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

Field-shielded Televisor, listening intently and allowing his eyes to rove over a quire or so of official-looking communications that piled high before him.

The High Minister rapped sharply on the desk. “What is this? What is going on?”

The Secretary’s eyes flicked coldly at him, and the Televisor was put to one side. “Greetings, Your Excellency.”

“Greet me no greetings!” retorted the High Minister impatiently. “I want to know what is going on.”

“In a sentence, our man has escaped.”

“You mean the man who was treated by Shekt with the Synapsifier—the Outsider—the spy—the one on the farm outside Chica—”

It is uncertain how many qualifications the High Minister, in his anxiety, might have rattled out had not the Secretary interrupted with an indifferent “Exactly.”

“Why was I not informed? Why am I never informed?”

“Immediate action was necessary and you were engaged. I substituted, therefore, to the best of my ability.”

“Yes, you are careful about my engagements when you wish to do without me. Now, I’ll not have it. I will not permit myself to be by-passed and sidetracked. I will not—”

“We delay,” was the reply at ordinary speaking volume, and the High Minister’s half shout faded. He coughed, hovered uncertainly at further speech, then said mildly:

“What are the details, Balkis?”

“Scarcely any. After two months of patient waiting, with nothing to show for it, this man Schwartz left—was followed—and was lost.”

“How lost?”

“We are not sure, but there is a further fact. Our agent, Natter, missed three reporting periods last night. His alternates set out after him along the highway toward Chica and found him at dawn. He was in a ditch at the side of the highway—quite dead.”

The High Minister paled. “The Outsider had killed him?”

“Presumably, though we cannot say certainly. There were no visible signs of violence other than a look of agony on the dead face. There will be an autopsy, of course. He might have died of a stroke just at that inconvenient moment.”

“That would be an incredible coincidence.”

“So I think,” was the cool response, “but if Schwartz killed him, it makes subsequent events puzzling. You see, Your Excellency, it seemed quite obvious from our previous analysis that Schwartz would make for Chica in order to see Shekt, and Natter was found dead on the highway between the Maren farm and Chica. We therefore sent out an alarm to that city three hours ago and the man was caught.”

“Schwartz?” incredulously.

“Certainly.”

“Why didn’t you say that immediately?”

Balkis shrugged. “Your Excellency, there is more important work to be done. I said that Schwartz was in our hands. Well, he was caught quickly and easily, and that fact does not seem to me to jibe very well with the death of Natter. How could he be at once so clever as to detect and kill Natter—a most capable man—and so stupid as to enter Chica the very next morning and openly enter a factory, without disguise, to find a job?”

“Is that what he did?”

“That’s what he did. . . . There are two possible thoughts that this gives rise to, therefore. Either he has already transmitted such information as he has to Shekt or Arvardan, and has now let himself be caught in order to divert out attention, or else other agents are involved, whom we have not detected and whom he is now covering. In either case, we must not be overconfident.”

“I don’t know,” said the High Minister helplessly, his handsome face twisted into anxious lines. “It gets too deep for me.”

Balkis smiled with more than a trace of contempt and volunteered a statement. “You have an appointment four hours from now with Professor Bel Arvardan.”

“I have? Why? What am I to say to him? I don’t want to see him.”

“Relax. You must see him, Your Excellency. It seems obvious to me that since the date of commencement of his fictitious expedition is approaching, he must play out the game by asking you for permission to investigate the Forbidden Areas. Ennius warned us he would, and Ennius must know exactly the details of this comedy. I suppose that you are able to return him froth for froth in this matter and to counter pretense with pretense.”

The High Minister bowed his head. “Well, I shall try.”

Bel Arvardan arrived in good time, and was able to look about him. To a man well acquainted with the architectural triumphs of all the Galaxy, the College of Ancients could scarcely seem more than a brooding block of steel-ribbed granite, fashioned in an archaic style. To one who was an archaeologist as well, it might signify, in its gloomy, nearly savage austerity, the proper home of a gloomy, nearly savage way of life. Its very primitiveness marked the turning back of eyes to the far past.

And Arvardan’s thoughts slipped away once again. His two-month tour about Earth’s western continents had proven not quite—amusing. That first day had ruined things. He found himself thinking back to that day at Chica.

He was instantly angry with himself for thinking about it again. She had been rude, egregiously ungrateful, a common Earthgirl. Why should he feel guilty? And yet . . .

Had he made allowances for her shock at discovering him to be an Outsider, like that officer who had insulted her and whose arrogant brutality he had repaid with a broken arm? After all, how could he know how much she had already suffered at the hands of Outsiders? And then to find out, like that, without any softening of the blow, that he was one.

If he had been more patient . . . Why had he broken it off so brutally? He didn’t even remember her name. It was Pola something. Strange! His memory was ordinarily better than that. Was it an unconscious effort to forget?

Well, that made sense. Forget! What was there to remember, anyway? An Earthgirl. A common Earthgirl.

She was a nurse in a hospital. Suppose he tried to locate the hospital. It had been just a vague blot in the night when he parted from her, but it must be in the neighborhood of that Foodomat.

He