The Jesus Incident Read online

  “Morgan, may I have a drink, too?”

  Her voice sounded small and weak against the background of the mural—yet she had created this mural. A gift. He had thought: She wants to please me. But now . . . there was always something other than pleasing in the way she looked at him. What had she really meant with this painting? Was it to please him or disturb him? He stared at it. The painting was a splash of colors, much larger than the mandala for his new offices here. She called it: “Struggle at suns-set.”

  The mural recreated a scene they had witnessed earlier on holo: Colonists at a construction site near the sea fighting back a sudden swarm of hylighters. One Colonist dangled by a leg in mid-air, wide-eyed . . . Horror or hallucination? The doomed man pointed an accusing finger out of the painting directly at the observer. This detail had escaped Oakes before. He stared at it.

  All the construction sites, the drilling sites, the mine heads—all of them were shut down now. Everything depended on the Redoubt.

  Why did that figure in the painting look accusing?

  “A drink, please, Morgan?”

  He did not have to turn to know her expression, the tongue flickering out to wet her lips. What was she planning? He pressed the dispenser key for two drinks. The Scream Room had left its imprint on her, no doubt of that, but instead of making her more trustworthy . . . it had . . . What? He did not like the eagerness in her request for a drink. Was she going the way of that damned Win Ferry? Her report on Ferry was unsettling. They had to have somebody shipside they could trust!

  Oakes returned to her side, handed her one of the drinks. The suns-set was shading into dark purples with a few streaks of rose higher in the sky.

  “Is this the way I have to buy your favors now?” He focused on her drink.

  She managed a smile. What did he mean by that question? Coming here had been far more difficult than she had imagined. Even armed with the new knowledge in her possession . . . even fleeing the turmoil at Colony-—very difficult. A new Lab One with Lewis in charge was being built only a few blinks away, buried in the rocks of the Redoubt.

  I’m free of that. I’m free.

  But now she knew it would take more than conscious awareness of what had happened to her, much more, before she could feel completely liberated. Oakes still had his grasping hand in her psyche.

  Her fingers trembled as she sipped from the glass he had handed her. It was pungent and bitter, a distillation, but she could feel it soothing her.

  When the right time comes, Morgan Lon Oakes.

  Oakes touched her hair, stroked her head. She did not lean toward him or away.

  “In another few diurns,” he said, “all that will remain of the kelp will be holo approximations and our memories. If we’re right about the hylighters, they won’t endure much longer.” He glanced out the plaz where the after-glow of the setting suns had left golden luminescence in the sky and two fans of shadowy lines radiating upward from beyond the curve of the sea. “None too fond, eh, Legata?”

  She shuddered as his fingers touched a nerve in her neck.

  “Cold, Legata?”

  “No.”

  She turned and her gaze fell on the mural. Sensors had ignited low illumination to compensate for the shadows filling the porch. The mural. It drank her mind.

  I did that. Was it real or dream ?

  She stared into the mural at the world of her dreams, that peculiar soothsayer of the mind called imagination—a world Oakes could never see without the intervention of someone like herself.

  Again, she shuddered, recalling the holorecord which had inspired the painting: the eerie moanings of the hylighters and the whoosh and thump when they exploded, the tortured screams of burning Colonists. Even as she recalled the scene, she imagined the smell of burning hair. It seemed to fill the porch. She tore her attention away from the mural and stared out at the sea—all darkness out there except for a distant white line glowing along the horizon. It looked threatening, more threatening than her memories.

  “Why did we have to build so near the sea?” she asked.

  The question was out before she could think about it and she wished she had suppressed it.

  The drink. It loosens the tongue.

  “We’re high above the sea, my dear, not very near at all.”

  “But it’s so big and . . .”

  “Legata! You helped draw the plans for our Redoubt. You agreed. I recall your words clearly: ‘What we need is a place to get away, a safe place.’”

  But that was before the Scream Room, she thought.

  She forced herself to look at him. The dim illumination erased the soft edges of his features and left the shadows controlled by his skull.

  What other plans does he have for me?

  As though he heard the question in her mind, Oakes began to speak, addressing her reflection in the plaz.

  “As soon as we get matters orderly down here, Legata, I’ll want you to make a few trips back to the ship. We’ll have to keep an eye on Ferry until we can find a replacement.”

  So he still needs me.

  It was clear now that he feared going shipside more than he feared the terrors groundside. Why? How does Ship threaten him? She tried to imagine herself as Oakes back in his cubby shipside, completely surrounded by the presence of Ship. Not the ship. Ship! Did Oakes, after all, believe in Ship?

  He put an arm around her waist. “You agreed, my dear.”

  She forced herself not to cringe, fearful of the artificial kindness in his tone, afraid of unknown plans he might have for her. What was the reasoning behind his decisions?

  Perhaps there is no reason.

  The futility of this thought frightened her even more than Morgan Oakes did. Morgan Lon Oakes. Could it be that . . . clones and the wild creatures of Pandora . . . and Shipmen—that so many died merely because Oakes acted without reason?

  He has his reasons.

  Once more, she looked at her mural. What did I paint there? The doomed man stared back at her—the eyes, the melting flesh, the pointing finger, all screamed: You agreed! You agreed!

  “You can’t kill all of the creatures on this planet,” she whispered, and shut her eyes tight.

  He removed his arm from her waist. “Pardon me, Legata. I thought you said ‘can’t.’”

  “I . . .” She could not continue.

  He took her arm above the elbow the way Murdoch had grasped her at the Scream Room! She felt him guide her across the porch, and she opened her eyes only when her shins touched the red couch. Firmly, he pressed her down into the cushions. She saw that she still clutched her drink, some of it still sloshing in the glass. She could not look up at Oakes. She was shaking so hard that small splashes of the drink jumped out of the glass to settle on her hand and thigh.

  “Do I make you nervous, Legata?” He reached down to stroke her forehead, her cheek.

  She could not answer. She remembered the last time he did this and began to cry silently, her shoulders stiff, tears flowing quietly down her cheeks.

  Oakes dropped to the couch beside her, took the drink from her hand and put it somewhere aside on the floor. He began to massage the back of her neck, working the stiffness out of her shoulders. His fingers, his precise medical touch, knew where to reach her and how to ease through her defenses.

  How can he touch me like this and be wrong?

  She leaned forward, almost totally relaxed, and her elbow touched a damp spot on her thigh where she had spilled her drink. She knew in that instant that she could resist him . . . and that he would not expect the way of her resistance.

  He does not know about the record I hid shipside.

  His fingers continued to move so expertly, so full of pseudo-love.

  He doesn’t love me. If he loved me he wouldn’t . . . he wouldn’t . . . She shuddered at a memory of the Scream Room.

  “Still cold, my dear?”

  His practiced hands pulled her gently down onto the couch, eased the tensions from her throat and breast.r />
  If he loved me, he wouldn’t touch me this way and frighten me the way he does. What does he really want?

  It had to be more than sex, more than her body which he knew how to ignite with such sureness. It had to be something far more profound.

  How strange, the way he could go on talking to her at a time like this. His words seemed to make no sense whatsoever.

  “. . . and in the recombinant process itself, we have gained an interesting side effect to the degeneration of the kelp.”

  Degeneration! Always degeneration!

  Chapter 45

  Avata informs through the esoteric symbols of Avata’s history reduced to dreams and to images which often can be translated only by the dreamer, not by Avata.

  —Kerro Panille, History of the Avata

  THERE’S NO reason to panic yet, Waela told herself.

  Other subs had lost their LTAs and survived. The drill was spelled out by those experiences.

  Still, she found herself trembling uncontrollably, her memory focused on her escape from the depths at the south shore of The Egg.

  I escaped before. I’m a survivor. Ship, save us!

  Save yourself. That was the unmistakable voice of her own Honesty. Certainly. She knew how to do it. She had taught the procedure to Thomas by repeated drill. And Panille appeared to be a cool one. No panic there. He was watching the screens, estimating the extent that the downed LTA bag was covering them.

  Strange that it drifted straight down.

  “There has to be a vertical current in this lagoon,” Panille said, as though answering her thought. “See how the fabric has draped itself over us.”

  Thomas had watched the fabric cover them, sinking all around the sub to enclose them in an orange curtain which cut off their view of the kelp.

  There’s no way the LTA could have been brought down by lightning, he thought. The bag was grounded to its anchor cable. It was compartmented. Breaking half the compartments would not have brought it down. There still would have been enough lift to take off the stripped-down gondola.

  Somebody doesn’t want us back.

  “I think we could begin cutting away the fabric now,” Panille said. He touched Thomas on the shoulder, not liking the way the man sat staring fixedly at the screens.

  “Yes . . . yes. Thank you.”

  Thomas lifted the nose of the sub then and extruded the cutters. Whiplike arc burners, they slipped from hull-top compartments and began their work. The plaz dome above them glowed with silvery blue light from the burner. Thomas saw the orange curtain part and drift down, stirring up a fog of sediment.

  “Do you want me to do it?” Waela asked.

  He shook his head abruptly, realizing that she too must have noted his funk. “No. I can handle it.”

  The procedure was direct: release the slip-tackle which linked them to the anchor cable, fire the blast bolts which freed the command gondola from the carrier, blow the tanks and ride the gondola to the surface. Once on the surface, the gondola would stabilize automatically. They could fire their radiosonde then and set their locator beacon. From there, it was a matter of waiting out the arrival of a relief LTA.

  The sense of failure was large in Thomas as he began the escape procedure. They had barely started the communications routine . . . and the plan had been a good one.

  The kelp could’ve answered.

  They all felt the jolt of the blast bolts. The gondola began to lift from the split carrier. Rising out of it like a pearl from an oyster, Thomas thought.

  As they lifted, the kelp lights once more came into view through the open areas of the plaz walls.

  Waela stared out at the winking lights. They pulsed and glowed in spasmodic bursts which sparked a memory just at the edge of awareness.

  Where have I seen that before?

  It was so familiar! Lights almost all green and purple winking at her . . .

  Where? I was only down in the . . .

  The memory returned in a rush and she spoke without thinking.

  “This is just like the other time when I escaped. The kelp lights were very much like that.”

  “Are you sure?” Thomas asked.

  “I’m sure. I can still see them there—the kelp separating and opening a way to the surface for me.”

  “Hylighters are born in the sea,” Panille said. “Maybe they think we’re a hylighter.”

  “It may be,” Thomas said. And he thought: Is that what we were supposed to see, Ship?

  There was a certain elegant sense in the idea. Colony had copied the hylighters to give the LTAs free access to Pandora’s skies. Hylighters did not attack an LTA. Perhaps the kelp could be fooled in the same way. It would bear investigation. There were more important considerations of survival right now, however. Suspecting sabotage, he had to share that suspicion with his team.

  “Nothing ordinary could have brought down that LTA,” he said.

  Panille turned from looking out at the firefly lights of the kelp.

  “Sabotage,” Thomas said. He produced the arguments.

  “You don’t really believe that!” Waela protested.

  Thomas shrugged. He stared out at the descending cables of kelp. The gondola was almost into the biologically active zone near the surface.

  “You don’t,” she insisted.

  “I do.”

  He thought back through his conversation with Oakes. Had the man come out to inspect a sabotage device? He certainly had done nothing discernible. But there had been discrepancies in his responses—lapses.

  Panille stared out through the gondola’s plaz walls at the enclosing cage of kelp. Illumination was increasing rapidly now. The surface dome of light expanded and expanded as they entered sun-washed waters. Swimming creatures darted out of their path and circled close. Dazzling rays of light shot through the enclosing kelp barrier. The flickering nodules dimmed and were gone. Within a few heartbeats, the gondola broke free on the surface.

  Thomas activated the surface program as the gondola began to bob and turn in the currents of the lagoon, rising and settling on a low swell. The sky overhead was cloudless but a mass of hylighters could be seen downwind.

  A sea anchor popped from its external package below them, spread its funnel shape and snubbed the capsule around. The plaz-filtered light of both suns filled the gondola with brilliant reflections.

  Panille exhaled a long sigh, realized he had been holding his breath to see if they really had stabilized on the surface.

  Sabotage?

  Waela, too, thought about Thomas’ suspicions. He had to be wrong! A few remnants of the LTA bag drifted in the kelp leaves around the downwind edge of the lagoon. It was all consistent with a lightning strike.

  In a cloudless sky?

  Honesty would have to focus on the big discrepancy!

  The hylighters, then?

  Hylighters do not attack LTAs. You know that

  Thomas armed the radiosonde, punched the firing key. There was a popping sound overhead and a red glow arced over them, swerved left and dove into the sea. Boiling orange smoke lifted from the water where it had gone and was whipped toward the mass of hylighters tacking across the downwind horizon.

  They all saw the kelp leaves twist and lift in agitation where the radiosonde had gone.

  Thomas nodded to himself. A faulty radiosonde.

  Waela freed herself from her seat restraints and reached for the release handle to the top hatch, but Panille grabbed her arm. “No! Wait.”

  “What?” She twisted free of him.

  It embarrassed her to touch him after that scene the previous nightside. She found her skin glowing a hot and velvety purple which she was unable to control.

  “He’s right,” Thomas said. “Touch nothing yet.”

  Thomas unlocked his own seat restraints, found the gondola’s toolkit and removed a unipry. With the unipry, he began removing the cover to the hatch mechanism. The cover came off with a snapping sound and fell to the deck below. They all saw the odd
green package nested in the controls where it would be crushed by a lever when the hatch was undogged and opened. Thomas took nippers from the toolkit and released the green package. He handled it gently.

  Very amateur work, he thought, recalling the training which his Voidship crew had undergone in detecting and defusing dangerous devices. Ship did much better than this even before it was Ship. That had been good training and necessary. There had been no telling how a rogue Voidship might attack its umbilicus crew.

  Did we create a rogue Voidship of more subtle powers?

  The evidence of sabotage which he had seen thus far did not feel like Ship. It reeked of Oakes . . . or Lewis.

  “What’s that package?” Waela asked.

  “My guess is it’s a poison vapor set to start fuming when we tried to undog the hatch,” Thomas said.

  Handling it with caution in the bobbing gondola, Thomas set the package aside and returned his attention to the hatch controls. The system appeared to be free of other tampering. Slowly, gingerly, he undogged the hatch, folded down the screw handle and began turning it. The hatch lifted to expose the rim of gaskets and a sky unfiltered by the enclosing plaz.

  When he had the hatch fully open, Thomas took the green package in one hand, climbed part way up the ladder and threw the package downwind. When it touched the water, lime-yellow smoke erupted from it, was caught by the wind and blown across the kelp-covered waves. The surface leaves writhed away from the smoke, curling and withering as he watched.

  Waela clutched a stanchion for support and put one hand across her mouth.

  “Who?”

  “Oakes,” Thomas said.

  “Why?” Panille asked. He found himself more fascinated than fearful at these developments. Ship could save them if it came to that.

  “He may want no more than one Ceepee alive in Colony.”

  “You’re a Ceepee?” Panille was surprised.

  “Didn’t Waela tell you?” Thomas came back down the ladder.

  “I . . .” She blushed a deep purple. “It slipped my mind.”