Saturn Read Free

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