Exiles trilogy, p.34
Exiles Trilogy, page 34
part #99 of Exiles Series
They let Linc go back to his room while the workday wore on. After lastmeal everyone would gather in the meeting room to hear Magda’s decision about Linc.
He sat on his bunk and stared at the wall. Magda won’t sentence me, she’ll thank me. I did it for her. She’ll be glad.
But still he worried.
The time for midmeal passed. Linc didn’t bother going out to the galley, and no one brought him any food.
But then he heard swift footsteps outside his door. The door slid open, and Magda stepped into his room.
He stood up and reached for her.
“How could you?” she whispered.
He blinked, confused. “What do you mean?”
“How could you cause all this trouble? Fix the pump! You know that it’s forbidden to tamper with the machines.”
“I didn’t tamper with it,” Linc said stubbornly, “I fixed it. I figured out how to use the wall screen in the farm section, and the screen told me—”
But her eyes were wide with horror. “Linc! Do you realize what you’re saying! No one’s allowed to touch the machines. You can’t play with viewing screens.”
“But the screens know how to fix the machines.”
She covered her mouth with one hand and paced the length of the room in four rapid strides. Turning back to Linc, she asked:
“Have you told anybody about the screen?”
“No... I don’t think so.”
“Good. Now listen to me. When we meet after lastmeal, say nothing about the screen. Or—better yet, tell them Jerlet appeared on the screen without you touching it.”
“I was trying to get Jerlet to speak, that’s why I turned the screen on.”
“Listen to me,” she urged. “Don’t say that you turned the screen on. I’ll tell them that I was meditating and looking for an answer to our problem all through the night. Which is no lie. I was. And Jerlet must have seen me, or heard me... and fixed the pump for us.”
“But that’s not true,” Linc said. “I fixed it. I did it by myself, with my own hands.”
She shook her head impatiently. “Monel will destroy you ... both of us, if we give him the chance.”
“But I saved the crops. Nobody will go hungry.”
“Which is why he’s angry.”
Linc pounded his fists against his thighs. “The people will be glad that the pump’s working again. The farmers were singing!”
Magda glared at him. “Linc, people don’t behave like machines. Don’t you see what Monel will do? He’ll say that it’s a crime to tamper with the machines, yet you went ahead and did it anyway. This time it worked, but if you’re left free to tamper again, you could destroy something and kill us all.”
Linc sank down onto his bunk. “That’s stupid.”
“But that’s just what he’ll do. And then he’ll tell me to get Jerlet to speak to us, and Jerlet will just answer with the same words he always speaks, and I’ll have to condemn you. I’ll have to!”
“I did it for you,” Linc muttered. “You wanted a miracle.”
Her look softened. “I know. But we’ve got to be careful about how we explain it to the people. You’ve got to say that the screen came on by itself, and Jerlet told you what to do.”
With a frown, Linc said, “And how do I explain why I went into the farms in the first place?”
Magda bowed her head in thought for a moment. Then she came up smiling. “Oh, it’s easy! You say that Jerlet came to you in a dream, while you were sleeping, and told you to go to the farms.”
“But that’s not true!”
She sat on the bunk beside him and put a finger to his lips. “Linc, you couldn’t have fixed the pump without Jerlet’s help. We both know that.”
“But....”
“We’ll just explain his help a little differently from the way it really happened. It’s not really lying; it’s... well, it’s bending the truth a little, so that the people won’t get frightened.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Trust the priestess,” Magda whispered. “I want to help you.”
With a shake of his head, Linc answered, “But you don’t understand what’s really important. I found out that the screens ... they know how to fix things. They show you what to do. We can fix all the dead machines....”
“No!” Magda snapped. “You mustn’t say that. You’ll frighten everyone ... you’ll be playing into Monel’s hands.” She got up from the bunk and started pacing the floor again.
He looked at her. “Am I frightening you?”
From the corner of the tiny compartment she returned his stare. “Yes,” she said at last, in a hushed voice. “Yes .. .a little.”
He reached a hand out toward her, and she rushed over and sat beside him on the bunk. She gripped his hands hard, and her fingers were ice cold.
“Magda, we can fix everything....”
“Hush.” She bent forward slightly, squeezing his hands with a strength he never knew she possessed. She pressed her eyes shut, and began to tremble wildly.
Linc had seen Magda entrance herself before. She was searching the future, trying to see what would happen, what they should do.
She stopped trembling and eased up the pressure on his hands. She straightened up and looked into his eyes. Her own deep black eyes were rimmed with red and glimmering with tears.
“Linc... you’re going to Jerlet.” Her voice was a frightened whisper. “You.. .you’re going to see him, talk with him. But before you do... you’ll see Peta again.”
Linc pulled his hands away from her. “That’s what you see in the future, huh? All that means is that you’re going to have me cast out, just the way you cast out Peta.”
“No—” she gasped.
He jumped to his feet. “I know how to fix the machines, but you and the others are too scared to see the noses on your faces!”
‘You think I’m wrong?” Magda’s voice went rigid; it was the priestess speaking now, not his friend.
“The screens can tell us how to fix everything—”
“It is forbidden to touch the screens, or any other machine. You have committed sins and you’re telling me that you’re not sorry about it. You’re telling me that you want to do even worse things.”
“I want to save us! If we can learn how to fix all the machines, maybe we can push the yellow star away.”
“You’ll make Jerlet angry at all of us.”
“No, I want to save us all.”
Magda walked past Linc to the door. She stopped, facing it. He could see from the stiff back, the way she held her head high, that every centimeter of her slim body was rigid with tension and anger.
She whipped around and faced him once more. “Linc, I want to help you, but you’re going against everything we know. Everything we have. So you fixed one pump. That might have been luck or even a trap....”
“A trap?”
“Yes!” she insisted. “You think you know how to fix all the machines. Suppose Jerlet is just testing you, seeing if you’ll tamper with more machines. You’re going against his rules, Linc! I can’t let you do that.”
For the first time, Linc felt anger seething inside his guts. “You just don’t believe that I can fix them. You believe all this stuff about not touching the machines, but you don’t believe me.”
“No one can fix them.”
“You’d rather just sit here and let one machine after another break down until we’re freezing and starving. You’d sit here and let the yellow star swallow us up, without even lifting a finger to try ----”
“Jerlet’s rules are----”
“Don’t yammer at me about Jerlet’s rules!” he roared. “I don’t care about his stupid rules!”
Her mouth dropped open.
Forcing himself to take a deep, calming breath. Linc said more softly, “Magda, listen to me. Suppose this really is a test? Suppose Jerlet’s trying to find out if we’ll use the brains he gave us to find out how to fix the machines?”
“But his rules say we mustn’t tamper with the machines.”
“We were children when he told us that... so small we couldn’t see over the galley tables. And all the servomechs worked then. Things are different now, and Jerlet hasn’t said anything new about the machines for a long, long time.” He felt a smile trying to work its way across his face. “Remember back then? Remember how I used to boost you up, so you could reach the top buttons on the food selector?”
She grinned and looked down, so that Linc couldn’t see her • face. “Yes—”
“But then the selector broke down...and the servomechs broke down ... all the machines are dying. Jerlet wouldn’t want us to sit here and die. with them. He wants us to fix them.”
“Then why hasn’t he told us so?” Magda asked.
Linc shrugged.
She came away from the door and sat on the bunk beside Linc. “And you’ve forgotten about Monel.”
“Hmp! What about him? After I’ve fixed a few more machines he----”
She touched his shoulder. “Linc, you might know about machines, but you don’t know about people. Monel won’t let you fix anything. I can see just what he’ll do.”
He took her hand, engulfing it in his own. “He won’t be able to stop me if you’re on my side. Together we can convince the people.”
“No.” Magda shook her head. “Not if you try to tell everyone that the screens speak, and you want to fix all the machines. It’s too much for them to take, all at once. Monel will turn them against you.”
“The farmers—”
“The farmers are glad the pump’s working again. But Monel can frighten them into casting you out.”
“But if I just tell them the truth—”
“If you tell them the truth, we’ll both be cast out!” Magda’s voice was iron hard now. “I want to save you, Linc, but you’ve got to help me. I will not allow Monel to become my master. I will not allow him to set up another priestess, I must be the priestess here! It’s Jerlet’s command.”
Linc could feel the coldness of outside seeping into him. “You mean that you’ll let them cast me out, rather than risk your position as priestess.”
“It’s what I have to do.” Magda’s voice was low, almost a whisper, but still unalterably firm.
“It’s what you want to do,” Linc answered bitterly.
Magda sat unmoving, like a statue. Even her face seemed to have gone hard and lifeless.
Finally, she spoke. “I am the priestess. I can see the future. I can see into people’s minds. I must stay as priestess. No one else can be priestess in my place.”
Linc said tightly, “So what happens now?”
Magda still didn’t move. Her voice sounded as if it came from one of the ghosts. “You will be brought before me for judgment, because you tampered with the machine.”
He said nothing.
“If you confess that you did it, and say nothing about the screen, and tell the people that you followed Jerlet’s commands, I can show you mercy. Monel wouldn’t dare insist on casting you out... this time. But if you try to insist that you can reach Jerlet by using the screens, and fix all the machines—”
Her voice trailed off.
For a long moment there was no sound in the tiny compartment except the distant buzz of an air blower. Linc felt the wall hard and unyielding against his back, the softer foamplastic of the bunk beneath him. It all seemed unreal, strange, as if he’d never been in this place before. Yet he had lived all his life here.
“And your vision of the future,” he heard himself ask, stiffly, as if he was talking to a stranger. “You said I was going to find Jerlet...and Peta.”
Magda nodded slowly.
“That means I’m going to be cast out, just as Peta was.”
Her voice was distant, as if it came from the farthest star. “Don’t force me to do it. Linc. Please ... don’t make me do it.”
He didn’t answer.
After a long silent time, she got up and left him sitting there by himself.
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.
