Pebble in the Sky (24 page)

“Father,” said Pola, “don’t! There’s no use—”

But Arvardan’s interruption was peremptory. “Wait, now. Let me think.
I’m
the one who can settle this. Who better? Let me ask him a few questions. . . . Look, Schwartz.”

Schwartz looked up again.

“Yours was the only world in the Galaxy?”

Schwartz nodded, then said dully, “Yes.”

“But you only thought that. I mean you didn’t have space travel, so you couldn’t check up. There might have been many other inhabited worlds.”

“I have no way of telling that.”

“Yes, of course. A pity. What about atomic power?”

“We had an atomic bomb. Uranium—and plutonium—I guess that’s what made this world radioactive. There must have been another war after all—after I left. . . . Atomic bombs.” Somehow Schwartz was back in Chicago, back in his old world, before the bombs. And he was sorry. Not for himself, but for that beautiful world. . . .

But Arvardan was muttering to himself. Then, “All right. You had a language, of course.”

“Earth? Lots of them.”

“How about you?”

“English—after I was a grown man.”

“Well, say something in it.”

For two months or more Schwartz had said nothing in English. But now, with lovingness, he said slowly, “I want to go home and be with my own people.”

Arvardan spoke to Shekt. “Is that the language he used when he was Synapsified, Shekt?”

“I can’t tell,” said Shekt, in mystification. “Queer sounds then and queer sounds now. How can I relate them?”

“Well, never mind. . . . What’s your word for ‘mother’ in your language, Schwartz?”

Schwartz told him.

“Uh-
huh
. How about ‘father’ . . . ‘brother’ . . . ‘one’—the numeral, that is . . . ‘two’ . . . ‘three’ . . . ‘house’ . . . ‘man’ . . . ‘wife’ . . .”

This went on and on, and when Arvardan paused for breath his expression was one of awed bewilderment.

“Shekt,” he said, “either this man is genuine or I’m the victim of as wild a nightmare as can be conceived. He’s speaking a language practically equivalent to the inscriptions found in the fifty-thousand-year-old strata on Sirius, Arcturus, Alpha Centauri, and twenty others. He
speaks
it. The language has only been deciphered in the last generation, and there aren’t a dozen men in the Galaxy besides myself who can understand it.”

“Are you sure of this?”

“Am I
sure?
Of course I’m sure. I’m an archaeologist. It’s my business to know.”

For an instant Schwartz felt his armor of aloofness cracking. For the first time he felt himself regaining the individuality he had lost. The secret was out; he was a man from the past,
and they accepted it
. It proved him sane, stilled forever that haunting doubt, and he was grateful. And yet he held aloof.

“I’ve got to have him.” It was Arvardan again, burning in the holy flame of his profession. “Shekt, you have no idea what this means to archaeology. Shekt—it’s a man from the past. Oh, Great Space! . . . Listen, we can make a deal. This is the proof Earth is looking for. They can have him. They can—”

Schwartz interrupted sardonically. “I know what you’re thinking. You think that Earth will prove itself to be the source of civilization through me and that they will be grateful for it. I tell you, no! I’ve thought of it and I would have bartered for my own life. But they won’t believe me—or you.”

“There’s absolute proof.”

“They won’t listen. Do you know why? Because they have
certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don’t want the truth; they want their traditions.”

“Bel,” said Pola, “I think he’s right.”

Arvardan ground his teeth. “We could try.”

“We would fail,” insisted Schwartz.

“How can you know?”

“I
know!
” And the words fell with such oracular insistence that Arvardan was silent before them.

It was Shekt who was looking at him now with a strange light in his tired eyes.

He asked softly, “Have you felt any bad effects as a result of the Synapsifier?”

Schwartz didn’t know the word but caught the meaning. They
had
operated, and on his mind. How much he was learning!

He said, “No bad effects.”

“But I see you learned our language rapidly. You speak it very well. In fact, you might be a native. Doesn’t it surprise you?”

“I always had a very good memory,” was the cold response.

“And so you feel no different now than before you were treated?”

“That’s right.”

Dr. Shekt’s eyes were hard now, and he said, “Why do you bother? You know that I’m certain you know what I’m thinking.”

Schwartz laughed shortly. “That I can read minds? Well, what of it?”

But Shekt had dropped him. He had turned his white, helpless face to Arvardan. “He can sense minds, Arvardan. How much I could do with him. And to be here—to be helpless . . .”

“What—what—what—” Arvardan popped wildly.

And even Pola’s face somehow gained interest. “Can you really?” she asked Schwartz.

He nodded at her. She had taken care of him, and now they would kill her. Yet she was a traitor.

Shekt was saying, “Arvardan, you remember the bacteriologist I told you about, the one who died as a result of the effects of the Synapsifier? One of the first symptoms of mental breakdown was his claim that he could read minds. And he
could
. I found that out before he died, and it’s been my secret. I’ve told no one—but it’s possible, Arvardan, it’s possible. You see, with the lowering of brain-cell resistance, the brain may be able to pick up the magnetic fields induced by the microcurrents of others’ thoughts and reconvert it into similar vibrations in itself. It’s the same principle as that of any ordinary recorder. It would be telepathy in every sense of the word—”

Schwartz maintained a stubborn and hostile silence as Arvardan turned slowly in his direction. “If this is so, Shekt, we might be able to use him.” The archaeologist’s mind was spinning wildly, working out impossibilities. “There may be a way out now. There
must
be a way out. For us and the Galaxy.”

But Schwartz was cold to the tumult in the Mind Touch he sensed so clearly. He said, “You mean by my reading their minds? How would that help? Of course I can do more than read minds. How’s that, for instance?”

It was a light push, but Arvardan yelped at the sudden pain of it.

“I did that,” said Schwartz. “Want more?”

Arvardan gasped, “You can do that to the guards? To the Secretary? Why did you let them bring you here? Great Galaxy, Shekt, there’ll be no trouble. Now, listen, Schwartz—”

“No,” said Schwartz, “
you
listen. Why do
I
want to get out? Where will I be? Still on this dead world. I want to go home, and I
can’t
go home. I want my people and my world, and I can’t have them. And I
want
to die.”

“But it’s a question of all the Galaxy, Schwartz. You can’t think of yourself.”

“Can’t I? Why not? Must I worry about your Galaxy now?
I hope your Galaxy rots and dies. I know what Earth is planning to do, and I am glad. The young lady said before she had chosen her side. Well, I’ve chosen my side, and my side is Earth.”

“What?”

“Why not? I’m an Earthman!”

An hour had passed since Arvardan
had first waded thickly out of unconsciousness to find himself slabbed like a side of beef awaiting the cleaver. And nothing had happened. Nothing but this feverish, inconclusive talk that unbearably passed the unbearable time.

None of it lacked purpose. He knew that much. To lie prone, helpless, without even the dignity of a guard, without even that much concession to a conceivable danger, was to become conscious of overwhelming weakness. A stubborn spirit could not survive it, and when the inquisitor
did
arrive there would be little defiance, or none, for him to be presented with.

Arvardan needed a break in the silence. He said, “I suppose this place is Spy-waved. We should have talked less.”

“It isn’t,” came Schwartz’s voice flatly. “There’s nobody listening.”

The archaeologist was ready with an automatic “How do
you
know?” but never said it.

For a power like that to exist! And not for him, but for a man of the past who called himself an Earthman and wanted to die!

Within optical sweep was only a patch of ceiling. Turning, he could see Shekt’s angular profile; the other way, a blank wall. If he lifted his head he could make out, for a moment, Pola’s pale, worn expression.

Occasionally there was the burning thought that he was a man of the Empire—of the
Empire,
by the Stars; a Galactic citizen—and that there was a particularly vile injustice in
his
imprisonment, a particularly deep impurity in the fact that he had allowed
Earthmen
to do this to him.

And that faded too.

They might have put him next to Pola . . . No, it was better this way. He was not an inspiring sight.

“Bel?” The word trembled into sound and was strangely sweet to Arvardan, coming as it did in this vortex of coming death.

“Yes, Pola?”

“Do you think they’ll be much longer?”

“Maybe not, darling. . . . It’s too bad. We wasted two months, didn’t we?”

“My fault,” she whispered. “My fault. We might have had these last few minutes, though. It’s so—unnecessary.”

Arvardan could not answer. His mind whirred in circles of thought, lost on a greased wheel. Was it his imagination, or did he feel the hard plastic on which he was so stiffly laid? How long would the paralysis last?

Schwartz
must
be made to help. He tried guarding his thoughts—knew it to be ineffective.

He said, “Schwartz—”

Schwartz lay there as helpless, and
with an added, un-calculated refinement to his suffering. He was four minds in one.

By himself he might have maintained his own shrinking eagerness for the infinite peace and quiet of death, fought down the last remnants of that love of life which even as recently as two days previously—three?—had sent him reeling away from the farm. But how could he? With the poor, weak horror of death that hung like a pall over Shekt; with the strong chagrin and rebellion of Arvardan’s hard, vital mind; with the deep and pathetic disappointment of the young girl.

He should have closed his own mind. What did he need to know of the sufferings of others? He had his own life to live, his own death to die.

But they battered at him, softly, incessantly—probing and sifting through the crannies.

And Arvardan said, “Schwartz,” then, and Schwartz knew that they wanted him to save them. Why should he? Why should he?

“Schwartz,” repeated Arvardan insinuatingly, “you can live a hero. You have nothing to die for here—not for those men out there.”

But Schwartz was gathering the memories of his own youth, clutching them desperately to his wavering mind. It was a queer amalgamation of past and present that finally brought forth his indignation.

But he spoke calmly, restrainedly. “Yes, I can live a hero—and a traitor. They want to kill me, those
men
out there. You call them men, but that was with your tongue; your mind called them something I didn’t get, but it was vile. And not because they were vile, but because they were Earthmen.”

“That’s a lie,” hotly.

“That is
not
a lie,” as hotly, “and everyone here knows that. They want to kill me, yes—but that is because they think I’m one of your kind of people, who can condemn an entire planet at a stroke and drench it with your contempt, choke it slowly with your insufferable superiority. Well, protect yourself against these worms and vermin who are somehow managing
to threaten their Godlike overlords. Don’t ask for the help of one of them.”

“You talk like a Zealot,” said Arvardan with amazement. “Why? Have
you
suffered? You were a member of a large and independent planet, you say. You were an Earthman when Earth was the sole repository of life. You’re one of
us,
man; one of the rulers. Why associate yourself with a desperate remnant? This is not the planet you remember. My planet is more like the old Earth than is this diseased world.”

Schwartz laughed. “I’m one of the rulers, you say? Well, we won’t go into that. It isn’t worth explaining. Let’s take you instead. You’re a fine sample of the product sent us by the Galaxy. You are tolerant and wonderfully bighearted, and admire yourself because you treat Dr. Shekt as an equal. But underneath—yet not so far underneath that I can’t see it plainly in your mind—you are uncomfortable with him. You don’t like the way he talks or the way he looks. In fact, you don’t like him, even though he is offering to betray Earth. . . . Yes, and you kissed a girl of Earth recently and look back upon it as a weakness. You’re ashamed of it—”

“By the Stars, I’m not. . . . Pola,” desperately, “don’t believe him. Don’t listen to him.”

Pola spoke quietly. “Don’t deny it, or make yourself unhappy about it, Bel. He’s looking below the surface to the residue of your childhood. He would see the same if he looked into mine. He would see things similar if he could look into his own in as ungentlemanly a fashion as he probes ours.”