Pebble In The Sky

6. Apprehension In The Night
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 na??vet??. 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.