The Procurator’s palace was scarcely less a fairyland at night. The evening flowers (none native to Earth) opened their fat white blossoms in festoons that extended their delicate fragrance to the very walls of the palace. Under the polarized light of the moon, the artificial silicate strands woven cleverly into the stainless aluminum alloy of the palace structure sparked a faint violet against the metallic sheen of their surroundings.
Ennius looked at the stars. They were the real beauty to him, since they were the Empire.
Earth’s sky was of an intermediate type. It had not the unbearable glory of the skies of the Central Worlds, where star elbowed star in such blinding competition that the black of night was nearly lost in a coruscant explosion of light. Nor did it possess the lonely grandeur of the skies of the Periphery, where the unrelieved blackness was broken at great intervals by the dimness of an orphaned star--with the milky lens shape of the Galaxy spreading across the sky, the individual stars thereof lost in diamond dust.
On Earth two thousand stars were visible at one time. Ennius could see Sirius, round which circled one of the ten most populous planets of the Empire. There was Arcturus, capital of the sector of his birth. The sun of Trantor, the Empire’s capital world, was lost somewhere in the Milky Way. Even under a telescope it was just part of a general blaze.
He felt a soft hand on his shoulder, and his own went up to meet it.
“Flora?” he whispered.
“It had better be,” came his wife’s half-amused voice. “Do you know that you haven’t slept since you returned from Chica? Do you know further that it is almost dawn?... Shall I have breakfast sent out here?”
“Why not?” He smiled fondly up at her and felt in the darkness for the brown ringlet that hovered next her cheek. He tugged at it. “And must you wait up with me and shadow the most beautiful eyes in the Galaxy?”
She freed her hair and replied gently, “You are trying to shadow them yourself with your sugar syrup, but I’ve seen you this way before and am not in the tiniest hoodwinked. What worries you tonight, dear?”
“Why, that which always worries me. That I have buried you here uselessly, when there’s not a viceregal society in the Galaxy you could not grace.”
“Besides that! Come, Ennius, I will not be played with.”
Ennius shook his head in the shadows and said, “I don’t know. I think an accumulation of little puzzling things has finally sickened me. There’s the matter of Shekt and his Synapsifier. And there’s this archaeologist, Arvardan, and his theories. And other things, other things. Oh, what’s the use, Flora--I’m doing no good here at all.”
“Surely this time of the morning isn’t quite the moment for putting your morale to the test.”
But Ennius was speaking through clenched teeth. “These Earthmen! Why should so few be such a burden to the Empire? Do you remember, Flora, when I was first appointed to the Procuracy, the warnings I received from old Faroul, the last Procurator, as to the difficulties of the position?... He was right. If anything, he did not go far enough in his warnings. Yet I laughed at him at the time and privately thought him the victim of his own senile incapacity. I was young, active, daring. I would do better...” He paused, lost in himself, then continued, apparently at a disconnected point. “Yet so many independent pieces of evidence seem to show that these Earthmen are once again being misled into dreams of rebellion.”
He looked up at his wife. “Do you know that it is the doctrine of the Society of Ancients that Earth was at one time the sole home of Humanity, that it is the appointed center of the race, the true representation of Man?”
“Why, so Arvardan told us two evenings ago, didn’t he?” It was always best at these times to let him talk himself out.
“Yes, so he did,” said Ennius gloomily, “but even so, he spoke only of the past. The Society of Ancients speaks of the future as well. Earth, once more, they say, will be the center of the race. They even claim that this mythical Second Kingdom of Earth is at hand; they warn that the Empire will be destroyed in a general catastrophe which will leave Earth triumphant in all its pristine glory”--and his voice shook--“as a backward, barbarous, soil-sick world. Three times before this same nonsense has raised rebellion, and the destruction brought down upon Earth has never served in the least to shake their stupid faith.”
“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 manmade--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 a 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.”
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 he rebellion that you’re expecting because of its effect on our 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.
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 had 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?”
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.”
“Nonsense,” was the immediate reply. “I have no intention of dying first. Do I look like the sort of man who would die first? I’m living twelve years, three months, and four days, and there’s not a man here with the hardihood to deny it.” And he looked very fierce indeed.
A slim young man took a long, dandyish cigarette from between his lips to say darkly, “It’s well for them that can calculate it out to a day. There’s many a man living past his time.”
“Ah, surely,” said another, and there was a general nod and a rather inchoate air of indignation arose.
“Not,” continued the young man, interspersing his cigarette puffs with a complicated flourish intended to remove the ash, “that I see any objection to a man--or woman--wishing, to continue on past their birthday to the next Council day, particularly if they have some business to clean up. It’s these sneaks and parasites that try to go past to the next Census, eating the food of the next generation--” He seemed to have a personal grievance there.
Arvardan interposed gently, “But aren’t the ages of everyone registered? They can’t very well pass their birthday too far, can they?”
A general silence followed, admixtured not a little with contempt at the foolish idealism expressed. Someone said at last, in diplomatic fashion, as though attempting to conclude the subject, “Well, there isn’t much point living past the Sixty, I suppose.”
“Not if you’re a farmer,” shot back another vigorously. “ After you’ve been working in the fields for half a century, you’d be crazy not to be glad to call it off. How about the administrators, though, and the businessmen?”
Finally the elderly man, whose fortieth wedding anniversary had begun the conversation, ventured his own opinion, emboldened perhaps by the fact that, as a current victim of the Sixty, he had nothing to lose.
“As to that,” he said, “it depends on who you know.” And he winked with a sly innuendo. “I knew a man once who was sixty the year after the 810 Census and lived till the 820 Census caught him. He was sixty-nine before he left off. Sixty-nine! Think of that!”
“How did he manage that?”
“He had a little money, and his brother was one of the Society of Ancients. There’s nothing you can’t do if you’ve got that combination.”
There was general approval of that sentiment.
“Listen,” said the young man with the cigarette emphatically, “I had an uncle who lived a year past--just a year. He was just one of these selfish guys who don’t feel like going, you know. A lot he cared for the rest of us....And I didn’t know about it, you see, or I would have reported him, believe me, because a guy should go when it’s his time. It’s only fair to the next generation. Anyway, he got caught all right, and the first thing I knew, the Brotherhood calls on me and my brother and wants to know how come we didn’t report him. I said, hell, I didn’t know anything about it; nobody in my family knew anything about it. I said we hadn’t seen him in ten years. My old man backed us up. But we got fined five hundred credits just the same. That’s when you don’t have any pull.”
The look of discomposure on Arvardan’s face was growing. Were these people madmen to accept death so--to resent their friends and relatives who tried to escape death? Could he, by accident, be on a ship carrying a cargo of lunatics to asylum--or euthanasia? Or were these simply Earthmen?
His neighbor was scowling at him again, and his voice broke in on Arvardan’s thoughts. “Hey fella, where’s ‘back there?’”
“Pardon me?”
“I said--where are you from? You said ‘back there.’ What’s ‘back there’? Hey?”
Arvardan found the eyes of all upon him now, each with its own sudden spark of suspicion in it. Did they think him a member of this Society of Ancients of theirs? Had his questioning seemed the cajolery of an agent provocateur?
So he met that by saying, in a burst of frankness, “I’m not from anywhere on Earth. I’m Bel Arvardan from Baronn, Sirius Sector. What’s your name?” And he held out his hand.
He might as well have dropped an atomic explosive capsule into the middle of the plane.
The first silent horror on every face turned rapidly into angry, bitter hostility that flamed at him. The man who had shared his seat rose stiffly and crowded into another, where the pair of occupants squeezed closely together to make room for him.
Faces turned away. Shoulders surrounded him, hemmed him in. For a moment Arvardan burned with indignation. Earthmen to treat him so. Earthmen! He had held out the hand of friendship to them. He, a Sirian, had condescended to treat with them and they had rebuffed him.
And then, with an effort, he relaxed. It was obvious that bigotry was never a one-way operation, that hatred bred hatred!
He was conscious of a presence beside him, and he turned toward it resentfully. “Yes?”
It was the young man with the cigarette. He was lighting a new one as he spoke. “Hello,” he said. “My name’s Creen.... Don’t let those jerks get you.”
“No one’s getting me,” said Arvardan shortly. He was not too pleased with the company, nor was he in the mood for patronizing advice from an Earthman.
But Creen was not trained to the detection of the more delicate nuances. He puffed his cigarette to life in man-sized drags and tapped its ashes over the arm of the seat into the middle aisle.
“Provincials!” he whispered with contempt. “Just a bunch of farmers....They lack the Galactic view. Don’t bother with them....Now you take me. I got a different philosophy. Live and let live, I say. I got nothing against Outsiders. If they want to be friendly with me, I’ll be friendly with them. What the hell--They can’t help being an Outsider just like I can’t help being an Earthman. Don’t you think I’m right?” And he tapped Arvardan familiarly on the wrist.
Arvardan nodded and felt a crawling sensation at the other’s touch. Social contact with a man who felt resentful over losing a chance to bring about his uncle’s death was not pleasant, quite regardless of planetary origin.
Creen leaned back. “Heading for Chica? What did you say your name was? Albadan?”
“Arvardan. Yes, I’m going to Chica.”
“That’s my home town. Best damned city on Earth. Going to stay there long?”
“Maybe. I haven’t made any plans.”
“Umm....Say, I hope you don’t object to my saying that I’ve been noticing your shirt. Mind if I take a close look? Made in Sirius, huh?”
“Yes, it is.”
“It’s very good material. Can’t get anything like that on Earth....Say, bud, you wouldn’t have a spare shirt like that in your luggage, would you? I’d pay for it if you wanted to sell it. It’s a snappy number.”
Arvardan shook his head emphatically. “Sorry, but I don’t have much of a wardrobe. I am planning to buy clothes here on Earth as I go along.”
“I’ll pay you fifty credits,” said Creen....Silence. He added, with a touch of resentment, “That’s a good price.”
“A very good price,” said Arvardan, “but, as I told you, I have no shirts to sell.”
“Well...” Creen shrugged. “Expect to stay on Earth quite a while, I suppose?”
“Maybe.”
“What’s your line of business?”
The archaeologist allowed irritation to rise to the surface. “Look, Mr. Creen, if you don’t mind, I’m a little tired and would like to take a nap. Is that all right with you?”
Creen frowned. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t your kind believe in being civil to people? I’m just asking you a polite question; no need to bite my ear off.”
The conversation, hitherto conducted in a low voice, had suddenly amplified itself into a near shout. Hostile expressions turned Arvardan’s way, and the archaeologist’s lips compressed themselves into a thin line.
He had asked for it, he decided bitterly. He would not have gotten into this mess if he had held aloof from the beginning, if he hadn’t felt the necessity of vaunting his damned tolerance and forcing it on people who didn’t want it.
He said levelly, “Mr. Creen, I didn’t ask you to join me, and I haven’t been uncivil. I repeat, I am tired and would like to rest. I think there’s nothing unusual in that.”
“Listen”--the young man rose from his seat, threw his cigarette away with a violent gesture, and pointed a finger--”you don’t have to treat me like I’m a dog or something. You stinking Outsiders come here with your fine talk and standoffishness and think it gives you the right to stamp all over us. We don’t have to stand for it, see. If you don’t like it here, you can go back where you came from, and it won’t take much more of your lip to make me light into you, either. You think I’m afraid of you?”
Arvardan turned his head away and stared stonily out the window.
Creen said no more, but took his original seat once again. There was an excited buzz of conversation round and about the plane which Arvardan ignored. He felt, rather than saw, the sharpened and envenomed glances being cast at him. Until, gradually, it passed, as all things did.
He completed the journey, silent and alone.
The landing at the Chica airport was welcome. Arvardan smiled to himself at the first sight from the air of the “best damned city on Earth,” but found it, nevertheless, an immense improvement over the thick, unfriendly atmosphere of the plane.
He supervised the unloading of his luggage and had it transferred into a biwheel cab. At least he would be the only passenger here, so that if he took care not to speak unnecessarily to the driver, he could scarcely get into trouble.
“State House,” he told the cabby, and they were off.
Arvardan thus entered Chica for the first time, and he did so on the day that Joseph Schwartz escaped from his room at the Institute for Nuclear Research.
Creen watched Arvardan leave with a bitter half-smile. He took out his little book and studied it closely between puffs at his cigarette. He hadn’t gotten much out of the passengers, despite his story about his uncle (which he had used often before to good effect). To be sure, the old guy had complained about a man living past his time and had blamed it on “pull” with the Ancients. That would come under the heading of slander against the Brotherhood. But then the geezer was heading for the Sixty in a month, anyway. No use putting his name down.
But this Outsider, that was different. He surveyed the item with a feeling of pleasure: “Bel Arvardan, Baronn, Sirius Sector--curious about the Sixty--secretive about own affairs--entered Chica by commercial plane 11 A.M. Chica time, 12 October--anti-Terrestrian attitude very marked.”
This time maybe he had a real haul. Picking up these little squealers who made incautious remarks was dull work, but things like this made it payoff.
The Brotherhood would have his report before half an hour was up. He made his way leisurely off the field.
For the twentieth time Dr. Shekt leafed through his latest volume of research notes, then looked up as Pola entered his office. She frowned as she slipped on her lab coat.
“Now, Father, haven’t you eaten yet?”
“Eh? Certainly I have....Oh, what’s this?”
“This is lunch. Or it was, once. What you ate must have been breakfast. Now there’s no sense in my buying meals and bringing them here if you’re not going to eat them. I’m just going to make you go home for them.”
“Don’t get excited. I’ll eat it. I can’t interrupt a vital experiment every time you think I ought to eat, you know.”
He grew cheerful again over the dessert. “You have no idea,” he said, “the kind of man this Schwartz is. Did I ever tell you about his skull sutures?”
“They’re primitive. You told me.”
“But that’s not all. He’s got thirty-two teeth: three molars up and down, left and right, counting one false one that must be homemade. At least I’ve never seen a bridge that has metal prongs hooking it onto adjacent teeth instead of being grafted to the jawbone....But have you ever seen anyone with thirty-two teeth?”
“I don’t go about counting people’s teeth, Father. What’s the right number--twenty-eight?”
“It sure as Space is....I’m still not finished, though. We took an internal analysis yesterday. What do you suppose we found?...Guess!”
“Intestines?”
“Pola, you’re being deliberately annoying, but I don’t care. You needn’t guess; 111 tell you. Schwartz has a vermiform appendix, three and a half inches long, and it’s open. Great Galaxy, it’s completely unprecedented! I have checked with the Medical School--cautiously, of course--and appendixes are practically never longer than half an inch, and they’re never open.”
“And just what does that mean?”
“Why, he’s a complete throwback, a living fossil.” He had risen from his chair and paced the distance to the wall and back with hasty steps. “I tell you what, Pola, I don’t think we ought to give Schwartz up. He’s too valuable a specimen.”
“No, no, Father,” said Pola quickly, “you can’t do that. You promised that farmer to return Schwartz, and you must for Schwartz’s own sake. He’s unhappy.”
“Unhappy! Why, we’re treating him like a rich Outsider.”
“What difference does that make? The poor fellow is used to his farm and his people. He’s lived there all his life. And now he’s had a frightening experience--a painful one, for all I know--and his mind works differently now. He can’t be expected to understand. We’ve got to consider his human rights and return him to his family.”
“But, Pola, the cause of science--”
“Oh, slush! What is the cause of science worth to me? What do you suppose the Brotherhood will say when they hear of your unauthorized experiments? Do you think they care about the cause of science? I mean, consider yourself if you don’t wish to consider Schwartz. The longer you keep him, the greater the chance of being caught. You send him home tomorrow night, the way you originally planned to, do you hear?...I’ll go down and see if Schwartz wants anything before dinner.”
But she was back in less than five minutes, face damp and chalky. “Father, he’s gone!”
“Who’s gone?” he asked, startled.
“Schwartz!” she cried, half in tears. “You must have forgotten to lock the door when you left him.”
Shekt was on his feet, throwing a hand out to steady himself. “How long?”
“I don’t know. But it can’t be very long. When were you last there?”
“Not fifteen minutes. I had just been here a minute or two when you came in.”
“Well, then,” with sudden decision, “I’ll run out. He may simply be wandering about the neighborhood. You stay here. If someone else picks him up, they mustn’t connect him with you. Understand?”
Shekt could only nod.
Joseph Schwartz felt no lifting of the heart when he exchanged the confines of his prison hospital for the expanses of the city outside. He did not delude himself to the effect that he had a plan of action. He knew, and knew well, that he was simply improvising.
If any rational impulse guided him (as distinct from mere blind desire to exchange inaction for action of any sort), it was the hope that by chance encounter some facet of life would bring back his wandering memory. That he was an amnesiac he was now fully convinced.
The first glimpse of the city, however, was disheartening. It was late afternoon and, in the sunlight, Chica was a milky white. The buildings might have been constructed of porcelain, like that farmhouse he had first stumbled upon.
Stirrings deep within told him that cities should be brown and red. And they should be much dirtier. He was sure of that.
He walked slowly. He felt, somehow, that there would be no organized search for him. He knew that, without knowing how he knew. To be sure, in the last few days he had found himself growing increasingly sensitive to “atmosphere,” to the “feel” of things about him. It was part of the strangeness in his mind, since--since...
His thought trailed away.
In any case, the “atmosphere” at the hospital prison was one of secrecy; a frightened secrecy, it seemed. So they could not pursue him with loud outcry. He knew that. Now why should he know that? Was this queer activity of his mind part of what went on in cases of amnesia?
He crossed another intersection. Wheeled vehicles were relatively few. Pedestrians were--well, pedestrians. Their clothes were rather laughable: seamless, buttonless, colorful. But then so were his own. He wondered where his old clothes were, then wondered if he had ever really owned such clothes as he remembered. It is very difficult to be sure of anything, once you begin doubting your memory on principle.
But he remembered his wife so clearly; his children. They couldn’t be fictions. He stopped in the middle of the walk to regain a composure suddenly lost. Perhaps they were distorted versions of real people, in this so unreal-seeming real life, whom he must find.
People were brushing past him and several muttered unamiably. He moved on. The thought occurred to him, suddenly and forcibly, that he was hungry, or would be soon, and that he had no money.
He looked about. Nothing like a restaurant in sight. Well, how did he know? He couldn’t read the signs.
He gazed into each store front he passed....And then he found an interior which consisted in part of small alcoved tables, at one of which two men sat and another at which a single man sat. And the men were eating.
At least that hadn’t changed. Men who ate still chewed and swallowed.
He stepped in and, for a moment, stopped in considerable bewilderment. There was no counter, no cooking going on, no signs of any kitchen. It had been his idea to offer to wash the dishes for a meal, but--to whom could he make the offer?
Diffidently, he stepped up to the two diners. He pointed, and said painstakingly, “Food! Where? Please.”
They looked up at him, rather startled. One spoke fluently, and quite incomprehensibly, patting a small structure at the wall end of the table. The other joined in, impatiently.
Schwartz’s eyes fell. He turned to leave, and there was a hand upon his sleeve--
Granz had seen Schwartz while the latter was still only a plump and wistful face at the window.
He said “What’s he want?”
Messter, sitting across the little table, with his back to the street, turned, looked, shrugged his shoulders, and said nothing.
Granz said, “He’s coming in,” and Messter replied, “So what?”
“Nothing. Just mentioning it.”
But a few moments later the newcomer, after looking about helplessly, approached and pointed to their beef stew, saying in a queer accent, “Food! Where? Please.”
Granz looked up. “Food right here, bud. Just pull up a chair at any table you want and use the Foodomat.... Foodomat! Don’t you know what a Foodomat is?...Look at the poor jerk, Messter. He’s looking at me as if he doesn’t understand a word I say. Hey, fella--this thing, see. Just put a coin in and let me eat, will you?”
“Leave him alone,” grunted Messter. “He’s just a bum, looking for a handout.”
“Hey, hold on.” Granz seized Schwartz’s sleeve as the latter turned to go. He added in an aside to Messter, “Space, let the guy eat. He’s probably getting the Sixty soon. It’s the least I can do to give him a break....Hey, bud, you got any money?...Well, I’ll be damned, he still doesn’t understand me. Money, pal, money! This--” And he drew a shining half-credit piece out of his pocket, flipping it so that it sparkled in the air.
“Got any?” he asked.
Slowly Schwartz shook his head.
“Well, then, have this on me!” He replaced the half-credit piece in his pocket and tossed over a considerably smaller coin.
Schwartz held it uncertainly.
“All right. Don’t just stand there. Stick it in the Foodomat. This thing here.”
Schwartz suddenly found himself understanding. The Foodomat had a series of slits for coins of different sizes and a series of knobs opposite little milky rectangles, the writing upon which he could not read. Schwartz pointed to the food on the table and ran a forefinger up and down the knobs, raising his eyebrows in question.
Messter said in annoyance, “ A sandwich isn’t good enough for him. We’re getting classy bums in this burg nowadays. It doesn’t pay to humor them, Granz.”
“All right, so I lose point eight five credits. Tomorrow’s payday, anyway....Here,” he said to Schwartz. He placed coins of his own into the Foodomat and withdrew the wide metal container from the recess in the wall. “Now take it to another table....Nab, keep that tenth piece. Buy yourself a cup of coffee with it.”
Schwartz carried the container gingerly to the next table. It had a spoon attached to the side by means of a transparent, filmy material, which broke with a slight pop under the pressure of a fingernail. As it did so, the top of the container parted at a seam and curled back upon itself.
The food, unlike that which he saw the others eating, was cold; but that was a detail. It was only after a minute or so that he realized the food was getting warmer and that the container had grown hot to the touch. He stopped, in alarm, and waited.
The gravy first steamed, then bubbled gently for a moment. It cooled again and Schwartz completed the meal.
Granz and Messter were still there when he left. So was the third man, to whom, throughout, Schwartz had paid no attention.
Nor had Schwartz noticed, at any time since he had left the Institute, the thin, little man who, without seeming to, had managed to remain always within eyeshot.
Bel Arvardan, having showered and changed his clothes, promptly followed his original intention of observing the human animal, subspecies Earth, in its native habitat. The weather was mild, the light breeze refreshing, the village itself--pardon, the city--bright, quiet, and clean.
Not so bad.
Chica first stop, he thought. Largest collection of Earth. men on the planet. Washenn next; local capital. Senloo! Senfran! Bonair!...He had plotted an itinerary all over the western continents (where most of the meager scattering of Earth’s population lived) and, allowing two or three days at each, he would be back in Chica just about the time his expeditionary ship was due.
It would be educational.
As afternoon began to decline he stepped into a Foodomat and, as he ate, observed the small drama that played itself out between the two Earthmen who had entered shortly after himself and the plump, elderly man who came in last of all. But his observation was detached and casual, simply not. ing it as an item to set against his unpleasant experience on the jet transport. The two men at the table were obviously air-cab drivers and not wealthy, yet they could be charitable.
The beggar left, and two minutes later Arvardan left as well.
The streets were noticeably fuller, as the workday was approaching its end.
He stepped hastily aside to avoid colliding with a young girl.
“Pardon me,” he said.
She was dressed in white, in clothing which bore the stereotyped lines of a uniform. She seemed quite oblivious of the near collision. The anxious look on her face, the sharp turning of her head from side to side, her utter preoccupation, made the situation quite obvious.
He laid a light finger on her shoulder. “May I help you, miss? Are you in trouble?”
She stopped and turned startled eyes upon him. Arvardan found himself judging her age at nineteen to twenty-one, observing carefully her brown hair and dark eyes, her high cheekbones and little chin, her slim waist and graceful carriage. He discovered, suddenly, that the thought of this little female creature being an Earthwoman lent a sort of perverse piquancy to her attractiveness.
But she was still staring, and almost at the moment of speaking she seemed to break down. “Oh, it’s no use. Please don’t bother about me. It’s silly to expect to find someone when you don’t have the slightest idea where he could have gone. “ She was drooping in discouragement, her eyes wet. Then she straightened and breathed deeply. “Have you seen a plump man about five-four, dressed in green and white, no hat, rather bald?”
Arvardan looked at her in astonishment. “What? Green and white?...Oh, I don’t believe this....Look, this man you’re referring to--does he speak with difficulty?”
“Yes, yes. Oh yes. You have seen him, then?”
“Not five minutes ago he was in there eating with two men....Here they are....Say, you two.” He beckoned them over.
Granz reached them first. “Cab, sir?”
“No, but if you tell the young lady what happened to the man you were eating with, you’ll stand to make the fare, anyway.”
Granz paused and looked chagrined. “Well, I’d like to help you, but I never saw him before in my life.”
Arvardan turned to the girl. “Now look, miss, he can’t have gone in the direction you came from or you’d have seen him. And he can’t be far away. Suppose we move north a bit. I’ll recognize him if I see him.”
His offer of help was an impulse, yet Arvardan was not, ordinarily, an impulsive man. He found himself smiling at her.
Granz interrupted suddenly. “What’s he done, lady? He hasn’t broken any of the Customs, has he?”
“No, no,” she replied hastily. “He’s only a little sick, that’s all.”
Messter looked after them as they left. “ A little sick?” He shoved his visored cap back upon his head, then pinched balefully at his chin. “How d’ya like that, Granz? A little sick.”
His eyes looked askance at the other for a moment.
“What’s got into you?” asked Granz uneasily.
“Something that’s making me a little sick. That guy must’ve been straight out of the hospital. That was a nurse looking for him, and a plenty worried nurse, too. Why should she be worried if he was just a little sick? He couldn’t hardly talk, and he didn’t hardly understand. You noticed that, didn’t you?”
There was a sudden panicky light in Granz’s eyes. “You don’t think it’s Fever?”
“I sure do think it’s Radiation Fever--and he’s far gone. He was within a foot of us, too. It’s never any good--”
There was a little thin man next to them. A little thin man with bright, sharp eyes and a twittering voice, who had stepped out of nowhere. “What’s that, gents? Who’s got Radiation Fever?”
He was regarded with disfavor. “Who are you?”
“Ho,” said the sharp little man, “you want to know, do you? It so happens that I’m a messenger of the Brotherhood, to be sure.” He flashed a little glowing badge on the inner lapel of his jacket. “Now, in the name of the Society of Ancients, what’s all this about Radiation Fever?”
Messter spoke in cowed and sullen tones. “I don’t know nothing. There’s a nurse looking for somebody who’s sick, and I was wondering if it was Radiation Fever. That’s not against the Customs, is it?”
“Ho! You’re telling me about the Customs, are you? You better go about your business and let me worry about the Customs.”
The little man rubbed his hands together, gazed quickly about him, and hurried northward.
“There he is!” and Pola clutched feverishly at her companion’s elbow. It had happened quickly, easily, and accidentally. Through the despairing blankness he had suddenly materialized just within the main entrance of the self-service department store, not three blocks from the Foodomat.
“I see him,” whispered Arvardan. “Now stay back and let me follow him. If he sees you and dashes into the mob, we’ll never locate him.”
Casually they followed in a sort of nightmare chase. The human contents of the store was a quicksand which could absorb its prey slowly--or quickly--keep it hidden impenetrably, spew it forth unexpectedly; set up barriers that somehow would not yield. The mob might almost have had a malevolent conscious mind of its own.
And then Arvardan circled a counter watchfully, playing Schwartz as though he were at the end of a fishing line. His huge hand reached out and closed on the other’s shoulder.
Schwartz burst into incomprehensible prose and jerked away in panic. Arvardan’s grip, however, was unbreakable to men far stronger than Schwartz, and he contented himself with smiling and saying, in normal tones, for the benefit of the curious spectator, “Hello, old chap, haven’t seen you in months. How are you?”
A palpable fraud, he supposed, in the face of the other’s gibberish, but Pola had joined them.
“Schwartz,” she whispered, “come back with us.”
For a moment Schwartz stiffened in rebellion, then he drooped.
He said wearily, “I--go--along--you,” but the statement was drowned in the sudden blare of the store’s loud-speaker system.
“Attention! Attention! Attention! The management requests that all patrons of the store leave by the Fifth Street exit in orderly fashion. You will present your registration cards to the guards at the door. It is essential that this be done rapidly. Attention! Attention! Attention!”
The message was repeated three times, the last time over the sound of scuffling feet as crowds were beginning to line up at the exits. A many-tongued cry was making itself heard, asking in various fashions the forever-unanswerable question of “What’s happened? What’s going on?”
Arvardan shrugged and said, “Let’s get on line, miss. We’re leaving anyway.”
But Pola shook her head. “We can’t. We can’t--”
“Why not?” The archaeologist frowned.
The girl merely shrank away from him. How could she tell him that Schwartz had no registration card? Who was he? Why had he been helping her? She was in a whirl of suspicion and despair.
She said huskily, “You’d better go, or you’ll get into trouble.”
They were pouring out the elevators as the upper floors emptied. Arvardan, Pola, and Schwartz were a little island of solidity in the human river.
Looking back on it later, Arvardan realized that at this point he could have left the girl. Left her! Never seen her again! Have nothing to reproach himself with!...And all would have been different. The great Galactic Empire would have dissolved in chaos and destruction.
He did not leave the girl. She was scarcely pretty in her fear and despair. No one could be. But Arvardan felt disturbed at the sight of her helplessness.
He had taken a step away, and now he turned. “Are you going to stay here?”
She nodded.
“But why?” he demanded.
“Because”--and the tears now overflowed--”I don’t know what else to do.”
She was just a little, frightened girl, even if she was an Earthie. Arvardan said, in a softer voice, “If you’ll tell me what’s wrong, I’ll try to help.”
There was no answer.
The three formed a tableau. Schwartz had sunk to the floor in a squatting posture, too sick at heart to try to follow the conversation, to be curious at the sudden emptiness of the store, to do anything but bury his head in his hands in the last unspoken and unuttered whimper of despair. Pola, weeping, knew only that she was more frightened than she had ever thought it possible for anyone to be. Arvardan, puzzled and waiting, tried clumsily and ineffectually to pat Pola’s shoulder in encouraging fashion, and was conscious only of the fact that for the first time he had touched an Earthgirl.
The little man came upon them thus.
Lieutenant Marc Claudy of the Chica garrison yawned slowly and gazed into the middle distance with an ineffable boredom. He was completing his second year of duty on Earth and waited yearningly for replacement.
Nowhere in the Galaxy was the problem of maintaining a garrison quite so complicated as it was on this horrible world. On other planets there existed a certain camaraderie between soldier and civilian, particularly female civilian. There was a sense of freedom and openness.
But here the garrison was a prison. There were the radiation-proof barracks and the filtered atmosphere, free of radioactive dust. There was the lead-impregnated clothing, cold and heavy, which could not be removed without grave risk. As a corollary to that, fraternization with the population (assuming that the desperation of loneliness could drive a soldier to the society of an “Earthie” girl) was out of the question.
What was left, then, but short snorts, long naps, and slow madness?
Lieutenant Claudy shook his head in a futile attempt to clear it, yawned again, sat up and began dragging on his shoes. He looked at his watch and decided it was not yet quite time for evening chow.
And then he jumped to his feet, only one shoe on, acutely conscious of his uncombed hair, and saluted.
The colonel looked about him disparagingly but said nothing directly on the subject. Instead he directed crisply, “Lieutenant, there are reports of rioting in the business district. You will take a decontamination squad to the Dunham department store and take charge. You will see to it that all your men are thoroughly protected against infection by Radiation Fever.”
“Radiation Fever!” cried the lieutenant. “Pardon me, sir, but--”
“You will be ready to leave in fifteen minutes,” said the colonel coldly.
Arvardan saw the little man first, and stiffened as the other made a little gesture of greeting. “Hi, guv’ner. Hi, big fella. Tell the little lady there ain’t no call for the waterworks. “
Pola’s head had snapped up, her breath sucked in. Automatically she leaned toward the protecting bulk of Arvardan, who, as automatically, put a protective arm about her. It did not occur to him that that was the second time he had touched an Earthgirl.
He said sharply, “What do you want?”
The little man with the sharp eyes stepped diffidently out from behind a counter piled high with packages. He spoke in a manner which managed to be both ingratiating and impudent simultaneously.
“Here’s a weird go outside,” he said, “but it don’t need to bother you, miss. I’ll get your man back to the Institute for you.”
“What institute?” demanded Pola fearfully.
“Aw, come off it,” said the little man. “I’m Natter, fella with the fruit stand right across the street from the Institute for Nuclear Research. I seen you here lots of times.”
“See here,” said Arvardan abruptly, “what’s all this about?”
Natter’s little frame shook with merriment. “They think this fella here has Radiation Fever--”
“Radiation Fever?” It came from both Arvardan and Pola at once.
Natter nodded. “That’s right. Two cabbies ate with him and that’s what they said. News like that kinda spreads, you know.”
“The guards outside,” demanded Pola, “are just looking for someone with fever?”
“That’s right.”
“And just why aren’t you afraid of the fever?” demanded Arvardan abruptly. “I take it that it was fear of contagion that caused the authorities to empty the store.”
“Sure. The authorities are waiting outside, afraid to come in, too. They’re waiting for the Outsiders’ decontamination squad to get here.”
“And you’re not afraid of the fever, is that it?”
“Why should I be? This guy don’t have no fever. Look at him. Where’s the sores on his mouth? He isn’t flushed. His eyes are all right. I know what fever looks like. Come on, miss, we’ll march out of here, then.”
But Pola was frightened again. “No, no. We can’t. He’s--he’s--” She couldn’t go on.
Natter said insinuatingly, “I could take him out. No questions asked. No registration card necessary--”
Pola failed to suppress a little cry, and Arvardan said, with considerable distaste, “What makes you so important?”
Natter laughed hoarsely. He flipped his lapel. “Messenger for the Society of Ancients. Nobody’ll ask me questions.”
“And what’s in it for you?”
“Money! You’re anxious and I can help you. There ain’t no fairer than that. It’s worth, say, a hundred credits to you, and it’s worth a hundred credits to me. Fifty credits now, fifty on delivery.”
But Pola whispered in horror, “You’ll take him to the Ancients.”
“What for? He’s no good to them, and he’s worth a hundred credits to me. If you wait for the Outsiders, they’re liable to kill the fella before they find out he’s fever-free. You know Outsiders--they don’t care if they kill an Earthman or not. They’d rather, in fact.”
Arvardan said, “Take the young lady with you.”
But Natter’s little eyes were very sharp and very sly. “Oh no. Not that guv’ner. I take what you call calculated risks. I can get by with one, maybe not with two. And if I only take one, I take the one what’s worth more. Ain’t that reasonable to you?”
“What,” said Arvardan, “if I pick you up and pull your legs off? What’ll happen then?”
Natter flinched, but found his voice, nevertheless, and managed a laugh. “Why, then, you’re a dope. They’ll get you anyway, and there’ll be murder, too, on the list....All right, guv’ner. Keep your hands off.”
“Please”--Pola was dragging at Arvardan’s arm--”we must take a chance. Let him do as he says....You’ll be honest with us, w-won’t you, Mr. Natter?”
Natter’s lips were curling. “Your big friend wrenched my arm. He had no call to do that, and I don’t like nobody to push me around. I’ll just take an extra hundred credits for that. Two hundred in all.”
“My father’ll pay you--”
“One hundred in advance,” he replied obdurately.
“But I don’t have a hundred credits,” Pola wailed.
“That’s all right, miss,” said Arvardan stonily. “I can swing it.”
He opened his wallet and plucked out several bills. He threw them at Natter. “Get going!”
“Go with him, Schwartz,” whispered Pola.
Schwartz did, without comment, without caring. He would have gone to hell at that moment with as little emotion.
And they were alone, staring at each other blankly. It was perhaps the first time that Pola had actually looked at Arvardan, and she was amazed to find him tall and craggily handsome, calm and self -confident. She had accepted him till now as an inchoate, unmotivated helper, but now--She grew suddenly shy, and all the events of the last hour or two were enmeshed and lost in a scurry of heartbeating.
They didn’t even know each other’s name.
She smiled and said, “I’m Pola Shekt.”
Arvardan had not seen her smile before, and found himself interested in the phenomenon. It was a glow that entered her face, a radiance. It made him feel--But he put that thought away roughly. An Earthgirl!
So he said, with perhaps less cordiality than he intended, “My name is Bel Arvardan.” He held out a bronzed hand, into which her little one was swallowed up for a moment.
She said, “I must thank you for all your help.”
Arvardan shrugged it away. “Shall we leave? I mean, now that your friend is gone; safely, I trust.”
“I think we would have heard quite a noise if they had caught him, don’t you think so?” Her eyes were pleading for confirmation of her hope, and he refused the temptation toward softness.
“Shall we go?”
She was somehow frozen. “Yes, why not?” sharply.
But there was a whining in the air, a shrill moan on the horizon, and the girl’s eyes were wide and her outstretched hand suddenly withdrawn again,
“What’s the matter now?” asked Arvardan.
“It’s the Imperials.”
“And are you frightened of them too?” It was the self-consciously non-Earthman Arvardan who spoke--the Sirian archaeologist. Prejudice or not, however the logic might be chopped and minced, the approach of Imperial soldiers meant a trace of sanity and humanity. There was room for condescension here, and he grew kind.
“Don’t worry about the Outsiders,” he said, even stooping to use their term for non-Earthmen. “I’ll handle them, Miss Shekt.”
She was suddenly concerned. “Oh no, don’t try anything like that. Just don’t talk to them at all. Do as they say, and don’t even look at them.”
Arvardan’s smile broadened.
The guards saw them while they were still a distance from the main entrance and fell back. They emerged into a little space of emptiness and a strange hush. The whine of the army cars was almost upon them.
And then there were armored cars in the square and groups of glass-globe-headed soldiers springing out therefrom. The crowds scattered before them in panic, aided in their scramblings by clipped shouts and thrusts with the butt ends of the neuronic whips.
Lieutenant Claudy, in the lead, approached an Earthman guard at the main entrance. “ All right, you, who’s got the fever?”
His face was slightly distorted within the enclosing glass, with its content of pure air. His voice was slightly metallic as a result of radio amplification.
The guard bent his head in deep respect. “If it please your honor, we have isolated the patient within the store. The two who were with the patient are now standing in the doorway before you.”
“They are, are they? Good! Let them stand there. Now in the first place, I want this mob out of here. Sergeant! Clear the square!”
There was a grim efficiency in the proceedings thereafter. The deepening twilight gloomed over Chica as the crowd melted into the darkening air. The streets were beginning to gleam in soft, artificial lighting.
Lieutenant Claudy tapped his heavy boots with the butt of his neuronic whip. “You’re sure the sick Earthie is inside?”
“He has not left, your honor. He must be.”
“Well, we’ll assume he is and waste no time about it. Sergeant! Decontaminate the building!”
A contingent of soldiers, hermetically sealed away from all contact with Terrestrial environment, charged into the building. A slow quarter hour passed, while Arvardan watched all in absorbed fashion. It was a field experiment in intercultural relationships that he was professionally reluctant to disturb.
The last of the soldiers were out again, and the store was shrouded in deepening night.
“Seal the doors!”
Another few minutes and then the cans of disinfectant which had been placed in several spots on each floor were discharged at long distance. In the recesses of the building those cans were flung open and the thick vapors rolled out and curled up the walls, clinging to every square inch of surface, reaching through the air and into the inmost crannies. No protoplasm, from germ to man, could remain alive in its presence, and chemical flushing of the most painstaking type would be required eventually for decontamination.
But now the lieutenant was approaching Arvardan and Pola.
“What was his name?” There was not even cruelty in his voice, merely utter indifference. An Earthman, he thought, had been killed. Well, he had killed a fly that day also. That made two.
He received no answer, Pola bending her head meekly and Arvardan watching curiously. The Imperial officer did not take his eyes off them. He beckoned curtly. “Check them for infection.”
An officer bearing the insignia of the Imperial Medical Corps approached them, and was not gentle in his investigation; His gloved hands pushed hard under their armpits and yanked at the corners of their mouths so that he might investigate the inner surfaces of their cheeks.
“No infection, Lieutenant. If they had been exposed this afternoon, the stigmata would be clearly visible by now if infection had occurred.”
“Umm.” Lieutenant Claudy carefully removed his globe and enjoyed the touch of “live” air, even that of Earth. He tucked the ungainly glass object into the crook of his left elbow and said harshly, “Your name, Earthie-squaw?”
The term itself was richly insulting; the tone in which it was uttered added disgrace to it, but Pola showed no sign of resentment.
“Pola Shekt, sir,” she responded in a whisper.
“Your papers!”
She reached into the small pocket of her white jacket and removed the pink folder.
He took it, flared it open in the light of his pocket flash, and studied it. Then he tossed it back. It fell, fluttering, to the floor, and Pola bent quickly for it.
“Stand up,” the officer ordered impatiently, and kicked the booklet out of reach. Pola, white-faced, snatched her fingers away.
Arvardan frowned and decided it was time to interfere. He said, “Say, look here, now.”
The lieutenant turned on him in a flash, his lips drawn back. “What did you say, Earthie?”
Pola was between them at once. “If you please, sir, this man has nothing to do with anything that has happened today. I never saw him before--”
The lieutenant yanked her aside. “I said, What did you say, Earthie?”
Arvardan returned his stare coolly. “I said, Look here, now. And I was going to say further that I don’t like the way you treat women and that I’d advise you to improve your manners.”
He was far too irritated to correct the lieutenant’s impression of his planetary origin.
Lieutenant Claudy smiled without humor...And where have you been brought up, Earthie? Don’t you believe in saying ‘sir’ when you address a man? You don’t know your place, do you? Well, it’s been a while since I’ve had the pleasure of teaching the way of life to a nice big Earthie-buck. Here, how’s this--”
And quickly, like the flick of a snake, his open palm was out and across Arvardan’s face, back and forth, once, twice. Arvardan stepped back in surprise and then felt the roaring in his ears. His hand shot out to catch the extended arm that pecked at him. He saw the other’s face twist in surprise
The muscles in his shoulders writhed easily.
The lieutenant was on the pavement with a crashing thud that sent the glass globe rolling into shattered fragments. He lay still, and Arvardan’s half-smile was ferocious. He dusted his hands lightly...Any other bastard here think he can play pattycake on my face?”
But the sergeant had raised his neuronic whip’. The contact closed and there was the dim violet flash that reached out and licked at the tall archaeologist.
Every muscle in Arvardan’s body stiffened in unbearable pain, and he sank slowly to his knees. Then, with total paralysis upon him, he blacked out.
When Arvardan swam out of the haze he was conscious first of all of a wash of welcome coolness on his forehead. He tried to open his eyes and found his lids reacting as if swinging on rusty hinges. He let them remain closed and, with infinitely slow jerks (each fragmentary muscular movement shooting pins through him), lifted his arm to his face.
A soft, damp towel, held by a little hand...
He forced an eye open and battled with the mist.
“Pola,” he said.
There was a little cry of sudden joy. “Yes. How do you feel?”
“As if I were dead,” he croaked, “without the advantage of losing pain....What happened?”
“We were carted off to the military base. The colonel’s been in here. They’ve searched you--and I don’t know what they’re going to do, but--Oh, Mr. Arvardan, you shouldn’t ever have struck the lieutenant. I think you broke his arm. “
A faint smile wrenched at Arvardan’s face. “Good! I wish I’d broken his back.”
“But resisting an Imperial officer--it’s a capital offense.” Her voice was a horrified whisper.
“Indeed? We’ll see about that.”
“Ssh. They’re coming back.”
Arvardan closed his eyes and relaxed. Pola’s cry was faint and far-off in his ears, and when he felt the hypodermic’s thrust he could not gather his muscles into motion.
And then there was the wash of wonderful soothing nonpain along his veins and nerves. His arms unknotted and his back released itself slowly from its rigid arch, settling down. He fluttered his eyelids rapidly and, with a thrust of his el. bow, sat up. “
The colonel was regarding him thoughtfully; Pola, apprehensively, yet, somehow, joyfully.
The colonel said, “Well, Dr. Arvardan, we seem to have had an unpleasant contretemps in the city this evening.”
Dr. Arvardan. Pola realized the little she knew about him, not even his occupation....She had never felt quite like this.
Arvardan laughed shortly. “Unpleasant, you say. I consider that a rather inadequate adjective.”
“You have broken the arm of an officer of the Empire about the performance of his duty.”
“That officer struck me first. His duty in no way included the necessity for grossly insulting me, both verbally and physically. In doing so he forfeited any claim he might have to treatment as an officer and gentleman. As a free citizen of the Empire, I had every right to resent such cavalier, not to say illegal, treatment.”
The colonel harumphed and seemed at a loss for words. Pola stared at both of them with wide, unbelieving eyes.
Finally the colonel said softly, “Well, I need not say that I consider the whole incident to have been unfortunate. Apparently the pain and indignity involved have been equally spread on both sides. It may be best to forget this matter.”
“Forget? I think not. I have been a guest at the Pro. curator’s palace, and he may be interested in hearing exactly in what manner his garrison maintains order on Earth.”
“Now, Dr. Arvardan, if I assure you that you will receive a public apology--”
“To hell with that. What do you intend doing with Miss Shekt?”
“What would you suggest?”
“That you free her instantly, return her papers, and tender your apologies--right now.”
The colonel reddened, then said with an effort, “Of course.” He turned to Pola. “If the young lady will accept my deepest regrets…”
They had left the dark garrison walls behind them. It had been a short and silent ten-minute air-taxi ride to the city proper, and now they stood at the deserted blackness of the Institute. It was past midnight.
Pola said, “I don’t think I quite understand. You must be very important. It seems silly of me not to know your name. I didn’t ever imagine that Outsiders could treat an Earthman so.”
Arvardan felt oddly reluctant and yet compelled to end the fiction. “I’m not an Earthman, Pola. I’m an archaeologist from the Sirian Sector.”
She turned on him quickly, her face white in the moonlight. For the space of a slow count to ten she said nothing. “Then you outfaced the soldiers because you were safe, after all, and knew it. And I thought--I should have known.”
There was an outraged bitterness about her. “I humbly beg your pardon, sir, if at any time today, in my ignorance, I affected any disrespectful familiarity with you--”
“Pola,” he cried angrily, “what’s the matter? What if I’m not an Earthman? How does that make me different from what I seemed to you to be five minutes ago?”
“You might have told me, sir.”
“I’m not asking you to call me ‘sir.’ Don’t be like the rest of them, will you?”
“Like the rest of whom, sir? The rest of the disgusting animals that live on Earth?...I owe you a hundred credits.”
“Forget it,” said Arvardan disgustedly.
“I cannot follow that order. If you’ll give me your address, I will send you a money order for the amount tomorrow.”
Arvardan was suddenly brutal. “You owe me much more than a hundred credits.”
Pola bit her lip and said in lowered tones, “It is the only part of my great debt, sir, that I can repay. Your address?”
“State House, “ he flung at her across his shoulder. He was lost in the night.
And Pola found herself weeping/
Shekt met Pola at the door of his office.
“He’s back,” he said. “A little thin man brought him.”
“Good!” She was having difficulty speaking.
“He asked for two hundred credits. I gave it to him.”
“He was to ask for one hundred, but never mind.”
She brushed past her father. He said wistfully, “I was terribly worried. The commotions in the neighborhood--I dared not ask; I might have endangered you.”
“It’s all right. Nothing’s happened....Let me sleep here tonight, Father.”
But not all her weariness could make her sleep, for something had happened. She had met a man, and he was an Outsider.
But she had his address. She had his address.
They presented a complete contrast, these two Earthmen--one with the greatest semblance of power on Earth, and one with the greatest reality.
Thus the High Minister was the most important Earthman on Earth, the recognized ruler of the planet by direct and definite decree of the Emperor of all the Galaxy--subject, of course, to the orders of the Emperor’s Procurator. His Secretary seemed no one at all, really--merely a member of the Society of Ancients, appointed, theoretically, by the High Minister to take care of certain unspecified details, and dismissable, theoretically, at will.
The High Minister was known to all the Earth and was looked up to as the supreme arbiter on matters of Custom. It was he who announced the exemptions to the Sixty and it was he who judged the breakers of ritual, the defiers of rationing and of production schedules, the invaders of restricted territory and so on. The Secretary, on the other hand, was known to nobody, not even by name, except to the Society of Ancients and, of course, to the High Minister himself.
The High Minister had a command of language and made frequent speeches to the people, speeches of high emotional content and copious flow of sentiment. He had fair hair, worn long, and a delicate and patrician countenance. The Secretary, snub-nosed and wry-faced, preferred a short word to a long one, a grunt to a word, and silence to a grunt--at least in public.
It was the High Minister, of course, who had the semblance of power; the Secretary who had the reality. And in the privacy of the High Minister’s office that circumstance was quite plain.
For the High Minister was pettishly puzzled and the Secretary coolly indifferent.
“What I don’t see,” said the High Minister, “is the connection of all these reports you bring me. Reports, reports!” He lifted an arm above his head and struck viciously at an imaginary heap of paper. “I don’t have the time for them.”
“Exactly,” said the Secretary coldly. “It is why you hire me. I read them, digest them, transmit them.”
“Well, good Balkis, about your business, then. And quickly, since these are minor matters.”
“Minor? Your Excellency may lose a great deal someday if your judgment is not sharpened....Let us see what these reports mean, and I shall then ask you if you still consider them minor. First we have the original report, now seven days old, from Shekt’s underling, and it is that which first put me on the trail.”
“What trail?”
Balkis’s smile was faintly bitter. “May I recall to Your Excellency certain important projects which have been nurtured here on Earth for several years.”
“Ssh!” the High Minister, in sudden loss of dignity, could not forbear looking about hastily.
“Your Excellency, it is not nervousness but confidence that will win for us....You know further that the success of this project has depended upon the judicious use of Shekt’s little toy, the Synapsifier. Until now, at least as far as we know, it has been utilized under our direction only, and for definite purposes. And now, without warning, Shekt has Synapsified an unknown man, in complete violation of our orders.”
“This,” said the High Minister, “is a simple matter. Discipline Shekt, take the treated man into custody, and end the matter. “
“No, no. You are far too straightforward, Your Excellency. You miss the point. It is not what Shekt has done, but why he has done so. Note that there exists a coincidence about the matter, one of a considerable series of subsequent coincidences. The Procurator of Earth had visited Shekt that same day, and Shekt himself reported to us, in loyal and trustworthy fashion, all that had passed between them. Ennius had wanted the Synapsifier for Imperial use. He made promise, it seems, of great help and gracious assistance from the Emperor.”
“Hmm,” said the High Minister.
“You are intrigued? A compromise such as that seems attractive as compared to the dangers attending our present course?...Do you remember the promises of food to us during the famine five years ago? Do you? Shipments were refused because we lacked Imperial credits, and Earth-manufactured products would not be accepted, as being radioactively contaminated. Was there a free gift of food as promised? Was there even a loan? A hundred thousand died of starvation. Don’t put your trust in Outsider promises.
“But that does not matter. What does is that Shekt made a great display of loyalty. Surely we could never doubt him again. With compounded certainty, we could not suspect him of treason that very day” Yet so it came to pass.”
“You mean in this unauthorized experiment, Balkis?”
“I do, Your Excellency. Who was the man treated? We have photographs of him and, with the help of Shekt’s technician, retinal patterns. A check with the Planetary Registry shows no record of him. The conclusion must therefore be reached that he is no Earthman, but an Outsider. Furthermore, Shekt must have been aware of it, since a registration card cannot be forged or transferred, if checked with retinal patterns. So, in simple fashion, the unalterable facts lead us to the conclusion that Shekt has Synapsified, knowingly, an Outsider. And why?...
“The answer to that may be disturbingly simple. Shekt is not an ideal instrument for our purposes. In his youth he was an Assimilationist; he even once stood for election to the Washenn Council on a platform of conciliation with the Empire. He was defeated, by the way.”
The High Minister interrupted. “I didn’t know that.”
“That he was defeated?”
“No, that he ran. Why wasn’t I informed of this? Shekt is a very dangerous man in the position he now holds.”
Balkis smiled softly and tolerantly. “Shekt invented the Synapsifier and still represents the one man truly experienced in its operation. He has always been watched, and will now be watched more closely than ever. Do not forget that a traitor within our ranks, known to us, can do more harm to the enemy than a loyal man can do good to us.
“Now, let us continue to deal with the facts. Shekt has Synapsified an Outsider. Why? There is only one reason why a Synapsifier can possibly be used--to improve a mind. And why that? Because only so can the minds of our scientists, already improved by Synapsification, be overtaken. Eh? This means that the Empire has at least a faint suspicion of what is going on upon Earth. Is that minor, Your Excellency?”
There was a scattered dew on the High Minister’s forehead. “Do you really think so?”
“The facts are a jigsaw puzzle that can fit only one way. The Outsider so treated was a man of undistinguished, even contemptible, appearance. A good stroke, too, since a bald and fat old man can still be the Empire’s most skilled espionage agent. Oh yes. Yes. Who else could be trusted on a mission such as this?...But we have followed this stranger, whose alias, by the way, is Schwartz, as far as we can. Let us take this second file of reports.”
The High Minister cast an eye upon them. “The ones concerning Bel Arvardan?”
“Dr. Bel Arvardan,” assented Balkis, “eminent archaeologist of the gallant Sirian Sector, those worlds of brave and chivalrous bigots,” He spat the last out. Then, “Well, never mind. In any case, we have here a queer mirror image to Schwartz, an almost poetic contrast. He is not unknown, but, instead, a famous figure. He is not a secret intruder, but one who comes floating on a tidal wave of publicity. We are warned of him not by an obscure technician, but by the Procurator of Earth himself.”
“Do you think there is a connection, Balkis?”
“Your Excellency may suppose it possible that one may be designed to distract our attention from the other. Or else, since the ruling classes of the Empire are skilled enough in intrigue, we have an example of two methods of camouflage. In the case of Schwartz, the lights are put out. In the case of Arvardan, the lights are flashed in our eyes. In neither case are we intended to see anything?...Come, of what did Ennius warn us concerning Arvardan?”
The High Minister rubbed his nose thoughtfully...Arvardan, he said, was on an archaeological expedition under Imperial sponsorship and wished to enter the Forbidden Areas for scientific purposes. No sacrilege, he said, was intended, and if we could stop him in gentle fashion, he would back our action to the Imperial Council. Something like that. “
“So then we will watch Arvardan closely, but for what purpose? Why, to see that he makes no unauthorized entry into the Forbidden Areas. Here’s the head of an archaeological expedition without men, ships, or equipment. Here’s an Outsider who does not remain at Everest, where he belongs, but wanders about Earth; for some reason--and goes to Chica first. And how is our attention distracted from all these most curious and suspicious circumstances? Why, by urging us to watch carefully something that is of no importance.
“But notice, Your Excellency, that Schwartz was kept hidden in the Institute for Nuclear Research for six days. And then he escaped. Isn’t that strange? The door, suddenly, wasn’t locked. The corridor, suddenly, wasn’t guarded. What queer negligence. And on what day was it that he escaped? Why, on the same day that Arvardan arrived at Chica. A second peculiar coincidence.”
“You think, then...” said the High Minister tensely.
“I think that Schwartz is the Outsider agent on Earth, that Shekt is the contact man with the Assimilationist traitors among us, and that Arvardan is the contact man with the Empire. Observe the skill with which the meeting between Schwartz and Arvardan was arranged. Schwartz is allowed to escape, and after an appropriate interval his nurse--Shekt’s daughter, by a not-too-surprising additional coincidence--is out after him. If anything were to go wrong with their split-second timetable, it is obvious that she would have found him suddenly; that he would have become a poor, sick patient for the benefit of anyone’s curiosity; that he would have been brought back to safety for another attempt later. In fact, two overcurious cabbies were told that he was a sick man, and that, ironically enough, backfired upon them.
“Follow it closely, now. Schwartz and Arvardan meet first in a Foodomat. They are, apparently, unaware of each other’s existence. It is a preliminary meeting, designed, simply, to indicate that all has gone well so far and that the next step may be taken....At least they don’t underestimate us, which is gratifying.
“Then Schwartz leaves; a few minutes later Arvardan leaves and the Shekt girl meets him. It is stop-watch timing. Together, after playing a little part for the benefit of the afore-mentioned cabbies, they head for the Dunham department store, and now all three are together. Where else but a department store? It is an ideal meeting place. It has a secrecy no cave in the mountains could duplicate. Too open to be suspected. Too crowded to be stalked. Wonderful--wonderful--I give credit to my opponent.”
The High Minister writhed in his chair. “If our opponent deserves too much credit, he will win.”
“Impossible. He is already defeated. And in that respect we must give credit to the excellent Natter.”
“And who is Natter?”
“An insignificant agent who must be used to the limit after this. His actions yesterday could not have been improved upon. His long-range assignment has been to watch Shekt. For the purpose, he keeps a fruit stand across the street from the Institute. For the last week he has been specifically instructed to watch the development of the Schwartz affair.
“He was on hand when the man, known to him through photographs and through a glimpse at the time he was first brought to the Institute, escaped, He observed every action, himself unobserved, and it is his report that details yesterday’s events. With incredible intuition, he decided that the entire purpose of the ‘escape’ was to arrange a meeting with Arvardan. He felt himself to be not in a position, single-handed, to exploit that meeting, so he decided to prevent it. The cabbies, to whom the Shekt girl had described Schwartz as being sick, speculated on Radiation Fever. Natter seized on that with the swiftness of genius. As soon as he observed the meeting in the department store, he reported the case of fever and the local authorities at Chica were, praised be Earth, intelligent enough to co-operate quickly.
“The store was emptied, and the camouflage which they counted upon to hide their conversation was stripped from them. They were alone and very conspicuous in the store. Natter went further. He approached them and talked them into allowing him to escort Schwartz back to the Institute. They agreed. What could they do?...So that the day ended without a single word passing between Arvardan and Schwartz.
“Nor did he commit the folly of arresting Schwartz. The two are still in ignorance of their detection and will yet lead us to bigger game
“And Natter went further still. He notified the Imperial garrison, and that is beyond praise. It presented Arvardan with a situation he could not possibly have counted upon. He must either reveal himself to be an Outsider and destroy his usefulness, which apparently depends upon conducting himself upon Earth as though he were an Earthman, or he must keep the fact secret and subject himself to whatever unpleasantness might result. He took the more heroic alternative, and even broke the arm of an officer of the Empire, in his passion for realism. That, at least, must be remembered in his favor.
“It is significant that his actions were as they were. Why should he, an Outsider, expose himself to the neuronic whip for an Earthgirl if the matter at stake was not supremely important?”
Both fists of the High Minister were on the desk before him. He glowered savagely, the long, smooth lines of his face crumpled in distress. “It is well for you, Balkis, from such meager details, to construct the spider web you do. It is skillfully done, and I feel that it is as you say. Logic leaves us no other alternative....But it means that they are too close, Balkis. They are too close....And they will have no mercy this time.”
Balkis shrugged. “They cannot be too close, or, in a case of such potential destructiveness for all the Empire, they would have already struck....And their time is running short. Arvardan must still meet with Schwartz if anything is to be accomplished, and so I can predict for you the future.”
“Do so--do so.”
“Schwartz must be sent away now and events allowed to quiet down from their current high pitch.”
“But where will he be sent?”
“We know that too. Schwartz was brought to the Institute by a man, obviously a farmer. Descriptions reached us from both Shekt’s technician and from Natter. We went through the registration data of every farmer within sixty miles of Chica, and Natter identified one Arbin Maren as the man. The technician supported that decision independently. We investigated the man quietly, and it seems that is is supporting a father-in-law, a helpless cripple. in evasion of the Sixty.”
The High Minister pounded the table. “Such cases are entirely too frequent, Balkis. The laws must be tightened--”
“It is not now the point, Your Excellency. What is important is the fact that since the farmer is violating the customs, he can be blackmailed.”
“Oh...”
“Shekt, and his Outsider allies, need a tool for just such a case--that is, where Schwartz must remain in seclusion for a longer period than he can safely stay hidden in the Institute. This farmer, probably helpless and innocent, is perfect’ for the purpose. Well, he will be watched. Schwartz will never be out of sight....Now, eventually another meeting between him and Arvardan will have to be arranged, and that time we will be prepared. Do you understand everything now?”
“I do.”
“Well, praise Earth. Then I will leave you now.” And, with a sardonic smile, he added, “With your permission, of course. “
And the High Minister, completely oblivious to the sarcasm, waved a hand in dismissal.
The Secretary, on his way to his own small office, was alone, and, when alone, his thoughts sometimes escaped from beneath his firm control and disported themselves in the secrecy of his mind.
They concerned themselves very little with Dr. Shekt, Schwartz, Arvardan--least of all with the High Minister.
Instead there was the picture of a planet, Trantor--from whose huge, planet-wide metropolis all the Galaxy was ruled. And there was the picture of a palace whose spires and sweeping arches he had never seen in reality; that no other Earthman had ever seen. He thought of the invisible lines of power and glory that swept from sun to sun in gathering strings, ropes, and cables to that central palace and to that abstraction, the Emperor, who was, after all, merely a man.
His mind held that thought fixedly--the thought of that power which could alone bestow a divinity during life--concentrated in one who was merely human.
Merely human! Like himself!
He could be--
The coming of the change was dim in Joseph Schwartz’s mind. Many times, in the absolute quiet of the night--how much more quiet the nights were now; were they ever noisy and bright and clanging with the life of energetic millions? --in the new quiet, he traced it back. He would have liked to say that here, here was the moment.
There was first that old, shattering day of fear when he was alone in a strange world--a day as misty in his mind now as the memory of Chicago itself. There was the trip to Chica, and its strange, complicated ending. He thought of that often.
Something about a machine--pills he had taken. Days of recuperation and then the escape, the wandering, the inexplicable events that last hour in the department store. He couldn’t possibly remember that part correctly. Yet, in the two months since, how clear everything was, how unfaulted his memory.
Even then things had begun to seem strange. He had been sensitive to atmosphere. The old doctor and his daughter had been uneasy, even frightened. Had he known that then? Or had it just been a fugitive impression, strengthened by the hindsight of his thoughts since?
But then, in the department store, just before that big man had reached out and trapped him--just before that--he had become conscious of the coming snatch. The warning had not been soon enough to save him, but it was a definite indication of the change.
And, since then, the headaches. No, not quite headaches. Throbbings, rather, as though some hidden dynamo in his brain had started working and, with its unaccustomed action, was vibrating every bone of his skull. There had been nothing like it in Chicago--supposing his fantasy of Chicago had meaning--or even during his first few days here in reality.
Had they done something to him that day in Chica? The machine? The pills--that had been anesthetic. An operation? And his thoughts, having reached that point for the hundredth time, stopped once more.
He had left Chica the day after his abortive escape, and now the days passed easily.
There had been Grew in his wheel chair, repeating words and pointing, or making motions, just as the girl, Pola, had done before him. Until one day Grew stopped speaking nonsense and began talking English. Or no, he himself--he, Joseph Schwartz--had stopped speaking English and had begun talking nonsense. Except that it wasn’t nonsense, any more.
It was so easy. He learned to read in four days. He surprised himself. He had had a phenomenal memory once, in Chicago, or it seemed to him that he had. But he had not been capable of such feats. Yet Grew did not seem surprised.
Schwartz gave it up.
Then, when the autumn had become really golden, things were clear again, and he was out in the fields working. It was amazing, the way he picked it up. There it was again--he never made a mistake. There were complicated machines that he could run without trouble after a single explanation.
He waited for the cold weather and it never quite came. The winter was spent in clearing ground, in fertilizing, in preparing for the spring planting in a dozen ways.
He questioned Grew, tried to explain what snow was, but the latter only stared and said, “Frozen water falling like rain, eh? Oh! The word for that is snow! I understand it does that on other planets but not on Earth.”
Schwartz watched the temperature thereafter and found that it scarcely varied from day to day--and yet the days shortened, as would be expected from a northerly location, say as northerly as Chicago. He wondered if he was on Earth.
He tried reading some of Grew’s book films but gave up. People were people still, but the minutiae of daily life, the knowledge of which was taken for granted, the historical and sociological allusions that meant nothing to him, forced him back.
The puzzles continued. The uniformly warm rains, the wild instructions he received to remain away from certain regions. For instance, there had been the evening that he had finally become too intrigued by the shining horizon, the blue glow to the south...
He had slipped off after supper, and when not a mile had passed, the almost noiseless whir of the biwheel engine came up behind him and Arbin’s angry shout rang out in the evening air. He had stopped and had been taken back.
Arbin had paced back and forth before him and had said, “You must stay away from anywhere that it shines at night.”
Schwartz had asked mildly, “Why?”
And the answer came with biting incision, “Because it is forbidden.” A long pause, then, “You really don’t know what it’s like out there, Schwartz?”
Schwartz spread his hands.
Arbin said, “Where do you come from? Are you an--an Outsider?”
“What’s an Outsider?”
Arbin shrugged and left.
But that night had had a great importance for Schwartz, for it was during that short mile toward the shiningness that the strangeness in his mind had coalesced into the Mind Touch. It was what he called it, and the closest he had come, either then or thereafter, to describing it.
He had been alone in the darkling purple. His own footsteps against the springy pavement were muted. He hadn’t seen anybody. He hadn’t heard anybody. He hadn’t touched anything.
Not exactly...It had been something like a touch, but not anywhere on his body. It was in his mind....Not exactly a touch, but a presence--a somethingness there like a velvety tickle.
Then there had been two--two touches, distinct, apart. And the second--how could he tell them apart?--had grown louder (no, that wasn’t the right word) ; it had grown distincter, more definite.
And then he knew it was Arbin. He knew it five minutes, at least, before he caught the sound of the biwheel, ten minutes before he laid eyes on Arbin.
Thereafter it occurred again and again with increasing frequency.
It began to dawn on him that he always knew when Arbin, Loa, or Grew was within a hundred feet of himself, even when he had no reason for knowing, even when he had every reason to suppose the opposite. It was a hard thing to take for granted, yet it began to seem so natural.
He experimented, and found that he knew exactly where any of them were, at any time. He could distinguish between them, for the Mind Touch differed from person to person. Not once had he the nerve to mention it to the others.
And sometimes he would wonder what that first Mind Touch on the road to the Shiningness had been. It had been neither Arbin, Loa, nor Grew. Well? Did it make a difference?
It did later. He had come across the Touch again, the same one, when he brought in the cattle one evening. He came to Arbin then and said :
“What about that patch of woods past the South Hills, Arbin?”
“Nothing about it,” was the gruff answer. “It’s Ministerial Ground.”
“What’s that?”
Arbin seemed annoyed. “It’s of no importance to you, is it? They call it Ministerial Ground because it is the property of the High Minister.”
“Why isn’t it cultivated?”
“It’s not intended for that.” Arbin’s voice was shocked. “It was a great Center. In ancient days. It is very sacred and must not be disturbed. Look, Schwartz, if you want to remain here safely, curb your curiosity and tend to your job.”
“But if it’s so sacred, then nobody can live there?”
“Exactly. You’re right.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure....And you’re not to trespass. It will mean the end for you.”
“I won’t.”
Schwartz walked away, wondering and oddly uneasy. It was from that wooded ground that the Mind Touch came, quite powerfully, and now something additional had been added to the sensation. It was an unfriendly Touch, a threatening Touch.
Why? Why?
And still he dared not speak. They would not have believed him, and something unpleasant would happen to him as a consequence. He knew that too. He knew too much, in fact.
He was younger these days, also. Not so much in the physical sense, to be sure. He was thinner in his stomach and broader in his shoulders. His muscles were harder and springier and his digestion was better. That was the result of work in the open. But it was something else he was chiefly conscious of. It was his way of thinking.
Old men tend to forget what thought was like in their youth; they forget the quickness of the mental jump, the daring of the youthful intuition, the agility of the fresh insight. They become accustomed to the more plodding varieties of reason, and because this is more than made up by the accumulation of experience, old men think themselves wiser than the young.
But to Schwartz experience remained, and it was with a sharp delight that he found he could understand things at a bound, that he gradually progressed from following Arbin’s explanations to anticipating them, to leaping on ahead. As a result, he felt young in a far more subtle way than any amount of physical excellence could account for.
Two months passed, and it all came out--over a game of chess with Grew in the arbor.
Chess, somehow, hadn’t changed, except for the names of the pieces. It was as he remembered it, and therefore it was always a comfort to him. At least, in this one respect, his poor memory did not play him false.
Grew told him of variations of chess. There was fourhanded chess, in which each player had a board, touching each other at the corners, with a fifth board filling the hollow in the center as a common No Man’s Land. There were three-dimensional chess games in which eight transparent boards were placed one over the other and in which each piece moved in three dimensions as they formerly moved in two, and in which the number of pieces and pawns were doubled, the win coming only when a simultaneous check of both enemy kings occurred. There were even the popular varieties, in which the original position of the chessmen were decided by throws of the dice, or where certain squares conferred advantages or disadvantages to the pieces upon them, or where new pieces with strange properties were introduced.
But chess itself, the original and unchangeable, was the same--and the tournament between Schwartz and Grew had completed its first fifty games.
Schwartz had a bare knowledge of the moves when he began, so that he lost constantly in the first games. But that had changed and losing games were becoming rarer. Gradually Grew had grown slow and cautious, had taken to smoking his pipe into glowing embers in the intervals between moves, and had finally subsided into rebellious and querulous losses.
Grew was White and his pawn was already on King 4.
“Let’s go,” he urged sourly. His teeth were clamped hard on his pipe and his eyes were already searching the board tensely.
Schwartz took his seat in the gathering twilight and sighed. The games were really becoming uninteresting as more and more he became aware of the nature of Grew’s moves before they could be made. It was as if Grew had a misty window in his skull. And the fact that he himself knew, almost instinctively, the proper course of chess play to take was simply of a piece with the rest of his problem.
They used a “night-board,” one that glowed in the darkness in a checkered blue-and-orange glimmer. The pieces, ordinary lumpish figures of a reddish clay in the sunlight, were metamorphosed at night. Half were bathed in a creamy whiteness that lent them the look of cold and shining porcelain, and the others sparked in tiny glitters of red.
The first moves were rapid. Schwartz’s own King’s Pawn met the enemy advance head on. Grew brought out his King’s Knight to Bishop 3; Schwartz countered with Queen’s Knight to Bishop 3. Then the White Bishop leaped to Queen’s Knight 5, and Schwartz’s Queen’s Rook’s Pawn slid ahead a square to drive it back to Rook 4. He then advanced his other Knight to Bishop 3.
The shining pieces slid across the board with an eery volition of their own as the grasping fingers lost themselves in the night.
Schwartz was frightened. He might be revealing insanity, but he had to know. He said abruptly, “Where am I?”
Grew looked up in the midst of a deliberate move of his Queen’s Knight to Bishop 3 and said, “What?”
Schwartz didn’t know the word for “country,” or “nation.” He said, “What world is this?” and moved his Bishop to King 2.
“Earth,” was the short reply, and Grew castled with great emphasis, first the tall figurine that was the King, moving, and then the lumpish Rook topping it and resting on the other side.
That was a thoroughly unsatisfactory answer. The word Grew had used Schwartz translated in his mind as “Earth.” But what was “Earth”? Any planet is “Earth” to those that live on it. He advanced his Queen’s Knight’s Pawn two spaces, and again Grew’s Bishop had to retreat, to Knight 3 this time. Then Schwartz and Grew, each in turn, advanced the Queen’s Pawn one space, each freeing his Bishop for the battle in the center that was soon to begin.
Schwartz asked, as calmly and casually as he could, “What year is this?” He castled.
Grew paused. He might have been startled. “What is it you’re harping on today? Don’t you want to play? If it will make you happy, this is 827.” He added sarcastically, “G.E.” He stared frowningly at the board, then slammed his Queen’s Knight to Queen 5, where it made its first assault.
Schwartz dodged quickly, moving his own Queen ‘s Knight to Rook 4 in counterattack. The skirmish was on in earnest. Grew’s Knight seized the Bishop, which leaped upward in a bath of red fire to be dropped with a sharp click into the box where it might lie, a buried warrior, until the next game. And then the conquering Knight fell instantly to Schwartz’s Queen. In a moment of overcaution, Grew’s attack faltered and he moved his remaining Knight back to the haven of King I, where it was relatively useless. Schwartz’s Queen’s Knight now repeated the first exchange, taking the Bishop and falling prey in its turn to the Rook’s Pawn.
Now another pause, and Schwartz asked mildly, “What’s G.E.?”
“What?” demanded Grew bad-humoredly. “Oh--you mean you’re still wondering what year this is? Of all the fool--Well, I keep forgetting you just learned to talk a month or so ago. But you’re intelligent. Don’t you really know? Well, it’s 827 of the Galactic Era. Galactic Era: G.E.--see? It’s 827 years since the foundation of the Galactic Empire; 827 years since the coronation of Frankenn the First. Now, please, it’s your move.”
But the Knight that Schwartz held was swallowed up in the grip of his hand for the moment. He was in a fury of frustration. He said, “Just one minute,” and put the Knight down on Queen 2. “Do you recognize any of these names? America, Asia, the United States, Russia, Europe--” He groped for identification.
In the darkness Grew’s pipe was a sullen red glow and the dim shadow of him hunched over the shining chessboard as if it had the less life of the two. He might have shaken his head curtly, but Schwartz could not see that. He didn’t have to. He sensed the other’s negation as clearly as though a speech had been delivered.
Schwartz tried again. “Do you know where I can get a map?”
“No maps,” growled Grew, “unless you want to risk your neck in Chica. I’m no geographer. I never heard of the names you mention, either. What are they? People?”
Risk his neck? Why that? Schwartz felt the coldness gather. Had he committed a crime? Did Grew know about it?
He asked doubtfully, “The sun has nine planets, hasn’t it?”
“Ten,” was the uncompromising answer.
Schwartz hesitated. Well, they might have discovered another that he hadn’t heard about. But then why should Grew have heard about it? He counted on his fingers, and then, “How about the sixth planet? Has it got rings?”
Grew was slowly moving the King’s Bishop’s Pawn forward two squares, and Schwartz instantly did the same.
Grew said, “Saturn, you mean? Of course it has rings.” He was calculating now. He had the choice of taking either the Bishop’s Pawn or the King’s Pawn, and the consequences of the choice were not too clear.
“And is there an asteroid belt--little planets--between Mars and Jupiter? I mean between the fourth and fifth planets?”
“Yes,” mumbled Grew. He was relighting his pipe and thinking feverishy. Schwartz caught that agonized uncertainty and was annoyed at it. To him, now that he was sure of Earth’s identity, the chess game was less than a trifle. Questions quivered along the inner surface of his skull, and one slipped out.
“Your book films are real, then? There are other worlds? With people?”
And now Grew looked up from the board, eyes probing uselessly in the darkness. “Are you serious?”
“Are there?”
“By the Galaxy! I believe you really don’t know.”
Schwartz felt humiliated in his ignorance. “Please--”
“Of course there are worlds. Millions of them! Every star you see has worlds, and most of those you don’t see. It’s all part of the Empire.”
Delicately, inside, Schwartz felt the faint echo of each of Grew’s intense words as they sparked directly from mind to mind. Schwartz felt the mental contacts growing stronger with the days. Maybe, soon, he could hear those tiny words in his mind even when the person thinking them wasn’t talking.
And now, for the first time, he finally thought of an alternative to insanity. Had he passed through time, somehow? Slept through, perhaps?
He said huskily, “How long since it’s all happened, Grew? How long since the time when there was only one planet?”
“What do you mean?” He was suddenly cautious. “Are you a member of the Ancients?”
“Of the what? I’m not a member of anything, but wasn’t Earth once the only planet?...Well, wasn’t it?”
“The Ancients say so,” said Grew grimly, “but who knows? Who really knows? The worlds up there have been existing all history long as far as I know.”
“But how long is that?”
“Thousands of years, I suppose. Fifty thousand, a hundred --I can’t say.”
Thousands of years! Schwartz felt a gurgle in his throat and pressed it down in panic. All that between two steps? A breath, a moment, a flicker of time--and he had jumped thousands of years? He felt himself shrinking back to amnesia. His identification of the Solar System must have been the result of imperfect memories penetrating the mist.
But now Grew was making his next move--he was taking the other’s Bishop’s Pawn, and it was almost mechanically that Schwartz noted mentally the fact that it was the wrong choice. Move fitted to move now with no conscious effort. His King’s Rook swooped forward to take the foremost of the now-doubled White Pawns. White’s Knight advanced again to Bishop 3. Schwartz’s Bishop moved to Knight 2, freeing itself for action. Grew followed suit my moving his own Bishop to Queen 2.
Schwartz paused before launching the final attack. He said, “Earth is boss, isn’t it?”
“Boss of what?”
“Of the Emp--”
But Grew looked up with a roar at which the chessmen quivered. “Listen, you, I’m tired of your questions. Are you a complete fool? Does Earth look as if it’s boss of anything?” There was a smooth whir as Grew’s wheel chair circled the table. Schwartz felt grasping fingers on his arm.
“Look! Look there!” Grew’s voice was a whispered rasp. “You see the horizon? You see it shine?”
“Yes.”
“That is Earth--all Earth. Except here and there, where a few patches like this one exist.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Earth ‘s crust is radioactive. The soil glows, always glowed, will glow forever. Nothing can grow. No one can live--You really didn’t know that? Why do you suppose we have the Sixty?”
The paralytic subsided. He circled his chair about the table again. “It’s your move.”
The Sixty! Again a Mind Touch with an indefinable aura of menace. Schwartz’s chess pieces played themselves, while he wondered about it with a tight-pressed heart. His King’s Pawn took the opposing Bishop’s Pawn. Grew moved his Knight to Queen 4 and Schwartz’s Rook side-stepped the attack to Knight 4. Again Grew’s Knight attacked, moving to Bishop 3, and Schwartz’s Rook avoided the issue again to Knight 5. But now Grew’s King’s Rook’s Pawn advanced one timorous square and Schwartz’s Rook slashed forward. It took the Knight’s Pawn, checking the enemy King. Grew’s King promptly took the Rook, but Schwartz’s Queen plugged the hole instantly, moving to Knight 4 and checking. Grew’s King scurried to Rook 1, and Schwartz brought up his Knight, placing it on King 4. Grew moved his Queen to King 2 in a strong attempt to mobilize his defenses, and Schwartz countered by marching his Queen forward two squares to Knight 6, so that the fight was now in close quarters. Grew had no choice; he moved his Queen to Knight 2, and the two female majesties were now face to face. Schwartz’s Knight pressed home, taking the opposing Knight on Bishop 6, and when the now-attacked White Bishop moved quickly to Bishop 3, the Knight followed to Queen 5. Grew hesitated for slow minutes, then advanced his outflanked Queen up the long diagonal to take Schwartz’s Bishop.
Then he paused and drew a relieved breath. His sly opponent had a Rook in danger with a check in the offing and his own Queen ready to wreak havoc. And he was ahead a Rook to a Pawn.
“Your move,” he said with satisfaction.
Schwartz said finally, “What--what is the Sixty?”
There was a sharp unfriendliness to Grew’s voice. “Why do you ask that? What are you after?”
“Please,” humbly. He had little spirit left in him. “I am a man with no harm in me. I don’t know who I am or what happened to me. Maybe I’m an amnesia case.”
“Very likely,” was the contemptuous reply. “Are you escaping from the Sixty? Answer truthfully.”
“But I tell you I don’t know what the Sixty is!”
It carried conviction. There was a long silence. To Schwartz, Grew’s Mind Touch was ominous, but he could not, quite, make out words.
Grew said slowly, “The Sixty is your sixtieth year. Earth supports twenty million people, no more. To live, you must produce. If you cannot produce, you cannot live. Past Sixty--you cannot produce.”
“And so...” Schwartz’s mouth remained open.
“You’re put away. It doesn’t hurt.”
“You’re killed?”
“It’s not murder,” stiffly. “It must be that way. Other worlds won’t take us, and we must make room for the children some way. The older generation must make room for the younger.”
“Suppose you don’t tell them you’re sixty?”
“Why shouldn’t you? Life after sixty is no joke....And there’s a Census every ten years to catch anyone who is foolish enough to try to live. Besides, they have your age on record.”
“Not mine.” The words slipped out, Schwartz couldn’t stop them. “Besides, I’m only fifty--next birthday.”
“It doesn’t matter. They can check by your bone structure. Don’t you know that? There’s no way of masking it. They’ll get me next time....Say, it’s your move.”
Schwartz disregarded the urging. “You mean they’ll--”
“Sure, I’m only fifty-five, but look at my legs. I can’t work, can I? There are three of us registered in our family, and our quota is adjusted on a basis of three workers. When I had the stroke I should have been reported, and then the quota would have been reduced. But I would have gotten a premature Sixty, and Arbin and Loa wouldn’t do it. They’re fools, because it has meant hard work for them--till you came along. And they’ll get me next year, anyway.... Your move.”
“Is next year the Census?”
“That’s right….Your move.”
“Wait!” urgently. “Is everyone put away after sixty? No exceptions at all?”
“Not for you and me. The High Minister lives a full life, and members of the Society of Ancients; certain scientists or those performing some great service. Not many qualify. Maybe a dozen a year....It’s your move!”
“Who decides who qualifies?”
“The High Minister, of course. Are you moving?”
But Schwartz stood up. “Never mind. It’s checkmate in five moves. My Queen is going to take your Pawn to check you; you’ve got to move to Knight 1; I bring up the Knight to check you at King 2; you must move to Bishop 2; my Queen checks you at King 6; you must move to Knight 2; my Queen goes to Knight 6, and when you’re then forced to Rook 1, my Queen mates you at Rook 6.
“Good game,” he added automatically.
Grew stared long at the board, then, with a cry, dashed it from the table. The gleaming pieces rolled dejectedly about on the lawn.
“You and your damned distracting chatter,” yelled Grew.
But Schwartz was conscious of nothing. Nothing except the overwhelming necessity of escaping the Sixty. For though Browning said:
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be...
that was in an Earth of teeming billions and of unlimited food. The best that was now to be was the Sixty--and death.
Schwartz was sixty-two.
Sixty-two...