Ship of Fools Read Online Free PDF Page B

at the lungs. We walked through a forest of skeletal trees, the dead dry leaves and branches cracking and snapping under our boots.
    “There are a lot of people who want to leave the ship,” Pär said when we were deep into the woods.
    “Where are they going to go?” I asked disingenuously. “Out the air lock?”
    Pär scowled up at me. “When we reach Antioch. You know that’s what I mean.”
    “Temporarily, or permanently?”
    “Permanently.”
    “It may not be habitable.”
    “It probably is, though, isn’t it?”
    “Yes,” I admitted. “But even if it is habitable, we don’t know what we’ll find.”
    “It doesn’t matter. These people will want to leave the ship under any and all circumstances. Join those already living there, in the extremely unlikely event we find anybody, or start their own settlement if the place is deserted. They won’t care about hardships. Anything to get off this damned ship. Permanently.”
    “Downsiders,” I said.
    Pär nodded.
    We walked on in silence for a while, our breaths like disintegrating smoke. The Snow Gardens appeared to go on for kilometers when they were in season and there was snow everywhere, the ground blanketed and the densely leaved trees heavy with snow and ice. But now the boundaries were visible—the gray walls enclosing the gardens, which were in need of basic maintenance; the dark ceiling high above us, pitted and cracked, appearing nothing at all like the vast and open sky it was in season with chaotic cloud images moving across its surface.
    We neared a wall and changed direction. Directly ahead of us was a half-burned tree, branches and trunk charred and broken.
    “There would need to be a vote,” I finally said to him.
    Pär snorted. “Yeah, but what kind? None of the downsiders would be voting.”
    “That’s true,” I said. “On the other hand, the vote would be taken not by the Executive Council, but by the full Planning Committee.”
    “Either one, we know how that vote would go.”
    “It depends on the circumstances.”
    “Crap,” Pär said with disgust. “They’d never agree to let people leave. Especially not downsiders. They need them to do the scut work—cleaning and maintenance, all the manual labor this ship needs, and needing more all the time. Not to mention providing the servants for you all.”
    He was right, of course. Over the years, the issue had come up several times in Executive Council sessions as well as in other informal discussions. With few exceptions, no one wanted to allow the downsiders to leave, unless the upper-level residents were to also leave the ship, which wasas unlikely as finding anyone alive in this solar system. Those in the upper levels were afraid to leave the Argonos after all these centuries; they were afraid they would lose the power and control they had over the downsiders. They were right to be afraid.
    “We can help each other,” Pär eventually said.
    “You said that once before.”
    “And I mean it now as much as I did then.”
    I wasn’t sure what he was after, or what he could offer in return, so I finally asked him.
    “You have shipwide access,” he said, “full authority over all systems.”
    “Not all,” I corrected. “I cannot launch weapons on my own. I cannot shut down life support. I cannot change or set course—”
    Pär shook his head in dismissal. “You have access to everything we need.”
    He said we. So he was with them, which I had already suspected. But I wondered if his we was meant to include me as well.
    “Landing ships, supplies, all of that,” he went on. “We have people who can run the loaders and navigate the shuttles. But we’ll need access codes for the shuttles, ship’s stores, fuel allocation, launch coordinates . . .” He shook his head. “Too much we can’t do on our own.” He stopped and leaned against the charred tree trunk; a pair of violet-and-indigo butterflies rose from a scarred branch and fluttered away. Pär looked up at