Pebble in the Sky (12 page)

He looked about. Nothing like a restaurant in sight. Well, how did he know? He couldn’t read the signs.

He gazed into each store front he passed. . . . And then he found an interior which consisted in part of small alcoved tables, at one of which two men sat and another at which a single man sat. And the men were eating.

At least that hadn’t changed. Men who ate still chewed and swallowed.

He stepped in and, for a moment, stopped in considerable bewilderment. There was no counter, no cooking going on, no signs of any kitchen. It had been his idea to offer to wash the dishes for a meal, but—to whom could he make the offer?

Diffidently, he stepped up to the two diners. He pointed, and said painstakingly, “Food! Where? Please.”

They looked up at him, rather startled. One spoke fluently, and quite incomprehensibly, patting a small structure at the wall end of the table. The other joined in, impatiently.

Schwartz’s eyes fell. He turned to leave, and there was a hand upon his sleeve—

Granz had seen Schwartz while the
latter was still only a plump and wistful face at the window.

He said, “What’s
he
want?”

Messter, sitting across the little table, with his back to the street, turned, looked, shrugged his shoulders, and said nothing.

Granz said, “He’s coming in,” and Messter replied, “So what?”

“Nothing. Just mentioning it.”

But a few moments later the newcomer, after looking about helplessly, approached and pointed to their beef stew, saying in a queer accent, “Food! Where? Please.”

Granz looked up. “Food right here, bud. Just pull up a chair at any table you want and use the Foodomat. . . . Foodomat! Don’t you know what a Foodomat is? . . . Look at the poor jerk, Messter. He’s looking at me as if he doesn’t understand a word I say. Hey, fella—this thing, see. Just put a coin in and let me eat, will you?”

“Leave him alone,” grunted Messter. “He’s just a bum, looking for a handout.”

“Hey, hold on.” Granz seized Schwartz’s sleeve as the latter turned to go. He added in an aside to Messter, “Space, let the guy eat. He’s probably getting the Sixty soon. It’s the least I can do to give him a break. . . . Hey, bud, you got any money? . . . Well, I’ll be damned, he still doesn’t understand me. Money, pal, money! This—” And he drew a shining half-credit piece out of his pocket, flipping it so that it sparkled in the air.

“Got any?” he asked.

Slowly Schwartz shook his head.

“Well, then, have this on me!” He replaced the half-credit piece in his pocket and tossed over a considerably smaller coin.

Schwartz held it uncertainly.

“All right. Don’t just stand there. Stick it in the Foodomat. This thing here.”

Schwartz suddenly found himself understanding. The Foodomat had a series of slits for coins of different sizes and a series of knobs opposite little milky rectangles, the writing upon which he could not read. Schwartz pointed to the food on the table and ran a forefinger up and down the knobs, raising his eyebrows in question.

Messter said in annoyance, “A sandwich isn’t good enough for him. We’re getting classy bums in this burg nowadays. It doesn’t pay to humor them, Granz.”

“All right, so I lose point eight five credits. Tomorrow’s payday, anyway. . . . Here,” he said to Schwartz. He placed coins of his own into the Foodomat and withdrew the wide metal container from the recess in the wall. “Now take it to another table. . . . Nah, keep that tenth piece. Buy yourself a cup of coffee with it.”

Schwartz carried the container gingerly to the next table. It had a spoon attached to the side by means of a transparent, filmy material, which broke with a slight pop under the pressure of a
fingernail. As it did so, the top of the container parted at a seam and curled back upon itself.

The food, unlike that which he saw the others eating, was cold; but that was a detail. It was only after a minute or so that he realized the food was getting warmer and that the container had grown hot to the touch. He stopped, in alarm, and waited.

The gravy first steamed, then bubbled gently for a moment. It cooled again and Schwartz completed the meal.

Granz and Messter were still there when he left. So was the third man, to whom, throughout, Schwartz had paid no attention.

Nor had Schwartz noticed, at any time since he had left the Institute, the thin, little man who, without seeming to, had managed to remain always within eyeshot.

Bel Arvardan, having showered and changed
his clothes, promptly followed his original intention of observing the human animal, subspecies Earth, in its native habitat. The weather was mild, the light breeze refreshing, the village itself—pardon, the city—bright, quiet, and clean.

Not so bad.

Chica first stop, he thought. Largest collection of Earthmen on the planet. Washenn next; local capital. Senloo! Senfran! Bonair! . . . He had plotted an itinerary all over the western continents (where most of the meager scattering of Earth’s population lived) and, allowing two or three days at each, he would be back in Chica just about the time his expeditionary ship was due.

It would be educational.

As afternoon began to decline he stepped into a Foodomat and, as he ate, observed the small drama that played itself out between the two Earthmen who had entered shortly after himself and the plump, elderly man who came in last of all. But his observation was detached and casual, simply noting it as an item to set against his unpleasant experience on the jet transport.
The two men at the table were obviously air-cab drivers and not wealthy, yet they could be charitable.

The beggar left, and two minutes later Arvardan left as well.

The streets were noticeably fuller, as the workday was approaching its end.

He stepped hastily aside to avoid colliding with a young girl.

“Pardon me,” he said.

She was dressed in white, in clothing which bore the stereotyped lines of a uniform. She seemed quite oblivious of the near collision. The anxious look on her face, the sharp turning of her head from side to side, her utter preoccupation, made the situation quite obvious.

He laid a light finger on her shoulder. “May I help you, miss? Are you in trouble?”

She stopped and turned startled eyes upon him. Arvardan found himself judging her age at nineteen to twenty-one, observing carefully her brown hair and dark eyes, her high cheekbones and little chin, her slim waist and graceful carriage. He discovered, suddenly, that the thought of this little female creature being an Earthwoman lent a sort of perverse piquancy to her attractiveness.

But she was still staring, and almost at the moment of speaking she seemed to break down. “Oh, it’s no use. Please don’t bother about me. It’s silly to expect to find someone when you don’t have the slightest idea where he could have gone.” She was drooping in discouragement, her eyes wet. Then she straightened and breathed deeply. “Have you seen a plump man about five-four, dressed in green and white, no hat, rather bald?”

Arvardan looked at her in astonishment. “What? Green and white? . . . Oh, I don’t believe this. . . . Look, this man you’re referring to—does he speak with difficulty?”

“Yes, yes. Oh yes. You have seen him, then?”

“Not five minutes ago he was in there eating with two men. . . . Here they are. . . . Say, you two.” He beckoned them over.

Granz reached them first. “Cab, sir?”

“No, but if you tell the young lady what happened to the man you were eating with, you’ll stand to make the fare, anyway.”

Granz paused and looked chagrined. “Well, I’d like to help you, but I never saw him before in my life.”

Arvardan turned to the girl. “Now look, miss, he can’t have gone in the direction you came from or you’d have seen him. And he can’t be far away. Suppose we move north a bit. I’ll recognize him if I see him.”

His offer of help was an impulse, yet Arvardan was not, ordinarily, an impulsive man. He found himself smiling at her.

Granz interrupted suddenly. “What’s he done, lady? He hasn’t broken any of the Customs, has he?”

“No, no,” she replied hastily. “He’s only a little sick, that’s all.”

Messter looked after them as they left. “A little sick?” He shoved his visored cap back upon his head, then pinched balefully at his chin. “How d’ya like that, Granz? A little sick.”

His eyes looked askance at the other for a moment.

“What’s got into
you?
” asked Granz uneasily.

“Something that’s making
me
a little sick. That guy must’ve been straight out of the hospital. That was a nurse looking for him, and a plenty worried nurse, too. Why should she be worried if he was just a
little
sick? He couldn’t hardly talk, and he didn’t hardly understand. You noticed that, didn’t you?”

There was a sudden panicky light in Granz’s eyes. “You don’t think it’s Fever?”

“I sure
do
think it’s Radiation Fever—and he’s far gone. He was within a foot of us, too. It’s never any good—”

There was a little thin man next to them. A little thin man with bright, sharp eyes and a twittering voice, who had stepped
out of nowhere. “What’s that, gents? Who’s got Radiation Fever?”

He was regarded with disfavor. “Who are you?”

“Ho,” said the sharp little man, “you want to know, do you? It so happens that I’m a messenger of the Brotherhood, to be sure.” He flashed a little glowing badge on the inner lapel of his jacket. “Now, in the name of the Society of Ancients, what’s all this about Radiation Fever?”

Messter spoke in cowed and sullen tones. “
I
don’t know nothing. There’s a nurse looking for somebody who’s sick, and I was wondering if it was Radiation Fever. That’s not against the Customs, is it?”

“Ho! You’re telling
me
about the Customs, are you? You better go about your business and let
me
worry about the Customs.”

The little man rubbed his hands together, gazed quickly about him, and hurried northward.

“There he is!” and Pola clutched
feverishly at her companion’s elbow. It had happened quickly, easily, and accidentally. Through the despairing blankness he had suddenly materialized just within the main entrance of the self-service department store, not three blocks from the Foodomat.

“I see him,” whispered Arvardan. “Now stay back and let me follow him. If he sees you and dashes into the mob, we’ll never locate him.”

Casually they followed in a sort of nightmare chase. The human contents of the store was a quicksand which could absorb its prey slowly—or quickly—keep it hidden impenetrably, spew it forth unexpectedly, set up barriers that somehow would not yield. The mob might almost have had a malevolent conscious mind of its own.

And then Arvardan circled a counter watchfully, playing Schwartz as though he were at the end of a fishing line. His huge hand reached out and closed on the other’s shoulder.

Schwartz burst into incomprehensible prose and jerked
away in panic. Arvardan’s grip, however, was unbreakable to men far stronger than Schwartz, and he contented himself with smiling and saying, in normal tones, for the benefit of the curious spectator, “Hello, old chap, haven’t seen you in months. How are you?”

A palpable fraud, he supposed, in the face of the other’s gibberish, but Pola had joined them.

“Schwartz,” she whispered, “come back with us.”

For a moment Schwartz stiffened in rebellion, then he drooped.

He said wearily, “I—go—along—you,” but the statement was drowned in the sudden blare of the store’s loud-speaker system.

“
Attention! Attention! Attention!
The management requests that all patrons of the store leave by the Fifth Street exit in orderly fashion. You will present your registration cards to the guards at the door. It is essential that this be done rapidly.
Attention! Attention! Attention!”

The message was repeated three times, the last time over the sound of scuffling feet as crowds were beginning to line up at the exits. A many-tongued cry was making itself heard, asking in various fashions the forever-unanswerable question of “What’s happened? What’s going on?”

Arvardan shrugged and said, “Let’s get on line, miss. We’re leaving anyway.”

But Pola shook her head. “We can’t. We can’t—”

“Why not?” The archaeologist frowned.

The girl merely shrank away from him. How could she tell him that Schwartz had no registration card? Who was he? Why had he been helping her? She was in a whirl of suspicion and despair.

She said huskily, “You’d better go, or you’ll get into trouble.”

They were pouring out the elevators as the upper floors emptied. Arvardan, Pola, and Schwartz were a little island of solidity in the human river.

Looking back on it later, Arvardan realized that at this point he could have left the girl. Left her! Never seen her again! Have nothing to reproach himself with! . . . And all would have been different. The great Galactic Empire would have dissolved in chaos and destruction.

He did not leave the girl. She was scarcely pretty in her fear and despair. No one could be. But Arvardan felt disturbed at the sight of her helplessness.

He had taken a step away, and now he turned. “Are you going to stay here?”

She nodded.

“But why?” he demanded.

“Because”—and the tears now overflowed—“I don’t know what else to do.”

She was just a little, frightened girl, even if she was an Earthie. Arvardan said, in a softer voice, “If you’ll tell me what’s wrong, I’ll try to help.”

There was no answer.

The three formed a tableau. Schwartz had sunk to the floor in a squatting posture, too sick at heart to try to follow the conversation, to be curious at the sudden emptiness of the store, to do anything but bury his head in his hands in the last unspoken and unuttered whimper of despair. Pola, weeping, knew only that she was more frightened than she had ever thought it possible for anyone to be. Arvardan, puzzled and waiting, tried clumsily and ineffectually to pat Pola’s shoulder in encouraging fashion, and was conscious only of the fact that for the first time he had touched an Earthgirl.