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

insistence that Arvardan was silent before them.

It was Shekt who was looking at him now with a strange light in his tired eyes.

He asked softly, “Have you felt any bad effects as a result of the Synapsifier?”

Schwartz didn’t know the word but caught the meaning. They had operated, and on his mind. How much he was learning!

He said, “No bad effects.”

“But I see you learned our language rapidly. You speak it very well. In fact, you might be a native. Doesn’t it surprise you?”

“I always had a very good memory,” was the cold response.

“And so you feel no different now than before you were treated?”

“That’s right.”

Dr. Shekt’s eyes were hard now, and he said, “Why do you bother? You know that I’m certain you know what I’m thinking.”

Schwartz laughed shortly. “That I can read minds? Well, what of it?”

But Shekt had dropped him. He had turned his white, helpless face to Arvardan. “He can sense minds, Arvardan. How much I could do with him. And to be here—to be helpless . . .”

“What—what—what—” Arvardan popped wildly.

And even Pola’s face somehow gained interest. “Can you really?” she asked Schwartz.

He nodded at her. She had taken care of him, and now they would kill her. Yet she was a traitor.

Shekt was saying, “Arvardan, you remember the bacteriologist I told you about, the one who died as a result of the effects of the Synapsifier? One of the first symptoms of mental breakdown was his claim that he could read minds. And he could. I found that out before he died, and it’s been my secret. I’ve told no one—but it’s possible, Arvardan, it’s possible. You see, with the lowering of brain-cell resistance, the brain may be able to pick up the magnetic fields induced by the microcurrents of others’ thoughts and reconvert it into similar vibrations in itself. It’s the same principle as that of any ordinary recorder. It would be telepathy in every sense of the word—”

Schwartz maintained a stubborn and hostile silence as Arvardan turned slowly in his direction. “If this is so, Shekt, we might be able to use him.” The archaeologist’s mind was spinning wildly, working out impossibilities. “There may be a way out now. There must be a way out. For us and the Galaxy.”

But Schwartz was cold to the tumult in the Mind Touch he sensed so clearly. He said, “You mean by my reading their minds? How would that help? Of course I can do more than read minds. How’s that, for instance?”

It was a light push, but Arvardan yelped at the sudden pain of it.

“I did that,” said Schwartz. “Want more?”

Arvardan gasped, “You can do that to the guards? To the Secretary? Why did you let them bring you here? Great Galaxy, Shekt, there’ll be no trouble. Now, listen, Schwartz—”

“No,” said Schwartz, “you listen. Why do I want to get out? Where will I be? Still on this dead world. I want to go home, and I can’t go home. I want my people and my world, and I can’t have them. And I want to die.”

“But it’s a question of all the Galaxy, Schwartz. You can’t think of yourself.”

“Can’t I? Why not? Must I worry about your Galaxy now? I hope your Galaxy rots and dies. I know what Earth is planning to do, and I am glad. The young lady said before she had chosen her side. Well, I’ve chosen my side, and my side is Earth.”

“What?”

“Why not? I’m an Earthman!”

17

Change Your Side!

An hour had passed since Arvardan had first waded thickly out of unconsciousness to find himself slabbed like a side of beef awaiting the cleaver. And nothing had happened. Nothing but this feverish, inconclusive talk that unbearably passed the unbearable time.

None of it lacked purpose. He knew that much. To lie prone, helpless, without even the dignity of a guard, without even that much concession to a conceivable danger, was to become conscious of overwhelming weakness. A stubborn spirit could not survive it, and when the inquisitor did arrive there would be little defiance, or none, for him to be presented with.

Arvardan needed a break in the silence. He said, “I suppose this place is Spy-waved. We should have talked less.”

“It isn’t,” came Schwartz’s voice flatly. “There’s nobody listening.”

The archaeologist was ready with an automatic “How do you know?” but never said it.

For a power like that to exist! And not for him, but for a man of the past who called himself an Earthman and wanted to die!

Within optical sweep was only a patch of ceiling. Turning, he could see Shekt’s angular profile; the other way, a blank wall. If he lifted his head he could make out, for a moment, Pola’s pale, worn expression.

Occasionally there was the burning thought that he was a man of the Empire—of the Empire, by the Stars; a Galactic citizen—and that there was a particularly vile injustice in his imprisonment, a particularly deep impurity in the fact that he had allowed Earthmen to do this to him.

And that faded too.

They might have put him next to Pola . . . No, it was better this way. He was not an inspiring sight.

“Bel?” The word trembled into sound and was strangely sweet to Arvardan, coming as it did in this vortex of coming death.

“Yes, Pola?”

“Do you think they’ll be much longer?”

“Maybe not, darling. . . . It’s too bad. We wasted two months, didn’t we?”

“My fault,” she whispered. “My fault. We might have had these last few minutes, though. It’s so—unnecessary.”

Arvardan could not answer. His mind whirred in circles of thought, lost on a greased wheel. Was it his imagination, or did he feel the hard plastic on which he was so stiffly laid? How long would the paralysis last?

Schwartz must be made to help. He tried guarding his thoughts—knew it to be ineffective.

He said, “Schwartz—”

Schwartz lay there as helpless, and with an added, un-calculated refinement to his suffering. He was four minds in one.

By himself he might have