Pebble in the Sky Read online

  Schwartz watched the temperature thereafter and found that it scarcely varied from day to day—and yet the days shortened, as would be expected from a northerly location, say as northerly as Chicago. He wondered if he was on Earth.

  He tried reading some of Grew’s book films but gave up. People were people still, but the minutiae of daily life, the knowledge of which was taken for granted, the historical and sociological allusions that meant nothing to him, forced him back.

  The puzzles continued. The uniformly warm rains, the wild instructions he received to remain away from certain regions. For instance, there had been the evening that he had finally become too intrigued by the shining horizon, the blue glow to the south . . .

  He had slipped off after supper, and when not a mile had passed, the almost noiseless whir of the biwheel engine came up behind him and Arbin’s angry shout rang out in the evening air. He had stopped and had been taken back.

  Arbin had paced back and forth before him and had said, “You must stay away from anywhere that it shines at night.”

  Schwartz had asked mildly, “Why?”

  And the answer came with biting incision, “Because it is forbidden.” A long pause, then, “You really don’t know what it’s like out there, Schwartz?”

  Schwartz spread his hands.

  Arbin said, “Where do you come from? Are you an—an Outsider?”

  “What’s an Outsider?”

  Arbin shrugged and left.

  But that night had had a great importance for Schwartz, for it was during that short mile toward the shiningness that the strangeness in his mind had coalesced into the Mind Touch. It was what he called it, and the closest he had come, either then or thereafter, to describing it.

  He had been alone in the darkling purple. His own footsteps against the springy pavement were muted. He hadn’t seen anybody. He hadn’t heard anybody. He hadn’t touched anything.

  Not exactly . . . It had been something like a touch, but not anywhere on his body. It was in his mind. . . . Not exactly a touch, but a presence—a somethingness there like a velvety tickle.

  Then there had been two—two touches, distinct, apart. And the second—how could he tell them apart?—had grown louder (no, that wasn’t the right word); it had grown distincter, more definite.

  And then he knew it was Arbin. He knew it five minutes, at least, before he caught the sound of the biwheel, ten minutes before he laid eyes on Arbin.

  Thereafter it occurred again and again with increasing frequency.

  It began to dawn on him that he always knew when Arbin, Loa, or Grew was within a hundred feet of himself, even when he had no reason for knowing, even when he had every reason to suppose the opposite. It was a hard thing to take for granted, yet it began to seem so natural.

  He experimented, and found that he knew exactly where any of them were, at any time. He could distinguish between them, for the Mind Touch differed from person to person. Not once had he the nerve to mention it to the others.

  And sometimes he would wonder what that first Mind Touch on the road to the Shiningness had been. It had been neither Arbin, Loa, nor Grew. Well? Did it make a difference?

  It did later. He had come across the Touch again, the same one, when he brought in the cattle one evening. He came to Arbin then and said:

  “What about that patch of woods past the South Hills, Arbin?”

  “Nothing about it,” was the gruff answer. “It’s Ministerial Ground.”

  “What’s that?”

  Arbin seemed annoyed. “It’s of no importance to you, is it? They call it Ministerial Ground because it is the property of the High Minister.”

  “Why isn’t it cultivated?”

  “It’s not intended for that.” Arbin’s voice was shocked. “It was a great Center. In ancient days. It is very sacred and must not be disturbed. Look, Schwartz, if you want to remain here safely, curb your curiosity and tend to your job.”

  “But if it’s so sacred, then nobody can live there?”

  “Exactly. You’re right.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. . . . And you’re not to trespass. It will mean the end for you.”

  “I won’t.”

  Schwartz walked away, wondering and oddly uneasy. It was from that wooded ground that the Mind Touch came, quite powerfully, and now something additional had been added to the sensation. It was an unfriendly Touch, a threatening Touch.

  Why? Why?

  And still he dared not speak. They would not have believed him, and something unpleasant would happen to him as a consequence. He knew that too. He knew too much, in fact.

  He was younger these days, also. Not so much in the physical sense, to be sure. He was thinner in his stomach and broader in his shoulders. His muscles were harder and springier and his digestion was better. That was the result of work in the open. But it was something else he was chiefly conscious of. It was his way of thinking.

  Old men tend to forget what thought was like in their youth; they forget the quickness of the mental jump, the daring of the youthful intuition, the agility of the fresh insight. They become accustomed to the more plodding varieties of reason, and because this is more than made up by the accumulation of experience, old men think themselves wiser than the young.

  But to Schwartz experience remained, and it was with a sharp delight that he found he could understand things at a bound, that he gradually progressed from following Arbin’s explanations to anticipating them, to leaping on ahead. As a result, he felt young in a far more subtle way than any amount of physical excellence could account for.

  Two months passed, and it all came out—over a game of chess with Grew in the arbor.

  Chess, somehow, hadn’t changed, except for the names of the pieces. It was as he remembered it, and therefore it was always a comfort to him. At least, in this one respect, his poor memory did not play him false.

  Grew told him of variations of chess. There was four-handed chess, in which each player had a board, touching each other at the corners, with a fifth board filling the hollow in the center as a common No Man’s Land. There were three-dimensional chess games in which eight transparent boards were placed one over the other and in which each piece moved in three dimensions as they formerly moved in two, and in which the number of pieces and pawns were doubled, the win coming only when a simultaneous check of both enemy kings occurred. There were even the popular varieties, in which the original position of the chessmen were decided by throws of the dice, or where certain squares conferred advantages or disadvantages to the pieces upon them, or where new pieces with strange properties were introduced.

  But chess itself, the original and unchangeable, was the same—and the tournament between Schwartz and Grew had completed its first fifty games.

  Schwartz had a bare knowledge of the moves when he began, so that he lost constantly in the first games. But that had changed and losing games were becoming rarer. Gradually Grew had grown slow and cautious, had taken to smoking his pipe into glowing embers in the intervals between moves, and had finally subsided into rebellious and querulous losses.

  Grew was White and his pawn was already on King 4.

  “Let’s go,” he urged sourly. His teeth were clamped hard on his pipe and his eyes were already searching the board tensely.

  Schwartz took his seat in the gathering twilight and sighed. The games were really becoming uninteresting as more and more he became aware of the nature of Grew’s moves before they could be made. It was as if Grew had a misty window in his skull. And the fact that he himself knew, almost instinctively, the proper course of chess play to take was simply of a piece with the rest of his problem.

  They used a “night-board,” one that glowed in the darkness in a checkered blue-and-orange glimmer. The pieces, ordinary lumpish figures of a reddish clay in the sunlight, were metamorphosed at night. Half were bathed in a creamy whiteness that lent them the look of cold and shining porcelain, and the others sparked in tiny glitt
ers of red.

  The first moves were rapid. Schwartz’s own King’s Pawn met the enemy advance head on. Grew brought out his King’s Knight to Bishop 3; Schwartz countered with Queen’s Knight to Bishop 3. Then the White Bishop leaped to Queen’s Knight 5, and Schwartz’s Queen’s Rook’s Pawn slid ahead a square to drive it back to Rook 4. He then advanced his other Knight to Bishop 3.

  The shining pieces slid across the board with an eery volition of their own as the grasping fingers lost themselves in the night.

  Schwartz was frightened. He might be revealing insanity, but he had to know. He said abruptly, “Where am I?”

  Grew looked up in the midst of a deliberate move of his Queen’s Knight to Bishop 3 and said, “What?”

  Schwartz didn’t know the word for “country,” or “nation.” He said, “What world is this?” and moved his Bishop to King 2.

  “Earth,” was the short reply, and Grew castled with great emphasis, first the tall figurine that was the King, moving, and then the lumpish Rook topping it and resting on the other side.

  That was a thoroughly unsatisfactory answer. The word Grew had used Schwartz translated in his mind as “Earth.” But what was “Earth”? Any planet is “Earth” to those that live on it. He advanced his Queen’s Knight’s Pawn two spaces, and again Grew’s Bishop had to retreat, to Knight 3 this time. Then Schwartz and Grew, each in turn, advanced the Queen’s Pawn one space, each freeing his Bishop for the battle in the center that was soon to begin.

  Schwartz asked, as calmly and casually as he could, “What year is this?” He castled.

  Grew paused. He might have been startled. “What is it you’re harping on today? Don’t you want to play? If it will make you happy, this is 827.” He added sarcastically, “G.E.” He stared frowningly at the board, then slammed his Queen’s Knight to Queen 5, where it made its first assault.

  Schwartz dodged quickly, moving his own Queen’s Knight to Rook 4 in counterattack. The skirmish was on in earnest. Grew’s Knight seized the Bishop, which leaped upward in a bath of red fire to be dropped with a sharp click into the box where it might lie, a buried warrior, until the next game. And then the conquering Knight fell instantly to Schwartz’s Queen. In a moment of overcaution, Grew’s attack faltered and he moved his remaining Knight back to the haven of King 1, where it was relatively useless. Schwartz’s Queen’s Knight now repeated the first exchange, taking the Bishop and falling prey in its turn to the Rook’s Pawn.

  Now another pause, and Schwartz asked mildly, “What’s G.E.?”

  “What?” demanded Grew bad-humoredly. “Oh—you mean you’re still wondering what year this is? Of all the fool—Well, I keep forgetting you just learned to talk a month or so ago. But you’re intelligent. Don’t you really know? Well, it’s 827 of the Galactic Era. Galactic Era: G.E.—see? It’s 827 years since the foundation of the Galactic Empire; 827 years since the coronation of Frankenn the First. Now, please, it’s your move.”

  But the Knight that Schwartz held was swallowed up in the grip of his hand for the moment. He was in a fury of frustration. He said, “Just one minute,” and put the Knight down on Queen 2. “Do you recognize any of these names? America, Asia, the United States, Russia, Europe—” He groped for identification.

  In the darkness Grew’s pipe was a sullen red glow and the dim shadow of him hunched over the shining chessboard as if it had the less life of the two. He might have shaken his head curtly, but Schwartz could not see that. He didn’t have to. He sensed the other’s negation as clearly as though a speech had been delivered.

  Schwartz tried again. “Do you know where I can get a map?”

  “No maps,” growled Grew, “unless you want to risk your neck in Chica. I’m no geographer. I never heard of the names you mention, either. What are they? People?”

  Risk his neck? Why that? Schwartz felt the coldness gather. Had he committed a crime? Did Grew know about it?

  He asked doubtfully, “The sun has nine planets, hasn’t it?”

  “Ten,” was the uncompromising answer.

  Schwartz hesitated. Well, they might have discovered another that he hadn’t heard about. But then why should Grew have heard about it? He counted on his fingers, and then, “How about the sixth planet? Has it got rings?”

  Grew was slowly moving the King’s Bishop’s Pawn forward two squares, and Schwartz instantly did the same.

  Grew said, “Saturn, you mean? Of course it has rings.” He was calculating now. He had the choice of taking either the Bishop’s Pawn or the King’s Pawn, and the consequences of the choice were not too clear.

  “And is there an asteroid belt—little planets—between Mars and Jupiter? I mean between the fourth and fifth planets?”

  “Yes,” mumbled Grew. He was relighting his pipe and thinking feverishy. Schwartz caught that agonized uncertainty and was annoyed at it. To him, now that he was sure of Earth’s identity, the chess game was less than a trifle. Questions quivered along the inner surface of his skull, and one slipped out.

  “Your book films are real, then? There are other worlds? With people?”

  And now Grew looked up from the board, eyes probing uselessly in the darkness. “Are you serious?”

  “Are there?”

  “By the Galaxy! I believe you really don’t know.”

  Schwartz felt humiliated in his ignorance. “Please—”

  “Of course there are worlds. Millions of them! Every star you see has worlds, and most of those you don’t see. It’s all part of the Empire.”

  Delicately, inside, Schwartz felt the faint echo of each of Grew’s intense words as they sparked directly from mind to mind. Schwartz felt the mental contacts growing stronger with the days. Maybe, soon, he could hear those tiny words in his mind even when the person thinking them wasn’t talking.

  And now, for the first time, he finally thought of an alternative to insanity. Had he passed through time, somehow? Slept through, perhaps?

  He said huskily, “How long since it’s all happened, Grew? How long since the time when there was only one planet?”

  “What do you mean?” He was suddenly cautious. “Are you a member of the Ancients?”

  “Of the what? I’m not a member of anything, but wasn’t Earth once the only planet? . . . Well, wasn’t it?”

  “The Ancients say so,” said Grew grimly, “but who knows? Who really knows? The worlds up there have been existing all history long as far as I know.”

  “But how long is that?”

  “Thousands of years, I suppose. Fifty thousand, a hundred—I can’t say.”

  Thousands of years! Schwartz felt a gurgle in his throat and pressed it down in panic. All that between two steps? A breath, a moment, a flicker of time—and he had jumped thousands of years? He felt himself shrinking back to amnesia. His identification of the Solar System must have been the result of imperfect memories penetrating the mist.

  But now Grew was making his next move—he was taking the other’s Bishop’s Pawn, and it was almost mechanically that Schwartz noted mentally the fact that it was the wrong choice. Move fitted to move now with no conscious effort. His King’s Rook swooped forward to take the foremost of the now-doubled White Pawns. White’s Knight advanced again to Bishop 3. Schwartz’s Bishop moved to Knight 2, freeing itself for action. Grew followed suit by moving his own Bishop to Queen 2.

  Schwartz paused before launching the final attack. He said, “Earth is boss, isn’t it?”

  “Boss of what?”

  “Of the Emp—”

  But Grew looked up with a roar at which the chessmen quivered. “Listen, you, I’m tired of your questions. Are you a complete fool? Does Earth look as if it’s boss of anything?” There was a smooth whir as Grew’s wheel chair circled the table. Schwartz felt grasping fingers on his arm.

  “Look! Look there!” Grew’s voice was a whispered rasp. “You see the horizon? You see it shine?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is Earth—all Earth. Except here and there, wh
ere a few patches like this one exist.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Earth’s crust is radioactive. The soil glows, always glowed, will glow forever. Nothing can grow. No one can live—You really didn’t know that? Why do you suppose we have the Sixty?”

  The paralytic subsided. He circled his chair about the table again. “It’s your move.”

  The Sixty! Again a Mind Touch with an indefinable aura of menace. Schwartz’s chess pieces played themselves, while he wondered about it with a tight-pressed heart. His King’s Pawn took the opposing Bishop’s Pawn. Grew moved his Knight to Queen 4 and Schwartz’s Rook side-stepped the attack to Knight 4. Again Grew’s Knight attacked, moving to Bishop 3, and Schwartz’s Rook avoided the issue again to Knight 5. But now Grew’s King’s Rook’s Pawn advanced one timorous square and Schwartz’s Rook slashed forward. It took the Knight’s Pawn, checking the enemy King. Grew’s King promptly took the Rook, but Schwartz’s Queen plugged the hole instantly, moving to Knight 4 and checking. Grew’s King scurried to Rook 1, and Schwartz brought up his Knight, placing it on King 4. Grew moved his Queen to King 2 in a strong attempt to mobilize his defenses, and Schwartz countered by marching his Queen forward two squares to Knight 6, so that the fight was now in close quarters. Grew had no choice; he moved his Queen to Knight 2, and the two female majesties were now face to face. Schwartz’s Knight pressed home, taking the opposing Knight on Bishop 6, and when the now-attacked White Bishop moved quickly to Bishop 3, the Knight followed to Queen 5. Grew hesitated for slow minutes, then advanced his outflanked Queen up the long diagonal to take Schwartz’s Bishop.

  Then he paused and drew a relieved breath. His sly opponent had a Rook in danger with a check in the offing and his own Queen ready to wreak havoc. And he was ahead a Rook to a Pawn.

  “Your move,” he said with satisfaction.

  Schwartz said finally, “What—what is the Sixty?”

  There was a sharp unfriendliness to Grew’s voice. “Why do you ask that? What are you after?”

  “Please,” humbly. He had little spirit left in him. “I am a man with no harm in me. I don’t know who I am or what happened to me. Maybe I’m an amnesia case.”