Flight of Exiles

3

The ship was built on the principle of wheels within wheels. It consisted of seven ring structures, starting from a central bulbous hub. Going outward, each ring was bigger and held more room for equipment and living space. The entire ship was turning, revolving slowly, to provide an artificial gravity. The outermost wheel, level one, was at one full Earth g, and everyone felt his normal Earth weight there. Going “upward,” toward the hub, weight and gravity fell off consistently, until at the hub itself, there was effectively no gravity, weightlessness.

The thousand or so people who were awake and active had their living quarters in level one. All the levels were linked by tubes.

The infirmary was on the second level, where the spin-induced gravity was slightly less than I g. It made for an unconscious buoyant feeling, a sense of well-being and optimism, that the medics claimed helped to get patients recovered from their ailments.

The infirmary stretched over a long section of the second level. Instead of viewports looking outside, the main wall of the infirmary was made up of viewscreens that showed constantly changing pictures of Earth; old Earth, before the bursting population had torn down most of her forests, ripped open her mineral-rich lands, covered vast stretches of ground with festering cities.

Dan Christopher was sitting up in his infirmary bed, floating lightly on the liquid-filled mattress. He had drifted in and out of sleep several times this morning. When he had first been awakened for his morning check by the automated sensor system at his bedside, the scene on the wall screens outside his plastiglass-walled cubicle had shown an impossible blue sky and a vista of rugged white mountains dotted by patches of green, under a gleaming sun.

Dan knew that the sun was a star, but it didn’t look like any star he had ever seen. Now, later in the morning, the scene was a deep green forest, where the sunlight filtered down in dusty shafts and strange four-legged animals tip-toed warily through the underbrush.

Wasting electrical power to show these scenes, he told himself. Dan still felt woozy, as much from the medicines they had been filling him with as from the dreams that haunted his sleep. The medics had pumped him full of tranquilizers, he guessed. But underneath their flat calming effect he knew there was a core of terror and rage inside him.

He’s dead. The man who gave us this ship, the man who started this mission, the man who gave me life. The most important man aboard. Dead. A couple of months before we’re due to reach our destination. A couple of months before he’d be reawakened and I’d get to really know him. Now he’s dead.

Two nurses walked briskly past his cubicle, chatting together. Dan paid no attention to them. The chief medic would be here soon. Dan wanted to get out of the infirmary.

A tapping on his door snapped him fully awake. Through the plastiglass he saw Joe Haller: solid, dependable Joe. A good engineer and a good friend. Joe’s long hair and beard turned off many of the older people, but he was one of the most reliable and brightest men aboard. Next to Larry, Joe was Dan’s best and longest friend.

Dan waved him in, and Joe opened the plastiglass door and stepped into the cramped cubicle. There was no room for a chair, so he simply stood next to Dan’s bed.

“How’re you feeling?” he asked.

Dan said, “Good enough. I’ve got to get out of here today. How long have I been here?”

“This is the third day.”

Dan could feel a shock race through him. “Three days? Then the Council meeting…”

“It’s over. They picked Larry as Chairman.”

“Larry!”

Joe shrugged and evaded looking straight into Dan’s eyes. “Larry was there, you weren’t. I don’t know what went on before the meeting, what Larry did to convince them. The rumble is that Larry let them know he wanted to be Chairman, and as long as you were too sick to depend on, he ought to have the job.”

Dan sagged back in the bed.

Looking worried, Joe added “They … uh, they held services for the people who died in the fire—yesterday.”

“Yesterday.”

“Yeah.”

“My father too? They didn’t wait…”

“Everybody. One single service. Their remains went into the hydroponics tank.”

“They couldn’t wait for me?”

Joe shrugged and looked away.

Dan reached up and grabbed his wrist. “They couldn’t wait a day or two for me to be there?” he shouted. “For my own father!”

“Larry decided…”

“Larry!”

“Listen,” Joe said, his voice suddenly low and urgent. “I know you and Larry have been friends since you were kids. But he sure isn’t acting like a friend of yours right now.”

Dan let himself sink slowly back into the yielding warmth of the bed again. He could feel his heart racing. Deliberately, he took a deep, calming breath.

“I’ve got to be calm,” he said, his voice steady now. “If I get excited, the medics will trank me again. If I show them I’m calm and relaxed, then they’ll let me out.”

Joe looked at him for a moment. “What’re you going to do when you get out?”

“I don’t know,” Dan said. “Something… but I don’t know what.”

Joe left shortly afterward. Dan held himself rigidly under control, not speaking, not moving, trying to not even think. He concentrated on the sensor screens next to his bed. Keep those luminous traces as calm and steady as you can. Watch them wiggle across the screens; heartbeat, blood pressure, alpha wave, respiration, basal metabolism. Calm and steady. Calm and steady. Stare at them, let them hypnotize you. Feel your heart muscle working inside you. Slower. Slower. Calm. Steady.

He fell asleep watching the screens. And he dreamed. Dreamed of the luminous lines worming across the screens; they were ropes, they were snakes, twining around him, choking him, crushing him. But then he was watching from somewhere far off as the glowing snakes squeezed the life out of someone else. His father! Himself!

He woke screaming.

“The more I think about it, the more glad I am that we voted you Chairman,” said Dr. Loring.

Larry Belsen was sitting in the main room of the Lorings’ quarters.’ Valery sat next to him on the foldout couch. Her father was comfortably sunk in the depths of a webchair. Every time he moved, the plastic webbing creaked; Larry was afraid it would give way under his weight.

Dr. Loring was one of the twelve oldest men awake, and thus was a permanent member of the Council. He had been a child when the ship had left Earth, and had never undergone deepsleep. “I want to see it all, from beginning to end,” he often said. The Council balanced age, tradition and stability against youth, vigor and change. The twelve oldest people awake were permanent members. The remaining Council seats were filled by younger men and women, and the Chairman was always elected from the younger generation, for a one-year term.

“Yes, you’ll be a good Chairman, Lawrence, my boy,” Dr. Loring went one. “Frankly, I always had my doubts about Dan…” he glanced at his daughter, “…as far as being Chairman is concerned. Too emotional. That’s not bad in some aspects of life, of course, but as Chairman…”

Valery smiled at the old man. “Dad, you’ve told us the same thing three times now.”

“Oh? Really? Well…” He shook his head, looking slightly embarrassed. Dr. Loring was a heavy man, big-boned and round with paunch. He was nearly bald, nothing but scraggly white tufts of hair sticking out around his ears. H is eyes were big and moist and always blinking. Larry thought of him sometimes as a frog who’d been turned into a prince… fifty years ago.

Dr. Loring turned in his webchair, producing a chorus of groans from the plastic, and called to his wife: “What about dinner?”

She was standing in the kitchen alcove, thoughtfully watching the bank of dials set alongside the eye-level oven.

“I’m trying to time everything so that it’s all done together, and everything will be hot when we sit down… Valery, you can fold out the table and set places.”

As Val got up, Dr. Loring complained, “It was a lot easier when the microwave ovens were working. This business of using heat for cooking… it’s barbaric.”

Larry said, “We just can’t afford the electrical power for microwave cooking until the main generator’s back on the line.”

“Hmmph. There’s another thing about Dan. How long has that generator been out? It’s his responsibility—”

“Now don’t go blaming him,” Larry said strongly. “It’s not his fault. Nobody aboard ship knows much about the generator— Dan’s had to train himself and a special crew just to get ready to tackle the job.”

Dr. Loring mumbled, “Well it’s been a long-enough time, certainly.”

“They’ve got to be very careful,” Larry insisted. “Joe Mailer’s going through the computer core for instructions about the generator. If they goof, you know, we’ll be in real trouble.”

“Don’t get so upset, dear,” Mrs. Loring said. “Dinner’s ready at last… I think,” she added.

The meal was fine. The vegetables and fruits came from the ship’s hydroponics gardens; the synthetic meat came from the biochemists’ “ranch,” where nutrients and enzymes and other special chemicals were put together to form a constantly-growing blob that had all the nourishment of real organic protein. No one awake had ever tasted actual meat from a real animal, except in dimly remembered childhood, but the biochemists insisted that their synthetics tasted “just like steak… even better.”

Larry found that he was getting more and more nervous as the meal went on. Got to tell them about us sooner or late, he kept saying to himself. But the dinner-table conversation kept rolling along, and he couldn’t find an excuse to bring the subject around to himself and Valery.

He kept glancing at Valery, waiting for her to say something, to help him get started. But she looked more amused at his consternation than anything else.

As usual. Dr. Loring was doing most of the talking. Ordinarily, Larry could let the old man’s rambling speeches go in one ear and out the other; but tonight he was getting edgy. Damn, I wish he’d shut up for a minute!

It was Mrs. Loring who finally came to his rescue. She was the model from which Valery got her looks. Even at her age, she still looked lovely, strong, vital. Her hair was still the same sun-gold as Valery’s; her eyes sparkled the same way.

She laid a hand on her husband’s arm and said, interrupting him, “Dear, why don’t we have some wine with our dessert? Is there still some left in that bottle you made?”

He looked at her, puzzled, for a moment. “H’mm? Uh, why yes… but…,”

“I know we save it for special occasions,” Mrs. Loring said, “but this is a special occasion, isn’t it? After all, it’s not every day that we elect a new Chairman.”

As Dr. Loring pushed his chair back from the table, Larry took the opportunity:

“It’s a double occasion— Valery and I want to get married.” He said it as quickly as he could.

“What? Married…” Dr. Loring blinked at him.

Mrs. Loring didn’t seem surprised at all. “Why, that’s marvelous. And now that you’re Chairman, you don’t have to be hemmed in by all those silly computer rules, do you?”

Dr. Loring broke into a huge grin and grabbed Larry’s hand. Pumping it hard enough to shake the table, he said heartily, “Congratulations. I’m very glad… very glad!”

Larry felt a thousand kilos lighter. He looked at Valery. Her mother kissed her cheek. They were both beaming.

“The wine,” Dr. Loring said, finally letting go of Larry’s hand. “Yes, by heaven, this is a special occasion.” He got up from the table and waddled back toward the kitchen alcove. Opening a closet door, he muttered, “It’s in here someplace.”

“I’m very happy for the two of you,” Mrs. Loring said quietly. “I know that Valery thinks the world of Dan—but you were her first choice.”

Larry grinned foolishly, but inwardly he was thinking about Dan. First the Chairmanship, now Valery. He’s going to hate me. And I don’t blame him.

Valery said, “I’ve been thinking… maybe it would be best if we didn’t tell Dan about… us. Not yet. He’s upset enough right now.”

Mrs. Loring nodded. “Yes, you’re right.”

“I don’t know…” Larry started to object.

Valery turned to him and smiled her prettiest. “Please, Larry. It wouldn’t be fair to Dan to hit him with this. Not just now.”

“But it’s not fair to let him think…”

“Let me handle it,” she said.

“Well…”

“Please?”

He melted. “All right. But don’t let him think the wrong thing for too long. It’ll just get worse, the longer we wait.”

“I know how to handle him,” Valery said.

Dr. Loring pulled a green bottle from the bottom of the closet. “Ahah!” He held the bottle up by the neck. “Not much left, but enough to toast the happy couple.”

Larry smiled, even though he didn’t feel particularly happy at that moment.