The Winds of Altair (20 page)

CHAPTER 27

Bishop Foy scowled at them as he sat behind his broad, massive desk.

"But how would we become land holders of an artificial colony built in space?" he demanded. "Our contract with the world government gives us title to the land of Altair VI and nothing else. Certainly we couldn't claim ownership of an O'Neill colony."

"That's right," answered Jeff. He sat in front of the Bishop's desk, with Laura on one side of him, Amanda and Dr. Carbo on the other. It had taken two full days before the Bishop would agree to meet with them. Foy had insisted that the students disband their occupation of the contact lab. They had refused. Reluctantly, Foy had finally allowed them to come to his office for a face-to-face confrontation.

"We won't own the colony," Carbo agreed. "It will belong jointly to all of us—including the colonists."

Foy grimaced. His jaws worked as if he were grinding his teeth, but he said nothing.

"I know what you're thinking," Carbo said, a soft smile lighting his swarthy face. "I am prepared to donate my personal fortune to the project. I burn my bridges behind me, just as you and all the others have been forced to do. We build this colony together and we build it to last for many, many lifetimes."

Amanda reached toward him and put her hand on his. "None of us will become rich," she said.

"Except in God's grace," Laura added.

The Bishop's face twitched. His hands began to tremble. "You . . ." His voice cracked as he visibly struggled to control himself.

"Reverend Bishop," Jeff said, as politely as he could, "we put it to a vote among the students. They have overwhelmingly approved this plan."

Carbo added, "The scientists, too. And the social technicians."

"It is not the students' prerogative," Foy said stiffly, "to decide such matters. Nor that of the scientists and social technicians whom the Church employs. Only the Elders . . ."

"The Elders may vote as you instruct them to," said Jeff. "But the scientists and the students will not continue the attempt to transform Altair VI. If necessary, we will send a message back to the Mother Church to ask for a new Council of Elders and a new Bishop."

"That's unheard of!" Foy snapped.

Jeff shrugged slightly. "So is building a new world."

The Bishop's face grew crafty. "All communications back to Earth must be approved by me."

"You're not saying that you'd interfere . . ." Laura's shocked voice halted in mid-sentence. Her face showed that she understood the Bishop's meaning quite clearly.

Jeff's hands tightened on the arms of his chair. Glaring at the Bishop, he asked softly, "Will you force us to take complete control of the Village? The comm center, all the domes? Must we lock you in your quarters?"

"That's mutiny!"

Carbo got to his feet and spread his arms, as if trying to separate the two of them. "Wait. Wait. Before we begin to say things that we will regret later, let us admit that we are at impasse."

"What good will that do?" Amanda asked.

"The colony ship is due to take up orbit in a few days. Let us agree to a truce until then. No further work on the surface of the planet. The students will go back to their own domes." Eying the Bishop, Carbo went on, "And we will all pray for guidance until we have a chance to meet the colonists and see what condition they are in."

Foy shook his head. "I don't see what good that will do."

"Frankly, neither do I," Carbo admitted cheerfully. "But it's better than fighting. Perhaps the students and the Elders can use the time to meet with each other and discuss the situation."

Understanding dawned in Amanda's dark eyes, Carbo saw. She understands what I am trying to do, he thought to himself. The students can persuade the Elders to be more flexible than Foy would allow. We can undermine his position, given a few days' time.

But the Bishop was still adamant when the massive colony ship established itself in orbit a precise hundred kilometers behind the Village. They circled Altair VI as if linked by an invisible thread.

Captain Gunnerson and his family had brought the colony ship to Altair, and now he carried Foy, Jeff, and Carbo in a cramped shuttle rocket from the Village to the huge collection of domes that was the colony ship.

"Her name's the
Ghandi
," Gunnerson said, leaning back in his pilot's chair and puffing great clouds of blue smoke from his pipe.

The tobacco smelled awful to Jeff, and he could see that the Bishop's nose wrinkled in undisguised disgust at Gunnerson's filthy habit. Carbo, however, seemed to take some perverse pleasure in every sniff.

The three of them were sitting strapped into contoured chairs, like astronauts of old, because this shuttle used old-fashioned rocket thrusters rather than the gravity drive that propelled the bigger ships among the stars.

Gunnerson deftly docked the tiny shuttle at the
Ghandi
's airlock, and introduced his three passengers to the world government representative who was waiting for them in the sterile, metal-walled airlock chamber.

He was a tall, fair, light-haired man named Manning. A career world government bureaucrat, he moved his lanky body slowly, his long legs and arms seeming to probe the air around him cautiously, as if afraid of bumping into something unpleasant. His voice was soft, bland, almost hypnotic.

"I can't tell you how glad I am to see you." he said in an unemotional monotone. "We have been confined to this vehicle for four months now, and I have another four months ahead of me for the return flight. It will be so good to get back to Earth and my own home once again. Words fail me."

Jeff could not suppress a grin. "Don't you want to take a day or two to see the surface of the planet? It's very exciting."

Manning missed the humor. "No, I think not, but thank you all the same. My duty is accomplished once I have transferred the colonists to your care. I wouldn't dream of keeping Captain Gunnerson here one day longer than necessary."

"The colonists are well?" Carbo asked. "Any problems with them?"

"Oh no, none at all. They were happy to leave their wretched villages and cities. The devastation there was very intense." All in the same monotone. "We implanted them with neuro probes along the way. It took more than a month, but since then they have all been as docile as lambs."

Jeff saw Carbo wince, but the scientist said nothing.

"Well," Bishop Foy snapped, "I suppose we should meet their Council of Elders."

"Yes, by all means. Right this way."

Neither Jeff nor the others were prepared for the shock.

Manning led them to the massive inner hatch of the big airlock chamber. He touched the control button set into the gleaming metal wall and the hatch sighed softly, almost reluctantly, then slid aside.

The smell hit them first. The sour, acrid odor of too many people crowded too close together. Jeff had been positive that the colony ship would be somewhat like the Village in its interior design. But now he saw that they were stepping out onto a metal catwalk that circled the interior of this dome. The dome itself had been partitioned into many levels, so that the maximum number of people could be squeezed into it. A dozen meters below the catwalk, on a bare metal floor that could barely be seen because of the thick throngs of people standing down there, thousands upon thousands of colonists stood, jammed shoulder to shoulder.

Men, women, children, babes in their mothers' arms, they all stood mutely, not making a sound, their big liquid eyes staring up at the catwalk and the airlock hatch, their dark faces turned upward toward Jeff and Carbo and Bishop Foy—but totally without expression, numb, paralyzed by the neuro probes that ruled out hope, erased fear, buried all expectation. Gray. Their coveralls were gray. Nothing but a sea of lifeless gray. Not a touch of color anywhere. Gray uniforms, dark skin, faces without even a spark of life to them.

Jeff could hear them breathing. He could
feel
it, almost like the sighing rhythm of the surf down on Windsong. He knew that every dome in this huge ship was layered with many decks, and each deck held thousands of colonists sandwiched between its steel plates. And all of them were standing, waiting, their minds held in paralysis by the neuro probes. None of them saying a word; just standing there, breathing and looking blankly into nothingness.

Jeff heard a gagging sound beside him and turned to see Bishop Foy's face go white. The Bishop reached out and grasped the steel railing of the catwalk with both his hands. His knees buckled. Jeff grabbed him around his frail shoulders.

"I . . . I . . ." The Bishop tried to gasp out words.

Carbo came up on his other side, his own face as white as the Bishop's, but the expression on it one of fury and self-hate.

"You were right," the Bishop said. "We must do the best we can for them. We must. God would never forgive us for anything less."

Manning seemed to politely ignore the Bishop's infirmity. "Shall I bring their Council of Elders here, do you think, or would you prefer to meet them in their own quarters?" Before anyone could answer, the bureaucrat went on, "Here is better, if you don't mind my suggesting it. Their quarters are, well, rather cramped and uncomfortable. And they all smell bad, you know."

"Are their Elders under neuro control?" Carbo snarled.

Ignoring the venom in the question, Manning answered, "No, of course not. They have been administering the controls, actually. Under my supervision, of course."

"Of course."

"Here," Bishop Foy said. "We'll . . . meet the Elders here."

Manning nodded and turned to the intercom phone set into the wall. Jeff felt the Bishop's body regain some strength. The three of them stood at the railing and stared down into the eyes of those unmoving gray masses of humanity.

"How wrong I've been," Foy muttered. "What a vain, foolish tool of pride I've been. Thank God for that stubborn conscience of yours, Holman. God has chosen you to show me the path to righteousness."

Jeff took a deep breath, his nostrils flaring slightly at the strange, almost sickening odor from the overcrowded colonists. That's as close to praise as I'll ever get from the good Bishop, he knew. And he realized that he was content with that; it was enough.

Six small, dark men clambered up a ladder and walked briskly along the catwalk to where Jeff and the others stood. They stopped a respectful five meters from the Bishop and bowed to him. As Manning introduced them, Jeff saw that each of them was of a slightly different hue, ranging from the coal-black of one of the Indians among them to the almost golden color of the one who was introduced as a Vietnamese. Their coveralls were like everyone else's, gray and devoid of decoration or any kind of insignia. But, this close, Jeff could see that they were clean and carefully pressed, even though threadbare.

"Welcome to our humble ship," said the Indian, in sing-song English. "We are enormously grateful that you have sacrificed so much merely to help us."

"No," said the Bishop, in a heartfelt tone that Jeff had never heard from him before. "It is we who must thank you for the opportunity to help do God's work."

All six of the men smiled and bowed again.

"It may be of some interest to you to know that, although the official name of this ship is the
Ghandi
, we colonists decided to give it an additional name, a more personal name, a name that meant much more to each of us. We voted on such a name—before," his voice lowered a notch, "before we had to insert the neuro probes into our brethren."

"And what name did you choose?" Bishop Foy asked.

"Hope. We call this ship, Hope."

Jeff felt as if he was going to cry. Turning away from the bowing, expectant Council, he saw that Carbo's eyes looked misty, and even Bishop Foy was blinking.

Carbo said, "We share in your hope. But we have many long years of hard work ahead of us."

"Yes, I certainly can understand that," said the Indian.

"The planet . . ." Bishop Foy began. "The planet we have all been sent to is not fit for human habitation." He said it all in a rush, as if afraid that he wouldn't have the strength to finish if he hesitated even for an instant.

The Councilmen's eyes widened. "Not fit! But how can that be?"

"What are we to do?"

"We will build our own colony," the Bishop said. His voice grew stronger, calmer. "We will build a world for ourselves, a completely Earthlike world. With God's help."

They looked at each other uneasily.

"It can be done," Carbo said. "An O'Neill-type colony, big enough to house all of us."

"But—what of children? What of the future?"

"We will build more colonies. Larger ones. It will be difficult, and we will need the help of every person among you."

"It will take an enormous amount of work," Jeff said. "You and your people will have to learn new skills, new abilities. Will you do this? Will you work with us to build a new world?"

The Indian drew himself up to his full height. Although he was a full head shorter than Jeff, he was the equal of any man there.

"Are we not human? Have we not minds and hands and hearts? Can we not be trusted to help build our own future and the future of our children?"

Jeff felt his face ease into a smile. Bishop Foy stepped up to the six men and took each hand, in turn. "God will help us in this mighty task," he said.

But Carbo had turned to stare down at the sea of blank, dark faces once again.

"Do you really mean it?" he asked. "Do you really want to be trusted with building your own future?"

"Of course we do!"

"Then turn off the damned controls!"

They were surprised by his vehemence, but Bishop Foy explained that this was the famous Dr. Carbo who had invented the neuro-electronic probe.

"And I never meant it to be used to turn human beings into cattle," Carbo growled. "Turn it off! Let them be human beings again!"

Manning began to object. "But if we do . . ."

Carbo cut him short with a murderous glance.

"Well," Manning muttered. "It's your responsibility, isn't it?"

But he picked up the intercom phone again and spoke into it briefly. Carbo gripped the railing and stared into the crowd.