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

Slowly, in one piece, he turned around. The small figure coming up to him waved its hand, but in the sunless time of day he could not make it out clearly. It approached, unhurrying. He waited.

“Hey, there. Glad to see you. It ain’t much fun beating it along the road without company. Mind if I go along with you?”

“Hello,” said Schwartz dully. It was the correct Mind Touch. It was the follower. And the face was familiar. It belonged to that hazy time, in Chica.

And then the follower gave every sign of recognition. “Say, I know you. Sure! . . . Don’t you remember me?”

It was impossible for Schwartz to say whether under ordinary conditions, in another time, he might or might not have believed the other to be sincere. But now how could he avoid seeing that thin, ragged layer of synthetic recognition that overlay the deep currents of a Touch that told him—shouted at him—that the little man with the very sharp eyes had known him from the start? Knew him and had a death weapon ready for him, if necessary.

Schwartz shook his head.

“Sure,” insisted the little man. “It was in the department store. I got you away from that mob.” He seemed to double up in artificial laughter. “They thought you had Radiation Fever. You remember.”

Schwartz did, too, vaguely—dimly. A man like this, for a few minutes, and a crowd, which had first stopped them and then parted for them.

“Yes,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.” It wasn’t very brilliant conversation, but Schwartz could do no better, and the little man did not seem to mind.

“My name’s Natter,” he said, shoving out a limp hand at the other. “I didn’t get a chance to talk much with you that first time—overlooked it in the crisis of things, you might say—but I’m sure glad to get a second chance. . . . Let’s have the mitt.”

“I’m Schwartz.” And he touched palms with the other, briefly.

“How come you’re walking?” asked Natter. “Going somewheres?”

Schwartz shrugged. “Just walking.”

“A hiker, huh? That’s for me too. All year round I’m on the road—puts the old kibosh on the grummlies.”

“What?”

“You know. Makes you full of life. You get to breathe that air and feel the blood pumping, hey? . . . Walked too far this time. Hate to get back after night by my lonesome. Always glad for the company. Where you going?”

It was the second time Natter had asked the question, and the Mind Touch made plain the importance attached to it. Schwartz wondered how long he could evade the issue. There was a questing anxiety in the follower’s mind. And no lie would do. Schwartz didn’t know enough about this new world to lie.

He said, “I’m going to the hospital.”

“The hospital? What hospital?”

“I was there when I was in Chica.”

“You mean the Institute. Ain’t that it? That’s where I took you before, that time in the department store, I mean.” Anxiety and increasing tension.

“To Dr. Shekt,” said Schwartz. “Do you know him?”

“I’ve heard of him. He’s a big shot. Are you sick?”

“No, but I’m supposed to report once in a while.” Did that sound reasonable?

“Walking?” said Natter. “Doesn’t he send a car for you?” Apparently it did not seem reasonable.

Schwartz said nothing now—a clammy silence.

Natter, however, was buoyant. “Look here, chum, soon’s I pass a public Communi-wave, I’ll order a taxi from the city. It’ll meet us on the road.”

“A Communi-wave?”

“Sure. They have ’em all along the highway. See, there’s one.”

He took a step away from Schwartz, and the latter found himself in a sudden shriek. “Stop! Don’t move.”

Natter stopped. There was a queer coldness in his expression as he turned. “What’s eating you, bud?”

Schwartz found the new language almost inadequate for the rapidity with which he hurled words at the other. “I’m tired of this acting. I know you, and I know what you’re going to do. You’re going to call somebody to tell them I’m going to Dr. Shekt. They’ll be ready for me in the city and they’ll send out a car to pick me up. And you’ll kill me if I try to get away.”

There was a frown on Natter’s face. He muttered, “You’re sure right on the gizzbo with that last—” It was not intended for Schwartz’s ears, nor did it reach them, but the words rested lightly on the very surface of his Mind Touch.

Aloud he said, “Mister, you’ve got me confused. You’re shoving a fast one right past my nose.” But he was making room, and his hand was drifting toward his hip.

And Schwartz lost control of himself. He waved his arms in a wild fury. “Leave me alone, why don’t you? What have I done to you? . . . Go away! Go away!”

He ended in a voice-cracked shriek, his forehead ridged with hate and fear of the creature who stalked him and whose mind was so alive with enmity. His own emotions heaved and thrust at the Mind Touch, attempting to evade the clingingness of it, rid itself of the breath of it—

And it was gone. Suddenly and completely gone. There had been the momentary consciousness of overwhelming pain—not in himself, but in the other—then nothing. No Mind Touch. It had dropped away like the grip of a fist growing lax and dead.

Natter was a crumpled smear on the darkening highway. Schwartz crept toward him. Natter was a little man, easy to turn over. The look of agony on his face might have been stamped on, deeply, deeply. The lines remained, did not relax. Schwartz felt for the heartbeat and did not find it.

He straightened in a deluge of self-horror.

He had murdered a man!

An then a deluge of amazement—

Without touching him! He had killed this man just by hating him, by striking somehow at the Mind Touch.

What other powers did he have?

He made a quick decision. He searched the other’s pockets and found money. Good! He could use that. Then he dragged the corpse into the fields and let the high grass cover it.

He walked on for two