Ben Bova - End of Exile

,He reached out with his left hand. Nothing. He peered into the darkness but he couldn’t even see his own hand. He reached out farther. His hand bumped into the wall.

Suddenly Linc was sweating. It was a cold sweat trickling down his face and flanks like rivers of ice, making him shiver. He edged away from the wall and reached out with his right hand. It touched something warm and furry that shrieked. Linc yelled, too, and pulled the hand back. Tremblingly, he forced himself to reach out again. Yes, there’s the rail.

Rail on the right. Wall on the left.

Thai means I’m turned around. I’m facing down the tunnel.

Something in him didn’t believe that. Somehow he knew that if he turned around and started down the tunnel in the reverse direction from the way he was facing now, he would be walking into an endless fury of rats, heading away from Jerlet, going back the way he had so laboriously traveled.

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to concentrate. He pictured all the times he had been in the tunnel, including the long journey he was on now. And he saw himself climbing up the spiraling steps with the rail on his left and the wall on his right.

No, the frightened voice within him screamed. You’re wrong. I know you’re wrong.

Linc opened his eyes. The rats were edging closer, glowering at him, saying, Make up your mind. Either way, it doesn’t matter. We’ll get you no matter what you do.

Every instinct in Linc’s body was screaming for him to go forward, not to turn around, not to turn his back to the rats.

But his memory, his mind showed him clearly that he must travel with the rail at his left if he wanted to continue upward, toward Jerlet.

Forcing down a shaking shriek of fright, Linc slowly turned and grasped the rail firmly with his left hand. His feet floated slowly off the steps.

He took a deep shuddery breath, grasped the freezing, skin-sticking rail with both hands, and pulled himself into flight. He soared through the darkness like an arrow… upward toward Jerlet. I hope!

The rats followed, screeching.

But Linc could use his hands to pull himself along the spiraling railing, speeding along faster than the rats could follow. Hand over hand, racing faster and faster through the darkness, while the red eyes and evil voices dwindled behind him.

Even if I’m going in the wrong direction, Linc thought, at least I’m outdistancing them.

He was almost feeling good about it when he slammed into something utterly hard and unyielding. The darkness was split by a million shooting stars of pain.

And then the darkness swallowed him completely.

He awoke slowly.

And when he opened his eyes for the briefest flash of a moment, he wasn’t sure that he had really awakened.

Dreaming, he told himself. I’m dreaming.

He cracked his eyes open again, just a slit, because of the brightness.

Squinting cautiously, he saw that he was in a room. A small room, not much bigger than his sleeping compartment back in the Living Wheel. But it was brilliant with light, light everywhere, white and clean and dazzling. And warm! The warmth flooded through him, soothing and gentle. Linc felt warmer than he ever had since he had been a tiny child.

Then the dream began to turn into a nightmare. He felt good enough to sit up, but found that he was unable to move. He could raise his head a little, but that was all. The rest of his body seemed to be paralyzed. He looked down at himself and saw that broad soft straps were holding down his arms and legs. Another strap crossed his middle so that he couldn’t move his torso much.

There were some sort of coverings wrapped around his hands and feet. He was dressed in a clean, crisp white gown with short sleeves.

And there was a slim, flexible tube connected to his left arm, just above the inner elbow.

Suddenly frightened, Linc twisted his head around and saw that the tube was connected to a green bottle that was hanging upside down from a support on the wall. The other end of the tube was inside his arm. The place where it entered his flesh was covered by something white and plastic looking. Linc could feel it inside him, and it made his flesh crawl.

“What is this place?” he yelled out. “Where am I? What are you doing to me?”

Only then did it occur to him that he had no idea at all of who “you” might be. The ship was much vaster than he had ever imagined. There might be all sorts of people living in it—

Linc let his head sink back on the bed. Don’t panic, he told himself. At least you got away from the rats.

But the tight knot in his stomach didn’t feel any better. Not for a moment. He glanced up at the tube going into his arm again, then turned his face away.

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.”

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.”