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

Grew paused. He might have been startled. “What is it you’re harping on today? Don’t you want to play? If it will make you happy, this is 827.” He added sarcastically, “G.E.” He stared frowningly at the board, then slammed his Queen’s Knight to Queen 5, where it made its first assault.

Schwartz dodged quickly, moving his own Queen’s Knight to Rook 4 in counterattack. The skirmish was on in earnest. Grew’s Knight seized the Bishop, which leaped upward in a bath of red fire to be dropped with a sharp click into the box where it might lie, a buried warrior, until the next game. And then the conquering Knight fell instantly to Schwartz’s Queen. In a moment of overcaution, Grew’s attack faltered and he moved his remaining Knight back to the haven of King 1, where it was relatively useless. Schwartz’s Queen’s Knight now repeated the first exchange, taking the Bishop and falling prey in its turn to the Rook’s Pawn.

Now another pause, and Schwartz asked mildly, “What’s G.E.?”

“What?” demanded Grew bad-humoredly. “Oh—you mean you’re still wondering what year this is? Of all the fool—Well, I keep forgetting you just learned to talk a month or so ago. But you’re intelligent. Don’t you really know? Well, it’s 827 of the Galactic Era. Galactic Era: G.E.—see? It’s 827 years since the foundation of the Galactic Empire; 827 years since the coronation of Frankenn the First. Now, please, it’s your move.”

But the Knight that Schwartz held was swallowed up in the grip of his hand for the moment. He was in a fury of frustration. He said, “Just one minute,” and put the Knight down on Queen 2. “Do you recognize any of these names? America, Asia, the United States, Russia, Europe—” He groped for identification.

In the darkness Grew’s pipe was a sullen red glow and the dim shadow of him hunched over the shining chessboard as if it had the less life of the two. He might have shaken his head curtly, but Schwartz could not see that. He didn’t have to. He sensed the other’s negation as clearly as though a speech had been delivered.

Schwartz tried again. “Do you know where I can get a map?”

“No maps,” growled Grew, “unless you want to risk your neck in Chica. I’m no geographer. I never heard of the names you mention, either. What are they? People?”

Risk his neck? Why that? Schwartz felt the coldness gather. Had he committed a crime? Did Grew know about it?

He asked doubtfully, “The sun has nine planets, hasn’t it?”

“Ten,” was the uncompromising answer.

Schwartz hesitated. Well, they might have discovered another that he hadn’t heard about. But then why should Grew have heard about it? He counted on his fingers, and then, “How about the sixth planet? Has it got rings?”

Grew was slowly moving the King’s Bishop’s Pawn forward two squares, and Schwartz instantly did the same.

Grew said, “Saturn, you mean? Of course it has rings.” He was calculating now. He had the choice of taking either the Bishop’s Pawn or the King’s Pawn, and the consequences of the choice were not too clear.

“And is there an asteroid belt—little planets—between Mars and Jupiter? I mean between the fourth and fifth planets?”

“Yes,” mumbled Grew. He was relighting his pipe and thinking feverishy. Schwartz caught that agonized uncertainty and was annoyed at it. To him, now that he was sure of Earth’s identity, the chess game was less than a trifle. Questions quivered along the inner surface of his skull, and one slipped out.

“Your book films are real, then? There are other worlds? With people?”

And now Grew looked up from the board, eyes probing uselessly in the darkness. “Are you serious?”

“Are there?”

“By the Galaxy! I believe you really don’t know.”

Schwartz felt humiliated in his ignorance. “Please—”

“Of course there are worlds. Millions of them! Every star you see has worlds, and most of those you don’t see. It’s all part of the Empire.”

Delicately, inside, Schwartz felt the faint echo of each of Grew’s intense words as they sparked directly from mind to mind. Schwartz felt the mental contacts growing stronger with the days. Maybe, soon, he could hear those tiny words in his mind even when the person thinking them wasn’t talking.

And now, for the first time, he finally thought of an alternative to insanity. Had he passed through time, somehow? Slept through, perhaps?

He said huskily, “How long since it’s all happened, Grew? How long since the time when there was only one planet?”

“What do you mean?” He was suddenly cautious. “Are you a member of the Ancients?”

“Of the what? I’m not a member of anything, but wasn’t Earth once the only planet? . . . Well, wasn’t it?”

“The Ancients say so,” said Grew grimly, “but who knows? Who really knows? The worlds up there have been existing all history long as far as I know.”

“But how long is that?”

“Thousands of years, I suppose. Fifty thousand, a hundred—I can’t say.”

Thousands of years! Schwartz felt a gurgle in his throat and pressed it down in panic. All that between two steps? A breath, a moment, a flicker of time—and he had jumped thousands of years? He felt himself shrinking back to amnesia. His identification of the Solar System must have been the result of imperfect memories penetrating the mist.

But now Grew was making his next move—he was taking the other’s Bishop’s Pawn, and it was almost mechanically that Schwartz noted mentally the fact that it was the wrong choice. Move fitted to move now with no conscious effort. His King’s Rook swooped forward to take the foremost of the now-doubled White Pawns. White’s Knight advanced again to Bishop 3. Schwartz’s Bishop moved to Knight 2, freeing itself for action. Grew followed suit by moving his own Bishop to Queen 2.

Schwartz paused before launching the final attack. He said, “Earth is boss, isn’t it?”

“Boss of what?”

“Of the Emp—”

But Grew looked up with a roar at which the chessmen quivered. “Listen, you, I’m tired of your questions. Are you