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

amazement, “What? Are you telling me he reads minds?”

“That can be demonstrated, Your Excellency. But I think the Brother will confirm the statement.”

The Secretary darted a quick look of hatred at Schwartz, boiling in its intensity and lightninglike in its passage across his face. He said, with but the most imperceptible quiver in his voice, “It is quite true, Your Excellency. This man they have here has certain hypnotic faculties, though whether that is due to the Synapsifier or not I don’t know. I might add that this man’s subjection to the Synapsifier was not recorded, a matter which you’ll agree is highly suspicious.”

“It was not recorded,” said Shekt quietly, “in accordance with my standing orders from the High Minister.” But the Secretary merely shrugged his shoulders at that.

Ennius said peremptorily, “Let us get on with the matter and avoid this petty bickering. . . . What about this Schwartz? What have his mind-reading powers, or hypnotic talents, or whatever they are, to do with the case?”

“Shekt intends to say,” put in the Secretary, “that Schwartz can read my mind.”

“Is that it? Well, and what is he thinking?” asked the Procurator, speaking to Schwartz for the first time.

“He’s thinking,” said Schwartz, “that we have no way of convincing you of the truth of our side of what you call the case.”

“Quite true,” scoffed the Secretary, “though that deduction scarcely calls for much mental power.”

“And also,” Schwartz went on, “that you are a poor fool, afraid to act, desiring only peace, hoping by your justice and impartiality to win over the men of Earth, and all the more a fool for so hoping.”

The Secretary reddened. “I deny all that. It is an obvious attempt to prejudice you, Your Excellency.”

But Ennius said, “I am not so easily prejudiced.” And then, to Schwartz, “And what am I thinking?”

Schwartz replied, “That even if I could see clearly within a man’s skull, I need not necessarily tell the truth about what I see.”

The Procurator’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “You are correct, quite correct. Do you maintain the truth of the claims put forward by Drs. Arvardan and Shekt?”

“Every word of it.”

“So! Yet unless a second such as you can be found, one who is not involved in the matter, your evidence would not be valid in law even if we could obtain general belief in you as a telepath.”

“But it is not a question of the law,” cried Arvardan, “but of the safety of the Galaxy.”

“Your Excellency”—the Secretary rose in his seat—“I have a request to make. I would like to have this Joseph Schwartz removed from the room.”

“Why so?”

“This man, in addition to reading minds, has certain powers of mental force. I was captured by means of a paralysis induced by this Schwartz. It is my fear that he may attempt something of the sort now against me, or even against you, Your Excellency, that forces me to the request.”

Arvardan rose to his feet, but the Secretary overshouted him to say, “No hearing can be fair if a man is present who might subtly influence the mind of the judge by means of admitted mental gifts.”

Ennius made his decision quickly. An orderly entered, and Joseph Schwartz, offering no resistance, nor showing the slightest sign of perturbation on his moonlike face, was led away.

To Arvardan it was the final blow.

As for the Secretary, he rose now and for the moment stood there—a squat, grim figure in green; strong in his self-confidence.

He began, in serious, formal style, “Your Excellency, all of Dr. Arvardan’s beliefs and statements rest upon the testimony of Dr. Shekt. In turn, Dr. Shekt’s beliefs rest upon the dying delirium of one man. And all this, Your Excellency, all this, somehow never reached the surface until after Joseph Schwartz was submitted to the Synapsifier.

“Who, then, is Joseph Schwartz? Until Joseph Schwartz appeared on the scene, Dr. Shekt was a normal, untroubled man. You yourself, Your Excellency, spent an afternoon with him the day Schwartz was brought in for treatment. Was he abnormal then? Did he inform you of treason against the Empire? Of certain babblings on the part of a dying biochemist? Did he seem even troubled? Or suspicious? He says now that he was instructed by the High Minister to falsify the results of the Synapsifier tests, not to record the names of those treated. Did he tell you that then? Or only now, after that day on which Schwartz appeared?

“Again, who is Joseph Schwartz? He spoke no known language at the time he was brought in. So much we found out for ourselves later, when we first began to suspect the stability of Dr. Shekt’s reason. He was brought in by a farmer who knew nothing of his identity, or, indeed, any facts about him at all. Nor have any since been discovered.

“Yet this man has strange mental powers. He can stun at a hundred yards by thought alone—kill at closer range. I myself have been paralyzed by him; my arms and legs were manipulated by him; my mind might have been manipulated by him if he had wished.

“I believe, certainly, that Schwartz did manipulate the minds of these others. They say I captured them, that I threatened them with death, that I confessed to treason and to aspiring to Empire—Yet ask of them one question, Your Excellency. Have they not been thoroughly exposed to the influence of Schwartz, that is, of a man capable of controlling their minds?

“Is not perhaps Schwartz a traitor? If not, who is Schwartz?”

The Secretary seated himself, calm, almost genial.

Arvardan felt as though his brain had mounted a cyclotron and was spinning outward now in faster and faster revolutions.

What answer could one make? That Schwartz was from the past? What evidence was there for that? That the man spoke a genuinely primitive speech? But only he himself—Arvardan—could testify to that. And he, Arvardan, might well have a manipulated mind. After all, how could he tell his mind had not been manipulated? Who was Schwartz? What had so convinced