The Pandora Sequence: The Jesus Incident, the Lazarus Effect, the Ascension Factor (28 page)

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 interior 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.

It’s the job of waves and rocks to make sand, she thought. Why can’t I do my job that well . . . without question?

The answer came immediately, as though she had thought it through countless times:
Because changing rock into sand is not killing. It is change, not extermination.

Her artist’s eye wanted to find order in the view out the plaz, but all was disorder. Beautiful disorder, but frightening. What a contrast with the peaceful bustle of a shipside agrarium.

She could see the shuttle station off on the isolated point of land to her left, an arc of the bay between, and the low line of the protected passage leading from Redoubt to Station. That had been Lewis’ idea: Keep the Station remote, easy to cut off should attackers come from Colony.

She found herself wanting the roll and toss of kelp leaves in the bay, but the kelp was going . . . going . . .

A chill crawled up her spine and down her arms.

A few diurns,
Oakes had said.

She closed her eyes and the picture that haunted her was her own mural, the accusing finger which pointed straight at her heart.

You are killing me!
it said.

No matter how hard she shook her head, the voice would not be still. Against her better judgment, she crossed to the dispenser and keyed it for a drink. Her hand was steady. She returned to the plaz-guarded view, and sipped slowly while watching the waves bite their way up the beach across the bay. The waves had buried the previous high-tide mark at least a dozen meters back. She wondered whether she should wake Oakes.

A hylighter suddenly valved itself low across the beach below the shuttle station. A sentry appeared at the beachside guardpost and snapped her heavy lasgun to her shoulder, then hesitated. Legata held her breath, expecting the bright orange flash and concussion. But the woman did not fire; she lowered her weapon and watched as the delicate hylighter drifted out of sight around the point.

Legata let out her breath in a long sigh.

What happens when we have no others to kill?

Oakes’ desire for a paradise planet vanished when she confronted that seascape. He could make it sound so plausible, so natural, but . . .

What about the Scream Room?

It was a symptom. Would people turn on each other, band together in tribes and attack each other in the absence of Dashers or Runners . . . or kelp?

Another hylighter drifted past farther out.

It thinks.

And the vanishing kelp. Oakes was right that she had seen the reports from the disastrous undersea research project.

It thinks.

There was a sentiency here which touched her where cell walls left off, somewhere within that realm of creative imagination which Oakes distrusted and would never enter.

Almost eighty percent of this planet is wrapped in seas and we don’t even know what’s under there.

She found herself envying the researchers who had risked (and lost) their lives groping beneath these seas. What had they found?

A pair of huge boulders down on the beach beneath her smashed together with a jarring crack that caused her to jump. She glanced at the beach across the bay. As quickly as it crossed the high-tide mark, the waters began their ebb.

Curious.

Tons of boulders had been rolled up against the cliff barrier across the compound. More of them obviously must be on the beach beneath her. The boulders she could see were gigantic.

That much power in the waves.

“Legata . . .”

The abruptness of Oakes’ voice and touch upon her shoulder startled her, and she crushed the glass in her hand. She stared down at the hand, the cuts, her own blood, shards of glass glinting in her flesh.

“Sit over here, my dear.”

He was the doctor then, and she felt thankful for it. He plucked out broken glass, then unrolled strips of Celltape from a dispenser at his com-console to stop the bleeding. His hands were firm and gentle as he worked. He patted her shoulder when he had finished.

“There. You should . . .”

The buzz of the console interrupted.

“Colony’s gone.” It was Lewis.

“What do you mean, gone?” Oakes raged. “How can the entire . . .”

“A shuttle overflight shows nothing but a hole where Lab One was. Plenty of demons, hatchways to all lower levels blown . . .” He shrugged, a tiny gesture in the console screen.

“That’s . . . that’s thousands of people. All . . . dead?”

Legata could not face Lewis, even on the screen. She crossed to the divan silently and stared out the plaz.

“There could be survivors holed up behind some of the hatches,” Lewis went on. “That’s how we made it here when . . .”

“I know how you made it here!” Oakes shouted. “What are you suggesting?”

“I’m not suggesting anything.”

Oakes gritted his teeth and pounded the console. “You don’t think we should have Murdoch try to save anyone?”

“Why risk the shuttles? Why risk one of our last good people?”

“Of course. A hole, you say?”

“Nothing but rubble. Looks to’ve been the work of lasguns and plasteel cutters.”

“Do they . . . I mean, are there any shuttles left over there?”

“We disabled everything before leaving.”

“Yes . . . yes, of course,” Oakes murmured. Then: “LTAs?”

“Nothing.”

“Didn’t you and Murdoch say that you cleared everything out of that Lab One site? Moved it all here?”

“Apparently the rioters thought there might be some burst hidden away there. They captured the only remaining communications equipment. They were demanding help from . . . the ship.”

“They didn’t . . .”Oakes could not complete the question.

“The ship didn’t answer. We were listening.”

A deep sigh shook Oakes.

Without turning to face him or the viewscreen, Legata called out, “How many people did we lose there?”

“Ship knows!” Lewis threw back his head, laughing.

Oakes hit the key to shut him off,

Legata clenched her fists. “How could he laugh that way at . . .” She shook her head.

“Nervous,” Oakes said. “Hysteria.”

“He was not hysterical! He was enjoying it!”

“Calm yourself, Legata. You should get some rest. We have much to do and I’ll need your help. We’ve saved the Redoubt. We have most of the food that was at Colony and far fewer people to eat it. Be thankful that you’re among the living.”

That worry in his tone, in his eyes.

It was almost possible to believe he felt genuine love for her.

“Legata . . .” He put out a hand to touch her arm.

She pulled away. “Colony’s gone. The hylighters and kelp are next. Then what? Me?”

She knew it was her own voice speaking, but she had no control over it.

“Really, Legata! If you can’t handle alcohol, you should not drink it.”

His gaze went to the broken glass on the floor.

“Especially this early in the dayside.”

She whirled away from him and heard him press the console key and summon a clone worker to clean up the broken glass. As he spoke, Legata felt the last of her hope shatter in the morning air, lost on the wild glinting of the waves she could see out there.

What can I do against him?