Asimov’s Future History Volume 13

by Isaac Asimov

  “But it would have to be someone with a psycho-probe,” protested Samia. “Surely you wouldn’t expect natives to be able to use them.”

  “Perhaps not. But then you wouldn’t expect an authorized medical man to use one so inexpertly. The fact that we arrive at a contradiction proves the story to be a lie throughout. If you will accept my suggestion, my Lady, you will leave these creatures to our handling. You see that it’s useless to expect anything out of them.”

  Samia hesitated. “Perhaps you’re right.”

  She rose and looked uncertainly at Rik. The Captain stepped behind her, lifted the little chair and folded it with a snap.

  Rik jumped to his feet. “Wait!”

  “If you please, my Lady,” said the Captain, holding the door open for her. “My men will quiet him.”

  Samia stopped at the threshold. “They won’t hurt him?”

  “I doubt if he’ll make us go to extremes. He will be easy handling.”

  “Lady! Lady!” Rik called. “I can prove it. I’m from Earth.”

  Samia stood irresolute for a moment. “Let’s hear what he has to say.”

  The Captain said coldly, “As you wish, my Lady.”

  She returned, but not very far. She remained a step from the door.

  Rik was flushed. With the effort of remembering, his lips drew back into the caricature of a smile. He said, “I remember Earth. It was radioactive. I remember the Forbidden Areas and the blue horizon at night. The soil glowed and nothing would grow in it. There were just a few spots men could live on. That’s why I was a Spatio-analyst. That’s why I didn’t mind staying in space. My world was a dead world.”

  Samia shrugged. “Come along, Captain. He’s simply raving.”

  But this time it was Captain Racety who stood there, open-mouthed. He muttered, “A radioactive world!”

  She said, “You mean there is such a thing?”

  “Yes.” He turned wondering eyes on her. “Now where could he have picked that up?”

  “How could a world be radioactive and inhabited?”

  “But there is one. And it is in the Sirius Sector. I don’t remember its name. It might even be Earth.”

  “It is Earth,” said Rik, proudly and with confidence. “It is the oldest planet of the Galaxy. It is the planet on which the whole human race originated.”

  The Captain said softly, “That’s so!”

  Samia said, mind whirling, “You mean the human race originated on this Earth?”

  “No, no,” said the Captain abstractedly. “That’s superstition. It’s just that that’s how I came to hear about the radioactive planet. It claims to be Man’s home planet.”

  “I didn’t know we were supposed to have a home planet.”

  “I suppose we started somewhere, my Lady, but I doubt that anyone can possibly know on what planet it happened.”

  With sudden decision he walked toward Rik. “What else do you remember?”

  He almost added “boy,” but held it back.

  “The ship mostly,” said Rik, “and Spatio-analysis.”

  Samia joined the Captain. They stood there, directly before Rik, and Samia felt the excitement returning. “Then it’s all true? But then how did he come to be psycho-probed?”

  “Psycho-probed!” said Captain Racety thoughtfully. “Suppose we ask him. Here, you, native or outworlder or whatever you are. How did you come to be psycho-probed?”

  Rik looked doubtful. “You all say that. Even Lona. But I don’t know what the word means.”

  “When did you stop remembering, then?”

  “I’m not sure.” He began again, desperately. “I was on a ship.”

  “We know that. Go on.”

  Samia said, “It’s no use barking, Captain. You’ll drive out what few wits are left him.”

  Rik was entirely absorbed in wrenching at the dimness within his mind. The effort left no room for any emotion. It was to his own astonishment that he said, “I’m not afraid of him, Lady. I’m trying to remember. There was danger. I’m sure of that. Great danger to Florina, but I can’t remember the details about it.”

  “Danger to the whole planet?” Samia cast a swift glance at the Captain.

  “Yes. It was in the currents.”

  “What currents?” asked the Captain.

  “The currents of space.”

  The Captain spread his hands and let them drop. “This is madness.”

  “No, no. Let him go on.” The tide of belief had shifted to Samia again. Her lips were parted, her dark eyes gleamed and little dimples between cheek and chin made their appearance as she smiled. “What are the currents of space?”

  “The different elements,” said Rik vaguely. He had explained that before. He didn’t want to go through that again.

  He went on rapidly, nearly incoherently, speaking as the thoughts came to him, driven by them. “I sent a message to the local office on Sark. I remember that very clearly. I had to be careful. It was a danger that went beyond Florina. Yes. Beyond Florina. It was as wide as the Milky Way. It had to be handled carefully.”

  He seemed to have lost all real contact with those who listened to him, to be living in a world of the past before which a curtain was tearing away in places. Valona placed a soothing hand upon his shoulder and said, “Don’t!” but he was unresponsive even to that.

  “Somehow,” he went on breathlessly, “my message was intercepted by some official on Sark. It was a mistake. I don’t know how it happened.”

  He frowned. “I’m sure I sent it to the local office on the Bureau’s own wave length. Do you suppose the sub-ether could have been tapped?” He did not even wonder that the word “sub-ether” came so easily to him.

  He might have been waiting for an answer, but his eyes were still unseeing. “Anyway, when I landed on Sark they were waiting for me.”

  Again a pause, this time long and meditative. The Captain did nothing to break it; he seemed to be meditating himself.

  Samia, however, said, “Who was waiting for you? Who?”

  Rik said, “I — I don’t know. I can’t remember. It wasn’t the office. It was someone of Sark. I remember speaking to him. He knew about the danger. He spoke of it. I’m sure he spoke of it. We sat at a table together. I remember the table. He sat opposite me. It’s as clear as space. We spoke for quite a while. It seems to me I wasn’t anxious to give details. I’m sure of that. I would have had to speak to the office first. And then he …”

  “Yes?” prompted Samia.

  “He did something. He — No, nothing more will come. Nothing will come!”

  He screamed the words and then there was silence, a silence that was anticlimactically broken by the prosaic buzz of the Captain’s wrist communo.

  He said, “What is it?”

  The answering voice was reedy and precisely respectful. “A message to the Captain from Sark. It is requested that he accept it personally.”

  “Very well. I will be at the sub-etherics presently.”

  He turned to Samia. “My Lady, may I suggest that it is, in any case, dinnertime.”

  He saw that the girl was about to protest her lack of appetite, to urge him to leave and not to bother about her. He continued, more diplomatically, “It is also time to feed these creatures. They are probably tired and hungry.”

  Samia could say nothing against that. “I must see them again, Captain.”

  The Captain bowed silently. It might have been acquiescence. It might not.

  Samia of Fife was thrilled. Her studies of Florina satisfied a certain aspiration to intellect within her, but the Mysterious Case of the Psycho-probed Earthman (she thought of the matter in capitals) appealed to something much more primitive and much more demanding. It roused the sheer animal curiosity in her.

  It was a mystery!

  There were three points that fascinated her. Among these was not the perhaps reasonable question (under the circumstances) of whether the man’s story was a delusion or a deliberate lie, rather than the trut
h. To believe it anything other than truth would spoil the mystery and Samia could not allow that.

  The three points were therefore these. (1) What was the danger that threatened Florina, or, rather, the entire Galaxy? (2) Who was the person who had psycho-probed the Earthman? (3) Why had the person used the psycho-probe?

  She was determined to sift the matter to her own thorough satisfaction. No one is so modest as not to believe himself a competent amateur sleuth, and Samia was far from modest.

  As soon after dinner as she could politely manage, she hurried down to the brig.

  She said to the guard, “Open the door!”

  The sailor remained perfectly erect, staring blankly and respectfully ahead. He said, “If Your Ladyship pleases, the door is not to be opened.”

  Samia gasped. “How dare you say so? If you do not open the door instantly, the Captain shall be informed.”

  “If Your Ladyship pleases, the door is not to be opened. That is by the strict order of the Captain.”

  She stormed up the levels once more, bursting into the Captain’s stateroom like a tornado compressed into sixty inches.

  “Captain!”

  “My Lady?”

  “Have you ordered the Earthman and the native woman to be kept from me?”

  “I believe, my Lady, it was agreed that you were to interview them only in my presence.”

  “Before dinner, yes. But you saw they were harmless?”

  “I saw that they seemed harmless.”

  Samia simmered. “In that case I order you to come with me now.”

  “I cannot, my Lady. The situation has changed.”

  “In what way?”

  “They must be questioned by the proper authorities on Sark and until then I think they should be left alone.”

  Samia’s lower jaw dropped, but she rescued it from its undignified position almost immediately. “Surely you are not going to deliver them to the Bureau of Florinian Affairs.”

  “Well,” temporized the Captain, “that was certainly the original intention. They have left their village without permission. In fact they have left their planet without permission. In addition, they have taken secret passage on a Sarkite vessel.”

  “The last was a mistake.”

  “Was it?”

  “In any case, you knew all their crimes before our last interview.”

  “But it was only at the interview that I heard what the so-called Earthman had to say.”

  “So-called. You said yourself that the planet Earth existed.”

  “I said it might exist. But, my Lady, may I be so bold as to ask what you would like to see done with these people?”

  “I think the Earthman’s story should be investigated. He speaks of a danger to Florina and of someone on Sark who has deliberately attempted to keep knowledge of that danger from the proper authorities. I think it is even a case for my father. In fact I would take him to my father, when the proper time came.”

  The Captain said, “The cleverness of it all!”

  “Are you being sarcastic, Captain?”

  The Captain flushed. “Your pardon, my Lady. I was referring to our prisoners. May I be allowed to speak at some length?”

  “I don’t know what you mean by ‘some length,” she retorted angrily, “but I suppose you may begin.”

  “Thank you. In the first place, my Lady, I hope you will not minimize the importance of the disturbances on Florina.”

  “What disturbances?”

  “You cannot have forgotten the incident in the library.”

  “A patroller killed! Really, Captain!”

  “And a second patroller killed this morning, my Lady, and a native as well. It is not very usual for natives to kill patrollers and here is one who has done it twice, and yet remains uncaught. Is he a lone hand? Is it an accident? Or is it all part of a carefully laid scheme?”

  “Apparently you believe the last.”

  “Yes, I do. The murdering native had two accomplices. Their description is rather like that of our two stowaways.”

  “You never said so!”

  “I did not wish to alarm Your Ladyship. You’ll remember, however, that I told you repeatedly that they could be dangerous.”

  “Very well. What follows from all this?”

  “What if the murders on Florina were simply side shows intended to distract the attention of the patroller squadrons while these two sneaked aboard our ship?”

  “That sounds so silly.”

  “Does it? Why are they running away from Florina? We haven’t asked them. Let us suppose they are running away from the patrollers since that is certainly the most reasonable assumption. Would they be running to Sark of all places? And on a ship that carries Your Ladyship? And then he claims to be a Spatio-analyst.”

  Samia frowned. “What of that?”

  “A year ago a Spatio-analyst was reported missing. The story was never given wide publicity. I knew, of course, because my ship was one of those that searched near space for signs of his ship. Whoever is backing these Florinian disorders has undoubtedly seized on that fact, and just knowing that the matter of the missing Spatio-analyst is known to them shows what a tight and unexpectedly efficient organization they have.”

  “It might be that the Earthman and the missing Spatio-analyst have no connection.”

  “No real connection, my Lady, undoubtedly. But to expect no connection at all is to expect too much of coincidence. It is an impostor we are dealing with. That is why he claims to have been psycho-probed.”

  “Oh?”

  “How can we prove he isn’t a Spatio-analyst? He knows no details of the planet Earth beyond the bare fact that it is radioactive. He cannot pilot a ship. He knows nothing of Spatioanalysis. And he covers up by insisting he was psycho-probed. Do you see, my Lady?”

  Samia could make no direct answer. “But to what purpose?” she demanded.

  “So that you might do exactly what you said you intended to do, my Lady.”

  “Investigate the mystery?”

  “No, my Lady. Take the man to your father.”

  “I still see no point.”

  “There are several possibilities. At the best, he could be a spy upon your father, either for Florina or possibly for Trantor. I imagine old Abel of Trantor would certainly come forward to identify him as an Earthman, if for no other reason than to embarrass Sark by demanding the truth concerning this fictitious psycho-probing. At the worst, he will be your father’s assassin.”

  “Captain!”

  “My Lady?”

  “This is ridiculous!”

  “Perhaps, my Lady. But if so, the Department of Security is also ridiculous. You will recall that just before dinner I was called away to receive a message from Sark.”

  “Yes.”

  “This is it.”

  Samia received the thin translucent foil with its red lettering. It said: “Two Florinians are reported to have taken secret, illegal passage on your ship. Secure them immediately. One of them may claim to be a Spatio-analyst and not a Florinian native. You are to take no action in this matter. You will be held strictly responsible for the safety of these people. They are to be held for delivery to Depsec. Extreme secrecy. Extreme urgency.”

  Samia felt stunned. “Depsec,” she said. “The Department of Security.”

  “Extreme secrecy,” said the Captain. “I stretch a point to tell you this, but you have left me no choice, my Lady.”

  She said, “What will they do to him?”

  “I cannot say for certain,” said the Captain. “Certainly a suspected spy and assassin cannot expect gentle treatment. Probably his pretense will become partly a reality and he will learn what a psycho-probe is really like.”

  Twelve: The Detective

  THE FOUR GREAT Squires regarded the Squire of Fife each in his own way. Bort was angry, Rune was amused, Balle was annoyed, and Steen was frightened.

  Rune spoke first. He said, “High treason? Are you trying to frighten us with a phrase
? What does it mean? Treason against you? Against Bort? Against myself? By whom and how? And for S ark’s sake, Fife, these conferences interfere with my normal sleeping hours.”

  “The results,” said Fife, “may interfere with many sets of sleeping hours. I don’t refer to treason against any of us, Rune. I mean treason against Sark.”

  Bort said, “Sark? What’s that, anyway, if not us?”

  “Call it a myth. Call it something ordinary Sarkites believe in.”

  “I don’t understand,” moaned Steen. “You men always seem so interested in talking each other down. Really! I wish you’d get all this over with.”

  Balle said, “I agree with Steen.” Steen looked gratified.

  Fife said, “I’m perfectly willing to explain immediately. You have heard, I suppose, of the recent disturbances on Florina.”

  Rune said, “The Depsec dispatches speak of several patrollers killed. Is that what you mean?”

  Bort broke in angrily. “By Sark, if we must have a conference, let’s talk about that. Patrollers killed! They deserve to be killed! Do you mean to say a native can simply come up to a patroller and bash his head in with a two-by-four? Why should any patroller let any native with a two-by-four in his hand come close enough to use it? Why wasn’t the native burned down at twenty paces?

  “By Sark, I’d rattle the Patrol Corps from captain to recruit and send every dunderhead out on ship duty. The entire Corps is just an accumulation of fat. It’s too easy a life for them down there. I say that every five years we should put Florina under martial law and scrape out the troublemakers. It would keep the natives quiet and our own men on their toes.”

  “Are you through?” asked Fife.

  “For now, yes. But I’ll take it up again. It’s my investment down there, too, you know. It may not be as big as yours, Fife, but it’s big enough for me to worry about.”

  Fife shrugged. He turned suddenly to Steen. “And have you heard of the disturbances?”