Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov (best novels of all time .txt) 📗

Lord Ennius, Procurator of Earth, had experienced no comparable difficulties in seeing Dr. Shekt, though he had experienced an almost comparable excitement. In his fourth year as Procurator, a visit to Chica was still an event. As the direct representative of the remote Emperor, his social standing was, legalistically, upon a par with viceroys of huge Galactic sectors that sprawled their gleaming volumes across hundreds of cubic parsecs of space, but, actually, his post was little short of exile.

Trapped as he was in the sterile emptiness of the Himalayas, among the equally sterile quarrels of a population that hated him and the Empire he represented, even a trip to Chica was escape.

To be sure, his escapes were short ones. They had to be short, since here at Chica it was necessary to wear lead-impregnated clothes at all times, even while sleeping, and, what was worse, to dose oneself continually with metaboline.

He spoke bitterly of that to Shekt.

“Metaboline,” he said, holding up the vermilion pill for inspection, “is perhaps a true symbol of all that your planet means to me, my friend. Its function is to heighten all metabolic processes while I sit here immersed in the radioactive cloud that surrounds me and which you are not even aware of.”

He swallowed it. “There! Now my heart will beat more quickly; my breath will pump a race of its own accord; and my liver will boil away in those chemical syntheses that, medical men tell me, make it the most important factory in the body. And for that I pay with a siege of headaches and lassitude afterward.”

Dr. Shekt listened with some amusement. He gave a strong impression of being nearsighted, did Shekt, not because he wore glasses or was in any way afflicted, but merely because long habit had given him the unconscious trick of peering closely at things, of weighing all facts anxiously before saying anything. He was tall and in his late middle age, his thin figure slightly stooped.

But he was well read in much of Galactic culture, and he was relatively free of the trick of universal hostility and suspicion that made the average Earthman so repulsive even to so cosmopolitan a man of the Empire as Ennius.

Shekt said, “I’m sure you don’t need the pill. Metaboline is just one of your superstitions, and you know it. If I were to substitute sugar pills without your knowledge, you’d be none the worse. What’s more, you would even psychosomaticize yourself into similar headaches afterward.”

“You say that in the comfort of your own environment. Do you deny that your basal metabolism is higher than mine?”

“Of course I don’t, but what of it? I know that it is a superstition of the Empire, Ennius, that we men of Earth are different from other human beings, but that’s not really so in the essentials. Or are you coming here as a missionary of the anti-Terrestrians?”

Ennius groaned. “By the life of the Emperor, your comrades of Earth are themselves the best such missionaries. Living here, as they do, cooped up on their deadly planet, festering in their own anger, they’re nothing but a standing ulcer in the Galaxy.

“I’m serious, Shekt. What planet has so much ritual in its daily life and adheres to it with such masochistic fury? Not a day passes but I receive delegations from one or another of your ruling bodies for the death penalty for some poor devil whose only crime has been to invade a forbidden area, to evade the Sixty, or perhaps merely to eat more than his share of food.”

“Ah, but you always grant the death penalty. Your idealistic distaste seems to stop short at resisting.”

“The Stars are my witness that I struggle to deny the death. But what can one do? The Emperor will have it that all the subdivisions of the Empire are to remain undisturbed in their local customs—and that is right and wise, since it removes popular support from the fools who would otherwise kick up rebellion on alternate Tuesdays and Thursdays. Besides, were I to remain obdurate when your Councils and Senates and Chambers insist on the death, such a shrieking would arise and such a wild howling and such denunciation of the Empire and all its works that I would sooner sleep in the midst of a legion of devils for twenty years than face such an Earth for ten minutes.”

Shekt sighed and rubbed the thin hair back upon his skull. “To the rest of the Galaxy, if they are aware of us at all, Earth is but a pebble in the sky. To us it is home, and all the home we know. Yet we are no different from you of the outer worlds, merely more unfortunate. We are crowded here on a world all but dead, immersed within a wall of radiation that imprisons us, surrounded by a huge Galaxy that rejects us. What can we do against the feeling of frustration that burns us? Would you, Procurator, be willing that we send our surplus population abroad?”

Ennius shrugged. “Would I care? It is the outside populations themselves that would. They don’t care to fall victim to Terrestrial diseases.”

“Terrestrial diseases!” Shekt scowled. “It is a nonsensical notion that should be eradicated. We are not carriers of death. Are you dead for having been among us?”

“To be sure,” smiled Ennius, “I do everything to prevent undue contact.”

“It is because you yourself fear the propaganda created, after all, only by the stupidity of your own bigots.”

“Why, Shekt, no scientific basis at all to the theory that Earthmen are themselves radioactive?”

“Yes, certainly they are. How could they avoid it? So are you. So is everyone on every one of the hundred million planets of the Empire. We are more so, I grant you, but scarcely enough to harm anyone.”

“But the average man of the Galaxy believes the opposite, I am afraid, and is not desirous of finding out by experiment. Besides—”

“Besides, you’re going to say, we’re different. We’re not human beings,