There was a hierarchy among the convicts. Those connected with organized crime were at the top of the prestige chain. Murderers, even those poor wretches who killed in passion, were accorded more respect than thieves or kidnappers. Mere swindlers, which was Eberly’s rap, were far down the chain, doomed to perform services for their superiors whether they wanted to or not.
Fortunately, Eberly maneuvered himself into a cell where the top con was a former garage mechanic from the Italian province of Calabria who had been declared guilty of banditry, terrorism, bank robbings, and murders. Although barely literate, the Calabrian was a born organizer: he ran his section of the prison like a medieval fiefdom, settling disputes and enforcing a rough kind of justice so thoroughly that the guards allowed him to keep the peace among the prisoners in his own rough manner. When Eberly discovered that he needed a man who could operate a computer to keep him in touch with his family in their mountaintop village and the remnants of his band, still hiding in the hills, Eberly became his secretary. After that, no one was allowed to molest him.
It was the mind-numbing routine of each long, dull day that made Eberly sick to his soul. Once he came under the Calabrian’s protection, he got along well enough physically, but the drab sameness of the cell, the food, the stink, the stupid talk of the other convicts day after day, week after week, threatened to drive him mad. He tried to keep his mind engaged by daily visits to the prison library, where he could use the tightly-monitored computer to make at least a virtual connection to the world outside. Most of the entertainment sites were censored or cut off altogether, but the prison authorities allowed — even encouraged — using the educational sites. Desperately, Eberly enrolled in one course after another, usually finishing them far sooner than expected and rushing into the next.
At first he took whatever courses came to hand: Renaissance painting, transactional psychology, municipal water recycling systematics, the poetry of Goethe. It didn’t matter what the subject matter was; he needed to keep his mind occupied, needed to be out of this prison for a few hours each day, even if it was merely through the computer.
Gradually, though, he found himself drawn to studies of history and politics. In time, he applied for a degree program at the Virtual University of Edinburgh.
It was a great surprise when, one ordinary morning, the guard captain pulled him out of line as he and his cell mates shuffled to the cafeteria for their lukewarm breakfasts.
The captain, stubble-jawed and humorless, tapped Eberly on the shoulder with his wand and said, “Follow me.”
Eberly was so astonished that he blurted, “Why me? What’s wrong?”
The captain held his wand under Eberly’s nose and fingered the voltage control. “No talking in line! Now follow me.”
The other convicts marched by in silence, their heads facing straight ahead but their eyes shifting toward Eberly and the captain before looking away again. Eberly remembered what the wand felt like at full charge and let his chin sink to his chest as he dutifully followed the captain away from the cafeteria.
The captain led him to a small, stuffy room up in the executive area where the warden and other prison administrators had their offices. The room had one window, tightly closed and so grimy that the morning sunlight hardly brightened it. An oblong table nearly filled the room, its veneer chipped and dull. Two men in expensive-looking business suits were seated at it, their chairs almost scraping the bare gray walls.
“Sit,” said the captain, pointing with his wand to the chair at the foot of the table. Wondering what this was all about, and whether he would miss his breakfast, Eberly slowly sat down. The captain stepped out into the hallway and softly closed the door.
“You are Malcolm Eberly?” said the man at the head of the table. He was rotund, fleshy-faced, his cheeks pink and his eyes set deep in his face. Eberly thought of a pig.
“Yes, I am,” Eberly replied. Then he added, “Sir.”
“Born Max Erlenmeyer, if our information is correct,” said the man at the pig’s right. He was prosperous-looking in an elegant dark blue suit and smooth, silver-gray hair. He had the look of a yachtsman to him: Eberly could picture him in a double-breasted blazer and a jaunty nautical cap.
“I had my name legally changed when—”
“That’s a lie,” said the yachtsman, as lightly as he might ask for a glass of water. An Englishman, from his accent, Eberly decided tentatively. That could be useful, perhaps.
“But, sir—”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the pig. “If you wish to be called Eberly, that is what we will call you. Fair enough?”
Eberly nodded, completely baffled by them.
“How would you like to be released from prison?” the pig asked.
Eberly could feel his eyes go wide. But he quickly controlled his reactions and asked, “What would I have to do to be released?”
“Nothing much,” said the yachtsman. “Merely fly out to the planet Saturn.”
Gradually they revealed themselves. The fat one was from the Atlanta headquarters of the New Morality, the multinational fundament alist organization that had raised Eberly to manhood back in America.
“We were very disappointed when you ran away from our monastery in Nebraska and took up a life of crime,” he said, genuine sadness on his puffy face.
“Not a life of crime,” Eberly protested. “I made one mistake only, and now I’m suffering the consequences.”
The yachtsman smiled knowingly. “Your mistake was getting caught. We are here to offer you another chance.”
He was a Catholic, he claimed, working with the European Holy Disciples on various social programs. “Of which, you are one.”
“Me?” Eberly asked, still puzzled. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s really very simple,” said the pig, clasping his fat hands prayerfully on the tabletop. “The International Consortium of Universities is organizing an expedition to the planet Saturn.”
“Ten thousand people in a self-contained habitat,” added the yachtsman.
“Ten thousand so-called intellectuals,” the pig said, clear distaste in his expression. “Serving a cadre of scientists who wish to study the planet Saturn.”
The yachtsman glanced sharply at his associate, then went on, “Many governments are allowing certain individuals to leave Earth. Glad to be rid of them, actually.”
“The scientists are fairly prestigious men and women. They actually want to go to Saturn.”
“And they are all secularists, of course,” the yachtsman added.
“Of course,” said Eberly.
“We know that many people want to escape from the lives they are leading,” the pig resumed. “They are unwilling to submit to the very necessary discipline that we of the New Morality impose.”
“The same thing applies in Britain and Europe,” said the yachtsman. “The Holy Disciples cleaned up the cities, brought morality and order to the people, helped feed the starving and find jobs for the people who were wiped out by the greenhouse floods.”
The pig was nodding.
“But still, there are plenty of people who claim we’re stifling their individual freedoms. Their individual freedoms! It was all that liberty and license that led to the near-collapse of civilization.”
“But the floods,” Eberly interjected. “The greenhouse warming and the droughts and all the other the environmental disasters.”
“Visitations by an angry God,” said the pig firmly. “Warnings that we must return to His ways.”
“Which we have done, by and large,” the yachtsman took up. “Even in the bloody Middle East the Sword of Islam has worked miracles.”
“But now, with this mission to Saturn—”
“Run by godless secularists.”