1,000-Year Voyage (10 page)

“Absolutely ridiculous,” Exodus declared flatly. “I admit that I don't like sharing power either with you or anybody else but I'm also remembering that you are also my mother, my own flesh and blood. I want to study this life energy machine for no other purpose than to further my own invention. I beg of you to believe that.”

“You'll have to find some other way,” Merva said, deliberately. “I have no intention of allowing you to examine that machine.”

“There is nothing to stop me doing it in your absence.”

“Yes, there is. I intend to place an electrical circuit around it, and it will be so arranged that if you touch any part of that machine you will receive a shock sufficient to kill you. Just as you respect me as your own flesh and blood I respect you for the same reason, but in the final analysis one's own life comes first and I do not propose to take any chances with that. Forget all about that machine, Exodus, and work out your own invention entirely from a theoretical basis. I will willingly check it for you and in detail, correcting it where it fails to match up with this life energy machine as its basis.”

Exodus was silent for a long moment, obviously quite unable to understand the situation. Even if he had for a moment suspected that Vilnia had said anything to his mother—which indeed he did not—he would never have expected her to take the course of guarding the life energy machine: rather he would have expected that she would have protected herself. So the puzzle for him was complete.

“Since that is your attitude, mother,” he said, briefly, “you leave me no other course than to make the necessary drawings and then submit them to you, and I must say I am not particularly happy over your complete lack of cooperation.”

With that he swung from the laboratory and was gone.

Merva remained grimly silent for several moments after the laboratory door had closed, then she crossed over to the life energy machine and set to work to devise the electrical circuit to give it protection in case of emergency. This was a task that was destined to occupy her for some hours and in the meantime Exodus had gone in search of Vilnia. He found her in her accustomed place in the conning tower. He looked and felt rather irritated as he studied her innocent young face as she stared outwards towards the stars.

“Why do you have to spend so much time in here?” he demanded roughly. “Don't you realise that you are a scientist just like the rest of us and for that reason you should be constantly at my side helping me in the tasks which I have to perform. Instead of that I find you here looking out on to infinity. What do you expect to gain by doing that?”

Vilnia turned and looked at him wistfully.

“Have you never liked to be alone with your thoughts, Exodus?”

“What I like and what I get are two very different things, Vilnia. Usually I have so many things to work out I just haven't time to be alone with my thoughts. You seem to forget that I am one of the prime movers in this great scheme of vengeance against the Earth. I have no time to spend gazing out on to infinity.”

“From which I assume you wish me to help you with something or other?”

“I had thought of that possibility,” Exodus admitted, and then he hesitated. Finally he shook his head. “Upon reflection I'm afraid you would be more of a hindrance than help. I suppose it is a wife's purpose to help her husband but only within the limits which she understands and you couldn't possibly understand a cosmic energy generator.”

Vilnia looked at him quickly. “And what in heaven's name do you want a thing like that for? Or is it all part of that plot you mentioned to be rid of your mother?”

“Plot I mentioned?” Exodus frowned a little, then he gave a sudden start. “Just a minute!”

Reaching forward he caught Vilnia's shoulders fiercely and forced her to look at him. “Tell me something, Vilnia. Did you by any chance tell mother that I had mentioned casually that I didn't forever intend to be under her domination?”

Vilnia was silent, looking away, until Exodus' rough hand forced her to once again look at him.

“Well?” he demanded, “I'm asking you a question. Don't sit there like a mute!”

“As a matter of fact I did,” Vilnia replied, sighing. “Now that you do know the worst thing you can do is kill me and I don't suppose you will do that. At least, not until a child has been born!”

Exodus lowered his hands and pondered. “This,” he said slowly, “explains a great deal. Mother was particularly cautious when I asked her if I could study the life energy machine. I just couldn't understand why then, but I do now. She must believe from what you have told her that I intend to do something to stop her receiving the energy, which she must have. As a matter of actual fact nothing could be further from my thoughts. The trouble is that I'm now going to be greatly delayed in the construction of my cosmic generator, thanks to your infernal interference. Why did you have to betray my confidence like that?” he demanded savagely.

“I have a respect for my conscience, Exodus, even if you have not. I just could not hear of a plot like that directed against my mother-in-law without warning her of what was coming.”

“How very touching,” Exodus sneered, “and also how very unconvincing. I can hardly imagine any person in whose fate you are less concerned than my mother's—unless it be mine.”

Vilnia got to her feet and shrugged her shoulders.

“If you don't mind. Exodus, I'm finding this conversation extremely odious. I would prefer to talk to you when you are in a calmer mood.”

“Don't you dare adopt that tone to me!” he barked, catching her arm and swinging her back to him. “You seem to have forgotten one fact—you're my wife now, and as such entirely under my dictation. That is the law of the ship and there is certainly going to be no exception in your case. I'll tell you why you betrayed me to my mother,” he went on, tightening his hold so fiercely on Vilnia's arm that she gave a little gasp, “because you thought by doing that to curry favour with her. You thought she would grant you favours, my dear, didn't you?”

“I certainly thought it might make her hate me less,” Vilnia retorted fiercely, “and let go of my arm, you're hurting me.” She snatched it away savagely.

“Ah, so Vilnia has a little fire after all,” Exodus sneered, dropping his hand. “I thought you had more intelligence than the others and therefore a little more spirit. It pleases me to see it, but it does
not
please me to know that you have started off our married life by repeating a merely casual remark in the way you have. Suppose we get one thing straight, Vilnia, here and now—do you to the end of your days prefer to be dominated by my mother or by me?”

“I may not be dominated by either,” she answered, ambiguously.

Exodus grinned broadly. “Can it be that the little Vilnia is conceiving some way of disposing of me as well as my mother? You haven't the brains or the courage, my dear, so don't waste your time. You're just like the rest of your generation, spineless and lazy good-for-nothings. Haven't you noticed how they all react, why it is that I am the strongest of the generation? Why it is that you are all weak physically and the rest of your colleagues of the same generation as well? The reason is not far to seek.

“That extraction of energy from you and the others when you were children has had the inevitable reaction of producing feeble adult life. Not enough to incapacitate but enough to reduce that immense virility of purpose which one has come to expect of adult scientists in this day and age.”

Vilnia smiled faintly to herself and Exodus gave an angry look.

“I was not aware that I had said anything funny!”

“No, Exodus, you didn't say anything funny. I was just thinking how odd it would be if our lack of virility makes it that no children are born. That would be a great tragedy for you and your mother, wouldn't it?”

Exodus started. “That must not happen at any price! It would ruin everything!”

“As far as I am concerned I could very easily ruin everything by leaping out of the airlock into the void. What would you do then, Exodus?”

He stared at her, unbelieving. It seemed impossible that so frail a girl with so gentle a voice could even conceive of flinging herself into the sub-zero of interstellar space.

“Don't worry,” she said, gently, “I shan't do that. Not because I am afraid to do so but because—believe it or not—it would give me pleasure to have a child of my own in whom I could take an interest despite the fact that he or she will become nothing more or less than a tool of your mother and you. Nevertheless it would perhaps help to fill the aching void, the awful longing that is within me.... It will give me something to cherish and to love.

“To go through life as I am now, not caring for or being cared for by anybody is absolute hell. You can't see it from my point of view because you have power and this fantastic plan of vengeance. But the rest of the girls aboard this vessel feel like I do, and indeed some of the young men too. They're not all at one with this idea of vengeance, believe me: it seems to have become centred only between you and your mother now. There still remains with us the memory of that experiment in our childhood when quite unable to help ourselves we were sacrificed to the Moloch of your mother's thirst for revenge. And,” Vilnia added simply, with an upward lift of her wide eyes, “the scheme will never work out, Exodus, you know.”

“Never work out! Don't be ridiculous! The planning through the endless years, the absolute meticulous regard to detail, the vast scientific machines, the enormous expenditure of mental energy, the checking by electronic brains of every figure we shall ever make, and you say it I can never work out! Of all the fool things you've said, Vilnia, that is decidedly the most foolish.”

Vilnia sat down again looking at the stars. “In any case it doesn't matter to me,” she shrugged. “I shall not be alive when that time comes. But when the time does come you'll remember what I have said. It cannot work out….”

“Then suppose you tell me why not?”

“I don't know why not. If I did I'd tell you. I just happen to know, that's all. It's a sort of instinct.”

“I never did believe in woman's intuition,” Exodus retorted, bitterly. With that he swung away and left the conning tower hurrying out to the adjoining section of the laboratory which was devoted entirely to draughtsmanship and the drawing board stage of the various weapons of destruction intended for the ultimate vengeance.

Vilnia watched him go and smiled sadly to herself.

And the ship fled on....

* * * * * * *

Weeks—months—years— In one respect Vilnia had proved incorrect. Children had been born, her own included, and as far as could be told by the medical machine aboard the vessel each one of them was entirely robust and physically perfect in every detail. Whatever the lack of vitality in the parents, occasioned by their losing so much vital energy in their youth, it had apparently not been handed on to the offspring.

Five years had gone since that speaking-of-minds in the conning tower and now Exodus and Vilnia had reached full maturity and twenty-three years of age. As far as Vilnia was concerned the difference was hardly apparent except that she had perhaps more development and was indeed about an inch taller than she had been.

It was in Exodus that the change was so obvious. Big as a youth he was immense as a man and almost an exact duplicate of the mighty Rigilus who had once ruled the world and the solar system. He was majestic, dominant and entirely cruel, a perfect combination of his mother and father. Where Rigilus had had the tolerance, Exodus had none and where Rigilus had carried most people along with him and benefited them thereby, Exodus had become a figure of terror, a prowler aboard the mighty space machine; his steely eyes always alert for the smallest fault and his authority absolutely unchallenged since he always had his mother to back him.

In the five years he had been more than busy particularly concerned with the designing of his cosmic energy generator, the final plan of which his mother had herself checked and found to be entirely accurate. Her approval of the plan had taken place some years before and immediately afterwards Exodus had set to work on the actual building of the equipment in the empty storage hold which he had selected as his site.

He had never allowed anyone to come and watch him during the construction of that apparatus but at times either his mother or Vilnia had accidently come upon him at work and had seen a heavily suited figure, complete with hood and gigantic gauntlets, busily at work like some ultra modem Faust as he tamed the inconceivable energies of outer space and bent them to his will within the enormous generator which he had devised.

Even yet the generator itself was not complete, nor for that matter were his experiments for cosmic radiation. To be entirely satisfied with the apparatus's power he had to find something living upon which to test it, and this was the problem at the moment that held him up.

He was in the midst of checking up the apparatus on one occasion when Vilnia came in to him—or rather paused in the doorway of the storage hold somewhat awe-stricken by the spectacular flashings of power rippling from the masses of coils from the great towers of insulators.

“Exodus,” Vilrúa called, motioning, “your mother wants both of us at once!”

Since Exodus was not in his heavily insulated suit he heard her words clearly enough. He turned sharply.

“Is it imperative? I'm extremely busy at the moment.”

“She seems to think it is. Yes, we'd better go!”

Before very long they had reached Merva's apartment and found her in the midst of checking a list of names.

“You sent for us, mother?” Exodus asked, briefly, making no attempt to hide the fact that he did not like interruption in his work.

“I had no particular need to do,” Merva answered, calmly. “I just thought that you would like to know that within an hour I have decided to use your child, and of course the other children which have been born, for the purposes of energy extraction. I have not informed the others of my intention since I did not deem it altogether necessary. I have merely done so in your case as a matter of courtesy.”