The Jesus Incident

"I don't care what you say," Oakes muttered. "The planet's beaten us."

"If that's what you want."

"What I want!" Oakes rounded on him in rage, broke off at the approach of two E-clones carrying a wounded man on a litter. Hali Ekel, her nose ring glittering in the brilliant light, walked alongside. Her pribox was hooked to the patient. Oakes looked down at the litter and recognized the man there: Raja Thomas. The litter carriers stared questioningly at Oakes as they lowered Thomas to the sand.

"How bad?" Oakes directed the question at Hali.

Panille answered: "He is dying. A chest wound and a flash burn."

A chuckle forced its way from Oakes. He gulped it back. "So he won't survive me! At last - no Ceepee for the damned ship!"

Hali knelt beside Thomas and looked up at Panille. "He won't survive being carried to the shelter. He wanted me to bring him to you."

"I know."

Panille stared down at the dying man. Awareness of Thomas lay there in Panille's mind, linked to Vata, to Waela, to most of the E-clones whose genetic mix traced itself back to the Avata. All of it was there, the complete pattern. How profound of Ship to take the Raja Flattery of Ship's own origins and make a personal nemesis out of the man.

Thomas moved his lips, a whisper only, but even Oakes heard him: "I studied the question so lon.... I hid the problem."

"What's he talking about?" Oakes demanded.

"He's talking to Ship," Panille said, and this time his lips moved, his voice was the remembered voice of the poet, full of pouncing awareness.

A series of gasps wracked the dying man, then: "I played the game so lon.... so long. Panille knows. It's the roc.... the child. Yes! I know! The child!"

Oakes snorted. "He just thinks he's talking to the ship."

"You still refuse to live up to the best of your own humanity," Panille said, looking at Oakes.

"Wha.... what do you mean?"

"That's all Ship ever asked of us," Panille said. "That's all WorShip was meant to be: find our own humanity and live up to it."

"Words! Just words!" Oakes felt that he was being crowded into a corner. Everything here was illusion!

"Then throw out the words and ask yourself what you're doing here," Panille said.

"I'm just trying to survive. What else is there to do?"

"But you've never really been alive."

"I'v.... I'v...." Oakes fell silent as Panille lifted an arm.

One by one, the demons moved off at an angle away from the cliffside shelter. The first of them were at the cliff and moving up toward the high plains before Panille spoke.

"I release them as Avata released them. Still they do what they do."

Oakes looked at the departing demons. "What will they do?"

"When they are hungry, they will eat."

It was too much for Oakes. "What do you want of me?"

"You're a doctor," Panille said. "There are wounded."

Oakes pointed at Thomas. "You'd have me save him?"

"Only Ship or all of us together can save him," Panille said.

"Ship!"

"Or all of us together - it's the same thing."

"Lies! You're lying!"

"The idea of saving has many meanings," Panille said. "There's comfort in the intelligence and potential immortality of our own kind."

Oakes backed one step away from Panille. "Lying words! This planet's going to kill us all."

"What are your senses for if not to be believed?" Panille asked. He gestured around him, met Hali's rapt gaze. "We survive. We repair this planet. Avata, who kept this place in balance, is gone. But Vata is their daughter as much as mine."

"Vata?" Oakes spat the word. "What's this new nonsense?"

"Waela's child has been born. She is called Vata. She carries the true seed of Avata placed there at her conception."

"Another monster." Oakes shook his head.

"Not at all. A beautiful child, as human in her form as her mother. Here, I will show you."

Images began to play in Oakes' awareness, howling through his mind on the carrier wave of the pellet in his neck. He wanted to tear the thing from his flesh. Oakes staggered backward, thrusting at Panille with one hand while the other hand clutched at the imbedded pellet.

"Noooo.... n.... no!"

The images would not stop. Oakes fell backward to the sand and, as he fell, he heard the voice of Ship. He knew it was Ship. There was no escaping that presence as it expanded within him, not needing the pellet, not needing any device.

You see, Boss? You never needed a covenant of inflexible words. All you ever needed was self-respect, the self-worship which contains all of humankind and all the things that matter for your mutual immortality.

Pressing his hands to his head, Oakes rolled to his knees. He stared down at the sand, his eyes blurred by tears.

Slowly, Ship withdrew. It was a hot knife being pulled from Oakes' brain. It left an aching void. He lowered his hands and heard the crunch of many feet on sand. Turning, he saw a long line of people - E-clones and Naturals - approaching from the Redoubt. Legata and Lewis led them. Beyond the refugees, Oakes saw smoke drifting on a sea wind, billowing from the wreckage of the Redoubt. His precious sanctuary was being destroyed! Everything! All of Oakes' rage returned as he stumbled to his feet.

Damn You, Ship! You tricked me!

Oakes shook a fist at Legata. "You bitch, Legata!"

Lewis and Legata stopped about ten paces from Oakes. The refugees stopped behind them except for one tall E-clone female with fine features on a bulbous head. She stepped in front of Legata.

"You do not speak to her that way!" the E-clone shouted. "We have chosen her Ceepee. You do not speak to our Ceepee that way."

"That's crazy!" Oakes screamed it. "How can deformed monstrosities choose a Ceepee?"

The E-clone took a step toward Oakes, another. "Whom do you call monstrosity? What if we breed and breed here, and your kind becomes the freak?"

Oakes stared at her in horror.

"You ain't so pretty, you know," she said. "I look at me every day and every day I don't look so bad. But every day you get uglier and uglier. What if I don't think it's right for any more uglies to be born?"

Legata stepped forward and touched the woman's arm. "Enough."

As Legata spoke, a dark shadow flowed over them. They looked up to see Ship passing between Rega and the plain - far lower than Ship had ever been before. The odd protrusions and wing shapes of the agraria were clearly visible. The shadow moved with an awesome slowness, an eternity in the passage. When the shadow touched him, Lewis began to laugh. All who heard him turned toward Lewis and most of them were in time to see him vanish. He became a white blur which dissolved and left nothing where he had stood.

"Why, Ship?" Panille spoke it aloud, startled by the disappearance.

They all heard the answer, a joyous clamor in their heads.

You needed a real devil, Jesus Lewis, the other half of Me. The real devil always goes with Me. Thomas remained his own devi...special kind of demon, a goad. And now he knows. Humans, you have won your reprieve. You know how to worship.

In that instant, they all saw Ship's intentions toward Thomas, the issue hanging on a fragile balance.

Thomas raised himself on one elbow, resisting Hali's attempts to prevent it. "No, Ship," he muttered. "Not back to hyb. I'm home."

Legata intruded. "Let him go, Ship."

If you can save him, he is yours.

Ship's challenge rang through them.

Panille held fast to the awareness of Thomas and sent the call to Vata back in the medical shelter at the cliffs: Vata! Help us!

The old presence of Avata crept into his mind - attenuated but with nothing omitted. Vata was all of what had bee.... and more. Panille felt his daughter as the repository of those long eons when Avata had lived and learned, but welded now to everything human. She reached beyond the plain into the crew remaining aboard Ship, even into the dormant ones of hyb, giving them the new worship and weaving them into a single organism. They came together an awareness at a tim.... even Oakes. And when they were united, they moved threadlike into the flesh of Thomas, closing his wounds, repairing cells.