End of Exile e-3

by Ben Bova

  7

  He stayed alone on his bunk for only a few minutes.

  Everybody’s at lastmeal by now, he thought. He knew what he had to do. Suddenly, It was as clear as the instructions the wall screen had given him about the pump. Magda’s vision of the future was right. I’m going to find Jerlet.

  He went to the door and stepped out into the corridor. It was empty; everyone was in the galley.

  Hurriedly, Linc padded down the corridor to his station at the electrical distribution compartment. He gathered a few tools: the knife he had made out of a screwdriver, a length of metal pipe, some coiled wire. They were the only things that he could vaguely imagine as being helpful on the long trek upward to the region of weightlessness.

  H e almost got to the tube-tunnel hatch without being seen. A couple was lounging in the recessed alcove that the hatch was set into, out of sight from the main walkway of the corridor, shadowed from the overhead lights. They were just as startled to see Linc as he was to find them there when he ducked into the alcove.

  “Hey what—” The guy jumped and yelled as Linc bumped into him.

  “Oh… sorry,” Linc said.

  The girl was even more upset. “Why don’t you watch… say,” she recognized Linc. “Where are you going? There’s going to be a meeting about you—”

  Linc pushed past. “I won’t be there.”

  “You can’t run away,” the guy said, reaching out to grab Linc. “Monel wants you—”

  Linc brushed his hand away. “I’m not running away from anybody. I’m going up to find Jerlet. Tell Monel I’ll be back.”

  They stood there, stunned, as Linc worked the hatch mechanism and swung it back. He stepped through. The last he saw of them was their shocked, wide-eyed faces as he slammed the hatch shut again.

  It was dark in the tunnel. Linc stepped out across the metal platform and leaned over the railing. Up and up spiraled the metal steps, winding around the tunnel’s circular walls until they were lost in blackness.

  How far up did they go? Can I really climb them high enough to reach Jerlet? Linc wondered.

  As he started up the winding steps, he told himself, it must be possible. Magda wouldn’t have sent Peta up this way if the steps didn’t go all the way to Jerlet.

  With a sudden shock Linc realized that he had no food with him, and he had missed lastmeal and midmeal. He didn’t feel particularly hungry; more excited and curious. But suppose it takes a really long time to get-up there? I could starve!

  He shook his head and kept on climbing. No, Magda’s vision said I’d find Peta and Jerlet. I won’t starve.

  Sleep reached out for him before hunger did. Linc climbed for as long as he could, until his legs grew numb and his eyes gummed together. Then he tried to get out of the tunnel; he didn’t want to sleep in this cold, dark, hollow-ringing metal tube. There could be rats here, or other things, unknown things, that were even worse.

  The first hatch that he tried was jammed shut. Linc strained against it, but it refused to budge. He climbed up a long, spiraling level. The hatch there was shut, too, but there was a small window in it. Yellowish light slanted across the scene on the other side of the hatch. The yellow star! Linc realized. Closer than ever.

  Then he focused on what the light was showing him. The passageway beyond the hatch was wrecked. Its walls gaped open, and Linc could see stars from outside peering into the shattered, twisted passageway. No one could live in there; it was all outer darkness, even in the warmth of the approaching star.

  The hatch at the next level was open and Linc wearily stepped through. The passageway was intact; it was even warm. Rows of doors lined the walls. Groggy from sleepiness, Linc tottered to the nearest door and pushed it open.

  It was a small storeroom of some sort, caked with dust and ages of filth. In the light from the corridor, Linc found the control switch on the wall beside the door and flicked it. The overhead panels glowed to life.

  No one had been in this room for ages. The thick dust was undisturbed. Not even the tiny footprints of rats or other animals. Linc nodded, satisfied that it was safe. He shut the door, turned off the lights, and stretched out on the grimy floor. He was asleep almost instantly, in spite of the choking smell of dust in his nostrils.

  A dream awakened him.

  Linc sat bolt upright, sweating and trembling. He had been screaming in his nightmare, and his mouth was open now, but nothing came out except a strangled cough. The dream fled from his memory; the harder he tried to recall, the smaller and smaller it dwindled inside his mind until, within a few moments, it was lost altogether. All he could remember was the terror. Something had been after him and nearly got him.

  Still coughing from the dust, Linc got to his feet and left the room. Within a few minutes he was back in the tube-tunnel, shuddering slightly from the coldness of it. He touched the curving metal wall; it was so cold that it hurt his fingertips.

  Upward, ever upward. Spiraling around and around until he grew dizzy and had to stop and sit on the steps and catch his breath. Then the cold would seep through his thin coveralls and he’d be forced to his feet again. Exercise warmed him. But his belly growled complainingly. It had been empty too long.

  Once when he stopped, he heard scrabbling sounds. Clawed feet scratching across metal. Lots of them. In the echoes of the tunnel he couldn’t tell if the noise was coming from below him or above.

  Linc pulled the length of pipe from his belt loop and hefted it firmly in his hand. But his hand shook, and not merely from the cold.

  He climbed more slowly now, and paused often to listen. The sounds were always there, and seemed to be drawing nearer. He pounded the pipe against the steps, and the clanging frightened even himself. But within a few heartbeats, the scrabblings of the rats returned.

  Linc had suffered an electric shock when he had fixed a faulty wire in the distribution center. He still remembered the feeling.

  It was mild compared to the shock he felt when he saw Peta’s body.

  The boy was lying in a tumbled heap at one of the platforms in front of a hatch. H is clothes were badly chewed up and caked with blood. Linc sank to his knees and stared at the dead body. There was a huge red gash across his forehead. His eyes were open, staring sightlessly at nothingness.

  Linc lost track of how long he knelt there, not knowing what to do. Did Jerlet do this? No, it couldn’t be. This isn’t the weightless domain. Jerlet’s not here.

  That meant that something, or someone, had killed Peta.

  Monet’s guards? Did they track him all this way and kill him? Linc shook his head. Impossible. Why would they? And even Monel’s guards couldn’t deliberately kill somebody.

  As he knelt there, a tiny tick-tick-ticking sound scurried across the platform. Linc looked down to Peta’s bare feet. A pair of rats were sniffing there, their red eyes glittering in the darkness.

  Linc swung his pipe at them but they scampered away unharmed and disappeared. The pipe clattered across the metal floor plates.

  Can’t leave Peta here!

  Linc retrieved the pipe, then hoisted Peta’s cold body to his shoulder. He worked the hatch open and stepped into the passageway on the other side…

  For the first time he realized how little weight there was here. His own weight had been diminishing steadily, but he had been too sleepy and hungry, and too tired, to notice it. Peta felt as light as a bunk mattress, and Linc was almost tempted to try gliding down the passageway.

  There’s got to be a deadlock here someplace. Linc told himself as he tiptoed down the passageway. Got to put Peta safely away into the outer darkness.

  The passageway seemed strange. The ceiling was lower than any Linc had ever seen before. There were doors only on one side of the corridor. And the floor curved sharply upward. It looked as if Linc were walking uphill, but it felt to his tired legs as if he was on a perfectly flat floor.

  The deadlock was at the end of the passageway, blocking it completely, a huge, heavy metal hatch with th
e strange symbols that the ancients had put there.

  Linc studied it for a long while, to make certain it was exactly the same as the deadlock in the Living Wheel. It seemed the same; as if it had been made by someone who couldn’t possibly make two things differently.

  He didn’t like the idea of staying there any longer than he had to, but Linc worked the deadlock very carefully. He went exactly by the ritual Jerlet had taught them so long ago, for he knew that to deviate from the ritual would mean instant death.

  Carefully he touched the buttons set into the wall alongside the hatch in the proper order and watched the lights inside each button turn on, just as they were supposed to. When the correct ritual had been performed, the inner hatch slid open, and Linc peered into the glittery metal chamber of the deadlock itself.

  Strangely, he found that his eyes misted over and he was nearly crying as he gently laid Peta’s body in the cold metal chamber. He looked so little, so helpless.

  “Soon you will be outside,” Linc whispered the words of the ritual, “with all the others who have ever lived. You will become a star, Peta, and you will never feel cold or alone again.”

  Linc went back to the keyboard to finish the ritual. The hatch closed and the red light over it flashed on. Linc could hear a faint hum and whoosh of the outer hatch opening and Peta’s body taking flight for the stars. Then the humming stopped and the red light turned off.

  It was done. Peta was launched into the outer world, as was proper. Yet Linc felt no happiness about it. He had done the correct thing, but it made him sad and somehow lonelier than he had ever felt before in his life.

  Grimly, he made his way back along the passageway to the hatch that opened onto the tube-tunnel. Hunger and cold were his only companions now.

  Except for the rats.

  8

  The tunnel was endless.

  Linc pushed on, up the eternally-spiraling steps, eyes burning from lack of sleep, hands shaking from the cold. It was dark in the tunnel, the only light came from an occasional window. The starlight carried no warmth with it. Somehow the light from the yellow star never reached these windows; its warmth never touched the metal chill of the tunnel.

  At his back Linc could hear the rats. At first they had been faint, distant. But now their scrabbling claws scratched clearly on the metal steps. Their screeching chatter came echoing off the curved tunnel walls.

  Linc pushed on. His weight was getting lighter and lighter, but his strength was ebbing away fast, too, leached from his body by the cold and hunger.

  Can’t stop, he told himself. If you stop you’ll fall asleep. And the rats will get to you --

  He stumbled. He fell. He picked himself up. He spread out his arms and soared effortlessly. The tunnel was no longer spiraling up over his head. It was flat and open and there was no up or down. He laughed aloud, and heard a strange crackling harsh voice echoing off the metal walls of the tunnel.

  He floated almost weightlessly. Floating, floating… Everything was dark around him. Impenetrable black. He was alone in the darkness, without even a star to watch over him. Nothing… no one… alone… Something deep inside Linc’s mind was telling him to stay awake, but the voice was far, far away.

  Alone… all alone… and cold… It didn’t make any difference if his eyes were open or shut. There was nothing to see. The darkness was complete.

  Linc drifted, weightless. His eyes closed. The cold seemed to wrap him tenderly now. It didn’t hurt anymore. His aching muscles relaxed. He floated on nothingness.

  Nothingness.

  Pain awoke him. Not a sharp stabbing pain, but a far-off dull kind of discomfort that comes when there’s a lump in your slipper. Or when a rat begins chewing on a leg that’s numb from cold.

  Linc shook his head to clear it. He wasn’t certain that he was awake--

  And then he saw the red gleaming eyes, heard the chittering of thousands of rats, felt them crawling over his body. A warm furry blur brushed across his face.

  He screamed and jackknifed, doubling over weightlessly and sending his body twisting madly across the dark tunnel in a cloud of equally-weightless rats. They screamed, too, and scattered.

  Linc bounced off a bitingly-cold metal wall and felt around his waist for the pipe he had been carrying, the wire, anything he could use as a weapon. His hand felt warm sticky blood.

  Thousands of glaring red eyes surrounded him in the darkness. He kicked out, flailing arms and legs as he edged his back along the burningly-cold wall.

  The rats flowed back away from him. They chattered among themselves as if to say. Stay clear. He’s still strong enough to fight. Wait a while. He won’t last long.

  Linc kept edging away from the malevolent eyes, his back to the wall. But in the dark and weightlessness he couldn’t tell which way he was going. Which way is up? he sobbed to himself. How can I tell?

  The rats hovered just out of his reach, waiting, chittering.

  Linc’s feet were still dangling in midair. His only contact with the tunnel was the wall at his back. He pushed sideways on the frozen metal with the palms of his bloody hands, reaching out with his feet for some solid contact.

  The steps. His feet touched a step. The rats followed him, chattering, patient.

  Sinking to his knees on the steps, Linc forced his mind to remember: The railing. When you were going up the tunnel, the rail was on your left and the wall was on your right.

  ,He reached out with his left hand. Nothing. He peered into the darkness but he couldn’t even see his own hand. He reached out farther. His hand bumped into the wall.

  Suddenly Linc was sweating. It was a cold sweat trickling down his face and flanks like rivers of ice, making him shiver. He edged away from the wall and reached out with his right hand. It touched something warm and furry that shrieked. Linc yelled, too, and pulled the hand back. Tremblingly, he forced himself to reach out again. Yes, there’s the rail.

  Rail on the right. Wall on the left.

  Thai means I’m turned around. I’m facing down the tunnel.

  Something in him didn’t believe that. Somehow he knew that if he turned around and started down the tunnel in the reverse direction from the way he was facing now, he would be walking into an endless fury of rats, heading away from Jerlet, going back the way he had so laboriously traveled.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to concentrate. He pictured all the times he had been in the tunnel, including the long journey he was on now. And he saw himself climbing up the spiraling steps with the rail on his left and the wall on his right.

  No, the frightened voice within him screamed. You’re wrong. I know you’re wrong.

  Linc opened his eyes. The rats were edging closer, glowering at him, saying, Make up your mind. Either way, it doesn’t matter. We’ll get you no matter what you do.

  Every instinct in Linc’s body was screaming for him to go forward, not to turn around, not to turn his back to the rats.

  But his memory, his mind showed him clearly that he must travel with the rail at his left if he wanted to continue upward, toward Jerlet.

  Forcing down a shaking shriek of fright, Linc slowly turned and grasped the rail firmly with his left hand. His feet floated slowly off the steps.

  He took a deep shuddery breath, grasped the freezing, skin-sticking rail with both hands, and pulled himself into flight. He soared through the darkness like an arrow… upward toward Jerlet. I hope!

  The rats followed, screeching.

  But Linc could use his hands to pull himself along the spiraling railing, speeding along faster than the rats could follow. Hand over hand, racing faster and faster through the darkness, while the red eyes and evil voices dwindled behind him.

  Even if I’m going in the wrong direction, Linc thought, at least I’m outdistancing them.

  He was almost feeling good about it when he slammed into something utterly hard and unyielding. The darkness was split by a million shooting stars of pain.

  And then the darkness swallo
wed him completely.

  He awoke slowly.

  And when he opened his eyes for the briefest flash of a moment, he wasn’t sure that he had really awakened.

  Dreaming, he told himself. I’m dreaming.

  He cracked his eyes open again, just a slit, because of the brightness.

  Squinting cautiously, he saw that he was in a room. A small room, not much bigger than his sleeping compartment back in the Living Wheel. But it was brilliant with light, light everywhere, white and clean and dazzling. And warm! The warmth flooded through him, soothing and gentle. Linc felt warmer than he ever had since he had been a tiny child.

  Then the dream began to turn into a nightmare. He felt good enough to sit up, but found that he was unable to move. He could raise his head a little, but that was all. The rest of his body seemed to be paralyzed. He looked down at himself and saw that broad soft straps were holding down his arms and legs. Another strap crossed his middle so that he couldn’t move his torso much.

  There were some sort of coverings wrapped around his hands and feet. He was dressed in a clean, crisp white gown with short sleeves.

  And there was a slim, flexible tube connected to his left arm, just above the inner elbow.

  Suddenly frightened, Linc twisted his head around and saw that the tube was connected to a green bottle that was hanging upside down from a support on the wall. The other end of the tube was inside his arm. The place where it entered his flesh was covered by something white and plastic looking. Linc could feel it inside him, and it made his flesh crawl.

  “What is this place?” he yelled out. “Where am I? What are you doing to me?”

  Only then did it occur to him that he had no idea at all of who “you” might be. The ship was much vaster than he had ever imagined. There might be all sorts of people living in it—

  Linc let his head sink back on the bed. Don’t panic, he told himself. At least you got away from the rats.

  But the tight knot in his stomach didn’t feel any better. Not for a moment. He glanced up at the tube going into his arm again, then turned his face away.