Ben Bova - End of Exile

Linc was barely listening. He was staring down at his bandaged arms and legs. “You saved me from the rats.”

Shaking his head, the old man said, “Nope, you saved yourself from them. I just saved you from bleeding to death, or freezing. You ran smack into my electrical fence and knocked yourself out. I had to come out and get you. Wasn’t expecting visitors. But I’m glad you came.” •

“You… really are Jerlet?” Linc asked.

He bobbed his head up and down, and his tangled hair waved around his face.

Linc scratched at his own shoulder-length hair and realized that it too was floating weightlessly.

“Look, kid, I know I look kinda shabby, but I’ve been living alone up here for a lotta years… since you and your batchmates were barely big enough to reach the selector buttons in the autogalley.”

“Why did you leave us?”

Jerlet shrugged. “I was dying. If I had stayed down there, in a full Earth gravity, my ol’ ticker would’ve popped out on me.”

“What? I don’t understand?”

Jerlet smiled at him, an oddly gentle smile in that stubbly, shaggy face. “C’mon, I’ll explain over lunch.”

“What’s lunch?”

“Hot food, sonny. Best in the world … this world, at least.”

Jerlet led Linc out of the little room and down a narrow passageway that curved so steeply Linc couldn’t see more than a few paces ahead. Yet it was all weightless.

“It’s not really zero gravity here,” Jerlet said as they glided along the passageway. “Just enough weight here to keep something down where you put it. But with your one-g muscles this must seem like total weightlessness.”

Linc nodded, not really sure he understood what the old man was rumbling about. He must be Jerlet, all right. Linc told himself. But he sure doesn’t look the way I thought he would!

They passed a double door. Jerlet nodded at it. “Biology lab; where you and the rest of the kids were born. Show you later.”

Linc said nothing. Jerlet’s words were puzzling.

Jerlet squeezed his bulk through a doorway, and Linc followed him into another small room. But this one had a round table and several soft-looking chairs in it. One wall was covered with buttons and little hatches and strange symbols.

“A food selector!” Linc marveled. “And it works?”

“Sure,” Jerlet answered heartily. “Look at the size of me! Think I’d let the food recyclers go out of whack?”

Linc studied the buttons and the symbols on each one.

Jerlet loomed beside him. “Go on! Pick anything you want… it all works fine.”

“Uh—” Linc suddenly felt stupid. “How do you know which button to push? I mean, back home we knew which button gave what kind of food… before it all broke down—”

“Broke down?” Jerlet snapped. “You mean the repair servomechs didn’t keep it going?”

“They broke down, too…”

“Then how do you … you cook the food yourselves?”

Linc nodded.

The old man looked upset. “I didn’t think the machines would fail so soon… the repair units, especially. I’m not as smart as I thought I was.” He put a hand on Linc’s shoulder. His voice sounded strange, almost as if he was afraid of what he was saying. “How… how many of you… are still alive?”

Linc shrugged. “More than both hands.”

“Both hands? You don’t know the number? You can’t even count? What happened to the education tapes?”

Somehow Linc felt as if he had hurt the old man. “I can name everybody for you. Would that be all right?”

Jerlet didn’t answer, so Linc began, “There’s Magda, she’s the priestess, of course. And Monel, and Slav—” He went through all the names of all the people. He almost said Peta’s name, but left it out when he remembered.

“Fifty-seven of you,” Jerlet muttered. He seemed shaken. He shuffled slowly from the food selector to the nearest chair and sat down heavily, despite the minuscule gravity. “Fifty-seven. Out of a hundred. Nearly half of you “dead in less than fifteen years—” He sank his face in his hands.

Linc stood by the food selector wall, helpless, and watched the old man, his huge bloated expanse of flesh squeezed into the graceful little chair. A far part of Linc’s mind marveled that the chair’s slim legs didn’t buckle under Jerlet’s gross weight, despite the low gravity.

The old man looked up at last, and his eyes were rimmed with red.

“Don’t you understand?” His voice was rough, shaky, almost begging. “I made you! You’re my children, just as surely as if I was your father… I made you, and then I had to leave. Now nearly half of you are dead … my fault—”

Linc stared at him.

Jerlet pulled himself out of the chair and took a shambling step toward Linc.

“Don’t you understand?” His voice rose to a roar. “It’s my fault! You were going to be the beautiful new people, the best generation ever! You were going to reach the new world … raised in love and kindness… BUT YOU’RE NOTHING BUT A PACK OF IGNORANT HOWLING SAVAGES!”

His voice boomed off the walls of the tiny room. Linc winced and backed a step, bumping into the selector buttons.

“Fifty-seven of you,” Jerlet bellowed. “Stupid, superstitious savages.” He took a couple of faltering steps toward Linc, then stopped, gasping, his huge body wracked with shuddering panting sobs.

“No—” he gasped. “Not now…” He seemed to be muttering to himself. But then his eyes focused on Linc, and he could see that the old man’s eyes were as red and burning as the rats’. But not with hate, Linc knew. Jerlet’s eyes were filled with pain.

“You don’t… understand… any of this,” the old man puffed, his voice low and rasping now. “Do you? It’s all… beyond you—”

Linc wanted to say something, to reach out to him or run away, do something. But he was frozen where he stood. Even his voice seemed paralyzed.

Jerlet waved a meaty hand, feebly, at Linc and staggered out of the room.

He’s crazy. Linc thought. Like Robar, when he tried to go through the deadlock with Sheela’s body. What he says doesn’t make any sense.

Linc wondered if he should try to follow the old man. Then he noticed that some food had dropped into the selector’s pickup bin. I must have touched some of the buttons when I backed into the wall, he realized.

The food was neatly packaged, sitting in little shining boxes on a tray. Linc looked up toward the door, then decided, I’d better leave him alone. If he really is Jerlet, he’ll come back to me.

He picked up the tray and took it to the table. Unwrapping each box, he blinked at the strange sights. One box contained a liquid that was an odd color, almost like one of the colors used in the wiring back at the Living Wheel. It felt cold to his lips. The second box was an oblong metal container filled with something that looked almost like meat. When Linc peeled off the transparent film from its top, the stuff began to steam. Linc smiled. It smelted like meat.

The third box was also cold, and filled with something smooth and featureless and white. Linc dug a fingertip into it, and tasted the tiny sample. Sweet! He had never tasted anything like it before.

Without thinking about additional selections he might make, Linc sat down at the table. This stuff was strange, but it was good food.

So his first meal in Jerlet’s domain consisted of orange juice, soyburger, and ice cream.

Linc slept right there in the eating room. The floor was soft and warm, so he stretched out and went to sleep almost immediately.

In his dreams he saw Jerlet and some of the people from the Living Wheel—Magda was trying to tell him something, but Monel got between them somehow. It was all mixed up and strange.