Pebble in the Sky (21 page)

“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 her 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?”

“Dr. Shekt is your father? . . . Please call me Bel. I’ll call you Pola.”

“If you want me to, I’ll try. I suppose you were pretty angry with him.”

“He wasn’t very polite.”

“He couldn’t be. He’s being watched. In fact, he and I arranged in advance that he was to get rid of you and I was to see you here. This is our house, you know. . . . You see”—her voice dropped to a tight whisper—“Earth is going to revolt.”

Arvardan couldn’t resist a moment of amusement.

“No!” he said, opening his eyes wide. “All of it?”

But Pola flared into instant fury. “Don’t laugh at me. You said you would listen and believe me. Earth is going to revolt, and it is serious, because Earth can destroy all the Empire.”

“Earth can do that?” Arvardan struggled successfully against a burst of laughter. He said gently, “Pola, how well do you know your Galactography?”

“As well as anybody, teacher, and what has that to do with it, anyway?”

“It has this to do with it. The Galaxy has a volume of several million cubic light-years. It contains two hundred million
inhabited planets and an approximate population of five hundred quadrillion people. Right?”

“I suppose so, if you say so.”

“It is, believe me. Now Earth is one planet, with a population of twenty millions, and no resources besides. In other words, there are twenty-five billion Galactic citizens for every single Earthman. Now what harm can Earth do against odds of twenty-five billion to one?”

For a moment the girl seemed to sink into doubt, then she emerged. “Bel,” she said firmly, “I can’t answer that, but my father can. He has not told me the crucial details, because he claims that that would endanger my life. But he will now, if you come with me. He’s told me that Earth knows a way by which it can wipe out all life outside Earth, and he
must
be right. He’s always been right before.”

Her cheeks were pink with earnestness, and Arvardan longed to touch them. (Had he ever before touched her and felt horrified at it? What was happening to him?)

“Is it after ten?” asked Pola.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Then he should be upstairs now—if they haven’t caught him.” She looked about with an involuntary shudder. “We can get into the house directly from the garage now, and if you’ll come with me—”

She had her hand on the knob that controlled the car door, when she froze. Her voice was a husky whisper: “There’s someone coming . . . Oh, quick—”

The rest was smothered. It was anything but difficult for Arvardan to remember her original injunction. His arms swept about her with an easy motion, and, in an instant, she was warm and soft against him. Her lips trembled upon his and were limitless seas of sweetness . . .

For about ten seconds he swiveled his eyes to their extremes in an effort to see that first crack of light or hear that first footstep, but then he was drowned and swept under by the
excitement of it all. Blinded by stars, deafened by his own heartbeat.

Her lips left his, but he sought them again, frankly, and found them. His arms tightened, and she melted within them until her own heartbeat was shaking him in time to his own.

It was quite a while before they broke apart, and for a moment they rested, cheek against cheek.

Arvardan had never been in love before, and this time he did not start at the word.

What of it? Earthgirl or not, the Galaxy could not produce her equal.

He said, with a dreamy pleasure, “It must have been only a traffic noise.”

“It wasn’t,” she whispered. “I didn’t hear any noise.”

He held her at arm’s distance, but her eyes did not falter. “You devil. Are you serious?”

Her eyes sparkled. “I wanted you to kiss me. I’m not sorry.”

“Do you think
I
am? Kiss me again, then, for no reason but that
I
want to this time.”

Another long, long moment and she was suddenly away from him, arranging her hair and adjusting the collar of her dress with prim and precise gestures. “I think we had better go into the house now. Put out the car light. I’ve got a pencil flash.”

He stepped out of the car after her, and in the new darkness she was the vaguest shadow in the little pockmark of light that came from her pencil flash.

She said, “You’d better hold my hand. There’s a flight of stairs we must go up.”

His voice was a whisper behind her. “I love you, Pola.” It came out so easily—and it sounded so right. He said it again. “I love you, Pola.”

She said softly, “You hardly know me.”

“No. All my life. I swear! All my life. Pola, for two months I’ve been thinking and dreaming of you. I swear it.”

“I am an Earthgirl, sir.”

“Then I will be an Earthman. Try me.”

He stopped her and bent her hand up gently until the pocket flash rested upon her flushed, tear-marked face. “Why are you crying?”

“Because when my father tells you what he knows, you’ll know that you cannot love an Earthgirl.”

“Try me on that too.”

Arvardan and Shekt met in a
back room on the second story of the house, with the windows carefully polarized to complete opaqueness. Pola was downstairs, alert and sharp-eyed in the armchair from which she watched the dark and empty street.

Shekt’s stooped figure wore somehow an air different from that which Arvardan had observed some ten hours previously. The physicist’s face was still haggard, and infinitely weary, but where previously it had seemed uncertain and timorous, it now bore an almost desperate defiance.

“Dr. Arvardan,” he said, and his voice was firm, “I must apologize for my treatment of you in the morning. I had hoped you would understand—”

“I must admit I didn’t, sir, but I believe I do now.”

Shekt seated himself at the table and gestured toward the
bottle of wine. Arvardan waved his hand in a deprecating motion. “If you don’t mind, I’ll have some of the fruit instead. . . . What is this? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.”

“It’s a kind of orange,” said Shekt. “I don’t believe it grows outside Earth. The rind comes off easily.” He demonstrated, and Arvardan, after sniffing at it curiously, sank his teeth into the winy pulp. He came up with an exclamation.

“Why, this is delightful, Dr. Shekt! Has Earth ever tried to export these objects?”

“The Ancients,” said the biophysicist grimly, “are not fond of trading with the Outside. Nor are our neighbors in space fond of trading with us. It is but an aspect of our difficulties here.”

Arvardan felt a sudden spasm of annoyance seize him. “That is the most stupid thing yet. I tell you that I could despair of human intelligence when I see what can exist in men’s minds.”

Shekt shrugged with the tolerance of lifelong use. “It is part of the nearly insoluble problem of anti-Terrestrianism, I fear.”

“But what makes it so nearly insoluble,” exclaimed the archaeologist, “is that no one seems to really want a solution! How many Earthmen respond to the situation by hating all Galactic citizens indiscriminately? It is an almost universal disease—hate for hate. Do your people really want equality, mutual tolerance? No! Most of them want only their own turn as top dog.”

“Perhaps there is much in what you say,” said Shekt sadly. “I cannot deny it. But that is not the whole story. Give us but the chance, and a new generation of Earthmen would grow to maturity, lacking insularity and believing wholeheartedly in the oneness of Man. The Assimilationists, with their tolerance and belief in wholesome compromise, have more than once been a power on Earth. I am one. Or, at least, I was one once. But the Zealots rule all Earth now. They are the extreme nationalists,
with their dreams of past rule and future rule. It is against them that the Empire must be protected.”

Arvardan frowned. “You refer to the revolt Pola spoke of?”