The Jesus Incident

"Don't try to get me groundside!" Waela said.

Usija climbed to her feet. "Humans bred freely Earthside and anywhere they liked. We're merely seeing it happen agai.... plus an unknown which must be studied."

Murdoch directed his glare at her. "You sai...."

"I said you could ask her. She has made her decision. Her plan is a sensible one. Isolate her from children, put her under constant monitorin...."

Usija's voice droned on outlining specifics to implement Waela's decisio...place with a shiptit, a rotation of Natali med-tech....

Waela tuned out the droning voice. The babe was turning again. Waela felt dizzy.

None of this is normal. Nothing is as it should be.

Blip. The fear lifted in her awareness, then dropped.

What did Murdoch mean that she might no longer be humantype?

Waela tried to recall details of what had happened in the gondola as it floated on Pandora's sea. All she could remember was the ecstatic wash of her union with something awesome. This shipside command cubby, Usija's voice - none of this was important any longer. Only the baby growing at its terrible pace within her was important.

I need a shiptit.

An image of Ferry pressed itself into her awareness. He was somewhere else with his inevitable drink in his hand. Murdoch was talking to him. Ferry was trying to protest without success. She heard faint voices, distant and muffled as though they came from a sealed room. There was a high view of Pandora's sea glowing in the light of two suns. It was replaced by a blurred vision of Oakes and Legata Hamill. They were making love. Oakes lay on his back on a brown woven mat. She was astride hi.... slow movemen.... very slo.... an insane look of joy on her face, her hands clenching and unclenching the fat of his chest. In the vision, Legata leaned back, trembling and Oakes caught her as she fell.

It's a dream, a strange waking dream, Waela told herself.

Now, the dream shifted to Hali on her knees in her own cubby. Atop a ledge in front of Hali stood an odd construction of wood - two smooth sticks, one of them fixed off-center across the other. Hali leaned her head close to the crossed sticks and, as she did this, Waela experienced the unmistakable fragrance of cedar, as fresh as anything she had ever smelled in a treedome.

Abruptly, she was back in the command cubby. Hali's arm was around her shoulder, leading her out the hatch while Usija and Brulagi argued with Murdoch behind them.

"You need food and rest," Hali said. "You've overstressed yourself."

"Shiptit," Waela whispered. "Ship will feed me."

***

The prophets of Israel who preached the idea of the nucleus of ten good men required for a city's survival, built this concept on the Talmudic idea of the Thirty-Six Just Ones whose existence in each generation is necessary for the survival of Humankind.

UNTIL SHE saw him sprint across the east plain, a Hooded Dasher close behind, Legata did not know Thomas was at the Redoubt. She stood at the giant screen in the Command Center, the hum of late dayside activity going on all around. Oakes and Lewis were conferring off to her left. The big screen had been set on a scan program, ready to lock onto any unusual activity. She took over the controls and zoomed in on the ru

"Morgan, look!"

Oakes rushed to her side, stared up at the screen.

"The fool," he muttered.

Thomas swerved abruptly to the left, made a desperate leap off a dangerously high rock onto the sand at the high tide mark. The Dasher leaped after him, misjudged and landed in a patch of dead kelp washed up by the surf. It immediately began gulping rags of kelp while Thomas ran off down the beach. Another Dasher appeared behind him then, dropping from a high rock, ru

"He'll never make it, no one can," Oakes' trembling voice betrayed his nervousness.

Afraid he won't get away? Legata asked herself. Or afraid he will?

"Why did you turn him out?" she asked. She kept her attention on the figure darting and weaving away from her, and she remembered that nightside meeting with him outside Colony's Lab One. She found herself silently urging him on: Into the surf! Dodge into the water!

"I didn't turn him out, my dear," Oakes said. "He must've escaped." Oakes turned and called out to Lewis across the room. "Make sure nothing's been left open to the outside."

"He was a prisoner. Why?"

"He and the TaoLini woman came back from their undersea venture without Panille, a wild story about hylighters rescuing them. That requires more than simple debriefing."

Lewis came up to stand beside Oakes. "All secure."

Thomas had swerved toward the water once more, diving under ragged scraps of dead kelp. He surfaced draped with the stuff, and the second Dasher remained behind to feed on the scraps. Thomas was visibly tiring now, his stride irregular.

"Can't we do anything for him?" Legata asked.

"What would you have us do?" Oakes asked.

"Send a rescue party!"

"That area's full of Dashers and Flatwings. We can't afford to lose any more people."

"If he was foolish enough to go outside, he takes his own chances," Lewis said. "Isn't that the rule for ru

"He's not ru

"Whatever he's doing, he's on his own," Oakes said.

"Ohhh, n...." The gasp escaped her as the black figure of another Hooded Dasher, two Flatwings close behind it, took up the chase. Thomas was staggering now and the Dasher closed rapidly. In the last blink, as the Dasher stretched for the final blurring leap, it swerved abruptly aside. A mass of tentacles dropped from the air and a hylighter soared across Thomas, scooping him up.

Oakes worked the screen controls, zooming back for a general view. Someone behind them said: "Would you look at that!" It was almost a sigh.

The hills and cliffs inland from the Redoubt displayed tier upon tier of hylighters, great mobs of them gathered in a siege arc beyond the range of the Redoubt's weapons.

"Goodbye, Raja Thomas," Oakes said. "Too bad the hylighters got him. A Dasher would've ended it quickly."

"What do the hylighters do to you?" Legata asked.

Before Oakes could answer, Lewis turned to the room and said: "All right, everybody. Show's over. Back to work."

"We only have evidence from some demon carcasses," Oakes said. "They were sucked dry."

".... wish we could've saved him," she said.

"He took his chances and he lost."

Oakes reached out to the controls, his finger poised over the scan program, stopped. He stepped backward to bring the whole screen into view. The hylighter carrying Thomas had lost itself in the distant mobs. The great billowing bags now danced on the air, underlighted by the orange glow of the suns, their sail membranes rippling and filling.

Legata saw what had stopped Oakes. More hylighters were coming up, climbing higher and higher, filling in the sky.

"Ship's eyes!" another voice behind them said. "They're blocking out the suns!"

"Split screen," Oakes said. "Activate all perimeter sensors."

It took several blinks for Legata to realize he was addressing her. She flipped the switches and the screen went gray, then reformed in measured squares of the different views, a locator number under each. Hylighters englobed the sky all around the Redoubt - over the sea, over the land.