There hadn’t been any rats in this tube-tunnel for a long time. although it had taken the death of four of Linc’s friends to clear the tunnel of them. The little monsters fought fiercely when they couldn’t run or hide.
Linc gripped the hilt of his only weapon, a slim blade that had once been a screwdriver. He had ground the working end down until it was a sharp dagger. Holding the plastic hilt in a suddenly sweaty palm, Linc peered into the darkness of the tunnel, looking down the spiraling steps for the glint of red, beady eyes.
If there’s too many of them —
The shadows seemed to bunch up and take shape. A person.
“Petal!” Linc shouted; and his voice echoed off the tube’s cold metal walls.
The kid jumped as if sparks from a machine had seared him.
“Peta, it’s me, Linc. Don’t be afraid.”
“Linc! Oh, Linc—” Peta scrambled up the steps and grabbed at Linc’s outstretched hand. He was breathless, sweaty, wide-eyed.
“What are you doing up here?” Linc asked. “I thought you were waiting for Magda to…”
“I’ve got to get away! Monel and his guards… they’re after me!”
Linc thought of Peta as just a kid, although all the people in the Living Wheel were exactly the same age, of course. But Peta was small, his skin pink and soft, his hair as yellow as the star that was coming toward them. He looked more like a child than a young man. Linc, whose face was bony and dark with the beginnings of a beard, towered over him.
Linc held the slim youth by both shoulders. “Listen. You’re supposed to be waiting for judgment by Magda. You can’t run away.”
Peta’s hands were fluttering wildly. “But Monel and his guards… he said I’d broken the pump on purpose. He said they were going to cast me into outer darkness!”
“He can’t do that—”
“But Magda can. He said Magda told him that’s what she was going to judge.”
Linc shook his head. “No, Magda wouldn’t make up her mind before hearing your side of it.”
Peta glanced back over his shoulder. “I was hungry. And tired. I’d been working in the tanks for a long time… everybody else had a chance to eat, but Slav said I couldn’t stop until I finished weeding my whole tank.”
“Slav knows what’s right,” Linc said. “He’s fair.”
Even in the shadowy light of the tube-tunnel, Linc could see Peta’s normally pink face had gone completely white with fright. “I know… but I stuffed the weeds I had pulled into the water trough.”
“Oh no—” Linc could feel the back of his neck tensing. “And they clogged the pump…?”
Peta nodded dumbly.
“And that’s why the pump broke, and now half the farm tanks can’t get water,” Linc finished. “Half our food supply is ruined.”
Peta’s voice was a miserable whine. “Monel came to my compartment with his guards. They took me out… said they were taking me to the deadlock to… to cast me out.”
“He can’t do that!”
“I ran away from them,” Peta babbled on. “I grabbed the stick that Monel carries and hit the guard that was holding my arm and ran away.”
“You what?”
“I… hit… the guard.” It was a tortured whisper.
“You hit him? You really struck him?” Linc sank down onto the metal step and let his head droop into his hands. Peta stood fidgeting in front of him, his mouth opening but nothing coming out except a barely audible squeak.
Looking up at him again, Linc asked, “How could you do it? If you had deliberately tried to break every rule Jerlet’s given us you couldn’t have done worse.”
“They were going to push me into the deadlock,” Peta cried.
Linc shook his head.
“Help me!”
“Help you?” Linc spread his hands helplessly. “How? Half the people will starve because you were lazy. Maybe I can fix the pump, but you know Jerlet’s laws about touching the machines. And you hit a guard. Violence! All the tales about the wars and the killings… didn’t they mean anything to you?”
“They were going to cast me out!”
“Not even Monel would do that without Magda’s judgment,” Linc snapped. “I’m no friend of his, Jerlet knows. There’s a lot about him I can’t stand. But he’d never hurt you with anything except his tongue. He and his guards were playing with you, and you were stupid enough to believe they meant what they were saying. Only Magda can give punishment, you know that.”
Peta dropped to his knees and clutched at Linc. “Help me, please! They’ll take me back for judgment—”
“That’s just what you deserve.”
“No! Please! Hide me… help me get away from them.”
Linc shook his head. “You can’t hide away, all by yourself. You’d either starve or have to steal food; Monel’s guards would catch you sooner or later. Or the rats would.”
“Please Linc! Do something. Don’t let them get me. They’ll…”
Linc pushed him away and stood up. “Come on, I’m taking you to Magda.”
“Noooo,” Peta cried.
“The best thing is to give yourself up. Maybe she’ll make your punishment easier then. I’ll ask her to go easy on you.”
“Very well spoken!”
Linc wheeled around. From out of the darkness above him, Monel and three guards came down the metal stairs. Two of the guards held Monel’s chair, grunting with each step they took. Another three guards appeared out of the shadows on the steps below them.
Monel was smiling. Once he had been as tall as Linc, but since the fall that ruined his legs and forced him to stay forever in his chair, his body had seemed to shrivel and dry out. Now he was a twisted, frail knot of anger and pain. His eyes burned in the darkness. His voice was as brittle-thin and hurtful as a bare high-voltage wire.
“Don’t look so surprised, little Peta,” he said in his thin, acid-bitter voice. “Once we saw you scramble into this tunnel it was a simple matter to set a trap for you.”
Linc bent down and, as gently as he could, lifted the wordless Peta to his feet.
“I thought for a moment,” Monel said to Linc, “that we would catch you in the trap, too. But you turned out to be a loyal friend of Magda.”
Linc said nothing. He could see in the dimness a dark welt along the cheek of one of the guards. Must be where Peta hit him.
Monel’s smile was blood-chilling. “Let’s go see Magda now. She’s waiting for her little Peta.”
3
The meeting room was filled. All the people were there; many more than the fingers of both Linc’s hands. More even than the knuckle joints on each finger.
Magda sat in the center of the meeting room, as she should. She sat on the old desk with its tiny, dead viewing screen and the pretty colored buttons alongside it. Everyone sat on the floor tiles around her, as they should. All eyes were on Magda. Even the empty shelves that lined the walls of the big room seemed to be staring at her. There were only a few ancient books left on the shelves, dusty and crumbling. They were being saved for an emergency, for a time when the cold seeped so deeply into the Living Wheel that even this last precious bit of fuel would be needed. All the other books had been used for warmth long ago, before Linc could remember.
Magda sat on the desk, her back straight, her chin high, her eyes closed. Her slim legs were folded under her in the correct manner for her duty as priestess. Her dark hair was carefully combed and glistened in the shadowless light from the ceiling panels.
She wore her priestess’s robe, and although it was threadbare and patched in places, the strange signs and lettering on it still stood out boldly: ELCTRC BLNKT, II0 v, AC ONLY. In her right hand was the wand of power and authority, which the ancients called a sliderule; in her left was the symbol of justice and compassion, an infant’s skull. Around her waist was the golden chain of the zodiac, with its twelve mysterious signs.