The Jesus Incident

"I hear you," Hali muttered.

"Ready?" Ferry asked. He gripped the head of the gurney.

Hali nodded.

"Unhook her."

Hali removed the monitor co

Docking Bay Eight, Hali thought. Four minutes. They could make it if they were not delayed too long anywhere along the way.

She saw that Ferry was guiding the gurney toward the tangent passage to the docking bays. Good choice.

They had taken fewer than a dozen hurried steps when Hali was paged.

"Ekel to Sickbay. Ekel to Sickbay."

Hali estimated two hundred meters from Sickbay to their goal. They could not trust shiptransport internally. If Murdoch was a killer, if she had figured him for less than what he revealed himself, then placing themselves in a transit tube would be disaster. He could override the controls and have them delivered like salad to his hatchway.

The gurney's wheels squeaked and Hali found this irritating. Ferry was panting with unaccustomed exertion. The few people they passed merely observed the obvious rush on medical business and squeezed aside to let them pass.

Once more, she was paged: "Ekel! Emergency in Sickbay!"

They skidded around the corner into the passage to the Docking Bay and nearly overturned the gurney. Ferry grabbed for it and prevented Waela from sliding off.

Hali helped to settle Waela as they continued pushing toward Number Eight. They were passing Number Five and she could see the Eight down the passage ahead of them.

Ferry, reaching under Waela's shoulder as they moved, pulled out something which had caught his eye.

Hali saw him go pale. "What's that?"

He held it up for her to see.

The thing looked insidiou...small pale tube of silver.

"Tracer," Ferry gasped.

"Where was it?"

"Murdoch must've tried to feed it to her, but he didn't stick around long enough to be sure she swallowed it. She must've spit it out."

"Bu...."

"They know where we are. The biocomputer can track this through the body, yes, but it can also track it anywhere in Ship."

Hali grabbed it out of his hand and threw it behind her as far as she could.

"All we need's a little delay."

"This is as far as you go, Ekel!"

It was Murdoch's shrill voice almost paralyzing her as he stepped out of the Number Eight hatch just ahead of Ferry. She glimpsed a laser scalpel in his hand, realizing he could use it as a weapon. That thing under full power could sever a leg at ten meters!

***

As the Jesuits recognized, a key function of logic limits argument and, therefore, confines the thinking process. As far back as the Vedanta, this way of tying down the wild creativity of thought was codified into seven logic-directing categories: Quality, Substance, Action, Generality, Particularity, Intimate Relation and Non-existence (or Negation). These were thought to define the true limits of the symbolic universe. The recognition that all symbol processes are inherently open-ended and infinite came much later.

THE HYLIGHTER with Thomas cradled in its tentacles vented a brief undulating song and began a slow drop into blue haze. Thomas felt the tentacles enfolding him, heard the song - was even aware that Alki was begi

The haze enclosed him then, warm and moist.

His memories were confused, like something seen through swirling water. They moved and shifted, combining in ways that frightened him.

Calm. Be calm.

He could not be sure this was his own thought.

Where was I?

He thought he remembered being thrust into the open outside Oakes' Redoubt. The land beneath him, then, could still be Black Dragon. He could not, however, remember being picked up by a hylighter.

How did I get here?

As though his confusion ignited some remote explanation, he saw a distant view of himself sprinting across a plain, a Hooded Dasher close behind, then the swoop of a hylighter as it lifted him to safety. The images played in his mind without his volition.

Rescue? What am I doing here? Ballast? Food? Maybe the hylighter is taking me to its nest and a bunch of hungr.... hungry what?

"Nest!"

He heard the word clearly as though someone spoke directly into his ear, but there was no one. He knew the voice was not his, not Ship's.

Ship!

They had fewer than seven diurns left! Ship was about to break the recording. End of humankind.

I've gone insane, that's it. I'm not really being carried through blue haze by a hylighter.

In his mind, a hatch opened and he heard a babble of voices, Panille's among them. Memorie.... he felt his mind lock onto memories that had been sealed away until this babble of voices. The gondola - the hylighters reaching into the surfaced gondol.... Waela and Panille making love, tentacles all around like long black snakes slitherin.... questing. He heard his own hysterical laughter. Was that another memory? He recalled the LTA carrying them to the Redoub.... the cell - those odd E-clone.... more laughter. I'm hallucinatin.... and remembering hallucinating.

"Not hallucinating."

That voice again! The cradling tentacles shifted, but he still saw only blue haze an.... an.... Nothing else was certain.

The chatter continued in his mind - memories or present, he did not know. His head whirled. Fragments of what appeared to be holorecords danced behind his eyes.

I've finally gone all the way - really insane.

"Not insane."

N.... I just talk to myself.

The chatter had begun to separate into discriminate pieces. He thought he recognized specific snatches of conversation, but the internal holorecord terrified him. He felt that the entire planet had become eyes and ears just for him, that he wa.... everywhere.

In fits and starts, silence returned. He felt it wash through his mind. Slowly - the creep of some small creature up a gigantic wall - he felt those other eyes and ears remove themselves from his awareness.

He was alone.

What the hell is happening to me?

No answer.

But he sensed the cadences of his mind's voice echo down a long, dark system of tu

The tentacles no longer enclosed him!

One palm touched the groun.... rock, sand. Darkness all around. Waela remained there - calm, receptive.

I've turned into some kind of a damned mystic.

"Live mystic."

That voice! It was as real as the wind he felt abruptly on his face. He knew then that he knelt on some dark ground wit.... with haze turning luminous blue all around. And he remembered, really remembered being picked up by a hylighter. Most precious memory: He nursed it as though it were his only child. Memory: a shimmering expanse of sea, narrow ribbon of coast winding itself out of sight, the most rugged mountains of Pandora lifting from the sea and plain - Black Dragon.

"Look up, Raja Thomas, and see how the child becomes father to the man."

He tipped his head and saw ripplings of bright yellow and orange in the blue mist. A whistling song astounded his ears. It was a small hylighter directly overhead in the mist. Tentacles brushed the ground around him. The mist began to thin, pushed by the breeze he could feel on his skin. He smelled floral perfumes. Visibility moved outward through air thick and warm with water vapor. He looked right and left.