Pebble in the Sky

by Isaac Asimov

  “They are but poor creatures,” said Flora, “these men of Earth. What should they have, if not their Faith? They are certainly robbed of everything else—of a decent world, of a decent life. They are even robbed of the dignity of acceptance on a basis of equality by the rest of the Galaxy. So they retire to their dreams. Can you blame them?”

  “Yes, I can blame them,” cried Ennius with energy. “Let them turn from their dreams and fight for assimilation. They don’t deny they are different. They simply wish to replace ‘worse’ by ‘better,’ and you can’t expect the rest of the Galaxy to let them do that. Let them abandon their cliquishness, their outdated and offensive ‘Customs.’ Let them be men, and they will be considered men. Let them be Earthmen and they will be considered only as such.

  “But never mind that. For instance, what’s going on with the Synapsifier? Now there’s a little thing that is keeping me from sleep.” Ennius frowned thoughtfully at the dullness which was overcoming the polished darkness of the eastern sky.

  “The Synapsifier? . . . Why, isn’t that the instrument Dr. Arvardan spoke of at dinner? Did you go to Chica to see about that?”

  Ennius nodded.

  “And what did you find out there?”

  “Why nothing at all,” said Ennius. “I know Shekt. I know him well. I can tell when he’s at ease; I can tell when he isn’t. I tell you, Flora, that man was dying of apprehension all the time he was speaking to me. And when I left he broke into a sweat of thankfulness. It is an unhappy mystery, Flora.”

  “But will the machine work?”

  “Am I a neurophysicist? Shekt says it will not. He called me up to tell me that a volunteer was nearly killed by it. But I don’t believe that. He was excited! He was more than that. He was triumphant! His volunteer had lived and the experiment had been successful, or I’ve never seen a happy man in my life. . . . Now why do you suppose he lied to me, then? Do you suppose that the Synapsifier is in operation? Do you suppose that it can be creating a race of geniuses?”

  “But then why keep it secret?”

  “Ah! Why? It isn’t obvious to you? Why has Earth failed in its rebellions? There are fairly tremendous odds against it, aren’t there? Increase the average intelligence of the Earthman. Double it. Triple it. And where may your odds be then?”

  “Oh, Ennius.”

  “We may be in the position of apes attacking human beings. What price numerical odds?”

  “You’re really jumping at shadows. They couldn’t hide a thing like that. You can always have the Bureau of Outer Provinces send in a few psychologists and keep testing random samples of Earthmen. Surely any abnormal rise in I.Q. could be detected instantly.”

  “Yes. I suppose so. . . . But that may not be it. I’m not sure of anything, Flora, except that a rebellion is in the cards. Something like the Uprising of 750, except that it will probably be worse.”

  “Are we prepared for it? I mean, if you’re so certain—”

  “Prepared?” Ennius’s laughter was a bark. “I am. The garrison is in readiness and fully supplied. Whatever can possibly be done with the material at hand, I have done. But, Flora, I don’t want to have a rebellion. I don’t want my Procuracy to go down in history as the Procuracy of the Rebellion. I don’t want my name linked with death and slaughter. I’ll be decorated for it, but a century from now the history books will call me a bloody tyrant. What about the Viceroy of Santanni in the sixth century? Could he have done other than he did, though millions died? He was honored then, but who has a good word for him now? I would rather be known as the man who prevented a rebellion and saved the worthless lives of twenty million fools.” He sounded quite hopeless about it.

  “Are you so sure you can’t, Ennius—even yet?” She sat down beside him and brushed her finger tips along the line of his jaw.

  He caught them and held them tightly. “How can I? Everything works against me. The Bureau itself rushes into the struggle on the side of the fanatics of Earth by sending this Arvardan here.”

  “But, dear, I don’t see that this archaeologist will do anything so awful. I’ll admit he sounds like a faddist, but what harm can he do?”

  “Why, isn’t it plain? He wants to be allowed to prove that Earth is the original home of Humanity. He wants to bring scientific authority to the aid of subversion.”

  “Then stop him.”

  “I can’t. There you have it, frankly. There’s a theory about that viceroys can do anything, but that just isn’t so. That man, Arvardan, has a writ of permission from the Bureau of Outer Provinces. It is approved by the Emperor. That supersedes me completely. I could do nothing without appealing to the Central Council, and that would take months. . . . And what reasons could I give? If I tried to stop him by force, on the other hand, it would be an act of rebellion; and you know how ready the Central Council is to remove any executive they think is overstepping the line, ever since the Civil War of the eighties. And then what? I’d be replaced by someone who wouldn’t be aware of the situation at all, and Arvardan would go ahead anyway.

  “And that still isn’t the worst, Flora. Do you know how he intends to prove the antiquity of Earth? Suppose you guess.”

  Flora laughed gently. “You’re making fun of me, Ennius. How should I guess? I’m no archaeologist. I suppose he’ll try to dig up old statues or bones and date them by their radioactivity or something like that.”

  “I wish it were like that. What Arvardan intends to do, he told me yesterday, is to enter the radioactive areas on Earth. He intends to find human artifacts there, show that they exist from a time previous to that at which Earth’s soil became radioactive—since he insists the radioactivity is man-made—and date it in that fashion.”

  “But that’s almost what I said.”

  “Do you know what it means to enter the radioactive areas? They’re Forbidden. It’s one of the strongest Customs these Earthmen have. No one can enter the Forbidden Areas, and all radioactive areas are Forbidden.”

  “But then that’s good. Arvardan will be stopped by the men of Earth themselves.”

  “Oh, fine. He’ll be stopped by the High Minister! And then how will we ever convince him that all this was not a Government-sponsored project, that the Empire is not conniving at deliberate sacrilege?”

  “The High Minister can’t be that touchy.”

  “Can’t he?” Ennius reared back and stared at his wife. The night had lightened to a slatiness in which she was just visible. “You have the most touching naïveté. He certainly can be that touchy. Do you know what happened—oh, about fifty years ago? I’ll tell you, and then you can judge for yourself.

  “Earth, it so happens, will allow no outward sign of Imperial domination on their world because of their insistence that Earth is the rightful ruler of the Galaxy. But it so happened that young Stannell II—the boy emperor who was somewhat insane and who was removed by assassination after a reign of two years; you remember!—ordered that the Emperor’s insignia be raised in their Council Chamber at Washenn. In itself the order was reasonable, since the insignia is present in every planetary Council Chamber in the Galaxy as a symbol of the Imperial unity. But what happened in this case? The day the insignia was raised, the town became a mass of riots.

  “The lunatics of Washenn tore down the insignia and took up arms against the garrison. Stannell II was sufficiently mad to demand that his order be complied with if it meant the slaughter of every Earthman alive, but he was assassinated before that could be put into effect, and Edard, his successor, canceled the original order. All was peace again.”

  “You mean,” said Flora incredulously, “that the Imperial insignia was not replaced?”

  “I mean that exactly. By the Stars, Earth is the only one of the millions and millions of planets in the Empire that has no insignia in its Council Chamber. This miserable planet we are on now. And if even today we were to try again, they would fight to the last man to prevent us. And you ask me if they’re touchy. I tell you they’re mad.”

&
nbsp; There was silence in the slowly graying light of dawn, until Flora’s voice sounded again, little and unsure of itself.

  “Ennius?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not just concerned about the rebellion that you’re expecting because of its effect on your reputation. I wouldn’t be your wife if I couldn’t half read your thoughts, and it seems to me that you expect something actually dangerous to the Empire. . . . You shouldn’t hide anything from me, Ennius. You’re afraid these Earthmen will win.”

  “Flora, I can’t talk about it.” There was something tortured in his eyes. “It isn’t even a hunch. . . . Maybe four years on this world is too long for any sane man. But why are these Earthmen so confident?”

  “How do you know they are?”

  “Oh, they are. I have my sources of information too. After all, they’ve been crushed three times. They can’t have illusions left. Yet they face two hundred million worlds, each one singly stronger than they, and they are confident. Can they really be so firm in their faith in some Destiny or some supernatural Force—something that has meaning only to them? Maybe—maybe—maybe—”

  “Maybe what, Ennius?”

  “Maybe they have their weapons.”

  “Weapons that will allow one world to defeat two hundred millions? You are panicky. No weapon could do that.”

  “I have already mentioned the Synapsifier.”

  “And I have told you how to take care of that. Do you know of any other type of weapon they could use?”

  Reluctantly, “No.”

  “Exactly. There isn’t any such weapon possible. Now I’ll tell you what to do, dear. Why don’t you get in touch with the High Minister and, in earnest of your good faith, warn him of Arvardan’s plans? Urge, unofficially, that he not be granted permission. This will remove any suspicion—or should—that the Imperial Government has any hand in this silly violation of their customs. At the same time you will have stopped Arvardan without having appeared in the mess yourself. Then have the Bureau send out two good psychologists—or, better, ask for four, so they’ll be sure to send at least two—and have them check on the Synapsifier possibility. . . . And anything else can be taken care of by our soldiers, while we allow posterity to take care of itself.

  “Now why don’t you sleep right here? We can put the chair back down, you can use my fur piece as a blanket, and I’ll have a breakfast tray wheeled out when you awake. Things will seem different in the sun.”

  And so it was that Ennius, after waking the night through, fell asleep five minutes before sunrise.

  Thus it was eight hours later that the High Minister first learned of Bel Arvardan and his mission from the Procurator himself.

  7

  Conversation with Madmen?

  As for Arvardan, he was concerned only with making holiday. His ship, the Ophiuchus, was not to be expected for at least a month, therefore he had a month to spend as lavishly as he might wish.

  So it was that on the sixth day after his arrival at Everest, Bel Arvardan left his host and took passage on the Terrestrial Air Transport Company’s largest jet Stratospheric, traveling between Everest and the Terrestrial capital, Washenn.

  If he took a commercial liner, rather than the speedy cruiser placed at his service by Ennius, it was done deliberately, out of the reasonable curiosity of a stranger and an archaeologist toward the ordinary life of men inhabiting such a planet as Earth.

  And for another reason too.

  Arvardan was from the Sirian Sector, notoriously the sector above all others in the Galaxy where anti-Terrestrian prejudice was strong. Yet he had always liked to think he had not succumbed to that prejudice himself. As a scientist, as an archaeologist, he couldn’t afford to. Of course he had grown into the habit of thinking of Earthmen in certain set caricature types, and even now the word “Earthman” seemed an ugly one to him. But he wasn’t really prejudiced.

  At least he didn’t think so. For instance, if an Earthman ever wished to join an expedition of his or work for him in any capacity—and had the training and the ability—he would be accepted. If there were an opening for him, that was. And if the other members of the expedition didn’t mind too much. That was the rub. Usually the fellow workers objected, and then what could you do?

  He pondered the matter. Now certainly he would have no objection to eating with an Earthman, or even bunking with one in case of need—assuming the Earthman were reasonably clean, and healthy. In fact, he would in all ways treat him as he would treat anyone else, he thought. Yet there was no denying that he would always be conscious of the fact that an Earthman was an Earthman. He couldn’t help that. That was the result of a childhood immersed in an atmosphere of bigotry so complete that it was almost invisible, so entire that you accepted its axioms as second nature. Then you left it and saw it for what it was when you looked back.

  But here was his chance to test himself. He was in a plane with only Earthmen about him, and he felt perfectly natural, almost. Well, just a little self-conscious.

  Arvardan looked about at the undistinguished and normal faces of his fellow passengers. They were supposed to be different, these Earthmen, but could he have told these from ordinary men if he had met them casually in a crowd? He didn’t think so. The women weren’t bad-looking . . . His brows knit. Of course even tolerance must draw the line somewhere. Intermarriage, for instance, was quite unthinkable.

  The plane itself was, in his eyes, a small affair of imperfect construction. It was, of course, atomic-powered, but the application of the principle was far from efficient. For one thing, the power unit was not well shielded. Then it occurred to Arvardan that the presence of stray gamma rays and a high neutron density in the atmosphere might well strike Earthmen as less important than it might strike others.

  Then the view caught his eyes. From the dark wine-purple of the extreme stratosphere, Earth presented a fabulous appearance. Beneath him the vast and misted land areas in sight (obscured here and there by the patches of sun-bright clouds) showed a desert orange. Behind them, slowly receding from the fleeing stratoliner, was the soft and fuzzy night line, within whose dark shadow there was the sparking of the radioactive areas.

  His attention was drawn from the window by the laughter among the others. It seemed to center about an elderly couple, comfortably stout and all smiles.

  Arvardan nudged his neighbor. “What’s going on?”

  His neighbor paused to say, “They’ve been married forty years, and they’re making the Grand Tour.”

  “The Grand Tour?”

  “You know. All around the Earth.”

  The elderly man, flushed with pleasure, was recounting in voluble fashion his experiences and impressions. His wife joined in periodically, with meticulous corrections involving completely unimportant points; these being given and taken in the best of humor. To all this the audience listened with the greatest attention, so that to Arvardan it seemed that Earthmen were as warm and human as any people in the Galaxy.

  And then someone asked, “And when is it that you’re scheduled for the Sixty?”

  “In about a month,” came the ready, cheerful answer. “Sixteenth November.”

  “Well,” said the questioner, “I hope you have a nice day for it. My father reached his Sixty in a damned pouring rain. I’ve never seen one like it since. I was going with him—you know, a fellow likes company on a day like that—and he complained about the rain every step of the way. We had an open biwheel, you see, and we got soaked. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘what are you complaining about, Dad? I’ve got to come back.’ ”

  There was a general howl of laughter which the anniversary couple were not backward in joining. Arvardan, however, felt plunged in horror as a distinct and uncomfortable suspicion entered his mind.

  He said to the man sharing his seat, “This Sixty, this subject of conversation here—I take it they’re referring to euthanasia. I mean, you’re put out of the way when you reach your sixtieth birthday, aren’t you?”

&
nbsp; Arvardan’s voice faded somewhat as his neighbor choked off the last of his chuckles to turn in his seat and favor the questioner with a long and suspicious stare. Finally he said, “Well, what do you think he meant?”

  Arvardan made an indefinite gesture with his hand and smiled rather foolishly. He had known of the custom, but only academically. Something in a book. Something discussed in a scientific paper. But it was now borne in upon him that it actually applied to living beings, that the men and women surrounding him could, by custom, live only to sixty.

  The man next to him was still staring. “Hey, fella, where you from? Don’t they know about the Sixty in your home town?”

  “We call it the ‘Time,’ ” said Arvardan feebly. “I’m from back there.” He jerked his thumb hard over his shoulder, and after an additional quarter minute the other withdrew that hard, questioning stare.

  Arvardan’s lips quirked. These people were suspicious. That facet of the caricature, at least, was authentic.

  The elderly man was talking again. “She’s coming with me,” he said, nodding toward his genial wife. “She’s not due for about three months after that, but there’s no point in her waiting, she thinks, and we might as well go together. Isn’t that it, Chubby?”

  “Oh yes,” she said, and giggled rosily. “Our children are all married and have homes of their own. I’d just be a bother to them. Besides, I couldn’t enjoy the time anyway without the old fellow—so we’ll just leave off together.”

  Whereupon the entire list of passengers seemed to engage themselves in a simultaneous arithmetical calculation of the time remaining to each—a process involving conversion factors from months to days that occasioned several disputes among the married couples involved.

  One small fellow with tight clothes and a determined expression said fiercely, “I’ve got exactly twelve years, three months, and four days left. Twelve years, three months, and four days. Not a day more, not a day less.”

  Which someone qualified by saying, reasonably, “Unless you die first, of course.”