Pebble in the Sky Read online

  Then Shekt smiled at Arbin and said, “It will all be over very soon.”

  The large machinery was advanced upon the sleeper like a slow-moving and hungry monster. Four long wires were dangled to the extremities of his limbs, and a dull black pad of something that looked like hard rubber was carefully adjusted at the back of his neck and held firmly in place by clamps that fitted over the shoulders. Finally, like two giant mandibles, the opposing electrodes were parted and brought downward over the pale, pudgy head, so that each pointed at a temple.

  Shekt kept his eyes firmly on the chronometer; in his other hand was the switch. His thumb moved; nothing visible happened—not even to the fear-sharpened sense of the watching Arbin. After what might have been hours, but was actually less than three minutes, Shekt’s thumb moved again.

  His assistant bent over the still-sleeping Schwartz hurriedly, then looked up triumphantly. “He’s alive.”

  There remained yet several hours, during which a library of recordings were taken, to an undertone of almost wild excitement. It was well past midnight when the hypodermic was pressed home and the sleeper’s eyes fluttered.

  Shekt stepped back, bloodless but happy. He dabbed at his forehead with the back of a hand. “It’s all right.”

  He turned to Arbin firmly. “He must stay with us a few days, sir.”

  The look of alarm grew madly in Arbin’s eyes. “But—but—”

  “No, no, you must rely on me,” urgently. “He will be safe; I will stake my life on it. I am staking my life on it. Leave him to us; no one will see him but ourselves. If you take him with you now, he may not survive. What good will that do you? . . . And if he does die, you may have to explain the corpse to the Ancients.”

  It was the last that did the trick. Arbin swallowed and said. “But look, how am I to know when to come and take him? I won’t give you my name!”

  But it was submission. Shekt said, “I’m not asking you for your name. Come a week from today at ten in the evening. I’ll be waiting for you at the door of the garage, the one we took in your biwheel at. You must believe me, man; you have nothing to fear.”

  It was evening when Arbin arrowed out of Chica. Twenty-four hours had passed since the stranger had pounded at his door, and in that time he had doubled his crimes against the Customs. Would he ever be safe again?

  He could not help but glance over his shoulder as his biwheel sped along the empty road. Would there be someone to follow? Someone to trace him home? Or was his face already recorded? Were matchings being leisurely made somewhere in the distant files of the Brotherhood at Washenn, where all living Earthmen, together with their vital statistics, were listed, for purposes of the Sixty?

  The Sixty, which must come to all Earthmen eventually. He had yet a quarter of a century before it came to him, yet he lived daily with it on Grew’s account, and now on the stranger’s account.

  What if he never returned to Chica?

  No! He and Loa could not long continue producing for three, and once they failed, their first crime, that of concealing Grew, would be discovered. And so crimes against the Customs, once begun, must be compounded.

  Arbin knew that he would be back, despite any risk.

  It was past midnight before Shekt thought of retiring, and then only because the troubled Pola insisted. Even then he did not sleep. His pillow was a subtle smothering device, his sheets a pair of maddening snarls. He arose and took his seat by the window. The city was dark now, but there on the horizon, on the side opposite the lake, was the faint trace of that blue glow of death that held sway over all but a few patches of Earth.

  The activities of the hectic day just past danced madly before his mind. His first action after having persuaded the frightened farmer to leave had been to televise the State House. Ennius must have been waiting for him, for he himself had answered. He was still encased in the heaviness of the lead-impregnated clothing.

  “Ah, Shekt, good evening. Your experiment is over?”

  “And nearly my volunteer as well, poor man.”

  Ennius looked ill. “I thought well when I thought it better not to stay. You scientists are scarcely removed from murderers, it seems to me.”

  “He is not yet dead, Procurator, and it may be that we will save him, but—” And he shrugged his shoulders.

  “I’d stick to rats exclusively henceforward, Shekt. . . . But you don’t look at all your usual self, friend. Surely you, at least, must be hardened to this, even if I am not.”

  “I am getting old, my Lord,” said Shekt simply.

  “A dangerous pastime on Earth,” was the dry reply. “Get you to bed, Shekt.”

  And so Shekt sat there, looking out at the dark city of a dying world.

  For two years now the Synapsifier had been under test, and for two years he had been the slave and sport of the Society of Ancients, or the Brotherhood, as they called themselves.

  He had seven or eight papers that might have been published in the Sirian Journal of Neurophysiology, that might have given that Galaxy-wide fame to him that he so wanted. These papers moldered in his desk. Instead there was that obscure and deliberately misleading paper in Physical Reviews. That was the way of the Brotherhood. Better a half-truth than a lie.

  And still Ennius was inquiring. Why?

  Did it fit in with other things he had learned? Was the Empire suspecting what he himself suspected?

  Three times in two hundred years Earth had risen. Three times, under the banner of a claimed ancient greatness, Earth had rebelled against the Imperial garrisons. Three times they had failed—of course—and had not the Empire been, essentially, enlightened, and the Galactic Councils, by and large, statesmanlike, Earth would have been bloodily erased from the roll of inhabited planets.

  But now things might be different. . . . Or could they be different? How far could he trust the words of a dying madman, three quarters incoherent?

  What was the use? In any case, he dared do nothing. He could only wait. He was getting old, and, as Ennius had said, that was a dangerous pastime on Earth. The Sixty was almost upon him, and there were few exceptions to its inevitable grasp.

  And even on this miserable, burning mud ball of Earth, he wanted to live.

  He went to bed once more at that point, and just before falling asleep he wondered feebly if his call to Ennius might have been tapped by the Ancients. He did not know at the time that the Ancients had other sources of information.

  It was morning before Shekt’s young technician had completely made up his mind.

  He admired Shekt, but he knew well that the secret treatment of a non-authorized volunteer was against the direct order of the Brotherhood. And that order had been given the status of a Custom, which made disobedience a capital offense.

  He reasoned it out. After all, who was this man who had been treated? The campaign for volunteers had been carefully worked out. It was designed to give enough information about the Synapsifier to remove suspicion on the part of possible Imperial spies without giving any real encouragement to volunteers. The Society of Ancients sent their own men for treatment, and that was enough.

  Who had sent this man, then? The Society of Ancients in secret? In order to test Shekt’s reliability?

  Or was Shekt a traitor? He had been closeted with someone earlier in the day—someone in bulky clothes, such as Outsiders wore in fear of radioactive poisoning.

  In either case Shekt might go down in doom, and why should he himself be dragged down as well? He was a young man with nearly four decades of life before him. Why should he anticipate the Sixty?

  Besides, it would mean promotion for him. . . . And Shekt was so old, the next Census would probably get him anyway, so it would involve very little harm for him. Practically none at all.

  The technician had decided. His hand reached for the communicator, and he punched the combination that would lead directly to the private room of the High Minister of all Earth, who, under the Emperor and Procurator, held the power of life and death
over every man on Earth.

  It was evening again before the misty impressions within Schwartz’s skull sharpened through the pink pain. He remembered the trip to the low, huddling structures by the lakeside, the long crouching wait in the rear of the car.

  And then—what? What? His mind yanked away at the sluggish thoughts. . . . Yes, they had come for him. There was a room, with instruments and dials, and two pills. . . . That was it. They had given him pills, and he had taken them cheerfully. What had he to lose? Poisoning would have been a favor.

  And then—nothing.

  Wait! There had been flashes of consciousness . . . People bending over him . . . Suddenly he remembered the cold motion of a stethoscope over his chest. . . . A girl had been feeding him.

  It flashed upon him that he had been operated upon and, in panic, he flung the bed sheets from him and sat up.

  A girl was upon him, hands on his shoulders, forcing him back onto the pillows. She spoke soothingly, but he did not understand her. He tensed himself against the slim arms, but uselessly. He had no strength.

  He held his hands before his face. They seemed normal. He moved his legs and heard them brush against the sheets. They couldn’t have been amputated.

  He turned to the girl and said, without much hope, “Can you understand me? Do you know where I am?” He scarcely recognized his own voice.

  The girl smiled and suddenly poured out a rapid patter of liquid sound. Schwartz groaned. Then an older man entered, the one who had given him the pills. The man and the girl spoke together, the girl turning to him after a while, pointing to his lips and making little gestures of invitation to him.

  “What?” he said.

  She nodded eagerly, her pretty face glowing with pleasure, until, despite himself, Schwartz felt glad to look at it.

  “You want me to talk?” he asked.

  The man sat down upon his bed and motioned him to open his mouth. He said, “Ah-h-h,” and Schwartz repeated “Ah-h-h” while the man’s fingers massaged Schwartz’s Adam’s apple.

  “What’s the matter?” said Schwartz peevishly, when the pressure was removed. “Are you surprised I can talk? What do you think I am?”

  The days passed, and Schwartz learned a few things. The man was Dr. Shekt—the first human being he knew by name since he had stepped over the rag doll. The girl was his daughter, Pola. Schwartz found that he no longer needed to shave. The hair on his face never grew. It frightened him. Did it ever grow?

  His strength came back quickly. They were letting him put on clothes and walk about now, and were feeding him something more than mush.

  Was his trouble amnesia, then? Were they treating him for that? Was all this world normal and natural, while the world he thought he remembered was only the fantasy of an amnesic brain?

  And they never let him step out of the room, not even into the corridor. Was he a prisoner, then? Had he committed a crime?

  There never can be a man so lost as one who is lost in the vast and intricate corridors of his own lonely mind, where none may reach and none may save. There never was a man so helpless as one who cannot remember.

  Pola amused herself by teaching him words. He was not at all amazed at the ease with which he picked them up and remembered. He remembered that he had had a trick memory in the past; that memory, at least, seemed accurate. In two days he could understand simple sentences. In three he could make himself understood.

  On the third day, however, he did become amazed. Shekt taught him numbers and set him problems. Schwartz would give answers, and Shekt would look at a timing device and record with rapid strokes of his stylus. But then Shekt explained the term “logarithm” to him and asked for the logarithm of two.

  Schwartz picked his words carefully. His vocabulary was still minute and he reinforced it with gestures. “I—not—say. Answer—not—number.”

  Shekt nodded his head excitedly and said, “Not number. Not this, not that; part this, part that.”

  Schwartz understood quite well that Shekt had confirmed his statement that the answer was not an even number but a fraction and therefore said, “Point three zero one zero three—and—more—numbers.”

  “Enough!”

  Then came the amazement. How had he known the answer to that? Schwartz was certain that he had never heard of logarithms before, yet in his mind the answer had come as soon as the question was put. He had no idea of the process by which it had been calculated. It was as if his mind were an independent entity, using him only as its mouthpiece.

  Or had he once been a mathematician, in the days before his amnesia?

  He found it exceedingly difficult to wait the days out. Increasingly he felt he must venture out into the world and force an answer from it somehow. He could never learn in the prison of this room, where (the thought suddenly came to him) he was but a medical specimen.

  The chance came on the sixth day. They were beginning to trust him too much, and one time when Shekt left he did not lock the door. Where usually the door so neatly closed itself that the very crack of its joining the wall became invisible, this time a quarter inch of space showed.

  He waited to make sure Shekt was not returning on the instant, and then slowly put his hand over the little gleaming light as he had seen them often do. Smoothly and silently the door slid open. . . . The corridor was empty.

  And so Schwartz “escaped.”

  How was he to know that for the six days of his residence there the Society of Ancients had its agents watching the hospital, his room, himself?

  6

  Apprehension in the Night

  The Procurator’s palace was scarcely less a fairyland at night. The evening flowers (none native to Earth) opened their fat white blossoms in festoons that extended their delicate fragrance to the very walls of the palace. Under the polarized light of the moon, the artificial silicate strands woven cleverly into the stainless aluminum alloy of the palace structure sparked a faint violet against the metallic sheen of their surroundings.

  Ennius looked at the stars. They were the real beauty to him, since they were the Empire.

  Earth’s sky was of an intermediate type. It had not the unbearable glory of the skies of the Central Worlds, where star elbowed star in such blinding competition that the black of night was nearly lost in a coruscant explosion of light. Nor did it possess the lonely grandeur of the skies of the Periphery, where the unrelieved blackness was broken at great intervals by the dimness of an orphaned star—with the milky lens shape of the Galaxy spreading across the sky, the individual stars thereof lost in diamond dust.

  On Earth two thousand stars were visible at one time. Ennius could see Sirius, round which circled one of the ten most populous planets of the Empire. There was Arcturus, capital of the sector of his birth. The sun of Trantor, the Empire’s capital world, was lost somewhere in the Milky Way. Even under a telescope it was just part of a general blaze.

  He felt a soft hand on his shoulder, and his own went up to meet it.

  “Flora?” he whispered.

  “It had better be,” came his wife’s half-amused voice. “Do you know that you haven’t slept since you returned from Chica? Do you know further that it is almost dawn? . . . Shall I have breakfast sent out here?”

  “Why not?” He smiled fondly up at her and felt in the darkness for the brown ringlet that hovered next her cheek. He tugged at it. “And must you wait up with me and shadow the most beautiful eyes in the Galaxy?”

  She freed her hair and replied gently, “You are trying to shadow them yourself with your sugar syrup, but I’ve seen you this way before and am not in the tiniest hoodwinked. What worries you tonight, dear?”

  “Why, that which always worries me. That I have buried you here uselessly, when there’s not a viceregal society in the Galaxy you could not grace.”

  “Besides that! Come, Ennius, I will not be played with.”

  Ennius shook his head in the shadows and said, “I don’t know. I think an accumulation of little puzzling thin
gs has finally sickened me. There’s the matter of Shekt and his Synapsifier. And there’s this archaeologist, Arvardan, and his theories. And other things, other things. Oh, what’s the use, Flora—I’m doing no good here at all.”

  “Surely this time of the morning isn’t quite the moment for putting your morale to the test.”

  But Ennius was speaking through clenched teeth. “These Earthmen! Why should so few be such a burden to the Empire? Do you remember, Flora, when I was first appointed to the Procuracy, the warnings I received from old Faroul, the last Procurator, as to the difficulties of the position? . . . He was right. If anything, he did not go far enough in his warnings. Yet I laughed at him at the time and privately thought him the victim of his own senile incapacity. I was young, active, daring. I would do better . . .” He paused, lost in himself, then continued, apparently at a disconnected point. “Yet so many independent pieces of evidence seem to show that these Earthmen are once again being misled into dreams of rebellion.”

  He looked up at his wife. “Do you know that it is the doctrine of the Society of Ancients that Earth was at one time the sole home of Humanity, that it is the appointed center of the race, the true representation of Man?”

  “Why, so Arvardan told us two evenings ago, didn’t he?” It was always best at these times to let him talk himself out.

  “Yes, so he did,” said Ennius gloomily, “but even so, he spoke only of the past. The Society of Ancients speaks of the future as well. Earth, once more, they say, will be the center of the race. They even claim that this mythical Second Kingdom of Earth is at hand; they warn that the Empire will be destroyed in a general catastrophe which will leave Earth triumphant in all its pristine glory”—and his voice shook—“as a backward, barbarous, soil-sick world. Three times before, this same nonsense has raised rebellion, and the destruction brought down upon Earth has never served in the least to shake their stupid faith.”