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

It was after that that the J. Gal. Arch. Soc. (to give the Journal its professional abbreviation) decided to print Arvardan’s Senior Dissertation more than ten years after it had been presented.

And now the pursuit of his pet theory led Arvardan to probably the least significant planet of the Empire—the planet called Earth.

Arvardan landed at that one spot of Empire on all Earth, that patch among the desolate heights of the plateaus north of the Himalayas. There where radioactivity was not, and never had been, there gleamed a palace that was not of Terrestrial architecture. In essence it was a copy of the viceregal palaces that existed on more fortunate worlds. The soft lushness of the grounds was built for comfort. The forbidding rocks had been covered with topsoil, watered, immersed in an artificial atmosphere and climate—and converted into five square miles of lawns and flower gardens.

The cost in energy involved in this performance was terrific by Earthly calculations, but it had behind it the completely incredible resources of tens of millions of planets, continually growing in number. (It has been estimated that in the Year of the Galactic Era 827 an average of fifty new planets each day were achieving the dignity of provincial status, this condition requiring the attainment of a population of five hundred millions.)

In this spot of non-Earth lived the Procurator of Earth, and sometimes, in this artificial luxury, he could forget that he was a Procurator of a rathole world and remember that he was an aristocrat of great honor and ancient family.

His wife was perhaps less often deluded, particularly at such times as, topping a grassy knoll, she could see in the distance the sharp, decisive line separating the grounds from the fierce wilderness of Earth. It was then that not all the colored fountains (luminescent at night, with an effect of cold liquid fire), flowered walks, or idyllic groves could compensate for the knowledge of their exile.

So perhaps Arvardan was welcomed even more than protocol might call for. To the Procurator, after all, Arvardan was a breath of Empire, of spaciousness, of boundlessness.

And Arvardan for his part found much to admire.

He said, “This is done well—and with taste. It is amazing how a touch of the central culture permeates the most outlying districts of our Empire, Lord Ennius.”

Ennius smiled. “I’m afraid the Procurator’s court here on Earth is more pleasant to visit than to live in. It is but a shell that rings hollowly when touched. When you have considered myself and family, the staff, the Imperial garrison, both here and in the important planetary centers, together with an occasional visitor such as yourself, you have exhausted all the touch of the central culture that exists. It seems scarcely enough.”

They sat in the colonnade in the dying afternoon, with the sun glinting downward toward the mist-purpled jags of the horizon and the air so heavy with the scent of growing things that its motions were merely sighs of exertion.

It was, of course, not quite suitable for even a Procurator to show too great a curiosity about the doings of a guest, but that does not take into account the inhumanity of day-to-day isolation from all the Empire.

Ennius said, “Do you plan to stay for some time, Dr. Arvardan?”

“As to that, Lord Ennius, I cannot surely say. I have come ahead of the rest of my expedition in order to acquaint myself with Earth’s culture and to fulfill the necessary legal requirements. For instance, I must obtain the usual official permission from you to establish camps at the necessary sites, and so on.”

“Oh granted, granted! But when do you start digging? And whatever can you possibly expect to find on this miserable heap of rubble?”

“I hope, if all goes well, to be able to set up camp in a few months. And as to this world—why, it’s anything but a miserable heap. It is absolutely unique in the Galaxy.”

“Unique?” said the Procurator stiffly. “Not at all! It is a very ordinary world. It is more or less of a pigpen of a world, or a horrible hole of a world, or a cesspool of a world, or almost any other particularly derogative adjective you care to use. And yet, with all its refinement of nausea, it cannot even achieve uniqueness in villainy, but remains an ordinary, brutish peasant world.”

“But,” said Arvardan, somewhat taken aback by the energy of the inconsistent statements thus thrown at him, “the world is radioactive.”

“Well, what of that? Some thousands of planets in the Galaxy are radioactive, and some are considerably more so than Earth.”

It was at this moment that the soft-gliding motion of the mobile cabinet attracted their attention. It came to a halt within easy hand reach.

Ennius gestured toward it and said to the other, “What would you prefer?”

“I’m not particular. A lime twist, perhaps.”

“That can be handled. The cabinet will have the ingredients. . . . With or without Chensey?”

“Just about a tang of it,” said Arvardan, and held up his forefinger and thumb, nearly touching.

“You’ll have it in a minute.”

Somewhere in the bowels of the cabinet (perhaps the most universally popular mechanical offspring of human ingenuity) a bartender went into action—a non-human bartender whose electronic soul mixed things not by jiggers but by atom counts, whose ratios were perfect every time, and who could not be matched by all the inspired artistry of anyone merely human.

The tall glasses appeared from nowhere, it seemed, as they waited in the appropriate recesses.

Arvardan took the green one and, for a moment, felt the chill of it against his cheek. Then he placed the rim to his lips and tasted.

“Just right,” he said. He placed the glass in the well-fitted holder in the arm of his chair and said, “Thousands of radioactive planets, Procurator, just as you say, but only one of them is inhabited. This one, Procurator.”

“Well”—Ennius smacked his lips over his own drink and seemed to lose some of his sharpness