Pebble in the Sky (29 page)

“I know.”

“But there’s no treason in that officer’s mind.”

“Well,” miserably, “then I guessed wrong. I’ll eat worms when Ennius comes. What about Balkis?”

“There’s no worry or fear in his mind; only hate. And now it’s mostly hate for us, for capturing him, for dragging him here. We’ve wounded his vanity horribly, and he intends to square it with us. I saw little daydream pictures in his mind. Of himself, singlehanded, preventing the entire Galaxy from doing anything to stop him even while we, with our knowledge, work against him. He’s giving us the odds, the trumps, and then he’ll smash us anyway and triumph over us.”

“You mean that he will risk his plans, his dreams of Empire, just to vent a little spite at us? That’s mad.”

“I know,” said Schwartz with finality. “
He
is mad.”

“And he thinks he’ll succeed?”

“That’s right.”

“Then we must have you, Schwartz. We’ll need your mind. Listen to me—”

But Shekt was shaking his head. “No, Arvardan, we couldn’t work that. I woke Schwartz when you left and we discussed the matter. His mental powers, which he can describe only dimly, are obviously not under perfect control. He can stun a man, or paralyze him, or even kill him. Better than that, he can control the larger voluntary muscles even against the subject’s will, but no more than that. In the case of the Secretary, he couldn’t make the man talk, the small mucles about the vocal cords being beyond him. He couldn’t co-ordinate motion well enough to have the Secretary drive a car; he even balanced him while walking only with difficulty. Obviously, then, we couldn’t control Ennius, for instance, to the point of having him issue an order, or write one. I’ve thought of that, you see . . .” Shekt shook his head as his voice trailed away.

Arvardan felt the desolation of futility descend upon him. Then, with a sudden pang of anxiety, “Where’s Pola?”

“She’s sleeping in the alcove.”

He would have longed to wake her—longed—Oh, longed a lot of things.

Arvardan looked at his watch. It was almost midnight, and there were only thirty hours left.

He slept for a while after that, then woke for a while, as it grew light again. No one approached, and a man’s very soul grew haggard and pale.

Arvardan looked at his watch. It was almost midnight, and there were only six hours left.

He looked about him now in a dazed and hopeless way. They were all here now—even the Procurator, at last. Pola was next to him, her warm little fingers on his wrist and that look of fear and exhaustion on her face that more than anything else infuriated him against all the Galaxy.

Maybe they all deserved to die, the stupid, stupid—stupid—

He scarcely saw Shekt and Schwartz. They sat on his left.
And there was Balkis, the damnable Balkis, with his lips still swollen, one cheek green, so that it must hurt like the devil to talk—and Arvardan’s own lips stretched into a furious, aching smile at the thought and his fists clenched and writhed. His own bandaged cheek ached less at the thought.

Facing all of them was Ennius, frowning, uncertain, almost ridiculous, dressed as he was in those heavy, shapeless, lead-impregnated clothes.

And he was stupid, too. Arvardan felt a thrill of hatred shoot through him at the thought of these Galactic trimmers who wanted only peace and ease. Where were the conquerors of three centuries back? Where? . . .

Six hours left—

Ennius had received the call from the Chica garrison some eighteen hours before and he had streaked half around the planet at the summons. The motives that led him to that were obscure but nonetheless forceful. Essentially, he told himself, there was nothing to the matter but a regrettable kidnaping of one of those green-robed curiosities of superstitious hagridden Earth. That, and these wild and undocumented accusations. Nothing, certainly, that the colonel on the spot could not have handled.

And yet there was Shekt—Shekt was in this—And not as the accused, but as an accuser. It was confusing.

He sat now facing them, thinking, quite conscious that his decision in this case might hasten a rebellion, perhaps weaken his own position at court, ruin his chances at advancement—As for Arvardan’s long speech just now about virus strains and unbridled epidemics, how seriously could he take it? After all, if he took action on the basis of it, how credible would the matter sound to his superiors?

And yet Arvardan was an archaeologist of note.

So he postponed the matter in his mind by saying to the Secretary, “Surely you have something to say in this matter?”

“Surprisingly little,” said the Secretary with easy confidence.
“I would like to ask what evidence exists for supporting the accusation?”

“Your Excellency,” said Arvardan with snapping patience, “I have already told you that the man admitted it in every detail at the time of our imprisonment day before yesterday.”

“Perhaps,” said the Secretary, “you choose to credit that, Your Excellency, but it is simply an additional unsupported statement. Actually the only facts to which outsiders can bear witness to are that
I
was the one violently taken prisoner, not they; that it was
my
life that was in peril, not theirs. Now I would like my accuser to explain how he could find all this out in the nine weeks that he has been on the planet, when you, the Procurator, in years of service here, have found nothing to my disadvantage?”

“There is reason in what the Brother says,” admitted Ennius heavily. “How
do
you know?”

Arvardan replied stiffly, “Prior to the accused’s confession I was informed of the conspiracy by Dr. Shekt.”

“Is that so, Dr. Shekt?” The Procurator’s glance shifted to the physicist.

“That is so, Your Excellency.”

“And how did you find out?”

Shekt said, “Dr. Arvardan was admirably thorough and accurate in his description of the use to which the Synapsifier was put and in his remarks concerning the dying statements of the bacteriologist, F. Smitko. This Smitko was a member of the conspiracy. His remarks were recorded and the recording is available.”

“But, Dr. Shekt, the dying statements of a man known to be in delirium—if what Dr. Arvardan said is true—cannot be of very great weight. You have nothing else?”

Arvardan interrupted by striking his fist on the arm of his chair and roaring, “Is this a law court? Has someone been guilty of violating a traffic ordinance? We have no time to weigh evidence on an analytical balance or measure it with micrometers.
I tell you we have till six in the morning, five and a half hours, in other words, to wipe out this enormous threat. . . . You knew Dr. Shekt previous to this time, Your Excellency. Have you known him to be a liar?”

The Secretary interposed instantly, “No one accused Dr. Shekt of deliberately lying, Your Excellency. It is only that the good doctor is aging and has, of late, been greatly concerned over his approaching sixtieth birthday. I am afraid that a combination of age and fear have induced slight paranoiac tendencies, common enough here on Earth. . . . Look at him! Does he seem to you quite normal?”

He did not, of course. He was drawn and tense, shattered by what had passed and what was to come.

Yet Shekt forced his voice into normal tones, even into calmness. He said, “I might say that for the last two months I have been under the continual watch of the Ancients; that my letters have been opened and my answers censored. But it is obvious that all such complaints would be attributed to the paranoia spoken of. However, I have here Joseph Schwartz, the man who volunteered as a subject for the Synapsifier one day when you were visiting me at the Institute.”

“I remember.” There was a feeble gratitude in Ennius’s mind that the subject had, for the moment, veered. “Is that the man?”

“Yes.”

“He looks none the worse for the experience.”

“He is far the better. The exposure to the Synapsifier was uncommonly successful, since he had a photographic memory to begin with, a fact I did not know at the time. At any rate, he now has a mind which is sensitive to the thoughts of others.”

Ennius leaned far forward in his chair and cried in a shocked amazement, “What? Are you telling me he reads minds?”

“That can be demonstrated, Your Excellency. But I think the Brother will confirm the statement.”

The Secretary darted a quick look of hatred at Schwartz, boiling in its intensity and lightninglike in its passage across his
face. He said, with but the most imperceptible quiver in his voice, “It is quite true, Your Excellency. This man they have here has certain hypnotic faculties, though whether that is due to the Synapsifier or not I don’t know. I might add that this man’s subjection to the Synapsifier was not recorded, a matter which you’ll agree is highly suspicious.”

“It was not recorded,” said Shekt quietly, “in accordance with my standing orders from the High Minister.” But the Secretary merely shrugged his shoulders at that.

Ennius said peremptorily, “Let us get on with the matter and avoid this petty bickering. . . . What about this Schwartz? What have his mind-reading powers, or hypnotic talents, or whatever they are, to do with the case?”

“Shekt intends to say,” put in the Secretary, “that Schwartz can read my mind.”

“Is that it? Well, and what is he thinking?” asked the Procurator, speaking to Schwartz for the first time.

“He’s thinking,” said Schwartz, “that we have no way of convincing you of the truth of our side of what you call the case.”

“Quite true,” scoffed the Secretary, “though that deduction scarcely calls for much mental power.”

“And also,” Schwartz went on, “that you are a poor fool, afraid to act, desiring only peace, hoping by your justice and impartiality to win over the men of Earth, and all the more a fool for so hoping.”

The Secretary reddened. “I deny all that. It is an obvious attempt to prejudice you, Your Excellency.”

But Ennius said, “I am not so easily prejudiced.” And then, to Schwartz, “And what am
I
thinking?”

Schwartz replied, “That even if I could see clearly within a man’s skull, I need not necessarily tell the truth about what I see.”

The Procurator’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “You are correct, quite correct. Do you maintain the truth of the claims put forward by Drs. Arvardan and Shekt?”

“Every word of it.”

“So! Yet unless a second such as you can be found, one who is not involved in the matter, your evidence would not be valid in law even if we could obtain general belief in you as a telepath.”

“But it is not a question of the law,” cried Arvardan, “but of the safety of the Galaxy.”

“Your Excellency”—the Secretary rose in his seat—“I have a request to make. I would like to have this Joseph Schwartz removed from the room.”

“Why so?”

“This man, in addition to reading minds, has certain powers of mental force. I was captured by means of a paralysis induced by this Schwartz. It is my fear that he may attempt something of the sort now against me, or even against you, Your Excellency, that forces me to the request.”

Arvardan rose to his feet, but the Secretary overshouted him to say, “No hearing can be fair if a man is present who might subtly influence the mind of the judge by means of admitted mental gifts.”

Ennius made his decision quickly. An orderly entered, and Joseph Schwartz, offering no resistance, nor showing the slightest sign of perturbation on his moonlike face, was led away.

To Arvardan it was the final blow.

As for the Secretary, he rose now and for the moment stood there—a squat, grim figure in green; strong in his self-confidence.

He began, in serious, formal style, “Your Excellency, all of Dr. Arvardan’s beliefs and statements rest upon the testimony of Dr. Shekt. In turn, Dr. Shekt’s beliefs rest upon the dying delirium of one man. And all this, Your Excellency,
all this,
somehow never reached the surface until after Joseph Schwartz was submitted to the Synapsifier.

“Who, then, is Joseph Schwartz? Until Joseph Schwartz appeared on the scene, Dr. Shekt was a normal, untroubled man. You yourself, Your Excellency, spent an afternoon with
him the day Schwartz was brought in for treatment. Was he abnormal then? Did he inform you of treason against the Empire? Of certain babblings on the part of a dying biochemist? Did he seem even troubled? Or suspicious? He says now that he was instructed by the High Minister to falsify the results of the Synapsifier tests, not to record the names of those treated. Did he tell you that then? Or only now,
after
that day on which Schwartz appeared?

“Again, who is Joseph Schwartz? He spoke no known language at the time he was brought in. So much we found out for ourselves later, when we first began to suspect the stability of Dr. Shekt’s reason. He was brought in by a farmer who knew nothing of his identity, or, indeed, any facts about him at all. Nor have any since been discovered.

“Yet this man has strange mental powers. He can stun at a hundred yards by thought alone—kill at closer range. I myself have been paralyzed by him; my arms and legs were manipulated by him; my mind might have been manipulated by him if he had wished.

“I believe, certainly, that Schwartz did manipulate the minds of these others. They say I captured them, that I threatened them with death, that I confessed to treason and to aspiring to Empire—Yet ask of them one question, Your Excellency. Have they not been thoroughly exposed to the influence of Schwartz, that is, of a man capable of controlling their minds?

“Is not perhaps Schwartz a traitor? If not, who
is
Schwartz?”

The Secretary seated himself, calm, almost genial.

Arvardan felt as though his brain had mounted a cyclotron and was spinning outward now in faster and faster revolutions.

What answer could one make? That Schwartz was from the past? What evidence was there for that? That the man spoke a genuinely primitive speech? But only he himself—Arvardan—could testify to that. And he, Arvardan, might well have a manipulated mind. After all, how could he tell his mind
had not been manipulated? Who
was
Schwartz? What had so convinced him of this great plan of Galactic conquest?