again, "My wife is a Foundationer." He looked from one to the other, and then said quietly, "She's coming."

The conversation took a general turn after the evening meal, which Fran had spiced with three tales of reminiscence composed of equal parts of blood, women, profits, and embroidery. The small televisor was on, and some classic drama was playing itself out in an unregarded whisper. Randu had hitched himself into a more comfortable position on the low couch and gazed past the slow smoke of his long pipe to where Bayta had knelt down upon the softness of the white fur mat brought back once long ago from a trade mission and now spread out only upon the most ceremonious occasions.

"You have studied history, my girl?" he asked, pleasantly.

Bayta nodded.............