Currents of Space, The - Isaac Asimov

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THE
CURRENTS
OF
SPACE
Isaac Asimov:
Copyright © 1952 by Isaac Asimov
To David, who took his time coming, but was worth waiting for
PROLOG: A YEAR BEFORE
THE MAN from Earth came to a decision. It had been slow in coming and developing, but it was
here.
It had been weeks since he had felt the comforting deck of his ship and the cool, dark blanket of
space about it. Originally, he had intended a quick report to the local office of the Interstellar Spatio-
analytic Bureau and a quicker retreat to space. Instead, he had been held here.
It was almost like a prison.
He drained his tea and looked at the man across the table. He said, “I’m not staying any longer.”
The other man came to a decision. It had been slow in coming and developing, but it was here. He
would need time, much more time. The response to the first letters had been nil. They might have fallen
into a star for all they had accomplished.
That had been no more than he had expected, or, rather, no less. But it was only the first move.
It was certain that, while future moves developed, he could not allow the man from Earth to
squirm out of reach. He fingered the smooth black rod in his pocket.
He said, “You don’t appreciate the delicacy of the problem.”
The Earthman said, “What’s delicate about the destruction of a planet? I want you to broadcast the
details to all of Sark; to everyone on the planet.”
“We can’t do that. You know it would mean panic.”
“You said at first you would do it.”
“I’ve thought it over and it just isn’t practical.”
The Earthman turned to a second grievance. “The representative of the I.S.B. hasn’t arrived.”
“I know it. They are busy organizing proper procedures for this crisis. Another day or two.”
“Another day or two! It’s always another day or two! Are they so busy they can’t spare me a
moment? They haven’t even seen my calculations.”
“I have offered to bring your calculations to them. You don’t want me to.”
“And I still don’t. They can come to me or I can go to them.” He added violently, “I don’t think
you believe me. You don’t believe Florina will be destroyed.”
“I believe you.”
“You don’t. I know you don’t. I see you don’t. You’re humoring me. You can’t understand my
data. You’re not a Spatio-analyst. I don’t even think you’re who you say you are. Who are you?”
“You’re getting excited.”
“Yes, I am. Is that surprising? Or are you just thinking, Poor devil, Space has him. You think I’m
crazy.”
“Nonsense.”
“Sure you do. That’s why I want to see the I.S.B. They’ll know if I’m crazy or not. They’ll know.”
The other man remembered his decision. He said, “Now you’re not feeling well. I’m going to help
you.”
“No, you’re not,” shouted the Earthman hysterically, “because I’m going to walk out. If you want
to stop me, kill me, except that you won’t dare. The blood of a whole world of people will be on your hands
if you do.”
The other man began shouting, too, to make himself heard. “I won’t kill you. Listen to me, I won’t
kill you. There’s no need to kill you.”
The Earthman said, “You’ll tie me up. You’ll keep me here. Is that what you’re thinking? And
what will you do when the I.S.B. starts looking for me? I’m supposed to send in regular reports, you
know.”
“The Bureau knows you’re safely with me.”
“Do they? I wonder if they know I’ve reached the planet at all? I wonder if they received my
original message?” The Earthman was giddy. His limbs felt stiff.
The other man stood up. It was obvious to him that his decision had come none too soon. He
walked slowly about the long table, toward the Earthman.
He said soothingly, “It will be for your own good.” He took the black rod from his pocket.
The Earthman croaked, “That’s a psychic probe.” His words were slurred, and when he tried to
rise, his arms and legs barely quivered.
He said, between teeth that were clenching in rigor, “Drugged!”
“Drugged!” agreed the other man. “Now look, I won’t hurt you. It’s difficult for you to understand
the true delicacy of the matter while you’re so excited and anxious about it. I’ll just remove the anxiety.
Only the anxiety.”
The Earthman could no longer talk. He could only sit there. He could only think numbly, Great
Space, I’ve been drugged. He wanted to shout and scream and run, but he couldn’t.
The other had reached the Earthman now. He stood there, looking down at him. The Earthman
looked up. His eyeballs could still move.
The psychic probe was a self-contained unit. Its wires needed only to be fixed to the appropriate
places on the skull. The Earthman watched in panic until his eye muscles froze. He did not feel the fine
sting as the sharp, thin leads probed through skin and flesh to make contact with the sutures of his skull
bones.
He yelled and yelled in the silence of his mind. He cried, No, you don’t understand. It’s a planet
full of people. Don’t you see that you can’t take chances with hundreds of millions of living people?
The other man’s words were dim and receding, heard from the other end of a long, windy tunnel.
“It won’t hurt you. In another hour you’ll feel well, really well. You’ll be laughing at all this with me.”
The Earthman felt the thin vibration against his skull and then that faded too.
Darkness thickened and collapsed about him. Some of it never lifted again. It took a year for even
parts of it to lift.
ONE: THE FOUNDLING
Rik put down his feeder and jumped to his feet. He was trembling so hard he had to lean against
the bare milk-white wall.
He shouted, “I remember!”
They looked at him and the gritty mumble of men at lunch died somewhat. Eyes met his out of
faces indifferently clean and indifferently shaven, glistening and white in the imperfect wall illumination.
The eyes reflected no great interest, merely the reflex attention enforced by any sudden and unexpected cry.
Rik cried again, “I remember my job. I had a job!”
Someone called, “Shoddop!” and someone else yelled, “Siddown!”
The faces turned away, the mumble rose again. Rik stared blankly along the table. He heard the
remark, “Crazy Rik,” and a shrug of shoulders. He saw a finger spiral at a man’s temple. It all meant
nothing to him. None of it reached his mind.
Slowly he sat down. Again he clutched his feeder, a spoonlike affair, with sharp edges and little
tines projecting from the front curve of the bowl, which could therefore with equal clumsiness cut, scoop
and impale. It was enough for a millworker. He turned it over and stared without seeing at his number on
the back of the handle. He didn’t have to see it. He knew it by heart. All the others had registration
numbers, just as he had, but the others had names also. He didn’t. They called him Rik because it meant
something like “moron” in the slang of the kyrt mills. And often enough they called him “Crazy Rik.”
But perhaps he would be remembering more and more now. This was the first time since he had
come to the mill that he had remembered anything at all from before the beginning. If he thought hard! If
he thought with all his mind!
All at once he wasn’t hungry; he wasn’t the least hungry. With a sudden gesture, he thrust his
feeder into the jellied briquet of meat and vegetables before him, pushed the food away, and buried his eyes
in the heels of his palms. His fingers thrust and clutched at his hair and painstakingly he tried to follow his
mind into the pitch from which it had extracted a single item--one muddy, undecipherable item.
Then he burst into tears, just as a clanging bell announced the end of his lunch shift.
Valona March fell in beside him when he left the mill that evening. He was scarcely conscious of
her at first, at least as an individual. It was only that he heard his footsteps matched. He stopped and
looked at her. Her hair was something between blonde and brown. She wore it in two thick plaits that she
clamped together with little magnetized green-stoned pins. They were very cheap pins and had a faded
look about them. She wore the simple cotton dress which was all that was needed only an open, sleeveless
shirt and cotton slacks.
She said, “I heard something went wrong lunchtime.”
She spoke in the sharp, peasant accents one would expect. Rik’s own language was full of flat
vowels and had a nasal touch. They laughed at him because of it and imitated his way of speaking, but
Valona would tell him that that was only their own ignorance.
Rik mumbled, “Nothing’s wrong, Lona.”
She persisted. “I heard you said you remembered something. Is that Right, Rik?”
She called him Rik too. There wasn’t anything else to call him. He couldn’t remember his real
name. He had tried desperately enough. Valona had tried with him. One day she had obtained a torn city
directory somehow and had read all the first names to him. None had seemed more familiar than any other.
He looked her full in the face and said, “I’ll have to quit the mill.”
Valona frowned. Her round, broad face with its flat, high cheekbones was troubled. “I don’t think
you can. It wouldn’t be right.”
“I’ve got to find out more about myself.”
Valona licked her lips. “I don’t think you should.”
Rik turned away. He knew her concern to be sincere. She had obtained the mill job for him in the
first place. He had had no experience with mill machinery. Or perhaps he had, but just didn’t remember.
In any case, Lona had insisted that he was too small for manual labor and they had agreed to the
nightmarish days when he could scarcely make sounds and when he didn’t know what food was for, she
had watched him and fed him. She had kept him alive.
He said, “I’ve got to.”
“Is it the headaches again, Rik?”
“No. I really remember something. I remember what my job was before--Before!”
He wasn’t sure he wanted to tell her. He looked away. The warm, pleasant sun was at least two
hours above the horizon. The monotonous rows of workers’ cubicles that stretched out and round the mills
were tiresome to look at, but Rik knew that as soon as they topped the rise the field would lie before them
in all the beauty of crimson and gold.
He liked to look at the fields. From the very first the sight had soothed and pleased him. Even
before he knew that the colors were crimson and gold, before he knew that there were such things as colors,
before he could express his pleasure in anything more than a soft gurgle, the headaches would flicker away
faster in the fields. In those days Valona would borrow a diamagnetic scooter and take him out of the
village every idle-day. They would skim along, a foot above the road, gliding on the cushioned smoothness
of the counter-gravity field, until they were miles and miles away from any human habitation and there
would be left only the wind against his face, fragrant with the kyrt blossoms.
They would sit beside the road then, surrounded by color and scent, and between them share a
food briquet, while the sun glowed down upon them until it was time to return again.
Rik was stirred by the memory. He said, “Let’s go to the fields, Lona.”
“It’s late.”
“Please. Just outside town.”
She fumbled at the thin money pouch she kept between herself and the soft blue leather belt she
wore, the only luxury of dress she allowed herself.
Rik caught her arm. “Let’s walk.”
They left the highway for the winding, dustless, packed-sand roads half an hour later. There was a
heavy silence between them and Valona felt a familiar fear clutching at her. She had no words to express
her feelings for him, so she had never tried.
What if he should leave her? He was a little fellow, no taller than herself and weighing somewhat
less, in fact. He was still like a helpless child in many ways. But before they had turned his mind off he
must have been an educated man. A very important educated man.
Valona had never had any education besides reading and writing and enough trade-school
technology to be able to handle mill machinery, but she knew enough to know that all people were not so
limited. There was the Townman, of course, whose great knowledge was so helpful to all of them.
Occasionally Squires came on inspection tours. She had never seen them close up but once, on a holiday,
she had visited the City and seen a group of incredibly gorgeous creatures at a distance. Occasionally the
millworkers were allowed to listen to what educated people sounded like. They spoke differently, more
fluently, with longer words and softer tones. Rik talked like that more and more as his memory improved.
She had been frightened at his first words. They came so suddenly after long whimpering over a
headache. They were pronounced queerly. When she tried to correct him he wouldn’t change.
Even then she had been afraid that he might remember too much and then leave her. She was only
Valona March. They called her Big Lona. She had never married. She never would. A large, big-footed girl
with work-reddened hands like herself could never marry. She had never been able to do more than look at
the boys with dumb resentment when they ignored her at the idle-day dinner festivals. She was too big to
giggle and smirk at them.
She would never have a baby to cuddle and hold. The other girls did, one after the other, and she
could only crowd about for a quick glimpse of something red and hairless with screwed-up eyes, fists
impotently clenched, gummy mouth--
“It’s your turn next, Lona.”
“When will you have a baby, Lona?”
She could only turn away.
But when Rik had come, he was like a baby. He had to be fed and taken care of, brought out into
the sun, soothed to sleep when the headaches racked him.
The children would run after her, laughing. They would yell, “Lona’s got a boy friend. Big Lona’s
got a crazy boy friend. Lona’s boy friend is a rik.”
Later on, when Rik could walk by himself (she had been as proud the day he took his first step as
though he were really only one year old, instead of more like thirty-one) and stepped out, unescorted, into
the village streets, they had run about him in rings, yelling their laughter and foolish ridicule in order to see
a grown man cover his eyes in fear, and cringe, with nothing but whimpers to answer them. Dozens of
times she had come charging out of the house, shouting at them, waving her large fists.
Even grown men feared those fists. She had felled her section head with a single wild blow the
first day she had brought Rik to work at the mill because of a sniggering indecency concerning them which
she overheard. The mill council fined her a week’s pay for that incident, and might have sent her to the City
for further trial at the Squire’s court, but for the Townman’s intervention and the plea that there had been
provocation.
So she wanted to stop Rik’s remembering. She knew she had nothing to offer him; it was selfish of
her to want him to stay mind-blank and helpless forever. It was just that no one had ever before depended
upon her so utterly. It was just that she dreaded a return to loneliness.
She said, “Are you sure you remember, Rik?”
“Yes.”
They stopped there in the fields, with the sun adding its reddening blaze to all that surrounded
them. The mild, scented evening breeze would soon spring up, and the checkerboard irrigation canals were
already beginning to purple.
He said, “I can trust my memories as they come back, Lona. You know I can. You didn’t teach me
to speak, for instance. I remembered the words myself. Didn’t I? Didn’t I?”
She said reluctantly, “Yes.”
“I even remember the times you took me out into the fields before I could speak. I keep
remembering new things all the time. Yesterday I remembered that once you caught a kyrt fly for me. You
held it closed in your hands and made me put my eye to the space between your thumbs so that I could see
it flash purple and orange in the darkness. I laughed and tried to force my hand between yours to get it, so
that it flew away and left me crying after all. I didn’t know it was a kyrt fly then, or anything about it, but
it’s all very clear to me now. You never told me about that, did you, Lona?”
She shook her head.
“But it did happen, didn’t it? I remember the truth, don’t I?”
“Yes, Rik.”
“And now I remember something about myself from before. There must have been a before,
Lona.”
There must have been. She felt the weight on her heart when she thought that. It was a different
before, nothing like the now they lived in. It had been on a different world. She knew that because one
word he had never remembered was kyrt. She had to teach him the word for the most important object on
all the world of Florina.
“What is it you remember?” she asked.
At this, Rik’s excitement seemed suddenly to die. He hung back. “It doesn’t make much sense,
Lona. It’s just that I had a job once, and I know what it was. At least, in a way.”
“What was it?”
“I analyzed Nothing.”
She turned sharply upon him, peering into his eyes. For a moment she put the flat of her hand
upon his forehead, until he moved away irritably. She said, “You don’t have a headache again, Rik, have
you? You haven’t had one in weeks.”
“I’m all right. Don’t you go bothering me.”
Her eyes fell, and he added at once, “I don’t mean that you bother me, Lona. It’s just that I feel
fine and I don’t want you to worry.”
She brightened. “What does ‘analyzed’ mean?” He knew words she didn’t. She felt very humble at
the thought of how educated he must once have been.
He thought a moment. “It means--it means ‘to take apart.’ You know, like we would take apart a
sorter to find out why the scanning beam was out of alignment.”
“Oh. But, Rik, how can anyone have a job not analyzing anything? That’s not a job.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t analyze anything. I said I analyzed Nothing. With a capital N.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?” It was coming, she thought. She was beginning to sound stupid to him.
Soon he would throw her off in disgust.
“No, of course not.” He took a deep breath. “I’m afraid I can’t explain though. That’s all I
remember about that. But it must have been an important job. That’s the way it feels. I couldn’t have been a
criminal.”
Valona winced. She should never have told him that. She had told herself it was only for his own
protection that she warned him, but now she felt that it had really been to keep him bound tighter to herself.
It was when he had first begun to speak. It was so sudden it had frightened her. She hadn’t even
dared speak to the Townman about it. The next idle-day she had withdrawn five credits from her life-hoard-
-there would never be a man to claim it as dowry, so that it didn’t matter--and taken Rik to a City doctor.
She had the name and address on a scrap of paper, but even so it took two frightening hours to find her way
to the proper building through the huge pillars that held the Upper City up to the sun.
She had insisted on watching and the doctor had done all sorts of fearful things with strange
instruments. When he put Rik’s head between two metal objects and then made it glow like a kyrt fly in the
night, she had jumped to her feet and tried to make him stop. He called two men who dragged her out,
struggling wildly.
Half an hour afterward the doctor came out to her, tall and frowning. She felt uncomfortable with
him because he was a Squire, even though he kept an office down in the Lower City, but his eyes were
mild, even kind. He was wiping his hands on a little towel, which he tossed into a wastecan, even though it
looked perfectly clean to her.
He said, “Where did you meet this man?”
She had told him the circumstances cautiously, reducing it to the very barest essentials and leaving
out all mention of the Townman and the patrollers.
“Then you know nothing about him?”
She shook her head. “Nothing before that.”
He said, “This man has been treated with a psychic probe. Do you know what that is?”
At first she had shaken her head again, but then she said in a dry whisper, “Is it what they do to
crazy people, Doctor?”
“And to criminals. It is done to change their minds for their own good. It makes their minds
healthy, or it changes the parts that make them want to steal and kill. Do you understand?”
She did. She grew brick-red and said, “Rik never stole anything or hurt anybody.”
“You call him Rik?” He seemed amused. “Now look here, how do you know what he did before
you met him? It’s hard to tell from the condition of his mind now. The probing was thorough and brutal. I
can’t say how much of his mind has been permanently removed and how much has been temporarily lost
through shock. What I mean is that some of it will come back, like his speaking, as time goes on, but not all
of it. He should be kept under observation.”
“No, no. He’s got to stay with me. I’ve been taking good care of him, Doctor.”
He frowned, and then his voice grew milder. “Well, I’m thinking of you, my girl. Not all the bad
may be out of his mind. You wouldn’t want him to hurt you someday.”
At that moment a nurse led out Rik. She was making little sounds to quiet him, as one would an
infant. Rik put a hand to his head and stared vacantly, until his eyes focused on Valona; then he held out his
hands and cried, feebly, “Lona--”
She sprang to him and put his head on her shoulder, holding him tightly. She said to the doctor,
“He wouldn’t hurt me, no matter what.”
The doctor said thoughtfully, “His case will have to be reported, of course. I don’t know how he
escaped from the authorities in the condition he must have been in.”
“Does that mean they’ll take him away, Doctor?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Please, Doctor, don’t do that.” She wrenched at the handkerchief, in which were the five
gleaming pieces of credit-alloy. She said, “You can have it all, Doctor. I’ll take good care of him. He won’t
hurt anyone.”
The doctor looked at the pieces in his hand. “You’re a mill-worker, aren’t you?”
She nodded.
“How much do they pay you a week?”
“Two point eight credits.”
He tossed the coins gently, brought them together in his closed palm with a tinkle of metal, then
held them out to her. “Take it, girl. There’s no charge.”
She accepted them with wonder. “You’re not going to tell anyone, Doctor?”
But he said, “I’m afraid I have to. It’s the law.”
She had driven blindly, heavily, back to the village, clutching Rik to her desperately.
The next week on the hypervideo newscast there had been the news of a doctor dying in a gyro-
crash during a short failure in one of the local transit power-beams. The name was familiar and in her room
that night she compared it with that on the scrap of paper. It was the same.
She was sad, because he had been a good man. She had received his name once long before from
another worker as a Squire doctor who was good to the mill hands and had saved it for emergencies. And
when the emergency had come he had been good to her too. Yet her joy drowned the sorrow. He had not
had the time to report Rik. At least, no one ever came to the village to inquire.
Later, when Rik’s understanding had grown, she had told him what the doctor had said so that he
would stay in the village and be safe.
Rik was shaking her and she left her reveries.
He said, “Don’t you hear me? I couldn’t be a criminal if I had an important job.”
“Couldn’t you have done wrong?” she began hesitantly. “Even if you were a big man, you might
have. Even Squires--”
“I’m sure I haven’t. But don’t you see that I’ve got to find out so that others can be sure? There’s
no other way. I’ve got to leave the mill and village and find out more about myself.”
She felt the panic rise. “Rik! That would he dangerous. Why should you? Even if you analyzed
Nothing, why is it so important to find out more about it?”
“Because of the other thing I remember.”
“What other thing?”
He whispered, “I don’t want to tell you.”
“You ought to tell somebody. You might forget again.”
He seized her arm. “That’s right. You won’t tell anyone else, will you, Lona? You’ll just be my
spare memory in case I forget.”
“Sure, Rik.”
Rik looked about him. The world was very beautiful. Valona had once told him that there was a
huge shining sign in the Upper City, miles above it even, that said: “Of all the Planets in the Galaxy,
Florina is the Most Beautiful.”
And as he looked about him he could believe it.
He said, “It is a terrible thing to remember, but I always remember correctly, when I do remember.
It came this afternoon.”
“Yes?”
He was staring at her in horror. “Everybody in the world is going to die. Everybody on Florina.”
TWO: THE TOWNMAN
Myrln Terens was in the act of removing a book-film from its place on the shelf when the door-
signal sounded. The rather pudgy outlines of his face had been set in lines of thought, but now these
vanished and changed into the more usual expression of bland caution. He brushed one hand over his
thinning, ruddy hair and shouted, “One minute.”
He replaced the film and pressed the contact that allowed the covering section to spring back into
place and become indistinguishable from the rest of the wall. To the simple millworkers and farm hands he
dealt with, it was a matter of vague pride that one of their own number, by birth at any rate, should own
films. It lightened, by tenuous reflection, the unrelieved dusk of their own minds. And yet it would not do
to display the films openly.
The sight of them would have spoiled things. It would have frozen their none too articulate
tongues. They might boast of their Townman’s books, but the actual presence of them before their eyes
would have made Terens seem too much the Squire.
There were, of course, the Squires as well. It was unlikely in the extreme that any of them would
visit him socially at his house, but should one of them enter, a row of films in sight would be injudicious.
He was a Townman and custom gave him certain privileges but it would never do to flaunt them.
He shouted again, “I’m coming!”
This time he stepped to the door, closing the upper seam of his tunic as he went. Even his clothing
was somewhat Squirelike. Sometimes he almost forgot he had been born on Florina.
Valona March was on the doorstep. She bent her knees and ducked her head in respectful greeting.
Terens threw the door wide. “Come in, Valona. Sit down. Surely it’s past curfew. I hope the
patrollers didn’t see you.”
“I don’t think so, Townman.”
“Well, let’s hope that’s so. You’ve got a bad record, you know.”
“Yes, Townman. I am very grateful for what you have done for me in the past.”
“Never mind. Here, sit down. Would you like something to eat or drink?”
She seated herself, straight-backed, at the edge of a chair and shook her head. “No, thank you,
Townman. I have eaten.”
It was good form among the villagers to offer refreshment. It was bad form to accept. Terens knew
that. He didn’t press her.
He said, “Now what’s the trouble, Valona? Rik again?”
Valona nodded, but seemed at a loss for further explanation. Terens said, “Is he in trouble at the
mill?”
“No, Townman.”
“Headaches again?”
“No, Townman.”
Terens waited, his light eyes narrowing and growing sharp. “Well, Valona, you don’t expect me to
guess your trouble, do you? Come, speak out or I can’t help you. You do want help, I suppose.”
She said, “Yes, Townman,” then burst out, “How shall I tell you, Townman? It sounds almost
crazy.”
Terens had an impulse to pat her shoulder, but he knew she would shrink from the touch. She sat,
as usual, with her large hands buried as far as might be in her dress. He noticed that her blunt, strong
fingers were intertwined and slowly twisting.
He said, “Whatever it is, I will listen.”
“Do you remember, Townman, when I came to tell you about the City doctor and what he said?”
“Yes, I do, Valona. And I remember I told you particularly that you were never to do anything like
that again without consulting me. Do you remember that?”
She opened her eyes wide. She needed no spur to recollect his anger. “I would never do such a
thing again, Townman. It’s just that I want to remind you that you said you would do everything to help me
keep Rik.”
“And so I will. Well, then, have the patrollers been asking about him?”
“No. Oh, Townman, do you think they might?”
“I’m sure they won’t.” He was losing patience. “Now, come, Valona, tell me what is wrong.”
Her eyes clouded. “Townman, he says he will leave me. I want you to stop him.”
“Why does he want to leave you?”
“He says he is remembering things.”
Interest leaped into Terens’ face. He leaned forward and almost he reached out to grip her hand.
“Remembering things? What things?”
Terens remembered the day Rik had first been found. He had seen the youngsters clustered near
one of the irrigation ditches just outside the village. They had raised their shrill voices to call him.
“Townman! Townman!”
He had broken into a run. “What’s the matter, Rasie?” He had made it his business to learn the
youngsters’ names when he came to town. That went well with the mothers and made the first month or
two easier.
Rasie was looking sick. He said, “Looky here, Townman.”
He was pointing at something white and squirming, and it was Rik. The other boys were yelling at
once in confused explanation. Terens managed to understand that they were playing some game that
involved running, hiding and pursuing. They were intent on telling him the name of the game, its progress,
the point at which they had been interrupted, with a slight subsidiary argument as to exactly which
individual or side was “winning.” All that didn’t matter, of course.
Rasie, the twelve-year-old black-haired one, had heard the whimpering and had approached
cautiously. He had expected an animal, perhaps a field rat that would make good chasing. He had found
Rik.
All the boys were caught between an obvious sickness and an equally obvious fascination at the
strange sight. It was a grown human being, nearly naked, chin wet with drool, whimpering and crying
feebly, arms and legs moving about aimlessly. Faded blue eyes shifted in random fashion out of a face that
was covered with a grown stubble. For a moment the eyes caught those of Terens and seemed to focus.
Slowly the man’s thumb came up and inserted itself into his mouth.
One of the children laughed. “Looka him, Townman. He’s finger-sucking.”
The sudden shout jarred the prone figure. His face reddened and screwed up. A weak whining,
unaccompanied by tears, sounded but his thumb remained where it was. It showed wet and pink in contrast
to the rest of the dirt-smeared hand.
Terens broke his own numbness at the sight. He said, “All right, look, fellows, you shouldn’t be
running around here in the kyrt field. You’re damaging the crop and you know what that will mean if the
farm hands catch you. Get going, and keep quiet about this. And listen, Rasie, you run to Mr. Jencus and
get him to come here.”
Ull Jencus was the nearest thing to a doctor the town had. He had passed some time as apprentice
in the offices of a real doctor in the City and on the strength of it he had been relieved of duty on the farms
or in the mills. It didn’t work out too badly. He could take temperatures, administer pills, give injections
and, most important, he could tell when some disorder was sufficiently serious to warrant a trip to the City
hospital. Without such semiprofessional backing, those unfortunates stricken with spinal meningitis or
acute appendicitis might suffer intensively but usually not for long. As it was, the foremen muttered and
accused Jencus in everything but words of being an accessory after the fact to a conspiracy of malingering.
Jencus helped Terens lift the man into a scooter cart and, as unobtrusively as they might, carried
him into town.
Together they washed off the accumulated and hardened grime and filth. There was nothing to be
done about the hair. Jencus shaved the entire body and did what he could by way of physical examination.
Jencus said, “No infection I c’n tell of, Townman. He’s been fed. Ribs don’t stick out too much. I
don’t know what to make of it. How’d he get out there, d’you suppose, Townman?”
He asked the question with a pessimistic tone as though no one could expect Terens to have the
answer to anything. Terens accepted that philosophically. When a village has lost the Townman it has
grown accustomed to over a period of nearly fifty years, a newcomer of tender age must expect a transition
period of suspicion and distrust. There was nothing personal in it.
Terens said, “I’m afraid I don’t know.”
“Can’t walk, y’know. Can’t walk a step. He’d have to be put there. Near’s I c’n make out, he
might’s well be a baby. Everything else seems t’be gone.”
“Is there a disease that has this effect?”
“Not’s I know of. Mind trouble might do it, but I don’t know nothing ‘tall about that. Mind trouble
摘要：

THECURRENTSOFSPACEIsaacAsimov:Copyright©1952byIsaacAsimovToDavid,whotookhistimecoming,butwasworthwaitingforPROLOG:AYEARBEFORETHEMANfromEarthcametoadecision.Ithadbeenslowincominganddeveloping,butitwashere.Ithadbeenweekssincehehadfeltthecomfortingdeckofhisshipandthecool,darkblanketofspaceaboutit.Origi...

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