The Enterprise was still seventeen days out from Antioch when I returned to the chamber to check on the bishop's progress with his new machine. I wanted to know what it was; I needed to be ready.567Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHQ7KVMGvXC
After stepping inside the chamber and closing the door quietly behind me, I stood motionless in the darkness and listened. I couldn't hear anything except a distant ticking sound that could have been metal cooling, or water dripping, or maybe something else altogether. The air was cooler, with a hint of moisture.
I switched on my hand torch and made my way through the chamber, choosing a path by guesswork; there were no lights or sounds to guide me this time, although I knew the general direction. Twice I thought I heard something, footsteps perhaps, but both times when I stopped to listen I heard only the faint ticking nd other ambient sounds.
At last I reached familiar territory---the two large cylinders and the corroded metal structure I had crawled through the last time I had been here. Once again I was perched above the open bay. This time, however, there was only a silent, lifeless structure below me; no bishop, no other men.
There was no easy way down, so I worked my way around the upper edge of the bay to the far end and the ramp leading down into it from a large, open corridor. I walked down the ramp, my footsteps echoing dully, and approached the massive structure. It seemed dead and somehow incomplete. Maybe the bishop had abandoned it and moved on to other projects.567Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡE7SCenzECt
A metallic scraping noise startled me, followed by a cry of pain. I swung around, sweeping the torch beam across a jungle of broken machinery surrounding the bay. The light caught a pair of eyes that tried to pull back. I steadied the beam and held it on the face of a boy staring down at me from above a mound of twisted wire and metal. The boy tried to shift to the side, then back again, but his foot and leg were caught in the wire, and it seemed that the more he struggled against it, the deeper his leg went.567Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmX7QZi1hL8
"Don't be afraid," I said to him. "It's all right. I'm not going to hurt you."567Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLGfQKJzZgJ
But the boy kept struggling, and there was panic in his eyes. I guess that either he didn't understand me or he didn't believe me.567Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmOD5V3dyfI
I moved the light away from his face and walked back up the ramp, then worked my way toward him. I stopped when I was still several meters away, and aimed the light at the tangle of metal and wire that trapped his leg. I tried talking to him again.567Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwevDTZuuV2
"I wont' hurt you. I just want to help you get your leg free. Do you understand me?"
I moved the light up just enough so that its halo faintly illuminated his face. The panic had changed to defiance, but I was sure the fear was still there, camouflaged. He couldn't have been more than thirteen or fourteen years old.567Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr61jm7dz7R
"My name's Pavel," I said. "What's yours?"
The boy finally spoke. "Let me see your face," he demanded.
I swung the torch around and lit up my face from below.
"You look weird," he said. "What's the metal behind your neck?"
"That's just part of my exoskeleton."
"What's that?"
"A special support for my body, for my back and neck. My spine is.....defective." I tried again. "What's your name?"
He hesitated, grimaced, and then said: "Charles."
"A saint's name." An automatic response, which I immediately regretted. The boy's grimace twisted even more.
"Yeah, that's what my mom told me. But I'm no saint, and I never will be."
I turned the light back onto his trapped leg and started slowly forward. "Let me help you with that. You don't want to get stuck in this place. No one would ever find you in here, and you'd starve to death."
"You found me," Charles said. "And that big bald guy would come around pretty soon. I wouldn't starve."
"The big bald guy? You mean the bishop?"
"I don't know." I was right next to the boy now and I could see him shrug. "He comes here and other places, and he builds machines."567Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWjNrleFchn
Yes----he builds machines. I knelt beside the boy and aimed the light down into the chaotic webwork of metal and wire. His leg was buried in it to midthigh.
"Any idea what this machine does?" I asked the boy.
"No, not really. Makes a weird sound and it gets real hot. But it doesn't go anywhere. He likes those old machines; he likes to make them work."
"You don't know who the bishop is, do you?"
"No."
"Have you ever been to the cathedral?" I began carefully pulling and pushing at the wire around his thigh, creating a gap around his trouser leg.
"That's the big church, right?"
"Right."
"I've never been there." He paused and I could almost sense him staring down at me. "Your arms aren't real."567Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiBYJlOaAaf
"They're real," I replied. "They're just not flesh and muscle and bone."
"They're not real," he insisted.
I nodded, smiling to myself. "I guess you've got a point."
"And there's something wrong with your foot."
'Yes, club foot. I was born that way."
"Your body's pretty messed up."
"Yes. But I get by just fine. No, don't move your leg yet; hold still until I tell you to pull." A twisted metal rod had become wedged against his knee. I couldn't get a good grip on it, but I pulled at it anyway. My fingers slipped; I grabbed the rod again, grip better this time, and managed to pry a few centimeters away from his leg.
"All right, trying pulling your foot out now, slowly.567Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHoCywn0X6Z
The leg came up a bit, but his foot was caught almost immediately. It was stuck underneath a bundle of corroded wire.
"Can you straighten your ankle and twist your foot round to the right a little?"
There was some slight movement, but he stopped. "It hurts,' he said.
"All right, let me work on it some more." I lay down on my stomach and stretched my arm far down, grabbed the bundled wire, and pulled. There's a lot of strength in my prosthetic fingers and arms; suddenly the wires broke apart and the boy's foot came free. He pulled his leg and foot all the way out and stumbled backwards. He sat down on a metal bench that was attached to a dark blue apparatus littered with broken rubber belts.567Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOur8y6wW8c
"Are you all right?" I asked.
Charles nodded. "Foot still hurts, but that's all."
I sat beside him. "Do you think you can walk?"
He snorted. "Sure, I can walk."
"Now, just what were you doing in there, young man?"
The boy shrugged. "Looking around."
"Do you come here often?"
"Sometimes. And other places like this. I like them."
"How about school?"
Charles barked out a laugh. "What's the point of that?"
"Do your parents know you come here?"
"I don't have any."
I hesitated, feeling a sharp pain of recognition in my chest. "No parents at all?"
Charles didn't answer me r ight away. He looked down at his feet and rubbed his left ankle.
"No father," he said finally. "My mother's sick. They say she's dying and they won't let me see her. I haven't seen her in a long time."
"Who're you living with, then?"
"Nobody."
"Nobody?"
"I can take care of myself."
Yes, I thought, he probably could. But that wasn't excuse enough for a thirteen-year-old boy to be living alone. "Don't you have other family? Sisters or brothers or aunts and uncles? Grandparents?"
"Yeah, but they don't really want me." He shrugged again. "I don't want them either, so it kind of works out."
I didn't believe him, but I said nothing. Then I noticed he had a light.
"Don't you have a hand torch or some kind of light?" I asked.
"I dropped it back there when I got stuck."
I climbed across the mount of wire and searched for it with my own light. Far inside I saw what might be another hand torch; I lay down and tried to dig for it. But it was well beyond my reach; I realized there was no way I could ever get to it.
"I can't reach it," I said. "We'll go out together."
The boy didn't respond. When I turned around to ask him where I should take him, he was gone. I swung the light around, among the hulks of old machines, between hanging cables and rusting metal rods, but saw no sign of him. He couldn't have gone far.
"Charles."
I listened carefully, but I didn't hear anything.
"Charles." Louder this time. Again no response and no sound of movement.
I knew he was nearby, motionless and silent, cloaked in shadows. I was also fairly sure that if I searched long enough I'd find him. But he didn't want to be found, and I felt I should honor his wishes. There was something about the boy that reminded me of myself.
I stood watching and listening, still reluctant to leave him, but his wishes were clear.
"Goodbye, Charles," I finally said. "I hope I'll see you again."
There was still no response, so I headed out on my own.
Like Charles, I have no parents. Certainly there was a woman who gave birth to me (the bishop and the Church forbade all use of artificial wombs), and certainly there was a man who fathered me, in either the "natural" way or as a donor---probably the former, although the use of artificial insemination would have been far easier to conceal than the use of an artificial womb. So I almost certainly had parents of some kind, but I have never known who or what they were.567Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqDR1rqmYCi
I was born an orphan, presumably because of my deformities, and was raised communally by a small circle of families high within the social and command structures of the ship, which leads me to suspect that my parents were among that circle, or at least had some influence.567Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡavsjvRsaqI
I'm almost sure that my deformities were known well before my birth, but for some reason I wasn't aboard (the Church's strictures against abortion did not seem to stop most convenience terminations). I imagine there are a number of people who later regretted that decision ,whatever the reasons for it at the time. This always gave me some degree of satisfaction.567Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKQEPR4Ed0r
The people who were my parents may still be alive. I doubt that it would have been difficult to discover who they are, or were, but I never tried. They decided to abandon me at birth, so I've returned the favor throughout my life. As far as I'm concerned, they no longer exist, and never did.567Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLQSgTq8UHE
