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

meeting in the department store, he reported the case of fever and the local authorities at Chica were, praised be Earth, intelligent enough to co-operate quickly.

“The store was emptied, and the camouflage which they counted upon to hide their conversation was stripped from them. They were alone and very conspicuous in the store. Natter went further. He approached them and talked them into allowing him to escort Schwartz back to the Institute. They agreed. What could they do? . . . So that the day ended without a single word passing between Arvardan and Schwartz.

“Nor did he commit the folly of arresting Schwartz. The two are still in ignorance of their detection and will yet lead us to bigger game.

“And Natter went further still. He notified the Imperial garrison, and that is beyond praise. It presented Arvardan with a situation he could not possibly have counted upon. He must either reveal himself to be an Outsider and destroy his usefulness, which apparently depends upon conducting himself upon Earth as though he were an Earthman, or he must keep the fact secret and subject himself to whatever unpleasantness might result. He took the more heroic alternative, and even broke the arm of an officer of the Empire, in his passion for realism. That, at least, must be remembered in his favor.

“It is significant that his actions were as they were. Why should he, an Outsider, expose himself to the neuronic whip for an Earthgirl if the matter at stake was not supremely important?”

Both fists of the High Minister were on the desk before him. He glowered savagely, the long, smooth lines of his face crumpled in distress. “It is well for you, Balkis, from such meager details, to construct the spider web you do. It is skillfully done, and I feel that it is as you say. Logic leaves us no other alternative. . . . But it means that they are too close, Balkis. They are too close. . . . And they will have no mercy this time.”

Balkis shrugged. “They cannot be too close, or, in a case of such potential destructiveness for all the Empire, they would have already struck. . . . And their time is running short. Arvardan must still meet with Schwartz if anything is to be accomplished, and so I can predict for you the future.”

“Do so—do so.”

“Schwartz must be sent away now and events allowed to quiet down from their current high pitch.”

“But where will he be sent?”

“We know that too. Schwartz was brought to the Institute by a man, obviously a farmer. Descriptions reached us from both Shekt’s technician and from Natter. We went through the registration data of every farmer within sixty miles of Chica, and Natter identified one Arbin Maren as the man. The technician supported that decision independently. We investigated the man quietly, and it seems that he is supporting a father-in-law, a helpless cripple, in evasion of the Sixty.”

The High Minister pounded the table. “Such cases are entirely too frequent, Balkis. The laws must be tightened—”

“It is not now the point, Your Excellency. What is important is the fact that since the farmer is violating the customs, he can be blackmailed.”

“Oh . . .”

“Shekt, and his Outsider allies, need a tool for just such a case—that is, where Schwartz must remain in seclusion for a longer period than he can safely stay hidden in the Institute. This farmer, probably helpless and innocent, is perfect for the purpose. Well, he will be watched. Schwartz will never be out of sight. . . . Now, eventually another meeting between him and Arvardan will have to be arranged, and that time we will be prepared. Do you understand everything now?”

“I do.”

“Well, praise Earth. Then I will leave you now.” And, with a sardonic smile, he added, “With your permission, of course.”

And the High Minister, completely oblivious to the sarcasm, waved a hand in dismissal.

The Secretary, on his way to his own small office, was alone, and, when alone, his thoughts sometimes escaped from beneath his firm control and disported themselves in the secrecy of his mind.

They concerned themselves very little with Dr. Shekt, Schwartz, Arvardan—least of all with the High Minister.

Instead there was the picture of a planet, Trantor—from whose huge, planet-wide metropolis all the Galaxy was ruled. And there was the picture of a palace whose spires and sweeping arches he had never seen in reality; that no other Earthman had ever seen. He thought of the invisible lines of power and glory that swept from sun to sun in gathering strings, ropes, and cables to that central palace and to that abstraction, the Emperor, who was, after all, merely a man.

His mind held that thought fixedly—the thought of that power which could alone bestow a divinity during life—concentrated in one who was merely human.

Merely human! Like himself!

He could be—

11

The Mind That Changed

The coming of the change was dim in Joseph Schwartz’s mind. Many times, in the absolute quiet of the night—how much more quiet the nights were now; were they ever noisy and bright and clanging with the life of energetic millions?—in the new quiet, he traced it back. He would have liked to say that here, here was the moment.

There was first that old, shattering day of fear when he was alone in a strange world—a day as misty in his mind now as the memory of Chicago itself. There was the trip to Chica, and its strange, complicated ending. He thought of that often.

Something about a machine—pills he had taken. Days of recuperation and then the escape, the wandering, the inexplicable events that last hour in the department store. He couldn’t possibly remember that part correctly. Yet, in the two months since, how clear everything was, how unfaulted his memory.

Even then, things had begun to seem strange. He had been sensitive to atmosphere. The old doctor and his daughter had been uneasy, even frightened. Had he known that then? Or had it just been a fugitive impression, strengthened