The Exiles Trilogy Page 17

  “But this star-roving we’re talking about will take decades! Perhaps a century or even more! Why, none of us are even sure that a truly Earth-like planet exists out among the stars.”

  Kaufman shook his head, making a lock of his gray mane tumble over his forehead. “No, this star-roving idea is too risky, even on purely technical grounds. We just don’t know how to build a starship. And even if the best engineers on Earth were assigned by the government to help us, we wouldn’t be able to keep the ship in working order, once we left Earth. We wouldn’t be able to repair it and maintain it. How many engineers are there among us? A handful. We’re research scientists, not grease monkeys!”

  Lou was listening with only half his mind. The other half was remorselessly reminding him: Life is ruled by the laws of thermodynamics, just as all physical processes are. You can’t get anything without paying the price. Not anything. If you want the stars, you must leave Bonnie behind. If you want Bonnie, the price is perpetual imprisonment.

  What’s the difference? he asked himself. Would it be so different, pushing this beryllium nuthouse toward the stars? We’re alt going to spend our lives inside this shell, wherever it’s going.

  He answered himself, Don’t try to cop out. Heading for the stars gives everybody an aim, a purpose. Staying here is riding an orbital merry-go-round for the rest of your life, without hope, without anything but that big blue world hanging in front of your eyes, reminding you every minute of what’s been taken away.

  “And remember,” Kaufman was saying, “that as long as we stay in orbit here, there’s always the chance that the government will have a change of heart, that we’ll be freed. Once we break away, once we start out for the stars, there can be no turning back. It’s an irrevocable step. None of us will live to see us reach our destination. Our children will age and die aboard this vehicle. Perhaps our grandchildren may find a world they can live on. Perhaps. That’s a very thin hope on which to hang the lives of every man, woman, and child among us.”

  Kaufman stopped talking and leaned back, making the chair creak again. He turned expectantly toward Lou.

  Suddenly Lou’s mouth felt dry and sticky, his palms moist with perspiration. The cameras were on him now, it was his turn to speak. Should he try to convince them, or should he toss the whole idea away?

  He looked past Kaufman’s handsome features to the big electronic board that had been jury-rigged along the far wall of the studio. There was a light for every person aboard the satellite aged fifteen or older. When Lou finished speaking, they would all vote. A green light would show for each yes vote; a red one for each vote against the starship idea.

  “You can’t miss,” Kori had told him before the Tri-V broadcast had started. “Most of the no votes will come from the older people, the over-thirties. But we outnumber them. I just checked the population figures.”

  Greg had added, “We fought like kamikazes to get them to drop the age limit down to fifteen. After all, those kids are going to spend more of their lives in this pickle jar than any of us will.”

  “All you need to do,” Kori had said, gripping Lou’s arm earnestly, “is to make a strong speech. Put it on the line for everybody. The kids will vote for going to the stars. I know they will!”

  Now Lou sat there looking into the cold eyes of the cameras, but seeing Bonnie’s face, hearing her voice, watching her tears.

  He heard himself clear his throat. He shifted uneasily in the chair. Then he said:

  “Dr. Kaufman has pointed out some of the technical risks in trying to reach the stars. He’s perfectly right. It is dangerous. Nobody’s done it before. I don’t know—nobody knows—if we caq make the engines and air pumps and water recyclers work for a century or more without fail.”

  Lou hesitated a moment. “Dr. Kaufman also told you that if we stay here in orbit around Earth, there’s always the chance that we might win a reprieve. We might regain our freedom and be allowed to return to Earth and take up normal lives again. That’s also true. It could happen.”

  Again he stopped, but only for the span of a heartbeat. Only long enough to call silently, agonizingly, Bonnie… Bonnie…

  Then, “When I first came aboard this satellite, Dr. Kaufman asked me to go on Tri-V and tell you something about what had

  happened to me. I’m going to do that now.”

  And he told them. He told them about the Federal marshal and his ride to New York. Told them about the man’s unhappiness at missing his family picnic. Told them of his night in New York, the gangs, the knives, the running, the terror. Told them how the Institute looked, emptied of everyone but Big George. Of his arrest, his arrival in Messina, his audience with Minister Bernard. Told them of the island, of Marcus, of what they planned to do, how they wanted to use genetic engineering and the offshoots of their biochemistry as weapons alongside an arsenal of nuclear bombs. Told them of what they did to Big George, and what they wanted to do to all mankind.

  And finally he told them of the gently implacable General Chairman, of how he admitted that their exile was a horrible injustice, but could see no other course of action. And the people, the great masses of people, the twenty billions of people for whom they were being sacrificed, the people who knew of their exile but didn’t care.

  “This is the world we’ve been exiled from. A world where a few people can destroy the lives of the best scientists on the planet, along with the lives of their families. A world where savages rule the cities and civilized monsters battle to control the government.”

  He turned toward Kaufman. “This is the world you want to go back to! So let’s assume that we’re allowed to go back; let’s assume that the government changes its mind and frees us. What will they do with our work? Can we trust them to use our knowledge? Can we trust them in any way? What’s to stop them from exiling us again? Or quietly having us killed? Nobody cares about us. All they want is the power that our knowledge can give them. The kindest thing they were able to to was to exile us!”

  Looking directly into the cameras, Lou said, “We have no one to turn to but ourselves. The choice is ours. We can orbit this planet, slowly dying, and hope that someday the government will allow us to return. But do we really want to return? I don’t. I’ve seen that world down there, and despite all its beauty I don’t want to return to it. In this universe, with all its stars and space, there’s got to be some place where we can make a better world for ourselves and our children. I say we should go to the stars.”

  Lou collapsed back in the chair, feeling weak and trembling inside. Then the lights caught his eye. The vote shocked him: the green lights overwhelmed the few red ones.

  Somewhere behind the cameras, people were laughing and clapping their hands. Somebody whistled shrilly. A door opened and Lou saw Kori and Greg heading toward him, grinning.

  Lou knew that Bonnie was in her compartment. Packed and ready to leave. She was probably past tears now. Crying wouldn’t help anymore. The pain won’t be eased by tears, or words, or regrets.

  “You’re making a terrible mistake,” Kaufman said, shaking his head. “Everything we need and desire is here, and you’re going to force us to turn our backs on it all. You’re making us leave our homes and head out into emptiness. There’s nothing out there for us, Christopher. Nothing!”

  Nothing, Lou thought. Except the universe.

  FLIGHT OF EXILED

  ~~~

  To the Pratt family, with thanks for fine times.

  ~~~

  (1)

  “Fire… it’s on fire !”

  “EMERGENCY, EMERGENCY, EMERGENCY.”

  “Attention everyone. Emergency in cryonics area six. Damage Control and Life Support groups to cryonics area six immediately. Emergency.”

  “The whole area’s a mass of flames! The standby equipment is out! Get more men up here, quick!”

  The starship had no name. The people aboard merely called it “the ship.” It had originally been a huge artificial satellite orbiting around Earth, a min
or city in space, hugging close to the Mother World. Then it was made into a prison for thousands of the world’s best scientists and their families. Now it was a starship, coasting silently from the solar system toward the triple star system, Alpha Centauri.

  Inside the main control center, things were anything but quiet.

  “There are fifty men and women in cryosleepers in number six area. If you can’t get that fire under control they’ll die.”

  Larry Belsen was standing up on the ship’s bridge. It was actually a long curving row of desk consoles, where seated technicians worked the controls that watched and directed every section of the mammoth ship. Larry’s job was as close to a ship’s captain as any job on the ship; he was in charge of this Command and Control center, he had a finger on every pulsebeat in the ship.

  The technicians were hunched over the keyboards, fingers flying over the buttons that electronically linked all of the great ship’s machinery and people. In frontof each of their desks were viewscreens that showed them pictures, graphs, charts, every kind of information from each compartment and piece of equipment aboard engines, computers, life support, living quarters, work areas, cryonics units, power systems, all on view in the hundreds of screens.

  Normally, Larry thought of the curving ring of screens as the eye of a giant electronic insect, multifaceted to see into all the areas of the ship He had studied about Earth’s insects briefly in a biology course, on the learning tapes But now his attention was riveted to one particular screen, where the fire was raging in cryonics area six There wasn’t much he could see smoke obscured almost everything.

  He put a hand on the shoulder of the girl working that console.

  “Can’t you get the emergency equipment functioning?”

  She was a thin, dark-skinned girl, with close-cropped hair Glancing up at Larry, “It should’ve gone on automatically But it won’t respond at all I’ve tried . ” Her eyes were wide with fear, anxiety

  “It’s not your fault,” Larry said calmly “Don’t blame yourself “

  “But there are fifty sleepers in there!”

  Larry shook his head Without bothering to go across to the life support displays, he said, “They must be dead by now, Tania No sense tearing yourself up over it”

  He took a step to the guy sitting at the next desk console “You in touch with the Damage Control group?”

  “Yes they’ve plugged into a wall phone out in the main corridor, just outside area six “

  “Who’s in charge?”

  “It’s Mort Campbell’s unit, but he’s not the one on the phone “

  “Let me talk “

  “Is it cryonics six?”

  Larry turned to see Dan Christopher at the door down at the far end of the bridge For an instant, everything seemed to stand still people frozen at the console desks, communications speakers quiet, viewscreens stilled.

  The two of them looked almost like brothers, at first glance Larry was tall and slim with dark hair that he kept clipped fairly

  short. His eyes, though, were a cold gray, like a granite rock floating in space far from the warmth of a star. Dan was the same height and also youthfully slim. His hair was a lighter shade, and almost shoulder length, it curled slightly, his eyes were fiercely black, deep and flashing. Both of them were wearing workshift coveralls, Larry’s the blue-gray shade of the ship’s Command and Control personnel, Dan’s the howling orange of the Propulsion and Power section.

  “Is it six?” Dan demanded, his voice rising.

  Larry didn’t answer, he merely nodded slowly.

  “My father’s in there!”

  By now Larry had crossed the plastic tiled floor of the bridge and was within arm’s reach of Dan He took him by the arm.

  “So is mine! There’s nothing you can do, Dan The Damage Control group’s already there, but ...”

  “My father!”

  Dan pulled loose and yanked the door open Larry stood there and watched him disappear down the corridor running, until the door automatically slid shut again.

  With a sad shake of his head, Larry went back to the control desks and viewscreens.

  “You still in contact with the Damage Control party?”

  The fellow nodded and pointed to the main screen over his desk, in the center of a group of seven screens .A scared-looking teenager was in view. He was looking somewhere off camera, coughing in the smoke that was drifting past him.

  “What’s going on up there?” Larry asked sharply

  The kid in the screen seemed to jerk with surprise. Then turning full face toward the screen, he said “Mr Campbell and the crew are in there I saw flames coming through the main hatch a few minutes ago, but there’s only smoke now “

  “Is anybody hurt?”

  “I don’t know They’re all inside there nobody’s come out”

  “Did they have smoke masks?”

  “Yeah “

  “Where’s yours?” Larry asked

  The kid looked startled again “I uh yeah, it’s right here I got it.

  More gently, Larry said, “Don’t you think it might be a good idea to put it on? It can’t protect you while it’s zipped to your belt.”

  Larry found that he was bending over the shoulder of the seated technician. He straightened up and glanced at the life support screens on the next console. They were blank, dead.

  Fifty people in there. Dan’s father… and my own.

  “Larry… look.”

  He turned his attention back to the viewscreen. The Damage Control group was trudging wearily back into the corridor. Their faces’ were smudged, their coveralls blackened. The foamers and other fire-fighting equipment they dragged seemed to weigh tons.

  There was hardly any smoke coming from the hatch now. The last man to step out into the corridor slowly undipped his smoke mask. Larry recognized him as Mort Campbell stocky, slow-moving but always sure of himself, one of the oldest men working on this shift—nearly thirty.

  Then Dan Christopher came dashing into view. He pushed wordlessly past the first few men of the Damage Control group, his eyes wild, his mouth open in silent frenzy.

  Campbell stopped him at the hatch. Dan tried to dodge around him, but Campbell grabbed Dan by his slim shoulders and held him firmly.

  “Don’t go in there. It’s not pretty.”

  “My father…”

  “They’re all dead.”

  Watching them in the viewscreen, Larry felt his insides sink. You knew he was dead, he told himself. But knowing it in your head and feeling it in your guts are two entirely different things.

  He knew all the technicians, all up and down the long row of consoles, were staring at him now. He stood unmoved, his face frozen into a mask of concentration, and kept his eyes on the viewscreen. Inside his head, he was telling himself overand over, You never knew him. He was frozen before you were old enough to remember him. There’s no reason for you to break up.

  Dan’s reaction was very different.

  “NO!” he screamed, and he twisted out of Campbell’s grasp and darted into the still smoky cryonics area. The older man slipped his face mask back on and went in after him.

  “The cameras inside the cryonics area aren’t working now,” the girl tech said quietly, her fingers still tapping on her keyboard, trying to coax life back into the dead machines.,

  “Never mind,” Larry said woodenly. “There’s nothing in there that we should see.”

  (2)

  Larry sat in his living quarters, in the dark. It was a single compartment, barely big enough for a bunk, a desk, and a chair. The bunk and desk were molded into the curving walls of the compartment. Drawers and sliding partitions to the closet and sanitary blended almost invisibly with the silvery metal of the walls.

  In the darkness, as he sat in the only chair and stared at nothing, there was only the residual glow of the viewscreen at the foot of the bed and the faint fluorescence of the wall painting that’Valery had done for him years ago, when he had first been ass
igned a compartment of his own.

  So you’ve lost a father you’ve never known, Larry still argued with himself. You’re not the only one. Every one of those fifty frozen people was a father or mother to somebody aboard the ship. Look at Dan; it’s hit him a lot harder.

  But as he thought about it, slowly Larry began to realize that something else was bothering him. It wasn’t the deaths. Not really. That left nothing but a cold emptiness inside him. It was something else—

  What caused the fire?

  According to the ship’s computer records, they had been crawling through the huge gulf of space for nearly fifty years. Twenty-some thousand human beings, exiles from Earth, on their way to Alpha Centauri in a giant pinwheel of a ship. Nearly fifty years. Almost there.

  But the ship was starting to die.

  The men and women who had started on this long, long voyage were exiles. They had been scientists—molecular geneticists, most of them. The world government had rounded them up and placed them in a prison, this ship, which was then only a mammoth satellite orbiting Earth. Earth was overcrowded, it needed peace and above all it needed stability. The scientists represented the forces of change, not stability. The geneticists and their colleagues offered the ability to alter the human race, to make every baby intoa superman ora slave, into a genius or a moron. On demand. Pay your money and take your choice.