The Jesus Incident

Ship was relentless: Not MY problem! Your problem.

"My problem, then. I'm going to share it with the others."

It is time to talk of endings, Raj.

He glared at the sensor, as though that were the origin of the presence in his head.

"You mea.... break the recording?"

Yes, it is the time of times.

Was that sadness in Ship?

"Must You?"

Yes.

So Ship really meant it. This was not just another diversion, another replay. Thomas closed his eyes, feeling his voice go slack in his throat, his mouth dry. He opened his eyes and the fly was gone.

"Ho.... long do w.... how long?"

There was a noticeable pause.

Seven diurns.

"That's not enough! I might do it in sixty. Give me sixty diurns. What's such a sliver of time to You?"

Just that, Raj: a sliver. A

"How can we discover the right way to WorShip in seven diurns? We haven't satisfied You for centuries an...."

The kelp is dying. It has seven diurns until extinction. Oakes thinks it will be longer, but he is mistaken. Seven diurns, then, for you all.

"What will You do?"

Leave you to the certainty that you will wipe yourselves out.

Thomas leaped from his hammock, shouted: "I can't do anything about it in here! What do You expect fro.... ?"

"You in there! Thomas!"

It was a male voice from a hidden vocoder. Thomas thought he recognized the voice of Jesus Lewis.

"Is that you, Lewis?"

"Yes. Who are you talking to?"

Thomas looked up at the sensor in the ceiling. "I have to talk to Oakes."

"Why?"

"Ship is going to destroy us."

Let you destroy yourselves. The correction was gentle but firm in his awareness.

"Was that what you were shouting about? You think you were talking to the ship?" There was derision in Lewis' tone.

"I was talking to Ship! Our WorShip is all wrong. Ship demands that we learn how t...."

"Ship demands! The ship is about to be put in its proper place, a functiona...."

"Where's Waela?" He shouted it in desperation. He had to have help. Waela might understand.

"Waela's pregnant and she's been sent shipside to the Natali. We don't have birthing facilities here yet."

"Lewis, please listen to me, please believe. Ship awakened me from hyb to put you all on notice. You don't have much time left t...."

"We have all the time in this world!"

"That's it! And this world has only seven more diurns. Ship demands that we learn the proper WorShip befor...."

"WorShip! We can't waste time on such nonsense. We have to make a whole planet safe to live on!"

"Lewis, I have to talk to Oakes."

"You think I'm going to bother the Ceepee with your babblings?"

"You forget that I'm a Ceepee."

"You're insane and you're a clone."

"Unless you listen to me, you're headed for destruction. Ship will break th.... it will be the end of humankind forever."

"I have my orders about you, Thomas, and I'm going to obey them. There's only room for one Ceepee here."

The hatch behind Thomas popped open and he whirled to see the yellow dayside lights of the passage framing an E-clone sentry there - giant head, round black hole for a mouth, huge arms that hung nearly to his ankles. The eyes were glaring red and bulbous.

"You!" A growling voice issued from the round black hole. "Out here!"

One of the massive hands reached in, closed around Thomas' neck and jerked him out into the passage.

"WorShip. We have to learn how to WorShip," Thomas croaked.

"I get tired a hearin' that WorShip crap," the sentry said. "You're movin' out." The sentry released his neck and gave Thomas a violent push down the passage.

"Where are we going? I have to talk to Oakes."

The sentry lifted one of his arms, pointed down the passage. "Out!"

"Bu.... ."

Another push sent Thomas stumbling. There was no resisting the strength of this clone. Thomas allowed himself to be herded down the passage. It curved to the right and ended at a locked hatch. The sentry took one of Thomas' arms in a relentless grip, opened the hatch. It swung wide to reveal the open ground of Pandora in the harsh cross-lighting of Alki swinging low on the horizon to his left. A sudden push from the clone sent Thomas sprawling into the open and took his breath away. He heard the hatch slam closed. Somewhere above him, he heard the distant fluting of a flock of hylighters.

They've sent me into the open to die!

***

And the Lord said, "Behold, the people is one, and they have all one languag.... and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do. Let us go down and confound their language that they may not understand one another's speech."

FROM THE instant the first tentacles brushed her face to the moment she boarded the shuttle for Ship, Waela lived in a blur of past-present-future which she could not control. Kerro was gone and Thomas was not available, this much she knew. And contact with the hylighters had left her with a voice in her mind. It flared there in flashes of total demand. She wavered between accepting the voice and believing herself insane.

The voice of Honesty would not answer, but this new voice intruded without warning. When it came, she felt herself filled with the same conceptual ecstasy she had felt in the gondola.

It is the Avata way of learning.

The voice kept repeating this. When she questioned, answers came, but in a jargon which confused her.

Like electricity, humanwaela, knowledge flows between poles. It activates and charges all that it touches. It changes that which moves it and moves within it. You are such a pole.

She knew what the words meant, but they went together in a confusing way.

And all the while, she remained vaguely aware of the processing procedure when the rescue gondola deposited them at Colony. Thomas was taken away somewhere and she was rushed into a medical unit for debriefing. The session was run by Lewis - astonishing!

It was right there that the first demanding flash hit her.

Waela. I have found the Avata.

She knew there was no sound, but the voice filled her sense of hearing. It was Kerro Panille, no denying it. Not his voice, but his identity recognized in an internal way which could not be disguised. She knew it as she knew herself. But she didn't even know that Kerro was alive!

I'm alive.

Then he had found some way of reaching ou.... or of reaching in.

Either that or I'm insane, she thought.

She did not feel insane as she stood in the Medical section's glaring tile-white cubicle looking across a metal table at Lewis. Hands supported her. It was nightside; she knew this. Rega had been setting and they had brought her directly in here. Lewis was speaking to her and she kept shaking her head, unable to answer him because of that voice in her mind. An older med-tech said something to Lewis. She heard three words. "...too soon fo...."

Then the whirl of that intruding voice returned. She was uncertain whether she recognized words - or whether it really could be called a voice - but she knew what was being said. It was a non-language, and she knew this when she found that she could not distinguish between "I" and "We" in Kerro's communication. A language barrier was down.

In that instant of recognition, she knew Avata as Kerro Panille knew Avata. She wondered how she learned this lesson, this ancient bit of human history.

How did I learn, Kerro Panille?

What is done to one is felt by all, humanwaela.

"Why am I humanwaela?" She asked it aloud and saw an odd expression come over the face of Lewis as he turned from talking to the med-tech. This did not bother her. She felt her mind drifting lazily in Pandoran wind. There were mutterings and headshakings among people around her - med-techs, several of the.... an entire team. She filtered them out. Nothing was more important than the voice in her mind.