Foundation and Chaos Read Online Free

oversexed partner of few charms and little wit…
    “It is a matter of some curiosity and perhaps importance, Highness.”
    “Meanwhile, you cause unrest in Sectors that are already unhappy. Sinter, it’s a foolish liberty—or rather, a foolish breach of liberty. I am supposed to guarantee my subjects’ freedom from being strapped to the horrid little hobbyhorses of my ministers and advisors, or even my own. Well, my hobbyhorses are relatively comfortable mounts…but this, but you , Sinter!”
    For a moment, Sinter thought the Emperor was actually going to show a spine, some Imperial fortitude, and forbid this activity, and he felt a momentary chill. It was because Sinter was so good at finding attractive women for young Klayus, and replacing them when he or they grew bored, that Klayus put up with so many of his peccadilloes.
    But the Emperor’s eyes grew heavy-lidded, and his energy and irritation appeared to dissipate. Sinter hid his relief. Klayus the Young was, after all, relenting once more.
    “Please don’t be so obvious, my good man,” Klayus said. “Slow down. What you need to know will come to you in good time, don’t you think? I’m sure you have all of our interests at heart. Now, about this woman Tyreshia…”
    Farad Sinter listened to Klayus’s request with apparent interest, but in fact had switched on his recorder and would pay attention in more detail later. He could hardly believe his fortune. The Emperor had not forbidden these actions! He could indeed redirect and slow the less fruitful investigations; and he could also continue.
    In fact, it was not humans, exceptional or otherwise, that he was after. Sinter sought evidence for the most extraordinary and long-lived conspiracy in human history…
    A conspiracy he had traced back to the time of Cleon I, and probably long before that.
    A myth, a legend, a real entity, coming and going like a wraith in Trantor’s history. The Mycogenians had called him Danee. He was one of the mysterious Eternals, and Sinter was determined to find out more, however he might risk his reputation.
    Talk of the Eternals was regarded with as little respect—less, actually—as talk of ghosts. Many on Trantor, an ancient world filled to overflowing with extinct lives, believed in ghosts. Only a select few paid attention to stories of the Eternals.
    The Emperor talked on about the woman he was interested in, and Sinter appeared to listen attentively, but his thoughts were far away…Years away.
    Sinter imagined himself being credited with saving the Empire. He savored energizing visions of sitting on an Imperial throne, or even better, of replacing Linge Chen on the Commission of Public Safety.
    “Farad!” The Emperor’s voice was sharp.
    Sinter’s recorder instantly fed him the last five seconds of conversation.
    “Yes, your Highness. Tyreshia is indeed a beautiful woman, reputedly very high-spirited, and ambitious.”
    “Ambitious women like me, don’t they, Farad?” The boy’s tone softened. Klayus’s mother had been ambitious, and successful, until she had fallen into Linge Chen’s bad graces. She had tried to work her wiles on the Chief Commissioner in the presence of one of his wives. Chen was extremely loyal to his wives.
    Strange that a weak boy like Klayus would enjoy strong women; invariably they grew bored with him. After a time, noteven the most ambitious could hide their boredom. Once they learned who was really in power, ultimately…
    Neither Sinter nor Linge Chen cared much for sex. Power was so much more rewarding.

4.
    The greatest engineering feat in the history of Trantor had failed ten years before, and the echoes of that failure still plagued the important and crowded and troublesome Dahl Sector. Four million Dahlite engineers and heatsink workers, supplemented by an additional ten million laborers and even a smuggled force of the banned tiktoks, had worked for twenty years to drive the deepest heatsink yet attempted—over two