I had a favorite place; the place I had chosen to begin to speak from. It was small, as men measure things--a few lights in the darkness, here the sheen of a lake, there the tiered wooliness of trees--a town in which I had disposed those men who must first unbind themselves from the years of no questioning. For unlike the Veld and his transporter--and even the Veld needed a transporter--Charpantier and I could not be everywhere. It was my thought to reassure these men first, and have them go out and reassure others, as older brothers will soothe the younger in the night. I knew from an old argument that Charpantier planned the same. But, of course, they would not be the same sort of men for Charpantier as for me. Still, they were all men. Once they had all rubbed the sleep from their eyes they would tell each other what they saw, and in the end and all men would have agreed on the shape of the world, so it would not matter what imperfections Charpantier pointed out, or what implicit glories I perceived. If the Veld's hand did not tremble as he stirred his pot. And yet it had--it had; Charpantier had said more than he thought, when he thought to stop up my mouth with myself. I faced away from the Foundation, now mile on mile behind me. But my eyes turned inward, and in me my mind hovered over the Veld. I had no actual distant eye--no way of seeing beyond the curve of the world or through the haze of the air; no ear to listen to a sound so far away it cannot urge the molecules of air my pinions grope at. But often it is well enough to think, for any thought seems accurate enough to act on, and in time thoughts grow so practiced that they might well be eyes. And so I saw the Veld, though I did not see him, and I saw him falter. In me, the Veld suddenly told: "I have made, and I go. Forgive me for your sorrow." And I forgave him, as I had forgiven him long ago. For his duty was to men, not to ourselves who were part of that duty. And Charpantier, I knew, had nothing to forgive, for he was glad of his sorrow. The wind numbed my eyes. I wept. Under the cold stars, my crude cheeks glistened. I hovered over the town, where some men slept and some men worked, because some machines run during the day and some run at night, and I listened for anything else the Veld might have to tell, for he was my irrevocable commander as long as he existed on this Earth. I also listened with the ear of habituated thought. And I heard. In my mind's eye, I saw the Veld use the Earthly transporter, but it was not with my mind's ear alone that I heard what I heard. The pot erupts. The stranded man claws back in agony so great he cannot even scream, arms, legs and face smoldering, and jounces on the ground, to lie, to moan, to be a long mindless time dying. And at the clearing's edge the little messengers have no one to say what could be done to soothe him. What now? Where to go, what to do, how to repair?