The Jesus Incident

  She reminded him now of the shipside agrarium workers. What had really impressed him out there was the difference between those workers and other Shipmen. Agrarium workers were a tight-lipped lot and always busy—sometimes noisy in their work but silent in themselves.

  That was it. Legata had become silent in herself.

  She was like the agrarium workers, containing seriousness, almost a reverence . . . not the grimness found in the Vitro labs or around the axolotl tanks where Lewis produced his miracles . . . but something else.

  It occurred to Oakes that the agraria were the only parts of the ship where he had felt out of place. This thought disturbed him.

  Legata makes me feel out of place now.

  And there was no escaping the choices he had made. He would have to live with the consequences. Choices resulted from information. He had acted on bad information.

  Who gave me that bad information? Lewis?

  What control systems reposed in the information, leading inevitably to certain choices?

  Such a simple question.

  He turned it over in his mind, feeling that it put him on the track of something vital. Perhaps it was the key to the ship’s true nature. A key somewhere in the flow of information.

  Information-to-choice-to-action.

  Simple, always simple. The true scientist was required to suspect complexity.

  Occam’s razor really cuts.

  What choices did the ship make and on the basis of what information? Would the ship openly oppose moving the Natali groundside, for instance? The move could not yet be made, but the possibility of open opposition excited him. He longed for such opposition.

  Show your hand, you mechanical monster!

  The ship can act without hands.

  But could the ship act without curiosity and without leaving clues?

  As an intelligent, questioning being, Oakes felt the constant need to sharpen his curiosity, to keep himself in motion. He might not always move smoothly—that business with Legata—but he had to move . . . in jumps and fits and starts. . . whatever. The success of his movements stayed relative to his own intelligence and the information available.

  Better information.

  Excitement shot through him. With the right information, could he design the test which would prove, once and for all, that the ship was not God? An end to the ship’s pretenses forever!

  What information did he possess? The ship’s consciousness? It had to be conscious. To assume otherwise would be to move backward—bad choice. Whatever else it might be, the ship could only be viewed as a complex intelligence.

  A truly intelligent being might move seldom, but it would move surely and on the basis of reliable information which had been tested somehow for predictability.

  Testing by large numbers or over a long time.

  One or the other.

  How long had the ship been testing its Shipmen? In a pure-chance universe, past results could not always guarantee predictions. Could the ship’s decisions be predicted?

  Oakes felt his heart thumping hard and fast. In this game, he truly felt himself come alive. It was like sex . . . but this could be even bigger—the biggest game in the universe.

  If the ship’s movements and choices could be predicted, they could be precipitated. He would have the key to quick and easy victory on Pandora. What action could he take to link the ship’s powers to his own desires? Given the right information, he could control even a god.

  Control!

  What was prayer but a whining, sniveling attempt to control. Supplication? Threats?

  If You don’t get me assigned to Medical, Ship, I’ll abandon WorShip!

  So much for WorShip. The gods, if there were any, could have a good laugh.

  Abruptly, he was sobered by memory of Illuyank’s death.

  Damn this place!

  To walk in a shipside agrarium right now . . . or even in a treedome . . .

  He remembered once nightside on the ship, walking out through the shutter-baffles to a dome on the rim, pressing his forehead against the plaz to stare into the void. Out there, stars whirled in their slow spin and he had known, beyond a doubt, that they spun around him. But, in the face of those uncounted stars, he had felt himself slipping into a maw of terrifying black. On the other side of that plasmaglass barrier, whole galaxies awoke and whole galaxies died every second. No call for help could carry beyond the tip of his own tongue. No caress could survive the cold.

  Who else in that universe was this much alone?

  Ship.

  The voice of his mind had spoken the unexpected. But he had known it for the truth. In that instant he had seen, in the plaz, the reflection of his own eyes melting into the dark between the stars. He recalled that he had stepped back in mute surprise.

  That look! That same expression!

  It had been on the face of the black man back on Earth when they took the man away.

  Remembering, he realized it was the same expression he now saw in Legata’s eyes.

  In my eyes . . . in her eyes . . . in the eyes of the black man from my childhood . . .

  Now, feeling the groundside cubby around him, all of the concentric rings of walls and barriers which comprised Colony, he sensed how his unguarded body could be betrayed.

  I could betray myself to myself.

  And perhaps to others.

  To Thomas?

  To the ship?

  No matter his denials, the mystery of deep space and inner space filled him with wonder and fear. This was a weakness and it required that he deal with it directly.

  God or not, the ship was one of a kind. As I am.

  And what if . . . Ship were really God?

  Oakes passed his tongue over his lips. He stood alone in the center of his cubby and listened.

  For what am I listening?

  He could only move by testing, by forcing the exchange, by groping beyond the ken of all other Shipmen. The key to the ship lay in its movements. Why did any organism move?

  To seek pleasure, to avoid pain.

  Food was pleasure. He felt hunger knot his stomach. Sex was pleasure. Where was Legata right now? Victory was pleasure. That would have to wait.

  Let the pains demand their own actions.

  Always the pendulum swung: pleasure/pain . . . pleasure/pain. Intensity and period varied; the balance, the mean, did not.

  What sweets would tempt a god? What thorn would lift a god’s foot?

  It came over Oakes that he had been standing for a long time in one position, his gaze fixed on the mandala pattern attached to his cubby wall. It copied the one he had left shipside. Legata had made this copy for him before . . . She had produced another in her finest hand and it already was displayed at the Redoubt. How he wished the Redoubt were ready! Demons gone, dayside and nightside safe. Many times he had dreamed of stepping out into Pandora’s double-sunshine, a light breeze ruffling his hair, Legata on his arm for a walk through gardens down to a gentle sea.

  A sudden image of Legata clawing at her eyes replaced this pastoral vision. Oakes fought for a deep breath, his gaze fixed on the mandala.

  Lewis has to destroy all of the demons—the kelp, everything!

  It required a physical effort for Oakes to break himself away from his fixation on the mandala. He turned, walked three steps, stopped . . . He was facing the mandala!

  What’s happening to my mind?

  Daydreaming. That had to be it, letting his mind wander. The pressure of all those demons outside Colony’s perimeter walls overwhelmed him with feelings of vulnerability. He had lost the insulation he had enjoyed shipside—exchanged the perils of the ship for the perils of Pandora.

  Who would ever have thought I’d miss the ship?

  The damned Colonists were too brash, too quick. They thought they could barge in any time, interrupt anything. They talked too fast. Everything had to be done right now!

  His com-console buzzed at him.

  Oakes depressed a key. Murdoch’s t
hin face stared at him from the screen. Murdoch began speaking without asking leave, without any preamble.

  “My dayside orders say you wanted Illuyank assigned to . . .”

  “Illuyank’s dead,” Oakes said, his voice flat. He enjoyed the look of surprise on Murdoch’s face. That was one of the reasons for secret random sampling among the spy sensors. No matter what horrors you found, the information could make you appear omnipotent.

  “Find someone else for my guard squad,” Oakes said. “Make it someone more suitable.” He broke the connection.

  There! That was the way they did it groundside. Quick decisions.

  The reminder of Illuyank’s death brought back the knot in his stomach. Food. He needed something to eat. He turned, and once more found himself looking at the mandala.

  Things will simply have to slow down.

  The mandala rippled before his eyes, myriad grotesque faces weaving in and out of the design, folding upon themselves.

  Belatedly, he realized that one of the faces was that of Rachel Demarest. Silly bitch! The Scream Room had driven her out of her mind . . . what was left of her mind. Running outside like that! Enough people had seen the demons get her that no blame would be laid at his hatch. One problem gone . . . but running outside . . .

  Everything reminds me of outside!

  Someone else would have to be found to make the liquor deliveries to old Win Ferry. Pure grain spirits he wanted now. And Ferry would have to get the message—no more pestering questions about that Demarest woman.

  Oakes found that his hands ached and he realized both fists were clenched. He forced himself to relax, began to rub at the beginnings of cramp in his fingers. Maybe another small drink of the wine . . . No!

  All this frustration! For what?

  Only one answer, the answer he had given Lewis so many times: For this world.

  Victory would give them their own safe world. Unconsciously, his right hand went out and touched the mandala. What a price! And Legata—historian, search technician, beautiful woman—perhaps she would be his queen. He owed her that, at least. Empress. His finger traced the maze of lines in the mandala, flowing intricacies.

  “Politics is your life, not mine,” Lewis had said.

  Lewis did not know what it cost. All Lewis wanted was his lab and the safety of the Redoubt.

  “Leave me alone here. You can proclaim and make policy all you want.”

  They were a great team—one in front and one behind.

  Maybe just a little bit of the wine. He picked up the bottle and sipped from it. This Raja Thomas would be eliminated soon. Another victim of the kelp.

  Lewis ought to drink more of this wine. They’ve really improved it.

  Oakes sipped the wine, aerated it across his tongue with a slurping sound which he knew always made Lewis uneasy.

  “You really should treat yourself to some of this stuff, Jesus. You might smooth some of those lines out of your face.”

  “No thanks.”

  “All the more for me, then.”

  “You and Ferry.”

  “No. I can take it or leave it alone.”

  “We have urgent problems,” Lewis kept saying.

  But urgency should never mean hurry, incautious rushing about. He had told Lewis in no uncertain terms: “If we’re relaxed and reasonable in our urgency to complete the Redoubt, the solutions we find will be relaxed and reasonable.”

  No need for chaos.

  He slurped more of the wine while staring at the mandala. The way those lines twisted—they, too, appeared to come right out of chaos. But Legata had found the design of it, duplicated it twice. Design. Pandora had its design, too. He just had to find it. Peel away all of this dissonance, and there would be the foundations of order.

  We’ll finish off the kelp, the Runners. Chlorine. Lots of it. Things will start making sense around here pretty soon.

  He lifted the bottle to take another sip, found that there was no more wine in it. He let the bottle slip out of his hand, heard it thump on the floor. As though that were the signal, his com-console buzzed at him once more.

  Murdoch again.

  “Demarest’s people are asking for another meeting, Doctor.”

  “Stall them! I told you tosh . . . stall them.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Murdoch did not sound very happy with the decision.

  Oakes took two stabs with a finger to break the connection. How many times did you have to give an order around this damned place?

  Once more, he focused on the mandala.

  “We’ll have some order around here pretty soon,” he told it.

  He realized then that he had taken too much wine. It sounded ridiculous, talking to himself in quarters this way, but he enjoyed hearing certain things, even if he had to be the one who voiced them.

  “Gonna get some order around here.”

  Where was that damned Legata? Had to tell her to get some order into things.

  Chapter 37

  As the rock silences the sea, the One in one silences the universe.

  —Kerro Panille, Translations from the Avata

  LEGATA PUT her shuttle on automatic for its landing at the Redoubt station. She leaned back into her couch and watched the shoreline sweep past beneath her. This time was her own. It was early dayside and she did not have to deal with Oakes or Lewis just yet, nor with demons or clones. She had nothing to do but watch, relax and breathe easy.

  Hylighters!

  She had seen them on holo, and a few had skirted Colony while she was there, but these hung no more than two hundred meters from the plaz in front of her.

  Ship’s teeth! They’re huge!

  She counted twelve of them, the largest one half again as big as her shuttle. Their bronzed orange sails caught the wind and they tacked in unison, almost escorting her. The sunlight through the membrane of their sails shimmered rainbows all over them. Most of their tentacles were tucked up against their bodies. They each held a ballast-rock with their two longest tendrils. The larger ones allowed the rocks to drag in the sea, forming a frothy wake. They tacked, and tacked again, picking up on the shifts of wind. As her shuttle settled into its final glide-path, she saw two of the smaller hylighters separate from the rest, pick up speed and slam the boulders they carried into the plaz shield surrounding Oakes’ private garden.

  Garden, she shuddered at the thought of the word.

  The boulders had no effect on the plaz—she could crash her shuttle into it and it might shatter, but rocks . . .

  The two hylighters disappeared in a flash so bright that for a few blinks she was blinded. When her vision cleared, she saw that her shuttle was down and linked with the entry lock, and that the two exploded hylighters had been a diversion. The others, all larger, slammed their rocks into the walls and plaz of the Redoubt where it had already been damaged by the clones. Each boulder chipped off a few more chunks of the buildings before the sentries focused on the sails. The other hylighters too, went up in a flash. The largest one was so close to the shuttle station when it exploded that it took part of the control tower and rigging with it.

  They give their lives for this, she thought. They are either very foolish or very noble.

  Several parts of the grounds were in flames and a work crew, covered by sentries, was busy fighting the fires. Lewis beckoned her from the plaz verandah at Oakes’ quarters and it was only then that she noticed the scorchmarks across the dome of her shuttle,

  She opened her hatch and stepped out between two sentries who escorted her along the covered way to the Redoubt. There was a strong taint of chlorine lingering over everything.

  At least we don’t have to worry about Runners, she thought.

  Over the chlorine she caught the sea-smell from the beach, and saw that the tideline had moved down several meters from its usual mark. The damp sand left behind was warmed by the suns. A heavy mist rose from it, dissipating in wisps over the rocks and the sea. She did not look at Lewis until she stepped
up to the verandah.

  “Legata,” he offered his hand, “how are you?”

  The searching expression in his eyes told her all that she needed to know.

  So that’s why I’m here, she thought. He wants to explore my current . . . utility before Oakes arrives.

  “Quite well,” she said, “that was a wonderful display the hylighters put on. Did you arrange it just for me?”

  “If I’d arranged it, it wouldn’t have cost us damage we can’t afford.”

  He led her inside and closed the hatch behind them.

  “How much damage?”

  He was leading her further inside, away from the plaz. She wanted to see the grounds, the repairs.

  “Not irreparable. Would you care for something to eat?”

  A woman with large, fanlike ears walked past them, accompanied by a normal crewman carrying a lasgun.

  “No, thank you, I’m not hungry.”

  At Legata’s response, the woman turned, looked her full into the eyes as if she wanted to say something, then turned quickly and went outside. Legata remembered that a rallying cry of the clone revolt had been I’m hungry now, and she was embarrassed.

  “Those ears . . . why?”

  “She can hear a Hooded Dasher at a hundred meters. That gives us a full second’s advantage. Attractive, too, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” Legata said coldly, “quite.”

  She noticed that Lewis was still limping, but she did not sympathize with him. Although she was curious about details of the revolt, she didn’t ask. She countered by not dropping the subject.

  “How reparable is ‘not irreparable’?”

  Lewis dropped his cordiality and assumed his usual businesslike air.

  “We lost most of our clone work force. Fewer than half of those remaining are effective. We’re getting replacements from Colony and the ship, but that’s slow work. Two of the finished hangars are badly damaged—hatches missing, holes in the walls. The clones’ quarters have their exterior walls and hatches intact, but the interiors are completely useless. Serves ’em right. Let ’em sleep on the piles of plaz.”

  “What about this building?”

  “Took some damage back where the clones’ quarters join with the storage area. They got into the kitchen but that’s where we sealed them off . . .”