Pebble in the Sky

by Isaac Asimov

  “But where are they kept, Schwartz?” insisted Arvardan. “Look, man, look—”

  “There’s a building I—can’t—quite—see. . . . Five points—a star—a name; Sloo, maybe—”

  Shekt broke in again. “That’s it. By all the stars in the Galaxy, that’s it. The Temple of Senloo. It’s surrounded by radioactive pockets on all sides. No one would ever go there but the Ancients. Is it near the meeting of two large rivers, Schwartz?”

  “I can’t—Yes—yes—yes.”

  “When, Schwartz, when? When will they be set off?”

  “I can’t see the day, but soon—soon. His mind is bursting with that—It will be very soon.” His own head seemed bursting with the effort.

  Arvardan was dry and feverish as he raised himself finally to his hands and knees, though they wobbled and gave under him. “Is he coming?”

  “Yes. He’s at the door.”

  His voice sank and stopped as the door opened.

  Balkis’s voice was one of cold derision as he filled the room with success and triumph. “Dr. Arvardan! Had you not better return to your seat?”

  Arvardan looked up at him, conscious of the cruel indignity of his own position, but there was no answer to make, and he made none. Slowly he allowed his aching limbs to lower him to the ground. He waited there, breathing heavily. If his limbs could return a bit more, if he could make a last lunge, if he could somehow seize the other’s weapons—

  That was no neuronic whip that dangled so gently from the smoothly gleaming Flexiplast belt that held the Secretary’s robe in place. It was a full-size blaster that could shred a man to atoms in an instantaneous point of time.

  The Secretary watched the four before him with a savage sense of satisfaction. The girl he tended to ignore, but otherwise it was a clean sweep. There was the Earthman traitor; there the Imperial agent; and there the mysterious creature they had been watching for two months. Were there any others?

  To be sure, there was still Ennius, and the Empire. Their arms, in the person of these spies and traitors, were pinioned, but there remained an active brain somewhere—perhaps to send out other arms.

  The Secretary stood easily, hands clasped in contemptuous disregard of any possible necessity of quickly reaching his weapon. He spoke quietly and gently. “Now it is necessary to make things absolutely clear. There is war between Earth and the Galaxy—undeclared as yet, but, nevertheless, war. You are our prisoners and will be treated as will be necessary under the circumstances. Naturally the recognized punishment for spies and traitors is death—”

  “Only in the case of legal and declared war,” broke in Arvardan fiercely.

  “Legal war?” questioned the Secretary with more than a trace of a sneer. “What is legal war? Earth has always been at war with the Galaxy, whether we made polite mention of the fact or not.”

  “Don’t bother with him,” said Pola to Arvardan softly. “Let him have his say and finish with it.”

  Arvardan smiled in her direction. A queer, spasmodic smile, for it was with a vast strain that he staggered to his feet and remained there, gasping.

  Balkis laughed softly. With unhurried steps he shortened the distance between himself and the Sirian archaeologist to nothing. With an equally unhurried gesture he rested a soft hand upon the broad chest of the other and shoved.

  With splintering arms that would not respond to Arvardan’s demand for a warding motion, with stagnant trunk muscles that could not adjust the body’s balance at more than snail speed, Arvardan toppled.

  Pola gasped. Lashing her own rebellious flesh and bone, she descended from her particular bench slowly—so slowly.

  Balkis let her crawl toward Arvardan.

  “Your lover,” he said. “Your strong Outsider lover. Run to him, girl! Why do you wait? Clasp your hero tightly and forget in his arms that he steams in the sweat and blood of a billion martyred Earthmen. And there he lies, bold and valiant—brought to Earth by the gentle push of an Earthman’s hand.”

  Pola was on her knees beside him now, her fingers probing beneath the hair for blood or the deadly softness of crushed bone. Arvardan’s eyes opened slowly and his lips formed a “Never mind!”

  “He’s a coward,” said Pola, “who would fight a paralyzed man and boast his victory. Believe me, darling, few Earthmen are like that.”

  “I know it, or you would not be an Earthwoman.”

  The Secretary stiffened. “As I said, all lives here are forfeit, but, nevertheless, can be bought. Are you interested in the price?”

  Pola said proudly, “In our case, you would be. That I know.”

  “Ssh, Pola.” Arvardan had not yet recovered his breath entirely. “What are you proposing?”

  “Oh,” said Balkis, “you are willing to sell yourself? As I would be, for instance? I, a vile Earthman?”

  “You know best what you are,” retorted Arvardan. “As for the rest, I am not selling myself; I am buying her.”

  “I refuse to be bought,” said Pola.

  “Touching,” grated the Secretary. “He stoops to our females, our Earthie-squaws—and can still play-act at sacrifice.”

  “What are you proposing?” demanded Arvardan.

  “This. Obviously, word of our plans has leaked out. How it got to Dr. Shekt is not difficult to see, but how it got to the Empire is puzzling. We would like to know, therefore, just what the Empire does know. Not what you have learned, Arvardan, but what the Empire now knows.”

  “I am an archaeologist and not a spy,” bit out Arvardan. “I don’t know anything at all about what the Empire knows—but I hope they know a damned lot.”

  “So I imagine. Well, you may change your mind. Think, all of you.”

  Throughout, Schwartz had contributed nothing; nor had he raised his eyes.

  The Secretary waited, then said, perhaps a trifle savagely, “Then I’ll outline the price to you of your non-co-operation. It will not be simply death, since I am quite certain that all of you are prepared for that unpleasant and inevitable eventuality. Dr. Shekt and the girl, his daughter, who, unfortunately for herself, is implicated to a deadly extent, are citizens of Earth. Under the circumstances, it will be most appropriate to have both subjected to the Synapsifier. You understand, Dr. Shekt?”

  The physicist’s eyes were pools of pure horror.

  “Yes, I see you do,” said Balkis. “It is, of course, possible to allow the Synapsifier to damage brain tissue just sufficiently to allow the production of an acerebral imbecile. It is a most disgusting state: one in which you will have to be fed, or starve; be cleaned, or live in dung; be shut up, or remain a study in horror to all who see. It may be a lesson to others in the great day that is coming.

  “As for you”—and the Secretary turned to Arvardan—“and your friend Schwartz, you are Imperial citizens, and therefore suitable for an interesting experiment. We have never tried our concentrated fever virus on you Galactic dogs. It would be interesting to show our calculations correct. A small dose, you see, so that death is not quick. The disease might work its way to the inevitable over a period of a week, if we dilute the injection sufficiently. It will be very painful.”

  And now he paused and watched them through slitted eyes. “All that,” he said, “is the alternative to a few well-chosen words at the present time. How much does the Empire know? Have they other agents active at the present moment? What are their plans, if any, for counteraction?”

  Dr. Shekt muttered, “How do we know that you won’t have us killed anyway, once you have what you want of us?”

  “You have my assurance that you will die horribly if you refuse. You will have to gamble on the alternative. What do you say?”

  “Can’t we have time?”

  “Isn’t that what I’m giving you now? Ten minutes have passed since I entered, and I am still listening. . . . Well, have you anything to say? What, nothing? Time will not endure forever, you must realize. Arvardan, you still knot your muscles. You think perhaps you can reach me before I ca
n draw my blaster. Well, what if you can? There are hundreds outside, and my plans will continue without me. Even your separate modes of punishment will continue without me.

  “Or perhaps you, Schwartz. You killed our agent. It was you, was it not? Perhaps you think you can kill me?”

  For the first time Schwartz looked at Balkis. He said coldly, “I can, but I won’t.”

  “That is kind of you.”

  “Not at all. It is very cruel of me. You say yourself that there are things worse than simple death.”

  Arvardan found himself suddenly staring at Schwartz in a vast hope.

  18

  Duel!

  Schwartz’s mind was whirling. In a queer, hectic way he felt at ease. There was a piece of him that seemed in absolute control of the situation, and more of him that could not believe that. Paralysis had been applied later to him than to the others. Even Dr. Shekt was sitting up, while he himself could just budge an arm and little more.

  And, staring up at the leering mind of the Secretary, infinitely foul and infinitely evil, he began his duel.

  He said, “I was on your side originally, for all that you were preparing to kill me. I thought I understood your feelings and your intentions. . . . But the minds of these others here are relatively innocent and pure, and yours is past description. It is not even for the Earthman you fight, but for your own personal power. I see in you not a vision of a free Earth, but of a re-enslaved Earth. I see in you not the disruption of the Imperial power, but its replacement by a personal dictatorship.”

  “You see all that, do you?” said Balkis. “Well, see what you wish. I don’t need your information after all, you know—not so badly that I must endure insolence. We have advanced the hour of striking, it seems. Had you expected that? Amazing what pressure will do, even on those who swear that more speed is impossible. Did you see that, my dramatic mind reader?”

  Schwartz said, “I didn’t. I wasn’t looking for it, and it passed my notice. . . . But I can look for it now. Two days—Less—Let’s see—Tuesday—six in the morning—Chica time.”

  The blaster was in the Secretary’s hand, finally. He advanced in abrupt strides and towered over Schwartz’s drooping figure.

  “How did you know that?”

  Schwartz stiffened; somewhere mental tendrils bunched and grasped. Physically his jaw muscles clamped rigorously shut and his eyebrows curled low, but these were purely irrelevant—involuntary accompaniments to the real effort. Within his brain there was that which reached out and seized hard upon the Mind Touch of the other.

  To Arvardan, for precious, wasting seconds, the scene was meaningless; the Secretary’s sudden motionless silence was not significant.

  Schwartz muttered gaspingly, “I’ve got him. . . . Take away his gun. I can’t hold on—” It died away in a gurgle.

  And then Arvardan understood. With a lurch he was on all fours. Then slowly, grindingly, he lifted himself once more, by main force, to an unsteady erectness. Pola tried to rise with him, could not quite make it. Shekt edged off his slab, sinking to his knees. Only Schwartz lay there, his face working.

  The Secretary might have been struck by the Medusa sight. On his smooth and unfurrowed forehead perspiration gathered slowly, and his expressionless face hinted of no emotion. Only that right hand, holding the blaster, showed any signs of life. Watch closely, and you might see it jerk ever so gently; note the curious flexing pressure of it upon the contact button: a gentle pressure, not enough to do harm, but returning, and returning—

  “Hold him tight,” gasped Arvardan with a ferocious joy. He steadied himself on the back of a chair and tried to gain his breath. “Let me get to him.”

  His feet dragged. He was in a nightmare, wading through molasses, swimming through tar; pulling with torn muscles, so slowly—so slowly.

  He was not—could not be—conscious of the terrific duel that proceeded before him.

  The Secretary had only one aim, and that was to put just the tiniest force into his thumb—three ounces, to be exact, since that was the contact pressure required for the blaster’s operation. To do so his mind had only to instruct a quiveringly balanced tendon, already half contracted, to—to—

  Schwartz had only one aim, and that was to restrain that pressure—but in all the inchoate mass of sensation presented to him by the other’s Mind Touch, he could not know which particular area was alone concerned with that thumb. So it was that he bent his efforts to produce a stasis, a complete stasis—

  The Secretary’s Mind Touch heaved and billowed against restraint. It was a quick and fearfully intelligent mind that confronted Schwartz’s untried control. For seconds it remained quiescent, waiting—then, in a terrific, tearing attempt, it would tug wildly at this muscle or that—

  To Schwartz it was as if he had seized a wrestling hold which he must maintain at all costs, though his opponent threw him about in frenzies.

  But none of this showed. Only the nervous clenching and unclenching of Schwartz’s jaw; the quivering lips, bloodied by the biting teeth—and that occasional soft movement on the part of the Secretary’s thumb, straining—straining.

  Arvardan paused to rest. He did not want to. He had to. His outstretched finger just touched the fabric of the Secretary’s tunic and he felt he could move no more. His agonized lungs could not pump the breath his dead limbs required. His eyes were blurred with the tears of effort, his mind with the haze of pain.

  He gasped, “Just a few more minutes, Schwartz. Hold him, hold him—”

  Slowly, slowly, Schwartz shook his head. “I can’t—I can’t—”

  And indeed, to Schwartz all the world was slipping away into dull, unfocused chaos. The tendrils of his mind were becoming stiff and nonresilient.

  The Secretary’s thumb pressed once again upon the contact. It did not relax. The pressure grew by tiny stages.

  Schwartz could feel the bulging of his own eyeballs, the writhing expansion of the veins in his forehead. He could sense the awful triumph that gathered in the mind of the other—

  Then Arvardan lunged. His stiff and rebellious body toppled forward, hands outstretched and clawing.

  The yielding, mind-held Secretary toppled with him. The blaster flew sideways, clanging along the hard floor.

  The Secretary’s mind wrenched free almost simultaneously, and Schwartz fell back, his own skull a tangled jungle of confusion.

  Balkis struggled wildly beneath the clinging dead weight of Arvardan’s body. He jerked a knee into the other’s groin with a vicious strength while his clenched fist came down sideways on Arvardan’s cheekbone. He lifted and thrust—and Arvardan rolled off in huddled agony.

  The Secretary staggered to his feet, panting and disheveled, and stopped again.

  Facing him was Shekt, half reclining. His right hand, shakingly supported by the left, was holding the blaster, and although it quivered, the business end pointed at the Secretary.

  “You pack of fools,” shrilled the Secretary, passion-choked, “what do you expect to gain? I have only to raise my voice—”

  “And you, at least,” responded Shekt weakly, “will die.”

  “You will accomplish nothing by killing me,” said the Secretary bitterly, “and you know it. You will not save the Empire you would betray us to—and you would not save even yourselves. Give me that gun and you will go free.”

  He extended a hand, but Shekt laughed wistfully. “I am not mad enough to believe that.”

  “Perhaps not, but you are half paralyzed.” And the Secretary broke sharply to the right, far faster than the physicist’s feeble wrist could veer the blaster.

  But now Balkis’s mind, as he tensed for the final jump, was utterly and entirely on the blaster he was avoiding. Schwartz extended his mind once again in a final jab, and the Secretary tripped and slammed downward as if he had been clubbed.

  Arvardan had risen painfully to his feet. His cheek was red and swollen and he hobbled when he walked. He said, “Can you move, Schwartz?”

/>   “A little,” came the tired response. Schwartz slid out of his seat.

  “Anyone else coming this way, maybe?”

  “Not that I can detect.”

  Arvardan smiled grimly down at Pola. His hand was resting on her soft brown hair and she was looking up at him with brimming eyes. Several times in the last two hours he had been sure that never, never would he feel her hair or see her eyes again.

  “Maybe there will be a later after all, Pola?”

  And she could only shake her head and say, “There’s not enough time. We only have till six o’clock Tuesday.”

  “Not enough time? Well, let’s see.” Arvardan bent over the prone Ancient and pulled his head back, none too gently.

  “Is he alive?” He felt futilely for a pulse with his still-numb finger tips and then placed a palm beneath the green robe. He said, “His heart’s beating, anyway. . . . You’ve a dangerous power there, Schwartz. Why didn’t you do this in the first place?”

  “Because I wanted to see him held static.” Schwartz clearly showed the effects of his ordeal. “I thought that if I could hold him, we could lead him out before; use him as decoy; hide behind his skirts.”

  Shekt said, in sudden animation, “We might. There’s the Imperial garrison in Fort Dibburn not half a mile away. Once there, we’re safe and can get word to Ennius.”

  “Once there! There must be a hundred guards outside, with hundreds more between here and there—And what can we do with a stiff green-robe? Carry him? Shove him along on little wheels?” Arvardan laughed humorlessly.

  “Besides,” said Schwartz gloomily, “I couldn’t hold him very long. You saw—I failed.”

  Shekt said earnestly, “Because you’re not used to it. Now listen, Schwartz, I’ve got a notion as to what it is you do with your mind. It’s a receiving station for the electromagnetic fields of the brain. I think you can transmit also. Do you understand?”

  Schwartz seemed painfully uncertain.

  “You must understand,” insisted Shekt. “You’ll have to concentrate on what you want him to do—and first we’re going to give him his blaster back.”