The Jesus Incident Read online

  “You sealed them off?”

  Lewis glanced away from her, then back. He rubbed his nose with his finger and she was reminded of Oakes when he was nervous. When it became obvious that he wouldn’t answer, she nodded.

  “After you discovered chlorine killed the Runners, how long before you released it among the people you had sealed off?”

  “Now, Legata, you weren’t here. You didn’t see what they were. . . .”

  “How long?”

  He looked her in the eyes, but did not answer.

  “So, you killed them.”

  “Runners killed them.”

  “But you could’ve killed the Runners.”

  “Then the clones would’ve gotten inside and killed us. You weren’t here. You don’t know what it was like.”

  “Yes, I think I do. Show me to Morgan’s Garden.”

  It took all of her nerve just to say that word. Whatever that horror she had confronted at Colony, the name of The Garden would not be shaken off, even though she could not remember. But she saw it made Lewis uneasy to think about it and she would be damned if she would ease anything for him.

  Lewis was obviously shaken by the sudden reference to The Garden. It meant Scream Room to him, too. She could see the questions forming behind his eyes: How much does she know? Why isn’t she afraid? She refused to allow herself the luxury of fear. Let him see that much. Until she herself remembered what had happened, she would not allow anyone else to capitalize on her experience there.

  “Yes,” he said, his voice almost hushed, “of course. The Garden. You can relax there until Morgan comes. This way.”

  Lewis led Legata through the finished parts of the resort and into the main dwelling, a mammoth structure carved entirely out of the mottled stone of the mountainside and lined with plasteel. She turned at the entryway and looked back over the grounds and out across the sea.

  “This hatchway opens to Morgan’s quarters. The study, library and cubby are all in this unit. Further back are the meeting and dining areas, all of that. I’ll take you through them if you like.”

  She watched the pulse of waves explode against the seawall ahead of them and imagined she could hear the slap and crash of the water through the insulating plaz.

  “Legata?”

  “Yes. I mean, no, you don’t have to guide me. I’d like to be alone.”

  “Very well.” Lewis spoke abruptly, “Morgan said that you are to be comfortable. I suggest you check with me before wandering around. You may need a sentry for some of the more exposed areas. It’s still early and I’m not due back at Colony until after midmeal. Call if you need me.”

  With that, the hatch hissed shut and she was alone.

  Once more, she looked at the sea. It tumbled away forever, drawing her consciousness outward, reaching.

  There’s a power here that even Morgan can’t buy, she thought, and fought back the temptation to run past the plazzed-in trees, the flowers, and the pond, past the stream meandering through the grasses, past the protection of the compound itself and into the wild sea air of Pandora. Then she noticed the kelp. The great masses of it which had glutted the beaches and the bay outside the Redoubt were reduced to a few isolated clumps and some long, serpentine tendrils undulating at the surface. Lewis’ doing! A sudden sadness filled her eyes with tears and she whispered aloud to the kelp, “I hope they’re wrong. I hope you make it.”

  She caught a movement out of the comer of her eye and turned to see two clones working on the tower at the shuttle station.

  Morgan’s expected in, she thought, they’ll want things looking as controlled as possible.

  She looked closer at the two men, her attention caught by the fact that they were lifting and welding plaz that was at least four meters off the ground—and neither was using scaffolding.

  Those arms . . .

  She wondered, coldly, where those workers fit within the clone index and price list.

  “Cost is no object, my dear,” Murdoch had said, and something in his inflection had terrified her. This terror was rekindled by the sight of the two workers busily welding plaz.

  Anything went, she thought. My every fantasy was possible.

  Why can’t I remember?

  Whatever horrors or pleasures took place in the Scream Room were no longer a part of her consciousness. There were flashes, uncontrollable and swift, that struck her mute in mid-conversation or mid-thought. Those who worked with her attributed it to a growing absentmindedness, an offshoot of her apparent love affair with The Boss.

  She knew she could find the Scream Room holo and see for herself what she had done. Oakes taunted her with it.

  “Dear Legata,” his every corpulent pore oozed honey and oil, “sit here with me, have a nice drink, and we’ll enjoy your games in the Scream Room.”

  He laughed at first when she shuddered and turned away. It was difficult for her to keep any personal control—he’d seen to that when he’d had her trapped and helpless down in Lab One. And now the Scream Room had been moved to the Redoubt.

  The laughter died away and he had spoken to her directly and flatly, “Like it or not, you’re one of us now. You can never go back. You may never walk into that room again, but you did walk into it once. Of your own free will, I might add.”

  “Free will!” Her blue eyes flashed up at him. “You drugged me! And those . . . monsters. Where was their free will?”

  “They would have no will at all, no existence at all, if it weren’t for me. . . .”

  “If it weren’t for Ship, you mean.”

  He sighed overdramatically. She remembered that he glanced at his viewscreen and made a few adjustments on his console.

  “Sometimes I really don’t understand you, Legata. One day soon you’ll be luxuriating in the Redoubt and its exquisite pleasures, and here you are mumbling dark-ages crap about the mystical powers of Ship.”

  He had shown her a holo, then, of this garden around her now. There was no question of its beauty. It was thick with vegetation and the perfumes of countless blossoms. She turned her eyes up to the dome. The immensity and wonder of the Pandoran sky pumped a strange surge of power through her. She experienced a feeling of . . . of . . .

  Connection! she thought. Yes, no matter what he does, somehow all of this is alive in me just as I live in it now.

  At Colony the nightside before, as she had been preparing to leave for the Redoubt, Oakes had escorted her into the tiny plaz dome far above his quarters.

  “There,” he had pointed out a large white glow slowly traversing the horizon, “there is your ship. Another pinpoint in the night. It takes no mysticism, no degree of godhood whatsoever, for one bit of mass to orbit another.”

  “That’s blasphemy,” she answered, because he expected it.

  “Is it? Ship can defend itself. Nothing is out of the hearing or the reach of Ship. Ship could terminate my program at any instant—but chooses not to. Or can’t. Either is the same to me. Blasphemy?”

  He had squeezed her hand tight, then. Convincing himself, she thought, and she had enjoyed the power this observation gave her.

  He gestured widely, indicating the entire display of stars.

  “I have brought you to this, not Ship. Ship is a tool. Complexity to the fifth power, granted, but still a tool. Built by people, thinking people, for the use of thinking people. People who know how to take charge, how to see light in the darkening storm of confusion. . . .”

  As he had raved on into the night, Legata had realized that much of what he said held a surprising sense of truth. She knew that, at the bottom of whatever was happening to Shipmen both on and off Ship, it was a result of non-interference by Ship itself. But she had delved into the secrets of Ship’s circuitry for too long and too deeply to believe that Ship was a piece of steel and molded plastics, that Ship didn’t care.

  She stood in the garden at the Redoubt and looked up at what she guessed to be Ship’s position above them.

  I wonder, she thought, I won
der if we’re a disappointment.

  Two patrol drones screamed over the dome and shattered Legata’s reverie. She guessed that Oakes would be coming soon; they were gearing up for him. She realized that she should prepare too.

  Nothing, she reminded herself, is sacred.

  Then, in a sudden leap of insight during the heavy stillness following the drones, she added, but something should be. This thought was liberating, exhilarating.

  Chapter 38

  The universe has no center.

  —Shipquotes

  RAJA THOMAS stood under the gigantic semi-inflated bag of the LTA in the main hangar. Lavu’s crew had gone, turning off most of the lights. It was full nightside now. The bag was a dim orange bulk tugging gently at its tethers above him. There were great folds and concavities in it yet, but before Alki joined Rega dayside, they would be airborne, the bag as full and smooth as a hylighter.

  Except that no hylighter of that size had ever been seen.

  Thomas glanced across the dark hangar, impatient to leave. Why does Oakes want to meet me here?

  The order had been succinct and simple. Oakes was coming out especially to inspect the LTA and its attached sub before allowing them to venture into the unprotected wilderness of Pandora’s sea.

  Is he about to veto the project?

  The implications were clear: Too much Colony energy went into projects such as this one. It was contra-survival. The exterminators wanted their way. This might be the last scientific investigation permitted for a long time. Too many subs lost . . . too many LTAs. Such energy could be applied to food production.

  The contrary argument of reason found fewer listeners with every passing hour of hunger.

  Without the knowledge we gain there may never be dependable food production on Pandora. The kelp is sentient. It rules this planet.

  What did the kelp call Pandora?

  Home.

  Was that Ship or my own imagination?

  No response.

  Thomas knew he was too keyed up, too full of uncertainties. Doubts. It would be so easy to share every viewpoint Oakes put forward. Agree with him. Even some of Lavu’s crew had been picking up that muttered catch phrase which could be heard all through Colony: I’m hungry now.

  Where was Oakes?

  Keeping me waiting to teach me my place.

  The self-constructed persona of Raja Thomas dominated this thought, but there were distant echoes of Flattery in it—distant but distinct. He felt like an actor well seated in his part after many performances. The Flattery self lay in his past like a childhood memory.

  What have You hidden in the depths of the sea, Ship?

  That is for you to discover.

  There! That definitely was Ship talking to him.

  The LTA creaked against its tethers. Thomas stepped from beneath it and peered up at the sphincter leaves of the skydoor—a vast shadowy circle in the dim light. His nostrils tasted a faint bitterness of Pandoran esters in the air. Colony had found that some volatile renderings from selected demons insulated the area around them against other ravening native predators—especially against Nerve Runners. Nothing was forever, though. The demons soon developed counter-responses.

  Thomas looked back at the shadowed sub—a smooth black rock held in the tentacles of an artificial hylighter . . . a smooth black rock with glittering lines down its sides.

  Again, the LTA creaked against its tethers. There was a draft in the hangar and he hoped this did not mean some unguarded opening to Pandora’s dangerous exterior. He was unarmed and alone here except for perimeter guards at the ground-level hatches, and a watchman off somewhere brewing tea. Thomas could smell it faintly—a familiar thing but marked by the subtle differences of Pandoran chemistry.

  Am I being set up to go the way Rachel Demarest went?

  He was a doubting man but there was no doubt in his mind about the way of Rachel’s passing. It had been too convenient, the timing too good.

  Who could question it, though?

  Such things happened every day on perimeter patrol. Colony had a number for this attrition: one in seventy. It was like losses in a war. Soldiers knew. Except that most Shipmen appeared to know very little about war in the historic sense.

  They knew soldiering, though.

  He sniffed.

  A faintly sweet undertone of native lubricants drifted on the air. This made him acutely aware of how grudgingly this planet gave up any of its substance to Colony. He had seen the reports—just cutting in the wells for those lubricants had cost them one life for every six diurns. And there was a general reluctance to go for cloned replacements—an unexplainable reluctance.

  Fewer and fewer clones around, except out at that mysterious project on Dragon.

  What was Lewis doing out there?

  Why the growing split between clones and naturals? Was it something about being groundside?

  We originated on a planet.

  Was there some atavistic memory at work here?

  Why don’t You answer me, Ship?

  When you need to know, you will know without asking.

  Typical Ship answer!

  What did Oakes mean by new clones? Are You helping him on that project, Ship? Are these new clones Your project?

  Who helped you make Me, Devil?

  Thomas felt his throat go dry. There had been barbs in that response. He glanced at the sub suspended off to his left. Quite suddenly, he saw it as representing a fragile and foolish venture. Sub and LTA had been shaped to simulate a hylighter carrying its characteristic rock ballast. No matter that the sub did not look much like rock.

  I should be out preaching Ship’s demand instead of risking my ancient flesh on this venture.

  But Ship had given him no stature for this game, no platform upon which to stand.

  How will you WorShip?

  No matter the different ways Ship phrased the question, it came out the same.

  Who would listen to an unknown, self-proclaimed Ceepee awakened from hyb? He was an admitted clone, member of a minority whose role was being redefined by Oakes.

  Talk to the sentient vegetable. Did the kelp have an answer? Ship hinted at it, but refused to say definitely.

  That’s for you to discover, Devil.

  No help there. No clues on how he could open a conversation with this alien sentience. In the abstract, it was an exciting idea—talk to a life form so different from humankind that few evolutionary parallels could be drawn.

  What strange things could we learn from them?

  What could the kelp learn from him?

  Again, Thomas glanced at his chrono. This delay was getting ridiculous!

  Why do I permit it?

  By this time Waela will have our poet in her cubby.

  A deep sigh shook him.

  Processing had released Panille less than an hour before nightside. They delayed him deliberately . . . the way Oakes is delaying now. What did they have in mind?

  Waela, if . . .

  Could that be the cause of Oakes’ delay? Had Oakes discovered that Waela . . .

  Thomas shook his head sharply. Foolish speculation!

  He felt cold and exposed waiting here in the hangar, and there was no denying his uneasiness at thoughts of Waela.

  Waela and the poet.

  Thomas felt torn by his own imagination. He had never before experienced such a powerful physical attraction toward a woman. And there was in his background, dredged up from that ancient conditioning process, a terrifying drive toward possession—private and exclusive possession. He knew this ran directly counter to much of the behavior Ship had allowed . . . or promoted.

  Waela . . . Waela . . .

  He had to force a mask of distant, deliberate coolness. The delay with Panille could have been the time for preparing him to act against me. They could have been briefing him. It was necessary that Waela become intimate with this poet, peel away his masks and find . . . What?

  Panille . . . Pandora . . .

  More
of Ship’s doing?

  Waela would find out. She had her orders. She must turn this Panille inside out, peer at the center of his being. She would learn and report back to her commander.

  Me.

  Who obeyed Oakes that way? Lewis, certainly. And Murdoch. And that Legata. What a surprise to find she was the Hamill of Ship’s briefing. Did they set traps the way he had set this one for Panille?

  Waela would do it right. It must seem a fortuitous accident to Panille. The right time . . . the right conditions . . .

  Dammit! How can I be jealous? I set this up!

  He knew he was performing according to Ship’s design. And probably according to Oakes’ design. What was the relationship between Oakes and Ship?

  Blasphemous man, Oakes. But Ship allowed the blasphemy. And Oakes might be right.

  Thomas had come to suspect more and more that Ship might not be God.

  What did we make when we created Ship?

  Thomas knew his own hand in that creation. But had there been other, unseen hands in that construction?

  Who helped you make Me, Devil?

  God or Satan? What did we make?

  At this moment, it did not much matter. He was tired in body and emotions and his dominant personal hope was that Panille would see through the sexual trap and defy it. Thomas did not really expect that to happen.

  I’m doing Your job to the best of my ability, Ship.

  “A function of my Devil is to frustrate good works. Shipmen must extend themselves beyond anything they believe possible.”

  Those had been Ship’s words to him.

  Why? Because frustration helped us to succeed with Project Consciousness?

  Were they only replaying an old theme which had worked once and might work once more?

  It occurred to him then that the Moonbase director who had supervised the building and the crew preparations for that original Voidship—old Morgan Hempstead—had served this identical function.

  He was our Devil and we knew it. But now I’m Ship’s Devil . . . and best friend.

  Thomas found cynical delight in this thought. Being a friend of Ship carried special perils. Oakes might have chosen the better role. Enemy of Ship. Thomas knew his own role, though. Ship chided him with it often enough.