Ben Bova - End of Exile

Linc wanted to run toward them, but his legs were too tired to make his motion more than a clumsy shamble.

“Hey… it’s me, Linc!” he shouted and waved both arms at them.

They froze. Seven of them, sweat-stained and dirty-faced, stopped dead in their tracks and stared at Linc, open-mouthed and wide-eyed.

“Slav… Cal… it’s me, Linc!”

Terror twisted their faces. They broke and ran up the corridor, away from Linc, screaming.

Linc clumped to a stop, laughing. All they see is the suit!

Slowly he pulled off his gloves and started to undo the neck seal, so that he could remove his helmet and let them see his face.

They probably couldn’t even hear me, from inside this bowl, he realized.

Before Linc could get the helmet off, Slav and three others came creeping down the corridor, armed with lengths of pipe. They moved as slowly and quietly as they could, but there was no way for them to hide in the bare corridor. They saw Linc and stopped, crouched, wary, scared.

Linc held up both hands. Then, realizing that they wouldn’t be able to hear him even if he shouted from inside the helmet, he reached down and touched the radio control studs set into the suit’s waist.

“I’ve come from Jerlet,” Linc said. The radio unit amplified his voice into a booming, echoing crack of doom. He turned the volume down a little.

“It’s me, Linc. I’ve come back. Jerlet sent me back to you.”

One of the farmers dropped his weapon and sank to his knees.

Slav scowled at him and held his ground. “What kind of monster are you? What have you done with Linc?”

“Wait,” Linc said.

He finished undoing the neck seal and lifted the helmet off his head.

“I’m not a monster at all, Slav,” he called to them in his normal voice. “I’m Linc. I’ve come back to you. Jerlet sent me.”

Slav and the others fell to their knees.

It took many minutes for Linc to convince them that he was just as normal and alive as they were, even though he was wearing strange garments.

The four farmers watched, goggle-eyed with a mixture of fear and fascination, as Linc slid the heavy backpack off his shoulders, unstrapped the support web beneath it, and finally pulled off his cumbersome boots.

Slav was the first to recover.

“You… you are Linc!” He slowly got to his feet. The others, behind him, did likewise. A bit shakily, Linc thought.

“Of course I’m Linc.”

“But you went away. Monel and the others said you died,” one of the farmers muttered.

“I didn’t die. Did Magda ever say I was dead?”

They looked at each other, puzzled, uneasy.

“I don’t think she ever did,” Slav replied.

Linc was glad to hear it.

“I didn’t die,” he said. “I’m as alive and normal as any of you. I found Jerlet. He told me many things, and gave me this suit to protect me so that I could come back to you. And he also gave me good news. The yellow star isn’t going to swallow us. It brings us life, not death.”

The good news didn’t seem to impress them at all. But at least they didn’t look so frightened.

Stav walked up to Linc and put out a hand to touch him. He peered closely at Linc’s face. A slow smile unfolded across his broad, stolid face.

“You really are Linc,”

“Yes, Stav. It’s good to see you again. Can you take me to Magda?”

Nodding, Stav answered, “Yes, yes… of course. But I think Monel will be on his way here before we can get to the priestess.”

Monel did arrive, almost breathless, with four more men behind him. They were all armed with lengths of pipe and knives from the galley.

Stav and the farmers had picked up the various pieces of Linc’s pressure suit, their faces showing awe more than fear. Linc still wore the main body covering of the suit, and felt slightly ridiculous with his stockinged feet and bare hands poking out of the bulbous blue garment.

“It is you!” Monel’s tone made it clear that he didn’t want to believe what he was seeing.

Linc could feel his face harden toward Monel. “That’s right. I’ve come back. Jerlet sent me back to you.”

“Jerlet? You don’t expect us to believe—”

“I don’t expect anything from you,” Linc snapped. “I’m here to see Magda. I don’t have time to waste on discussions with you.”

Monel’s thin face went red. He held up a hand, as if to stop Linc if he should try to move. The guards behind him tensed and gripped their weapons more tightly.

“You’re not going to see Magda or anyone else until I’m satisfied that you’re no danger to the people—”

Linc smiled at him, but his words were dead serious: “There’s only one danger to the people, and that’s delay. Jerlet showed me how to save the ship. We’re not going to die; the yellow sun isn’t going to kill us. If we act quickly. There’s a new world waiting for us, if we do the right things to get there.”

Monel’s chair rolled back a few centimeters, but he insisted, “Jerlet showed you? You mean you talked with Jerlet?”

“That’s right.”

“Then why didn’t he come with you?”

“He died—”

A shock wave went through them. Linc could feel it.

“Died?”

“Jerlet is dead?”

“Yes,” Linc said. “But he’ll come back again someday. When we’ve reached the new world and learned how to live on it. Probably not in our lifetime, but our children will see him when he returns.”

Even Monel was visibly shaken by Linc’s words. “I don’t understand…” His voice was almost a whisper.

“I know,” Linc said. “That’s why I have to see Magda. She’ll know what to do.”

Monel pursed his lips, thinking. The others—the farmers and Monel’s guards—clustered around Linc wordlessly. One of the farmers reached out and touched the rubberized fabric of Linc’s pressure suit.

“We’re wasting time,” Linc said to Monel. “I’ve got to see Magda.”

He started striding down the corridor, and the others hesitated only a moment. The farmers fell into step behind Linc. Monel’s guards shifted uneasily, eyed their sallow little leader, then looked toward Linc and the farmers.

“Don’t just stand there!” Monel snapped at them. “Get me up there with him.”

If anything, Magda was even more beautiful than Linc remembered her. She stood in the center of her tiny compartment, her dark eyes deep and somber, her finely-drawn face utterly serious, every Linc of her body held with regal pride.

“You returned,” she said.

Linc stepped into her room, and suddenly the crowd of people that had gathered around him as he had marched down the corridor seemed to disappear. There was no one in his sight except Magda.

“Jerlet sent me back.”

But Magda didn’t move toward him, didn’t smile. Her gaze shifted to the people crowding the doorway behind Linc.

“Leave us,” she commanded. “I must talk with Linc alone.”

They murmured and shuffled back away from the door. Linc shut it firmly. Then he turned back to Magda.

“I knew you would return,” she said, her voice so low that he could barely hear her. “Every night, every meditation, I knew you were alive and would return.”

“You don’t seem too happy about it,” Linc said.

Instead of responding to that, Magda said, “I must know everything about your journey. Every detail. You really saw Jerlet? He spoke to you?”

Linc sat down cross-legged on the warm carpeted floor and leaned his back against the bunk. Magda sat next to him, and he began to tell her about his time with Jerlet.

He knew this room, had known it all his life, since long before Jerlet had gone away from them and the kids decided to turn to Magda for the wisdom and future-seeing abilities that had made her priestess. But the room seemed different now. Magda was different. Everything looked the same: the carpeting, the drawing on the walls that Peta had done, the glowing zodiac signs traced across the ceiling. But it all felt different. Strange.