Stars, Like Dust

by Isaac Asimov

  “On the other hand, if you ignore it, make no attack upon it, it fades away. It’s what I do, when I want to observe its effects on others, and it isn’t difficult.”

  He placed a little veined hand upon the instrument, fingering the knobs aimlessly. “Sometimes I think that if one could really study this thing, one could compose symphonies in a new medium; do things one could never do with simple sound or sight. I lack the capacit,y for it, I’m afraid.”

  Biron said abruptly, “I’d like to ask you a question.”

  “By all means.”

  “Why don’t you put your scientific ability to worth-while use instead of--”

  “Wasting it on useless toys? I don’t know. It may not be entirely useless. This is against the law, you know.”

  “What is?”

  “The visisonor. Also my spy devices. If the Tyranni knew, it could easily mean a death sentence.”

  “Surely, you’re joking.”

  “Not at all. It is obvious that you were brought up on a cattle ranch. The young people cannot remember what it was like in the old days, I see.” Suddenly his head was to one side and his eyes were narrowed to slits. He asked, “Are you opposed to Tyrannian rule? Speak freely. I tell you frankly that I am. I tell you also that your father was.”

  Biron said calmly, “Yes, I am.”

  “Why?”

  “They are strangers, outlanders. What right have they to rule in Nephelos or in Rhodia?”

  “Have you always thought that?” Biron did not answer.

  Gillbret sniffed. “In other words, you decided they were strangers and outlanders only after they executed your father, which, after all, was their simple right. Oh, look, don’t fire up. Consider it reasonably. Believe me, I’m on your side. But think! Your father was Rancher. What rights did his herdsmen have? If one of them had stolen cattle for his own use or to sell to others, what would have been his punishment? Imprisonment as a thief. If he had plotted the death of your father, for whatever reason, for perhaps a worthy reason in his own eyes, what would have been the result? Execution, undoubtedly. And what right has your father to make laws and visit punishment upon his fellow human beings? H e was their Tyranni.

  “Your father, in his own eyes and in mine, was a patriot. But what of that? To the Tyranni, he was a traitor, and they removed him. Can you ignore the necessity of self-defense? The Hinriads have been a bloody lot in their time. Read your history, young man. All governments kill as part of the nature of things.,

  “So find a better reason to hate the Tyranni. Don’t think it is enough to replace one set of rulers by another; that the simple change brings freedom.”

  Biron pounded a fist into his cupped palm. “All this objective philosophy is fine. It is very soothing to the man who lives apart. But what if it had been your father who was murdered?”

  “Well, wasn’t it? My father was Director before Hinrik, and he was killed. Oh, not outright, but subtly. They broke his spirit, as they are breaking Hinrik’s now. They wouldn’t have me as Director when my father died; I was just a little too unpredictable. Hinrik was tall, handsome, and, above all, pliant. Yet not pliant enough, apparently. They hound him continuously, grind him into a pitiful puppet, make sure he cannot even itch without permission. You’ve seen him. He’s deteriorating by the month now. His continual state of fear is pathetically psychopathic. But that--all that--is not why I want to destroy Tyrannian rule.”

  “No?” said Biron. “You have invented an entirely new reason?”

  “An entirely old one, rather. The Tyranni are destroying the right of twenty billion human beings to take part in the development of the race. You’ve been to school. You’ve learned the economic cycle. A new planet is settled”--he was ticking the points off on his fingers--”and its first care is to feed itself. It becomes an agricultural world, a herding world. It begins to dig in the ground for crude ore to export, and sends its agricultural surplus abroad to buy luxuries and machinery. That is the second step. Then, as population increases and foreign investments grow, an industrial civilization begins to bud, which is the third step. Eventually, the world becomes mechanized, importing food, exporting machinery, investing in the development of more primitive worlds, and so on. The fourth step.

  “Always the mechanized worlds are the most thickly populated, the most powerful, militarily--since war is a function of machines--and they are usually surrounded by a fringe of agricultural, dependent worlds.

  “But what has happened to us? We were at the third step, with a growing industry. And now? That growth has been stopped, frozen, forced to recede. It would interfere with Tyrannian control of our industrial necessities. It is a short-term investment on their part, because eventually we’ll become unprofitable as we become impoverished. But meanwhile, they skim the cream.

  “Besides, if we industrialized ourselves, we might develop weapons of war. So industrialization is stopped; scientific research is forbidden. And eventually the people become so used to that, they lack the realization even that anything is missing. So that you are surprised when 1 tell you that I could be executed for building a visisonor.

  “Of course, someday we will beat the Tyranni. It is fairly inevitable. They can’t rule forever. No one can. They’ll grow soft and lazy. They will intermarry and lose much of their separate traditions. They will become corrupt. But it may take centuries, because history doesn’t hurry. And when those centuries have passed, we will still all be agricultural worlds with no industrial or scientific heritage to speak of, while our neighbors on all sides, those not under Tyrannian control, will be strong and urbanized. The Kingdoms will be semicolonial areas forever. They will never catch up, and we will be merely observers in the great drama of human advance.”

  Biron said, “What you say is not completely unfamiliar.”

  “Naturally, if you were educated on Earth. Earth occupies a very peculiar position in social development.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Consider! All the Galaxy has been in a continuous state of expansion since the first discovery of interstellar travel. We have always been a growing society, therefore, an immature society. It is obvious that human society reached maturity in only one place and at only one time and that this was on Earth immediately prior to its catastrophe. There we had a society which had temporarily lost all possibility for geographical expansion and was therefore faced with such problems as over-population, depletion of resources, and so on; problems that have never faced any other portion of the Galaxy.

  “They were forced to study the social sciences intensively. We have lost much or all of that and it is a pity. Now here’s an amusing thing. When Hinrik was a young man, he was a great Primitivist. He had a library on things Earthly that was unparalleled in the Galaxy. Since he became Director, that’s gone by the board along with everything else. But in a way, I’ve inherited it. Their literature, such scraps as survive, is fascinating. It has a peculiarly introspective flavor to it that we don’t have in our extraverted Galactic civilization. It is most amusing.”

  Biron said, “You relieve me. You have been serious for so long that I began to wonder if you had lost your sense of humor.”

  Gillbret shrugged. “I am relaxing and it is wonderful. First time in months, I think. Do you know what it is to playa part? To split your personality deliberately for twenty-four hours a day? Even when with friends? Even when alone, so that you will never forget inadvertently? To be a dilettante? To be eternally amused? To be of no account? To be so effete and faintly ridiculous that you have convinced all who know you of your own worthlessness? An so that your life may be safe even though it means it has become barely worth living. But, even so, once in a while I can fight them.”

  He looked up, and his voice was earnest, almost pleading. “You can pilot a ship. I cannot. Isn’t that strange? You talk about my scientific ability, yet I cannot pilot a simple one-man space gig. But you can, and it follows then that you must leave Rhodia.”

  There was no mi
staking the pleading, but Biron frowned coldly. “Why?”

  Gillbret continued, speaking rapidly: “As I said, Artemisia and I have discussed you and arranged this. When you leave here, proceed directly to her room, where she is waiting for you. I have drawn a diagram for you, so that you won’t have to ask your way through the corridors.” He was forcing a small sheet of metallene upon Biron. “If anyone does stop you, say that you have been summoned by the Director, and proceed. There will be no trouble if you show no uncertainty--”

  “Hold on!” said Biron. He was not going to do it again. Jonti had chevied him to Rhodia and, consequently, succeeded in bringing him before the Tyranni. The Tyrannian Commissioner had then chevied him to Palace Central before he could feel his own secret way there and, consequently, subjected him, nakedly unprepared, to the whims of an unsteady puppet. But that was all! His moves, henceforward, might be severely limited, but, by Space and Time, they would be his own. He felt very stubborn about it.

  He said, “I’m here on what is important business to me, sir. I’m not leaving.”

  “What! Don’t be a young idiot.” For a moment the old Gillbret was showing through. “Do you think you will accomplish anything here? Do you think you will get out of the Palace alive if you let the morning sun rise? Why, Hinrik will call in the Tyranni and you will be imprisoned within twenty-four hours. He is only waiting this while because it takes him so long to make up his mind to do anything. He is my cousin. I know him, I tell you.”

  Biron said, “And if so, what is that to you? Why should you be so concerned about me?” He was not going to be chevied. He would never again be another man’s fleeing marionette.

  But Gillbret was standing, staring at him. “I want you to take me with you. I’m concerned about myself. I cannot endure life under the Tyranni any longer. It is only that neither Artemisia nor I can handle a ship or we would have left long ago. It’s our lives too.”

  Biron felt a certain weakening of his resolve. “The Director’s daughter? What has she to do with this?”

  “I believe that she is the most desperate of us. There is a special death for women. What should be ahead of a Director’s daughter who is young, personable, and unmarried, but to become young, personable, and married? And who, in these days, should be the delightful groom? Why, an old, lecherous Tyrannian court functionary who has buried three wives and wishes to revive the fires of his youth in the arms of a girl.”

  “Surely the Director would never allow such a thing!”

  “The Director will allow anything. Nobody waits upon his permission.”

  Biron thought of Artemisia as he had last seen her. Her hair had been combed back from her forehead and allowed to fall in simple straightness, with a single inward wave at shoulder level. Clear, fair skin, black eyes, red lips! Tall, young, smiling! Probably the description of a hundred million girls throughout the Galaxy. It would be ridiculous to let that sway him.

  Yet he said, “Is there a ship ready?”

  Gillbret’s face wrinkled under the impact of a sudden smile. But, before he could say a word, there came a pounding at the door. It was no gentle interruption of the photo.. beam, no tender of the weapon of authority.

  It was repeated, and Gillbret said, “You’d better open the door.”

  Biron did so, and two uniforms were in the room. The foremost saluted Gillbret with abrupt efficiency, then turned to Biron. “Biron Farrill, in the name of the Resident Commissioner of Tyrann and of the Director of Rhodia, I place you under arrest.”

  “On what charge?” demanded Biron.

  “On that of high treason.”

  A look of infinite loss twisted Gillbret’s face momentarily. He looked away. “Hinrik was quick this once; quicker than I had ever expected. An amusing thought!”

  He was the old Gillbret, smiling and indifferent, eyebrows a little raised, as though inspecting a distasteful fact with a faint tinge of regret.

  “Please follow me,” said the guard, and Biron was aware of the neuronic whip resting easily in the other’s hand.

  EIGHT:

  A Lady’s Skirts

  Biron’s throat was growing dry. He could have beaten either of the guards in fair fight. He knew that, and he itched for the chance. He might even have made a satisfactory showing against both together. But they had the whips, and he couldn’t have lifted an arm without having them demonstrate the fact. Inside his mind he surrendered. There was no other way.

  But Gillbret said, “Let him take his cloak, men.”

  Biron, startled, looked quickly toward the little man and retracted that same surrender. He knew he had no cloak.

  The guard whose weapon was out clicked his heels as a gesture of respect. He motioned his whip at Biron. “You heard milord. Get your cloak and snap it up!”

  Biron stepped back as slowly as he dared. He retreated to the bookcase and squatted, groping behind the chair for his nonexistent cloak. And as his fingers clawed at the empty space behind the chair, he waited tensely for Gillbret.

  The visisonor was just a queer knobbed object to the guards. It would mean nothing to them that Gillbret fingered and stroked the knobs gently. Biron watched the muzzle of the whip intensely and allowed it to fill his mind. Certainly nothing else he saw or heard (thought he saw or heard) must enter.

  But how much longer?

  The armed guard said, “Is your cloak behind that chair? Stand up!” He took an impatient step forward, and then stopped. His eyes narrowed in deep amazement and he looked sharply to his left.

  That was it! Biron straightened and threw himself forward and down. He clasped the guard’s knees and jerked. The guard was down with a jarring thud, and Biron’s large fist closed over the other’s hand, grasping for the neuronic whip it contained.

  The other guard had his weapon out, but for the moment it was useless. With his free hand, he was brushing wildly at the space before his eyes.

  Gillbret’s high-pitched laugh sounded. “Anything bothering you, Farrill?”

  “Don’t see a thing,” he grunted, and then, “except this whip I’ve got now.”

  “All right, then leave. They can’t do anything to stop you. Their minds are full of sights and sounds that don’t exist.” Gillbret skipped out of the way of the writhing tangle of bodies.

  Biron wrenched his arms free and heaved upward. He brought his arm down solidly just below the other’s ribs. The guard’s face twisted in agony and his body doubled convulsively. Biron rose, whip in hand.

  “Careful,” cried Gillbret.

  But Biron did not turn quickly enough. The second guard was upon him, bearing him down again. It was a blind attack. What it was that the guard thought he was grasping, it was impossible to tell. That he knew nothing of Biron at the moment was certain. His breath rasped in Biron’s ear and there was a continuous incoherent gurgle bubbling in his throat.

  Biron twisted in an attempt to bring his captured weapon into play and was frighteningly aware of the blank and empty eyes that must be aware of some horror invisible to anyone else.

  Biron braced his legs and shifted weight in an effort to break loose, quite uselessly. Three times he felt the guard’s whip flung hard against his hip, and flinched at the contact.

  And then the guard’s gurgle dissolved into words. He yelled, “I’ll get you all!” and the very pale, almost invisible shimmer of the ionized air in the path of the whip’s energy beam made its appearance. It swept wide through the air, and the path of the beam intersected Biron’s foot.

  It was as though he had stepped into a bath of boiling lead. Or as if a granite block had toppled upon it. Or as if it had been crunched off by a shark. Actually, nothing had happened to it physically. It was only that the nerve endings that governed the sensation of pain had been universally and maximally stimulated, Boiling lead could have done no more.

  Biron’s yell tore his throat raw, and he collapsed. It did not even occur to him that the fight was over. Nothing mattered but the ballooning pain.


  Yet, though Biron did not know it, the guard’s grip had relaxed, and minutes later, when the young man could force his eyes open and blink away the tears, he found the guard backed against the wall, pushing feebly at nothing with both hands and giggling to himself. The first guard was still on his back, arms and legs spread-eagled now. He was conscious, but silent. His eyes were following something in an erratic path, and his body quivered a little. There was froth on his lips.

  Biron forced himself to his feet. He limped badly as he made his way to the wall. He used the butt of the whip and the guard slumped. Then back to the first, who made no defense either, his eyes moving silently to the very moment of unconsciousness.

  Biron sat down again, nursing his foot. He stripped shoe and stocking from it, and stared in surprise at the unbroken skin. He chafed it and grunted at the burning sensation. He looked up at Gillbret, who had put down his visisonor and was now rubbing one lean cheek with the back of his hand.

  “Thank you,” said Biron, “for the help of your instrument.”

  Gillbret shrugged. He said, “There’ll be more here soon. Get to Artemisia’s room. Please! Quickly!”

  Biron realized the sense of that. His foot had subsided to a quiet quiver of pain, but it felt swollen and puffy. He put on a stocking and tucked the shoe under his elbow. He already had one whip, and he relieved the second guard of the other. He stuffed it precariously within his belt.

  He turned at the door and asked, with a sense of crawling revulsion, “What did you make them see, sir?”