Pebble in the Sky

by Isaac Asimov

  “And again we have a queer coincidence. Schwartz escapes and makes his way to Chica. The very next day Arvardan appears here and, after a lukewarm rigmarole about his expedition, mentions casually that he is going to Chica to see Shekt.”

  “But why mention it, Balkis? It seems foolhardy.”

  “Because you are straightforward. Put yourself in his position. He imagines we suspect nothing. In such a case it is audacity that wins. He’s going to see Shekt. Good! He mentions it frankly. He even asks for a letter of introduction. What better guarantee of honest and innocent intentions can he present? And that brings up another point. Schwartz may have discovered that he was being watched. He may have killed Natter. But he has had no time to warn the others, or this comedy could not have played itself out in just this fashion.”

  The Secretary’s eyes were half lidded as he spun his spider web. “There is no way of telling how long it will be before Schwartz’s absence becomes suspicious for them, but it is at least safe to allow sufficient time for Arvardan to meet Shekt. We’ll catch them together; there will be that much less they can deny.”

  “How much time do we have?” demanded the High Minister.

  Balkis looked up thoughtfully. “The schedule is fluid, and ever since we uncovered Shekt’s treason they’ve been on triple shift—and things are proceeding well. We await only the mathematical computations for the necessary orbits. What holds us up there is the inadequacy of our computers. Well . . . it may be only a matter of days now.”

  “Days!” It was said in a tone queerly compounded of triumph and horror.

  “Days!” repeated the Secretary. “But remember—one bomb even two seconds before zero time will be enough to stop us. And even afterward there will be a period of from one to six months when reprisals can be taken. So we are not yet entirely safe.”

  Days! And then the most incredibly one-sided battle in the history of the Galaxy would be joined and Earth would attack all the Galaxy.

  The High Minister’s hands were trembling gently.

  Arvardan was seated in a stratoplane again. His thoughts were savage ones. There seemed no reason to believe that the High Minister and his psychopathic subject population would allow an official invasion of the radioactive areas. He was prepared for that. Somehow he wasn’t even sorry about it. He could have put up a better fight—if he had cared more.

  As it was, by the Galaxy, there would be illegal entry. He would arm his ship and fight it out, if necessary. He would rather.

  The bloody fools!

  Who the devil did they think they were?

  Yes, yes, he knew. They thought they were the original humans, the inhabitants of the planet—

  The worst of it was he knew that they were right.

  Well . . . The ship was taking off. He felt himself sinking back into the soft cushion of his seat and knew that within the hour he’d be seeing Chica.

  Not that he was eager to see Chica, he told himself, but the Synapsifier thing could be important, and there was no use being on Earth if he didn’t take advantage of it. He certainly never intended to return once he left.

  Rathole!

  Ennius was right.

  This Dr. Shekt, however . . . He fingered his letter of introduction, heavy with official formality—

  And then he sat bolt upright—or tried to, struggling bitterly against the forces of inertia that were compressing him down into his seat as the Earth still sank away and the blue of the sky was deepened into a rich purple.

  He remembered the girl’s name. It was Pola Shekt.

  Now why had he forgotten? He felt angry and cheated. His mind was plotting against him, holding back the last name till it was too late.

  But, deep underneath, something was rather glad of it.

  14

  Second Meeting

  In the two months that had elapsed from the day that Dr. Shekt’s Synapsifier had been used on Joseph Schwartz, the physicist had changed completely. Physically not so much, though perhaps he was a thought more stooped, a shade thinner. It was his manner—abstracted, fearful. He lived in an inner communion, withdrawn from even his closest colleagues, and from which he emerged with a reluctance that was plain to the blindest.

  Only to Pola could he unburden himself, perhaps because she, too, had been strangely withdrawn those two months.

  “They’re watching me,” he would say. “I feel it somehow. Do you know what the feeling is like? . . . There’s been a turnover in the Institute in the last month or so, and it’s the ones I like and feel I can trust that go. . . . I never get a minute to myself. Always someone about. They won’t even let me write reports.”

  And Pola would alternately sympathize with him and laugh at him, saying over and over again, “But what can they possibly have against you to do all this? Even if you did experiment on Schwartz, that’s not such a terrible crime. They’d have just called you on the carpet for it.”

  But his face was yellow and thin as he muttered, “They won’t let me live. My Sixty is coming and they won’t let me live.”

  “After all you’ve done. Nonsense!”

  “I know too much, Pola, and they don’t trust me.”

  “Know too much about what?”

  He was tired that night, aching to remove the load. He told her. At first she wouldn’t believe him, and finally, when she did, she could only sit there, in cold horror.

  Pola called up the State House the next day from a public Communi-wave at the other end of town. She spoke through a handkerchief and asked for Dr. Bel Arvardan.

  He wasn’t there. They thought he might be in Bonair, six thousand miles away, but he hadn’t been following his scheduled itinerary very closely. Yes, they did expect him back in Chica eventually, but they didn’t know exactly when. Would she leave her name? They would try to find out.

  She broke connections at that and leaned her soft cheek against the glass enclosure, grateful for the coolness thereof. Her eyes were deep with unshed tears and liquid with disappointment.

  Fool. Fool!

  He had helped her and she had sent him away in bitterness. He had risked the neuronic whip and worse to save the dignity of a little Earthgirl against an Outsider and she had turned on him anyway.

  The hundred credits she had sent to the State House the morning after that incident had been returned without comment. She had wanted then to reach him and apologize, but she had been afraid. The State House was for Outsiders only, and how could she invade it? She had never even seen it, except from a distance.

  And now—She’d have gone to the palace of the Procurator himself to—to—

  Only he could help them now. He, an Outsider who could talk with Earthmen on a basis of equality. She had never guessed him to be an Outsider until he had told her. He was so tall and self-confident. He would know what to do.

  And someone had to know, or it would mean the ruin of all the Galaxy.

  Of course, so many Outsiders deserved it—but did all of them? The women and children and sick and old? The kind and the good? The Arvardans? The ones who had never heard of Earth? And they were humans, after all. Such a horrible revenge would for all time drown whatever justice might be—no, was—in Earth’s cause in an endless sea of blood and rotting flesh.

  And then, out of nowhere, came the call from Arvardan. Dr. Shekt shook his head. “I can’t tell him.”

  “You must,” said Pola savagely.

  “Here? It is impossible—it would mean ruin for both.”

  “Then turn him away. I’ll take care of it.”

  Her heart was singing wildly. It was only because of this chance to save so many countless myriads of humans, of course. She remembered his wide, white smile. She remembered how he had calmly forced a colonel of the Emperor’s own forces to turn and bow his head to her in apology—to her, an Earthgirl, who could stand there and forgive him.

  Bel Arvardan could do anything!

  Arvardan could, of course, know nothing of all this. He merely took Shekt’s at
titude for what it seemed—an abrupt and odd rudeness, of a piece with everything else he had experienced on Earth.

  He felt annoyed, there in the anteroom of the carefully lifeless office, quite obviously an unwelcome intruder.

  He picked his words. “I would never have dreamed of imposing upon you to the extent of visiting you, Doctor, were it not that I was professionally interested in your Synapsifier. I have been informed that, unlike many Earthmen, you are not unfriendly to men of the Galaxy.”

  It was apparently an unfortunate phrase, for Dr. Shekt jumped at it. “Now, whoever your informant is, he does wrong to impute any especial friendliness to strangers as such. I have no likes and dislikes. I am an Earthman—”

  Arvardan’s lips compressed and he half turned.

  “You understand, Dr. Arvardan”—the words were hurried and whispered—“I am sorry if I seem rude, but I really cannot—”

  “I quite understand,” the archaeologist said coldly, though he did not understand at all. “Good day, sir.”

  Dr. Shekt smiled feebly. “The pressure of my work—”

  “I am very busy too, Dr. Shekt.”

  He turned to the door, raging inwardly at all the tribe of Earthmen, feeling within him, involuntarily, some of the catchwords that were bandied so freely on his home world. The proverbs, for instance: “Politeness on Earth is like dryness in the ocean” or “An Earthman will give you anything as long as it costs nothing and is worth less.”

  His arm had already broken the photoelectric beam that opened the front door when he heard the flurry of quick steps behind him and a hist of warning in his ear. A piece of paper was thrust in his hand, and when he turned, there was only a flash of red as a figure disappeared.

  He was in his rented ground car before he unraveled the paper in his hand. Words were scrawled upon it:

  “Ask your way to the Great Playhouse at eight this evening. Make sure you are not followed.”

  He frowned ferociously at it and read it over five times, then stared all over it, as though expecting invisible ink to bound into visibility. Involuntarily, he looked behind him. The street was empty. He half raised his hand to throw the silly scrap out of the window, hesitated, then stuffed it into his vest pocket.

  Undoubtedly, if he had had one single thing to do that evening other than what the scrawl had suggested, that would have been the end of it, and, perhaps, of several trillions of people. But, as it turned out, he had nothing to do.

  And, as it turned out, he wondered if the sender of the note had been—

  At eight o’clock he was making his slow way as part of a long line of ground cars along the serpentine way that apparently led to the Great Playhouse. He had asked only once, and the passerby questioned had stared suspiciously at him (apparently no Earthman was ever free of that all-pervasive suspicion) and had said curtly, “You just follow all the rest of the cars.”

  It seemed that all the rest of the cars were indeed going to the Playhouse, for when he got there he found all being swallowed, one by one, into the gaping maw of the underground parking lot. He swung out of line and crawled past the Playhouse, waiting for he knew not what.

  A slim figure dashed down from the pedestrian ramp and hung outside his window. He stared at it, startled, but it had the door open and was inside in a single gesture.

  “Pardon me,” he said, “but—”

  “Ssh!” The figure was hunched down low in the seat. “Were you followed?”

  “Should I have been?”

  “Don’t be funny. Go straight ahead. Turn when I tell you. . . . My goodness, what are you waiting for?”

  He knew the voice. A hood had shifted down to the shoulders, and light brown hair was showing. Dark eyes were gazing at him.

  “You’d better move on,” she said softly.

  He did, and for fifteen minutes, except for an occasional muffled but curt direction, she said nothing. He stole glances at her and thought, with a sudden pleasure, that she was even prettier than he had remembered her. Strange that now he felt no resentment.

  They stopped—or Arvardan did, at the girl’s direction—at the corner of an unpeopled residential district. After a careful pause the girl motioned him ahead once more and they inched down a drive that ended in the gentle ramp of a private garage.

  The door closed behind them and the light in the car was the only source of illumination.

  And now Pola looked at him gravely and said, “Dr. Arvardan, I’m sorry that I had to do this in order to speak to you privately. I know that I have no standing in your good opinion to lose—”

  “Don’t think that,” he said awkwardly.

  “I must think that. I want you to believe that I fully realize how small and vicious I was that night. I don’t have the proper words to apologize—”

  “Please don’t.” He glanced away from her. “I might have been a little more diplomatic.”

  “Well . . .” Pola paused a few moments to regain a certain minimal composure. “It’s not what I’ve brought you here for. You’re the only Outsider I’ve ever met that could be kind and noble—and I need your help.”

  A cold pang shot through Arvardan. Was this what it was all about? He packed that thought into a cold “Oh?”

  And she cried, “No,” in return. “It is not for me, Dr. Arvardan. It is for all the Galaxy. Nothing for myself. Nothing!”

  “What is it?”

  “First—I don’t think anyone followed us, but if you hear any noise at all, would you—would you”—her eyes dropped—“put your arms about me, and—and—you know.”

  He nodded his head and said dryly, “I believe I can improvise without any trouble. Is it necessary to wait for noise?”

  Pola reddened. “Please don’t joke about it, or mistake my intentions. It would be the only way of avoiding suspicion of our real intentions. It is the one thing that would be convincing.”

  Arvardan said softly, “Are things that serious?”

  He looked at her curiously. She seemed so young and so soft. In a way he felt it to be unfair. Never in his life did he act unreasoningly. He took pride in that. He was a man of strong emotions, but he fought them and beat them. And here, just because a girl seemed weak, he felt the unreasoning urge to protect her.

  She said, “Things are that serious. I’m going to tell you something, and I know you won’t believe it at first. But I want you to try to believe it. I want you to make up your mind that I’m sincere. And most of all I want you to decide that you will stick with us after I tell you and see it through. Will you try? I’ll give you fifteen minutes, and if you think at the end of that time that I’m not worth trusting or bothering with, I’ll leave, and that’s the end of it.”

  “Fifteen minutes?” His lips quirked in an involuntary smile, and he removed his wrist watch and put it before him. “All right.”

  She clasped her hands in her lap and looked firmly ahead through the windshield that afforded a view only of the blank wall of the garage ahead.

  He watched her thoughtfully—the smooth, soft line of her chin, belying the firmness into which she was attempting to force it, the straight and thinly drawn nose, the peculiarly rich overtone to the complexion, so characteristic of Earth.

  He caught the corner of her eye upon him. It was hastily withdrawn.

  “What’s the matter?” he said.

  She turned to him and caught her underlip in two teeth. “I was watching you.”

  “Yes, I could see that. Smudge on my nose?”

  “No.” She smiled tinily, the first since she had entered his car. He was becoming absurdly conscious of little things about her: the way her hair seemed to hover and float gently each time she shook her head. “It’s just that I’ve been wondering ever since—that night—why you don’t wear that lead clothing, if you’re an Outsider. That’s what fooled me. Outsiders generally look like sacks of potatoes.”

  “And I don’t?”

  “Oh no”—and there was a sudden tinge of enthusiasm in he
r voice—“you look—you look quite like an ancient marble statue, except that you’re alive and warm. . . . I’m sorry. I’m being impertinent.”

  “You mean you think that it’s my opinion you’re an Earth-girl who doesn’t know your place. You’ll have to stop thinking that of me, or we can’t be friendly. . . . I don’t believe in the radioactivity superstition. I’ve measured the atmospheric radioactivity of Earth and I’ve conducted laboratory experiments on animals. I’m quite convinced that under ordinary circumstances the radiations won’t hurt me. I’ve been here two months and I don’t feel sick yet. My hair isn’t falling out”—he pulled at it—“my stomach isn’t in knots. And I doubt that my fertility is being endangered, though I will admit to taking slight precautions in that respect. But lead-impregnated shorts, you see, don’t show.”

  He said that gravely, and she was smiling again. “You’re slightly mad, I think,” she said.

  “Really? You’d be surprised how many very intelligent and famous archaeologists have said that—and in long speeches, too.”

  And she said suddenly, “Will you listen to me now? The fifteen minutes are up.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Why, that you might be. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t still be sitting here. Not after what I’ve done.”

  He said softly, “Are you under the impression that I have to force myself very hard to sit here next to you? If you do, you’re wrong. . . . Do you know, Pola, I’ve never seen, I really believe I’ve never seen, a girl quite as beautiful as yourself.”

  She looked up quickly, with fright in her eyes. “Please don’t. I’m not trying for that. Don’t you believe me?”

  “Yes, I do, Pola. Tell me whatever it is you want to. I’ll believe it and I’ll help you.” He believed himself, implicitly. At the moment Arvardan would cheerfully have undertaken to unseat the Emperor. He had never been in love before, and at that point he ground his thoughts to a halt. He had not used that word before.

  Love? With an Earthgirl?

  “You’ve seen my father, Dr. Arvardan?”