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

He slept in an open field that night, and the next morning, after two hours more, reached the outskirts of Chica.

Chica was only a village to Schwartz, and by comparison with the Chicago he remembered, the motion of the populace was still thin and sporadic. Even so, the Mind Touches were for the first time numerous. They amazed and confused him.

So many! Some drifting and diffuse; some pointed and intense. There were men who passed with their minds popping in tiny explosions; others with nothing inside their skulls but, perhaps, a gentle rumination on the breakfast just completed.

At first Schwartz turned and jumped with every Touch that passed, taking each as a personal contact; but within the hour he learned to ignore them.

He was hearing words now, even when they were not actually mouthed. This was something new, and he found himself listening. They were thin, eery phrases, disconnected and wind-whipped; far off, far off . . . And with them, living, crawling emotion and other subtle things that cannot be described—so that all the world was a panorama of boiling life visible to himself only.

He found he could penetrate buildings as he walked, sending his mind in as though it were something he held on a leash, something that could suck its way into crannies invisible to the eye and bring out the bones of men’s inner thoughts.

It was before a huge stone-fronted building that he halted, and considered. They (whoever they were) were after him. He had killed the follower, but there must be others—the others that the follower had wanted to call. It might be best for him to make no move for a few days, and how to do that best? . . . A job? . . .

He probed the building before which he had stopped. In there was a distant Mind Touch that to him might mean a job. They were looking for textile workers in there—and he had once been a tailor.

He stepped inside, where he was promptly ignored by everyone. He touched someone’s shoulder.

“Where do I see about a job, please?”

“Through that door!” The Mind Touch that reached him was full of annoyance and suspicion.

Through the door, and then a thin, point-chin fellow fired questions at him and fingered the classifying machine onto which he punched the answers.

Schwartz stammered his lies and truths with equal uncertainty.

But the personnel man began, at least, with a definite unconcern. The questions were fired rapidly: “Age? . . . Fifty-two? Hmm. State of health? . . . Married? . . . Experience? . . . Worked with textiles? . . . Well, what kind? . . . Thermoplastic? Elastomeric? . . . What do you mean, you think all kinds? . . . Whom did you work with last? . . . Spell his name. . . . You’re not from Chica, are you? . . . Where are your papers? . . . You’ll have to bring them here if you want action taken. . . . What’s your registration number? . . .”

Schwartz was backing away. He hadn’t foreseen this end when he had begun. And the Mind Touch of the man before him was changing. It had become suspicious to the point of single-trackedness, and cautious too. There was a surface layer of sweetness and good-fellowship that was so shallow, and which overlay animosity so thinly, as to be the most dangerous feature of all.

“I think,” said Schwartz nervously, “that I’m not suited for this job.”

“No, no, come back.” And the man beckoned at him. “We have something for you. Just let me look through the files a bit.” He was smiling, but his Mind Touch was clearer now and even more unfriendly.

He had punched a buzzer on his desk—

Schwartz, in a sudden panic, rushed for the door.

“Hold him!” cried the other instantly, dashing from behind his desk.

Schwartz struck at the Mind Touch, lashing out violently with his own mind, and he heard a groan behind him. He looked quickly over his shoulder. The personnel man was seated on the floor, face contorted and temples buried in his palms. Another man bent over him; then, at an urgent gesture, headed for Schwartz. Schwartz waited no more.

He was out on the street, fully aware now that there must be an alarm out for him with a complete description made public, and that the personnel man, at least, had recognized him.

He ran and doubled along the streets blindly. He attracted attention; more of it now, for the streets were filling up—suspicion, suspicion everywhere—suspicion because he ran—suspicion because his clothes were wrinkled and ill-fitting—

In the multiplicity of Mind Touches and in the confusion of his own fear and despair, he could not identify the true enemies, the ones in which there was not only suspicion but certainty, and so he hadn’t the slightest warning of the neuronic whip.

There was only that awful pain, which descended like the whistle of a lash and remained like the crush of a rock. For seconds he coasted down the slope of that descent into agony before drifting into the black.

13

Spider Web at Washenn

The grounds of the College of Ancients in Washenn are nothing if not sedate. Austerity is the key word, and there is something authentically grave about the clustered knots of novices taking their evening stroll among the trees of the Quadrangle—where none but Ancients might trespass. Occasionally the green-robed figure of a Senior Ancient might make its way across the lawn, receiving reverences graciously.

And, once in a long while, the High Minister himself might appear.

But not as now, at a half run, almost in a perspiration, disregarding the respectful raising of hands, oblivious to the cautious stares that followed him, the blank looks at one another, the slightly raised eyebrows.

He burst into the Legislative Hall by the private entrance and broke into an open run down the empty, step-ringing ramp. The door that he thundered at opened at the foot pressure of the one within, and the High Minister entered.

His Secretary scarcely looked up from behind his small, plain desk, where he hunched over a midget