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

ducked his head, as a sort of rudimentary gesture of respect. “Thank you. It’s like this, sir. We have a man about the farm, a distant—uh—relative. He helps, you understand—”

Arbin swallowed with difficulty, and Shekt nodded gravely.

Arbin continued. “He’s a very willing worker and a very good worker—we had a son, you see, but he died—and my good woman and myself, you see, need the help—she’s not well—we could not get along without him, scarcely.” He felt that somehow the story was a complete mess.

But the gaunt scientist nodded at him. “And this relative of yours is the one you wish treated?”

“Why, yes, I thought I had said that—but you’ll pardon me if this takes me some time. You see, the poor fellow is not—exactly—right in his head.” He hurried on, furiously. “He is not sick, you understand. He is not wrong so that he has to be put away. He’s just slow. He doesn’t talk, you see.”

“He can’t talk?” Shekt seemed startled.

“Oh—he can. It’s just that he doesn’t like to. He doesn’t talk well.”

The physicist looked dubious. “And you want the Synapsifier to improve his mentality, eh?”

Slowly, Arbin nodded. “If he knew a bit more, sir, why, he could do some of the work my wife can’t, you see.”

“He might die. Do you understand that?”

Arbin looked at him helplessly, and his fingers writhed furiously.

Shekt said, “I’d need his consent.”

The farmer shook his head slowly, stubbornly. “He won’t understand.” Then, urgently, almost beneath his breath, “Why, look, sir, I’m sure you’ll understand me. You don’t look like a man who doesn’t know what a hard life is. This man is getting old. It’s not a question of the Sixty, you see, but what if, in the next Census, they think he’s a half-wit and—and take him away? We don’t like to lose him, and that’s why we bring him here.

“The reason I’m trying to be secret-like is that maybe—maybe”—and Arbin’s eyes swiveled involuntarily at the walls, as if to penetrate them by sheer will and detect the listeners that might be behind—“well, maybe the Ancients won’t like what I’m doing. Maybe trying to save an afflicted man can be judged as against the Customs, but life is hard, sir. . . . And it would be useful to you. You have asked for volunteers.”

“I know. Where is your relative?”

Arbin took the chance. “Out in my biwheel, if no one’s found him. He wouldn’t be able to take care of himself if anyone has—”

“Well, we’ll hope he’s safe. You and I will go out right now and bring the car around to our basement garage. I’ll see to it that no one knows of his presence but ourselves and my helpers. And I assure you that you won’t be in trouble with the Brotherhood.”

His arm dropped in friendly fashion to Arbin’s shoulder, who grinned spasmodically. To the farmer it was like a rope loosening from about his neck.

Shekt looked down at the plump, balding figure upon the couch. The patient was unconscious, breathing deeply and regularly. He had spoken unintelligibly, had understood nothing. Yet there had been none of the physical stigmata of feeblemindedness. Reflexes had been in order, for an old man.

Old! Hmm.

He looked across at Arbin, who watched everything with a glance like a vise.

“Would you like us to take a bone analysis?”

“No,” cried Arbin. Then, more softly, “I don’t want anything that might be identification.”

“It might help us—be safer, you know—if we knew his age,” said Shekt.

“He’s fifty,” said Arbin shortly.

The physicist shrugged. It didn’t matter. Again he looked at the sleeper. When brought in, the subject had been, or certainly seemed, dejected, withdrawn, uncaring. Even the Hypno-pills had apparently aroused no suspicion. They had been offered him; there had been a quick, spasmodic smile in response, and he had swallowed them.

The technician was already rolling in the last of the rather clumsy units which together made up the Synapsifier. At the touch of a push button the polarized glass in the windows of the operating room underwent molecular rearrangement and became opaque. The only light was the white one that blazed its cold brilliance upon the patient suspended, as he was, in the multihundred-kilowatt diamagnetic field some two inches above the operating table to which he was transferred.

Arbin still sat in the dark there, understanding nothing, but determined in deadly fashion to prevent, somehow, by his presence, the harmful tricks he knew he had not the knowledge to prevent.

The physicists paid no attention to him. The electrodes were adjusted to the patient’s skull. It was a long job. First there was the careful study of the skull formation by the Ullster technique that revealed the winding, tight-knit fissures. Grimly, Shekt smiled to himself. Skull fissures weren’t an unalterable quantitative measure of age, but they were good enough in this case. The man was older than the claimed fifty.

And then, after a while, he did not smile. He frowned. There was something wrong with the fissures. They seemed odd—not quite . . .

For a moment he was ready to swear that the skull formation was a primitive one, a throwback, but then . . . Well, the man was subnormal in mentality. Why not?

And suddenly he exclaimed in shock, “Why, I hadn’t noticed! This man has hair on his face!” He turned to Arbin. “Has he always been bearded?”

“Bearded?”

“Hair on his face! Come here! Don’t you see it?”

“Yes, sir.” Arbin thought rapidly. He had noticed it that morning and then had forgotten. “He was born like that,” he said, and then weakened it by adding, “I think.”

“Well, let’s remove it. You don’t want him going around like a brute beast, do you?”

“No, sir.”

The hair came off smoothly at the application of a depilatory salve by the carefully gloved technician.

The technician said, “He has hair on his chest too, Dr. Shekt.”

“Great Galaxy,” said Shekt, “let me see! Why, the man is a rug! Well, let it be. It won’t show with a shirt, and I want to get on with the electrodes. Let’s have