Ben Bova - End of Exile

To Regina, with love and hope for a better tomorrow.

The glass was cold.

Linc rubbed at it with the heel of his hand and felt the coldness of death sucking at his skin. His whole body trembled. It was chill here in the darkness outside the Ghost Place, but it wasn’t the cold that made him shake.

Still he had to decide. Peta’s life hung in the balance. And before he could decide, Linc had to know.

Wiping his freezing hand against the thin leg of his ragged coverall, Linc peered through the misty glass into the Ghost Place.

They were there, just as they’d always been.

More of them than Linc could count. More than the fingers of both hands. Ghosts.

They looked almost like real men and women. But of course no one that old still lived in the Wheel. The adults were all dead—all except Jerlet, who lived far up above the Wheel.

The ghosts were frozen in place, just as they had always been. Most of them were seated at the strange machines that stretched along one long wall of the place. Some of them were on the floor; one was kneeling with its back against the other wall, eyes closed as if in meditation. Most of them had their backs to Linc, but the few faces he could see were twisted in agony and terror. He shuddered as he thought of the first time he had seen them, when he had been barely big enough to scramble atop an old dead servomech’s shoulder and peek through the mist-shrouded window at the horrifying sight beyond.

It doesn’t scare me now, Linc told himself.

But still he could feel cold sweat trickling down his thin ribs; the smell of fear was real and pungent.

The ghosts stayed at their posts, staring blankly at the long curving wall full of strange machines. The strange buttons and lights; the wall screens above them were just as blank as’ the ghosts’ eyes—most of them. Linc’s heart leaped inside him as he saw a few of the screens still flickering, showing strange shadowy pictures that changed constantly.

Some of the machines still work! he realized.

The ghosts had been people once. Real people, just like Magda or Jerlet or any of the others. But they never moved, never breathed, never relaxed from their agonized frozen stares at the dead and dying machines.

They were real people once. And someday… someday I’ll become a ghost. Like them. Frozen. Dead.

But some of the ancient machines were still working; some of the wall screens still lived. Does that mean that the machines are meant to keep on working? Does it mean that I should try to fix the machine that Peta broke?

His whole body was shaking badly now. It was cold here in the darkness. Linc had to get back to the living section, where there was light and warmth and people. Living people. Maybe it was true that the ghosts walked through the Wheel’s passageways when everyone was asleep. Maybe all the frightening stories that Magda told were true.

It was a long and painful trek back to the living area. Many passageways were blocked off, sealed by heavy metal hatches. Other long sections were too dangerous for a lone traveler. Rats prowled there hungrily.

Linc had to take a tube-tunnel up to the next level, where he felt so much lighter that he could almost glide like one of the bright-colored birds down in the farming section of the Living Wheel. He stretched his legs and covered more paces in one leap than he had fingers on a hand.

Here in the second level it was fun. The corridors were empty and dark. The doors along them closed tight. There were strange markings on each door; Linc couldn’t understand them, but Jerlet had promised long ago to someday show him what they meant.

He was alone and free here, soaring down the corridor, letting his muscles lift his suddenly lightened body for long jumps down the shadowy passageway. He forgot the ghosts, forgot Peta’s trouble, forgot even Jerlet and Magda. There was nothing in his mind except the thrill of almost-flying, and the words of an ancient song. His voice had deepened not long ago, and no longer cracked and squeaked when he tried to sing. He was happily impressed with it as he heard it echoing off the bare corridor walls:

“Weeruffa seethu wizzer Swunnerfool wizzeruv oz—”

Then he sailed past a big observation window and skidded to a stop, nearly falling as he braked his momentum, and turned to look through the broad expanse of plastiglass.

The stars were circling slowly outside, quiet and solemn and unblinking. So many stars! More stars than there were people down in the Living Wheel. More than the birds and insects and pigs and all the other animals down in the farms. More even than the rats. So many.

Was he right about Jerlet’s teachings? It seemed to Linc that some of Jerlet’s words meant that the Living Wheel—and all the other wheels up at the higher levels—were actually part of a huge machine that was whirling around and carrying them from one star to another. Linc shook his head. Jerlet’s words were hard to figure out; and besides, that was Magda’s job, not his.

Then the yellow star swung into view. It was brighter than all the rest, so bright that it hurt Linc’s eyes to look at it. He squinted and turned his face away, but still saw the brilliant spot of yellow before his eyes, wherever he looked.

After a few moments it faded away. And Linc’s blood froze in his veins.

For he saw stretched across the scuffed, worn floor plates of the passageway a vague dark shadow stretching out, reaching up the far wall across the passageway from the window.

His own shadow, Linc realized quickly. But that brought no relief from fear. For the light casting the shadow came from the yellow star.

It really is getting closer to us, Linc told himself. The old legends are true!

Keeping his back to the window and the yellow star, staring at his slowly shifting shadow, Linc felt panic clutching at him.

The yellow star is coming to get us. It’s going to make ghosts of us all!

Linc had no idea how long he stayed, nearly paralyzed with fear, at the observation window. His shadow crept across the floor and up the far wall of the passageway, faded into darkness, then reappeared again. And again, And again.

Finally he pulled himself away, muttering, “If I tell the others about this, they’ll go crazy. But Magda… I’ve got to tell Magda.”

His voice sounded odd, even to himself. Shaky, high, and unsure. “I wish Jerlet was still with us.”

He stalked down the passageway purposefully, no more playful lightweighted leaps. Into the next open hatch he ducked, then stopped at the platform that opened onto the longspiraling metal stairs of the tube-tunnel. Jerlet was upward, in the far domain where legends said there was no weight at all and everything floated in midair. Downward were the others, his own people, in the Living Wheel, where there was warmth and food and life.

And fear.

“Jerlet. I’ve got to find Jerlet,” Linc told himself sternly, even though he had no idea of how far the journey would be, or how difficult.

Linc placed his slippered foot on the first cold metal step leading upward. But he heard a scuffling sound—faint as a breath, but enough to make him freeze in his steps.

Again. A faint rustling sound in the darkness. Something soft padding on the metal steps in the shadows below.

Rats? Linc wondered.

There hadn’t been any rats in this tube-tunnel for a long time. although it had taken the death of four of Linc’s friends to clear the tunnel of them. The little monsters fought fiercely when they couldn’t run or hide.