Isaac Asimov - Pebble In The Sky

The physicist's eyes were pools of pure horror.

"Yes, I see you do," said Balkis. "It is, of course, possible to allow the Synapsifier to damage brain tissue just sufficiently to allow the production of an acerebral imbecile. It is a most disgusting state: one in which you will have to be fed, or starve; be cleaned, or live in dung; be shut up, or remain a study in horror to all who see. It may be a lesson to others in the great day that is coming.

"As for you"-and the Secretary turned to Arvardan-"and your friend Schwartz, you are Imperial citizens, and therefore suitable for an interesting experiment. We have never tried our concentrated fever virus on you Galactic dogs. It would be interesting to show our calculations correct.

A small dose, you see, so that death is not quick. The disease might work its way to the inevitable over a period of a week, if we dilute the injection sufficiently. It will be very painful."

And now he paused and watched them through slitted eyes. II All that," he said, "is the alternative to a few well-chosen words at the present time. How much does the Empire know? Have they other agents active at the present moment? What are their plans, if any, for counteraction?"

Dr. Shekt muttered, "How do we know that you won't have us killed anyway, once you have what you want of us?"

"You have my assurance that you will die horribly if you refuse. You will have to gamble on the alternative. What do you say?"

"Can't we have time?"

"Isn't that what I'm giving you now? Ten minutes have passed since I entered, and I am still listening…Well. have you anything to say? What, nothing? Time will not endure forever, you must realize. Arvardan, you still knot your muscles. You think perhaps you can reach me before I can draw my blaster. Well, what if you can? There are hundreds outside, and my plans will continue without me. Even your separate modes of punishment will continue without me.

"Or perhaps you, Schwartz. You killed our agent. It was you, was it not? Perhaps you think you can kill me?"

For the first time Schwartz looked at Balkis. He said coldly, "I can, but I won't."

"That is kind of you."

"Not at all. It is very cruel of me. You say yourself that there are things worse than simple death."

Arvardan found himself suddenly staring at Schwartz in a vast hope.

Schwartz's mind was whirling. In a queer, hectic way he felt at ease. There was a piece of him that seemed in absolute control of the situation, and more of him that could not believe that. Paralysis had been applied later to him than to the others. Even Dr. Shekt was sitting up, while he himself could just budge an arm and little more.

And, staring up at the leering mind of the Secretary, infinitely foul and infinitely evil, he began his duel.

He said, "I was on your side originally, for all that you were preparing to kill me. I thought I understood your feelings and your intentions…But the minds of these others here are relatively innocent and pure, and yours is past description. It is not even for the Earthman you fight, but for your own personal power. I see in you not a vision of a free Earth, but of a re-enslaved Earth. I see in you not the disruption of the Imperial power, but its replacement by a personal dictatorship."

"You see all that, do you?" said Balkis. "Well, see what you wish. I don't need your information after all, you know-not so badly that I must endure insolence. We have advanced the hour of striking, it seems. Had you expected that? Amazing what pressure will do, even on those who swear that more speed is impossible. Did you see that, my dramatic mind reader?"

Schwartz said, "I didn't. I wasn't looking for it, and it passed my notice…But I can look for it now. Two days-Less-Let's see-Tuesday-six in the morning-Chica time."

The blaster was in the Secretary's hand, finally. He advanced in abrupt strides and towered over Schwartz's drooping figure.

"How did you know that?"

Schwartz stiffened; somewhere mental tendrils bunched and grasped. Physically his jaw muscles clamped rigorously shut and his eyebrows curled low, but these were purely irrelevant-involuntary accompaniments to the real effort. Within his brain there was that which reached out and seized hard upon the Mind Touch of the other.

To Arvardan, for precious, wasting seconds, the scene was meaningless; the Secretary's sudden motionless silence was not significant.

Schwartz muttered gaspingly, "I've got him…Take away his gun. I can't hold on-" It died away in a gurgle.

And then Arvardan understood. With a lurch he was on all fours. Then slowly, grindingly, he lifted himself once more, by main force, to an unsteady erectness. Pola tried to rise with him, could not quite make it. Shekt edged off his slab, sinking to his knees. Only Schwartz lay there, his face working.

The Secretary might have been struck by the Medusa sight. On his smooth and unfurrowed forehead perspiration gathered slowly, and his expressionless face hinted of no emotion. Only that right hand, holding the blaster, showed any signs of life. Watch closely, and you might see it jerk ever so gently; note the curious flexing pressure of it upon the contact button: a gentle pressure, not enough to do harm, but returning, and returning- "Hold him tight," gasped Arvardan with a ferocious joy. He steadied himself on the back of a chair and tried to gain his breath. "Let me get to him."

His feet dragged. He was in a nightmare, wading through molasses, swimming through tar; pulling with torn muscles, so slowly-so slowly.

He was not-could not be-conscious of the terrific duel that proceeded before him.

The Secretary had only one aim, and that was to put just the tiniest force into his thumb-three ounces, to be exact, since that was the contact pressure required for the blaster's operation. To do so his mind had only to instruct a quiveringly balanced tendon, already half contracted, to-to- Schwartz had only one aim, and that was to restrain that pressure-but in all the inchoate mass of sensation presented to him by the other's Mind Touch, he could not know which particular area was alone concerned with that thumb. So it was that he bent his efforts to produce a stasis, a complete stasis- The Secretary's Mind Touch heaved and billowed against restraint. It was a quick and fearfully intelligent mind that confronted Schwartz's untried control. For seconds it remained quiescent, waiting-then, in a terrific, tearing attempt, it would tug wildly at this muscle or that- To Schwartz it was as if he had seized a wrestling hold which he must maintain at all costs, though his opponent threw him about in frenzies.

But none of this showed. Only the nervous clenching and unclenching of Schwartz's jaw; the quivering lips, bloodied by the biting teeth-and that occasional soft movement on the part of the Secretary's thumb, straining-straining.

Arvardan paused to rest. He did not want to. He had to. His outstretched finger just touched the fabric of the Secretary's tunic and he felt he could move no more. His agonized lungs could not pump the breath his dead limbs required. His eyes were blurred with the tears of effort, his mind with the haze of pain.

He gasped, "Just a few more minutes, Schwartz. Hold him, hold him-"

Slowly, slowly, Schwartz shook his head. "I can't-I can't-"

And indeed, to Schwartz all the world was slipping away into dull, unfocused chaos. The tendrils of his mind were becoming stiff and nonresilient.

The Secretary's thumb pressed once again upon the contact. It did not relax. The pressure grew by tiny stages.

Schwartz could feel the bulging of his own eyeballs, the writhing expansion of the veins in his forehead. He could sense the awful triumph that gathered in the mind of the other