Ark of the Stars

by Frank Borsch

  "Yes," came the reply. "It'll reach its peak in about an hour."

  "Roger," Alemaheyu said. Then he had a thought. "Position?"

  "Shifted to Sector ... "

  "Shifted? What about the area where it originated?"

  "Nearly normal readings now."

  Alemaheyu called up the communications module on the holoscreen and attempted to make contact with Crawler Eleven. No result, either from the crew or the crawler's syntron. The comm officer gave the hypercom maximum transmitting power, focusing the beam on the sectors in which the hyperstorm had raged. No response. It was as though the crawler had ceased to exist.

  A lump developed in Alemaheyu's throat. He suddenly wished he had a joint to smoke to calm his nerves. But all that would've gotten him was a burst of Sharita's wrath. The comm officer leaped up and hurried over to Rhodan and the commander.

  "Sharita," he said, as she looked up at him angrily, "I'm sorry to disturb you, but I think we have an emergency."

  3

  A vague sense of unease drove Denetree that evening.

  She was used to taking off on her bicycle after the shift. Most metach on field duty were too tired afterwards to do more than drag themselves back to the half-gravity of the Middle Deck, eat with their Metach'ton, plug into the Net for an on-line game, or just sit and wait for the next day.

  Not Denetree.

  Yes, the work was hard, but after a Ship-year—more than half her obligation as a field hand was behind her—she had gotten used to it. In the beginning, only her thighs had developed, and she had otherwise looked like a beanpole. But now she had put on some flesh. Her arms, her entire body had become muscular. In the first months, the effort of cycling had almost completely burned her out. The gravity of the Outer Deck crushed newcomers mercilessly toward the ground, after a few minutes making every movement a torture. There was very little help from machinery in the fields, allegedly to save the always limited supply of energy on board. Denetree felt certain that was true, but exhausting the young metach in performing their service for the Ship seemed to her an equally likely intention. It kept them from getting dumb ideas.

  In theory, at least. In practice, Denetree became an example of the opposite. In the unanimous opinion of everyone who knew her, Denetree's endless rounds through the Ship on a bicycle after the end of her shift fell clearly into the category of dumb ideas. Except that it was harmless. Denetree didn't bother anyone, and as long as her rides always took her back to her Metach'ton, and her work performance the next day didn't suffer, no one tried to stop her. Not her neighbors, not the Naahk or the Net.

  Immediately after the end of her shift, Denetree climbed on the bicycle she considered "hers." Of course, it wasn't really her own. None of the metach owned their own bicycle, no matter how highly they were placed. The bicycles belonged to all equally—which didn't necessarily mean that every metach could use every bicycle.

  Denetree had made a number of changes to the bicycle she used: "optimizations," as she called them. Her bicycle's rims had a smaller diameter than the standard model and the tires were wider with a studded tread—designed for better traction rather than minimal rolling resistance, as was typical. Denetree pumped the tires full enough that only the center of the tire rested on the ground, creating a narrow, smooth strip that made it easier to ride on uneven terrain, but was apparently inferior in direct comparison to the standard ultrathin tires.

  The other members of her metach had laughed at her when she rode her bicycle to her shift the first time. "Look, that crazy Denetree has built a plow!" they mocked. "Come on, dig us a furrow!" Only after she had beaten the loudest mocker in a race, handily leaving him in the dust, did they stop their open teasing.

  It had been Denetree's luck to end up with one of the heaviest men in the metach as her opponent. He weighed more than a hundred kilos, and she weighed less than half that. Even though his weight should have given him an edge, Denetree beat him, and on the relatively unfavorable surface of the road.

  But her bicycle wasn't designed for speed. It had a low center of gravity and a computer-supported gear-shifter, into which she had secretly installed new firmware she had written herself. Those three assets made it possible for her to leave the assigned paths and ride between the fields, and even travel through the Ship's wilderness tracts where only a few metach ever wandered, since they lay away from the settlements and fields.

  And the firmware had a second, equally important function: it made the bicycle effectively Denetree's. If anyone else climbed onto the seat, the firmwear switched to neutral. The spectacle that followed had many variations, but only one conclusion: the unhappy would-be rider got off the bicycle cursing, sent a DAMAGED report to the Net over the guidance computer, and left the bicycle in the ditch without another thought. Thanks to Denetree's firmware, none of those reports ever reached the Net.The Net only ever saw a standard green indication from the guidance computer: "Bicycle intact. No maintenance required."

  Pedaling furiously in high gear, Denetree left behind the field where she had spent today's shift. Her arms and neck ached. Harvesting jakulent was hard labor. The long-stemmed plants were cultivated by the Ship for the sturdy fibers in their stalks. But choosing which of the stalks were ripe for harvest, cutting them and separating them into their individual fibers was a nasty grind—such hard work that a person was rarely assigned to the work for more than two weeks.

  Denetree ignored the pain. She would forget it completely in half an hour, when the exertions of pedaling would bring her pulse to a constant 140 beats per minute, and the blood that pulsed through her veins took the pain with it.

  Today, her thoughts were somewhere else.

  She was worried about her brother. Venron had become more taciturn in recent weeks than ever before. Not that he had ever said very much, but he had opened up to her, at least, especially when the feeling of being locked in, of there being no way out, threatened to overwhelm him. Then he had laid his head in her lap and looked up at the sky. It hung overhead, close enough to touch—close enough to make one weep—and was always the same. By day, bright, though never blinding; by night, an oppressive, impenetrable black.

  Denetree and Venron had endured considerable mockery and nasty remarks over time. Not because of their shared yearning for the stars, which they kept to themselves, but because the brother and sister shared a close relationship. The Ship did not support families. Children were raised in groups according to their ages; siblings rarely knew each other, and only a few cared to try. What would have been the point?

  By chance, Denetree and Venron had been assigned to adjacent Metach'tons. And ever since they had run into each other that first time, they had been inseparable. A connection existed between them that even they could not explain.

  The strongest bond between them was their common desire to escape to the stars, to find a new life away from the prison of the ship. Venron had often wept as he dreamed of that possibility, but Denetree waited in vain for relieving tears to come to her. The hard grip of his hands around her body relaxed to a gentle touch and his breath evened out as he lost himself in the fantasy of escape.

  Denetree had never managed to flee into her dreams to find peace. She only had her bicycle, the pumping of her heart, the protesting throb in her thighs, and the endless rounds through the ship that took her nowhere.

  Denetree reached the fields where Venron's Metach'ton was currently assigned. The hut that served the two dozen men and women as a shelter, changing and storage room was deserted. They must have finished their shift already. Denetree thought for a moment, then went on in the direction of the bow. All day long, the members of her Metach'ton had enthused over the party that would be taking place there tonight; perhaps the news had reached Venron's Metach'ton also.

  After a few minutes, she saw a group of people moving slowly through the fields. She pedaled faster and quickly caught up. It was Venron's Metach'ton. A swarm of bicycles surrounded an electric-powered harvest platform
. It was strictly forbidden to use the platforms for anything other than work—energy was too valuable to waste it on leisure activities—but the young men and women didn't care about the rules. Half the members of the Metach'ton had made themselves comfortable on the dirty platform, while the rest rode on bicycles, trying to hang on to the platform with one hand so they could be pulled along. The metach were exhausted from the day's labors, but the urge to feel something other than exhaustion pushed them on.

  "Watch out!" one of the men on bicycles called when he saw Denetree approach. "Here comes that pale little speed demon again!"

  The group made no effort to stop. Denetree came alongside, shifted to a lower gear, and shot with perfect aim through a gap in the bicycle riders to the platform.

  "Melenda!"

  The young woman cuddled in the lap of another metach. When she saw Denetree coming, she deliberately turned her head and, her eyes closed, gave the man a long, deep kiss.

  "Melenda, please!"

  The woman disengaged from the embrace and stared at Denetree in annoyance. "What do you want with me? Can't you see I'm busy?"

  "I'm looking for Venron. Do you happen to know where he is?"

  "Venron ... " Melenda rolled her eyes. Her pupils were dilated. Had she already been smoking? The jakulent stalks could be used for more than one purpose, especially ones of which the Ship didn't approve. "Oh, now I know who you mean! That lazy slacker who thinks he's too good for us! He was on his shift."

  "And?"

  "As usual, he did only half his quota. We had to slog away for him so he could he wander around the field and daydream."

  One of the men on the bicycles came closer, making a game out of trying to force Denetree away. Without looking, Denetree took her right foot out of the pedal's magnetic stirrup and gave the man a kick.

  "And after the shift?"

  "Who cares about that?"

  The man got back at Denetree for the kick by waving the other bicycle riders into a phalanx that pushed on Denetree from all sides. They would teach the troublemaker a lesson.

  "Please, Melenda! Help me! I ... "

  The men were on her. Denetree took a blow to her side. Her back wheel and the front wheel of one of the other bicycles rubbed against each other with a shrill squealing. Denetree yanked the handlebars around, then braked. Someone hit her again. The circle around her closed. Malicious faces laughed at her, like children torturing a field rodent. Denetree looked wildly around and saw a tiny opening to the right. She rose from her seat in order to step on the pedals with all her strength. There wasn't time to engage the battery.

  She broke away from the crowd but she could not avoid falling. Suddenly, the unfenced irrigation channel was right in front of her, and in the next moment the ground came up to meet her with a metallic scraping. Enthusiastic catcalls accompanied her fall.

  Denetree laid in the grass until the crowd moved off. The hoots and cheers gradually died away. Then Denetree heard the shrill voice of a woman say, "Just ask the Net where your brother is!" and the whinnying laughter of the rest of the Metach'ton in response.

  "Just ask the Net!"

  Nothing could be easier.

  She stood up carefully, checking her body for injuries. On her hip was a blood-engorged spot where she had run into the handlebar. Otherwise she was unhurt. She pulled the bicycle upright; its back wheel had landed in the irrigation channel. She had been fortunate: the vulnerable rims had not been bent.

  She trembled in rage and humiliation. The metach had no right to treat her like that! They ... Denetree thought of Venron. What must he endure at the hands of his Metach'ton, day in and day out? It was said that nothing escaped the Net; it was there for everyone. Why didn't the Net transfer him to a different group? If this is how they treated him, she didn't think Venron could hold out much longer.

  She got back on the bicycle, thinking. Where could he be? Venron had a knack for isolating himself. Time after time, he disappeared for hours, even entire nights. He told no one where he hid, not even Denetree. But she knew he went places no one else had been, because each time Venron brought her a present: new pictures of the starry sky, recordings made by previous generations, even small manufactured objects, like nothing she had seen before.

  Denetree returned to Venron's Metach'ton shed and began a systematic search. In increasingly larger circles, she scouted the area.

  Could Venron have gone on one of his raiding forays?

  Not likely, Denetree decided. Venron's explorations into the off-limits areas of the Ship were the high points of his existence, hours that made everything else bearable. Days of detailed planning preceded each foray, his excitement mounting until it seemed he would burst. When he was planning one of these expeditions, he smiled more often and gave her presents: small figures he made from stolen wood or metal, preludes to the great gift of new knowledge that he would soon bring her.

  Venron had returned from his last foray more withdrawn than ever. He had wept a great deal and could only fall asleep if he was clinging to Denetree.

  Three days ago, he had given her another gift, a small box wrapped with a fiber band. She could easily hold it in one hand. When she started to open it, he stopped her. "No," he had said. "Not yet."

  "Then when?" she had asked.

  "Not today. And not tomorrow, either," had been his answer. "You will know when it's time. Until then, hide it in a safe place." No matter how hard Denetree had tried to pry further information out of him, he refused to discuss it.

  Denetree completed her first circle of the shed. She had not met anyone. Anyone who didn't absolutely have to remain on the Outer Deck retreated in the evening to the Middle Deck, where they were better protected from radiation and could relax.

  She assumed Venron was planning something. But what? More than once Denetree had suspected that he was saying good-bye to the Ship, quietly seeking out his favorite places and spending time with his few friends.

  Denetree rode in increasingly wider circles, and to the same extent that the dull pain of exhaustion increased in her thighs, her unease grew, finally crossing the invisible boundary into fear. The paths lay deserted in the last light of day. It was impossible to miss a metach on foot or riding—unless he or she was intentionally hiding. But Venron wouldn't do that: What reason could he possibly have to hide from his own sister?

  Night fell. The Net turned off the light.

  Venron considered whether Venron might try to hurt himself, then tried to dismiss that thought. Even though no one spoke of the unhappy ones, she knew that many metach took their own lives. The Net, which otherwise reported every last detail of life on the Ship, no matter how unimportant, said nothing about the suicides. But those who took their own lives: they were different, weak or old; they had lost their faith in the Metach'rath, the Ladder of Life; they were not people like her, not like Venron.

  Denetree was panting. She rose from the seat, shifted to a higher gear and tried to drive the fear from her thoughts by pedaling harder.

  "Just ask the Net!"

  The mocking call echoed within her. Yes, the Net would know where Venron was. Nothing—or almost nothing, since it didn't know about the Star Seekers—escaped the attention of the Net. She could report Venron as missing. After that, nothing would ever happen to him again. The Net would take him into its caring protection, turn him over to the Magtar, the psychologists who had settled on the Inner Deck and never left it—and who could never leave it now, because their muscles had atrophied. Despite this handicap, they claimed to know better than everyone else about life on the Ship. They would test Venron until they found something. They would find out about his explorations, treat him with injections and pump him full of their drugs until he could only murmur his name and "Be loyal to the Ship!" Then they would let him go, a reformed member of the greater community.

  But he would live.

  Unless he was too strong. Then, the Magtar would turn him over to the Pekoy.

  Ahead, Denetree saw o
ne of the rudimentary shelters that had been built at regular intervals in this part of the Ship.

  He would live ...

  The Pekoy would ask questions. Why did he explore? Who else explored with him? Treason was a contagious disease. It would ripen in one individual, then spread to others, growing like an ulcer. To prevent it from endangering the entire community, treason had to be burned out. Completely. If she asked the Net to find Venron, the Star Seekers also would be discovered. They would all fall down the Ladder of Life, and if they were lucky, they would be allowed to begin again at the lowest rung. Maybe.

  He would live ...

  The Ladder of Life held no meaning for a dead man.

  Every shelter contained a terminal for use in emergencies that was fully connected to the Net.

  Denetree rode past the shelter, then turned around and stopped at it. There was a bicycle leaning against one of the posts, but no one was in sight. The floor of the shelter and the small touchscreen of the emergency terminal had been hastily wiped clear, most likely by children who had been caught playing with it. They must have run away in order to escape a beating, and left the bicycle behind in their panic.

  Denetree bent over the touch screen.

  Live, she thought. Venron must live!

  She touched the display to activate it, thinking hard to come up with the words she would use to report her brother as missing. Afraid of losing her nerve in the last second, she imagined him dead: his stiff, unmoving body, unseeing eyes.

  I'm sorry! She apologized in her thoughts to the other Star Seekers, who surely would be exposed. I'm sorry. But Venron must live.

  The display lit up. But instead of the input menu, she saw Venron.

  "Brother!" she exclaimed in surprise. "I was so worried about you! Where ... "

  The blare of the display's loudspeaker cut her off. "Look into the face of the traitor, metach! Today, this man, Venron, attempted to destroy the enterprise to which we have all sworn our lives! He has put us all in deadly danger! See his heinous deed!"