Pebble In The Sky

5. The Involuntary Volunteer

Once alone, Dr. Shekt, quietly and cautiously, touched the summoner, and a young technician entered hurriedly, white robe sparkling, long brown hair carefully bound back.

Dr. Shekt said, "Has Pola told you-"

"Yes, Dr. Shekt. I've observed him through the visiplate, and he must undoubtedly be a legitimate volunteer. He's certainly not a subject sent in the usual manner."

"Ought I refer to the Council, do you suppose?"

"I don't know what to advise. The Council wouldn't approve of any ordinary communication. Any beam can be tapped, you know." Then, eagerly, "Suppose I get rid of him. I can tell him we need men under thirty. The subject is easily thirty-five."

"No, no. I'd better see him." Shekt's mind was a cold whirl. So far things had been most judiciously handled. Just enough information to lend a spurious frankness, but no more. And now an actual volunteer-and immediately after Ennius's visit. Was there a connection? Shekt himself had but the vaguest knowledge of the giant misty forces that were now beginning to wrestle back and forth across the blasted face of Earth. But, in a way, he knew enough. Enough to feel himself at the mercy of them, and certainly more than any of the Ancients suspected he knew.

Yet what could he do, since his life was doubly in danger?

Ten minutes later Dr. Shekt was peering helplessly at the gnarled farmer standing before him, cap in hand, head half averted, as though attempting to avoid a too-close scrutiny. His age, thought Shekt, was certainly under forty, but the hard life of the soil was no flatterer of men. The man's cheeks were reddened beneath the leathery brown, and there were distinct traces of perspiration at the hairline and the temples, though the room was cool. The man's hands were fumbling at each other.

"Now, my dear sir," said Shekt kindly, "I understand you refuse to give your name."

Arbin's was a blind stubbornness. "I was told no questions would be asked if you had a volunteer."

"Hmm. Well, is there anything at all you would like to say? Or do you just want to be treated immediately?"

"Me? Here, now?" in sudden panic. "It's not myself that's the volunteer. I didn't say anything to give that impression."

"No? You mean someone else is the volunteer?"

"Certainly. What would I want-"

"I understand. Is the subject, this other man, with you?"

"In a way," said Arbin cautiously.

"All right. Now, look, just tell us whatever you wish. Everything you say will be held in strict confidence, and we'll help you in whatever way we can. Agreed?"

The farmer ducked his head, as a sort of rudimentary gesture of respect. "Thank you. It's like this, sir. We have a man about the farm, a distant-uh-relative. He helps, you understand-"

Arbin swallowed with difficulty, and Shekt nodded gravely.

Arbin continued. "He's a very willing worker and a very good worker-we had a son, you see, but he died-and my good woman and myself, you see, need the help-she's not well-we could not get along without him, scarcely." He felt that somehow the story was a complete mess.

But the gaunt scientist nodded at him. " And this relative of yours is the one you wish treated?"

"Why, yes, I thought I had said that-but you'll pardon me if this takes me some time. You see, the poor fellow is not-exactly-right in his head." He hurried on, furiously. "He is not sick, you understand. He is not wrong so that he has to be put away. He's just slow. He doesn't talk, you see."

"He can't talk?" Shekt seemed startled.

"Oh-he can. It's just that he doesn't like to. He doesn't talk well."

The physicist looked dubious. " And you want the Synapsifier to improve his mentality, eh?"

Slowly, Arbin nodded. "If he knew a bit more, sir, why, he could do some of the work my wife can't, you see."

"He might die. Do you understand that?"

Arbin looked at him helplessly, and his fingers writhed furiously.

Shekt said, "I'd need his consent."

The farmer shook his head slowly, stubbornly. "He won't understand." Then, urgently, almost beneath his breath, "Why, look, sir, I'm sure you'll understand me. You don't look like a man who doesn't know what a hard life is. This man is getting old. It's not a question of the Sixty, you see, but what if, in the next Census, they think he's a half-wit and -and take him away? We don't like to lose him, and that's why we bring him here.

"The reason I'm trying to be secret-like is that maybe-maybe"-and Arbin's eyes swiveled involuntarily at the walls, as if to penetrate them by sheer will and detect the listeners that might be behind-"well, maybe the Ancients won't like what I'm doing. Maybe trying to save an afflicted man can be judged as against the Customs, but life is hard, sir…And it would be useful to you. You have asked for volunteers."

"I know. Where is your relative?"

Arbin took the chance. "Out in my biwheel, if no one's found him. He wouldn't be able to take care of himself if anyone has-"

"Well, we'll hope he's safe. You and I will go out right now and bring the car around to our basement garage. I'll see to it that no one knows of his presence but ourselves and my helpers. And I assure you that you won't be in trouble with the Brotherhood."

His arm dropped in friendly fashion to Arbin's shoulder, who grinned spasmodically. To the farmer it was like a rope loosening from about his neck.

Shekt looked down at the plump, balding figure upon the couch. The patient was unconscious, breathing deeply and regularly. He had spoken unintelligibly, had understood nothing. Yet there had been none of the physical stigmata of feeblemindedness. Reflexes had been in order, for an old man.

Old! Hmm.

He looked across at Arbin, who watched everything with a glance like a vise.

"Would you like us to take a bone analysis?"

"No," cried Arbin. Then, more softly, "I don't want anything that might be identification."

"It might help us-be safer, you know-if we knew his age," said Shekt.

"He's fifty," said Arbin shortly.

The physicist shrugged. It didn't matter. Again he looked at the sleeper. When brought in, the subject had been, or certainly seemed, dejected, withdrawn, uncaring. Even the Hypno-pills had apparently aroused no suspicion. They had been offered him; there had been a quick, spasmodic smile in response, and he had swallowed them.

The technician was already rolling in the last of the rather clumsy units which together made up the Synapsifier. At the touch of a push button the polarized glass in the windows of the operating room underwent molecular rearrangement and became opaque. The only light was the white one that blazed its cold brilliance upon the patient suspended, as he was, in the multihundred-kilowatt diamagnetic field some two inches above the operating table to which he was transferred.

Arbin still sat in the dark there, understanding nothing, but determined in deadly fashion to prevent, somehow, by his presence, the harmful tricks he knew he had not the knowledge to prevent.

The physicists paid no attention to him. The electrodes were adjusted to the patient's skull. It was a long job. First there was the careful study of the skull formation by the Ullster technique that revealed the winding, tight-knit fissures. Grimly, Shekt smiled to himself. Skull fissures weren't an unalterable quantitative measure of age, but they were good enough in this case. The man was older than the claimed fifty.

And then, after a while, he did not smile. He frowned. There was something wrong with the fissures. They seemed odd-not quite…

For a moment he was ready to swear that the skull formation was a primitive one, a throwback, but then…Well, the man was subnormal in mentality. Why not?

And suddenly he exclaimed in shock, "Why, I hadn't noticed! This man has hair on his face!" He turned to Arbin. "Has he always been bearded?"

"Bearded?"

"Hair on his face! Come here! Don't you see it?"

"Yes, sir." Arbin thought rapidly. He had noticed it that morning and then had forgotten. "He was born like that," he said, and then weakened it by adding, "I think."

"Well, let's remove it. You don't want him going around like a brute beast, do you?"

"No, sir."

The hair came off smoothly at the application of a depilatory salve by the carefully gloved technician.

The technician said, "He has hair on his chest too, Dr. Shekt."

"Great Galaxy," said Shekt, "let me see! Why, the man is a rug! Well, let it be. It won't show with a shirt, and I want to get on with the electrodes. Let's have wires here and here, and here." Tiny pricks and the insertion of the platinum hair-lets. "Here and here."

A dozen connections, probing through skin to the fissures, through the tightness of which could be felt the delicate shadow echoes of the microcurrents that surged from cell to cell in the brain.

Carefully they watched the delicate ammeters stir and leap, as the connections were made and broken. The tiny needlepoint recorders traced their delicate spider webs across the graphed paper in irregular peaks and troughs.

Then the graphs were removed and placed on the illuminated opal glass. They bent low over it, whispering.

Arbin caught disjointed flashes: remarkably regular…look at the height of the quinternary peak…think it ought to be analyzed…clear enough to the eye…"

And then, for what seemed a long time, there was a tedious adjustment of the Synapsifier. Knobs were turned, eyes on vernier adjustments, then clamped and their readings recorded. Over and over again the various electrometers were checked and new adjustments were made necessary.

Then Shekt smiled at Arbin and said, "It will all be over very soon."

The large machinery was advanced upon the sleeper like a slow-moving and hungry monster. Four long wires were dangled to the extremities of his limbs, and a dull black pad of something that looked like hard rubber was carefully adjusted at the back of his neck and held firmly in place by clamps that fitted over the shoulders. Finally, like two giant mandibles, the opposing electrodes were parted and brought downward over the pale, pudgy head, so that each pointed at a temple.

Shekt kept his eyes firmly on the chronometer; in his other hand was the switch. His thumb moved; nothing visible happened-not even to the fear-sharpened sense of the watching Arbin. After what might have been hours, but was actually less than three minutes, Shekt's thumb moved again.

His assistant bent over the still-sleeping Schwartz hurriedly, then looked up triumphantly. "He's alive."

There remained yet several hours, during which a library of recordings were taken, to an undertone of almost wild excitement. It was well past midnight when the hypodermic was pressed home and the sleeper's eyes fluttered.

Shekt stepped back, bloodless but happy. He dabbed at his forehead with the back of a hand. "It's all right."

He turned to Arbin firmly. "He must stay with us a few days, sir."

The look of alarm grew madly in Arbin's eyes. "But-but -"

"No, no, you must rely on me," urgently. "He will be safe; I will stake my life on it. I am staking my life on it. Leave him to us; no one will see him but ourselves. If you take him with you now, he may not survive. What good will that do you?…And if he does die, you may have to explain the corpse to the Ancients."

It was the last that did the trick. Arbin swallowed and said, "But look, how am I to know when to come and take him? I won't give you my name!"

But it was submission. Shekt said, "I'm not asking you for your name. Come a week from today at ten in the evening. I'll be waiting for you at the door of the garage, the one we took in your biwheel at. You must believe me, man; you have nothing to fear."

It was evening when Arbin arrowed out of Chica. Twenty-four hours had passed since the stranger had pounded at his door, and in that time he had doubled his crimes against the Customs. Would he ever be safe again?

He could not help but glance over his shoulder as his biwheel sped along the empty road. Would there be someone to follow? Someone to trace him home? Or was his face already recorded? Were matchings being leisurely made somewhere in the distant files of the Brotherhood at Washenn, where all living Earthmen, together with their vital statistics, were listed, for purposes of the Sixty.

The Sixty, which must come to all Earthmen eventually. He had yet a quarter of a century before it came to him, yet he lived daily with it on Grew's account, and now on the stranger's account.

What if he never returned to Chica?

No! He and Loa could not long continue producing for three, and once they failed, their first crime, that of concealing Grew, would be discovered. And so crimes against the Customs, once begun, must be compounded.

Arbin knew that he would be back, despite any risk.

It was past midnight before Shekt thought of retiring, and then only because the troubled Pola insisted. Even then he did not sleep. His pillow was a subtle smothering device, his sheets a pair of maddening snarls. He arose and took his seat by the window. The city was dark now, but there on the horizon, on the side opposite the lake, was the faint trace of that blue glow of death that held sway over all but a few patches of Earth.

The activities of the hectic day just past danced madly before his mind. His first action after having persuaded the frightened farmer to leave had been to televise the State House. Ennius must have been waiting for him, for he himself had answered. He was still encased in the heaviness of the lead-impregnated clothing.

"Ah, Shekt, good evening. Your experiment is over?"

"And nearly my volunteer as well, poor man."

Ennius looked ill…1 thought well when I thought it better not to stay. You scientists are scarcely removed from murderers, it seems to me."

"He is not yet dead, Procurator, and it may be that we will save him, but-" And he shrugged his shoulders.

"I'd stick to rats exclusively henceforward, Shekt… But you don't look at all your usual self, friend. Surely you, at least, must be hardened to this, even if I am not."

"I am getting old, my Lord," said Shekt simply. " A dangerous pastime on Earth," was the dry reply. "Get you to bed, Shekt."

And so Shekt sat there, looking out at the dark city of a dying world.

For two years now the Synapsifier had been under test, and for two years he had been the slave and sport of the Society of Ancients, or the Brotherhood, as they called themselves.

He had seven or eight papers that might have been published in the Sirian Journal of Neurophysiology, that might have given that Galaxy-wide fame to him that he so wanted. These papers moldered in his desk. Instead there was that obscure and deliberately misleading paper in Physical Reviews. That was the way of the Brotherhood. Better a half-truth than a lie.

And still Ennius was inquiring. Why?

Did it fit in with other things he had learned? Was the Empire suspecting what he himself suspected?

Three times in two hundred years Earth had risen. Three times, under the banner of a claimed ancient greatness, Earth had rebelled against the Imperial garrisons. Three times they had failed-of course-and had not the Empire been, essentially, enlightened, and the Galactic Councils, by and large, statesmanlike, Earth would have been bloodily erased from the roll of inhabited planets.

But now things might be different,…Or could they be different? How far could he trust the words of a dying madman, three quarters incoherent?

What was the use? In any case, he dared do nothing. He could only wait. He was getting old, and, as Ennius had said, that was a dangerous pastime on Earth. The Sixty was almost upon him, and there were few exceptions to its inevitable grasp.

And even on this miserable, burning mud ball of Earth, he wanted to live.

He went to bed once more at that point, and just before falling asleep he wondered feebly if his call to Ennius might have been tapped by the Ancients. He did not know at the time that the Ancients had other sources of information.

It was morning before Shekt's young technician had completely made up his mind.

He admired Shekt, but he knew well that the secret treatment of a non-authorized volunteer was against the direct order of the Brotherhood. And that order had been given the status of a Custom, which made disobedience a capital offense.

He reasoned it out. After all, who was this man who had been treated? The campaign for volunteers had been carefully worked out. It was designed to give enough information about the Synapsifier to remove suspicion on the part of possible Imperial spies without giving any real encouragement to volunteers. The Society of Ancients sent their own men for treatment. and that was enough.

Who had sent this man, then? The Society of Ancients in secret? In order to test Shekt's reliability?

Or was Shekt a traitor? He had been closeted with someone earlier in the day-someone in bulky clothes, such as Outsiders wore in fear of radioactive poisoning.

In either case Shekt might go down in doom, and why should he himself be dragged down as well? He was a young man with nearly four decades of life before him. Why should he anticipate the Sixty?

Besides, it would mean promotion for him…And Shekt was so old, the next Census would probably get him anyway, so it would involve very little harm for him. Practically none at all.

The technician had decided. His hand reached for the communicator, and he punched the combination that would lead directly to the private room of the High Minister of all Earth, who, under the Emperor and Procurator, held the power of life and death over every man on Earth.

It was evening again before the misty impressions within Schwartz's skull sharpened through the pink pain. He remembered the trip to the low, huddling structures by the lakeside, the long crouching wait in the rear of the car.

And then-what? What? His mind yanked away at the sluggish thoughts…Yes, they had come for him. There was a room, with instruments and dials, and two pills… That was it. They had given him pills, and he had taken them cheerfully. What had he to lose? Poisoning would have been a favor.

And then-nothing.

Wait! There had been flashes of consciousness…People bending over him…Suddenly he remembered the cold motion of a stethoscope over his chest…A girl had been feeding him.

It flashed upon him that he had been operated upon and, in panic, he flung the bed sheets from him and sat up.

A girl was upon him, hands on his shoulders, forcing him back onto the pillows. She spoke soothingly, but he did not understand her. He tensed himself against the slim arms, but uselessly. He had no strength.

He held his hands before his face. They seemed normal. He moved his legs and heard them brush against the sheets. They couldn't have been amputated..

He turned to the girl and said, without much hope, "Can you understand me? Do you know where I am?" He scarcely recognized his own voice.

The girl smiled and suddenly poured out a rapid patter of liquid sound. Schwartz groaned. Then an older man entered, the one who had given him the pills. The man and the girl spoke together, the girl turning to him after a while, pointing to his lips and making little gestures of invitation to him.

"What?" he said.

She nodded eagerly, her pretty face glowing with pleasure, until, despite himself, Schwartz felt glad to look at it.

"You want me to talk?" he asked.

The man sat down upon his bed and motioned him to open his mouth. He said, " Ah-h-h," and Schwartz repeated "Ah-h-h" while the man's fingers massaged Schwartz's Adam's apple.

"What's the matter?" said Schwartz peevishly, when the pressure was removed. " Are you surprised I can talk? What do you think I am?"

The days passed, and Schwartz learned a few things. The man was Dr. Shekt-the first human being he knew by name since he had stepped over the rag doll. The girl was his daughter, Pola. Schwartz found that he no longer needed to shave. The hair on his face never grew. It frightened him. Did it ever grow?

His strength came back quickly. They were letting him put on clothes and walk about now, and were feeding him something more than mush.

Was his trouble amnesia, then? Were they treating him for that? Was all this world normal and natural, while the world he thought he remembered was only the fantasy of an amnesic brain?

And they never let him step out of the room, not even into the corridor. Was he a prisoner, then? Had he committed a crime?

There never can be a man so lost as one who is lost in the vast and intricate corridors of his own lonely mind, where none may reach and none may save. There never was a man so helpless as one who cannot remember.

Pola amused herself by teaching him words. He was not at all amazed at the ease with which he picked them up and remembered. He remembered that he had had a trick memory in the past; that memory, at least, seemed accurate. In two days he could understand simple sentences. In three he could make himself understood.

On the third day, however, he did become amazed. Shekt taught him numbers and set him problems. Schwartz would give answers, and Shekt would look at a timing device and record with rapid strokes of his stylus. But then Shekt explained the term "logarithm" to him and asked for the logarithm of two.

Schwartz picked his words carefully. His vocabulary was still minute and he reinforced it with gestures. "I-not-say. Answer-not-number."

Shekt nodded his head excitedly and said, "Not number. Not this, not that; part this, part that."

Schwartz understood quite well that Shekt had confirmed his statement that the answer was not an even number but a fraction and therefore said, "Point three zero one zero three -and-more-numbers."

"Enough!"

Then came the amazement. How had he known the answer to that? Schwartz was certain that he had never heard of logarithms before, yet in his mind the answer had come as soon as the question was put. He had no idea of the process by which it had been calculated. It was as if his mind were an independent entity, using him only as its mouthpiece.

Or had he once been a mathematician, in the days before his amnesia?

He found it exceedingly difficult to wait the days out. Increasingly he felt he must venture out into the world and force an answer from it somehow. He could never learn in the prison of this room, where (the thought suddenly came to him) he was but a medical specimen.

The chance came on the sixth day. They were beginning to trust him too much, and one time when Shekt left he did not lock the door. Where usually the door so neatly closed itself that the very crack of its joining the wall became invisible, this time a quarter inch of space showed.

He waited to make sure Shekt was not returning on the instant, and then slowly put his hand over the little gleaming light as he had seen them often do. Smoothly and silently the door slid open…The corridor was empty.

And so Schwartz "escaped."

How was he to know that for the six days of his residence there the Society of Ancients had its agents watching the hospital, his room, himself?