“And then?” Magda asked.
“Then we will get a new priestess.” He turned, ever so slightly, toward Jayna. The girl stared at Magda with bright eyes.
“It’s wrong!” Linc shouted. “We’ve always shared all the food equally. This plan is just plain wrong. It’s against the rules that Jerlet gave us.”
“Then ask Jerlet what to do,” Monel snapped.
For the first time, Magda looked shaken. Her voice almost trembled as she said, “You know that Jerlet doesn’t answer every little question we put to him.”
Monel said acidly, “I know that Jerlet never answers any questions that you put to him. He only says the same thing, over and over again.”
“But if we had a new priestess…” Jayna whispered.
“…maybe he would answer her,” Monel finished.
Linc suddenly felt rage. He wanted to smash his fists into something: the dead wall screen, the desk, the door… Monel’s-twisted smiling face. Violence! Mustn’t commit the sin of… Yet his fists clenched, and he took a step toward Monel.
Magda grabbed at his arm. “Linc! Come with me. We’ve heard enough of this.”
He stared at Monel with hatred seething inside him, but Magda’s hand on his arm and her voice were enough to turn him. Without another word he followed her out of the room and into the passageway.
She pushed the door shut. It was cooler out in the corridor. Linc could feel the flames within him damping down.
“That’s just what he wants,” Magda said. “If you attack him he’ll have you cast out. Now I understand what happened to Peta… Monel used him as a test. If he could make poor little Peta attack him, he knew he could get you to do it.”
“I’ll kill him,” Linc muttered.
“You will not,” Magda commanded. “If you even try, you’ll be killing yourself; and me, too.”
“Then what can we do?”
She let herself smile. “You were going to show me the yellow star. Let’s do that.”
“Now?”
“Yes. Now.”
They stood together at the wide observation window, his arm around her shoulders, hers around his waist. They gazed out at the stars that scattered across the darkness in an endless pattern of glory. And when the yellow star spun into view, they turned their faces and watched their shadows creep across the floor and walls of the passageway.
“It’s strange,” Magda murmured. “The yellow star brings warmth… it drives away the cold. It feels good.”
“Only for a while,” Linc said. “It will get hotter and hotter. It will turn everything to fire.”
“Too much warmth and we die,” she said.
Linc nodded.
“Too little food and we die,” she added.
He still said nothing.
“Linc… Monel is right, isn’t he? I’ll have to decide on his way about the food?”
“You can’t do that,” said Linc. “We’ve always shared everything equally. You can’t just decide that one person will starve while another eats.”
Her dark eyes seemed to cut right through him. “The priestess can decide such things,” she said.
“It would be wrong—”
“I decide what’s wrong! No one else. Only the priestess.”
“With Monel telling you what to do,” Linc shot back.
She nearly smiled. “No one tells me what to do…except Jerlet.”
The anger that Linc had tried to keep bottled up inside him came boiling out. “Jerlet never says anything new to you or anybody else. He always says the same thing!”
Magda remained icy-calm. “Of course. That’s because he’s told us everything that we need to know. Don’t you see? Jerlet has given us all the rules we need. It’s up to his priestess to use those rules wisely.”
“By letting people starve?”
“If I find it necessary.”
“If Monel tells you it’s necessary!”
“Linc… there are so many things you don’t understand. If I must decide that certain evil people must starve, and the people accept it, what’s to stop me from deciding one day that Monel must starve?”
“You…” Linc had to take a breath, and even when he did, his voice was still high-pitched with shock. “You would do that?”
“If I find that Monel is evil.”
He stared at Magda, as if seeing her for the first time in his life. This slim, lovely girl was in command of their lives. “You’d kill him?”
Magda smiled. “It will never come to pass. Sometimes I can see into the future… well, maybe see is the wrong word. I get feelings, like a cold draft touching me—”
“And?”
Turning slightly away from Linc, staring off into the darkness of the corridor, Magda said in a strangely hollow voice, “I’m not sure… I don’t see myself sentencing anyone to starve…not even Monel. I… it feels as if a miracle is going to happen. Yes, that’s it!” She fixed her gaze on Line. “A miracle, Line! Jerlet’s going to make the pump work again! He’s going to bring it back to life!”
Line couldn’t pull his eyes away from Magda’s brightly smiling face. But his mind was telling him, Jerlet’s not going to do a thing… unless you do it for him.
5
They slept right there in the passageway, next to the big observation window, huddled together to keep the chill away. The yellow star’s radiance wasn’t enough to really warm them, but that didn’t matter.
Linc woke first.
He sat up and watched Magda breathing easily in her sleep. Just like when they had been children together, and there were no worries or fears. Jerlet had been with them then, and he had strange and wonderful machines that did everything for all the children: kept them clean, even kept their clothing clean; fed them; taught them how to speak and walk; everything.
One by one, the machines broke down or wore out. A few of the cleaning machines still worked. Something Jerlet had called ultrasonics. You stepped in and a weird trembly feeling came over you for an instant. Then you were clean. But even those machines were wearing out.
Linc frowned at the memories playing in his head. He had fixed one of the cleaning machines once, a long time ago. It wasn’t working right, and Linc poked into its strange humming heart one day when no one was looking. There was a lot of dust and grime inside. He cleaned it out and the machine worked fine afterward.
He never told anyone about it. It would have made Jerlet angry.
It’s a strange rule. Linc thought. Why would Jerlet give us a rule like that? If the machines don’t work, we’ll all die. But if we could fix them, fix the heaters and the farm tanks and the lights…
He glanced down again at Magda. She was stirring, beginning to wake up.
If I could fix the pump, then Monel’s game with the chips wouldn’t be needed.
He had told himself that same thing a thousand times since Magda had spoken of a miracle.
If I can fix it.
And if I don’t get caught.
Magda finally awoke and they went down to the Living Wheel together. People were up and about. Monel was hissing orders at everyone as they lined up for firstmeal. He browbeat the cooks and made sure that everyone stayed in Linc. He checked the worn and faded plastic dishes that each person carried, and made sure no one took any extra food. He made a general nuisance of himself.
But no one complained. A few smiled. A mild joke here and there. That was all. They were accustomed to Monel’s fussing about. And afraid of his guards.
Then the workday began. Linc’s task was in the electrical distribution center. He stood by a flickering wall screen, just as Jerlet had taught him to do when he had been only a child, and watched the colored lights flash on and off. There was little else to do. The screen flashed and flickered. Once in a whole a light would flare red and then go blank. It would never light up on the screen again.