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

proverbs, for instance: “Politeness on Earth is like dryness in the ocean” or “An Earthman will give you anything as long as it costs nothing and is worth less.”

His arm had already broken the photoelectric beam that opened the front door when he heard the flurry of quick steps behind him and a hist of warning in his ear. A piece of paper was thrust in his hand, and when he turned, there was only a flash of red as a figure disappeared.

He was in his rented ground car before he unraveled the paper in his hand. Words were scrawled upon it:

“Ask your way to the Great Playhouse at eight this evening. Make sure you are not followed.”

He frowned ferociously at it and read it over five times, then stared all over it, as though expecting invisible ink to bound into visibility. Involuntarily, he looked behind him. The street was empty. He half raised his hand to throw the silly scrap out of the window, hesitated, then stuffed it into his vest pocket.

Undoubtedly, if he had had one single thing to do that evening other than what the scrawl had suggested, that would have been the end of it, and, perhaps, of several trillions of people. But, as it turned out, he had nothing to do.

And, as it turned out, he wondered if the sender of the note had been—

At eight o’clock he was making his slow way as part of a long line of ground cars along the serpentine way that apparently led to the Great Playhouse. He had asked only once, and the passerby questioned had stared suspiciously at him (apparently no Earthman was ever free of that all-pervasive suspicion) and had said curtly, “You just follow all the rest of the cars.”

It seemed that all the rest of the cars were indeed going to the Playhouse, for when he got there he found all being swallowed, one by one, into the gaping maw of the underground parking lot. He swung out of line and crawled past the Playhouse, waiting for he knew not what.

A slim figure dashed down from the pedestrian ramp and hung outside his window. He stared at it, startled, but it had the door open and was inside in a single gesture.

“Pardon me,” he said, “but—”

“Ssh!” The figure was hunched down low in the seat. “Were you followed?”

“Should I have been?”

“Don’t be funny. Go straight ahead. Turn when I tell you. . . . My goodness, what are you waiting for?”

He knew the voice. A hood had shifted down to the shoulders, and light brown hair was showing. Dark eyes were gazing at him.

“You’d better move on,” she said softly.

He did, and for fifteen minutes, except for an occasional muffled but curt direction, she said nothing. He stole glances at her and thought, with a sudden pleasure, that she was even prettier than he had remembered her. Strange that now he felt no resentment.

They stopped—or Arvardan did, at the girl’s direction—at the corner of an unpeopled residential district. After a careful pause the girl motioned him ahead once more and they inched down a drive that ended in the gentle ramp of a private garage.

The door closed behind them and the light in the car was the only source of illumination.

And now Pola looked at him gravely and said, “Dr. Arvardan, I’m sorry that I had to do this in order to speak to you privately. I know that I have no standing in your good opinion to lose—”

“Don’t think that,” he said awkwardly.

“I must think that. I want you to believe that I fully realize how small and vicious I was that night. I don’t have the proper words to apologize—”

“Please don’t.” He glanced away from her. “I might have been a little more diplomatic.”

“Well . . .” Pola paused a few moments to regain a certain minimal composure. “It’s not what I’ve brought you here for. You’re the only Outsider I’ve ever met that could be kind and noble—and I need your help.”

A cold pang shot through Arvardan. Was this what it was all about? He packed that thought into a cold “Oh?”

And she cried, “No,” in return. “It is not for me, Dr. Arvardan. It is for all the Galaxy. Nothing for myself. Nothing!”

“What is it?”

“First—I don’t think anyone followed us, but if you hear any noise at all, would you—would you”—her eyes dropped—“put your arms about me, and—and—you know.”

He nodded his head and said dryly, “I believe I can improvise without any trouble. Is it necessary to wait for noise?”

Pola reddened. “Please don’t joke about it, or mistake my intentions. It would be the only way of avoiding suspicion of our real intentions. It is the one thing that would be convincing.”

Arvardan said softly, “Are things that serious?”

He looked at her curiously. She seemed so young and so soft. In a way he felt it to be unfair. Never in his life did he act unreasoningly. He took pride in that. He was a man of strong emotions, but he fought them and beat them. And here, just because a girl seemed weak, he felt the unreasoning urge to protect her.

She said, “Things are that serious. I’m going to tell you something, and I know you won’t believe it at first. But I want you to try to believe it. I want you to make up your mind that I’m sincere. And most of all I want you to decide that you will stick with us after I tell you and see it through. Will you try? I’ll give you fifteen minutes, and if you think at the end of that time that I’m not worth trusting or bothering with, I’ll leave, and that’s the end of it.”

“Fifteen minutes?” His lips quirked in an involuntary smile, and he removed his wrist watch and put it before him. “All right.”

She clasped her hands in her lap and looked firmly ahead through the windshield that afforded a view only of the blank wall of the