Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

August issue of Physical Reviews. I noticed it because I was looking for anything that had to do with Earth, and articles by Earthmen in journals of Galactic circulation are very rare. . . . In any case, the point I am trying to make is that the man claims to have developed something he calls a Synapsifier, which is supposed to improve the learning capacity of the mammalian nervous system.”

“Really?” said Ennius a bit too sharply. “I haven’t heard about it.”

“I can find you the reference. It’s quite an interesting article; though, of course, I can’t pretend to understand the mathematics involved. What he has done, however, has been to treat some indigenous animal form on Earth—rats, I believe they call them—with the Synapsifier and then put them to solving a maze. You know what I mean: learning the proper pathway through a tiny labyrinth to some food supply. He used non-treated rats as controls and found that in every case the Synapsified rats solved the maze in less than one third the time. . . . Do you see the significance, Colonel?”

The military man who had initiated the discussion said indifferently, “No, Doctor, I do not.”

“I’ll explain, then, that I firmly believe that any scientist capable of doing such work, even an Earthman, is certainly my intellectual equal, at least, and, if you’ll pardon my presumption, yours as well.”

Ennius interrupted. “Pardon me, Dr. Arvardan. I would like to return to the Synapsifier. Has Shekt experimented with human beings?”

Arvardan laughed. “I doubt it, Lord Ennius. Nine tenths of his Synapsified rats died during treatment. He would scarcely dare use human subjects until much more progress has been made.”

So Ennius sank back into his chair with a slight frown on his forehead and, thereafter, neither spoke nor ate for the remainder of the dinner.

Before midnight the Procurator had quietly left the gathering and, with a bare word to his wife only, departed in his private cruiser on the two-hour trip to the city of Chica, with the slight frown still on his forehead and a raging anxiety in his heart.

Thus it was that on the same afternoon that Arbin Maren brought Joseph Schwartz into Chica for treatment with Shekt’s Synapsifier, Shekt himself had been closeted with none less than the Procurator of Earth for over an hour.

4

The Royal Road

Arbin was uneasy in Chica. He felt surrounded. Somewhere in Chica, one of the largest cities on Earth—they said it had fifty thousand human beings in it—somewhere there were officials of the great outer Empire.

To be sure, he had never seen a man of the Galaxy; yet here, in Chica, his neck was continually twisting in fear that he might. If pinned down, he could not have explained how he would identify an Outsider from an Earthman, even if he were to see one, but it was in his very marrow to feel that there was, somehow, a difference.

He looked back over his shoulder as he entered the Institute. His biwheel was parked in an open area, with a six-hour coupon holding a spot open for it. Was the extravagance itself suspicious? . . . Everything frightened him now. The air was full of eyes and ears.

If only the strange man would remember to remain hidden in the bottom of the rear compartment. He had nodded violently—but had he understood? He was suddenly impatient with himself. Why had he let Grew talk him into this madness?

And then somehow the door was open in front of him and a voice had broken in on his thoughts.

It said, “What do you want?”

It sounded impatient; perhaps it had already asked him that same thing several times.

He answered hoarsely, words choking out of his throat like dry powder, “Is this where a man can apply for the Synapsifier?”

The receptionist looked up sharply and said, “Sign here.”

Arbin put his hands behind his back and repeated huskily, “Where do I see about the Synapsifier?” Grew had told him the name, but the word came out queerly, like so much gibberish.

But the receptionist said, with iron in her voice, “I can’t do anything for you unless you sign the register as a visitor. It’s in the rules.”

Without a word, Arbin turned to go. The young woman behind the desk pressed her lips together and kicked the signal bar at the side of her chair violently.

Arbin was fighting desperately for a lack of notoriety and failing miserably in his own mind. This girl was looking hard at him. She’d remember him a thousand years later. He had a wild desire to run, run back to the car, back to the farm . . .

Someone in a white lab coat was coming rapidly out of another room, and the receptionist was pointing to him. “Volunteer for the Synapsifier, Miss Shekt,” she was saying. “He won’t give his name.”

Arbin looked up. It was still another girl, young. He looked disturbed. “Are you in charge of the machine, miss?”

“No, not at all.” She smiled in a very friendly fashion, and Arbin felt anxiety ebb slightly.

“I can take you to him, though,” she went on. Then, eagerly, “Do you really want to volunteer for the Synapsifier?”

“I just want to see the man in charge,” Arbin said woodenly.

“All right.” She seemed not at all disturbed by the rebuff. She slipped back through the door from which she had come. There was a short wait. Then, finally, there was the beckon of a finger . . .

He followed her, heart pounding, into a small anteroom. She said gently, “If you will wait about half an hour or less, Dr. Shekt will be with you. He is very busy just now. . . . If you would like some book films and a viewer to pass the time, I’ll bring them to you.”

But Arbin shook his head. The four walls of the small room closed about him, and held him rigid, it seemed. Was he trapped? Were the Ancients coming for him?

It was the longest wait in Arbin’s