Was it worth the risk? He felt that he was challenging Ship, but the stakes were the highest.
Will You let me die here, Ship?
No answer, but Ship had said that his destiny was his own now. That was a rule of this game.
If the kelp is sentient and we can make contact, the rewards will be enormous. Intelligent vegetable! Did it WorShip? It could be the key to Ship’s demands.
Ship called the kelp intelligent and that could be another twist of this game. Should he doubt?
It occurred to Thomas then that if Ship were telling the truth, the kelp might be close to immortal. Except for specimens damaged by human intrusion, they had never seen dead kelp.
Did it live forever?
“Do y’still reject a standby LTA?” Lavu asked.
“How long could you hold one in sight of us?” Thomas asked.
“Depends on the weather, as y’well know.”
There was resentment in Lavu’s voice. He took it personally that so many of his creations had been destroyed, all of them equipped as best he knew for underwater survival. The answer, of course, was that Pandora’s planet-wide sea contained perils beyond those they knew. Lavu felt that the entire project was now a challenge to him. He did not want to quit. It was more than a concern about hardware. Lavu wanted to go out as crew.
“How else can I learn what’s needed if I don’t go out m’self?”
“No,” Thomas said.
All right, Ship. This will be the big throw of the dice.
Devil, why do you persist in such overly dramatic poses? This time, he expected the response and was ready for it.
Because they won’t listen to me here unless I become bigger than life to them.
Life can never be bigger than itself.
Lavu patted the outer surface of the sub as Waela moved up beside him. She had been listening to the undertones in the conversation between Thomas and Lavu.
What drives Thomas? she wondered.
She had only the barest details about him. Out of hyb and into command of this project. Ship’s doing, he said.
Why?
“She’s heavier than any of the others,” Lavu said, thinking that the question in Waela’s mind. “I defy any Pandoran monster to break it.”
“Did you solve the problem of filling the LTA?” Thomas asked.
“You’ll have to get your final inflation outside,” Lavu said, “I’ve laid on extra perimeter guards because the skydoors’ll be open longer’n I like.”
“The sub itself?” Waela asked.
“We’ve rigged guide cables up through the doors. That’s it.”
Instinctively, Thomas glanced up at the iris closure of the skydoors.
“She’ll be ready by oh-six hundred at the latest,” Lavu said. “You’ll have a full nightside of rest before going out. Who’s to ride with y’?”
“Not you, Hap,” Thomas said.
“But I . . .”
“A new fellow named Panille is to go with us,” Thomas said.
“So I’ve heard. Untrained. A poet? Is that the truth?”
“An expert in communication,” Thomas said.
“Well, then, let’s run the tank test,” Lavu said. He turned and waved a hand signal at an aide.
“We’ll ride it with you,” Thomas said. “What pressure will you take it to?”
“Five hundred meters.”
Thomas glanced at Waela. She gave the barest inclination of her head to indicate agreement, then returned her attention to the sub. It curved over her, more than three times her height at the thickest part of the teardrop near its bow. The outer carrier concealed all but the upper bubble of the plaz gondola within it. The induction propeller at the stern had been shielded in a complex baffle and screening system which reduced its effectiveness, but guarded it against kelp fouling.
Workers ran a ladder up the side of the hull now, cushioned it with a foam blanket to keep the exterior signal lights clean, and steadied it while Lavu mounted. He spoke as he climbed.
“We’ve installed the manual override to insure that no random signal opens your hatch. You’ll have to undog it by hand every time y’open it.”
No surprises there, Thomas thought. That had been Waela’s idea. There were suspicions that the kelp could control signals in a wide scanning spectrum and that some of the lost subs had merely been opened underwater by scanner-activation of their hatch motors.
Waela scrambled up behind Lavu, leaving Thomas to follow. They were already inside when he reached the open hatch. He paused there to peer along this craft he would command. In a way, it was a small Voidship. The stabilizer fins were like solar panels. Exterior sensors for all of the cardinal directions were like a Voidship’s hull eyes. And every known weak point had been multiple-reinforced.
Backup systems piled on backup systems.
He turned, found the top rung of the access ladder with a foot and stepped down into the gondola. It was red-lighted gloom there with Lavu and Waela already at their positions. Waela was bent over her console, checking her instruments, leaving the line of her left cheek visible to Thomas in the red light. How tender and beautiful that line was, he thought. Immediately, he suppressed a cynical laugh.
Well, my glands are still working.
Chapter 32
Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and slew him. And the Lord said unto Cain, “Where is Abel, thy brother?” and he said, “I know not: am I my brother’s keeper?” and He said, “What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood cries unto Me from the ground.”
—Christian Book of the Dead, Shiprecords
“ANYTHING GOES here?” Legata asked.
She studied Sy Murdoch carefully as he thought about the question. He was taking too long to answer. She did not like this man, the pale eyes which defied everything around them. He kept the lab too bright, especially this late in the dayside. The young E-clones huddled against a far wall were obviously terrified of him.
“Well?”
“That takes a little thought,” Murdoch said.
Legata pursed her lips. This was her second visit to Lab One in three diurns. She did not believe the reasons for this one. Oakes had pretended anger that she had not penetrated every element of the lab, but she had sensed the flaws in his performance. He was lying.
Why had Oakes sent her back here? Lewis was no longer out of contact. What did those two know that they had not shared with her? Legata felt anger at the frustrating unknowns.
Murdoch moved cautiously. Oakes had ordered Legata sent through the Scream Room, an “exploratory,” but had warned: “She is frighteningly strong.”
How strong? Stronger than me?
He did not see how she could be. Such a bouncy little thing.
“I asked you a simple question,” Legata said, not bothering to conceal her anger.
“Interesting question, but not simple. Why do you ask it that way?”
“Because I’ve seen the lab reports to Morgan. You’re doing some strange things here.”
“Well . . . I would say that there are few limits here, but isn’t that the basis for discovery?”
She replied with a cold stare, and he went on.
“There are few limits here, so long as Doctor Oakes has a complete holorecord of what we do.”
“He has us on holo right now,” she said.
“I know.”
The way he said that made Legata’s skin crawl. Murdoch carried his powerful body like a dancer. He lifted his chin and she saw a scar beneath his jaw that she had not noticed before. It mingled with creases as he lowered his chin. There was no telling his age. Given the possibility that he might be a clone, there was no telling his chronological age either.
Have to look into him, she noted to herself.
The things Lewis was having done here . . .
She glanced around the room once more. Something was not right. She saw the usual holo, com-console, sensors, but the place offended her directly, she was one who a
ppreciated beauty. Not decoration, but beauty. The two huge flowers flanking the hatchway . . . she’d noticed them before. They were pink as tongues and their petals convoluted into one another like a line of mirrors.
Strange, she thought, they smell like sweat.
“Let’s get on with it,” she said.
“First, a formality requested by Doctor Oakes.”
Murdoch swung a sensorscribe from a panel beside the lock. It appeared to be the standard identification reader of her shipside experience. She placed her hand on the flat plate to allow it to read her.
Stupid formality, everyone knew who she was.
A sudden tingling sensation shot up her arm from her palm and she realized that Murdoch had said something to her. What did he say?
“I’m sorry . . . what?”
She felt weak and disoriented. Something. . . .
She saw that the hatch was open and she had no memory of him opening it. What had he done to her?
Murdoch’s hand was on her shoulder propelling her into the lock. As she passed through the hatchway she imagined that she heard a tiny voice pleading from the heart of one of the flowers: Feed me, feed me.
She heard the hatch seal behind her and realized that she was alone and the inner door was swinging open . . . slowly . . . ponderous. What was all the red light? And those dim shapes moving . . . ?
She walked toward the opening hatch.
So strange that Murdoch had not accompanied her. She peered at the shapes awash in the red glow beyond the inner hatch. Oh, yes—the new E-clones. Some of them she recognized from the lab reports. They were designed to match the synapse-quick demons of Pandora. There was a problem with breeding for speed, something she’d intended to investigate.
What was it she wanted to watch for?
A voice whispered in her ear: “I am Jessup. Come to me when you are through.”
How did I get inside here?
Something was wrong with her time sense. She swallowed hard and felt the thickness of her dry tongue rasp against the roof of her mouth.
“Good and evil hang their uniforms at the door.”
Did somebody say that or did I think it?
Oakes had said, “Anything goes on Pandora. Our every fancy is possible there.”
That’s why I asked Murdoch . . . where is Murdoch? The gargoyle clones were all around her now and she tried to focus on them. Her eyes were not tracking. Someone grabbed her left arm. Painful.
“Let go of me, you. . . .”
She rippled her arm and heard the grunts of surprise. Peculiar things were happening to her sense of time and the awareness of her own flesh. Blood welled up on her arms and she had no memory of how it got there. And her body—it was naked. Her muscles corded reflexively and she crouched in defense.
What is happening to me?
More hands—rough hands. She responded in a slow-motion flex of power. And she distinctly heard someone screaming. How odd that no one responded to those screams!
Chapter 33
Humans spend their lives in mazes. If they escape and cannot find another maze, they create one. What is this passion for testing?
—Kerro Panille, Questions from the Avata
RAJA THOMAS awoke in darkness and it was like that most recent time, awakening in hyb. He found himself disoriented in darkness, waiting for dangers he could not locate. Slowly, it came to him that he was in his groundside cubby . . . night. He glanced at the luminous time display beside his pallet: two hours into the midnight watch.
What awakened me?
His cubby was eight levels under the Pandoran surface, a choice location cushioned from surface noises and perils by numerous color-coded passages, locks, hatches, slide-tubes and seemingly endless branchings. The Ship-trained found no difficulty recording mental maps of such layouts, the more remote the address the better. Thomas resented being buried in these depths. Too much travel time to places which demanded his attention.
Lab One.
He had gone to sleep while wondering about that restricted place. The source of so many odd rumors.
“They’re breeding people who’re faster than the demons.”
That was the popular story.
“Oakes and Lewis want nothing but servile zombies!”
Thomas had heard that story from one of the new militants, a fiery young woman associate of Rachel Demarest.
Slowly, he sat up and tried to probe the darkness around him.
Odd I should awaken at this hour.
He touched the light plate on the wall beside his head and a dim glow replaced the dark. The cubby appeared boringly normal: his singlesuit draped over a slideseat . . . sandals. Everything as it should be.
“I feel like a damned Spinneret down here.”
He spoke it aloud while rubbing his face. Presently, he summoned a servo, then slipped into his clothing while waiting for it. The servo buzzed his hatch and he stepped out into an empty passage lighted by the widely spaced ceiling bulbs of nightside. Seating himself in the servo, he ordered it to take him topside. He felt oppressed by the travel time, the weight of construction overhead.
I never needed open spaces shipside. Maybe I’m going native.
The servo emitted an irritating hum full of subsonics.
At the surface autosentry checkpoint, he keyed his code into the system. With the green go signal came the blinking yellow light for Condition 2. He swore under his breath, then turned to the lockers beside the topside hatch and took out a lasgun. He knew the hatch would not open unless he did this. The weapon felt clumsy in his hands and, when he holstered it, he was intensely conscious of the weight at his waist.
“Doesn’t take much sense to know you shouldn’t live in a place if you have to carry a gun.” He muttered it, but his voice was loud enough that the blue acknowledge light winked at him from the sentry plate.
Still the hatch remained sealed to him. His hand was moving toward the override switch when he saw the little blinker at the bottom of the plate demanding: “Purpose of movement?”
“Work inspection,” he said.
The system digested this, then opened the hatch.
Thomas slipped off the servo and strode out into the topside corridors, sure now of why he had awakened at this hour.
Lab One.
It was a mystery of peculiar odor.
He found himself presently in the darkened perimeter halls, passing an occasional worker and the well-spaced extrusions of sentry posts, each with its armed occupant paying attention only to the nightside landscape.
Plaz ports showed Thomas that it was moonlight out there, two moons quartering the southern horizon. Pandora’s night was a buzz of shadows.
After a space, the ring passage ramped downward into a hatch-distribution dome about thirty meters in diameter. The passage to Lab One was indicated by an “L-1” sign on his right. He had taken only two steps toward it when it opened and a woman emerged, slamming the hatch behind her. It was dim in the dome, lighted only by the moonlight coming in through plaz ports on his left, but there was no mistaking the almost disjointed agitation in her movements.
The woman darted toward him, grabbing his arm as he passed, dragging him along toward the external ports with a strength which astonished him.
“Come here! I need you.”
Her voice was husky and full of odd undertones. Her face and arms were a mass of scratches and he sensed the unmistakable odor of blood on her light singlesuit.
“What . . .”
“Don’t question me!”
There was wildness, a touch of insanity, in her voice.
And she was beautiful.
She released him when they reached the barrier wall, and he saw the dim outline of an emergency hatch to Pandora’s perilous open air. Her hands were busy at the hatch controls, keying the override system in a way that did not set off the alarms. One of her hands reached out and grabbed his right wrist, guiding his hand to the lock mechanism. Such strength in her!
&n
bsp; “When I say so, open this hatch. Wait twenty-three minutes, then look for me. Let me in.”
Before he could find the words to protest, she slipped out of her singlesuit and thrust it at him. He caught it involuntarily with his free hand. She already was crouching to thong her feet and he saw that she had a magnificent body—-smooth muscles, a supple perfection—but swatches of Celltape criss-crossed her skin.
“What’s happened to you?”
“I warned you once not to question.” She spoke without looking up, and he sensed the wild power in her. Dangerous. Very dangerous. No inhibitions.
“You’re going to run the P,” he said. He glanced around, looking for someone, anyone, to call on for help. The circle of the distribution dome contained no other people.
“Bet on me,” she said, standing,
“How will I tell the twenty-three minutes?” he asked.
She crowded close to him and slapped a panel beside the emergency hatch. Immediately, he heard the sentry circuit’s hum, then a deep male voice: “Post Nine clear.”
A tiny screen above the circuit speaker glowed with red numerals: 2:29.
“The hatch,” she said.
There was no way to avoid it; he had felt her wild strength. He undogged the hatch and she thrust past him, swinging it wide as she dashed out into the open, turning right. Her body was a silver blur in the moonlight and he saw a dark shadow coming up behind her. His gun was in his hand without thinking about it and he cooked a Hooded Dasher that was only a step behind her. She did not turn.
His hands were shaking as he resealed the hatch.
Running the P!
He glanced at the time signal: 2:29. She had said twenty-three minutes. That would put her back at the hatch by 2:52.
It occurred to him then that the perimeter was just under ten kilometers.
It can’t be done! No one can run ten kilometers in twenty-three minutes!
But she had come from the passage to Lab One. He unwadded her singlesuit. Blood on it, no doubt of that. Her name was stitched over the left breast: Legata.
He wondered if it was a first or last name.