by Ben Bova
Professor DeVreis was up again. “Minister Kobryn, you have sentenced several thousand men, women and children to permanent exile. We naturally reject this decision in its entirety. It is completely antithetical to the spirit of the world government and the liberty of mankind. We demand a fair and open hearing before the Council of Ministers, the Assembly, and the World Court.”
Kobryn’s face hardened. His giant image loomed over the frail old man. “You do not understand. The decision has been made. It is final. There is no appeal. We will begin transporting you to the orbital station tomorrow.”
The viewscreen went blank, leaving them all sitting there stunned into silence.
10
By mid-afternoon the next day, a dozen men and their families had been taken from the villa by silent men in unmarked uniforms. The Kaufmans and the Sutherlands were the first to go.
Take the leaders first and the rest are easy to handle, Lou said to himself.
He wandered through the villa aimlessly. Everybody seemed to be in shock. People huddled in small groups, family groups mostly, talking in low and frightened tones. Lou was alone, a complete outsider. No family, not even his girl.
Again and again a shining black minibus would pull up the driveway and two men would get out. Unsmilingly, they would go through the rambling old house until they found the person they were looking for. A few moments of conversation, and then a family would follow the men out to the driveway, wide-eyed and shaken, to be bundled into the minibus and whisked away.
Lou stood on the balcony above the main entrance and watched one of the buses grind up the driveway, swaying top-heavily, and then swing out onto the road kicking up a plume of dust. It had showered the evening before, but the land was bone dry again this afternoon. Lou looked up. The sky was bright, but off on the sea horizon there were black clouds building up again.
A sleek little turbocar was coming down the road toward the villa, top down, two men in the front seat. It swung into the driveway in a flurry of dust and skid-screeching wheels, and pulled up to the entrance. Sitting next to the driver was the Norseman. He glanced up at the balcony and grinned.
“Very cooperative of you to be waiting for us,” he called to Lou. “Will you join us, please?”
Despite himself, Lou felt startled. It’s my turn already.
“Mr. Christopher,” the Norseman said, “you won’t try anything foolish, I hope.”
Lou glared at him. Without a word of answer he turned and went inside to find the stairs that led down to the front hall.
The sky was filling up with thunderheads and the late afternoon sunlight had that threatening, electrical yellow cast, with the damp sweet smell of an impending storm. It was cool and exhilarating in the back seat of the convertible, the wind clean and strong, tearing at your hair and clothes, making you squint your eyes and press your lips shut as the car roared along. They had come down the dusty coast road and turned onto a broad plastisteel throughway. For many miles the convertible was the only car on the road, but gradually the traffic built up. Now Lou could see the towers of a city off among the distant hills, and big trailer trucks were whizzing along beside them on air-cushion jets, streaking toward that city.
Lou knew better than to ask questions. Conversation from the back seat of the speeding car was next to impossible anyhow, even if they could or would answer. He simply sat there, enjoying the wind and watching the clouds blot out the sunshine and make the countryside look dark and gloomy.
Take a good look, he told himself. It’s probably the last time you’ll ever see any of this.
They barely beat the rain. The convertible, still top down, threaded through a maze of elevated highways at the city’s outskirts and then dove into a tunnel as the first big drops splattered on Lou’s bare legs. The tunnel must have had acoustic insulation of some sort, because even though the car didn’t slow down, the roar of its turbine didn’t echo and thunder the way it would have in a normal tunnel. They pulled into an underground garage and stopped in front of an unmarked doorway. The Norseman got out and held the door open for Lou. As soon as they were both out of the car, the driver revved the engine and drove off.
The Norseman led Lou into the building, down a hallway, and to an elevator that was waiting with its door open. He was watching Lou warily, and stayed slightly behind him, out of reach, as Lou stepped into the elevator cab. Then he walked in, flicked a finger at the topmost button on the control panel, and the doors swished shut.
As the elevator slid smoothly upward, the Norseman turned to Lou. “I understand that you people are being moved to a satellite.”
“We’re being exiled,” Lou said, feeling his anger returning.
“Yes, so I heard.”
“For life.”
The Norseman nodded.
“Whole families. Several thousand people.”
“I know… I’m sorry.”
“Did you know it when you brought me here from the States?”
He shook his head.
“Would it have made any difference to you if you had known what they were going to do with us?”
The Norseman looked at Lou. “I was only doing my job…”
“Would it have made any difference?” Lou insisted.
“Well… no, I don’t suppose it would have.”
“Then don’t tell me you’re sorry.”
“But…”
“Stuff it.”
The elevator stopped and the doors slid open. Lou had expected to see a hallway, a corridor. But instead he stepped directly into a huge, sumptuously furnished room. Thick red carpeting, a long conference table surrounded by tall comfortable chairs, all in the rich brown of real wood. Two of the walls were a smooth cream color, a third was splashed with an abstract mural. The far end of the room was plastiglass, but all Lou could see through the windows was mist and the streaks of raindrops. There was a massive desk near the windows, its black leather swivel chair unoccupied at the moment. The air felt cool and clean, the room even seemed to smell of authority and power.
“You will wait here,” the Norseman said.
Lou turned back and realized that his escort hadn’t gotten out of the elevator. The doors slid shut with a soft sigh.
Completely puzzled, Lou walked across the big room to the windows. His steps made no sound on the luxurious carpet. It was raining so hard now that the city was only a blurred gray outline. Then Lou heard a door open. He turned and saw a smiling middle-aged man enter. He was shorter than Lou, stocky but not yet turning soft. H is hair was still thick and dark, although his forehead had started to recede. He wore a light business suit.
“Mr. Christopher, a pleasure to meet you,” he said, gesturing toward one of the plush chairs by the desk.
He spoke with a European accent of some sort, Lou couldn’t place it. And Lou had the feeling that he had seen this man before, on Tri’-V newscasts, perhaps.
“My name is Rolf Bernard,” he said, taking the chair behind the desk. “That probably means nothing to you. The Finance Ministry is often behind the news, but seldom in it.”
“Of course,” Lou said. “The Minister of Finance.”
Bernard smiled. “You know my name? I am flattered.”
“I… uh…”
“Yes. You are wondering why you are here. It is very simple. Not everyone in the Council of Ministers is a monster, Mr. Christopher. The decision to exile you and your colleagues was not a unanimous one, I assure you.”
Lou felt more puzzled than ever.
“Mr. Christopher, I will come directly to the point. There is nothing I can do to save your friends from exile. Even as Minister of Finance, I am powerless to stop this cruel and degrading action.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “At this time.”
Lou felt his innards tighten. “What do you mean?”
“I am totally against this decision to exile the geneticists,” Bernard said, his voice firm. “There are a few others on the Council of Ministers who agree with me. We do not
have sufficient power to reverse the decision of the Council, but we will not sit by idly and watch this happen without taking steps to correct the situation.”
“But, I don’t see…”
“How can you see? No one is certain of anything at this point in time. Except for this: I am certain that a few of my fellow Ministers will work together to free your comrades and bring justice out of this exilement.”
Lou nodded.
“Now then, as a more concrete action, I am prepared to offer you an escape from exile.”
“Escape?”
“Reprieve, parole, whatever word you wish to use.”
“What do you mean?”
Smiling broadly now, Bernard said, “There is no way for me to save any of the geneticists or biochemists. Not now, at any rate. But you are not a geneticist nor a biochemist. I can take… eh, certain action, that will remove your name from the list of those who are to be exiled.”
“What? How…”
Bernard stopped him with an upthrust hand. “Never mind how. Believe me when I say that it can be done. You need not be exiled to the satellite station. There are a few others, also, who I can slip out of the lists and save.”
“But the geneticists?”
Shaking his head sadly, “Nothing can be done to save them, at present. Rest assured, they will be comfortable enough in the satellite. Physically, at least. And also be assured that powerful men, myself included, will be working night and day to rescue them and return them to their rightful places here on Earth.”
Lou sank back in his chair. His head was starting to spin. Everything was happening so fast.
“Now then,” Bernard went on, “you realize of course that your Institute has been permanently closed, as have all the leading genetics laboratories around the world. There are still plenty of geneticists and biochemists, plenty of working laboratories, left on our planet. But the best people, the leaders, the elite —they have been exiled. In this manner, the government hopes to stifle the progress of your science.”
“In the name of stability,” Lou muttered.
“Yes. You understand, I trust, that the government will not allow you to begin work at any of the genetics laboratories that have been left open. If they learn that you are working in this field, they will take you again and exile you. Or perhaps kill you.”
“But…”
The big smile returned, and somehow it began to look slightly wolfish to Lou. “Hear me out. I have taken the liberty of starting a small genetics laboratory of my own—safely tucked away from prying eyes. You and several others whom I am able to save from exile can work there. I will try to bring some of the best geneticists and biochemists available to work with you. They will not be the leaders of their fields, of course, but they will be the best of those who have escaped exilement. Your work can go on while we try to end the exile of your friends.”
Lou could hardly believe what he was hearing. “After all that’s happened over the past few days… it’s… well, meeting a sane man in the government is a jolt.”
Bernard laughed. “It is not so much that I am sane; I am unafraid. The others on the Council fear your science. They seek safety in stability and order. I welcome change. I welcome your science. Without progress, the world will sink into barbarism.”
For the first time since the marshal had arrested him, Lou felt himself really relaxing. He grinned at the Minister of Finance. “You don’t know how important those words are.”
Nodding, Bernard added, “I have also taken the liberty of bringing some of the equipment and animal stock from various laboratories to my new location. I understand one of your animals is a gorilla that can talk! Absolutely marvelous!”
“Big George,” Lou murmured. “He’s okay.”
“Yes, the gorilla is healthy.” Bernard seemed amused, “Apparently he was asking for you.”
Lou nodded.
“Now you must realize,” Bernard went on, hunching forward at the desk, his face grown serious, “that my laboratory is a private, even a secret affair. None of the other Ministers know about this. It is located on an island, and once you are safely there, you will not be allowed to leave. Until, that is, the entire business of the exile is settled.”
“But why secret?” Lou asked. “Why don’t you tell the world about the exile? Why keep everything hushed up? That’s just what the government wants.”
“My dear young friend, this is a very complicated business, and the stakes we are playing for are extremely high. If we make the smallest mistake, we will lose everything. You must trust me to do what is best. At the proper time, the world will learn what has happened, I assure you.”
“Well,” Lou said. “Okay, I guess you know more about this than I do.”
“Fine!” Bernard started beaming again. “Now, is there anything else you will need to continue your work? We have already dismantled your computer and are bringing it to the new laboratory.”
Before he realized what he was saying, Lou blurted, “There’s a computer programmer—her name’s Bonnie Sterne. She…”
“You want her at the new laboratory?”
“Yes, but she’s not one of the exiles. She’s in Albuquerque. And she might not want to come—”
Bernard waved his objections away. “She will come. I know women a little better than you do. If we tell her that you are safe and want her to be with you, she will come.”
Lou felt almost numb as he left Bernard’s office. The Norseman met him at the elevator again and guided him back to the waiting car. Lou felt as if his mind was somehow stuck in neutral gear. So much had happened. So much to absorb.
As he sat in the back seat of the car, driving through the chilling late afternoon rain, he tried to tell himself that he should feel happy. At least Bernard was on his side, on the side of justice and reason. Okay, so living on this island will be an exile of sorts, too. But at least you’ll be working, and Bonnie’ll be there. What more do you want?
But somehow it didn’t work. Lou didn’t feel happy at all, just vaguely uneasy, wary. And then he realized that he didn’t have the faintest idea of where they were driving him.
11
The new laboratory was on an island; all right. A Pacific island, Lou guessed, from the number of Orientals around the place. Most of the office people were Chinese or Malay. Half the computer programmers were Japanese.
Lou had been flown in the same day he had talked to Minister Bernard. They wasted no time. Anton Kon was on the plane with him, the only other passenger. Most of the trip was made at night, so neither Kori nor Lou could tell where they were going, except that they had been heading roughly southeastward when the sun set. The crew—two Arabic-looking pilots and a black engineer—said nothing to them.
Lou and Kon were separated at landing. A Chinese, about Lou’s own age, drove him in an open-topped turbowagon from the jet landing pad through a narrow dark road that seemed to be cut into a jungle. He pulled up at a plastic prefab dormitory building and showed Lou to a room on the ground floor. Not much furniture, but the bed was comfortable and Lou was asleep before he had even taken off his shoes.
The next morning, breakfast was brought to him by the same Chinese.
“The director of the laboratory asked me to convey his greetings to you,” he said “He requests that you enjoy yourself this morning in any way you desire. He will meet you here for lunch. At noon precisely.”
Lou glanced at his wristwatch.
“I took the liberty of setting it correctly for you.”
Looking up sharply at him, Lou asked, “While I was asleep?”
The Chinese nodded, with the faintest trace of a smile on his otherwise impassive face.
So Lou spent the morning walking around the island. It was small, no more than a half-dozen kilometers long, and half that wide. It was really nothing more than a pair of heavily-wooded hills poking out of the water. The trees were palms and other tropical species that Lou couldn’t identify.
The sun w
as hot, but the ocean breeze was beautiful. The place really was a tropical island paradise.
There were lovely white sand beaches all the way around the island, and a coral reef further out where the surf broke, except for a small inlet at one end. Lou saw a fair-sized, air-cushion ship resting in the gentle swells of the inlet. There was a dock there and a few plain white buildings. Slightly away from the buildings was the jet landing pad, a square of well-kept grass. The plane was gone now. There was no runway for bigger jets anywhere on the island, the vertical landing type were the only planes that could come down.
The dormitory building was at the opposite end of the island, connected to the inlet by the single road out through the trees. In the middle of the island, set into the fairly flat area between the two hills, were the laboratory buildings.
The labs were tucked away in the shade of tall trees. There were six buildings in all, filled with the bustling, nearly frantic action of men unpacking huge crates of equipment and working hard to set them up as quickly as possible. Their shouting and hammering drove Lou away very quickly. He only stayed long enough to make certain that they weren’t damaging the equipment that they were handling. They weren’t. They knew what they were doing.
And then, as he passed between two of the labs, Lou heard a scratchy hoarse voice calling.
“Uncle Lou!”
He looked and saw Big George standing erect, his huge arms upraised so that his hands rested on the top of the nine-foot wire screen fence that stood between them. The fence bulged dangerously under his weight.
“Hey, Georgy!” Lou felt his face stretch into its biggest smile in days as he ran toward the fence.
The gorilla jumped up and down and slapped his sides with excitement “Uncle Lou! Uncle Lou!”
“Georgy, you okay?” Lou asked as he reached the fence.
“Yes, yes. Strangers scared me at first, but they are very nice to me. It was lonesome, though, without you or any of my other friends.”
“Well, I’m here now. Everything’s going to be okay, Georgy. Come on down to that gate over there and I’ll get you out of this compound.”