Pebble in the Sky Read online

  He jumped up as the light above the door blinked on and off and the meaningless baritone of his host sounded. Then the door opened and there was breakfast—a mealy porridge that he did not recognize but which tasted faintly like corn mush (with a savory difference) and milk.

  He said, “Thanks,” and nodded his head vigorously.

  The farmer said something in return and picked up Schwartz’s shirt from where it hung on the back of the chair. He inspected it carefully from all directions, paying particular attention to the buttons. Then, replacing it, he flung open the sliding door of a closet, and for the first time Schwartz became visually aware of the warm milkiness of the walls.

  “Plastic,” he muttered to himself, using that all-inclusive word with the finality laymen always do. He noted further that there were no corners or angles in the room, all planes fading into each other at a gentle curve.

  But the other was holding objects out toward him and was making gestures that could not be mistaken. Schwartz obviously was to wash and dress.

  With help and directions, he obeyed. Except that he found nothing with which to shave, nor could gestures to his chin elicit anything but an incomprehensible sound accompanied by a look of distinct revulsion on the part of the other. Schwartz scratched at his gray stubble and sighed windily.

  And then he was led to a small, elongated, biwheeled car, into which he was ordered by gestures. The ground sped beneath them and the empty road moved backward on either side, until low, sparkling white buildings rose before him, and there, far ahead, was the blue of water.

  He pointed eagerly. “Chicago?”

  It was the last gasp of hope within him, for certainly nothing he ever saw looked less like that city.

  The farmer made no answer at all.

  And the last hope died.

  3

  One World—or Many?

  Bel Arvardan, fresh from his interview with the press, on the occasion of his forthcoming expedition to Earth, felt at supreme peace with all the hundred million star systems that composed the all-embracing Galactic Empire. It was no longer a question of being known in this sector or that. Let his theories concerning Earth be proven and his reputation would be assured on every inhabited planet of the Milky Way, on every planet that Man had set foot through the hundreds of thousands of years of expansion through space.

  These potential heights of renown, these pure and rarefied intellectual peaks of science were coming to him early, yet not easily. He was scarcely thirty-five, but already his career had been packed with controversy. It had begun with an explosion that had rocked the halls of the University of Arcturus when he first graduated as Senior Archaeologist from that institution at the unprecedented age of twenty-three. The explosion—no less effective for being immaterial—consisted of the rejection for publication, on the part of the Journal of the Galactic Archaeological Society, of his Senior Dissertation. It was the first time in the history of the university that a Senior Dissertation had been rejected. It was equally the first time in the history of that staid professional journal that a rejection had been couched in such blunt terms.

  To a non-archaeologist, the reason for such anger against an obscure and dry little pamphlet, entitled On the Antiquity of Artifacts in the Sirius Sector with Considerations of the Application Thereof to the Radiation Hypothesis of Human Origin, might seem mysterious. What was involved, however, was that from the first Arvardan adopted as his own the hypothesis advanced earlier by certain groups of mystics who were more concerned with metaphysics than with archaeology; i.e., that Humanity had originated upon some single planet and had radiated by degrees throughout the Galaxy. This was a favorite theory of the fantasy writers of the day, and the bête noire of every respectable archaeologist of the Empire.

  But Arvardan became a force to be reckoned with by even the most respectable, for within the decade he had become the recognized authority on the relics of the pre-Empire cultures still left in the eddies and quiet backwaters of the Galaxy.

  For instance, he had written a monograph on the mechanistic civilization of the Rigel Sector, where the development of robots created a separate culture that persisted for centuries, till the very perfection of the metal slaves reduced the human initiative to the point where the vigorous fleets of the War Lord, Moray, took easy control. Orthodox archaeology insisted on the evolution of Human types independently on various planets and used such atypical cultures, as that on Rigel, as examples of race differences that had not yet been ironed out through intermarriage. Arvardan destroyed such concepts effectively by showing that Rigellian robot culture was but a natural outgrowth of the economic and social forces of the times and of the region.

  Then there were the barbarous worlds of Ophiuchus, which the orthodox had long upheld as samples of primitive Humanity not yet advanced to the stage of interstellar travel. Every textbook used those worlds as the best evidence of the Merger Theory; i.e., that Humanity was the natural climax of evolution on any world based upon a water-oxygen chemistry with proper intensities of temperature and gravitation; that each independent strain of Humanity could intermarry; that with the discovery of interstellar travel, such intermarriage took place.

  Arvardan, however, uncovered traces of the early civilization that had preceded the then thousand-year-old barbarism of Ophiuchus and proved that the earliest records of the planet showed traces of interstellar trade. The final touch came when he demonstrated beyond any doubt that Man had emigrated to the region in an already civilized state.

  It was after that that the J. Gal. Arch. Soc. (to give the Journal its professional abbreviation) decided to print Arvardan’s Senior Dissertation more than ten years after it had been presented.

  And now the pursuit of his pet theory led Arvardan to probably the least significant planet of the Empire—the planet called Earth.

  Arvardan landed at that one spot of Empire on all Earth, that patch among the desolate heights of the plateaus north of the Himalayas. There where radioactivity was not, and never had been, there gleamed a palace that was not of Terrestrial architecture. In essence it was a copy of the viceregal palaces that existed on more fortunate worlds. The soft lushness of the grounds was built for comfort. The forbidding rocks had been covered with topsoil, watered, immersed in an artificial atmosphere and climate—and converted into five square miles of lawns and flower gardens.

  The cost in energy involved in this performance was terrific by Earthly calculations, but it had behind it the completely incredible resources of tens of millions of planets, continually growing in number. (It has been estimated that in the Year of the Galactic Era 827 an average of fifty new planets each day were achieving the dignity of provincial status, this condition requiring the attainment of a population of five hundred millions.)

  In this spot of non-Earth lived the Procurator of Earth, and sometimes, in this artificial luxury, he could forget that he was a Procurator of a rathole world and remember that he was an aristocrat of great honor and ancient family.

  His wife was perhaps less often deluded, particularly at such times as, topping a grassy knoll, she could see in the distance the sharp, decisive line separating the grounds from the fierce wilderness of Earth. It was then that not all the colored fountains (luminescent at night, with an effect of cold liquid fire), flowered walks, or idyllic groves could compensate for the knowledge of their exile.

  So perhaps Arvardan was welcomed even more than protocol might call for. To the Procurator, after all, Arvardan was a breath of Empire, of spaciousness, of boundlessness.

  And Arvardan for his part found much to admire.

  He said, “This is done well—and with taste. It is amazing how a touch of the central culture permeates the most outlying districts of our Empire, Lord Ennius.”

  Ennius smiled. “I’m afraid the Procurator’s court here on Earth is more pleasant to visit than to live in. It is but a shell that rings hollowly when touched. When you have considered myself and family, the staff, the Imperial garr
ison, both here and in the important planetary centers, together with an occasional visitor such as yourself, you have exhausted all the touch of the central culture that exists. It seems scarcely enough.”

  They sat in the colonnade in the dying afternoon, with the sun glinting downward toward the mist-purpled jags of the horizon and the air so heavy with the scent of growing things that its motions were merely sighs of exertion.

  It was, of course, not quite suitable for even a Procurator to show too great a curiosity about the doings of a guest, but that does not take into account the inhumanity of day-to-day isolation from all the Empire.

  Ennius said, “Do you plan to stay for some time, Dr. Arvardan?”

  “As to that, Lord Ennius, I cannot surely say. I have come ahead of the rest of my expedition in order to acquaint myself with Earth’s culture and to fulfill the necessary legal requirements. For instance, I must obtain the usual official permission from you to establish camps at the necessary sites, and so on.”

  “Oh granted, granted! But when do you start digging? And whatever can you possibly expect to find on this miserable heap of rubble?”

  “I hope, if all goes well, to be able to set up camp in a few months. And as to this world—why, it’s anything but a miserable heap. It is absolutely unique in the Galaxy.”

  “Unique?” said the Procurator stiffly. “Not at all! It is a very ordinary world. It is more or less of a pigpen of a world, or a horrible hole of a world, or a cesspool of a world, or almost any other particularly derogative adjective you care to use. And yet, with all its refinement of nausea, it cannot even achieve uniqueness in villainy, but remains an ordinary, brutish peasant world.”

  “But,” said Arvardan, somewhat taken aback by the energy of the inconsistent statements thus thrown at him, “the world is radioactive.”

  “Well, what of that? Some thousands of planets in the Galaxy are radioactive, and some are considerably more so than Earth.”

  It was at this moment that the soft-gliding motion of the mobile cabinet attracted their attention. It came to a halt within easy hand reach.

  Ennius gestured toward it and said to the other, “What would you prefer?”

  “I’m not particular. A lime twist, perhaps.”

  “That can be handled. The cabinet will have the ingredients. . . . With or without Chensey?”

  “Just about a tang of it,” said Arvardan, and held up his forefinger and thumb, nearly touching.

  “You’ll have it in a minute.”

  Somewhere in the bowels of the cabinet (perhaps the most universally popular mechanical offspring of human ingenuity) a bartender went into action—a non-human bartender whose electronic soul mixed things not by jiggers but by atom counts, whose ratios were perfect every time, and who could not be matched by all the inspired artistry of anyone merely human.

  The tall glasses appeared from nowhere, it seemed, as they waited in the appropriate recesses.

  Arvardan took the green one and, for a moment, felt the chill of it against his cheek. Then he placed the rim to his lips and tasted.

  “Just right,” he said. He placed the glass in the well-fitted holder in the arm of his chair and said, “Thousands of radioactive planets, Procurator, just as you say, but only one of them is inhabited. This one, Procurator.”

  “Well”—Ennius smacked his lips over his own drink and seemed to lose some of his sharpness after contact with its velvet—“perhaps it is unique in that way. It’s an unenviable distinction.”

  “But it is not just a question of statistical uniqueness.” Arvardan spoke deliberately between occasional sips. “It goes further; it has tremendous potentialities. Biologists have shown, or claim to have shown, that on planets in which the intensity of radioactivity in the atmosphere and in the seas is above a certain point life will not develop. . . . Earth’s radioactivity is above that point by a considerable margin.”

  “Interesting. I didn’t know that. I imagine that this would constitute definite proof that Earth life is fundamentally different from that of the rest of the Galaxy. . . . That should suit you, since you’re from Sirius.” He seemed sardonically amused at this point and said in a confidential aside, “Do you know that the biggest single difficulty involved in ruling this planet lies in coping with the intense anti-Terrestrialism that exists throughout the entire Sirius Sector? And the feeling is returned with interest on the part of these Earthmen. I’m not saying, of course, that anti-Terrestrialism doesn’t exist in more or less diluted form in many places in the Galaxy, but not like on Sirius.”

  Arvardan’s response was impatient and vehement. “Lord Ennius, I reject the implication. I have as little intolerance in me as any man living. I believe in the oneness of humanity to my very scientific core, and that includes even Earth. And all life is fundamentally one, in that it is all based upon protein complexes in colloidal dispersion, which we call protoplasm. The effect of radioactivity that I just talked of does not apply simply to some forms of human life, or to some forms of any life. It applies to all life, since it is based upon the quantum mechanics of the protein molecules. It applies to you, to me, to Earthmen, to spiders, and to germs.

  “You see, proteins, as I probably needn’t tell you, are immensely complicated groupings of amino acids and certain other specialized compounds, arranged in intricate three-dimensional patterns that are as unstable as sunbeams on a cloudy day. It is this instability that is life, since it is forever changing its position in an effort to maintain its identity—in the manner of a long rod balanced on an acrobat’s nose.

  “But this marvelous chemical, this protein, must be first built up out of inorganic matter before life can exist. So, at the very beginning, by the influence of the sun’s radiant energy upon those huge solutions we call oceans, organic molecules gradually increase in complexity from methane to formaldehyde and finally to sugars and starches in one direction, and from urea to amino acids and proteins in another direction. It’s a matter of chance, of course, these combinations and disintegrations of atoms, and the process on one world may take millions of years while on another it may take only hundreds. Of course it is much more probable that it will take millions of years. In fact, it is most probable that it will end up never happening.

  “Now physical organic chemists have worked out with great exactness all the reaction chain involved, particularly the energetics thereof; that is, the energy relationships involved in each atom shift. It is now known beyond the shadow of a doubt that several of the crucial steps in the building of life require the absence of radiant energy. If this strikes you as queer, Procurator, I can only say that photochemistry (the chemistry of reactions induced by radiant energy) is a well-developed branch of the science, and there are innumerable cases of very simple reactions which will go in one of two different directions depending upon whether it takes place in the presence or absence of quanta of light energy.

  “In ordinary worlds the sun is the only source of radiant energy, or, at least, by far the major source. In the shelter of clouds, or at night, the carbon and nitrogen compounds combine and recombine, in the fashions made possible by the absence of those little bits of energy hurled into the midst of them by the sun—like bowling balls into the midst of an infinite number of infinitesimal tenpins.

  “But on radioactive worlds, sun or no sun, every drop of water—even in the deepest night, even five miles under—sparkles and bursts with darting gamma rays, kicking up the carbon atoms—activating them, the chemists say—and forcing certain key reactions to proceed only in certain ways, ways that never result in life.”

  Arvardan’s drink was gone. He placed the empty glass on the waiting cabinet. It was withdrawn instantly into the special compartment where it was cleaned, sterilized, and made ready for the next drink.

  “Another one?” asked Ennius.

  “Ask me after dinner,” said Arvardan. “I’ve had quite enough for now.”

  Ennius tapped a tapering fingernail upon the arm of his chair an
d said, “You make the process sound quite fascinating, but if all is as you say, then what about the life on Earth? How did it develop?”

  “Ah, you see, even you are beginning to wonder. But the answer, I think, is simple. Radioactivity, in excess of the minimum required to prevent life, is still not necessarily sufficient to destroy life already formed. It might modify it, but, except in comparatively huge excess, it will not destroy it. . . . You see, the chemistry involved is different. In the first case, simple molecules must be prevented from building up, while in the second, already-formed complex molecules must be broken down. Not at all the same thing.”

  “I don’t get the application of that at all,” said Ennius.

  “Isn’t it obvious? Life on Earth originated before the planet became radioactive. My dear Procurator, it is the only possible explanation that does not involve denying either the fact of life on Earth or enough chemical theory to upset half the science.”

  Ennius gazed at the other in amazed disbelief. “But you can’t mean that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because how can a world become radioactive? The life of the radioactive elements in the planet’s crust are in the millions and billions of years. I’ve learned that, at least, during my university career, even in a pre-law course. They must have existed indefinitely in the past.”

  “But there is such a thing as artificial radioactivity, Lord Ennius—even on a huge scale. There are thousands of nuclear reactions of sufficient energy to create all sorts of radioactive isotopes. Why, if we were to suppose that human beings might use some applied nuclear reaction in industry, without proper controls, or even in war, if you can imagine anything like a war proceeding on a single planet, most of the topsoil could, conceivably, be converted into artificially radioactive materials. What do you say to that?”

  The sun had expired in blood on the mountains, and Ennius’s thin face was ruddy in the reflection of that process. The gentle evening wind stirred, and the drowsy murmur of the carefully selected varieties of insect life upon the palace grounds was more soothing than ever.