4

Slowly everyone left the meeting room, leaving only Magda and Linc there.

He walked up and stood beside her. She touched the control button that turned off the wall screen, then put down her symbols and let her robe slip off her shoulders.

Linc didn’t try to touch her, even though she was now no longer acting in her office as priestess.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Nodding. “Yes....”

“For sure?”

“Well,” she smiled and the room seemed to glow brighter, “it always shakes me when Jerlet speaks to us. His voice... I have dreams about it sometimes.”

“That’s why you’re the priestess.”

With the two of them alone in the big empty room, with no one and nothing there except the few remaining books on the bare shelves, Magda was less the priestess and more of a normal human being.

She looked up at Linc, her dark eyes questioning. “Are you angry with me?”

“Angry? Why?”

“You wanted me to show mercy to Peta.”

Linc felt his teeth clench slightly. Peta. I’d nearly forgotten about him. A few moments alone with her and I forget everything.

“Jerlet will take him,” Linc said.

“But you think I should have gone easier on him.”

Is she trying to start a fight? “You could have, if you wanted to. Peta isn’t really a violent person.”

“No; I could see that he acted out of panic.”

Linc felt puzzled. “Yet you sent him out into the tubes. He might never make it as far as Jerlet’s domain. The rats, and who knows what else—”

“Do you know why I had to send him away?”

Linc shook his head.

“Because of Monel,” Magda admitted.

“You thought he was right and I was wrong.”

She laughed suddenly, and reached out to touch Linc’s cheek. “No, you silly fool! And stop looking so grim. I wanted to let Peta go free. It would have been fun to watch Monel turn purple. And besides—”

Linc waited for her to go on. When she didn’t, he asked, “Besides...?”

She walked away a few steps, toward the room’s big double doors. “Besides, it would have pleased you.”

Linc rocked back on his heels. Magda turned away from him and hurried toward the door.

“Hey... wait. Magda!” He raced across the worn floor tiles after her. His long legs gobbled the distance in a few strides, and he jumped in front of her, leaning his back against the closed doors.

“You wanted to please me?”

“Yes.”

Truly puzzled, he asked, “Then... why didn’t you? Why cast Peta out? Why ask Jerlet to speak? You knew he’d just say the same old things... he never says anything else.”

Her smile faded and the troubled look returned to her eyes. “Linc.,. Monel wants power. He’s a bully. I’m sure he frightened Peta terribly; why else would the poor boy strike one of his guards? Peta never harmed anyone in any way before.”

“But then—”

She put a finger over his lips, silencing him. “Hear me. The real reason why I’m priestess is that I’m sensitive to the way people think. Monel wants to rule. He wants to be the leader and tell everyone what to do. He would make a terrible leader; he would hurt people. So I’ve got to stay ahead of him. I’ve got to make sure that he doesn’t gain more power.”

Linc felt as fluttery inside as he did up on the second level, where the gravity was lower. But now it wasn’t a happy feeling.

“Monel wants... how do you know... ?”

She shrugged her slim shoulders. “I know. I can hear him thinking about it. I can smell his hunger.”

Linc muttered, “Monel likes to boss people around.”

“He’s made it clear that he’d love to have an alliance with me. I stay priestess and he tells me what to do.”

In his mind, Linc saw himself facing Monel, and for the first time in his life he wanted to be violent.

“You’re shaking!” Magda said.

He grasped her shoulders. “I haven’t liked Monel since we were all children together and Jerlet lived with us. When he had the fall and his legs were crippled, well... I tried to forget that I didn’t like him. But now... now—”

“It’s all right,” Magda soothed, stepping close enough to Linc to lean her cheek against his chest. “I know how to handle Monel. Don’t fear—”

“It’s not fear that I feel,” Linc said tightly. His arms slid around her. Then a new thought struck him. “But... why did you do what Monel wanted? Why did you send Peta away?”

She pulled away from Linc slightly and looked up into his eyes. “Suppose I let Peta go free. And suppose somebody was attacked afterward? What then?”

“But Peta wouldn’t—”

“No. But Monel would. And then say that Peta did it.”

The breath nearly left Linc’s body. “Now I understand.”

“I couldn’t let that happen; I couldn’t take the chance. It would mean that Monel would take charge of everything and everyone—even me. I will not have that. I am the priestess and I’m going to stay the priestess, no matter what Monel tries.”

“So Peta had to be sacrificed.”

“Punished,” Magda corrected. “He was lazy, and stupid, and violent. Showing him mercy would have been playing into Monel’s hands.”

For a long moment Linc said nothing. Finally, “I hope he makes it up to Jerlet’s area. It’s a long climb. And dangerous.”

Magda turned slightly in his arms to glance at the wall screen. “Let’s get out of here. I have the feeling that he sees and hears everything we do in here.”

“Jerlet?”

“No. Monel.”

They were walking down the corridor toward the living area when Linc told her about the yellow star.

“It’s bright enough now to cast shadows. It’s getting so close that you can’t look at it without hurting your eyes.”

“How long do we have?” Magda asked.

He shrugged. “Who can tell? Maybe only a few sleeps. Maybe so long that we’ll all grow as old as Jerlet.”

“No one could ever get that old!”

They laughed together.

Then Linc said, “Want to go up and see it?”

Magda hesitated only a moment. “Yes. Show me.”

They were almost at the hatch that led into the tube-tunnel when one of the farm workers called out to them. Magda and Linc waited at the hatch as he hurried along the passageway toward them. The overhead light panels were mostly dead in this section of the passageway, so the worker flashed from light to shadow, light to shadow, as he approached.

“Magda,” he puffed as he came to a stop before them, “Monel... wants to see you... right away.”

“He can wait,” Linc said.

“No... it’s about the crops. Now that there’s not enough food for everybody—”

Magda’s face set into a tight mask. Even so, she’s beautiful, Linc thought.

“All right,” Magda said to the worker. “I’ll speak to Monel about the food.”

The three of them started down the passageway. Linc looked back over his shoulder at the hatch to the tube-tunnel. That must be the tunnel they put Peta into. I wonder if he’s a II right? Can he get to Jerlet before he needs food or sleep? Does the tunnel really go all the way up to Jerlet’s domain?

Monel was in a warm little compartment that had a rumpled bunk, a dead viewing screen on the far wall, and a desk studded with push buttons—also dead.

But on the bare part of the desk he had strewn lots and lots of colored chips of plastic. Where did he get them? Linc wondered.

He and Magda stood by the door of the little room. Monel sat behind the desk in his wheeled chair, his long skinny fingers toying with the plastic chips. Sitting on the bunk was Jayna, a girl who had worked as a farmer. Now, somehow, she seemed to work for Monel all the time.

“I’ve learned how to use these bits of plastic to solve our food problem,” Monel said.

“And I helped,” Jayna added.

“We’re going to eat plastic?” Linc asked.

“Of course not!” Monel snapped. “But these plastic pieces can show us how to give food to the right people.”

“The right people?” Magda echoed.

“Yes... look—” Monel touched a few of the chips, began lining them in straight files. “You see? Each piece stands for one of us.”

“The yellow ones are for the boys and the green ones are for the girls,” Jayna said, with a big smile of accomplishment on her face.

Linc watched Monel lining them up. “How do you know you’ve got the same number of chips as there are people?”

“That’s what I did,” Jayna said happily. “I picked out one chip for each person. I remembered everybody’s chip... see, they’re all shaped a little differently. So I can remember which chip belongs to which person. I’m good at remembering.” She jumped eagerly from the bunk and bounced to the desk. “See? This one is you, Magda... it’s the biggest green one. And this one is Monel, he’s right behind you. Each chip means somebody!”

Monel seemed to be smiling and frowning at once.

“Very interesting,” Magda said. It sounded to Linc as if she were trying to keep her voice as flat and calm as possible, and not quite succeeding. “But what does all this have to do with food?”

“Ahah!” Monel’s frown vanished and he was all toothy smile. “Since Peta broke the pump, we have a problem: not enough food for everybody.”

“Not yet,” Linc said. “We have enough for the time being.”

Monel shot him a nasty glance. “But when the next crop is harvested, we’ll only have half of what we need. Somebody’s going to go hungry... lots of people, in fact.”

“We all will,” Magda said. “We share the food equally.”

“We always have,” Monel agreed, “up to now. But that doesn’t mean we have to keep on doing things the old way. With these little chips, we can decide who should get food and how much he or she should get.”

“But everybody needs food,” Linc said.

Monet’s answer was swift. “But not everybody deserves it.”

“Deserves...?”

“You know people are always doing wrong things.” Monel said. “Not working hard enough, getting angry, not meditating when they’re supposed to... my guards see a lot of wrongs being done, and so do you, if you keep your eyes open. With these chips, we can put a mark down on a person’s chip whenever he does something wrong. The more marks he gets, the less food we give him.”

Linc felt his jaw drop open, but before he could say any thing, Magda’s voice cut through the room like an ice knife:

“And who decides when someone’s done something wrong?”

Monel smiled again, and it was enough to turn Linc’s stomach. “Why, the priestess will decide, of course,” Monel said. “Assisted by these chips and those who know how to work them.”

“You can’t—” Linc began, but Magda waved him silent.

“And suppose,” she asked, “that the priestess is unwilling to do this? Suppose that the priestess decides that this is an evil scheme, to deprive people of food deliberately?”

The smile on Monel’s thin face stayed fixed, as if frozen there. Finally he said, “When the people get tired of having so little to eat, they will see that this scheme is better for them.”

“Some of them.”

“The good ones among us,” Monel said. “Once they are convinced that this plan is better than letting everyone go hungry, they will decide that the priestess is wrong to oppose it.”

“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.