End of Exile e-3

by Ben Bova

  The countdown sequencer gave off a warning whistle, and the crowd of people shrank back from it, gasping.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Linc said. “It’s just a signal that we’re going to have another rocket blast in five minutes. This’ll be the last one.” And the roughest.

  They stared at the countdown screens, fascinated by the ever-changing numbers even though they couldn’t read them. A minute before the rockets were set to fire, Linc told them to lie down on the floor.

  “Magda!” he called.

  She raised her head and looked at him.

  “Tell all the people who haven’t come up to the bridge yet to get down on the floor or on their bunks. Tell them to keep away from anything that might fall on them. They’ve got… fifty-one seconds to the final rocket burn.”

  She spoke into the microphone. The crowd on the bridge lay down. Linc wedged his feet solidly against the desk supports and held onto the sides of his chair.

  The giant spoke again. The roar, was bone-rattling. The whole bridge shook as if it was going to come apart. Someone screamed. Linc realized he had squeezed his eyes shut. He opened them and tried to focus on the screens in front of him, but everything was shaking too much. All he could see was a jangled, multicolored blue.

  Then it stopped. Linc leaned forward to stare at the astrogation display. On course. He didn’t feel triumphant about it. Just grateful.

  Magda was staring at him, watching him as intently as Linc himself watched the screens.

  “Better tell everybody to start heading for the bridge. Now.” As she turned back to the microphone, Linc said to the people who were getting up off the floor, “There’s a short corridor on the other side of the hatch at the far end of the bridge. Linc up there in single file. No pushing and no panic. Everything’s going very smoothly, so let’s not foul it up by getting excited.”

  A voice came screaming from the open airlock hatch that led to the passageway: “The farm tanks! Something’s happened to the pumps. They’ve stopped!”

  Linc glanced at the screens that told him what the electrical power system was doing. Lights were going out all over the ship. Heaters, too. All on schedule.

  The people were lining up in the corridor that led to the matter transmitter. But fresh voices were coming from the passageway that led to the living area:

  “There’s no lights in the galley.”

  “The air fans have stopped.”

  “It’s getting cold out here! The heaters—”

  Linc went to the communications desk and reached for the microphone. It pulled out of the desk top easily, trailing a hair-thin wire.

  “Listen to me!” he Commanded. Magda pushed her chair back and stood beside him. “The ship is dying. We have only a little time to get off the ship and onto the new world. Linc up here at the bridge and get ready. Bring whatever you can carry with you; we won’t have time for anything else.”

  He handed the mike to Magda, who took it with only the slightest grimace of distaste. “My robe,” she said. “My symbols—”

  “No time,” Linc snapped. “I’ve got to get the transmitter started. You keep the people calmed down as they come in here.

  Get them in Linc. When I call you, you come. No arguments.”

  She started to say something, but let it drop. She nodded and turned away from him.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said into the microphone. And she forced a smile for the people who were milling confusedly around the bridge. “Let’s Linc tip now, down there where the hatch is…”

  Linc hurried past the Linc of people and opened the door to the transmitter room. He sat at the desk and started working the controls. The lights on the bridge dimmed. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a few of the display screens beyond the Linc of heads and shoulders in the corridor. The screens were starting to flicker and go dark.

  Every erg of power --

  Voices drifted in; Linc couldn’t tell if they were from the corridor, the bridge, or the passageway outside.

  “The machines are dying.”

  “Hey, I can see my breath… look it’s like little puffs of smoke.”

  And Magda’s voice. “It’s all right. We’ll all reach the new world safely. Don’t be afraid.”

  “But it’s cold!”

  The lights on the control desk were all green.

  Everything was ready. Linc got up, pushed through the people lined up in the corridor, and took a final look at the bridge’s countdown screen. It was one of the few left alive. Its yellow numerals glowed in the shadowy half-light of the darkened bridge.

  “Magda,” he called. “Time to go.”

  She let the mike fall from her hand and followed him to the transmitter room. As they stepped into the room itself, she whispered:

  “You’ve given us no choice.”

  “That’s right,” he said, leading her to the transmitter booth.

  Magda hesitated for only an instant. As Linc swung the booth’s transparent plastic door open, she straightened her back and marched right inside. The people at the front of the Linc watched, goggle-eyed.

  “Smile at them,” Linc whispered as he shut the door.

  She put on a smile. To Linc it seemed obviously artificial.

  He went swiftly to the desk, touched the controls, then let his hand hover over the orange ACTIVATE button. What if something’s wrong? What if the receiver landed in an area where we can’t live? What if I kill her?

  “It’s freezing out here,” came a voice from the corridor.

  Linc punched the orange button. The transmitter booth flared with a brilliant white-hot light for just an instant, then it was empty.

  He stared at it for a moment, then turned to the people at the head of the Linc. They were staring, too.

  “Did you see that?”

  “She’s gone!”

  “It’s magic!”

  “All right,” Linc called, suddenly unbearably weary. “Come on. One at a time. To the new world.”

  They did as they were told. There was no panic. A few of them were reluctant to enter the booth, obviously frightened. But the others in Linc jeered and joked at them; They all went in, with less than a minute between each one.

  Linc operated the controls like an automaton, knowing that the real reason they all stepped blindly into the transmitter booth was not their faith in him or even in Magda. It was their fear of the obvious death of the ship. The bridge lights finally went out completely, leaving only the glowing fluorescent panels of the corridor and transmitter room to give a dim, eerie light. The heat ebbed away, and Linc’s fingers began to go numb as he punched the buttons on the transmitter’s keyboard _over and over again. Twenty times. Thirty. Forty-five. He shuffled his feet and stamped them, sending needles of pain up his legs.

  Monel! The thought hit him as he worked the controls. Where is he? Why hasn’t he shown up? It’s not like him to be so quiet.

  Slav appeared in the Linc, and Linc waved him over. As the next man stepped into the booth and Linc worked the controls, he asked the broad-faced farmer, “Have you seen Monel?”

  “Yes. He’s at the end of the Linc. Him and his five guards.”

  “Why is he hanging back at the end of the Linc?” Linc asked.

  Slav shrugged. “You want me to wait here with you? In case he tries to make trouble?”

  Frowning, Linc shook his head. “No. Go ahead. I’ve kept you here too long already. Get into the booth.”

  Slav grinned. “I wouldn’t mind waiting. That… thing… it makes me scary. Big flash and poof, you’re gone.”

  Linc smiled back at him. “That’s right.” He hit the orange button and a girl disappeared from the booth. “And poof, you’re on the new world. Now get in there, you big potato brain, before somebody else starts admitting that he’s scared.”

  Slav patted Linc on the shoulder and stepped around to the booth. Without a hint of fear he got in and waved to Linc as he flashed into nothingness.

  Jayna showed up
a few minutes later, smiling nervously. Linc nodded to her and sent her into oblivion also.

  He realized that his mind was working against him. I’m not sending them into oblivion. I’m not killing them. I’m giving them life, sending them to the new world.

  But still, all he saw was the people he had known all his life disappearing, one by one. Stepping into the transmitter booth—calm or frightened, grinning or tight-lipped—each of them stepping in and allowing him to utterly destroy their bodies.

  His hands shook as he thought about it.

  The timer on the control desk showed less than four minutes remaining when Monel and his guards came into the transmitter room.

  “We’re the last,” Monel said. “There’s no one left behind us.”

  “All right.” Linc’s breath puffed steamily as he spoke. “You have to get in one at a time.”

  “No,” Monel said. “You’ve tricked the others, but you won’t trick me.”

  Somehow, Linc had expected if. “Don’t be an idiot. There’s only a few minutes left.”

  But Monel wheeled his chair over to the control desk and leaned his thin, narrow-eyed face next to Linc’s. “You think you’ll keep the whole ship for yourself, don’t you?, Everything for yourself. Well, it won’t work.”

  “The ship is dead,” Linc said. “There’s no way—”

  Monel smiled. On him, it wasn’t a pleasant thing. “Do you think for an instant that I believe Jerlet would let this ship die?”

  “Jerlet’s dead—”

  “So you told us. But you said he would return to us some day.

  How can he do that if the ship dies?”

  “He can’t,” Linc admitted. “He’ll plunge into Baryta with the dead ship. There’s nothing I can do about that.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Linc jabbed a thumb at the timer. “Look! We’ve got slightly more than three minutes to get the seven of us through the transmitter. That’s barely enough time—”

  Monel cut through with, “I want you to start turning on the machines again. I want the light and heat back, and all the machines to—”

  “I can’t!” Linc said, watching the timer click off the seconds. “Nobody can.”

  “You will. None of us are going through that machine. You’re not going to get us to leave.”

  Linc looked up at the five guards. They seemed to be solidly agreed with Monel.

  “All right,” he said. “Then I’m going… you can have the ship if you want it so badly.” He started to get up.

  “You’re not going anywhere!” Monel snapped.

  Two of the nearest guards pushed Linc back into his chair.

  Three minutes… two fifty-nine —

  “There’s no way to bring the ship back to life,” Linc shouted. “I had to dump every bit of power aboard into the transmitter. If we don’t get out of here in the next two and a half minutes, we’re all going to die!”

  “You’re bluffing,” Monel said.

  Linc clutched at his head. “Bluffing? Look around you, you stupid rat-brain! The machines are already dead. Nothing’s working except the transmitter.”

  “You can fix the machines.”

  “Don’t you realize how long it took me to fix the bridge? Months! We don’t have months, we only have seconds! The air fans aren’t working anymore. It’s a race to see if we’ll freeze before we suffocate!”

  Monel started to shake his head, but Linc pushed himself up out of the chair. To the guards he said, “If he wants to kill himself, that’s fine with me. But he’s killing us, too.”

  They shifted on their feet, looked at each other.

  “There’s hardly more than a minute left! In one more minute we’re all dead men.”

  The guard nearest the transmitter booth started to say, “Maybe…:”

  “No!” Monel snapped. “He wants to keep the ship for himself.”

  Linc pointed to the guard who had started to speak. “He’s crazy. He wants to die, and he wants to kill us with him. Get into the booth, at least I can save one or two of you.”

  The guard hesitated a heartbeat, then grabbed at the booth’s door.

  “Don’t you dare!” Monel screeched.

  But the guard got inside and swung the door shut. Linc leaned over the control desk and started touching the buttons. Monel screamed and grabbed at him, but Linc pushed him away.

  “Keep him off me,” he growled.

  With one hand he banged the buttons in the proper sequence and hit the orange ACTIVATE button. The booth flashed.

  “No, it’s a trick, don’t let him—” Monel raged. But two of his guards lifted him out of his chair and dragged him to the hatch. They dropped him there in a huddled heap.

  All four of the remaining guards tried to jam into the booth at once.

  “No! Stop that!” Linc commanded. “The first two… inside. You others wait for a few seconds.” The transmitter will handle two of them …I hope!

  He sent them on their way with a soundless flash and the other two guards squeezed into the booth. The timer read 00 00 24 when they disappeared.

  Linc punched buttons and hit the delay switch that would give him ten seconds to get into the booth before it activated again. He stepped away from the desk and reached for the booth’s door.

  Monel was lying at the edge of the hatch, staring at him with hate-filled eyes.

  “You wanted the ship, it’s all yours,” Linc said.

  Monel reached out a bony hand. His voice was a thin, high-pitched whine that Linc had never heard before.

  “Please… don’t leave me—”

  The timer read 00 00 07.

  Linc flung the booth door open, stepped over, and scooped Monel up in his arms. He was strangely light, frail, like a little child. He was whimpering. Linc dove into the booth and somehow managed to swing the door shut just as the whole universe exploded into blinding painful unbearable brilliance.

  21

  It was neither a long time nor a short time. It was no time at all. As if time didn’t exist. Total blankness. Nothing to see, feel, hear, taste, smell.

  I’m dead. Linc thought. This is what death is. Absolute nothingness.

  He wasn’t even sure that he was thinking. The blankness was so complete that even existence itself was doubtful. Totally alone, without sensation, as if his body and its organs no longer existed. Nothing but memory. Neither desire nor fear. Nothing but awareness, and the faint remembrance of…

  The light hurt his eyes.

  Squinting, Linc realized that he felt the weight of Monel’s frail body in his arms. He felt his feet standing on solid flooring. He was breathing. His pulse throbbed in his ears.

  For some reason his eyes were blurred with tears. He blinked a few times, and saw them.

  The people were clustered around, all of them. Stav was yanking open the door of the receiver booth, grinning like a fool.

  They grabbed at Linc, pulled Monel out of his arms, pounded him on the back, lifted him onto their shoulders. Laughing, shouting, all their voices raised at once, all of them looking up at him.

  “Hey, wait—”

  But they were jouncing him around on their shoulders, shouting over and over again, “You did it! You did it! We made it! We made it!”

  Linc looked around and saw the new world.

  It was green, not blue. That surprised him. The ground was covered with soft green grass that waved slowly in a warm breeze. The sky was pale blue, fading almost to yellow near the horizon. Hills and trees, and a sparkling stream of water—

  Everything was so open!

  The world just went on and on, open and huge and green and warm. Warm! Linc twisted around slightly and saw that Baryta was no longer a fiery danger but a warm smile upon the land.

  The landscape was open and beautiful. Gentle hills rolled off toward the horizon. A stream glinted in the sunlight. Trees dotted the open grassland, and farther off clustered into a thick forest. Something sailed through the air gracefully
, effortlessly, on outstretched wings that were ablaze with color.

  Finally they put him down, let him touch his feet on the grass of their new home.

  “It’s a good world you’ve brought us to,” someone said.

  “Not me,” said Linc. “We all did it, together… with Jerlet’s help, and the machines.”

  “What do we do now?”

  Linc saw that they were all looking at him, waiting for him to tell them what to do.

  He shook his head. “We need a leader… someone who can make wise decisions and help us learn how to live in this new world.”

  Before they could say anything, Linc stepped up to Slav and put an arm around the farmer’s broad shoulder. “Slav should be out leader. He knows more about farming than any of us, and that’s the kind of wisdom we need now.”

  They all shouted agreement. Slav actually blushed, but he didn’t argue. Linc edged away from him as the crowd cheered their new leader.

  Then he noticed Magda standing beside him.

  “The people will still need a priestess,” she said.

  Linc nodded. “Probably they will. And they’ll need machines, too.”

  “All the machines are on the ship.”

  With a grin, he said, “I think I can figure out how to make a few things… like a windmill, maybe. Or a wheelchair for Monel. Maybe even a power generator, if we can find the right metals.”

  She reached a hand out toward him, and he took it in his.

  “We both have a lot to learn,” Magda said.

  “We sure do,” Linc agreed.

  They lifted their eyes toward the sky, as a bright swift-moving star raced across the blue.

  “The ship,” said Linc.

  Magda looked sat. “It’s carrying Jerlet away from us.”

  Linc grinned. Remembering that shaggy, sloppy, wild-haired, booming-voiced old man, he said, “He accomplished what he set out to do; he got us here safely. And we’ll always remember him.”

  A soft breeze tousled Magda’s long hair. She nodded and smiled at Linc as the melodious song of a bird filled the morning air.

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: 1dc9f6f5-fe18-4f3f-905d-f1d01fbc1d54