The Jesus Incident

Thinking about those moments made Waela's breath come faster. She had been operating a cutter, her station a plaz bubble extruded from the hull. Leaves covered the bubble except for straining strands of kelp trying to crush the sub. Through the crashing static in her earphones, she had heard a crewmate describe the water jet cutting one of their companions in half. Abruptly, a warping of the hull and the explosive shift of pressure within the sub had blasted her bubble free. It shot out and clear of the blinding leaves, then upward as the kelp spread aside to permit her passage. She had never been able to explain that phenomenon. The kelp had opened a way to the surface for her!

Once into the glare of double-day side, she had forced open the hatch, dived clear to an undulant sea covered by broad fans of kelp leaves. She remembered touching the leaves, fearing them and needing them to support her; they were a pale green cushion which dampened the waves. Then she had felt a tingling all through her body. Her mind had been invaded by wild images of demons and humans locked in death struggles. She remembered screaming, swallowing salty water and screaming. Within seconds, the images overwhelmed her and she rolled across a kelp leaf unconscious.

An observation LTA had snatched her from the sea. She had spent many diurns recovering, awakening to acclaim because she had proved that the kelp not only was dangerous because of its physical abilities, but that its hallucinogenic capacity worked havoc when enough of it contacted enough of a Shipman's body in a liquid medium.

"Is something wrong, Waela?"

That was Panille staring at her, concerned by her introspection.

"No. We're leaving the active surface waters. We'll begin to see the lights soon."

"You've been down here before, they tell me."

"Yes."

"We'll be safe as long as we don't threaten the kelp," Thomas said. "You know that."

"Thanks."

"The records say that attempts to establish a shoreside harvester were defeated when the kelp actually came ashore to attack," Panille said.

"People and machines were snatched from the shore, yes," she said. "The people drowned and were thrown back. Machines just disappeared."

"Then why won't it attack us here?"

"It never has when we just come down and observe."

Saying this helped her restore a measure of calm. She returned to observation of sensors and telltales.

Panille peered over his shoulder at her screen, saw the angled strands of kelp, the fluting leaves and the curious bubble extrusions which reflected starbursts from the sub's dive lights. When he looked up past the ladder to the top hatch, he could see the luminous circle of the lagoon's surfac...receding moon populated by the darting shapes of the creatures who shared the sea with the kelp.

The lagoon was a place of magic and mystery with a beauty so profound he felt thankful to Ship just to have seen it. The kelp strands were pale gray-green cables, thicker than a Shipman's torso in places. They reached up from darkness into the distant mercuric pool of light overhead.

Light reaches for stars and, seeing the stars, fears to grasp them, floats in wonder. Oh, stars, you burn my mind.

The kelp aimed itself at Rega, the only sun in their sky at the moment. Alki would join Rega later. Even under clouds, the kelp aligned itself perpendicular to the passage of a sun. When two suns were present, this tropism adjusted to the radiation balance. It was a precise adjustment.

Panille thought about this, reviewing what he had learned from Ship. These were observations which perilous ventures into the sea had gleaned. Sparse information, and nowhere as intense as what he learned by being here. He knew some of the things he would see at the bottom: kelp tendrils wrapped around and through large rocks. Crawling creatures and burrowing ones. Slow currents, drifting sediments. Lagoons were ventilators, passages for exchange between surface and bottom waters. Near the surface, they provided light for creatures other than kelp.

The lagoons were cages.

"These lagoons are where the kelp engages in aquaculture," he said.

Thomas blinked. That was so close to his own surmise about how kelp fitted into the sea system that he wondered if Panille had been eavesdropping on his thoughts.

Is Ship talking to him even now?

Panille's words fascinated Waela. "You think the kelp follows a conscious pain?"

"Perhaps.

To Thomas, the poet's words pulled a veil from the kelp domain. He began to sense the sea in a different way. Here was rich living space free of Pandora's other dangerous demons. Was it right then to rid the sea of kelp? He knew it could be done - disrupt the ecosystem, break the internal chain of the kelp's own life. Was that the decision of Oakes and Lewis?

"The lights!" Panille said. "Ohhh, yes."

They had reached the dark zone where the sub's external sensors began to pick up the flickering lights. Jewels danced in the blackness beyond the range of the dive lights - tiny bursts of colo.... red, yellow, orange, green, purpl.... There appeared to be no pattern to them, just bursts of brilliance which dazzled the awareness.

"Bottom coming up," Waela said.

Panille, every sense alert, shot a glance at her screen. Yes - the bottom appeared to be moving while they remained stationary. Coming up.

Thomas adjusted the rate of descent - slower, slower. The sub came to rest with a slight jar which stirred sediment into a gray fog around them. When the fog settled, the screens showed a plastering of ripples out to the limits of their illumination. Bottom grazers moved through the ripples - inverted bowls with gulping lips all around the rim. At the extreme forward edge of illumination, the flukes of the sub's anchor dug into the sediment. The cable sagged back over them and out of light range. Off to the port side, they could glimpse black mounds of rock with kelp tendrils lacing over and through them. Dark shapes swam deep in the kelp jungle - more attendants of the sea's rulers.

Tiny crawlers already were working their way along the anchor and the cable. Panille knew that the anchor tackle had been made of native iron and steel - substances which would be etched away to lace in a few diurns. Only plaz and plasteel resisted the erosive powers in Pandora's seas.

This knowledge filled him with a sense of how fragile was their link to safety. He watched the jewel brilliants flickering in the gloom beyond the sub's dive lights. They seemed to speak to him: "We are here. We are here. We are her...."

To Thomas, the lights were like the play of a computer board. Watching holorecords of them had formed this association in his mind. He had proposed it to Waela during one of the sessions when she had been teaching him the ways of Pandora's deeps. "A computer could crunch far greater numbers, form so many more associations so much faster."

Out of this had been born his proposal: Record them, scan for patterns and play those patterns back to the kelp.

Waela had admired the elegant simplicity of it: Leap beyond the perilous collection and analysis of specimens, beyond the organic speculations. Strike directly for the communications patterns!

Say to the kelp: "We see you and know you are aware and intelligent. We, too, are aware. Teach us your speech."

As he watched the play of lights, Thomas wanted to say they were like Christmas lights twinkling in the dark. But he knew neither of his crew would understand.

Christmas!

The very thought made him feel ancient. Shipmen did not know Christmas. They played other religious games. Perhaps the only person in his universe who might understand Christmas was Hali Ekel. She had seen the Hill of Skulls.

What did the Hill of Skulls and the passion of Jesus have to do with these lights flickering in a sea?