Isaac Asimov - Pebble In The Sky

Then Arvardan lunged. His stiff and rebellious body toppled forward, hands outstretched and clawing.

The yielding, mind-held Secretary toppled with him. The blaster flew sideways, clanging along the hard floor.

The Secretary's mind wrenched free almost simultaneously, and Schwartz fell back, his own skull a tangled jungle of confusion.

Balkis struggled wildly beneath the clinging dead weight of Arvardan's body. He jerked a knee into the other's groin with a vicious strength while his clenched fist came down sideways on Arvardan's cheekbone. He lifted and thrust-and Arvardan rolled off in huddled agony.

The Secretary staggered to his feet, panting and disheveled, and stopped again.

Facing him was Shekt, half reclining. His right hand, shakingly supported by the left, was holding the blaster, and although it quivered, the business end pointed at the Secretary.

"You pack of fools," shrilled the Secretary, passion-choked, "what do you expect to gain? I have only to raise my voice-"

"And you, at least," responded Shekt weakly, "will die."

"You will accomplish nothing by killing me," said the

Secretary bitterly, "and you know it. You will not save the Empire you would betray us to-and you would not save even yourselves. Give me that gun and you will go free."

He extended a hand, but Shekt laughed wistfully. "I am not mad enough to believe that."

°'Perhaps not, but you are half paralyzed." And the Secretary broke sharply to the right. far faster than the physicist's feeble wrist could veer the blaster.

But now Balkis's mind, as he tensed for the final jump" was utterly and entirely on the blaster he was avoiding. Schwartz extended his mind once again in a final jab, and the Secretary tripped and slammed downward as if he had been clubbed.

Arvardan had risen painfully to his feet. His cheek was red and swollen and he hobbled when he walked. He said, "Can you move, Schwartz?"

"A little," came the tired response. Schwartz slid out of his seat.

"Anyone else coming this way, maybe?'"

"Not that I can detect."

Arvardan smiled grimly down at Pola. His hand was resting on her soft brown hair and she was looking up at him with brimming eyes. Several times in the last two hours he had been sure that never, never would he feel her hair or see her eyes again.

"Maybe there will be a later after an, Pola?"

And she could only shake her head and say, "There's not enough time. We only have till six o'clock Tuesday."

"Not enough time? Well, let's see." Arvardan bent over the prone Ancient and pulled his head back, none too gently.

"Is he alive?" He felt futilely for a pulse with his still-numb finger tips and then placed a palm beneath the green robe. He said, "His heart's beating, anyway…You've a dangerous power there, Schwartz. Why didn't you do this in the first place?"

"Because I wanted to see him held static.'" Schwartz clearly showed the effects of his ordeal. "I thought that if I could hold him, we could lead him out before; use him as decoy; hide behind his skirts."

Shekt said, in sudden animation, "We might. There's the Imperial garrison in Fort Dibburn not half a mile away. Once there, we're safe and can get word to Ennius."

"Once there! There must be a hundred guards outside, with hundreds more between here and there-And what can we do with a stiff green-robe? Carry him? Shove him along on little wheels?" Arvardan laughed humorlessly.

"Besides," said Schwartz gloomily, "I couldn't hold him very long. You saw-I failed."

Shekt said earnestly, "Because you're not used to it. Now listen, Schwartz, I've got a notion as to what it is you do with your mind. It's a receiving station for the electromagnetic fields of the brain. I think you can transmit also. Do you understand?"

Schwartz seemed painfully uncertain.

"You must understand, " insisted Shekt. "You'll have to concentrate on what you want him to do-and first we're going to give him his blaster back."

"What!" The outraged exclamation was neatly triple.

Shekt raised his voice. "He's got to lead us out of here. We can't get out otherwise, can we? And how can it look less suspicious than to allow him to be obviously armed?"

"But I couldn't hold him. I tell you I couldn't." Schwartz was flexing his arms, slapping them, trying to get back into the feel of normality. "I don't care what your theories are, Dr. Shekt. You don't know what goes on. It's a slippery, painful thing, and it's not easy."

"I know, but it's the chance we take. Try it now, Schwartz. Have him move his arm when he comes to." Shekt's voice was pleading.

The Secretary moaned as he lay there, and Schwartz felt the reviving Mind Touch. Silently, almost fearfully, he let it gather strength-then spoke to it. It was a speech that included no words; it was the silent speech you send to your arm when you want it to move, a speech so silent you are not yourself aware of it.

And Schwartz's arm did not move; it was the Secretary's that did. The Earthman from the past looked up with a wild smile, but the others had eyes only for Balkis-Balkis, that recumbent figure, with a lifting head, with eyes from which the glaze of unconsciousness was vanishing, and an arm which peculiarly and incongruously jerked outward at a ninety-degree angle.

Schwartz bent to his task.

The Secretary lifted himself up in angular fashion; nearly, but not quite, overbalancing himself. And then, in a queer and involuntary way, he danced.

It lacked rhythm; it lacked beauty; but to the three who watched the body, and to Schwartz, who watched body and mind, it was a thing of indescribable awe. For in those moments the Secretary's body was under the control of a mind not materially connected with it.

Slowly, cautiously, Shekt approached the robotlike Secretary and, not without a qualm, extended his hand. In the open palm thereof lay the blaster, butt first.

"Let him take it, Schwartz," said Shekt.

Balkis's hand reached out and grasped the weapon clumsily. For a moment there was a sharp, devouring glitter in his eyes, and then it all faded. Slowly, slowly, the blaster was put into its place in the belt, and the hand fell away.

Schwartz's laugh was high-pitched. "He almost got away, there." But his face was white as he spoke.

"Well? Can you hold him?"

"He's fighting like the devil. But it's not as bad as before."

"That's because you know what you're doing," said Shekt, with an encouragement he did not entirely feel. "Transmit, now. Don't try to hold him; just pretend you're doing it yourself."

Arvardan broke in. "Can you make him talk?"

There was a pause, then a low, rasping growl from the Secretary. Another pause; another rasp.

"That's all," panted Schwartz.

"But why won't it work?" asked Pola. She looked worried.

Shekt shrugged. "Some pretty delicate and complicated muscles are involved. It's not like yanking at the long limb muscles. Never mind, Schwartz. We may get by without."

The memory of the next two hours was something no two of those that took part in the queer odyssey could duplicate. Dr. Shekt, for instance, had acquired a queer rigidity in which all his fears were drowned in one breathless and helpless sympathy with the inwardly struggling Schwartz. Throughout he had eyes only for that round face as it slowly furrowed and twisted with effort. For the others he had hardly time for more than a moment's glance.

The guards immediately outside the door saluted sharply at the appearance of the Secretary, his green robe redolent of officialdom and power. The Secretary returned the salute in a fumbling, flat manner. They passed, unmolested.

It was only when they had left the great Hall that Arvardan became conscious of the madness of it all. The great, unimaginable danger to the Galaxy and the flimsy reed of safety that bridged, perhaps, the abyss. Yet even then, even then, Arvardan felt himself drowning in Pola's eyes. Whether it was the life that was being snatched from him, the future that was being destroyed about him, the eternal unavailability of the sweetness he had tasted-whatever it was, no one had ever seemed to him to be so completely and devastatingly desirable.