Pebble in the Sky

by Isaac Asimov

  “Hold your fire until I see Balkis. Have him sent in here.” He turned. “Dr. Arvardan, I will deal with you later.”

  Balkis was brought in, smiling. He bowed formally to Ennius, who yielded him the barest nod in return.

  “See here,” said the Procurator brusquely, “I am informed your men are packing the approaches to Fort Dibburn. This was not part of our agreement. . . . Now, we do not wish to cause bloodshed, but our patience is not inexhaustible. Can you disperse them peaceably?”

  “If I choose, Your Excellency.”

  “If you choose? You had better choose. And at once.”

  “Not at all, Your Excellency!” And now the Secretary smiled and flung out an arm. His voice was a wild taunt, too long withheld, now gladly released. “Fool! You waited too long and can die for that! Or live a slave, if you prefer—but remember that it will not be an easy life.”

  The wildness and fervor of the statement produced no shattering effect upon Ennius. Even here, at what was undoubtedly the profoundest blow of Ennius’s career, the stolidity of the Imperial career diplomat did not desert him. It was only that the grayness and deep-eyed weariness about him deepened.

  “Then I lost so much in my caution? The story of the virus—was true?” There was almost an abstract, indifferent wonder in his voice. “But Earth, yourself—you are all my hostages.”

  “Not at all,” came the instant, victorious cry. “It is you and yours that are my hostages. The virus that now is spreading through the Universe has not left Earth immune. Enough already saturates the atmosphere of every garrison on the planet, including Everest itself. We of Earth are immune, but how do you feel, Procurator? Weak? Is your throat dry? Your head feverish? It will not be long, you know. And it is only from us that you can obtain the antidote.”

  For a long moment Ennius said nothing, his face thin and suddenly incredibly haughty.

  Then he turned to Arvardan and in cool, cultured tones said, “Dr. Arvardan, I find I must beg your pardon for having doubted your word. Dr. Shekt, Miss Shekt—my apologies.”

  Arvardan bared his teeth. “Thank you for your apologies. They will be of great help to everybody.”

  “Your sarcasm is deserved,” said the Procurator. “If you will excuse me, I will return to Everest to die with my family. Any question of compromise with this—man is, of course, out of the question. My soldiers of the Imperial Procuracy of Earth will, I am sure, acquit themselves properly before their deaths, and not a few Earthmen will undoubtedly have time to light the way for us through the passages of death. . . . Good-by.”

  “Hold on. Hold on. Don’t go.” Slowly, slowly, Ennius looked up to the new voice.

  Slowly, slowly, Joseph Schwartz, frowning a bit, swaying a bit with weariness, stepped across the threshold.

  The Secretary tensed and sprang backward. With a sudden, wary suspicion, he faced the man from the past.

  “No,” he gritted, “you can’t get the secret of the antidote out of me. Only certain men have it, and only certain others are trained to use it properly. All these are safely out of your reach for the time it takes the toxin to do its work.”

  “They are out of reach now,” admitted Schwartz, “but not for the time it would take the toxin to do its work. You see, there is no toxin, and no virus to stamp out.”

  The statement did not quite penetrate. Arvardan felt a sudden choking thought enter his mind. Had he been tampered with? Had all this been a gigantic hoax, one that had taken in the Secretary as well as himself? If so, why?

  But Ennius spoke. “Quickly, man. Your meaning.”

  “It’s not complicated,” said Schwartz. “When we were here last night I knew I could do nothing by simply sitting and listening. So I worked carefully on the Secretary’s mind for a long time. . . . I dared not be detected. And then, finally, he asked that I be ordered out of the room. This was what I wanted, of course, and the rest was easy.

  “I stunned my guard and left for the airstrip. The fort was on a twenty-four-hour alert. The aircraft were fueled, armed, and ready for flight. The pilots were waiting. I picked one out—and we flew to Senloo.”

  The Secretary might have wished to say something. His jaws writhed soundlessly.

  It was Shekt who spoke. “But you could force no one to fly a plane, Schwartz. It was all you could do to make a man walk.”

  “Yes, when it’s against his will. But from Dr. Arvardan’s mind I knew how Sirians hated Earthmen—so I looked for a pilot who was born in the Sirius Sector and found Lieutenant Claudy.”

  “Lieutenant Claudy?” cried Arvardan.

  “Yes—Oh, you know him. Yes, I see. It’s quite clear in your mind.”

  “I’ll bet. . . . Go ahead, Schwartz.”

  “This officer hated Earthmen with a hate that’s difficult to understand, even for me, and I was inside his mind. He wanted to bomb them. He wanted to destroy them. It was only discipline that tied him fast and kept him from taking out his plane then and there.

  “That kind of a mind is different. Just a little suggestion, a little push, and discipline was not enough to hold him. I don’t even think he realized that I climbed into the plane with him.”

  “How did you find Senloo?” whispered Shekt.

  “In my time,” said Schwartz, “there was a city called St. Louis. It was at the junction of two great rivers. . . . We found Senloo. It was night, but there was a dark patch in a sea of radioactivity—and Dr. Shekt had said the Temple was an isolated oasis of normal soil. We dropped a flare—at least it was my mental suggestion—and there was a five-pointed building below us. It jibed with the picture I had received in the Secretary’s mind. . . . Now there’s only a hole, a hundred feet deep, where that building was. That happened at three in the morning. No virus was sent out and the universe is free.”

  It was an animal-like howl that emerged from the Secretary’s lips—the unearthly screech of a demon. He seemed to gather for a leap, and then—collapsed.

  A thin froth of saliva trickled slowly down his lower lip.

  “I never touched him,” said Schwartz softly. Then, staring thoughtfully at the fallen figure, “I was back before six, but I knew I would have to wait for the deadline to pass. Balkis would have to crow. I knew that from his mind, and it was from his own mouth, only, that I could convict him. . . . Now there he lies.”

  22

  The Best Is Yet to Be

  Thirty days had passed since Joseph Schwartz had lifted off an airport runway on a night dedicated to Galactic destruction, with alarm bells shrilling madly behind him and orders to return burning the ether toward him.

  He had not returned; not, at least, until he had destroyed the Temple of Senloo.

  The heroism was finally made official now. In his pocket he had the ribbon of the Order of the Spaceship and Sun, First Class. Only two others in all the Galaxy had ever gotten it nonposthumously.

  That was something for a retired tailor.

  No one, of course, outside the most official of officialdom, knew exactly what he had done, but that didn’t matter. Someday, in the history books, it would all become part of a bright and indelible record.

  He was walking through the quiet night now toward Dr. Shekt’s house. The city was peaceful, as peaceful as the starry glitter above. In isolated places on Earth bands of Zealots still made trouble, but their leaders were dead or captive and the moderate Earthmen, themselves, could take care of the rest.

  The first huge convoys of normal soil were already on their way. Ennius had again made his original proposal that Earth’s population be moved to another planet, but that was out. Charity was not wanted. Let Earthmen have a chance to remake their own planet. Let them build once again the home of their fathers, the native world of man. Let them labor with their hands, removing the diseased soil and replacing it with healthy, seeing the green grow where all had been dead and making the desert blossom in beauty once again.

  It was an enormous job; it could take a century—but what of that? Let th
e Galaxy lend machinery; let the Galaxy ship food; let the Galaxy supply soil. Of their incalculable resources, it would be a trifle—and it would be repaid.

  And someday, once again, the Earthman would be a people among peoples, inhabiting a planet among planets, looking all humanity in the eye in dignity and equality.

  Schwartz’s heart pounded at the wonder of it all as he walked up the steps to the front door. Next week he left with Arvardan for the great central worlds of the Galaxy. Who else of his generation had ever left Earth?

  And momentarily he thought of the old Earth, his Earth. So long dead. So long dead.

  And yet but three and a half months had passed . . .

  He paused, his hand on the point of signaling at the door, as the words from within sounded in his mind. How clearly he heard thoughts now, like tiny bells.

  It was Arvardan, of course, with more in his mind than words alone could ever handle. “Pola, I’ve waited and thought, and thought and waited. I won’t any more. You’re coming with me.”

  And Pola, with a mind as eager as his, yet with words of the purest reluctance, said, “I couldn’t, Bel. It’s quite impossible. My backwoods manners and bearing . . . I’d feel silly in those big worlds out there. And, besides, I’m only an Ear—”

  “Don’t say it. You’re my wife, that’s all. If anyone asks what and who you are, you’re a native of Earth and a citizen of the Empire. If they want further details, you’re my wife.”

  “Well, and after you make this address at Trantor to your archaeological society, what next?”

  “What next? Well, first we take a year off and see every major world in the Galaxy. We won’t skip one, even if we have to get on and off it by mail ship. You’ll get yourself an eyeful of the Galaxy and the best honeymoon that government money can buy.”

  “And then . . .”

  “And then it’s back to Earth, and we’ll volunteer for the labor battalions and spend the next forty years of our lives lugging dirt to replace the radioactive areas.”

  “Now why are you going to do that?”

  “Because”—there was the suspicion of a deep breath at this point in Arvardan’s Mind Touch—“I love you and it’s what you want, and because I’m a patriotic Earthman and have the honorary naturalization papers to prove it.”

  “All right . . .”

  And at this point the conversation stopped.

  But, of course, the Mind Touches did not, and Schwartz, in full satisfaction, and a little embarrassment, backed away. He could wait. Time enough to disturb them when things had settled down further.

  He waited in the street, with the cold stars burning down—a whole Galaxy of them, seen and unseen.

  And for himself, and the new Earth, and all those millions of planets far beyond, he repeated softly once more that ancient poem that he alone now, of so many quadrillions, knew:

  “Grow old along with me!

  The best is yet to be,

  The last of life, for which the first was made . . .”