Asimov, Isaac - Foundation Series 15 Pebble in the Sky by Asimov Isaac

Author:Asimov, Isaac
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE MIND THAT KILLED

It worked out so neatly in Schwartz's methodical mind. Since he did not want to die, he would have to leave the farm. If he stayed where he was, the Census would come, and with it, death.

Leave the farm, then. But where would he go?

There was the - what was it, a hospital? - in Chica. They had taken care of him before. And why? Because he had been a medical 'case.' But wasn't he still a case? And he could talk now; he could give them the symptoms, which he couldn't before. He could even tell them about the Mind Touch.

Or did everyone have the Mind Touch? Was there any way he could tell?... None of the others had it. Not Arbin or Loa or Grew. He knew that. They had no way of telling where he was unless they saw or heard him. Why, he couldn't beat Grew in chess if Grew could -

Wait, now, chess was a popular game. And it couldn't be played if people had the Mind Touch. Not really.

So that made him a peculiarity - a psychological specimen. It might not be a particularly gay life, being a specimen, but it would keep him alive.

And suppose one considered the new possibility that had just arisen. Suppose he were not an amnesiac but a man who had stumbled through time. Why, then, in addition to the Mind Touch, he was a man from the past. He was a historical specimen, an archaeological specimen; they couldn't kill him.

If they believed him.

Hmm, if they believed him.

That doctor would believe. He had needed a shave that morning Arbin took him to Chica. He remembered that very well. After that his hair never grew, so they must have done something to him. That meant that the doctor knew that he

- he, Schwartz - had had hair on his face. Wouldn't that be significant? Grew and Arbin never shaved. Grew had once told him that only animals had hair on their face.

So he had to get to the doctor.

What was his name? Shekt?... Shekt, that was right.

But he knew so little of this horrible world. To leave by night or cross-country would have entangled him in mysteries, would have plunged him into radioactive danger pockets of which he knew nothing. So, with the boldness of one with no choice, he struck out upon the highway in the early afternoon.

They wouldn't be expecting him back before supper-time, and by that time he Page 61

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would be well away. They would have no Mind Touch to miss.

For the first half hour he experienced a feeling of elation, the first sensation he had had since all this had started. He was finally doing something; he was making an attempt to fight back at his environment.

Something with a purpose, and not mere unreasoning flight as that time in Chica.

Ah, for an old man he wasn't bad. He'd show them.

And then he stopped - He stopped in the

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