The Pandora Sequence: The Jesus Incident, the Lazarus Effect, the Ascension Factor (13 page)

Chapter 24

The mind is a mirror of the universe.

See the reflections?

The universe is no mirror for the mind.

Nothing out there

Nothing in here

Shows ourselves.

—Kerro Panille,
The Collected Poems

WAELA TAOLINI lay in her groundside cubby, fatigue in her body, fatigue in her mind, but unable to sleep. Thomas had no mercy. Everything must be done to his perfectionist demands. He was a fanatic. They had spent twenty-one hours going through the operational routine for the new sub. Thomas would not wait for the arrival of the poet, who was somewhere in the bowels of Processing.
No. We will use what time we have.

She tried to take a deep breath. Pain yanked a knot behind her breastbone.

She wondered how Thomas came to them. How could he be from Ship? Things he did not know, things that Shipmen took for granted, worried her. There was the incident with the Hooded Dasher.

He was calm, though, I’ll give him that.

What really surprised her was his ignorance of The Game.

A crowd had gathered behind the LTA hangar—off-shift crew, most of them drinking what Shipmen called Spinneret wine.

“What’s this about?” Thomas pointed his clipboard at the group.

“It’s The Game.” She looked at him with a new amazement. “You mean you don’t know The Game?”

“What Game? That’s just a bunch of drunks having a good time . . . strange, there was nothing in my briefing about liquors of any kind.”

“There have always been lab alcohols,” she said, “and at one time there were wines and brandies. But officially we can’t afford to give up any productive food for wine. Somehow, some do and the market is brisk. Those men,” she nodded toward the group, “have traded away some of their food chits for it.”

“So, they trade food for wine that costs food to make—maybe less food. Isn’t that their right?” His eyes squinted at her.

“Yes, but food’s short. They’re going hungry. In this place, going hungry means you slow down and here, Raja Thomas, if you slow down you die. And maybe someone else dies because of it.”

“Do you do it?” he asked softly.

“Yes,” her skin glowed red, “when I can afford the time.”

She followed Thomas as he strolled toward the crew, pulled the sleeve of his singlesuit to stop him short.

“There’s more.”

“What?”

“It requires an even number of players, men or women. Each one buys into The Game with a certain number of food chits. They pair off any way they wish, and each one draws a wihi stick from a basket. They compare, and the longest stick wins a round. The shorter stick of the pair is eliminated, so those drawing the longer sticks pair up. They draw again, and so on until there is only one couple.”

“What about the food chits?”

“The players up the ante every round, so if there are a lot of people, The Game gets pretty expensive.”

“Does the last couple divide the chits?”

“No, they draw again. The one who draws the longer stick wins the chits.”

“That seems boring enough.”

“Yes.”

She hesitated, then: “The short stick runs the perimeter.”

She said it offhand, without as much as a blink.

“You mean they run around the outside . . .?” His thumb hung in the air over his shoulder.

She nodded. “They run it naked.”

“But they can’t possibly . . . that’s almost ten kilometers out in the open . . .”

“Some make it.”

“But why? Not for food, it’s not that bad yet, is it?”

“No, not for food. For favors, jobs, quarters, partners. For the thrill. For the chance to go out with a flash from a boring life. The long sticks are the losers. Food chits are a consolation prize. The winner gets to run the P.”

Thomas let out a long breath.

“What are the odds?”

“By experience, they work out just like the rest of The Game—fifty-fifty. Half don’t make it.”

“And it’s legal?”

It was her turn to look at him quizzically.

“They have the right to their own bodies.”

He turned to watch the people playing this . . . this game.

The crew had paired up, drawn, paired up, drawn, and was now down to the last pair. A man and a woman this time. The man had no nose, but wrinkled slits in his forehead pulsed with the moisture that Thomas took for breath. The woman looked vaguely like someone he had known.

They drew, and the woman matched longer. The crowd cheered and helped her gather her winnings. They tucked them in her collar and sleeves and belt. The last of the wine was passed around and the group began moving toward the west quarter exterior hatch.

“He’s really going out there?” Thomas followed them with his eyes.

“Did you notice his right eyebrow?”

“Yes,” he looked up at her, “it looked as though he had two eyebrows above it. And the nose . . .”

“Those were tattoos, hash marks. You get one for running the P.”

“Then this is his third? . . .”

“That’s right. His odds are still fifty-fifty. But there is a groundside saying: ‘You go once, you’ve had your flirt with death. You go twice, you live twice. Go three times and go for me.’”

“Charming.”

“It’s a good game.”

“You ever play it, TaoLini?”

She swallowed, and the glow faded out of her skin.

“No.”

“A friend?”

She nodded.

“Let’s get back to work,” he said, and walked her slowly back to the hangar.

Waela remembered this exchange with the odd feeling that she had missed something in Thomas’ responses.

Thomas would not even pause for WorShip. He permitted a grudging rest, hardly a hesitation, only when fatigue had them dropping programs and forgetting coordinates. During one of these rests he had started an odd conversation with her and it kept her awake now.

What was he trying to say to me?

They had been seated in the globe of plaz which would shield them in the depths of the sea. Workmen continued their activity all around the outside. She and Thomas sat so close to each other that they had been required to learn a special rhythm to keep from bumping elbows. Waela had missed the right sequence of keys for the dive train three times running.

“Take a rest.”

There was accusation in his tone, but she sank back into the sheltered contours of her seat, thankful for any relief, thankful even for the crash-harness which supported her. Muscles did not have to do what the harness did.

Presently, Thomas’ voice intruded on her consciousness.

“Once upon a time there was a fourteen-year-old girl. She lived on Earth, on a chicken farm.”

Lived on a chicken farm
, Waela thought, then:
He’s talking about me!

She opened her eyes.

“So, you’ve pried into my records.”

“That’s my job.”

A fourteen-year-old girl on a chicken farm. Her job!

She thought about that girl she had been—child of emigrants, grubbers in the dirt. Technopeasants. Gaulish middle-class.

I broke away from that.

No . . . to be honest, she had to admit that she had run away. A sun going nova meant little to a fourteen-year-old girl, a girl whose body had become a woman’s much earlier than her contemporaries.

I ran away to Ship.

She had held such conversations with herself many times. Waela closed her eyes. It was as though two people occupied her consciousness. One of them she called “Runaway,” and the other, “Honesty.” Runaway had objected to Shipman life and railed against groundside dangers.

Runaway asked, “Why was I chosen for this damned risky life, anyway?

Honesty replied, “As I recall it, you volunteered.”

“Then I must’ve parked my brains somewhere. What in hell was I thinking?”

“What do you know about Hell?” Honesty asked.

“Yeah, I have to know Hell before I can understand Paradise. Isn’t that what the Ceepee says?”

“You have it backwards, as usual.”

“You know why I volunteered, dammit!” The Runaway voice was edged with tears.

“Yes—because he died. Ten years with him and then—poof.”

“He died! That’s all you have to say about it, ‘He died.’”

“What else would there be to say?” Honesty’s voice was level, sure.

“You’re as bad as the Ceepee, always answering with questions. What’d Jim do to deserve that?”

“He tested for limits and found them when he ran the P.”

“But why doesn’t Ship or the Ceepee ever talk about it?”

“About death?” Honesty paused. “What’s there to talk about? Jim is dead and you’re alive, and that’s much more important.”

“Is it? Sometimes I wonder . . . I wonder what’s going to happen to me.”

“You live until you die.”

“But what’s going to happen!”

Honesty paused again, uncharacteristically, and said, “You fight to live.”

Waela! Waela, wake up!

It was Thomas’ voice. She opened her eyes, tipped her head onto the seatback and looked at him. Light glittered from the plaza above him and there was the sound of workmen pounding metal out in the hangar. She noted that Thomas, too, looked tired but was fighting it.

“I was telling you a story about Earth,” he said.

“Why?”

“It’s important to me. That fourteen-year-old girl had such dreams. Do you still have dreams about your life?”

Her skin began a nervous glow. Does he read minds?

“Dreams?” She closed her eyes and sighed. “What do I need with dreams? I have my work.”

“Is that enough?”

“Enough?” she laughed. “That’s not my worry. Ship is sending down my prince, remember?”

“Don’t blaspheme!”

“I’m not blaspheming, you are. Why do I have to seduce this poor idiot poet when . . .”

“We won’t argue that again. Leave now. Quit. But no more arguments.”

“I’m not a quitter!”

“So I’ve noticed.”

“Why did you pry into my records?”

“I was trying to recapture that girl. If she won’t start with dreams, maybe she’ll get somewhere with dreamers. I want to tell her what’s become of those dreams.”

“Well, what’s become of them?”

“She still has them; she always will.”

Chapter 25

You specie of gods. Very well. Avata speaks that language now. Avata says consciousness is the Species-God’s gift to the individual. Conscience is the Individual-God’s gift to the species. In conscience you find the structure, the form of consciousness, the beauty.

—Kerro Panille,
Translations from the Avata

HALI FELT no passage of time, but when the echoes of her own voice stopped reverberating in her consciousness, she found she was facing herself. She still sensed the tiny teaching lab which Ship had revealed behind the terminal in Records. And there was her own flesh in that lab. Her body lay stretched out on the yellow couch, and she stared down at it without knowing how she did this. Light filled the lab, splashed from every surface. It startled her how different she appeared from the mirror image she had known all of her life. The slick yellow material of the couch accented her brown skin. She thought the brilliance of the light should be dazzling, but could feel no discomfort. Where her short black hair stopped below her left ear there was a dark mole. Her nose ring caught the light and glittered against her skin. An odd aura surrounded her body.

She wanted to speak and for a panic-seized instant wondered how she could do this. It was as though she struggled to get back into her body. Sudden calm washed her and she heard Ship’s voice.

“I am here, Ekel.”

“Is that like hybernation?” She had no sensation of speaking, but heard her own voice.

“Far more difficult, Ekel. I show you this because you must remember it.”

“I’ll remember.”

Abruptly, she felt herself tumbling slowly in darkness. And at the front of her awareness was Ship’s promise to give her another body for this experience. An old woman’s body.

How will that feel?

There was no answer except the tunnel. It was a long, warm tunnel and the most disturbing thing was that it contained no heartbeat, no pulse at all. But there was a glimmer of light at some distance and she could glimpse a hillside beyond the light. Raised shipside, she understood corridors without thinking about them, but when she emerged through the oval whiteness it was a shock to find herself in an unconfined area.

Now, there was a pulsebeat, though. It was in her breast. She put a hand there, felt rough fabric and looked down. The hand was dark, old and wrinkled.

That’s not my hand!

She looked around. It was a hillside. She felt the deep vulnerability of her presence here. There was sunlight, a golden glowing which felt good to this body. She looked at her feet, her arms: an old body. And there were other people at a distance.

Ship spoke in her mind: “It will take a moment for you to become acquainted with this body. Do not try to rush it.”

Yes—she could feel her awareness creeping outward through halting linkages. Sandals covered her feet; she felt the straps. Rough ground underfoot when she tried two shuffling steps. Fabric swished against her ankles—a coarsely woven sack of a garment. She felt how it abraded her shoulders when she moved; it was the only garment covering her body . . . no. There was a piece of cloth wound around her hair. She reached up and touched it, turning as she did this to face downhill.

A crowd of several hundred people could be seen down there—perhaps as many as three hundred. She was not sure.

She felt that this body might have been running before she assumed her place in it. Breathing was difficult. A stink of old perspiration assaulted her nostrils.

She could hear the crowd now: a murmurous animal noise. They were moving slowly uphill toward her. The people in it surrounded a man who dragged what appeared to be part of a tree over his shoulder. As he drew nearer, she saw blood on his face, an odd circlet at his brow . . . it looked like a spiney sweat band. The man appeared to have been beaten, bruises and cuts could be discerned through his shredded gray robe.

While the man still was at some distance from her, she saw him stumble and fall on his face in the dirt. A woman in a faded blue robe hurried to help him up but she was beaten back by two young men who wore crested helmets and stiff upper garments which glittered. There were many such men in the crowd. Two of them were kicking and prodding the fallen man, trying to force him to his feet.

Armor
, she thought, recalling her history holos.
They’re wearing armor
.

A sense of the great time which stretched between this moment and her shipside life threatened to overwhelm her.
Ship?

Be calm, Ekel. Be calm.

She forced several deep, painful breaths into the old lungs. The armored men, she saw, wore dark skirts which covered them to the knees . . . heavy sandals on their feet, metal greaves over their shins. Each had a short sword sheathed at the shoulder with the handle sticking up beside his head. They used long staves to control the crowd . . . No, she corrected herself. They were using spears, clubbing the crowd back with the butt ends.

The crowd was milling around now, concealing the fallen figure from her. There was a great screaming and crying from them—a conflict which she did not understand.

Some called out: “Let him up! Please let him up!”

Others shouted: “Beat the bastard! Beat him!”

And there was one shrill voice heard above all the others: “Stone him here! He won’t make it to the top.”

A line of the armored men pushed the crowd back, leaving a tall dark man beside the fallen one. The dark man glanced all around, his fear obvious. He jerked to one side, trying to flee, but two of the armored men cut him off, swinging the butts of their spears at him. He dodged back to the side of the fallen man.

One of the soldiers shook the pointed tip of his spear at the dark one, shouted something which Hali could not make out. But the dark one stooped and picked up the tree, lifting it off the fallen one.

What is happening here?

Observe and do not interfere.

A cluster of women was wailing nearby. As the fallen man climbed to his feet and accompanied the dark one, who now dragged the tree, all moved up the hill toward Hali. She watched them carefully, seeking any clue to tell her what was happening. Obviously, it was something painful. Was it momentous? Why had Ship insisted she witness this scene?

They drew nearer. The beaten man lurched along and, presently, stopped near the wailing women. Hali saw that he was barely able to stand. One of the women slipped through the ring of soldiers and mopped the injured man’s bloody face with a gray cloth. He coughed in long, hard spasms, holding his left side and grimacing with each cough.

Hali’s med-tech training dominated her awareness. The man was badly injured—broken ribs at least, and perhaps a punctured lung. There was blood at the comer of his mouth. She wanted to run to him, use her sophisticated skills to ease his suffering.

Do not interfere!

Ship’s presence was like a palpable thing, a wall between her and the injured man.

Steady, Ekel

Ship was in her mind.

She gripped her hands into fists, took several deep gasping breaths. This brought the smell of the crowd into focus. It was the most disgusting sensory experience she had ever known. They were rank with an unwashed festering. How could they survive the things which her nostrils reported?

She heard the injured man speak then. His voice was soft and directed at the women who fell silent when he spoke.

“Weep not for me, but for your children.”

Hali heard him clearly. Such tenderness in that voice!

One of the armored men struck the injured one in the back with a spear butt then, forcing him to resume that lurching march uphill. They drew nearer. The dark one dragged the section of tree.

What were they doing?

The injured one looked back at the cluster of women who once more were wailing. His voice was strong, much stronger than Hali had thought possible.

“If they do these things in a green tree, what will they do in a dry?”

Turning back, the injured one looked full at Hali. He still clutched his side and she saw the characteristic red froth of a lung puncture at his lips.

Ship! What are they doing to him?

Observe.

The injured one said: “You have traveled far to see this.”

Ship intruded on her shock: “He’s talking to you, Ekel. You can answer him.”

The dust of the crowd welled up around her and she choked on it before being able to speak, then: “How . . . how do you know how far I’ve come?”

It was an old woman’s cracked voice she heard issuing from her mouth.

“You are not hidden from me,” the injured one said.

One of the soldiers laughed at her then and thrust his spear in her direction. He did it almost playfully. “Get along, old woman. You may’ve traveled far but I can send you farther.”

His companions guffawed at the jest.

Hali recalled Ship’s reassurance: No one bothers an old woman. The injured man called out to her: “Let them know it was done!”

Then the angry shouts of the crowd and the swirling, odorous dust engulfed her. She almost choked as they moved past, caught by a coughing spasm which cleared her throat. When she could, she turned to gaze after the crowd and a gasp was forced from her. At the top of the hill beyond the crowd two men were hanging on tree constructions with crosspieces such as that being dragged along with the injured man.

A momentary opening in the crowd gave her another glimpse of the injured one and, turning back toward her, he shouted: “If anyone understands God’s will, you must.”

Once more, the milling crowd hid him from her.

God’s will?

A hand touched her arm and she jerked away in fright, whirling to see a young man in a long brown robe at her side. His breath smelled of sewage. And his voice was an unctuous whine.

“He says you come from afar, mother,” the foul-breathed one said. “Do you know him?”

The look in Foul-breath’s eyes made her acutely aware of the vulnerable old flesh which housed her consciousness. This was a dangerous man . . . very dangerous. The look in his eyes reminded her of Oakes. He could cause great pain.

“You had better answer me,” he said, and there was poison in his voice.