The chatter continued in his mind - memories or present, he did not know. His head whirled. Fragments of what appeared to be holorecords danced behind his eyes.
I've finally gone all the way - really insane.
"Not insane."
N.... I just talk to myself.
The chatter had begun to separate into discriminate pieces. He thought he recognized specific snatches of conversation, but the internal holorecord terrified him. He felt that the entire planet had become eyes and ears just for him, that he wa.... everywhere.
In fits and starts, silence returned. He felt it wash through his mind. Slowly - the creep of some small creature up a gigantic wall - he felt those other eyes and ears remove themselves from his awareness.
He was alone.
What the hell is happening to me?
No answer.
But he sensed the cadences of his mind's voice echo down a long, dark system of tunnels and corridors. He was in darkness. And somewhere in this dark was an ear to hear and a voice to answer. Waela was there. He sensed her as though he could reach out with one hand and touc....
The tentacles no longer enclosed him!
One palm touched the groun.... rock, sand. Darkness all around. Waela remained there - calm, receptive.
I've turned into some kind of a damned mystic.
"Live mystic."
That voice! It was as real as the wind he felt abruptly on his face. He knew then that he knelt on some dark ground wit.... with haze turning luminous blue all around. And he remembered, really remembered being picked up by a hylighter. Most precious memory: He nursed it as though it were his only child. Memory: a shimmering expanse of sea, narrow ribbon of coast winding itself out of sight, the most rugged mountains of Pandora lifting from the sea and plain - Black Dragon.
"Look up, Raja Thomas, and see how the child becomes father to the man."
He tipped his head and saw ripplings of bright yellow and orange in the blue mist. A whistling song astounded his ears. It was a small hylighter directly overhead in the mist. Tentacles brushed the ground around him. The mist began to thin, pushed by the breeze he could feel on his skin. He smelled floral perfumes. Visibility moved outward through air thick and warm with water vapor. He looked right and left.
Jungle.
Without knowing how it came about, he understood his surroundings: a large crater nestled in black rock, a captive cloud layer creating an inversion with protected warmth beneath the crater's rim.
One of the hovering hylighter's tentacles snaked toward him, touched the back of his left hand. It felt as warm and soft as his own flesh. A small trickle of condensation ran down the back of his neck. He looked up at the hylighter. Another tentacle dripping condensation dangled directly above him.
Calmness fled.
What's it going to do to me?
His gaze moved all around: warm blue mist.
Crack!
Far overhead, a bright flash of lightning flared horizontally across the haze. He felt the prickling presence of it along the hairs on the back of his neck and arms.
Where is this place?
"Nest."
He felt that he was not really hearing that voice. N.... it played on his aural centers the way Ship's voice played, but it was not Ship.
Still, he sensed reality in what his eyes reported. A hylighter tentacle touched his hand; another hovered over him. The jungle remained right out there. Perhaps he was seeing what he desired most: the legendary refuge, the place of the horn of plenty, where there were no worries and no passage of time: Eden.
I've taken refuge in my own mind because of Ship's decision to end us.
He ventured another look at the mist-wrapped jungle all around - mottled clumps of trees and vines with odd colors hidden in the green.
"Your senses do not lie, Raja Thomas. Those are real trees and vines. Do you see the flowers?"
The colors were blossoms - red, magenta, draping cascades of golden yellow. It was all too perfect, a delicate fiction.
"We find the flowers quite pleasant."
"Wh.... i.... talkin.... t.... me?"
"Avata talks to you. Avata also admires the wheat and corn, the apple trees and cedars. Avata planted here what was swept away and abandoned by your kind."
"Who is Avata?"
Thomas stared up at the hovering hylighter, afraid of the answer he might get.
"This is Avata!"
Visions flooded his senses: the planet in light and darkness, the crags of Black Dragon and the plains of The Egg, seas and horizon...confusion which overwhelmed his ability to discriminate. He tried to cringe away from it, but the visions persisted.
"The hylighters," he whispered.
"We choose to be called 'Avata' by you, for we are many and yet one."
Slowly, the visions withdrew.
"Avata brings Panille to help you. See?"
He swung his gaze wide and saw, on his left, another hylighter descending through the blue mist, a naked Kerro Panille clutched in a loop of tentacle. Panille swam in the air like a persistent aftervision. The hylighter dropped him centimeters from the ground. He landed on his feet and strode toward Thomas. The sound of Panille's feet scuffing in sand could not be denied. The poet was real. He had not died on the plain or been killed by the hylighters.
"You are not hallucinating," Panille said. "Remember that. This is not Fraggo. It is a trading of Self."
Thomas climbed to his feet and the trailing tentacle of his hylighter moved with him, not breaking the contact against the back of his hand.
"Where are we, Kerro?"
"As you surmised - Eden."
"You read my thoughts?"
"Some of them. Who are you, Thomas? Avata expresses great curiosity about the mystery of you."
Who am I? He spoke what was in the front of his mind: "I am the bearer of evil tidings. Ship is going to end humankind forever. We hav.... less than seven diurns."
"Why would Ship do such a thing?" Panille stopped less than a pace from Thomas, head cocked to one side, a quizzical, half-amused expression on his face.
"Because we cannot learn how to WorShip."
***
The forgotten language of our animal past conveys the necessity for challenges. Not to be challenged is to atrophy. And the ultimate challenge is to overcome entropy, to break through those barriers which enclose and isolate life, limiting the energy for work and fulfillment.
- Kerro Panille, I Sing to the Avata
FOR A long heartbeat, Hali stood immobile in the passage while she stared at Murdoch and the weapon he carried - that deadly laser scalpel. She could see Docking Bay Eight directly behind him - the freighter and escape lay there. They had less than two minutes now until the automatic system propelled that freighter into space for the long dive to Pandora. A quick glance at the unconscious Waela on the gurney beside her showed no change there, but the target of that laser scalpel appeared obvious. Hali interposed her own body between Murdoch and Waela. She heard old Win Ferry gasp as she moved.
Hali kept her attention on the scalpel, cleared her throat, and found her voice astonishingly calm. "Those things are meant to save lives, Murdoch, not take them."
"I'll be saving a lot of lives by getting rid of this TaoLini woman." His voice reminded her of that faraway time when Ship had allowed her to be confronted by Foul-breath below the Hill of Skulls.
Ship? The unspoken plea filled her mind.
Ship made no response. It all depended on her then.
Ferry had stopped the gurney two paces from Murdoch and stood now at Hali's left, trembling.
Murdoch waved the scalpel at them. "This is made to excise unnatural growth from a healthy body. Sh...." He glared at the unconscious Waela. "...defiles us."
Again, Hali found her memory filled with the faces of the Hill of Skulls - passionate eyes and violence thinly restrained behind them. Murdoch's face was one of those.
"You have no right," she said.
"I have this."
He flicked the scalpel's laser blade in a searing arc past her right cheek. "That's all the right I need."
"But Shi...."
"The ship be damned!" He took one step toward her, thrusting out with his free hand to sweep her aside.
In this instant, Ferry moved. He was so fast that Hali saw only the backwards jerk of Murdoch's chin, the blur of old Ferry's elbow. Murdoch went sprawling to the deck, the scalpel spinning from his hand. Hali was as shocked by the old man's speed as by his action. Desperation moved Ferry.
"Go!" Ferry yelled at her. "Get Waela out of here!"
Murdoch was scrambling to his feet as Ferry lunged for him.
Hali moved instinctively. She grabbed the gurney, jerked it past the struggling men. Its howling wheels grated on her senses.
How much time do we have?
And she asked herself as she swept the gurney through the Bay Eight hatch: What made Ferry so desperate?
The sealed hatch into the freighter lay directly beyond the Bay Eight opening. She wheeled the gurney across the bump of the interlock and in ten steps brought it up short against the freighter's hatch. It was then that she realized she could not escape without Ferry. He carried the freighter's transit program. She stared at the control panel beside the hatch. Without the program, the freighter would land them at Colony. Her instincts told her that something worse than Murdoch awaited them there. Without that program, they could not enter the freighter - they would be cooked alive here in the Docking Bay. Without that program, she could not switch the freighter from automatic to life-support.
The inventory in her mind stopped as she heard the panel relays click into the final stages before separation. She whirled at a grunting sound and saw Murdoch and Ferry struggling in the short passage to the freighter's hatch, Murdoch slowly pushing the old man backward toward Hali. Once more, the panel clicked. One by one, the hatches to the docking bay hissed shut. Bolts clicked into their locks, sealing the bay and the four of them from the rest of Ship.
There was a scream from Murdoch and she saw his ear skid like a fragile blossom across the red-smeared deck. It was then she realized that Ferry had recovered the scalpel. She whirled to the panel, threw it open and found a hold program key. In desperation, she hit the key.
I hope I haven't trapped us.
An ominous ticking issued from the control panel.
Ferry thrust her aside, slipped a small metal wafer into a slot in the panel. His trembling hand touched the add program key and the freighter's hatch popped open. They pushed the gurney inside and, as they moved, Waela sat up. She looked at Ferry, then at Hali, and said: "My child will sleep in the sea. Where the hylighters calm the waves to the touch of a cradle, there my child will sleep."
Her head fell forward onto her chest. They slipped her from the gurney and wrestled her gently across to a passenger couch, locked her in it. As they worked, Hali heard the freighter's hatch hiss closed. The freighter quivered. Ferry propelled her toward one of the forward control couches and they strapped in.
"You ever fly one of these?" Ferry asked.
She shook her head.
"Me neither. I had simulator experience, but that was a long time ago."
His hand hesitated over the launch program key and, before he could move, the red automatics light flashed on the board. Hali looked forward to the plaz curve nested into the bay, expecting it to separate. Nothing happened.
"What's wrong?" She felt hysteria bubbling in her throat. "Why doesn't it launch?"
"Ferry! Ekel! Shut that thing down and come back inside!"
"Murdoch," Ferry said. "Always spoiling things. He must've escaped from the bay. He's taken over the auto-pilot and we can't release the docking bolts."
"Ferry, Ekel - if we don't get TaoLini back into Sickbay, she could die. You want that on your conscience? Don't let yourselves in for trouble ove.... ."
Ferry snapped off the vocoder.
Hali took a deep breath. "What now?"
"This will either be the ride of your life or no life at all. Hang on."
Ferry cleared the console and hit the reset key, then override and manual. His finger hesitated several blinks over launch program.
"Hit it," Hali said.
He depressed the key. A powerful trembling rippled through their cabin.
Hali looked at him. She had never suspected such action and determination in old Ferry. He seemed beyond desperation, caught up in some overriding program of his own. She realized then that the old man was sober.
"If we only had a flight manual," he said.
A metallic female voice startled them, crackling from an overhead vocoder: "You have a manual."
"Who the hell are you?" Ferry demanded.
"I am Bitten. I am the system of this freighter. I am designed for conventional or conversational program in emergencies. You wish to separate from Ship, correct?"
"Yes, bu...."
A roar shuddered through the freighter. The forward plaz displayed a blinding glimpse of Rega, then a panorama of stars as they shot free of Ship. They began a slow one-eighty turn toward Pandora, and Hali saw a gaping hole that had been Docking Bay Eight. Roboxes already were swarming over the area like insects, starting repairs on the ragged edges.
"Well," Ferry muttered, "what now?"
Hali tried to swallow in a dry throat, then: "What Waela said - the cradle of the sea. Does she know something abou.... ?"
"Life support has been activated," Bitten announced. "Does the sleeping one require additional attention?"
Hali jerked around and studied her patient. Waela lay in quiet sleep, her chest rising and falling evenly. Hali unstrapped, crept back to Waela's side and ran a test series: Everything read as normal as could be expected - blood pressure up a bit, adrenaline on the high side but dropping. No medication was indicated.
Ferry's voice intruded on Hali's thoughts then as he asked Bitten for their ETA to Pandora's atmosphere.
Hali turned and stared at the planet with a growing sense of wonder. Her shipboard life was ended. The only thing she knew for sure about her life now was that she still had it.
Bitten's metallic rasping filled the cabin: "Two hours, thirty-five minutes to atmosphere. Additional twenty-five minutes for entry and docking at Colony."
"We can't dock at Colony!" Hali said. She made her way back to her seat and strapped down. "What are our alternatives?"
"Colony is the only docking station approved for this vessel," Bitten intoned.
"What about a surface landing?"
"Certain conditions permit surface landing without damage to vessel and crew. But our departure destroyed all forward landing gear and docking valves. These are not necessary at Colony."
"But we can't land at Colony!" She stared at Ferry, who sat frozen either in fear or complete resignation.
"Survival of unprotected crew elsewhere on Pandora surface not likely," Bitten intoned.
Hali felt her mind whirling. Survival not likely! She had the sudden feeling that this whole thing was high drama, something staged and unreal. She looked at Ferry. He continued to stare out the forward plaz. That was it: Ferry was acting out of character - too far out.
But Murdoch's ea.... that hole in Shi....
"We can't go back to Ship and we can't dock at Colony and we can't land in the open," she said.
"We're trapped," Ferry agreed, and she did not like the calm way he said it.
***
Behold, these are a small troop, and indeed they are enraging us; and we are a host on our guard.
- Muslim Book of the Dead, Shiprecords
"WHAT YOU'RE talking about is war," Panille said, shaking his head. He sat on the warm ground, his back against a jungle tree, moon-shadowed darkness all around.
"War?" Thomas rubbed his forehead, looked at the shadowy ground. He did not like looking at Panill...naked Pan who seemed to flow in and out of contact with native life - touching a tree here, the tentacle of a passing hylighter there. Contact, physical contact: alwa
ys touching. "Shipmen have had no experience of war for many generations," Panille said. "Clones and E-clones have no experience of it at all, not even stories or traditions. I know it only from Ship's holos."
With one moon full and another raising its pale face on the jagged horizon, Panille saw Thomas haloed against night sky, a hazy outline amidst the stars. A very disturbed man.
"But we have to take over the Redoubt," Thomas said. "It's our only hope. Shi.... Ship wil...."
"How do you know this?"
"It's why I was brought out of hyb."
"To teach us WorShip?"
"No! To acquaint you with the need to solve that problem! Ship insists w...."
"There is no problem."
"What do you mean there's no problem?" Thomas was outraged, "Ship wil...."
"Look around you." Panille gestured at the moon-shadowed basin, the gentle stirrings of the moist air in the leaves. "If you care for your house, you are sheltered."
Thomas forced himself to take a deep breath, to assume at least the outward appearance of calm. The jungle - yes, there did not appear to be any demons in this plac.... this nest, as the hylighters called it. But this place was not enough! No place was safe from Oakes or from Ship. And there was no escaping Ship's demand. Panille had to be made to understand that.
"Please believe me," Thomas said. "Unless we learn how to WorShip, we are through. No more humankind anywhere......don't want that to happen."
"Then why should we attack the Redoubt?"
"Because you say those are the last people groundside - Colony's destroyed."
"That's true, but what would you teach those people by attacking?" Panille's tone was maddeningly reasonable, a voice which kept its disturbing pace with the sounds of breeze-stirred leaves.
Thomas tried to match that tone: "Lewis and The Boss are destroying the 'lectrokelp and the hylighters. The native life is running out of time, too. Don't the.... ?"
"Avata understands what is happening here."
"They know they're being wiped out?"
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