The Jesus Incident Page 21

  Or a title?

  He peered out of the plaz port, looking to the left where she would have to appear if she really did run the perimeter.

  What would a Legata be?

  A voice on the sentry circuit startled him: “Someone’s out there, pretty far out.”

  Another voice answered: “It’s a woman running the P. She just rounded Post Thirty-Eight.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Too far out to identify.”

  Thomas found himself praying for her to make it as he listened to each succeeding post report the runner. But he knew there was not much chance. Since learning about The Game from Waela, he had looked into the statistics. Fifty-fifty in dayside, yes. But nightside, fewer than one in fifty made it.

  The timer beside his head moved with an agonizing slowness: 2:48. It seemed to him that it took an hour shifting to 2:49. The sentries were silent now.

  Why didn’t the sentries mark her passage?

  As though to answer him, a voice on the circuit said: “She just rounded East Eighty-Nine!”

  “Who the hell is that out there?”

  “She’s still too far out to identify.”

  Thomas drew his lasgun and put a hand on the hatchdog. The word was that the last minutes were the worst, Pandora’s demons ganging up on the runner. He peered out into the moon-shadows.

  2:50.

  He spun the hatchdog, opened it a crack. No movement. . . . Nothing. Not even a demon. He found that he was swearing under his breath, muttering: “Come on, Legata. Come on. You can do it. Don’t blow the fucking run at the end!”

  Something flickered in the shadows off to his left. He swung the hatch wide.

  There she was!

  It was like a dance—leaping, dodging. Something large and black swerved behind her. Thomas took careful aim and burned another Dasher as she sped past him without breaking her stride. There was a musky odor of perspiration from her. He slammed the hatch and dogged it. Something crashed into the barrier as he sealed it.

  Too late, you fucker!

  He turned to see her slipping through the Lab One hatchway, her singlesuit in hand. She waved to him as the hatch hissed shut.

  Legata, he thought. Then: Ten klicks in twenty-three minutes!

  There was a babble of conversation on the sentry circuit.

  “Anybody know who that was?”

  “Negative. Where’d she go?”

  “Somewhere over near Lab One dome.”

  “Sheee-it! That must’ve been the fastest time ever.”

  Thomas slapped the switch to shut them off, but not before a male voice said: “I’d sure like to have that little honey chasing . . .”

  Thomas crossed over to the Lab One hatch, heaved on the dog. It refused to move, sealed.

  All that just to put a hashmark above her eyebrow?

  No . . . it had to be much more than the mark of success.

  What were they doing down there in Lab One?

  Again, he tried the hatchdog. It refused to budge. He shook his head and walked slowly back to the autosentry gate where he picked up a servo and rode it to his quarters. All the way down he kept wondering:

  What the hell’s a Legata?

  Chapter 34

  The clone of a clone does not necessarily stay closer to the original than a clone of the older original. It depends on cellular interference and other elements which may be introduced. Passage of time always introduces other elements.

  —Jesus Lewis, The New Cloning Manual

  OAKES SNAPPED off the holo and swiveled his chair around to stare at the design on the wall of his groundside cubby.

  He did not like this place. It was smaller than his quarters shipside. The air smelled strange. He did not like the casual way some of the Colonists treated him. He found himself constantly aware of Pandora’s surface . . . right out there.

  Never mind that it was many layers of Colony construction beyond his quarters, it was right out there.

  Despite the few familiar furnishings he had brought groundside, this place would never feel as comfortable as his old shipside cubby.

  Except that the dangers of the ship—the dangers which only he knew—were more distant.

  Oakes sighed.

  It was late dayside and he still had many things to do, but what he had seen on the holo compelled his attention.

  A most unsatisfactory performance.

  He chewed at his lower lip. No . . . it was more than unsatisfactory. Disturbing.

  Oakes leaned back and tried to relax. The holo of Legata’s visit to the Scream Room filled him with disquiet. He shook his head. In spite of the drug suppressing her cortical responses, she had resisted. Nothing in her Scream Room performance could be held against her . . . except . . . no. She had done nothing.

  Nothing!

  If he had not seen it for himself . . . Would she ask to see this holo? He thought not, but nothing was certain. None of the others had asked to see their holos, although everyone knew such a record was made.

  Legata had not performed according to pattern. Things were done to her and she resisted other things. The holo gave him no absolutely secure hold on her.

  If she sees that holo, she’ll know.

  How could he keep the record of it from the best-known Search Technician?

  Was it a mistake . . . sending her into the Scream Room!

  But he thought he still knew her. Yes. She would not take action against him unless she were in great pain. And she might not ask for the holo. Might . . . not.

  Not once in the Scream Room had Legata sought her own pleasure. She had acted only in reaction to the application of pain.

  Pain that I commanded.

  This made him uncomfortable.

  It was necessary!

  Given an adversary as potent as the ship, he had to take extreme measures. He had to explore the limits.

  I’m justified.

  Legata had not even required sedation after emerging from the Scream Room.

  Where did she go, dashing off like that with only the minimal Celltape on her wounds?

  She had returned naked, carrying her singlesuit.

  Oakes had heard the rumors that someone had run the perimeter in that interval. Surely not Legata. A coincidence, no more. And the proof of it was that she wore no hashmark.

  Damn fools! Running in the open at night like that!

  He would have liked to prohibit The Game, but Lewis had warned him off this, and his own good sense had agreed. There was no way to prevent The Game without wasting too much manpower policing all the hatches. Besides, The Game vented certain impulses of violence.

  Legata running the perimeter?

  Certainly not!

  Efficient damned woman! She was expected back at work by evening, the physical marks of her Scream Room experience almost gone. He looked at the notes beside his left hand. Unconsciously, he had addressed them to her.

  “Check on possible relationship between waxing of Alki and growth of ’lectrokelp. Have Lab One begin two LH clones. Map new data on dissidents—special attention to those associated with Rachel Demarest.”

  Would Legata even take his orders now?

  The picture of Legata’s face from the holorecord kept slipping back into his mind.

  She trusted me.

  Had she really trusted him? Why else would she go back to Lab One when her misgivings about it were all that apparent? With anyone else, he would have laughed at such musings, but not with Legata. She was painfully different from the others and he had already taken her too far.

  Entertainment time.

  It had not been as entertaining as he had expected. He recalled the first potent look of betrayal in her eyes when the sonics hit her. The sonics had driven away the clones; they already had taken their entertainment. But even heavy pain had not moved Legata. Despite sedation, she could hear Murdoch’s commands. And the sedation had been designed to suppress her will . . . but she resisted. Murdoch’s commands told her what to d
o, the clone was prepared, the equipment set—but even then, she had to be totally awash with pain before inflicting anything like her own agony on the clone. Most of the time, her gaze had sought out the holo scanner. She had stared directly into the scanner, and the dimming of her eyes gave him no pleasure, no pleasure at all.

  She won’t remember. They never do.

  Most of the subjects begged, offered anything for the pain to stop. Legata simply stared at the scanner, wide-eyed. Somewhere in her, he knew, there had been awareness that she was totally helpless, totally subject to his every whim. It was a conditioning process. He wanted her to be like the rest. He could deal with that.

  But he had been unprepared for the shock of her difference. Yes, she was different. What a shock, finally discovering this magnificent difference, to know that he had destroyed it. Whatever private trust they might have had was gone forever.

  Forever.

  She would never again trust him completely. Oh, she would obey—perhaps even more promptly now. But no trust.

  He felt himself shaking with this knowledge. Tense, distracted. He had to force himself to relax, to concentrate on something which comforted.

  Nothing is forever, he thought.

  Presently, he drifted into his own peculiar arena of sleep, but it was a sleep haunted by the design on his cubby wall. The design took on distorted shapes from the holo of Legata in the Scream Room.

  And Pandora was right out there . . . and . . . and . . . tomorrow . . .

  Chapter 35

  Humankerro: “Does the listener project his own sense of understanding and consciousness?”

  Avata: “Ahhh, you are building barriers.”

  Humankerro: “That’s what you call the illusion of understanding, is it not?”

  Avata: “If you understand, then you cannot learn. By saying you understand, you construct barriers.”

  Humankerro: “But I can remember understanding things.”

  Avata: “Memory only understands the presence or absence of electrical signals.”

  Humankerro: “Then what’s the combination, the program for learning?”

  Avata: “Now you open the path. It is the program which counts in the most literal sense.”

  Humankerro: “But what are the rules?”

  Avata: “Are there rules underlying every aspect of human life? Is that your question?”

  Humankerro: “That appears to be the question.”

  Avata: “Then answer it. What are the rules for being human?”

  Humankerro: “But I asked you!”

  Avata: “But you are human and I am Avata.”

  Humankerro: “Well, what are the rules for being Avata?”

  Avata: “Ahhhh, Humankerro, we embody such knowledge but we cannot know it.”

  Humankerro: “You appear to be saying that such knowledge cannot be reduced to language.”

  Avata: “Language cannot occur in a reference vacuum.”

  Humankerro: “Don’t we know what we’re talking about?”

  Avata: “Using language involves much more than recognizing strings of words. Language and the world to which it refers . . .”

  Humankerro: “The script of the play?”

  Avata: “The script, yes. The script of the game and its world must be interrelated. How can you substitute a word or some other symbol for every cellular element of your body?”

  Humankerro: “I can talk with my body.”

  Avata: “For that, you do not need a script.”

  —Kerro Panille, The Avata, “The Q & A Game”

  Chapter 36

  The mystery of consciousness? Erroneous data—significant results.

  —P. Weygand, Voidship Med-tech

  OAKES WATCHED the sentry on the Colony scanner. The man writhed and screamed in agony. The evening light of Alki cast long purple shadows which twisted as the man flopped and turned. The Current Outside Activity circuits reproduced the sounds of the sentry with clear fidelity, terrifyingly immediate. The man might be just outside this cubby’s hatch instead of on Colony’s north perimeter as the sensor log indicated.

  The screams turned to a hoarse growl, like a turbine running down. There came a convulsive flopping, shudders, then quiet.

  Oakes found that the sentry’s first screams still echoed in memory and would not be silenced.

  Runners! Runners!

  There was no escaping Pandora anywhere groundside. Colony remained under constant siege. And at the Redoubt—sterilization was their only solution. Kill everything.

  Oakes found that he had pressed his hands to his ears trying to quiet the memory of those screams. Slowly, he brought his hands down to the scanner controls, looking at them as though they had betrayed him. He had just been running through the available sensors, scanning for any random COA which might require his attention. And . . . and he had encountered horror.

  Images continued to play in his mind.

  The sentry had clawed at his own eyes, ripping out the nerve tissue which Runners found so succulent. But he must have known what every Colonist knew—there could be no help for him. Once Runners contacted nerve tissue they could not be stopped until they encysted their clutch of eggs in his brain.

  Except that this particular sentry knew about chlorine. Had some residual hope clutched at his doomed awareness? Surely not. Once the Runners were in his flesh, that was too late even for chlorine.

  To Oakes, the most horrible part of the incident was that he knew the sentry: Illuyank. Part of Murdoch’s Lab One crew. And before that, the doomed sentry had been with Lewis on Black Dragon Redoubt. Illuyank had been a survivor—three times running the P . . . and one of those who came back from Edmond Kingston’s team. Illuyank had even come shipside to report on Kingston’s failure.

  I heard his report.

  Movement in the scanner riveted Oakes’ attention. The sentry’s backup stepped into view (not too close!) with lasgun at the ready. The backup was marked as an ultimate coward by Colony rules. He had not been able to shoot the doomed Illuyank. So the Runners’ victim had died the most miserable death Pandora could offer.

  Now, the backup aimed his gun and burned Illuyank’s head to char. Standard procedure. Cook them out. Those eggs, at least, would never hatch.

  Oakes found the strength to switch off the scanner. His body was shaking so hard he could not move himself away from the console.

  It had just been a routine scan, the kind of thing he did regularly shipside. The horror of this place!

  What has the ship done to us?

  Groundside—nowhere to turn for escape. No release from the knowledge that he could not survive on this synapse-quick world without multiple barriers and constant guarding.

  And there was no turning back. Lewis was right. Colony required constant attention. Delicate decisions about personnel movements and assignments, the shifting of supplies and equipment to Redoubt—none of this could be trusted to shipside-groundside communications channels. Pandora required swift action and reaction. Lewis could not divide his attention between Redoubt and Colony.

  Oakes pressed a thumb against the lump of pellet in his neck. Useless now. Groundside static interference limited range . . . and when that impediment lifted, as it did for brief moments, the random signals which came through proved that their secrecy had been breached.

  The ship had to be the source of those signals. The ship! Still interfering. The pellets would have to come out at the first opportunity.

  Oakes lifted a bottle from the floor beside his console. His hand still shook from the shock of Illuyank’s death. He tried to pour a glass of wine and slopped most of it over his console where the sticky red splash reminded him of blood pulsing out of the sentry’s empty sockets . . . out of his nose . . . his mouth . . .

  The three tattooed hashmarks over Illuyank’s left eye remained burned in Oakes’ memory.

  Damn this place!

  Gripping the glass with both hands, Oakes drained what little remained in it. Even that small
swallow soothed his stomach.

  At least I won’t throw up.

  He put the empty glass on the lip of his console, and his gaze swept around the confines of his cubby. It was not big enough. He longed for the space he’d enjoyed shipside. But there could be no retreat—no return to the slavery of the ship.

  We’re going to beat You, Ship!

  Bravo!

  Everything groundside reminded him that he did not belong here. The speed of the Colonists! There was nothing like that speed shipside. Oakes knew he was too heavy, too out of condition to consider keeping up, much less protecting himself. He needed constant guarding. It festered in him that Illuyank had been one of the people considered for his own guard force. Illuyank was supposed to be a survivor.

  Even survivors die here.

  He had to get out of this room, had to walk somewhere. But when he pushed himself away from the console to stand and turn around, he confronted another wall. It came to him then that the loss of his lavish shipside cubby was a greater blow than anticipated. He needed the Redoubt for physical and psychological reasons as well as for a secure base of command. This damned cubby was larger than any other groundside, but by the time they housed his command console, his holo equipment and the other accouterments of the Ceepee, he was almost crowded out.

  There’s no room to breathe in here.

  He put a hand to the hatchdogs, wanting the release of a walk in the corridors, but when his hand touched cold metal he realized how all of those corridors led to the open, unguarded surface of Pandora. The hatch was one more barrier against the ravages of this place.

  I’ll eat something.

  And perhaps Legata could be summoned on some pretext. Practical Legata. Lovely Legata. How useful she remained . . . except that he did not like what had happened deep in her eyes. Was it time to ask Lewis for a replacement? Oakes could not find the will to do this.

  I made a mistake with her.

  He could admit this only to himself. It had been a mistake sending Legata to the Scream Room.

  She’s changed.