15
For a moment, Linc felt silly as he approached the library, clumping along the corridor in the bright-blue pressure suit. He hadn’t even bothered to take off the backpack. Only his gloves and helmet were missing.
But then he thought, I’ll need every bit of impact lean get. If the suit impresses them, so much the better.
He checked to see if the hand-welder’s power Linc was connected to the suit’s electrical system. It was.
If Monel tries to send his guards at me, I’ll burn the wheels off his chair.
He paused at the double doors of the library. Peering through the discolored windows he could see that everyone in the room— including Magda—was sitting with their eyes riveted to the big wall screen. Quietly, Linc pushed one of the doors open and slipped inside.
The screen was showing engineering drawings of the ship. Specific areas were outlined with pulsing yellow circles, as Jerlet’s voice commanded:
“The key to the whole damned thing is the bridge. That’s where the astrogation computer and all the necessary instruments are. Can’t start making course corrections until you know exactly where you are in relation to Baryta and Beryl. And I mean exactly. Laser wavelength accuracies, son.”
Linc smiled to himself. In his mind’s eye he could see the old man’s shambling figure, bloated and almost grotesque, and the intense glitter in his eyes as he tried to get his points across to Linc. Hard to think of him as dead. Linc said to himself. But it was still harder to understand how he could be frozen, like the ghosts on the bridge, and yet someday be brought back to life.
“The rocket engines ought to be all right; we checked them and repaired them back when you pups were being hatched,” Jerlet’s voice rumbled on. The screen showed red arrows where the thrusters were located. “You’ll have to make sure all the connections are still in place, so when the computer orders a burn the thrusters get the info. That’ll mean some outside work—”
The pictures went on, with Jerlet’s unmistakable voice explaining them, until they ended with another view of Beryl.
“That’s the new world, Linc,” the old man rasped. “Your world. Yours and the rest of the kids’. It’s up to you, son. You’ve got to get them there safely. It’s all up to you.”
The wall screen went blank.
No one in the room moved. They all kept staring at the screen,’ open-mouthed with awe.
“I intend to follow Jerlet’s command,” Linc said as loudly and strongly as he could.
They whipped around to see him. Magda’s hands flew to her face. A girl screamed. Monel sagged in his chair.
Slowly, deliberately, Linc walked through the shocked people sitting on the floor, up to the pedestal where Magda reigned.
He turned to face the people. “I’m not dead, as you can see. And I’m not afraid to face you. I’ve been with Jerlet, and he sent me back here to help us get to the new world.”
Jayna was sitting up front, her face glowing. No one spoke; the crowd hardly breathed.
Linc went on, “You all saw the pictures on the screen. There’s a new world waiting for us. A world that’s open and free. A world where we won’t have to worry about warmth or food or anything else.”
“Is it… is it really true?” someone in the crowd asked.
“Can it be really true?”
“It’s real,” Linc said. “I’ve seen it myself. The new world really exists. Its name is Beryl. Jerlet named it.”
“And we’re going there?”
“We can get there—but only if we fix the machines.”
“That’s forbidden!” Monel snapped.
A few people muttered agreement with him.
“Not anymore,” Linc said. “Jerlet forbade us from touching machinery while we were children, and too young to understand what we were doing. Now he wants us to fix the machines and save ourselves from death.”
Monel pushed his chair up toward Linc. “How do we know that was really Jerlet speaking to us? We didn’t see his face. And you said Jerlet is dead!”
A shocked murmur went through the crowd.
“He is dead, but he will come back to life someday. He left those words and pictures for us, to teach us, to show us what we’ve got to do.”
“Why didn’t he speak to us directly?” someone asked.
Monel added, “And all this talk about fixing the machines in the bridge. That’s the Ghost Place! How can Jerlet expect anyone to go there? It’s a place of death.”
“I was there a little while ago, and I’m not dead.”
They actually drew back away from him. Monet’s chair seemed to roll backward a few centimeters all by itself. The crowd sucked in its breath in a collective gasp of surprise and fear.
“I’m telling you,” Linc shouted to them, “that all this fear of the machines is stupid! Do you know what Jerlet thought of us? He called us superstitious idiots! He was ashamed of us!”
They muttered. They shook their heads.
“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” Monel demanded. “Just because you say you’ve been with Jerlet, and you say you’ve been to the Ghost Place—”
Linc found that he had the welding laser in his hand. Its smooth grip felt good against his palm. His fingers tightened over it.
“This suit I got from Jerlet. None of you has ever seen anything like it, have you?”
A mumbled “No.”
“And this…” he held up the welder so that they could all see it, “I took from the bridge—the Ghost Place. Watch.”
He turned to one of the few ragged books left on the shelves and pulled the laser’s trigger. A pencil-thin beam of red light leaped out. The book burst into flames.
The people oohed.
Linc eased off the trigger. He waved the laser in the general direction of one of Monel’s guards. “Put the fire out before it causes some real damage,” he ordered. The fellow hesitated a moment, then went over and smothered the smoldering book with a rag he pulled from his pocket.
“I have been with Jerlet,” Linc repeated to the crowd. “I have been to the Ghost Place. Your fears are silly. It’s time for us to stop acting like children and start doing what’s needed to save ourselves and reach the new world.”
“No.”
Linc turned. It was Magda.
“You are wrong,” she said. “Misguided. You may honestly think that you’re doing Jerlet’s work, but you are wrong.”
“I lived with him!”
Magda’s face was a mask of steel. “There is no proof. You tell us that Jerlet is dead, yet will live again. You say that Jerlet spoke the words we heard from the screen, yet he didn’t show himself to us. You tell us to fix the machines, yet we have Jerlet’s own words warning us that we mustn’t touch the machines.”
And she pressed the yellow button on the pedestal where she sat.
The wall screen glowed again, and now Jerlet’s face appeared. Linc knew that it was the younger Jerlet, speaking to them when they had been only children.
“I’ve tried to set you kids up as well as possible,” the tape began as it always began.
Linc watched the screen in sullen rage as the old tape unwound its familiar message. How can I get it through their skulls? he fumed at himself. How can I make them see?
“Now remember,” Jerlet was saying, “all the rules I’ve set down. They’re for your own safety. Especially, don’t mess around with the machines…”
Magda turned from the wall screen to Linc. “That is Jerlet,” she said. “He still lives. He speaks to us when the priestess summons him.” Her mouth was tight and hard; her eyes burning with—what? Is it fear? Or pain? Or hate?