End of Exile e-3

by Ben Bova

  The main trick was to avoid looking out at the stars. After the first few moments of awestruck sightseeing. Linc realized that the ship’s spinning motion made it impossible to stargaze and walk a straight Linc at the same time.

  So, shrugging inside the cumbersome suit, he kept his eyes on the winking yellow lights, on the handgrips and footholds that marked his way back to the Living Wheel.

  Linc had no idea of how much time passed. He was sweating with exertion long before he neared the Living Wheel. He knew that he should feel hungry, because except for sips of water from the tube inside his helmet he had eaten nothing. But his insides were trembling with exertion and excitement. His only hunger was to reach his destination.

  As he neared the outermost wheel, gravity began to make itself felt. The footholds turned into stairs that spiraled around the tube’s outer skin. There was a definite feeling of up and down that grew more certain with each step. Instead of walking along a path, Linc found himself climbing down a spiraling ladder.

  Abruptly, most unexpectedly, he was there. The last winking yellow light gave way to a circle of tiny blue lights that outlined the hatch of an airlock.

  Linc stood there for a long moment, his feet magnetically gripping the ladder’s final rung, one hand closed around the last handgrip. He studied the control panel set alongside the hatch. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the stars pinwheeling majestically as the largest of the ship’s wheels turned slowly around the distant hub. He had come a long way.

  With his free hand, Linc pushed the button that opened the hatch. He barely felt the button through the heavy metal mesh of his glove.

  For an eternity, nothing happened. Then the hatch slowly edged outward and to one side. Nothing could be heard in the hard vacuum, but Linc could swear that the hatch creaked as it moved.

  He stepped inside the cramped metal chamber of the airlock, and touched the buttons that would cycle the machinery. What if it doesn’t work? he asked himself in sudden panic. I’ll have to go all the way back to the hub and fight my way down the inside of the tube-tunnel!

  But the machines did their job. The outer hatch slid shut and sealed itself. Air hissed into the chamber. The telltale lights on the control panel flicked from red through amber to green, and the inner hatch sighed open.

  Linc clumped through into the passageway.

  He was home.

  The passageway was empty. It usually is, down at this end, he reminded himself. After all, they call this the deadlock. It’s not a happy place to be.

  He thumped up the passageway, heading for the living quarters. He felt oddly weary and slow, only gradually realizing that here in normal gravity his pressure suit and backpack weighed almost as much as he did himself.

  But he was too eager and excited to take them off.

  He was approaching the farming section when he saw the first people. A group of men were coming out of the big double doors of the farm area.

  Linc wanted to run toward them, but his legs were too tired to make his motion more than a clumsy shamble.

  “Hey… it’s me, Linc!” he shouted and waved both arms at them.

  They froze. Seven of them, sweat-stained and dirty-faced, stopped dead in their tracks and stared at Linc, open-mouthed and wide-eyed.

  “Slav… Cal… it’s me, Linc!”

  Terror twisted their faces. They broke and ran up the corridor, away from Linc, screaming.

  Linc clumped to a stop, laughing. All they see is the suit!

  Slowly he pulled off his gloves and started to undo the neck seal, so that he could remove his helmet and let them see his face.

  They probably couldn’t even hear me, from inside this bowl, he realized.

  Before Linc could get the helmet off, Slav and three others came creeping down the corridor, armed with lengths of pipe. They moved as slowly and quietly as they could, but there was no way for them to hide in the bare corridor. They saw Linc and stopped, crouched, wary, scared.

  Linc held up both hands. Then, realizing that they wouldn’t be able to hear him even if he shouted from inside the helmet, he reached down and touched the radio control studs set into the suit’s waist.

  “I’ve come from Jerlet,” Linc said. The radio unit amplified his voice into a booming, echoing crack of doom. He turned the volume down a little.

  “It’s me, Linc. I’ve come back. Jerlet sent me back to you.”

  One of the farmers dropped his weapon and sank to his knees.

  Slav scowled at him and held his ground. “What kind of monster are you? What have you done with Linc?”

  “Wait,” Linc said.

  He finished undoing the neck seal and lifted the helmet off his head.

  “I’m not a monster at all, Slav,” he called to them in his normal voice. “I’m Linc. I’ve come back to you. Jerlet sent me.”

  Slav and the others fell to their knees.

  It took many minutes for Linc to convince them that he was just as normal and alive as they were, even though he was wearing strange garments.

  The four farmers watched, goggle-eyed with a mixture of fear and fascination, as Linc slid the heavy backpack off his shoulders, unstrapped the support web beneath it, and finally pulled off his cumbersome boots.

  Slav was the first to recover.

  “You… you are Linc!” He slowly got to his feet. The others, behind him, did likewise. A bit shakily, Linc thought.

  “Of course I’m Linc.”

  “But you went away. Monel and the others said you died,” one of the farmers muttered.

  “I didn’t die. Did Magda ever say I was dead?”

  They looked at each other, puzzled, uneasy.

  “I don’t think she ever did,” Slav replied.

  Linc was glad to hear it.

  “I didn’t die,” he said. “I’m as alive and normal as any of you. I found Jerlet. He told me many things, and gave me this suit to protect me so that I could come back to you. And he also gave me good news. The yellow star isn’t going to swallow us. It brings us life, not death.”

  The good news didn’t seem to impress them at all. But at least they didn’t look so frightened.

  Stav walked up to Linc and put out a hand to touch him. He peered closely at Linc’s face. A slow smile unfolded across his broad, stolid face.

  “You really are Linc,”

  “Yes, Stav. It’s good to see you again. Can you take me to Magda?”

  Nodding, Stav answered, “Yes, yes… of course. But I think Monel will be on his way here before we can get to the priestess.”

  Monel did arrive, almost breathless, with four more men behind him. They were all armed with lengths of pipe and knives from the galley.

  Stav and the farmers had picked up the various pieces of Linc’s pressure suit, their faces showing awe more than fear. Linc still wore the main body covering of the suit, and felt slightly ridiculous with his stockinged feet and bare hands poking out of the bulbous blue garment.

  “It is you!” Monel’s tone made it clear that he didn’t want to believe what he was seeing.

  Linc could feel his face harden toward Monel. “That’s right. I’ve come back. Jerlet sent me back to you.”

  “Jerlet? You don’t expect us to believe—”

  “I don’t expect anything from you,” Linc snapped. “I’m here to see Magda. I don’t have time to waste on discussions with you.”

  Monel’s thin face went red. He held up a hand, as if to stop Linc if he should try to move. The guards behind him tensed and gripped their weapons more tightly.

  “You’re not going to see Magda or anyone else until I’m satisfied that you’re no danger to the people—”

  Linc smiled at him, but his words were dead serious: “There’s only one danger to the people, and that’s delay. Jerlet showed me how to save the ship. We’re not going to die; the yellow sun isn’t going to kill us. If we act quickly. There’s a new world waiting for us, if we do the right things to get there.”

 
Monel’s chair rolled back a few centimeters, but he insisted, “Jerlet showed you? You mean you talked with Jerlet?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then why didn’t he come with you?”

  “He died—”

  A shock wave went through them. Linc could feel it.

  “Died?”

  “Jerlet is dead?”

  “Yes,” Linc said. “But he’ll come back again someday. When we’ve reached the new world and learned how to live on it. Probably not in our lifetime, but our children will see him when he returns.”

  Even Monel was visibly shaken by Linc’s words. “I don’t understand…” His voice was almost a whisper.

  “I know,” Linc said. “That’s why I have to see Magda. She’ll know what to do.”

  Monel pursed his lips, thinking. The others—the farmers and Monel’s guards—clustered around Linc wordlessly. One of the farmers reached out and touched the rubberized fabric of Linc’s pressure suit.

  “We’re wasting time,” Linc said to Monel. “I’ve got to see Magda.”

  He started striding down the corridor, and the others hesitated only a moment. The farmers fell into step behind Linc. Monel’s guards shifted uneasily, eyed their sallow little leader, then looked toward Linc and the farmers.

  “Don’t just stand there!” Monel snapped at them. “Get me up there with him.”

  If anything, Magda was even more beautiful than Linc remembered her. She stood in the center of her tiny compartment, her dark eyes deep and somber, her finely-drawn face utterly serious, every Linc of her body held with regal pride.

  “You returned,” she said.

  Linc stepped into her room, and suddenly the crowd of people that had gathered around him as he had marched down the corridor seemed to disappear. There was no one in his sight except Magda.

  “Jerlet sent me back.”

  But Magda didn’t move toward him, didn’t smile. Her gaze shifted to the people crowding the doorway behind Linc.

  “Leave us,” she commanded. “I must talk with Linc alone.”

  They murmured and shuffled back away from the door. Linc shut it firmly. Then he turned back to Magda.

  “I knew you would return,” she said, her voice so low that he could barely hear her. “Every night, every meditation, I knew you were alive and would return.”

  “You don’t seem too happy about it,” Linc said.

  Instead of responding to that, Magda said, “I must know everything about your journey. Every detail. You really saw Jerlet? He spoke to you?”

  Linc sat down cross-legged on the warm carpeted floor and leaned his back against the bunk. Magda sat next to him, and he began to tell her about his time with Jerlet.

  He knew this room, had known it all his life, since long before Jerlet had gone away from them and the kids decided to turn to Magda for the wisdom and future-seeing abilities that had made her priestess. But the room seemed different now. Magda was different. Everything looked the same: the carpeting, the drawing on the walls that Peta had done, the glowing zodiac signs traced across the ceiling. But it all felt different. Strange.

  Magda listened to Linc’s tale without interrupting once. Her eyes went misty when he told her about Peta, otherwise she showed no emotion at all. The room’s lights dimmed to sleeping level, and still Linc wasn’t finished. On the ceiling, the Bull, the Twins, the Lion, the Virgin also listened in their customary silence. In the shadows Magda sat unmoving, straight-backed, as if in meditation. The only sign that she heard Linc was an occasional nod of her head.

  “…And, well, I guess that’s all of it,” Linc said at last. His throat was dry, raspy.

  Magda seemed to sense how he felt. “I’ll get you some water,” she said, rising to her feet. “Stay there.”

  She went to the little niche in the wall where the water tap was and filled a cup for Linc.

  Handing it to him and sitting down beside him again, Magda asked, “Jerlet wants us to fix the machines?”

  Linc could hear uncertainty in her voice. Disbelief.

  “Yes,” he answered. “The machines are our only hope. If we don’t fix them and use them properly, then we will fall into Baryta—the yellow sun. And we’ll all die. But with the help of the machines, we can reach the new world. Beryl. And we can live there.”

  Magda said nothing.

  Linc reached through the shadows to grasp her arm gently. “Think of it, Magda! A whole world for us! Open and free and clean. No more conning walls. All the air and food and water we could want. All the room!”

  “The machines,” she said softly. “Jerlet told us long ago never to touch the machines. Never.”

  Linc smiled at her, even though it was too dark for her to see it. “That was when we were children. Babies! Of course he told us not to touch the machines then. We would have hurt ourselves or fouled up the machines.”

  She didn’t move away from his touch. But she didn’t move toward him, either.

  “If Jerlet himself could tell us to fix the machines—”

  “He can’t. He’s dead.”

  “Yes, you told me.”

  “He used the machines himself. All the time. Even when he was dying.”

  “They didn’t save his life.”

  “He was old, Magda. Unbelievably old. And he’d been sick for a long time.”

  “But the machines still let him die,” she said.

  Linc answered, “He’s inside a machine now. A machine is keeping his body safe until we—or our children, I guess—learn enough to bring him back to life.”

  He felt her shudder, as though a touch of the outer darkness’s cold had gone through her.

  Linc lay back on the carpeting and stared up at the softly glowing figures on the ceiling. The Ram, the Scales, the Scorpion. Once they had been strange and mysterious signs that had puzzled and even frightened him a little. Now, thanks to Jerlet, he knew what astronomical constellations were and how the art of astrology had begun on old Earth.

  “Magda,” he said, surprised at the tone of his own voice. “We’re dealing with the difference between life and death. We can save the people, and reach the new world. But only if we use the machines. We’ve got to repair them and then use them. If we help the machines, they will help us. To live. If we don’t do it, then we will all die.”

  “Jerlet told you that.”

  “Jerlet showed me the truth of it. He taught me. He put ideas and information into my mind. I know what we have to do. But the people won’t do it unless you tell them to. You are their priestess. If you tell them that it’s the right thing to do, they’ll believe you.”

  “Monel thinks he’s their leader.”

  “Monel!” Linc heard anger and disgust in his voice. “He can play at being a leader, but if you tell the people that we’ve got to fix the machines, they’ll do it no matter how much Monel hollers.”

  “You’re really certain…?”

  “I know what we have to do,” Linc said firmly.

  For a moment, Magda said nothing. Then, “All right, Linc. I want to believe you. I don’t think I even care if you’re right or wrong. I want to believe you.”

  He smiled into the darkness. “Magda—”

  “Where will we start, Linc? What has to be done first?”

  “The bridge,” he said. “We’ve got to get the bridge back into functioning condition.”

  “Bridge?” she echoed. “Where is that?”

  He hesitated. “Um… it’s what we call… the Ghost Place.”

  Magda sat bolt upright. “The Ghost Place?” Her voice was a horrified whisper. “The Ghost Place? Linc, how could you even think of that? It’s impossible! You can’t go there!”

  “We’ve got to.”

  “No!” Magda screamed. “Never! That’s a place of death. I’ll never let you go there. You, or anyone else.”

  13

  Linc got slowly to his feet.

  “Magda,” he said, forcing his voice to stay steady and calm, “this is
something that I understand and you don’t. I’ve been with Jerlet; I know what has to be done.”

  She stood beside him, fists planted stubbornly on her hips. “You don’t understand anything! You can’t go to the Ghost Place. It’s death—”

  “That’s wrong. I know how to go there. I’ve got to clear out the bodies and fix the machines so that—”

  “Linc, listen to me!” Her voice was more pleading than angry now. “I couldn’t stand it if you died.”

  “I won’t die.”

  “Jerlet died! You could, too.” She took a deep breath. “Besides, if you go there it’ll give Monel the chance he’s been waiting for. He’ll drive us both out.”

  “Monel?”

  “I don’t have the strength to fight him,” Magda said. “He wanted to make Jayna priestess. But when I stopped fighting against him so much and let him have things his own way… he let that drop. I’m still priestess, but Monel tells everybody what to do.”

  Linc could feel his face pulling into a frown in the darkness. He couldn’t see the expression on Magda’s face, only the glint of highlights in her hair and the outline of her determined jaw, silhouetted against the fluorescent pictures on the walls.

  “I’m here now,” he said. “I’ll take care of Monel.”

  “How?” she snapped. “By going to the Ghost Place? By killing yourself? Or by making everybody so scared of you and what you’re doing that they’ll listen to whatever Monel tells them?”

  He reached out toward her. “Magda, it’s got to be done, or we’ll all die.”

  “No, I don’t believe that. Jerlet wouldn’t—”

  “Jerlet has no control over it! He never did! He was a man, an ordinary man. He couldn’t even move out of the weightless area. He couldn’t control the ship.”

  Someone knocked at the door. Two sharp raps, loud and demanding. Their argument ended.

  “Who is it?” Magda called.

  “Monel.”

  Before Linc could say anything, Magda answered, “Come in.”

  The door slid open and Monel wheeled himself into the room.

  “No lights?” His voice was mocking, a thin knife blade of sound. “Are you two meditating in the dark?”