The Jesus Incident Read online

  “Perhaps The Boss has his own plans for the kelp,” Panille said.

  Thomas pounced on this. “What do you mean?”

  Panille repeated what Hali Ekel had told him about the threat to exterminate the kelp.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Waela demanded.

  “I thought Hali might be mistaken and . . . the opportunity to tell you did not arise.”

  “Everybody stay put,” Thomas said, “while I see if there are any more little surprises in here.”

  He bent to his examination.

  “You seem to know what you’re looking for,” Waela said.

  “I’ve had some training in this.”

  She found this a disturbing idea: Thomas trained to locate sabotage?

  Panille listened to them with only part of his attention. He released himself from his seat and looked up at the open hatch. There was a sweet smell to the salt-washed air blowing in the hatchway. He found the smell invigorating. Through an unblocked area beside his console, he could see the flock of hylighters tacking closer across the wind. The motions of the gondola, the smells—even the survival from the perils of the dive—all charged him with a sense of being intensely alive.

  Thomas finished his examination.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  Waela said: “I still find it difficult to . . .”

  “Believe it anyway,” Panille said. “There are things happening around Oakes that the rest of us are not supposed to learn.”

  She was outraged. “Ship wouldn’t allow . . .”

  “Hah!” Thomas grimaced. “Oakes may be right. Ship or the ship? How can we be sure?”

  Such open blasphemy intrigued Panille. From another Ceepee, too! But it was the old philosophical question he had debated many times with Ship, merely cast in a more direct form. As he thought about this, Panille watched the approach of the hylighters, and now he pointed downwind.

  “Look at those hylighters!”

  Waela glanced over her shoulder. “A lot of them and big ones. What’re they doing?”

  “Probably coming to investigate us,” Thomas said.

  “They won’t get too close, do you think?”

  Panille stared at the orange flock. They were alive, perhaps sentient. “Have they ever attacked?”

  “There’s argument about that,” Waela said. “They use hydrogen for buoyancy, you know, very explosive if ignited. There have been incidents . . .”

  “Lewis argues that they sacrifice themselves as living bombs,” Thomas said. “I think they’re just curious.”

  “Could they wreck us?” Panille asked. He stared all around the horizon. No land in sight. He knew they had food and water in the compartments under their feet. Waela had inspected those before takeoff while he held a handlight.

  “They could blacken the gondola’s skin a bit,” Thomas said. He spoke while working at his console. “I’ve activated the locator beacon, but there’s a lot of static on those frequencies. Radio appears to be working . . .”

  “But we can’t punch past the interference without the ‘sonde,” Waela said. “We’re marooned.”

  Panille, holding himself against the pitching of the gondola, climbed several steps of the ladder until his shoulders cleared the hatch. One glance showed the hylighters still working their way toward the gondola. He turned his attention to the ‘sonde-release package attached to the plaz beside the hatch.

  “What’re you doing?” Thomas demanded.

  “There’s a lot of the ‘sonde’s antenna wire still in its reel.”

  Thomas moved to the foot of the ladder, peered up. “What’re you thinking?”

  Panille stared at the hylighters, at the wind-whipped sea surface. He felt an unexpected freedom here, as though all of that time confined in Ship’s artificial environment had merely been preparation for this release. All of the holorecords, the history and the intense hours of study could not touch one blink of this reality. The preparations had, however, armed him with knowledge. He looked down at Thomas.

  “A kite could lift our antenna high enough.”

  “Kite?” Waela stared up through the plaz at him. Kites were carrion-eating birds.

  Thomas, knowing the other meaning, looked thoughtful. “Do we have the material?”

  “What are you talking about?” Waela demanded.

  Thomas explained.

  “Ohhh, festival flyers,” she said. She glanced around the gondola. “We have fabrics. What’re these?” She unsnapped a sealing strip from an instrument panel, flexed it. “Here’s material for the bracing.”

  Panille, looking down at them, said: “Then let’s . . .” He broke off as a shadow passed over him.

  They all looked up.

  Two large hylighters passed directly over the gondola, some of their tendrils tucked up while others held large rocks in the water to steady them. The ballast tendrils of one hylighter rubbed across the gondola, rocking it sharply.

  Panille clutched the hatch rim for support. The ballast rock sped past below him in a foaming wake.

  “What’re they doing?” Waela shouted.

  “That gas we threw out killed a lot of the kelp,” Thomas said. “You don’t suppose hylighters protect the kelp?”

  “Here come some more of them!” Panille called.

  Thomas and Waela looked where he was pointing. A swarm of hylighters glowing golden orange tacked across the wind perhaps a hundred meters away, turning in unison.

  Panille climbed farther out of the hatch to sit on the rim. From this vantage, he could see the ballast rocks draw foaming lines across the waves, skipping over the kelp’s leaves. The giant sail-crests of the hylighters billowed and flapped as they turned, then stiffened as they took their new heading,

  Standing below him to peer over the top of an instrument bank, Thomas could see some of this.

  “Don’t tell me they’re brainless,” he said.

  “I wonder if we’ve angered them?” Waela asked.

  Panille, the wind tugging at his hair and beard, heard this as though it came from the ancient world of Ship. He felt exhilarated—free at last. Pandora was wonderful!

  “They’re beautiful!” he cried. “Beautiful!”

  A sharp crackling sound from behind Thomas brought him whirling around. It was the speaker of a radio he had left on after testing it. Another sharp crackling erupted from the speaker. Hylighters and kelp both were blamed for this phenomenon which made radio undependable here, but how did they do it?

  The swarm was almost at the gondola now. A giant specimen in the lead aimed its rock ballast directly at the gondola. Thomas held his breath. How much of that could the plaz withstand?

  “They’re attacking!” Waela shouted.

  Panille had climbed farther out, standing now on the ladder’s topmost rung while he steadied himself with a knee against the open hatch cover. He waved both arms wide, shouting: “Look at them! They’re gorgeous! Magnificent!”

  Thomas shouted to Waela who stood at the foot of the ladder: “Get that fool down here!”

  As he shouted, the tucked tendrils of the leading hylighter slid over the gondola and the rock smashed into the plaz directly in front of Waela. She clutched the ladder for support and screamed at Panille as the gondola tipped, but her warning came too late. Arms still waving, Panille was knocked off his feet and spilled out of the gondola. She saw one of his hands clutch a hylighter tendril and he was jerked skyward. Other tendrils quickly enfolded him, almost concealing his body which was now glimpsed only in places through the hylighter’s grasp. She saw all of this in bits and pieces as the gondola went through a series of wildly twisting gyrations under the massed onslaught of hylighters.

  They were attacking!

  Thomas had wedged himself into a corner where the arc of controls joined the communications board. He saw only Panille’s feet disappear and heard Waela scream: “They’ve got Kerro!”

  Chapter 46

  In your terms, Self may be called Avata. Not hylighter
, not kelp, not ’lectrokelp, but Avata. That is the Great Self in the language from your animal past. Avata. Finding this label in you, Avata knows we sing the same song. Through each other, Avata and human know Self. No second measurement for Avata. Same value every time. No separate qualities or forms. Thus with human.

  Avata. But not Avata.

  To name is to limit, to control. To name without knowing you limit is to hinder the knowing. At best, it is a diversion. At worst, it is a misrepresentation, a stolen label, a death. To name a thing falsely and to act thereafter on the name—that is killing, a cutting of the spiritual leaf, the death of the stem. A thing is Self or it is Other. The naming is a matter of proximity.

  Avata identifies the speciesfold magnetification, the magnetism of proximity; the wavelength of space: humanthomas humankerro, humanjessup, humanoakes. Avata concludes lack of sensory organ necessary to differentiate between clone and human. Avata does not consider this lack a weakness or misrepresentation.

  Avata is one in hylighter and kelp, not separate in either, nor the same. Cells differ but share the One. Before humans, Avata did not distinguish. Both are Self. Avata would teach you the Self of Other, the human in clone.

  Some things are because you name them. You perpetuate them in your language, you commiserate over the woe they have wrought you.

  Say simply that these things are not so. Do not change the label but the labelness. Eliminate them from your life by washing them first from your tongue. Ignoring that which is false is also a knowing. Thus—learning. To learn is to grow and to grow is to live. You may practice forgetting and thus learn.

  “Home.”

  That is your label for this place, humankerro. Avata washes your tongue here that you may properly inflect the name and then forget it. Avata brings you this to cleanse you of expectancies, that you may learn the cues to which Avata responds or refuses to respond.

  This is how you learn Avata. You are both lower level and higher level, and the continuity is the continuity of your will. Observe the vine which is all Avata winding through “Home.” Grasp the vine. Cup the waters in your hands and drink.

  You are the observer-effect.

  —Kerro Panille, Translations from the Avata

  Chapter 47

  And the Lord God said, “Behold the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever: Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man and he placed at the east of the Garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

  —Christian Book of the Dead, Shiprecords

  FOR KERRO Panille, his last sensible thought was the beauty of the lead hylighter passing within two meters overhead. He felt the presence of the sea and the wind, saw the black twisting mass of tendrils and the long rope of them which he knew linked the magnificent creature to its ballast rock. Then he was knocked off his feet and clutched at the only possible handhold—that long rope of guiding tendrils.

  From his study of them, Panille knew that the creatures were considered to be dangerously hallucinogenic, explosive and poisonous to Shipmen, but nothing could have prepared him for the actual experience. As his hand touched the hylighter he experienced an electric buzzing which climbed to a crescendo in every sense of his body. He tasted bitter iron. The musk of uncounted flowers savaged his nostrils. His ears were the citadel of the fiercest attack—cymbals and twanging strings competed with horns and the cries of birds. Behind this assault, he heard the choral singing of a multitude.

  Then his sense of balance went crazy.

  Silence.

  The sensations were turned off as though by a switch.

  Am I dead? Is this real?

  You live, humankerro.

  In a way, it was like the voice of Ship. It was calm, faintly amused, and he knew it occurred only in his head.

  How do I know that?

  Because you are a poet.

  Who . . . who are you?

  I am that which you call hylighter. I save you from the sea.

  The beautiful . . .

  Yes! The beautiful, gorgeous, magnificent hylighter!

  There was pride in this announcement, but still that sense of amusement.

  You called me . . . humankerro.

  Yes—humankerro-poet.

  What does being a poet have to do with my knowing this is real?

  Because you trust your senses.

  As though these words opened a door to his body, he felt the enclosing tendrils, the sharp bite of wind between them, and his inner ears registered the roll of a sweeping turn as the hylighter tacked. His eyes reported a shadowy golden area millimeters from his nose and he knew he lay on his back in a cradle of tendrils, the body of the hylighter close above him.

  What did you do to me?

  I touched your being.

  How . . .

  Again, he experienced the savage assault on his senses, but this time there was pattern in it. He detected bursts of modulation too fast for him to separate into coherent bits. His sense of sight registered pictures and he knew he was looking down with hylighter vision upon the sea . . . and the gondola from which he had been snatched. He felt that he must cling to these sensations as he clung to his sanity. Madness lurked at the edges of his awareness . . .

  And once more, the assault stopped with shocking abruptness.

  Panille lay gasping. It was like being immersed in all the most beautiful poetry that humankind had ever produced—everything simultaneous.

  You are my first poet, and all poets are known through you.

  Panille sensed an elemental truth in this.

  What are you doing with me? he asked. It was very much like talking to Ship in his head.

  I strive to prevent the death of human and of Self.

  That was reasonable.

  Panille could make no response to this. All the thoughts which occurred to him felt inadequate. Poison from the gondola had killed kelp. The hylighters, known to originate in the sea, obviously resented this. Yet, this hylighter would save a human. It occurred to him then that he was talking to a source which could explain the relationship between kelp and hylighter. Before he could think through his question, the voice filled his head, a single thoughtburst: Hylighterself-kelpself-all-one.

  It was like Ship asking him about God. He sensed another elemental truth.

  Poet knows . . . This thought twined around in his mind until he could not tell if it originated with the hylighter or with himself. Poet knows . . . poet knows . . .

  Panille felt himself washed in this thought. It was still with him when he realized that he was conversing with the hylighter in no language he could recall. The thoughts occurred . . . he understood them . . . but of all the languages he knew, none coincided with the structure of this exchange.

  Humankerro, you speak the forgotten language of your animal past As I speak rock, you speak this language.

  Before Panille could respond he felt the tendrils opening around him. It was a most curious sensation: He was both the tendrils and himself, and he knew he was clinging to the Avata as he was clinging to his own sanity. Curiosity was his grip upon his being. How curious this experience! What poetry it would make! Then he knew he was being dangled over the sea: The foam at the edge of a kelp’s fan leaf caught his attention and held it. He was not afraid; there was only that enormous curiosity. He wanted to drink in everything that was happening and preserve it to share with others.

  Wind whipped past him. He smelled it, saw it, felt it. He was turning in the grasp of the hylighter and he saw a mounded mass of hylighters directly below. They opened like flower petals expanding to reveal the gondola in their midst—orange petals and the glistening gondola.

  With gentle sureness, tendrils lowered him into the flower, into the gondola’s hatch. They followed him, spreading around the interio
r of the gondola. He knew he was there with Waela and Thomas, yet still saw the flower as its petals closed.

  An orange blaze surrounded him and he saw through the plaz, the hylighters all around, holding the gondola in a basket of tendrils.

  Again, the wild play of his senses resumed, but now it was slower and he could think between the beats of it. Yes, there were Thomas and Waela, eyes glazed—terrified or unconscious.

  Help them, Avata.

  Chapter 48

  Even the seemingly immortal gods survive only as long as they are required by mortal men.

  —The Oakes Covenant

  OAKES BEGAN to sputter and snore. His body lay half-melted into cushions of the long divan which stretched beneath Legata’s mural on the porch of the Redoubt. The light was dull red, the early dayside of Rega coming in through the plaz above the sea.

  Legata untangled herself from Oakes, slowly eased the sleeve of her singlesuit from under his naked thigh. She stepped over to the plaz and looked out at the dayside light flickering off the tops of waves. The sea was wild turmoil and the horizon a thick line of milky white. She found the uncontrolled violence of the sea repellent.

  Perhaps I was not made for a natural world.

  She pulled her singlesuit on, zipped it.

  Oakes continued to snore and snort.

  I could have crushed him there in those cushions, thrown his body to the demons. Who would suspect?

  No one except Lewis.

  The thought had very nearly become reality back there on the divan. Oakes had been satyric all through the dark hours. Once, she had slipped her arms up around his ribs while he worked at her, sweating and mumbling, but she could not bring herself to kill. Not even Oakes.

  Waves whipped high onto the beach across the bay as she scanned the scene. The water slashed high this morning. The pounding surf echoed a deeper trembling of the earth and she could hear the clatter of rock against rock. The sound must be frighteningly loud outside for it to be heard that well in here.