Over the years, Linc had gradually figured out that each little light on the screen stood for different rooms of the Living Wheel, and even different machines within the rooms. Whenever a symbol disappeared from the screen, a machine went dead somewhere. It could be a heater, or an air fan, or a cooking unit… anything. Which one stands for the pump Peta broke? Linc studied the section of the screen that represented the farming chambers.
One of the biggest thrills of Linc’s life had been the moment he realized that the straight lines on the screen stood for the wires that stretched along the passageways behind the plastic wall panels. The lines were even colored the same way the wires were: yellow, green, red, blue, and so forth. Once he had even fixed one of the wires; he found the trouble spot by noticing that one of the lines on the screen suddenly showed a flashing red light on it.
It had taken a long argument and nearly a day’s worth of meditation by the priestess before she decided that a wire was not a machine, and therefore could be touched by human hands. Linc fixed the faulty wire the way he had seen Jerlet and the servomechs do it years before, and a while room that had gone dark and cold suddenly became light and warm again.
Can I fix the pump? he asked himself, over and over again, all through the long day.
At the end of the workday he was still asking himself. He wondered about it all through lastmeal… which was noticeably skimpier than most lastmeals. And Monel was still there at the food Linc, wheeling his chair back and forth, badgering everybody.
Magda was nowhere to be seen. Which meant she had retired to her shrine to meditate.
She’s trying to reach Jerlet, Linc knew.
With Monel’s voice yammering in his ears, Linc took his food plate back to his own compartment and ate there alone. In silence.
The lights dimmed for sleeping as they always did, automatically. Linc stretched out on his bunk and felt the warmth in the room seeping away; the heaters were turned down, too, at sleep time. But Linc had no intention of going to sleep.
Now the question he asked himself wasn’t: Can I fix it? It was: Will they catch me?
He stayed silent and unmoving on his bunk for a long time, eyes staring into the darkness. Jerlet didn’t want us to tamper with the machines because we were just kids when he had to leave us. He left the servomechs to fix the machines. He didn’t want us to hurl ourselves, or mess up the machines.
Linc rose slowly and sat up on his bunk. The servomechs were supposed to keep all the machines working. But they themselves broke down and died. So there’s nobody here to fix machines. Except me.
He went to the door of his compartment and opened it a crack. The corridor outside was darkened, too. No sounds out there. Everyone was asleep.
I hope! Linc told himself.
Swiftly, he made his way down the corridor that went through the sleeping compartments, through the kitchen and the bolted-down tables and chairs of the galley, and up to the metal hatch that opened on the main passageway.
Magda and the others are wrong when they say Jerlet doesn’t want us to tamper with the machines. He wouldn’t mind if I tried to fix the pump. He wouldn’t get angry at me.
Still, Linc could feel a clammy sweat breaking out all over him. Gathering his strength, he pushed the hatch open and stepped out into the main passageway of the Living Wheel. Down at the end of the passageway loomed the huge double doors of the farm area. They were called airlocks, although Linc could never figure out how anyone could lock up air.
So far, all you’ve done is take a walk. But if they find you inside the farm section, Monel will know what you were up to.
Then he pictured Monel’s smug face with the plastic chips, smiling at Magda and telling her that she was a failure as priestess. Linc pushed down on the heavy latch that opened the airlock door.
The farms were fully lit, and the vast room was warm and pungent with green and growing smells. The air felt softer, somehow. Linc squinted in the sudden brightness and let the warmth soak into his bones. It felt good. The crop tanks stood there, row after row of them, huge square metal boxes glinting in the glare of the long overhead light tubes. The only sound in the vast high-domed chamber was the gentle gurgle of the nutrient fluids flowing through the crop tanks. The pigs and fowl and even the bees were asleep in shaded, shadowed areas across the big room.
Linc went straight to the pump that had been damaged. It looked completely normal from the outside: a heavy, squat chunk of metal with pipes going into it and out of it. But it was silent. The floor plates around it were stained, as if there had been a flood of nutrient fluid that the farmers had mopped up.
He clambered up the metal ladder to the rim of the nearest crop tank and peered in. Young corn was growing in the pebbly bed, together with something else green that Linc couldn’t identify. Nothing seemed to be wilted yet, but Linc was no farmer. Slav had said the crops would die without the nutrients that the pump provided, and the troughs criss-crossing the plastic pebbles of the tank were completely dry. The crops’ roots were sunk into those pebbles, and they were getting no nutrients.
Frowning, Linc clambered down again and stared at the pump. All right, brave hero. Now how do you fix it? Linc realized that he didn’t even know how to get the pump’s casing off so he could examine it.
Jerlet would know. But Jerlet never answered Magda’s questions; he only spoke the same old words. Linc squatted down and stared at the pump. It sat there, silent and dead. Beyond it, on the far wall of the chamber, Linc could see a dead viewing screen. No one had used it since Jerlet had left them; it was a machine that only Magda could touch.
Linc focused his eyes on the distant screen. Suppose I called Jerlet and just asked him how to fix this pump? If he didn’t want me to touch it, he could tell me. He frowned. Another voice in his head asked, What makes you think Jerlet will answer you, when he doesn’t answer the priestess?
“If he doesn’t answer,” Linc whispered to himself, “that means he doesn’t want me to touch the pump.”
Yes, but to try to reach him means that you’ll have to touch the viewing screen controls. That’s just as bad as tampering with the pump.
Linc had no answer for that. He walked across the big empty room and stood in front of the wall screen. A tiny desk projected out from under the screen. It had three rows of colored buttons on it. Some of the colors on the buttons had been chipped away. That’s where Monel got his colored plastics!
There was no chair at the desk. Linc looked down at the buttons, then up at the screen, then down at the buttons again.
“Jerlet wouldn’t mind me calling him,” he told himself. “Besides, if Monel can touch the buttons, why can’t I?”
Still, as he reached out for the biggest of the buttons, his outstretched hand trembled. Swallowing hard, Linc jabbed at the button.
The screen glowed a pearly gray.
No face showed on it, no picture of any sort, nor any sound. But it was alive! It glowed softly.
“Jerlet,” Linc blurted. “Can you hear me?”
The screen did nothing. It merely kept on glowing. Frowning, Linc called Jerlet’s name a few more times. Still no response. Impatiently, he started pressing the other buttons, jamming them down in haphazard fashion. The screen flashed pictures, lights, swirling colors. But no Jerlet. “Jeriet! Jerlet, answer me! Please!” After a few frantic minutes, a booming voice said: