Waela moved her tongue against her teeth. She felt that she had lost track of time. She had been out of her body in some new place, but now she knew her body better than ever before. Images. She recalled the earlier, more terrible moments off the south coast of The Egg when she had sprawled on a kelp leaf, fighting for her sanity. This recent experience in the gondola was not the same, but one partook of the other. In both, she felt the aftermath as a loosening of her identity and a mixing of linear memories, shaking bits of her past out of place.
Thomas unfastened his seat restraints, stood and peered out through the filtering plaz. He felt that something had reached into his psyche and drained away the energy. What are we doing here? How did we get here?
There was no sign of hylighters.
What are Avata?
The gondola had been deposited in a broad pocket of flat land surrounded by a rock rim. The place looked vaguely familiar. The outline of the west ri.... He stared at it, caught up in a fugue state of attempted recollection.
"Where are we?" That was Waela.
His throat was too dry to respond. It took a moment of convulsive attempts to swallow before he could speak.
".... think we're somewhere near Oakes' Redoubt. Those rock...He pointed.
"Where's Kerro?"
"Not here."
"He can't be outside. The demons!"
She stood and stared all around over the obstructing panels of instruments, craning her neck to peer every direction. That fool poet! She looked up at the hatch. It was still open.
In that instant an LTA drifted over the rim of rocks to the west; the glare of Rega setting ringed it in a golden halo. The LTA was valved down to a landing beside the gondola, the hiss of its loud vents stirred up the dust. The gondola was a conventional landside type, armored against demons and studded with weapons. The side hatch opened a crack and a voice called from within: "You can make it if you run! No demons near."
Hastily, Waela stood and slipped into her suit. It was like putting on familiar flesh. She felt her sense of identity firming.
I must not think about what has happened. I'm alive. We're rescued.
But somewhere within her she thought she heard a voice crying names: "Kerr.... Ji.... Kerr.... where are you?"
There was no answer, just Thomas insisting that she follow only after he had tested the outside. Damn fool! I'm faster than he is. But she went quietly up the ladder behind him, watched him slide down the smooth plaz curve of the gondola, then followed on his heels. The rescue hatch of the other gondola swung wide as they reached it, and they were jerked inside by two pairs of hands. They were in familiar red shadows with the Shipmen at defensive stations all around the interior.
Waela heard the hatch slammed and dogged behind her, felt the gondola lift, swinging. There was the humming of a scanner as it passed over her body. A voice at her ear said: "They're clean."
Only then did she realize that she stood in a sealed-off bubble within the rescue gondola. This spoke of only one threat: Nerve Runners!
There were Runners in the area.
She felt a deep sense of gratitude for the Shipman who had scanned them, risking contact with Runners. Turning, she saw a long-armed monstrosity only vaguely Shipman in shape.
"We take you Lab Oneside," he said and his mouth was a toothless black hole.
***
In a fit of enthusiastic madness I created a rational creature and was bound towards him to assure, as far as was in my power, his happiness and well-being. This was my duty, but there was another still paramount to that. My duties towards the beings of my own species had greater claims to my attention because they included a greater proportion of happiness or misery.
- Dr. Frankenstein Speaks, Shiprecords
THOMAS STRETCHED himself in the hammock of a cell and watched a fly creep its way across his ceiling. There were no ports in this cell, no chrono. He had no way of estimating the time.
The fly skirted the protrusion of a sensor eye.
"So we brought you, too." Thomas spoke aloud to the fly. "It wouldn't surprise me to find a few rats skulking around this place. Non-human rats, that is."
The fly stopped and rubbed its wings. Thomas listened. There was a steady stream of footsteps up and down the passage outside his locked hatch. It had been locked from the outside, no handle in here.
He knew he was somewhere within Oakes' infamous Redoubt, the fortress outpost on Black Dragon. They had taken all of his clothing, every possession, leaving him with a poorly fitted green singlesuit.
"Quarantine!" he snorted, still talking aloud. "At Moonbase we called it 'the hole.'"
Some of those footsteps outside were running. Everything was rush-rush here. He wondered what was happening. What was going on over at Colony? Where had they taken Waela? They had told him he was headed for debriefing. It turned out to be a quick once-over by a strange med-tech and isolation in this cell. Quarantine! Before they had closed the hatch, he had glimpsed a sign across the way: "Lab One." So they had a Lab One here, to.... or they had moved the other one from Colony.
He was aware of the sensor eye prying at him from the ceiling. The cell was spartan - the hammock, a fixed desk, a sink, an old-style composting toilet without seat.
Once more, he looked at the fly. It had progressed to the far corner of the cell.
"Ishmael," he said. "I think I'll call you Ishmael."
...his hand will be against every man and every man's hand against him, and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.
Ship's unmistakable presence filled Thomas' head so suddenly that he clapped his hands over his ears in reflex.
"Ship!" He closed his eyes and found that he was near tears. I can't give in to hysteria! I can't!
Why not, Devil? Hysteria has its moments. Particularly among humans.
"There isn't time for hysteria." He opened his eyes, brought his hands away from his ears, and spoke in the general direction of the ceiling sensor. "We have to solve Your problem of WorShip. They won't listen to me. I'll have to take direct action."
Ship was relentless: Not MY problem! Your problem.
"My problem, then. I'm going to share it with the others."
It is time to talk of endings, Raj.
He glared at the sensor, as though that were the origin of the presence in his head.
"You mea.... break the recording?"
Yes, it is the time of times.
Was that sadness in Ship?
"Must You?"
Yes.
So Ship really meant it. This was not just another diversion, another replay. Thomas closed his eyes, feeling his voice go slack in his throat, his mouth dry. He opened his eyes and the fly was gone.
"Ho.... long do w.... how long?"
There was a noticeable pause.
Seven diurns.
"That's not enough! I might do it in sixty. Give me sixty diurns. What's such a sliver of time to You?"
Just that, Raj: a sliver. Annoying, the way it works its way into the most sensitive area. Seven diurns, Raj, then I must be about other business.
"How can we discover the right way to WorShip in seven diurns? We haven't satisfied You for centuries an...."
The kelp is dying. It has seven diurns until extinction. Oakes thinks it will be longer, but he is mistaken. Seven diurns, then, for you all.
"What will You do?"
Leave you to the certainty that you will wipe yourselves out.
Thomas leaped from his hammock, shouted: "I can't do anything about it in here! What do You expect fro.... ?"
"You in there! Thomas!"
It was a male voice from a hidden vocoder. Thomas thought he recognized the voice of Jesus Lewis.
"Is that you, Lewis?"
"Yes. Who are you talking to?"
Thomas looked up at the sensor in the ceiling. "I have to talk to Oakes."
"Why?"
"Ship is going to destroy us."
Let you destroy yourselves. The correction wa
s gentle but firm in his awareness.
"Was that what you were shouting about? You think you were talking to the ship?" There was derision in Lewis' tone.
"I was talking to Ship! Our WorShip is all wrong. Ship demands that we learn how t...."
"Ship demands! The ship is about to be put in its proper place, a functiona...."
"Where's Waela?" He shouted it in desperation. He had to have help. Waela might understand.
"Waela's pregnant and she's been sent shipside to the Natali. We don't have birthing facilities here yet."
"Lewis, please listen to me, please believe. Ship awakened me from hyb to put you all on notice. You don't have much time left t...."
"We have all the time in this world!"
"That's it! And this world has only seven more diurns. Ship demands that we learn the proper WorShip befor...."
"WorShip! We can't waste time on such nonsense. We have to make a whole planet safe to live on!"
"Lewis, I have to talk to Oakes."
"You think I'm going to bother the Ceepee with your babblings?"
"You forget that I'm a Ceepee."
"You're insane and you're a clone."
"Unless you listen to me, you're headed for destruction. Ship will break th.... it will be the end of humankind forever."
"I have my orders about you, Thomas, and I'm going to obey them. There's only room for one Ceepee here."
The hatch behind Thomas popped open and he whirled to see the yellow dayside lights of the passage framing an E-clone sentry there - giant head, round black hole for a mouth, huge arms that hung nearly to his ankles. The eyes were glaring red and bulbous.
"You!" A growling voice issued from the round black hole. "Out here!"
One of the massive hands reached in, closed around Thomas' neck and jerked him out into the passage.
"WorShip. We have to learn how to WorShip," Thomas croaked.
"I get tired a hearin' that WorShip crap," the sentry said. "You're movin' out." The sentry released his neck and gave Thomas a violent push down the passage.
"Where are we going? I have to talk to Oakes."
The sentry lifted one of his arms, pointed down the passage. "Out!"
"Bu.... ."
Another push sent Thomas stumbling. There was no resisting the strength of this clone. Thomas allowed himself to be herded down the passage. It curved to the right and ended at a locked hatch. The sentry took one of Thomas' arms in a relentless grip, opened the hatch. It swung wide to reveal the open ground of Pandora in the harsh cross-lighting of Alki swinging low on the horizon to his left. A sudden push from the clone sent Thomas sprawling into the open and took his breath away. He heard the hatch slam closed. Somewhere above him, he heard the distant fluting of a flock of hylighters.
They've sent me into the open to die!
***
And the Lord said, "Behold, the people is one, and they have all one languag.... and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do. Let us go down and confound their language that they may not understand one another's speech."
- Christian Book of the Dead, Shiprecords
FROM THE instant the first tentacles brushed her face to the moment she boarded the shuttle for Ship, Waela lived in a blur of past-present-future which she could not control. Kerro was gone and Thomas was not available, this much she knew. And contact with the hylighters had left her with a voice in her mind. It flared there in flashes of total demand. She wavered between accepting the voice and believing herself insane.
The voice of Honesty would not answer, but this new voice intruded without warning. When it came, she felt herself filled with the same conceptual ecstasy she had felt in the gondola.
It is the Avata way of learning.
The voice kept repeating this. When she questioned, answers came, but in a jargon which confused her.
Like electricity, humanwaela, knowledge flows between poles. It activates and charges all that it touches. It changes that which moves it and moves within it. You are such a pole.
She knew what the words meant, but they went together in a confusing way.
And all the while, she remained vaguely aware of the processing procedure when the rescue gondola deposited them at Colony. Thomas was taken away somewhere and she was rushed into a medical unit for debriefing. The session was run by Lewis - astonishing!
It was right there that the first demanding flash hit her.
Waela. I have found the Avata.
She knew there was no sound, but the voice filled her sense of hearing. It was Kerro Panille, no denying it. Not his voice, but his identity recognized in an internal way which could not be disguised. She knew it as she knew herself. But she didn't even know that Kerro was alive!
I'm alive.
Then he had found some way of reaching ou.... or of reaching in.
Either that or I'm insane, she thought.
She did not feel insane as she stood in the Medical section's glaring tile-white cubicle looking across a metal table at Lewis. Hands supported her. It was nightside; she knew this. Rega had been setting and they had brought her directly in here. Lewis was speaking to her and she kept shaking her head, unable to answer him because of that voice in her mind. An older med-tech said something to Lewis. She heard three words. "...too soon fo...."
Then the whirl of that intruding voice returned. She was uncertain whether she recognized words - or whether it really could be called a voice - but she knew what was being said. It was a non-language, and she knew this when she found that she could not distinguish between "I" and "We" in Kerro's communication. A language barrier was down.
In that instant of recognition, she knew Avata as Kerro Panille knew Avata. She wondered how she learned this lesson, this ancient bit of human history.
How did I learn, Kerro Panille?
What is done to one is felt by all, humanwaela.
"Why am I humanwaela?" She asked it aloud and saw an odd expression come over the face of Lewis as he turned from talking to the med-tech. This did not bother her. She felt her mind drifting lazily in Pandoran wind. There were mutterings and headshakings among people around her - med-techs, several of the.... an entire team. She filtered them out. Nothing was more important than the voice in her mind.
You are humanwaela because you are at once human and at once Waela. There may be such a time as this is not so. Then you will be human.
"When will that be?"
The cold node of a pribox drilled the back of her left hand, tingled up her arm and sent her down a whirlwind of dis-timed memories which were not her own.
When you know all that otherhumans know, and otherhumans know all of you, then you are human.
She concentrated on that magnificent universe of the interior which this concept opened before her. Avata. She had no sensation of time while she floated in the arms of Avata, or whether Avata was really with her. If it was just a dream, she wanted it never to end.
Only you can end it, humanwaela. See?
Memories poured into her - from that first sensory awareness of the first Avata to the coming of Shipmen to Pandora and then to her rescue from the gondola - everything poured into her through a timeless flash, a non-linear stream of sensations.
This is not hallucination!
She saw humans, Shipman/humans of many suns, and uncounted histories which died with them. It baffled her how she understood this. Ho.... ?
She heard the voice in her mind: This we trade with those we touch. Lives of all humans alive in each of you. But you and humankerro are the first to recognize the trade. Others resist and fear. Fear erases. Humanthomas resists, but out of humanfear, not out of humanthomas fear. There is something he will not trade.
Waela found herself eavesdropping through another's eyes. She was looking in a mirror and the face that looked back was Raja Thomas. A shaking hand explored the face, a wan face, tired. She heard a voice which she knew to be Ship's.
Raj.
Then there we
re no more mind pictures. He blanked her out. Rejected.
She found herself alone on a gurney in a Redoubt passage.
So Thomas is on speaking terms with Ship.
"Why?" The question was a dry crackle in her throat and a nearby med-tech bent over her. "You'll be shipside soon, dear. Don't worry." The gurney's straps hurt her breasts.
This is Pandora, humanwaela. All evil has been released here.
There was that voice again. Not Kerro. Avata?
The word tingled on her tongue as med-techs began to roll her gurney onto a shuttle. There was another face above her then - dream or reality? Small, a face like Lewis, but not Lewis. The voices all around were babble. She was being wheeled, pushed and probed, but her attention remained with the voice in her mind and the link she had seen to that intricate chain of humanity.
"She's pregnant. That means shipside, the Natali. Orders."
"How long's she been pregnant?"
"Looks like more'n a month."
That can't be! she thought. I've just arrived here and Kerro an.... .
She felt a doubled awareness of time then - one told her she had arrived at the Redoubt late in the same diurn that had seen their sub enter the lagoon. The other time-sense lived in her abdomen, and the clock there had gone ma.... spinning, spinning, spinning. It raced completely out of pace with the clock in her head.
"She'll be the Natali's problem pretty soon," someone said. Those were words in her ears. Time out of sync was more important. From the time Kerro had slipped into her....
The time was out of phase. She knew only that she must be delivered shipside to the Natali. That was the way of WorShip.
How can that be, Avata?
She felt that she was meant to be pregnant and the act of conception was an Avata formality.
As the hatchway opened to the shuttle the lean-faced man took hold of the gurney and she saw that it was one of Murdoch's people, a long-fingered clone who spoke in a falsetto. A shock of fear jolted her body.
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