Ben Bova: End of Exile

Linc sat at Magda’s feet, close enough to the desk to reach out and touch it. Which no one in his right mind would dare to do. The desk was sacred to the priestess, and not to be touched by ordinary hands.

He looked up at Madga’s face, framed by the huge silver-gray wall screen behind her. When she was serving in her office as priestess and meditating, as she was now, Magda seemed to be unable to see anyone, so fiercely did she concentrate on her duty.

Still she was beautiful. Her eyes were darker than the eternal night outside the Wheel. Her face as finely cast as the most delicate tracings of the golden zodiac signs. Yet there was strength and authority in those high-arched cheekbones and firm jawline. And wisdom came from her lips.

She stirred and opened her eyes. The crowd sighed and shifted uneasily. Her meditation was ended.

Magda’s deep black eyes focused on the people. She swept her gaze across the room and smiled.

“I’m ready,” she said simply.

Monel started to push his wheeled chair forward, but Linc was faster and got to his feet. Peta, sitting flanked by two of Monel’s guards, didn’t move at all. He seemed petrified, too terrified even to tremble.

“We have a problem,” Linc said in the time-honored words of custom. “Peta messed up his work at the farm tanks and one of the main pumps is broken because of his carelessness—”

A gasp went through the crowd. Most of them already knew about the pump’s breakdown, but still the thought of losing half their food shocked them.

Magda glanced at Peta but said nothing.

“And then when Monel and his guards threatened him,” Linc went on, “Peta hit one of the guards and ran away.”

The crowd sighed again, louder this time. Whispers buzzed through them.

The priestess’s face went cold. “Is this true, Monel?” she asked.

Monel wheeled his chair up to where Linc was standing and motioned his bruised guard to step forward. “The evidence is clear to see,” he said. The guard turned slowly so that the whole crowd could gape at his bruised face.

“Peta was frightened,” Linc said. “Monel told him they were taking him to the deadlock.”

“A lie!” Monel snapped. “Peta was running away and we tried to stop him.”

Linc shook his head. “Peta has decided to give himself up to your justice, Magda. Monel and his guards came on us in the tube-tunnel just as he agreed to return to you and ask for mercy.”

Magda tapped her wand against her knee for a moment. “What do you have to do with all this, Linc? Were you there when it happened?”

“No. I was off duty.” No sense telling everybody about the Ghost Place. Or how close the yellow star’s getting. It would only scare them. “Peta and I met by accident in a tube-tunnel.” Monel edged his chair slightly in front of Linc. “Peta is a lazy clod. And stupid. His laziness and stupidity ruined half the farm tanks. Ask Slav if it’s not so!”

“Are they really ruined?” Magda asked. “Yes,” came Slav’s heavy voice from the rear of the crowd. She looked down at Peta. “All that food—ruined. How can we live without food?”

Before the frightened youth could answer, Linc said, “I brought Peta to you for justice. And mercy.”

She almost smiled at Linc. For an instant their eyes were locked together as if no one else was in the room with them. Linc could feel his own lips part in a slight grin.

“But worst of all,” Monel shouted, “is that Peta is violent! He attacked my guard. He could attack anyone, at any time. Any one of you!” He waved his arm at the crowd.

They muttered and stared at Peta. He hung his head so low that no one could see his face. The guards alongside him tensed and watched Monel, not Magda.

“We all know the punishment for violence,” Monel went on, still speaking to the crowd rather than the priestess. “Violence is the one crime we cannot tolerate.”

“Cast him into outer darkness!” someone shouted. “Cast him out!” one of the guards echoed.

“Yes… yes—” The crowd picked up the vibration.

Monel turned back toward Magda, his thin face flushed with success, his crooked smile triumphant.

Magda raised her arms for silence, and the crowd settled down to a dull murmur. She waited a moment longer, staring at the people, and they became absolutely still. Peta sat unmoving, his head sunk low.

“Peta,” she said softly. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

He raised his face high enough to look at her. With a miserable shrug he let his head droop again.

“Peta,” Magda said, but now it was a voice of command, “get to your feet.”

He slowly stood up.

“Is it your fault that the pump is dead?” she asked.

He nodded dumbly.

“Did you strike the guard?”

“He…they said—”

“Did you strike him?”

Peta’s voice broke. He nodded.

Monel rubbed the wheels of his chair. “He admits it.”

“He came here for justice and mercy,” Linc said.

“The punishment for violence is to be cast into the outer darkness!” Monel raged. He turned back to the crowd again. “Everybody knows that. Right?”

Before they could respond, Magda raised her slim arms.

“The punishment for violence,” she said in a steel-cold voice, “will be decided by the priestess, and no one else.”

“Give me a chance to look at the broken pump,” Linc said. “Maybe I can fix it.”

“Fix it?” Monel almost laughed. “You mean—make it work again, so that the crops won’t die?”

“Yes,” Linc said.

“Madness! You know it’s against Jerlet’s law to touch such a machine. And even if you could, how would you fix it? It’s not like a cut finger that can be healed—”

“Or a bruised face that will be normal in a little while?”

Monel’s face darkened. “That’s something else again. But the farm pump is a machine. Once it’s dead, it’s dead. It can’t be healed, or fixed.”

Turning to Magda, Linc said, “Let me try to fix the pump. Maybe we can save the crops. I’ve fixed other things before… wires, some of the electrical machines. Maybe—”

But Magda shook her head. “It’s forbidden to touch that kind of machine. You know Jerlet’s laws.”

“But…”

“It is forbidden.”

And she closed her eyes for meditation. Everyone in the crowd did the same. Linc sat down on the floor and shut his eyes.

He tried to squeeze out all thoughts and let his mind float free. But he kept seeing the frozen ghosts at the Ghost Place. He shuddered. The cold is getting worse; it’s coming into the living section. Even some of the crops in the farm tanks are dying of the cold. Then he remembered the yellow star approaching. Strange that we’ll all die in fire. If only we could use that star to warm us and drive away the cold…

But such thoughts were not helping him to meditate. Linc tried to get his mind free. The world is only a temporary illusion, he chanted to himself. The world is --

“I have decided,” Magda announced.

Everyone looked up at her.

She pointed the wand at Peta. “No one has committed the sin of violence among us since Jerlet left us, back when we were all children. We must ask Jerlet for judgment, because the punishment for violence is too heavy even for the priestess to bear alone.”

Peta’s thin chest was rising and falling in rapid, choking gasps. Magda touched the colored buttons on the desk top where she sat. The big wall screen behind her glowed to a silvery-shimmery gray.

Jerlet’s face filled the screen, huge, dominating the whole assembly, bigger than Linc’s own height, mighty and powerful.

He was old, far older than anyone in the Living Wheel. His face was strong and square, with deep creases around the eyes and mouth. His hair was long and thick, streaked with gray as it curled over his ears and down to his shoulders. His voice was a thundering command, saying the words of the law just as he always said them: