“This is your captain speaking,” said a woman’s voice from the speakers set above each display screen. “We have gone into a rendezvous orbit around the habitat. In three minutes we will be docking. You’ll feel a bump or two: nothing to be alarmed about.”
The thump jarred all the passengers. Eberly gripped his seat arms tightly and waited for more. But nothing else happened. Except -
His innards had settled down! He no longer felt sick. Gravity had returned and he felt normal again. No, better than normal. He turned to the woman sitting beside him and studied her face briefly. It was a round, almost chubby face with large dark almond eyes and curly black hair. Her skin was smooth, young, but swarthy. Eberly judged she was of Mediterranean descent, Greek or Spanish or perhaps Italian. He smiled broadly at her.
“Here we’ve been sitting next to each other for more than six hours and I haven’t even told you my name. I’m Malcolm Eberly.”
She smiled back. “Yes, I can see.” Tapping the name badge pinned to her blouse, she said, “I’m Andrea Maronella. I’m with the agrotech team.”
A farmer, Eberly thought. A stupid, grubbing farmer. But he smiled still wider and replied, “I’m in charge of the human resources department.”
“How nice.”
Before he could say more, the flight attendant asked them all to get up and head for the hatch. Eberly unstrapped and got to his feet, happy to feel solid weight again, eager to get his first glimpse of the habitat. The inner terror he had fought against dwindled almost to nothing. I won! he exulted to himself. I faced the terror and I beat it.
He politely allowed Maronella to slide out into the aisle ahead of him and then followed her to the hatch. The sixteen men and women filed through the hatch, into an austere metal-walled chamber. An older man stood by the inner hatch, tall and heavyset; his thick head of hair was iron gray and he had a bushy gray moustache. His face looked rugged, weather-beaten, the corners of his eyes creased by long years of squinting in the open sun. He wore a comfortable suede pullover and rumpled tan jeans. Two younger men stood slightly behind him, clad in coveralls; obviously underlings of some sort.
“Welcome to habitat Goddard,” he said, with a warm smile. “I’m Professor James Wilmot. Most of you have already met me, and for those of you who haven’t, I look forward to meeting you and discussing our future. But for now, let’s take a look at the world we’ll be inhabiting for at least the next five years.”
With that, one of the young men behind him tapped the keyboard on the wall beside the hatch, and the massive steel door swung slowly inward. Eberly felt a puff of warm air touch his face, like the light touch of his mother’s faintly remembered caress.
The group of sixteen department leaders started through the hatch. This is it, Eberly thought, feeling a new dread rising inside his guts. There’s no turning back now. This is the new world they want me to live in. This huge cylinder, this machine. I’m being exiled. All the way out to Saturn, that’s where they’re sending me. As far away as they can. I’ll never see Earth again.
He was almost the last one in line; he heard the others oohing and aahing by the time he got to the open hatch and stepped through. Then he saw why.
Stretching out in all directions around him was a green landscape, shining in warm sunlight. Gently rolling grassy hills, clumps of trees, little meandering streams spread out into the hazy distance. The group was standing on an elevated knoll, with a clear view of the habitat’s broad interior. Bushes thick with vivid red hibiscus and pale lavender oleanders lined both sides of a curving path that led down to a group of low buildings, white and gleaming in the sunlight that streamed in through the long windows. A Mediterranean village, Eberly thought, set on the gentle slope of a grassy hill, overlooking a shimmering blue lake.
This is some travel brochure vision of what a perfect Mediterranean countryside would look like. Far in the distance he made out what looked like farmlands, square little fields that appeared to be recently plowed, and more clusters of whitewashed buildings. There was no horizon. Instead, the land simply curved up and up, hills and grass and trees and more little villages with their paved roads and sparkling streams, up and up on both sides until he was craning his neck looking straight overhead at still more of the carefully, lovingly landscaped greenery.
“It’s breathtaking,” Maronella whispered.
“Awesome,” said one of the others.
Eberly thought, A virgin world, untouched by war or famine or hatred. Untouched by human emotions of any kind. Waiting to be shaped, controlled. Maybe it won’t be so bad here after all.
“This must have cost a bloody fortune,” a young man said, in a strong, matter-of-fact voice. “How could the consortium afford it?”
Professor Wilmot smiled and touched his moustache with a fingertip. “We got it in a bankruptcy sale, actually. The previous owners went broke trying to turn this into a retirement center.”
“Who retires nowadays?”
“That’s why they went bankrupt,” Wilmot replied.
“Still… the cost…”
“The International Consortium of Universities is not without resources,” said Wilmot. “And we have many alumni who can be very generous when properly approached.”
“You mean when you twist their arms hard enough,” a woman joked. The others laughed; even Wilmot smiled good-naturedly.
“Well,” the professor said. “This is it. This will be your home for the next five years, and even longer, for many of you.”
“When do the others start coming up?”
“As the personnel board approves applicants and they pass their final physical and psychological tests they will come aboard. We have about two-thirds of the available positions already filled, and more people are signing up at quite a brisk pace.”
The others asked more questions and Wilmot patiently answered them. Eberly filtered their nattering out of his conscious attention. He peered intently at the vast expanse of the habitat, savoring this moment of discovery, his arrival into a new world. Ten thousand people, that’s all they’re going to permit to join us. But this habitat could hold a hundred thousand easily. A million, even!
He thought of the squalor of his childhood days: eight, ten, twelve people to a room. And then the merciless discipline of the monastery schools. And prison.
Ten thousand people, he mused. They will live in luxury here. They will live like kings!
He smiled. No, he told himself. There will be only one king here. One master. This will be my kingdom, and everyone in it will bend to my will.
VIENNA: SCHÖNBRUNN PRISON
More than a full year before he had ever heard of habitat Goddard, Malcolm Eberly was abruptly released from prison after serving less than half his term for fraud and embezzlement.
The rambling old Schönbrunn Palace had been turned into a prison in the aftermath of the Refugee Riots that had shattered much of Vienna and its surroundings. When Eberly first learned that he would serve his sentence in the Schönbrunn he had been hopeful: at least it wasn’t one of the grim state prisons where habitual criminals were held. He quickly learned that he was wrong: a prison is a prison is a prison, filled with thugs and perverts. Pain and humiliation were constant dangers; fear his constant companion.
The morning had started like any other: Eberly was roused from sleep by the blast of the dawn whistle. He swung down from his top bunk and waited quietly while his three cell mates used the sink and toilet. He had become accustomed to the stench of the cell and quite early in his incarceration had learned that complaints led only to beatings, either by the guards or by his cell mates.