by Ben Bova
What are they doing to me?
He must have fallen asleep, because he was startled when the door banged open. Lifting his head as far as he could, Linc saw a shaggy, hugely fat old man push himself through the doorway, barely squeezing through. He floated weightlessly toward the bed, like an immense cloud of flesh wrapped in a gray, stained coverall that barely stretched across his girth.
“You finally woke up.” His voice was as heavy and gravelly as his body and face.
“Who… who are you?”
The old man looked mildly surprised. “Don’t you recognize me? I’m Jerlet.”
“No you’re not,” Linc said. “You don’t look anything like Jerlet.”
9
A slow smile spread across the old man’s craggy features. His face was shaggy with stubbly white hair across his cheeks and chin. The skin hung loose from his jowls and looked gray, not healthy. His hair was dead white and tangled in crazy locks that floated every which way in the weightlessness.
“Don’t recognize me, huh,” he said. He seemed amused by the idea.
He started unfastening the straps that held Linc down. “Don’t move that arm,” he warned, “until I get the l.V. out of you—”
Ivy? Linc wondered. That was something that grew down in the farms.
The old man floated lightly over the bed, to the side where the tube was, his huge bulk blotting out the light from overhead as he passed over Linc.
“Yep,” he muttered in a throaty deep rumbling voice, “it’s been a helluva long time since I cut those training tapes for you squirts. You’re practically an adult— What’s your name?”
“Linc.”
“Linc… Linc--” The old man’s face knotted in a frown of concentration. “Hell, been so long I don’t even remember myself. Got to look back at the records.”
Linc was studying his face. The more he watched it, the more he had to admit that there was some resemblance to the Jerlet who showed himself on the screen down in the Living Wheel. But while the Jerlet he knew from the screen was old, this man seemed ancient. Even his hands were gnarled and covered with blue veins. Yet his body was huge, immense.
Those gnarled old fingers withdrew the tube from Linc’s arm and covered the wound with a patch of plastic so quickly that Linc couldn’t see the wound itself.
“The l.V.’s been feeding you since I brought you here… you’ve been out cold for nearly seventy hours.”
“Hours?” Linc echoed.
The old man made a sour face. “Yeah, you squirts probably don’t measure time that way at all, do you?”
Linc shook his head.
“Okay, see if you can sit up. Go easy now…”
Linc pushed himself up to a sitting position, then gripped the edge of the bed to keep from floating away. Weightless… maybe this is Jerlet’s domain, after all.
“Guess I’ve aged a bit,” he was saying. “Bloat like a gasbag up here in zero g. But listen, son—I am Jerlet. The one and only. Nobody here but me. Those pictures of me you see on the screens down in your area, well, those tapes were cut a long time ago. I was a lot younger then. So were you.”
Linc was barely listening. He was staring down at his bandaged arms and legs. “You saved me from the rats.”
Shaking his head, the old man said, “Nope, you saved yourself from them. I just saved you from bleeding to death, or freezing. You ran smack into my electrical fence and knocked yourself out. I had to come out and get you. Wasn’t expecting visitors. But I’m glad you came.” •
“You… really are Jerlet?” Linc asked.
He bobbed his head up and down, and his tangled hair waved around his face.
Linc scratched at his own shoulder-length hair and realized that it too was floating weightlessly.
“Look, kid, I know I look kinda shabby, but I’ve been living alone up here for a lotta years… since you and your batchmates were barely big enough to reach the selector buttons in the autogalley.”
“Why did you leave us?”
Jerlet shrugged. “I was dying. If I had stayed down there, in a full Earth gravity, my ol’ ticker would’ve popped out on me.”
“What? I don’t understand?”
Jerlet smiled at him, an oddly gentle smile in that stubbly, shaggy face. “C’mon, I’ll explain over lunch.”
“What’s lunch?”
“Hot food, sonny. Best in the world … this world, at least.”
Jerlet led Linc out of the little room and down a narrow passageway that curved so steeply Linc couldn’t see more than a few paces ahead. Yet it was all weightless.
“It’s not really zero gravity here,” Jerlet said as they glided along the passageway. “Just enough weight here to keep something down where you put it. But with your one-g muscles this must seem like total weightlessness.”
Linc nodded, not really sure he understood what the old man was rumbling about. He must be Jerlet, all right. Linc told himself. But he sure doesn’t look the way I thought he would!
They passed a double door. Jerlet nodded at it. “Biology lab; where you and the rest of the kids were born. Show you later.”
Linc said nothing. Jerlet’s words were puzzling.
Jerlet squeezed his bulk through a doorway, and Linc followed him into another small room. But this one had a round table and several soft-looking chairs in it. One wall was covered with buttons and little hatches and strange symbols.
“A food selector!” Linc marveled. “And it works?”
“Sure,” Jerlet answered heartily. “Look at the size of me! Think I’d let the food recyclers go out of whack?”
Linc studied the buttons and the symbols on each one.
Jerlet loomed beside him. “Go on! Pick anything you want… it all works fine.”
“Uh—” Linc suddenly felt stupid. “How do you know which button to push? I mean, back home we knew which button gave what kind of food… before it all broke down—”
“Broke down?” Jerlet snapped. “You mean the repair servomechs didn’t keep it going?”
“They broke down, too…”
“Then how do you … you cook the food yourselves?”
Linc nodded.
The old man looked upset. “I didn’t think the machines would fail so soon… the repair units, especially. I’m not as smart as I thought I was.” He put a hand on Linc’s shoulder. His voice sounded strange, almost as if he was afraid of what he was saying. “How… how many of you… are still alive?”
Linc shrugged. “More than both hands.”
“Both hands? You don’t know the number? You can’t even count? What happened to the education tapes?”
Somehow Linc felt as if he had hurt the old man. “I can name everybody for you. Would that be all right?”
Jerlet didn’t answer, so Linc began, “There’s Magda, she’s the priestess, of course. And Monel, and Slav—” He went through all the names of all the people. He almost said Peta’s name, but left it out when he remembered.
“Fifty-seven of you,” Jerlet muttered. He seemed shaken. He shuffled slowly from the food selector to the nearest chair and sat down heavily, despite the minuscule gravity. “Fifty-seven. Out of a hundred. Nearly half of you “dead in less than fifteen years—” He sank his face in his hands.
Linc stood by the food selector wall, helpless, and watched the old man, his huge bloated expanse of flesh squeezed into the graceful little chair. A far part of Linc’s mind marveled that the chair’s slim legs didn’t buckle under Jerlet’s gross weight, despite the low gravity.
The old man looked up at last, and his eyes were rimmed with red.
“Don’t you understand?” His voice was rough, shaky, almost begging. “I made you! You’re my children, just as surely as if I was your father… I made you, and then I had to leave. Now nearly half of you are dead … my fault—”
Linc stared at him.
Jerlet pulled himself out of the chair and took a shambling step toward Linc.
“Don’t you unders
tand?” His voice rose to a roar. “It’s my fault! You were going to be the beautiful new people, the best generation ever! You were going to reach the new world … raised in love and kindness… BUT YOU’RE NOTHING BUT A PACK OF IGNORANT HOWLING SAVAGES!”
His voice boomed off the walls of the tiny room. Linc winced and backed a step, bumping into the selector buttons.
“Fifty-seven of you,” Jerlet bellowed. “Stupid, superstitious savages.” He took a couple of faltering steps toward Linc, then stopped, gasping, his huge body wracked with shuddering panting sobs.
“No—” he gasped. “Not now…” He seemed to be muttering to himself. But then his eyes focused on Linc, and he could see that the old man’s eyes were as red and burning as the rats’. But not with hate, Linc knew. Jerlet’s eyes were filled with pain.
“You don’t… understand… any of this,” the old man puffed, his voice low and rasping now. “Do you? It’s all… beyond you—”
Linc wanted to say something, to reach out to him or run away, do something. But he was frozen where he stood. Even his voice seemed paralyzed.
Jerlet waved a meaty hand, feebly, at Linc and staggered out of the room.
He’s crazy. Linc thought. Like Robar, when he tried to go through the deadlock with Sheela’s body. What he says doesn’t make any sense.
Linc wondered if he should try to follow the old man. Then he noticed that some food had dropped into the selector’s pickup bin. I must have touched some of the buttons when I backed into the wall, he realized.
The food was neatly packaged, sitting in little shining boxes on a tray. Linc looked up toward the door, then decided, I’d better leave him alone. If he really is Jerlet, he’ll come back to me.
He picked up the tray and took it to the table. Unwrapping each box, he blinked at the strange sights. One box contained a liquid that was an odd color, almost like one of the colors used in the wiring back at the Living Wheel. It felt cold to his lips. The second box was an oblong metal container filled with something that looked almost like meat. When Linc peeled off the transparent film from its top, the stuff began to steam. Linc smiled. It smelted like meat.
The third box was also cold, and filled with something smooth and featureless and white. Linc dug a fingertip into it, and tasted the tiny sample. Sweet! He had never tasted anything like it before.
Without thinking about additional selections he might make, Linc sat down at the table. This stuff was strange, but it was good food.
So his first meal in Jerlet’s domain consisted of orange juice, soyburger, and ice cream.
* * *
Linc slept right there in the eating room. The floor was soft and warm, so he stretched out and went to sleep almost immediately.
In his dreams he saw Jerlet and some of the people from the Living Wheel—Magda was trying to tell him something, but Monel got between them somehow. It was all mixed up and strange.
Then he was falling, in his dream, falling through darkness with the evil red eyes of the rats chasing behind him. But the eyes all merged into one single huge red eye with a great hollow booming voice roaring after him. Linc fell through the empty darkness, cold, alone, helpless…
And woke with a shock. He was lying face down on the soft floor of the eating room. Soaked with sweat, hot, mouth open in what must have been a yell of terror.
He sat up.
He felt wide awake. The dreams quickly faded into the dark parts of the mind where forgetfulness covers everything.
Drawing his knees up under his chin, and wrapping his arms around his legs. Linc tried to concentrate and think.
Almost immediately he smiled to himself. “Magda, wherever you are, forgive me. I’m not going to meditate. I’m not going to ask for Jerlet to point out the way I should go. I have to think this out for myself.”
It was funny, but in a bitter way. Here I nearly kill myself to find Jerlet, and it turns out that he’s crazy. A new thought struck Linc’s mind, and even his faint smile vanished. Maybe he’s dangerous! Maybe he’ll try to hurt me… kill me. He sure looked angry at lastmeal. Sounded it. too.
Carefully, Linc pushed the door open and peered down the narrow, strangely-curved passageway. No one in sight. He tiptoed down the passageway and tried several other doors. No sign of Jerlet, although he did find a couple of sleeping rooms, complete with sonic showers and bins full of strange-looking clothes.
All the machines worked up here! Linc saw that the lights were all glowing faithfully. He stepped into one of the bedrooms and the door slid shut behind him automatically. He tried the water tap, a shining metal faucet set above an equally-sparkling sink, and water flowed sweet and cold from it.
I’ll bet the sonic shower works, too.
Locking the door to the passageway. Linc quickly stripped off the formless white robe Jerlet had dressed him in and showered. The tingling vibrations all over his skin made him feel better than he had since he’d been a child. No standing in Linc. No worrying about the power running down before your turn comes.
He examined the clothes that were stored in the bins next to the bed. They seemed too small for Linc to wear, but when he tried on one of the shirts, it stretched to fit his body exactly. The pants, too.
And there are different colors!
One of the wall screens was strangely shaped, long enough to reach from ceiling to floor, and so narrow that it was barely as wide as Linc’s shoulders. And it was bright; it reflected everything in the room very clearly. Linc had never heard of a mirror before, but he automatically used this one as he tried on clothes of different colors.
He finally settled on a high-necked shirt that was almost the same shade of blue as his eyes, and a dark-brown pair of pants. He found slippers in another bin, and even they adjusted their shape magically to fit his feet snugly.
“Hello!”
Linc jumped as if an electric shock sparked through him.
“Hello!” Jerlet’s rough, husky voice called again. “Can you hear me?”
It was coming from a speaker grill in the ceiling, Linc realized. There was a viewing screen on the wall facing the bed, but it was dark and dead.
“Look… I don’t even remember your name, dammit. I, uh, listen son, I got very upset yesterday and I acted like an idiot. I’m sorry.”
Linc saw that there was a small keyboard on the table beside the bed. Frowning, he wondered if he should touch any of the buttons.
“It won’t do you any good to hide from me. You’ll have to come out for food sooner or later,” Jerlet was saying. “And I really want to help you, son. Really I do. The way I acted yesterday… well, I’ll explain it if you’ll give me a chance. At least turn on one of the screens so I can talk to you face to face… what in hell is your name, anyway. I know you told me, but you mentioned all those other names, too, and now I can’t remember… guess I’m getting old.”
Linc stepped across to the table where the keyboard buttons glowed in their different colors. He felt as if his head was spinning; not just from the low gravity, but from the effort to decide what he should do. Slowly, reluctantly, he reached out for the buttons.
“If you want to turn on a screen,” Jerlet was saying, “just punch the red button on any of the keyboards—”
Linc’s outstretched finger touched the red button. Jerlet’s haggard, stubbly face leaped into view on the wall screen across the room.
He was still saying earnestly, “I know I acted like a madman last night, but I can explain… oh, there you are!”
Linc gazed straight into Jerlet’s eyes. They looked sad now. The pain was still there, but it was deeper, covered over by sadness.
“Linc. My name is Linc.”
Jerlet bobbed his head eagerly, making his fleshy jowls bounce. “Yep, that’s right. Linc. You told me, but I couldn’t remember.”
Linc started to reply, but found that he had nothing to say.
Jerlet filled in the silence. “I see you’ve cleaned up and changed clothes. Good! How about meeting
me in the autogalley? Got a lot of things to show you.”
“The autogalley?” Linc asked.
“The eating room. Where the food selector is.”
“Oh… Okay.”
“Do you know how to find it from where you are?” Jerlet asked.
Linc nodded. “I can find it.”
“Okay, good. I’ll meet you there.” The old man seemed genuinely happy.
He was still smiling when he eased his bulk through the doorway of the autogalley and glided toward Linc. He stuck out a heavy, short-fingered hand.
“Linc, I dunno what kind of customs you kids have put together down in the living section, but it’s an old human custom for two men to shake hands when they meet.”
Thoroughly puzzled. Linc put his hand out.
•Jerlet waggled a finger at him. “No, no… the right hand.”
With a shrug, Linc raised his right hand and let Jerlet grasp it firmly. The old man’s a lot stronger than he looks, he realized.
“Good!” Jerlet beamed. “Now we’re formally met. Got so much to show you.” He rubbed his hands together. “Let’s start with the food selector. Show you how that works.”
They ate well. Jerlet showed Linc all sorts of new foods and tastes that he had never known before. As the food began to make a comfortable warm glow in his middle, Linc found his worries and suspicions about Jerlet melting away.
Then they were up and moving through the nearly weightless world of Jerlet. The old man showed Linc the power generators, the mysterious humming machines that kept electricity going out to all parts of the ship. Then the master computer, with its blinking lights and odd sing-song voices. And a room full of servomechs, standing stiffly at attention, mechanical arms at their sides, sensors turned off.
“Are they dead?” Linc asked, his voice hushed.
“You mean deactivated,” Jerlet replied in his normal booming tone. “Here… look, lemme show you.” He took a tiny control box from a shelf near the door and touched one of the buttons studding its top. The nearest servomech came to life. Its sensors glowed; it pivoted slightly to face Jerlet, moving on noiseless little wheels.
