The Jesus Incident

The laughter died away and he had spoken to her directly and flatly, "Like it or not, you're one of us now. You can never go back. You may never walk into that room again, but you did walk into it once. Of your own free will, I might add."

"Free will!" her blue eyes flashed up at him. "You drugged me! And thos.... monsters. Where was their free will?"

"They would have no will at all, no existence at all, if it weren't for me...."

"If it weren't for Ship, you mean."

He sighed overdramatically. She remembered that he glanced at his viewscreen and made a few adjustments on his console.

"Sometimes I really don't understand you, Legata. One day soon you'll be luxuriating in the Redoubt and its exquisite pleasures, and here you are mumbling dark-ages crap about the mystical powers of Ship."

He had shown her a holo, then, of this garden around her now. There was no question of its beauty. It was thick with vegetation and the perfumes of countless blossoms. She turned her eyes up to the dome. The immensity and wonder of the Pandoran sky pumped a strange surge of power through her. She experienced a feeling o.... o....

Co

At Colony the nightside before, as she had been preparing to leave for the Redoubt, Oakes had escorted her into the tiny plaz dome far above his quarters.

"There," he had pointed out a large white glow slowly traversing the horizon, "there is your ship. Another pinpoint in the night. It takes no mysticism, no degree of godhood whatsoever, for one bit of mass to orbit another."

"That's blasphemy," she answered, because he expected it. "Is it? Ship can defend itself. Nothing is out of the hearing or the reach of Ship. Ship could terminate my program at any instant - but chooses not to. Or can't. Either is the same to me. Blasphemy?"

He had squeezed her hand tight, then. Convincing himself, she thought, and she had enjoyed the power this observation gave her. He gestured widely, indicating the entire display of stars. "I have brought you to this, not Ship. Ship is a tool. Complexity to the fifth power, granted, but still a tool. Built by people, thinking people, for the use of thinking people. People who know how to take charge, how to see light in the darkening storm of confusio...."

As he had raved on into the night, Legata had realized that much of what he said held a surprising sense of truth. She knew that, at the bottom of whatever was happening to Shipmen both on and off Ship, it was a result of non-interference by Ship itself. But she had delved into the secrets of Ship's circuitry for too long and too deeply to believe that Ship was a piece of steel and molded plastics, that Ship didn't care.

She stood in the garden at the Redoubt and looked up at what she guessed to be Ship's position above them.

I wonder, she thought, I wonder if we're a disappointment.

Two patrol drones screamed over the dome and shattered Legata's reverie. She guessed that Oakes would be coming soon, they were gearing up for him. She realized that she should prepare too.

Nothing, she reminded herself, is sacred.

Then, in a sudden leap of insight during the heavy stillness following the drones, she added, but something should be. This thought was liberating, exhilarating.

***

The universe has no center.

RAJA THOMAS stood under the gigantic semi-inflated bag of the LTA in the main hangar. Lavu's crew had gone, turning off most of the lights. It was full nightside now. The bag was a dim orange bulk tugging gently at its tethers above him. There were great folds and concavities in it yet, but before Alki joined Rega dayside, they would be airborne, the bag as full and smooth as a hylighter.

Except that no hylighter of that size had ever been seen.

Thomas glanced across the dark hangar, impatient to leave. Why does Oakes want to meet me here?

The order had been succinct and simple. Oakes was coming out especially to inspect the LTA and its attached sub before allowing them to venture into the unprotected wilderness of Pandora's sea.

Is he about to veto the project?

The implications were clear: Too much Colony energy went into projects such as this one. It was contra-survival. The exterminators wanted their way. This might be the last scientific investigation permitted for a long time. Too many subs los.... too many LTAs. Such energy could be applied to food production.

The contrary argument of reason found fewer listeners with every passing hour of hunger.

Without the knowledge we gain there may never be dependable food production on Pandora. The kelp is sentient. It rules this planet.

What did the kelp call Pandora?

Home.

Was that Ship or my own imagination?

No response.

Thomas knew he was too keyed up, too full of uncertainties. Doubts. It would be so easy to share every viewpoint Oakes put forward. Agree with him. Even some of Lavu's crew had been picking up that muttered catch phrase which could be heard all through Colony: I'm hungry now!

Where was Oakes?

Keeping me waiting to teach me my place.

The self-constructed persona of Raja Thomas dominated this thought, but there were distant echoes of Flattery in it - distant but distinct. He felt like an actor well seated in his part after many performances. The Flattery self lay in his past like a childhood memory.

What have You hidden in the depths of the sea, Ship?

That is for you to discover.

There! That definitely was Ship talking to him.

The LTA creaked against its tethers. Thomas stepped from beneath it and peered up at the sphincter leaves of the skydoo...vast shadowy circle in the dim light. His nostrils tasted a faint bitterness of Pandoran esters in the air. Colony had found that some volatile renderings from selected demons insulated the area around them against other ravening native predators - especially against Nerve Ru

Thomas looked back at the shadowed su...smooth black rock held in the tentacles of an artificial hylighte.... a smooth black rock with glittering lines down its sides.

Again, the LTA creaked against its tethers. There was a draft in the hangar and he hoped this did not mean some unguarded opening to Pandora's dangerous exterior. He was unarmed and alone here except for perimeter guards at the ground-level hatches, and a watchman off somewhere brewing tea. Thomas could smell it faintl...familiar thing but marked by the subtle differences of Pandoran chemistry.

Am I being set up to go the way Rachel Demurest went?

He was a doubting man but there was no doubt in his mind about the way of Rachel's passing. It had been too convenient, the timing too good.

Who could question it, though?

Such things happened every day on perimeter patrol. Colony had a number for this attrition: one in seventy. It was like losses in a war. Soldiers knew. Except that most Shipmen appeared to know very little about war in the historic sense.

They knew soldiering, though.

He sniffed.

A faintly sweet undertone of native lubricants drifted on the air. This made him acutely aware of how grudgingly this planet gave up any of its substance to Colony. He had seen the reports - just cutting in the wells for those lubricants had cost them one life for every six diurns. And there was a general reluctance to go for cloned replacements - an unexplainable reluctance.

Fewer and fewer clones around, except out at that mysterious project on Dragon.

What was Lewis doing out there?

Why the growing split between clones and naturals? Was it something about being groundside?