The Pandora Sequence: The Jesus Incident, the Lazarus Effect, the Ascension Factor (10 page)

Chapter 18

Clones are property and that’s that!

—Morgan Hempstead, Moonbase Director

“THANK YOU for complying with my invitation.”

Thomas watched the seated speaker carefully, wondering at the sense of peril aroused by such a simple statement. This was Morgan Oakes, Chaplain/Psychiatrist—the Ceepee, The Boss?

It was late dayside on Ship and Thomas had not been long enough from hyb to feel completely awake and familiar with his long-dormant flesh.

I am no longer Raja Flattery. I am Raja Thomas.

There could be no slip in the new facade, especially here.

“I have been studying your dossier, Raja Thomas,” Oakes said.

Thomas nodded. That was a lie! The stress in the man’s voice was obvious. Didn’t Oakes realize how much he betrayed himself to trained senses? You could not believe a word this man uttered! He was careless—that was it.

Perhaps there are no other trained senses to test him.

“I responded to a summons, not to an invitation,” Thomas said.

There! That was the kind of thing a Raja Thomas would say.

Oakes merely smiled and tapped a folder of thin Shippaper in his lap. A dossier? Hardly. Thomas knew that it was in Ship’s interest to conceal the real identity of this new player in the game.

Thomas! I am Thomas!
He glanced around the Shipcell to which Oakes had invited him, realizing belatedly that this once had been a cubby. Oakes had taken out bulkheads to expand the cubby. Then, as Thomas recognized a mystical decorative motif between two dark-red woven wall hangings, he suffered one of the worst shocks in this awakening.

This was my cubby!

It was obvious that Ship had expanded enormously since those faraway Voidship days when it had housed only a few thousand hybernating humans and a minimal umbilicus crew. The changes he had seen on the trip here from hybernation hinted at even deeper changes behind them.
What had happened to Ship?

This expanded cubby suggested an unsavory history. The space was sybaritic with exotic hangings, deep orange carpeting, soft divans. Except for a small holoprojection at Oakes’ left hand, all the cubby’s expected servosystems had been concealed.

Oakes was giving his visitor plenty of time to study the space around him, using the time to return that scrutiny. What was Ship’s intent with this mysterious newcomer? The question was engraved large on Oakes’ face.

Thomas found his own attention caught by the computer-driven projection at the holofocus. It was a familiar three-dimensional analogue of a ship orbiting a planet, all glittering green and orange and black. Only the planetary system was unfamiliar; it had two suns and several moons. And as he watched the slow progression of the ship’s orbit, he felt an odd sense of deja vu. He was in motion in a ship in motion in a universe in motion . . . and it had all happened before.

Replay?

Ship said not, but . . . Thomas shrugged off such doubts, reserving them for later. He did not have to be told that the planet in the focus was Pandora and that this projection represented a real-time version of Ship’s position in the system. Some things did not change no matter the great passage of time. Bickel had once monitored such a projection on the Voidship Earthling.

Morgan Oakes sat on a deep divan of rust velvet while Raja Thomas stood—an unsubtle accent on their positions in a hierarchy which Thomas had not yet analyzed.

“I’m told you are a Chaplain/Psychiatrist,” Oakes said. And he thought:
This man does not respond to his name in a quite normal way.

“That was my training, yes.”

“Expert in communication?”

Thomas shrugged.

“Ahhh, yes.” Oakes was pleased with himself. “That remains to be tested. Tell me why you have asked for the poet.”

“Ship asked for the poet.”

“So you say.”

Oakes allowed silence to follow this challenge.

Thomas studied the man. Oakes was portly-going-on-fat, dark complexion, faint odor of perfume. His gray-streaked hair had been combed forward to conceal a receding hairline. The nose was sharp and flared at the nostrils, the mouth thin and given to a tight, stretching grimace; the chin was wide and cleft. The man’s eyes dominated this rather common Shipman face. They were light blue and they probed, boring in, always trying to penetrate every surface they found. Thomas had seen such eyes on people diagnosed as psychotic.

“Do you like what you see?” Oakes asked.

Again, Thomas shrugged.

Oakes did not like this response. “What is it you see in me which requires such scrutiny?”

Thomas stared at the man. The genotype was recognizable and that first name was suggestive. Oakes could have Lon as a middle name. If Oakes were a clone instead of a replay-survivor rescued from a dying planet . . . yes, that would be an interesting clue as to how Ship was playing this deadly game. Oakes bore a more than casual resemblance to Morgan Hempstead, the long-ago director of Moonbase. And there was that first name.

“I’ve just been very curious to meet The Boss,” Thomas said. He found a seat facing Oakes and sat without invitation.

Oakes scowled. He knew what they called him shipside and groundside, but politeness (not to mention politics) dictated that the term not be used in this room. Best not precipitate conflict yet, however. This Raja Thomas posed too many mysteries. Aristocratic type! That damned better-than-you manner.

“I, too, am curious,” Oakes said.

“I’m a servant of Ship.”

“But what is it you’re supposed to do?”

“I was told you have a communications problem on Pandora—something about an alien intelligence.”

“How very interesting. What are your special capabilities in this respect?”

“Ship appears to think I’m the one for the job.”

“I don’t call the ship’s process
thinking
. Besides, who cares what opinions come out of a system of electronic bits and pieces? I prefer a human assessment.”

Oakes watched Thomas carefully for a response to this open blasphemy. Who was this man . . . really? You couldn’t trust the damned ship to play fair. The only thing to believe was that the ship was not a god. Powerful, yes, but with limits which needed exploring.

“Well, I intend to have a go at the problem,” Thomas said.

“If I permit it.”

“That’s between you and Ship,” Thomas said. “I’m well satisfied to carry out Ship’s suggestions.”

“It offends me . . .” Oakes paused, leaned back into his cushions. “. . . when you refer to this mechanical construction . . .” He waved a hand to indicate the physical presence of Ship all around. “. . . as Ship. The implications . . .” He left it there.

“Have you issued an order prohibiting WorShip?” Thomas asked. He found this an interesting prospect. Would Ship interfere?

“I have my own accommodation with this physical monstrosity which human hands loosed on the universe,” Oakes said. “We tolerate each other. You have an interesting first name, do you know that?”

“In my family for a . . . very long time.”

“You have a family?”

“Had a family would be more proper.”

“Strange. I took you for a clone.”

“That’s an interesting philosophical question,” Thomas said. “Do clones have families?”

“Are you a clone?”

“What difference does that make?”

“No matter. As far as I’m concerned, you’re another machination of the ship. I will tolerate you . . . for now.” He waved a hand in dismissal.

Thomas was not ready to leave. “You, too, have an interesting first name.”

Oakes had been turning toward the holo projection and its com-console at his side. He hesitated, glanced at Thomas without turning his head. The gesture said:
You still here?
But there was more in his eyes. His interest had been caught.

“Well?”

“You bear a striking physical resemblance to Morgan Hempstead and I couldn’t help but notice that you have the same first name.”

“Who was Morgan Hempstead?”

“We often wondered if the Moonbase director had allowed a clone of himself. Are you that clone?”

“I’m not a clone! And what the hell is Moonbase?”

Thomas broke off, recalling what Ship had told him. These replay survivors had been picked up at a different stage in human development. The resemblance, even the name, could be coincidence. Did they come from a time before space travel? Was Ship their first experience in the many dimensions of the universe?

“I asked you a question!” Oakes was angry and not bothering to conceal it.

“Moonbase was the project center which created Ship.”

“On Earth’s moon? My Earth?” Oakes touched his breast with a thumb. And he thought about this revelation.

“Didn’t you ever wonder where Ship originated?” Thomas asked.

“Many times. But I never thought we did this thing to ourselves.”

Thomas remembered more of Ship’s recital now and drew on it. “Some people had to be saved. The sun was going nova. It required a herculean effort.”

“So we were told,” Oakes said, “but that was later. I am considerably more interested in how a Moonbase was kept secret.”

“If there’s only one lifeboat, do you tell everyone where it is?”

Thomas felt rather proud of this creative lie. It was just the kind of thing Oakes might believe.

Oakes nodded to himself. “Yes . . . of course.” He glanced at the com-console, then twisted himself more comfortably into the divan. Thomas was lying, obviously. Interesting lie, though. Everyone knew that the ship had landed in Aegypt. Could there be two ships? Perhaps . . . and there could have been many landings.

Thomas stood. “Where do I find transportation down to Pandora?”

“You don’t. Not until you’ve told me more about Moonbase. Make yourself comfortable.” He indicated the seat which Thomas had vacated.

There was no avoiding the threat. Thomas sank back.
What a tangled web we weave
, he thought.
Truth is easier.
But Oakes could not be told the truth . . . no, not yet. The proper moment and place had to be found for laying Ship’s command upon him. Shipmen were far gone in the puny play of WorShip. They would have to be shaken out of that before they could even contemplate Ship’s real demand.

Thomas closed his eyes and thought for a moment, then opened his eyes and began recounting the physical facts of Moonbase as he knew them. The account was barbered only to the extent needed for illusion that Moonbase had been a project kept secret from Oakes’ Earth.

Occasionally, Oakes stopped him, pressing for particular details.

“You were clones? All of you?”

“Yes.”

Oakes could not conceal his delight at this revelation. “Why?”

“Some of us were sure to be lost. Cloning was a way of improving the project’s chances of success. The best people were selected . . . each group had more data.”

“That’s the only reason?”

“Moonbase directives defined clones as property. You . . . could do things to clones that you couldn’t do to Natural Natals, the naturally born humans.”

Oakes ruminated on this for a moment while a slow smile crept over his face. Then: “Do continue.”

Thomas obeyed, wondering what it was that Oakes found so satisfying.

Presently, Oakes raised a hand to stop the recital. Small details were not of pressing interest. The broad picture carried the messages he wanted. Clones were property. There was precedent for this. And now, he knew the name behind those significant initials: MH—Morgan Hempstead! He decided to press for any other weaknesses in this Raja Thomas.

“You say Raja is a family name. Are you, ahhhh, related to the Raja Flattery mentioned in what passes for our history?”

“Distantly.”

And Thomas thought:
That’s true. We’re related distantly in time. Once there was a man called Raja Flattery . . . but that was another eon.

Already, he felt himself firmly seated in the identity of Raja Thomas. In some ways, the role suited him better than that of Flattery.

I was always the doubter. My failures were failures of doubt. I may be Ship’s “living challenge” but the means are mine.

Oakes cleared his throat. “I found this a most edifying and gratifying exchange.”

Once more, Thomas stood. He did not like this man’s attitude, the feeling that people were only valuable in terms of their usefulness to Morgan Oakes.

Morgan. He has to be a Hempstead clone. Has to be!

“I’ll be leaving now,” Thomas said.

Was that challenge enough? He studied Oakes for a negative response. Oakes was merely amused.

“Yes, Raja Lon Thomas. Go. Pandora will welcome you. Perhaps you’ll survive that welcome . . . for a time.”

Not until much later when he was standing in the shipbay waiting to board the groundside lighter did Thomas pause to wonder at where and how Oakes had obtained those sybaritic furnishings for his expanded cubby.

From Ship?

Chapter 19

The mind falls, the will drives on.

—Kerro Panille,
The Collected Poems

PANILLE EMERGED from Ferry’s office dazed and fearfully excited.

Groundside!

He knew what Hali thought of old Ferry—a bumbling fool, but there had been something else in the old man. Ferry had seemed sly and vindictive, consumed by unresolved hostilities. Even so, there was no evading his message.

I’m going groundside!

He had no time for dawdling—his orders required him to be at Shipbay Fifty in little more than an hour. Everything was controlled now by the time demands of Colony. It might be the last quarter of dayside here, but down at Colony it would soon be dawn, and the shuttles from Ship tried to make their groundside landings in the early hours there—less hylighter activity then.

Hylighters . . . dawn . . . groundside . . .

The very words conveyed a sense of the exotic to him. No more of Ship’s passages and halls.

The full import of this change began to fill him. He could see and touch ’lectrokelp. He could test for himself how this alien intelligence performed.

Abruptly, Panille wanted to share his excitement with someone. He looked around at the sterile reaches of Medical’s corridors—a few med-techs hurrying about their business. None of the faces were friendly acquaintances.

Hali’s face was nowhere among these impersonal passersby. Everything he saw was just the bustle and movement of Medical’s ordinary comings and goings.

Panille headed toward the main corridors. Medical’s bright lights bothered him. It was a painful contrast with Ferry’s office—the clutter, the dank smells. Ferry kept his office too dim.

Probably hiding the clutter even from himself.

It occurred to Panille then that Ferry’s mind probably was like that office—dim and confused.

A poor, confused old man.

At the first main corridor, Panille turned left toward his quarters. No time to search out Hali and share this momentous change. There would be time for sharing later—at the next shipside period of rest and recuperation. He would have much more to share then, too.

At his cubby, Panille shoved things into a shipcloth bag. He was not sure what to take. No telling when he might return. Recorder and spare charges, certainly; a few keepsakes . . . clothing . . . notepads and a spare stylus. And the silver net, of course. He stopped and held the net up to examine it—a gift from Ship, flexible silver and big enough to cover his head.

Panille smiled as he rolled the net and confined it in its own ties. Ship seldom refused to answer one of his questions; refusal signaled a defect in the question. But the day of this net had been memorable for refusals and shifting responses from Ship.

Insatiable curiosity—that was the hallmark of the poet and Ship certainly knew this. He had been at the Instruction Terminal, his request. “Tell me about Pandora.”

Silence.

Ship wanted a specific question.

“What is the most dangerous creature on Pandora?”

Ship showed him a composite picture of a human.

Panille was irritated. “Why won’t You satisfy my curiosity?”

“You were chosen for this special training because of your curiosity.”

“Not because I’m a poet?”

“When did you become a poet?”

Panille remembered staring at his own reflection in the glistening surface of the display screen where Ship revealed its symbolic patterns.

“Words are your tools but they are not enough,” Ship said. “That is why there are poets.”

Panille had continued to stare at his reflection in the screen, caught by the thought that it was a reflection but it also was displayed where Ship’s symbols danced.
Am I a symbol?
His appearance, he knew, was striking: the only Shipman who wore a beard and long hair. As usual, the hair was plaited back and bound in a golden ring at the nape of his neck. He was the picture of a poet from the history holos.

“Ship, do You write my poetry?”

“You ask the question of the Zen placebo: ‘How do I know I am me?’ A nonsense question as you, a poet, should know.”

“I have to be sure my poetry is my own!”

“You truly believe I might try to direct your poetry?”

“I have to be certain.”

“Very well. Here is a shield which will isolate you from Me. When you wear it, your thoughts are your own.”

“How can I be sure of that?”

“Try it.”

The silvery net had come out of the pneumatic slot beside the screen. Fingers trembling, Panille opened the round carrier, examined the contents and put the net over his head, tucking his long black hair up into it. Immediately, he sensed a special silence in his head. It was frightening at first and then exciting.

I’m alone! Really alone!

The words which had flowed from him then had achieved extra energy, a compulsive rhythm whose power touched his fellow Shipmen in strange ways. One of the physicists refused to read or listen to his poetry.

“You twist my mind!” the old man shouted.

Panille chuckled at the memory and tucked the silver snood into his shipcloth bag.

Zen placebo?

Panille shook his head; no time for such thoughts.

When the bag was full he decided that solved his packing problem. He took up his bag and forced himself not to look back when he left. His cubby was the past—a place of furious writing periods and restless inner probings. He had spent many a sleepless night there and, for one period, had taken to wandering the corridors looking for a cool breeze from a ventilator. Ship had felt overly warm and uncommunicative then.

But it was really me; I was the uncommunicative one.

At Shipbay Fifty, he was told to wait in an alcove with no chair or bench. It was a tiny metal-walled space too small for him even to stretch out on the floor. There were two hatches: the one through which he had entered and another directly opposite. Sensor lenses glittered at him from above the hatches and he knew he was being watched.

Why? Could I have angered The Boss?

Waiting made him nervous.

Why did they tell me to get right out here if they were going to make me wait?

It was like that faraway time when his mother had taken him to the Shipmen. He had been five years old, a child of Earth. She had taken him by the hand up the ramp to Ship Reception. He had not even known what Ship meant then, but he had been sensitized to what was about to happen to him because his mother had explained it with great solemnity.

Panille remembered that day well—a green spring day full of musty earth smells which had not vanished from his memory in all the Shipdays since. Over one shoulder, he had carried a small cotton bag containing the things his mother had packed for him.

He looked down at the shipcloth bag into which he had crammed the things for his groundside trip. Much more durable . . . larger.

The small cotton bag of that long-gone day had been limited to four kilos—the posted maximum for Ship Reception. It had contained mostly clothing his mother had made for him herself. He still had the amber stocking cap. And there were four primitive photographs—one of the father he had never seen in the flesh, a father killed in a fishing accident. He was revealed as a redhaired man with dark skin and a smile which survived him to warm his son. One picture was his mother, unsmiling and workworn, but still with beautiful eyes; one showed his father’s parents, two intense faces which stared directly into the recording lens; and one slightly larger picture showed “the family place” which was, Kerro reminded himself, a patch of land on a patch of planet lost long ago when its sun went nova.

Only the photo survived, wrapped with the others in the amber stocking cap within his shipcloth bag. He had found all of this preserved in a hyb locker when the Shipmen had revived him.

“I want my son to live,” his mother had said, handing him over to the Shipmen. “You have refused to take the two of us as a family, but you had better take him!”

No mistaking the threat in her voice. She would do something desperate. There were many desperate people doing violent things in those days. The Shipmen had appeared more amused than disturbed, but they had accepted young Kerro and sent him into hyb.

“Kerro was my father’s name,” she had explained, rolling the r’s. “That’s the way you say it. He was Portuguese and Samoan, a beautiful man. My mother was ugly and ran away with another man but my father was always beautiful. A shark ate him.”

Panille knew that his own father had been a fisherman. His father had been named Arlo and his father’s people had escaped from Gaul to the Chin Islands of the south, far across a sea which insulated them from distant persecution.

How long ago was that? he wondered.

He knew that hybernation stopped time for the flesh, but something else went on and on and on . . . Eternity. That was the poet’s candle. The people who were keeping him waiting now did not realize how a poet could adjust the candle’s flame. He knew he was being tested, but these Shipmen hidden behind their sensors did not know the tests he had already surmounted with Ship.

Panille idled away the wait by recalling such a test. At the time he had not known it was a test; that awareness came later. He had been sixteen and proud of his ability to create emotions with words. In the secret room behind Records, Panille had activated the com-console for a study session—to explore his own curiosity.

Ship began the conversation, which was unusual. Usually, Ship only responded to his questions. Ship’s first words had startled him.

“As has been the case with other poets, do you think you are God?”

Panille had reflected on this. “All the universe is God. I am of this universe.”

“A reasonable answer. You are the most reasonable poet of My experience.”

Panille remained silent, poised and watchful. He knew Ship did not always give simple answers, and never simple praise.

Ship’s response had been, once more, unexpected. “Why are you not wearing your silver net?”

“I’m not making poems.”

Then, back to the original subject: “Why is there God?”

The answer popped into his head the way some lines of poetry occurred to him. “Information, not decisions.”

“Cannot God make decisions?”

“God is the source of information, not of decisions. Decisions are human. If God makes decisions, they are human decisions.”

If Ship could be considered to feel excitement, that was the moment for it and Kerro sensed this. There had been a pattern to the way Ship supplied information to him, and it was a pattern which only a poet might recognize. He was being trained, sensitized, to ask the right questions . . . even of himself.

As he waited at Shipbay Fifty, the questions were obvious, but he did not like some of the answers those questions suggested.

Why were they keeping him waiting? It signaled a callous attitude toward their fellows. And what use had the Colony found for a poet? Communication? Or were Hali’s fears to be believed?

The hatch in front of him scissored open with a faint swish of servosystems and a voice called out: “Hurry it up!”

Panille recognized the voice and tried not to show surprise as he stepped through into a reception room and heard the hatch seal behind him. Automatics. And yes, it was the bumbler, Doctor Winslow Ferry.

With his recent analysis of Ferry, Panille tried to see the man sympathetically. It was difficult. Painful powers centered on this room, which was functional shipside standard: two hatches in metal walls, instruments in their racks, no ports. The room was blocked by a low barrier and a large com-console behind which Ferry sat. A gate on the right led to a hatch in the far wall.

It occurred to Panille that Ferry was old for shipside. He had watery gray eyes full of false boredom, puffy cheeks. His breath gave off a heavy floral perfume. There was slyness in his voice.

“Brought your own recorder, I see.” He punched a notation into the com-console which shielded him from the waist down.

Ferry glanced at the shipcloth bag on Panille’s shoulder. “What else you bring?”

“Personal possessions, clothes . . . a few keepsakes.”

“Hrrrm.” Ferry made another notation. “Let’s see.”

The distrust in this order shocked Panille. He put the bag on a flat counter beside the com-console, watched while Ferry pawed through the contents. Panille resented every stranger-touch on intimate possessions. It became obvious after a time that Ferry was searching for things which could be used as weapons. The rumors were true, then. The people around Oakes feared for their own flesh.

Ferry held up the flexible net of silver rolled into its tie bands. “Wha’s’s?”

“I use that when I’m writing my poetry. Ship gave it to me.”

Ferry put it onto the counter with care, went back to examining the rest of the bag’s contents. Some items of clothing he passed beneath a lens behind him and studied details in a scanner whose shields prevented anyone else from seeing what he saw. Occasionally, he made notations in the com-console.

Panille looked at the silver net. What was Ferry going to do with it? He could not take it!

Ferry spoke over his shoulder while examining more of Panille’s clothing under the scanner lens.

“You think the ship’s God?”

The “ship”? The usage surprised Panille. “I . . . yes.”

And he thought back to that one conversation he had had with Ship on the subject. That had been a test, too. Ship was God and God was Ship. Ship could do things mortal flesh could not . . . at least while remaining mortal flesh. Normal dimensions of space dissolved before Ship. Time carried no linear restrictions for Ship.

I, too, am God, Doctor Winslow Ferry. But I am not Ship . . . Or am I? And you, dear Doctor, what are you?

No doubting the origin of Ferry’s question. Ship’s godhead remained an open question with many. There had been a time when Ship was the ship, of course. Everyone knew that from the history which Ship taught. Ship had been a vehicle for mortal intelligence once. The ship had existed in the limited dimensions which any human could sense, and it had known a destination. It also had known a history of madness and violence. Then . . . the ship had encountered the Holy Void, that reservoir of chaos against which all beings were required to measure themselves.