Ben Bova - End of Exile

No one was in the corridor. That meant they were all in the library, at the meeting. Linc passed his own empty room, and a sudden idea came to him.

He ducked inside and looked at the tiny screen set into the wall above his bunk. Since he had been a child, it had been untouched. Was it workable?

He pulled his gloves off and touched the red ON button. The screen glowed to life. He tried several different buttons and got nothing but views of other empty rooms. Finally, just as he was about to give up, the screen showed the library, crowded with all the people.

“He still hasn’t shown up,” Monel was saying. He was sitting beside Magda, who held her rightful place on the central pedestal. “He’s scared of the truth, scared to face us all with his wild stories.”

The crowd was muttering, a dozen different conversations going on at once.

“How long are we going to wait for him?” Monel demanded of Magda.

She looked down at him from her perch and said, “It’s not like Linc to run away.”

If Monel felt any guilt at her remark, he didn’t show it. He merely insisted, “Linc demanded that we ask Jerlet’s guidance. I say we should call on Jerlet now, and see what he has to say. Either that, or call an end to this meeting. Linc isn’t going to show up. He’s afraid of Jerlet’s truth.”

Smiling in the glow of his viewscreen. Linc punched the buttons that activated the computer tapes he had programmed earlier. All the screens in the Living Wheel, including the huge wall screen in the meeting room, suddenly blazed into life.

A view of old Earth, brilliant blue and dazzling white, swimming against the blackness of space.

Jerlet’s rough, unmistakable voice rumbled, “That’s Earth, the world where we all came from originally…”

The view abruptly changed to show an ancient city on old Earth. And Jerlet said, “I’m not sure which city this is, but it doesn’t make much difference. They all got to be pretty much the same--” The crowds and noise were overwhelming. The sky was dark and somehow dirty-looking. Millions of people and vehicles snarled at each other along the city’s passageways.

Then the scene shifted to show mountains, rivers, oceans of pounding surf. And Jerlet’s voice continued:

“This is the world of our origin, where our ancestors came from, where this ship came from. It was a good world, long ago. But it turned rotten. Our ancestors fled in this ship… seems they were driven away by evil people, although they were glad enough to leave Earth; it had gone sour. They came out to the stars to find a new world where they could live in happiness and peace.”

The scene changed abruptly once again, showing a telescopic view of Beryl.

“This is the new world,” Jerlet said. “We can reach it, if we’re lucky. But there’s a lot of work ahead of us if we’re going to make it there safely—”

Linc left his helmet and gloves on the bunk and strode out toward the meeting room.

For a moment, Linc felt silly as he approached the library, clumping along the corridor in the bright-blue pressure suit. He hadn’t even bothered to take off the backpack. Only his gloves and helmet were missing.

But then he thought, I’ll need every bit of impact lean get. If the suit impresses them, so much the better.

He checked to see if the hand-welder’s power Linc was connected to the suit’s electrical system. It was.

If Monel tries to send his guards at me, I’ll burn the wheels off his chair.

He paused at the double doors of the library. Peering through the discolored windows he could see that everyone in the room— including Magda—was sitting with their eyes riveted to the big wall screen. Quietly, Linc pushed one of the doors open and slipped inside.

The screen was showing engineering drawings of the ship. Specific areas were outlined with pulsing yellow circles, as Jerlet’s voice commanded:

“The key to the whole damned thing is the bridge. That’s where the astrogation computer and all the necessary instruments are. Can’t start making course corrections until you know exactly where you are in relation to Baryta and Beryl. And I mean exactly. Laser wavelength accuracies, son.”

Linc smiled to himself. In his mind’s eye he could see the old man’s shambling figure, bloated and almost grotesque, and the intense glitter in his eyes as he tried to get his points across to Linc. Hard to think of him as dead. Linc said to himself. But it was still harder to understand how he could be frozen, like the ghosts on the bridge, and yet someday be brought back to life.

“The rocket engines ought to be all right; we checked them and repaired them back when you pups were being hatched,” Jerlet’s voice rumbled on. The screen showed red arrows where the thrusters were located. “You’ll have to make sure all the connections are still in place, so when the computer orders a burn the thrusters get the info. That’ll mean some outside work—”

The pictures went on, with Jerlet’s unmistakable voice explaining them, until they ended with another view of Beryl.

“That’s the new world, Linc,” the old man rasped. “Your world. Yours and the rest of the kids’. It’s up to you, son. You’ve got to get them there safely. It’s all up to you.”

The wall screen went blank.

No one in the room moved. They all kept staring at the screen,’ open-mouthed with awe.

“I intend to follow Jerlet’s command,” Linc said as loudly and strongly as he could.

They whipped around to see him. Magda’s hands flew to her face. A girl screamed. Monel sagged in his chair.

Slowly, deliberately, Linc walked through the shocked people sitting on the floor, up to the pedestal where Magda reigned.

He turned to face the people. “I’m not dead, as you can see. And I’m not afraid to face you. I’ve been with Jerlet, and he sent me back here to help us get to the new world.”

Jayna was sitting up front, her face glowing. No one spoke; the crowd hardly breathed.

Linc went on, “You all saw the pictures on the screen. There’s a new world waiting for us. A world that’s open and free. A world where we won’t have to worry about warmth or food or anything else.”

“Is it… is it really true?” someone in the crowd asked.

“Can it be really true?”

“It’s real,” Linc said. “I’ve seen it myself. The new world really exists. Its name is Beryl. Jerlet named it.”

“And we’re going there?”

“We can get there—but only if we fix the machines.”

“That’s forbidden!” Monel snapped.

A few people muttered agreement with him.

“Not anymore,” Linc said. “Jerlet forbade us from touching machinery while we were children, and too young to understand what we were doing. Now he wants us to fix the machines and save ourselves from death.”

Monel pushed his chair up toward Linc. “How do we know that was really Jerlet speaking to us? We didn’t see his face. And you said Jerlet is dead!”

A shocked murmur went through the crowd.

“He is dead, but he will come back to life someday. He left those words and pictures for us, to teach us, to show us what we’ve got to do.”

“Why didn’t he speak to us directly?” someone asked.

Monel added, “And all this talk about fixing the machines in the bridge. That’s the Ghost Place! How can Jerlet expect anyone to go there? It’s a place of death.”

“I was there a little while ago, and I’m not dead.”

They actually drew back away from him. Monet’s chair seemed to roll backward a few centimeters all by itself. The crowd sucked in its breath in a collective gasp of surprise and fear.

“I’m telling you,” Linc shouted to them, “that all this fear of the machines is stupid! Do you know what Jerlet thought of us? He called us superstitious idiots! He was ashamed of us!”