The Jesus Incident

The freighter skipped up the horizon, a great stone crossing the surface of a glassy sea. The fall into atmosphere was deceptive. The freighter had entered Pandora's pull at the lowest point on the horizon. It streaked a long upward arc as Panille felt it fill his awareness. It grew larger with its approach around the planet's curvature, and he saw it now falling white-hot toward him.

The crunch of gravel told him of Thomas' approach, but Panille had only a single purpose now. The approaching freighter was himself and he was diving through the sky alight with amber.

"Can you do it?" Thomas asked.

"I am doing it," Panille whispered. He begrudged the distraction of answering.

Until he had seen the pinpoint of that first glow against the Pandoran dusk, Panille had not been sure he could master this thing.

"I'm thinking them in," he whispered. There was awe and wonder in his voice.

"Who is coming?" Thomas asked.

"Avata did not say."

Thomas emitted a wry, jibing chuckle. "It's a surprise package from Ship. Maybe more recruits for me."

He moved around Panille and climbed down out of sight along the narrow path, his figure a mysterious movement in the half light.

Going to the shore where the surf crashes. The surf will make this landing perilous.

As the last sound of Thomas faded from Panille's awareness, darkness fell - the Double Dark in which Pandora's greatest mysteries blossomed.

Panille thought of himself now as a beacon. He was a signal transmitter in a known position. The freighter and its unknown passengers depended on his constancy. Avata wanted this freighter to land here. He trusted Avata.

Come to the sea, he thought. The se.... the se....

Hylighters began whistling along a rock ledge ahead of him and he knew it was time to join Thomas on the shore. He got up stiffly. It had been a long wait on the observation ledge. Knowing this, he had scavenged a singlesuit of white shipcloth which Avata had stored in the nest.

A hylighter positioned itself above and behind him as he began the slow climb down to the shore. Panille sensed tentacles dangling near, ready to grasp him should he fall.

Avata, Brother, he thought.

It fluted a brief reply.

The sharp rocks and the difficulty of the dark cliff path were second nature to Panille's body. He did not have to think about the climb. And he found that he could maintain the beacon while his thoughts wandered. His mind strayed back to Thomas' unbelieving interrogation.

Thomas demanded explanations and refused to believe almost everything he heard.

He believes Avata projects strange images into his mind. He believes I have learned from Avata, that I am a master of hallucination. He believes only what he can touch, and then he doubts that.

Panille recalled his own words: "Avata is not hallucinogenic. They are not even they. That's why I use the term Avata. That's why I call a hylighter Avata."

"I know that word!" Thomas was accusatory.

"The Oneness which is present in the many. It's a word from one of the old languages of my mother's people."

"Your mother?" Thomas was astounded.

"Didn't Ship tell you? I was womb-bred, womb-grown and nursed. I thought you said Ship told you everything."

Thomas flashed him a dark scowl which showed that Panille was striking at sensitive areas. But nothing had stopped Thomas from forming his army - no warnings about Avata's nature, no jibes at Thomas' limited information. Half of the army waited above them no...mixed crew of E-clones and normals - all of them praying that the freighter from Ship was bringing weapons and other support. Some had descended earlier to wait among the rocks at the base of the cliff.

Above Panille in the darkness, his Avatan guardian shared amusement and dismay at these thoughts.

Can that army save you? Panille asked.

Avata will die in only a few diurns. Then it may be that a rebirth can occur.

Oakes hasn't beaten you yet, Panille said. Lewis with his poisons and his virus, none of them understand about power.

Soft flutings rippled from the hylighter, the nearest Avata came to betraying doubts. Panille wondered then: Was this futility aroused by Thomas' efforts, or by the imminent end of Avata - no more of 'lectrokelp/hylighters, no more of the individual cells, the great plural-singular unity?

This thought disturbed him and he thought angrily as he worked his way down the steep trail to the shore: If you think you're done, then you are finished!

He emerged from a gap between high rocks onto a wide, rock-mounded sandy beach. Thomas stood far down the sand near the surf - one dark shadow among the many rocks. The surf was high, long rollers crashing onto the shingle. The air was damp with salt spray. Panille felt the surf's heavy rhythm transmitted through skin and feet simultaneously. He put a hand against one of the gateway rocks through which he had entered this sea realm. The rock was cold and wet, and it also vibrated to the surf.

Without the kelp to subdue the sea, the waves had become destructively wild - raging against the cliffs at high tide, throwing giant rocks in their surgings. Soon, very soon, all that Avata had built here would come crashing down into the wilderness of the sea.

The Avatan guardian hovered near his shoulder. One tendril touched his cheek, transmitting remembered emotions.

Yes, this is the place.

It was here, Panille recalled, that he had learned to appreciate all the centuries of poetry celebrating rock and sand and sea, and the peculiar Avata life-of-Self illuminated by the regular passage of moons and suns. Here, the occasional monotony of wave against shore had been broken by the healthy slap of a nightborn hylighter breaking free of its motherplant and drifting off with its long umbilicus tentacles trailing in the sea. Though all Avata was one creature, Panille had felt his own private kinship with the nightborn hylighter-Avatan. Here, he had listened for them and greeted each birth with a song. A far-off slap would catch his attention and fill him with all the wonder of an answered prayer. Across the gently rolling sea, the tiny creature would rise into darkness.

Never again?

Panille whispered a chant to those lost cells of Avata, feeling his whole body transmit the chant as though he were, at last, truly one with Avata.

As he chanted, the whole line of beach glowed with the moons-rise and the shimmering friendship of Avata. The glow illuminated the people of Thomas' ragtag army. Panille saw Thomas outlined against the dim light. Pushing himself away from the gateway rock, Panille went down the beach to stand near this mysterious "friend of Ship."

"They're less than two minutes away," Panille said. He felt the beacon within him, a timed fire which linked him to that hot metal behemoth diving toward him.

"Oakes will send probes," Thomas said.

"Avata will help me jam their signals." Panille gave a smile to the dark. "Would you care to join me in this?"

"No!"

You hold back too much, Raja Thomas.

"But I need your help," Panille said. And he felt Thomas fuming, the tension mounting.

"What do I do?" Thomas forced the words out.

"It may help you to touch an Avatan tentacle. Not necessary, but it helps at first."

A black tentacle came looping down to him then from the night sky. Reluctance apparent in every movement, Thomas reached out and placed a palm against the thrusting warmth.

Immediately, he felt his awareness joined to whoever guided that freighter toward them. He could see two hylighters hovering directly ahead of him and he felt his body standing on surf-drummed sand, a place to go. But the pulse of flight held him in thralldom.