The Sense of Wonder by Stephen Marlowe (novels to read .TXT) 📖

and swollen, but the smooth belt that flowed with water and with savory dishes did not run any more. The machinery, Rikud realized, also was responsible for food.

Chuls said, over and over, "I'm hungry."

"We will eat and we will drink when the buzzer tells us," Wilm replied confidently.

"It won't any more," Rikud said.

"What won't?"

"The buzzer will never sound again. I broke it."

Crifer growled. "I know. You shouldn't have done it. That was a bad thing you did, Rikud."

"It was not bad. The world has moved through the blackness and the stars and now we should go outside to live in the big garden there beyond the viewport."

"That's ridiculous," Chuls said.

Even Crifer now was angry at Rikud. "He broke the buzzer and no one can eat. I hate Rikud, I think."

There was a lot of noise in the darkness, and someone else said, "I hate Rikud." Then everyone was saying it.

Rikud was sad. Soon he would die, because no one would go outside with him and he could not go outside alone. In five more years he would have had a woman, too. He wondered if it was dark and hungry in the women's quarters. Did women eat?

Perhaps they ate plants. Once, in the garden, Rikud had broken off a frond and tasted it. It had been bitter, but not unpleasant. Maybe the plants in the viewport would even be better.

"We will not be hungry if we go outside," he said. "We can eat there."

"We can eat if the buzzer sounds, but it is broken," Chuls said dully.

Crifer shrilled, "Maybe it is only variable and will buzz again."

"No," Rikud assured him. "It won't."

"Then you broke it and I hate you," said Crifer. "We should break you, too, to show you how it is to be broken."

"We must go outside—through the viewport." Rikud listened to the odd gurgling sound his stomach made.

A hand reached out in the darkness and grabbed at his head. He heard Crifer's voice. "I have Rikud's head." The voice was nasty, hostile.

Crifer, more than anyone, had been his friend. But now that he had broken the machinery, Crifer was his enemy, because Crifer came nearer to understanding the situation than anyone except Rikud.

The hand reached out again, and it struck Rikud hard across the face. "I hit him! I hit him!"

Other hands reached out, and Rikud stumbled. He fell and then someone was on top of him, and he struggled. He rolled and was up again, and he did not like the sound of the angry voices. Someone said, "Let us do to Rikud what he said he did to the machinery." Rikud ran. In the darkness, his feet prodded many bodies. There were those who were too weak to rise. Rikud, too, felt a strange light-headedness and a gnawing hurt in his stomach. But it didn't matter. He heard the angry voices and the feet pounding behind him, and he wanted only to get away.

It was dark and he was hungry and everyone who was strong enough to run was chasing him, but every time he thought of the garden outside, and how big it was, the darkness and the hunger and the people chasing him were unimportant. It was so big that it would swallow him up completely and positively.

He became sickly giddy thinking about it.

But if he didn't open the door and go into the garden outside, he would die because he had no food and no water and his stomach gurgled and grumbled and hurt. And everyone was chasing him.

He stumbled through the darkness and felt his way back to the library, through the inner door and into the room with the voice—but the voice didn't speak this time—through its door and into the place of machinery. Behind him, he could hear the voices at the first door, and he thought for a moment that no one would come after him. But he heard Crifer yell something, and then feet pounding in the passage.

Rikud tripped over something and sprawled awkwardly across the floor. He felt a sharp hurt in his head, and when he reached up to touch it with his hands there in the darkness, his fingers came away wet.

He got up slowly and opened the next door. The voices behind him were closer now. Light streamed in through the viewport. After the darkness, it frightened Rikud and it made his eyes smart, and he could hear those behind him retreating to a safe distance. But their voices were not far away, and he knew they would come after him because they wanted to break him.

Rikud looked out upon the garden and he trembled. Out there was life. The garden stretched off in unthinkable immensity to the cluster of low mounds against the bright blue which roofed the many plants. If plants could live out there as they did within the world, then so could people. Rikud and his people should. This was why the world had moved across the darkness and the stars for all Rikud's lifetime and more. But he was afraid.

He reached up and grasped the handle of the door and he saw that his fingers were red with the wetness which had come from his hurt head. Slowly he slipped to the cool floor—how his head was burning!—and for a long time he lay there, thinking he would never rise again. Inside he heard the voices again, and soon a foot and then another pounded on the metal of the passage. He heard Crifer's voice louder than the rest: "There is Rikud on the floor!"

Tugging at the handle of the door, Rikud pulled himself upright. Something small and brown scurried across the other side of the viewport and Rikud imagined it turned to look at him with two hideous red eyes.

Rikud screamed and hurtled back through the corridor, and his face was so terrible in the light streaming in through the viewport that everyone fled before him. He stumbled again in the place of the machinery, and down on his hands and knees he fondled the bits of metal which he could see in the dim light through the open door.

"Where's the buzzer?" he sobbed. "I must find the buzzer."

Crifer's voice, from the darkness inside, said, "You broke it. You broke it. And now we will break you—"

Rikud got up and ran. He reached the door again and then he slipped down against it, exhausted. Behind him, the voices and the footsteps came, and soon he saw Crifer's head peer in through the passageway. Then there were others, and then they were walking toward him.

His head whirled and the viewport seemed to swim in a haze. Could it be variable, as Crifer had suggested? He wondered if the scurrying brown thing waited somewhere, and nausea struck at the pit of his stomach. But if the plants could live out there and the scurrying thing could live and that was why the world had moved through the blackness, then so could he live out there, and Crifer and all the others....

So tightly did he grip the handle that his fingers began to hurt. And his heart pounded hard and he felt the pulses leaping on either side of his neck.

He stared out into the garden, and off into the distance, where the blue-white globe which might have been a star stood just above the row of mounds.

Crifer was tugging at him, trying to pull him away from the door, and someone was grabbing at his legs, trying to make him fall. He kicked out and the hands let go, and then he turned the handle and shoved the weight of his body with all his strength against the door.

It opened and he stepped outside into the warmth.

The air was fresh, fresher than any air Rikud had ever breathed. He walked around aimlessly, touching the plants and bending down to feel the floor, and sometimes he looked at the blue-white globe on the horizon. It was all very beautiful.

Near the ship, water that did not come from a machine gurgled across the land, and Rikud lay down and drank. It was cool and good, and when he got up, Crifer and Wilm were outside the world, and some of the others followed. They stood around for a long time before going to the water to drink.