Into the Sea of Stars (16 page)

Richard gently took Elijah by the arm and led him astern.

"A nation, no, a race," he shouted, "and down from
across the millennium I am all that is left of my world,
for I am Lazarus returned from the realm of the dead to tell thee all!"

"I was working in the backup reactor housing when they hit us." Ian turned with a start of fear. It was his
watch, and as the others slept he had settled back to
watch Elijah's slowly tumbling realm and the sharp, cold
light of Delta Sag. He had never heard Elijah's quiet approach.

Ian beckoned for Elijah to join him in the
Co's
chair.
He was no longer wearing the bizarrely patched coveralls,
and he was freshly shaved and washed. Elijah looked at
Ian and smiled softly. Ian was shocked to notice that most
of his teeth were missing.

Elijah looked out the starboard window and stared at
the slowly turning reactor unit.

"That was my entire world, nay,
my
entire universe.
Main corridor eighty-three meters, fifty-two point one centimeters from main bulkhead to bulkhead.
Shall I tell
you how many tiles were set in the floor? How many were
cracked and what each crack looked like? How about screws securing each air vent? I spent eternity floating,
nameless, voiceless,
eternally
alone. Ah, such will be my
eternity in Hell for having endlessly cursed the name of
God in my madness."

Elijah looked back to Ian and smiled again. "I'm not
mad, Ian
Lacklin
, not mad at all. Perhaps I am saner than
any man alive, for I have learned the power of waiting,
but I shall not make you wait. First I will tell you all,
then
you can tell me what I desire. Will you tell me of
the paradise of my grandsires, where you walk upon the
outside of your world and all is green and blue skies above?
But first I will tell you."

Ian nodded and smiled encouragingly. He was half afraid
that Elijah was tottering on the edge of a complete break
down, and when that came, his message would be lost
forever.

"As I was saying, I was working on the backup reactor
when they came."

"Who?"

"Ah, yes. From Delta
Sagit
, the followers of the Fa
ther."

"The Father?"

"Ah, yes, forgive me. You don't know. My world...
I believe you call them colonies, had at last made Sun
Fall. I was, let's see, sixteen that year, and already proven
on the reactors and bio support."

Ian looked at him in amazement. Sun Fall he called it.
A journey of a thousand years and at last they make Sun
Fall. What it must have been like, arriving in a new
realm.

"I can remember it. Our world was indeed desperate
when we arrived. Across the millennium of the voyage
some systems had failed, others had gradually been de
pleted, and we needed what our science people called a
gas giant with hard-surfaced satellites, so that necessary
resources could be mined. Coming in on Delta
Sagit
also gave us a new energy source, which we had already been
exploiting through the use of parabolic mirrors.

"There are five gas giants around Delta
Sagit
and we
went into, how do you say—" He waved his hands vaguely
in a circular motion.

"Orbit?"
Ian prompted.

"Yes, orbit, that's the word, around the second farthest from the sun. Even as we arrived, they were waiting for
us."

"Who?
Was the Father's
name
Franklin Smith?" Ian ventured.

Elijah looked at him with incredulous eyes. "How did you know?"

"We've been following his path since the beginning."

"They said he was a great prophet," Elijah said, "who
spoke of the Satan that had driven them into the Hegira.

"Our beacon was on as we approached. For five years before orbit we had intercepted some of their broadcasts,
and they were aware of us, as well."

"Who are they?" Ian asked.

"They are followers of the Father," Elijah repeated in a vague singsong manner.

"You say they met you?"

"Remember, Ian
Lacklin
, I was not even of one score
years. We of my age and station had no word of our
leader's decisions, you see, our society was ruled by a
philosophos
."

"I don't recognize that..."

"From Plato, at least that's what I remember. I only
saw the Father's delegation once, when they first docked
with us. They were tall men and women, proud in their
bearing, with dark faces and eyes that bespoke some inner
vision. At least, that is how I remember, but you know
the tricks that memory plays with an old man."

Ian nodded, trying to envision the encounter between
two alien cultures separated by a thousand years from the
common cradle of their birth.

"Our
philosophos
then told us that we were leaving.
He said that they desired of us what we would not give
and told us to do what we would refuse. Therefore, we
would leave. We had but one month to stock up enough
raw
material
for the
replicator
machines, and then we
left."

"You had
replicator
machines?" Ian asked.

"Yes, a
replicator
. We always had them, don't you?"

Ian shook his head. "According to Beaulieu, they were
only legend, machines that could be programmed to make
whatever was desired, as long as enough raw
material
was fed in from the other end. Before the Holocaust some ninth-generation devices were used to mass-produce elements for the colonial development, but true
replicators
,
capable of producing just about anything, including models
of themselves, were only in the developmental stage when
the war came. At least, so Beaulieu thought."

"Ah, so I see," Elijah said pityingly.

"What was it they wanted?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"Have you ever been sixteen and in love? Her name
was Rachel..."

Ian nodded and understood. In the reality of sixteen-year-olds, there were some things even more important
than the destiny of worlds.

"So we left. For six months we accelerated up and
away, using the hydrogen mined from the gas giants along with matter/antimatter drives. And then there came the
day."

His voice broke and he looked out the window at the
ship.

"You know, she's over there still," Elijah said softly.

"Who?"

"My beloved Rachel.
You realize I couldn't send her out with the rest. I found her a year or so after the dark
day." He stopped for a minute, as if trying to control
himself, and then pushed on. "I found her floating in the wreckage and brought her back. A room in my area had
been ripped open to space. I tied my love in there with
a cable, so she wouldn't float away. You know, I went to
visit her every day and looked through the window at her.
I said good-bye to her before coming. I asked her if she
wanted to come with me but she said no, she wanted to stay with our world, forever sixteen. I said good-bye to
her and she said good-bye to me and said she would miss
me...

"My love she sleeps,
And
may her sleep,
As it is lasting so be deep,
Soft may the worms about her creep."

His voice started to rise and crackle like old parchment
being mishandled.

"It's all right, old boy." Ian turned with a start, and
there was Richard smiling at the two of them, drink in hand. Ian sighed with relief.

"She understands, my good man, she understands,"
Richard said soothingly. "Here, have a little bracer." And
he offered a chilled drink container.

Elijah snatched the container and took a long, deep
pull.

"You were talking about the day," Ian asked softly. Richard gave him a look of reproach, but he decided to push ahead anyhow.

"I was working on the reactor, changing a fuel rod.
Routine sort of thing.
Suddenly it was as if my world had
slammed into a solid rock. I thought we had taken a—
what's the word?"

"Meteor... asteroid?"

"Yes, asteroid hit. I had heard of such things. We had a collision drill once a year. In fact, it was such a ritual that it was a festival day,
The
last one was the first time
Rachel and
I..."
Elijah suddenly looked at them with
cold clear eyes. "But that is gone forever."

His voice now took on a clipped urgency, as if he were making some official report that had waited half a century
to be given.

"The first salvo hit the
torus
in sections one through
twenty. I went to the primary observation port and saw
entire sections going up, exploding outward in flashes of
light, tumbling debris, and shattered bodies. I saw it, I saw it! My God, that was my family, my mother and father!
Damn you, damn you bastards forever!"

Richard placed a hand on his shoulder and Elijah looked
at him with a haunted expression.

"Maybe you shouldn't," Richard said.

Elijah gave him a weak smile. "You know, I never saw
them—I mean, who it was that did it. I saw the flash of
the beams, but nothing else. I knew at once that somehow
the followers of the Father had caught up with us. The beam weapons slashed out, again and again, with such neat surgical precision, slicing out section after section.
The imbalance of the cylinder now started its own actions,
ripping it apart from the central core that I was in.

"We screamed in impotent rage as the beam finally
caught us out and slashed the core wide open.

"The section that I was in separated, cut from the main
. '
Subreactor
one and agro research and development sec
tion one, reporting in. Is there anyone there, is there
anyone there?'"

He looked again at the hulk then turned back to them.

"Ten of us with air.
We had thrown enough emergency
locks to seal the section off. Six of them were badly in
jured, mostly from a radiation spill in the containment
area.

"We fought for weeks.
Patching leaks, stabilizing the research lab, and creating an environmental support sys
tem.
We alone had survived. We found a couple of suits and rigged up an airlock, and thus started my scavenging
operations. I would crawl through the corridors, pushing past the bodies. You know, a body can make excellent
fertilizer. Oh, you'll do it if there's need enough. You
know, you can do something else, as well. They're frozen
dry, all you have to do is add a little water and the meat's
almost as tasty as fresh," Elijah whispered.

Ian was unable to respond.

"The others couldn't stand it. I watched them go, one by one. They'd crawl into the airlock, some of them crying,
others praying. One was laughing. They'd pop the door
and take the leap. The Big Leap, that's what we called
it. I'd watch them struggle out there, and later I'd go out
after 'em. After all, they were fresh..."

Ian was stunned.

"There was nothing else you could have done," Rich
ard said, his voice soft and soothing. "There was nothing
else for you, it was necessary in order to survive."

Elijah looked at him and smiled. "Conservation, recycling, that was the world, the world of my forefathers.
So I lived, I salvaged and lived, forever alone, in a world
of floating death. Anyhow, it tasted quite good. Still does,
you know."

He smiled at Richard. "If you want, I'll go out and get
you one. I've got a whole stockpile of legs.
Only the best
for my friends."

"No, that's quite all right, quite all right, my friend,"
Richard replied, making a supreme effort not to show his
emotions. Ian floated in the corner and tried not to gag.

"Rachel and I..." Elijah continued.
"My poor, dear
Rachel who floated in an airless room.
And the one book,
treasured in the museum.
A book from before the Great
Sailing.
I found it floating in the wreckage.
Literature of
the English-Speaking People
.
Oh, I know it by heart, I do. I know it all by heart, for I read it to Rachel every
day, and I shouted it to the heavens my entire life as I
floated with my dinner in that corridor—eighty-two me
ters, fifty-two point one centimeters."