Clifford Simak - Spacebred Generations

The wonder and the horror was gone from Joe's face now. It had gotten bleak. It was a judge's face. It towered above him and there was no mercy in it —not even any pity. "Joe!"

Joe turned around, swiftly, leaping for the door.

"Joe! Wait a minute, Joe!" But he was gone. The sound of his feet came back, the sound of them running down the corridor, heading for the escalator that would take him to the living levels.

Running back and going down to cry up the pack. To send them tonguing through the entire ship hunting down Jon Hoff. And when they caught Jon Hoff…

When they caught Jon Hoff that would be the End for always. That would make the End the kind of unknown End that was spoken of in the chapel. For there would be no other—there would never be another who would know the Meaning and the Purpose and the Destination.

And because of that, thousands of men and women would have died in vain. The sweat and genius and longing of the people who had launched the ship would have been for nothing.

It would be a terrible waste. And wasting was a crime.

You must not waste. You must not throw away.

And that meant human lives and dreams as well as food and water.

JON'S hand reached out and grasped the gun and his fingers tightened on it as the rage grew in him, the rage of desperation, the last-hope rage, the momentary, almost blinded madness of a man who sees the rug of life being deliberately jerked from beneath his feet.

Although it was not his life alone, but the lives of all the others—Mary's life, and Herb's and Louise's and Joshua's as well.

He was running at full tilt when he went out the door and he skidded as he made the sharp right-angle turn into the corridor. He flung himself in the direction of the escalator and in the darkness felt the treads beneath his feet, and he breathed a thankfulness for the many times he had gone from the living quarters to the center of the ship, feeling his way in darkness. For now he was at home in the darkness and that was an advantage he had that Joe did not possess.

He hurled himself down the stairs, skidded and raced along the corridor, found the second flight—and ahead of him he heard the running, stumbling footsteps of the man who fled ahead of him.

In the next corridor, he knew, there was a single lamp, burning dimly at the end of the corridor. If he could reach the corridor in time ...

He went down the treads, one hand on the rail to keep himself from falling, scarcely touching the treads, sliding down rather than running.

He hit the floor in a crouch, bent low, and there, outlined against the dimly burning lamp, was a running figure. He lifted the gun and pressed the button and the gun leaped in his hands and the corridor suddenly was filled with flame.

The light blinded him for a second and he remained crouching there and the thought ran through him: I've killed Joe, my friend. Except it wasn't Joe.

It wasn't the boy he'd grown up with. It wasn't the man who had sat across the chess board from him. It was not Joe, his friend.

It was someone else—a man with a judge's face, a man who had run to cry up the pack, a man who would have condemned them all to the End that was unknown.

He felt somehow that he was right, but nevertheless he trembled.

His sight came back and there was a huddled blackness on the floor.

And now his hand was shaking and he crouched there, without moving, and felt the sickness heaving at his stomach and the weakness crawl along his body.

You must not waste.

You must not throw away.

Those were spoken laws. But there were other laws that never had been spoken because there had been no need to speak them. They had not spoken you must not steal another's wife, they had not spoken you must not hear false witness, they had not spoken you must not kill—for those were crimes that had been wiped out long before the star-ship had leaped away from Earth.

Those were the laws of decency and good taste. And he had broken one of them.

He had killed a fellow man.

He had killed his friend.

Except, he told himself, he was not my friend. He was an enemy—the enemy of all of us.

Jon Hoff stood erect and stopped his body's shaking. He thrust the gun into his belt and walked woodenly down the corridor toward the huddle on the floor.

The darkness made it a little easier, for he could not see what lay there so well as if it had been light. The face lay against the floor and he could not see the face. It would have been harder had the face stared up at him.

He stood there considering.

In just a little while the Folk would miss Joe and would start to hunt for him. And they must not find him. They must never know. The idea of killing long since had been wiped away; there could be no suggestion of it. For if one man killed, no matter how or why, then there might be others who would kill as well. If one man sinned, his sinning must be hidden, for from one sinning might come other sinning and when they reached the new world, when (and if) they reached the target planet, they would need all the inner strength, all the fellowship and fellow-security they could muster up.

He could not hide the body, for there was no hiding place but could be found.

He could not feed it to the converter because he could not reach the converter. To reach it he'd have to go through the hydroponic gardens.

But no, of course, he wouldn't.

There was another way to reach the converter—through the engine room.

He patted his pocket and the keys were there.

He bent and grasped Joe and recoiled at the touch of the flesh, still warm. He shrank back against the metal wall and stood there and his stomach churned and the guilt of what he'd done hammered in his head.

He thought of his father talking to him—the granite-faced old man—and he thought of the man, far back, who had written the Letter, and he thought of all the others who had passed it on, committing heresy for the sake of truth, for the sake of knowledge and salvation.

There had been too much ventured, too much dared and braved, too many lonely nights of wondering if what one did was right, to lose it now because of squeamishness or guilt.

He walked out from the wall and grasped the body and slung it on his shoulder.

It dangled.

It gurgled.

Something wet and warm trickled down his back. He gritted his teeth to keep them from chattering. And he staggered along beneath his burden, climbing the long-stilled escalators, clopping along the corridors, heading for the engine room.

At last he reached the door and laid the burden down to fumble for the keys.

He found them and selected the right one and turned it in the door, and when he pushed against the door the door swung slowly open. A gust of warm air came out and slapped him in the face. Lights glowed brightly and there was a humming song of power and the whine of spinning metal.

He reached down and lifted Joe again and went in and closed the door. He stood staring down the long paths that ran between the great machines.

There was one machine that spun, and he recognized it—a gyroscope, a stabilizer hanging in its gymbals, humming to itself.

How long, he wondered, how long would it take a man to understand all there was to know about all these massive, intricate machines? How far, he wondered, have we fallen from the knowledge of a thousand years ago?

And the thing he carried dangled on his shoulder and he heard the slow, deliberate dripping of the warm, sticky liquid splashing on the floor.