Ben Bova - End of Exile

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.

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.