The Jesus Incident

Her fingers trembled as she sipped from the glass he had handed her. It was pungent and bitter, a distillation, but she could feel it soothing her.

When the right time comes, Morgan Lon Oakes.

Oakes touched her hair, stroked her head. She did not lean toward him or away.

"In another few diurns," he said, "all that will remain of the kelp will be holo approximations and our memories. If we're right about the hylighters, they won't endure much longer." He glanced out the plaz where the after-glow of the setting suns had left golden luminescence in the sky and two fans of shadowy lines radiating upward from beyond the curve of the sea. "None too fond, eh, Legata?"

She shuddered as his fingers touched a nerve in her neck.

"Cold, Legata?"

"No."

She turned and her gaze fell on the mural. Sensors had ignited low illumination to compensate for the shadows filling the porch. The mural. It drank her mind.

I did that. Was it real or dream?

She stared into the mural at the world of her dreams, that peculiar soothsayer of the mind called imaginatio...world Oakes could never see without the intervention of someone like herself.

Again, she shuddered, recalling the holorecord which had inspired the painting: the eerie meanings of the hylighters and the whoosh and thump when they exploded, the tortured screams of burning Colonists. Even as she recalled the scene, she imagined the smell of burning hair. It seemed to fill the porch. She tore her attention away from the mural and stared out at the sea - all darkness out there except for a distant white line glowing along the horizon. It looked threatening, more threatening than her memories.

"Why did we have to build so near the sea?" she asked.

The question was out before she could think about it and she wished she had suppressed it.

The drink. It loosens the tongue.

"We're high above the sea, my dear, not very near at all."

"But it's so big an...."

"Legata! You helped draw the plans for our Redoubt. You agreed. I recall your words clearly: 'What we need is a place to get away, a safe place.'"

But that was before the Scream Room, she thought.

She forced herself to look at him. The dim illumination erased the soft edges of his features and left the shadows controlled by his skull.

What other plans does he have for me?

As though he heard the question in her mind, Oakes began to speak, addressing her reflection in the plaz.

"As soon as we get matters orderly down here, Legata, I'll want you to make a few trips back to the ship. We'll have to keep an eye on Ferry until we can find a replacement."

So he still needs me.

It was clear now that he feared going shipside more than he feared the terrors groundside. Why? How does Ship threaten him? She tried to imagine herself as Oakes back in his cubby shipside, completely surrounded by the presence of Ship. Not the ship. Ship! Did Oakes, after all, believe in Ship?

He put an arm around her waist. "You agreed, my dear."

She forced herself not to cringe, fearful of the artificial kindness in his tone, afraid of unknown plans he might have for her. What was the reasoning behind his decisions?

Perhaps there is no reason.

The futility of this thought frightened her even more than Morgan Oakes did. Morgan Lon Oakes. Could it be tha.... clones and the wild creatures of Pandor.... and Shipmen - that so many died merely because Oakes acted without reason?

He has his reasons.

Once more, she looked at her mural. What did I paint there? The doomed man stared back at her - the eyes, the melting flesh, the pointing finger, all screamed: You agreed! You agreed!

"You can't kill all of the creatures on this planet," she whispered, and shut her eyes tight.

He removed his arm from her waist. "Pardon me, Legata. I thought you said 'can't.'"

"...." She could not continue.

He took her arm above the elbow the way Murdoch had grasped her at the Scream Room! She felt him guide her across the porch, and she opened her eyes only when her shins touched the red couch. Firmly, he pressed her down into the cushions. She saw that she still clutched her drink, some of it still sloshing in the glass. She could not look up at Oakes. She was shaking so hard that small splashes of the drink jumped out of the glass to settle on her hand and thigh.

"Do I make you nervous, Legata?" He reached down to stroke her forehead, her cheek.

She could not answer. She remembered the last time he did this and began to cry silently, her shoulders stiff, tears flowing quietly down her cheeks.

Oakes dropped to the couch beside her, took the drink from her hand and put it somewhere aside on the floor. He began to massage the back of her neck, working the stiffness out of her shoulders. His fingers, his precise medical touch, knew where to reach her and how to ease through her defenses.

How can he touch me like this and be wrong?

She leaned forward, almost totally relaxed, and her elbow touched a damp spot on her thigh where she had spilled her drink. She knew in that instant that she could resist hi.... and that he would not expect the way of her resistance.

He does not know about the record I hid shipside.

His fingers continued to move so expertly, so full of pseudo-love.

He doesn't love me. If he loved me he wouldn'.... he wouldn'.... She shuddered at a memory of the Scream Room.

"Still cold, my dear?"

His practiced hands pulled her gently down onto the couch, eased the tensions from her throat and breast.

If he loved me, he wouldn't touch me this way and frighten me the way he does. What does he really want?

It had to be more than sex, more than her body which he knew how to ignite with such sureness. It had to be something far more profound.

How strange, the way he could go on talking to her at a time like this. His words seemed to make no sense whatsoever.

"...and in the recombinant process itself, we have gained an interesting side effect to the degeneration of the kelp."

Degeneration! Always degeneration!

***

Avata informs through the esoteric symbols of Avata's history reduced to dreams and to images which often can be translated only by the dreamer, not by Avata.

THERE'S NO reason to panic yet, Waela told herself.

Others subs had lost their LTAs and survived. The drill was spelled out by those experiences.

Still, she found herself trembling uncontrollably, her memory focused on her escape from the depths at the south shore of The Egg.

I escaped before. I'm a survivor. Ship, save us!

Save yourself. That was the unmistakable voice of her own Honesty. Certainly. She knew how to do it. She had taught the procedure to Thomas by repeated drill. And Panille appeared to be a cool one. No panic there. He was watching the screens, estimating the extent that the downed LTA bag was covering them.

Strange that it drifted straight down.

"There has to be a vertical current in this lagoon," Panille said, as though answering her thought. "See how the fabric has draped itself over us."

Thomas had watched the fabric cover them, sinking all around the sub to enclose them in an orange curtain which cut off their view of the kelp.

There's no way the LTA could have been brought down by lightning, he thought. The bag was grounded to its anchor cable. It was compartmented. Breaking half the compartments would not have brought it down. There still would have been enough lift to take off the stripped-down gondola.

Somebody doesn't want us back.

"I think we could begin cutting away the fabric now," Panille said. He touched Thomas on the shoulder, not liking the way the man sat staring fixedly at the screens.