Lewis came up to stand at Oakes’ shoulder. “Why, Legata?” There was no denying the amusement in his voice.
She refused to take her attention from the stricken look on Oakes’ face. Why do I want to comfort him?
“The Scream Room was a mistake,” she whispered.
Someone off toward the edge of the room shouted: “Clones first! Send the clone out!” It began as a chant, grew to a pounding rage: “Send the clone out!”
Oakes screamed: “No!”
But hands grabbed him and Legata was powerless to prevent it in the crush of people without using her great strength to kill. She found herself unable to do this. Oakes’ voice screaming: “No! Please, no!” grew fainter across the room, out into the passage, was lost in the shouting of the mob.
Lewis moved to the console, shut off the data, keyed a high sensor still free of the Spinneret webs. It showed the sudden gush of a burner opening a gap through the web where the wall had been breached by a cutter beam from outside. Presently, Oakes stumbled into view outside, running alone across Pandora’s deadly plain.
Chapter 68
This fetus cannot be brought to term. It cannot be a fruit of the human tree. No human could accelerate its own fetal development. No human could tap the exterior world for its needed energy. No human could communicate before departing the womb. We must abort it or kill both mother and child.
—Sy Murdoch, The Lewis Exchange, Shiprecords
WAELA SAT on the edge of the cot in the obstetrics alcove they had improvised. She could hear Ferry working with the wounded out in the emergency area. He had not even noticed her leave his side. Supply crates screened her area and she sat in the fabric-diffused shadows, taking shallow breaths to slow the contractions.
The prediction of Hali’s pribox and her own inner voice had been correct. The baby was going to be born on its own schedule and despite anything else that might be happening.
Waela leaned back on the cot.
I’m not afraid. Why am I not afraid?
She felt that a voice spoke to her from her womb—It will be as it will be.
The quiet was broken by a babble of voices and another rush of footsteps into the medical shelter. How many batches of the wounded did that make? She had lost count.
A particularly hard contraction forced a gasp from her.
It’s time. It’s really time.
She felt that she had been put on a long slide, unable to get off, unable to change a single thing that would happen. This was inevitable, growing from that moment in the sub’s gondola.
How could I have stopped that? There was no way.
“Where’s that TaoLini woman? We need her help out here.”
It was Ferry’s familiar wheeze. Waela thrust herself upright, staggered to her feet and made her way heavily back to the emergency area of the shelter. She paused in the entrance as another contraction gripped her.
“I’m here. What do you want?”
Ferry glanced up from applying celltape to a wounded E-clone.
“Somebody has to go outside and decide which people are most in need of emergency treatment. I don’t have time.”
She stumbled toward the exit.
“Wait.” The bleary old eyes focused on her. “What’s wrong with you?”
“It’s . . . I’m . . .” She clutched the edge of the treatment table, looked down at a wounded E-clone.
“You’d better go back and lie down,” Ferry said.
“But you need . . .”
“I’ll decide what has to be done!”
“But you said . . .”
“I changed my mind.” He finished with the E-clone on the table, looked down at the bulging eyes which protruded from the corners of the clone’s temples. “You. You’re well enough to go outside and see that I get the worst cases first.”
She shook her head. “He doesn’t know anything about . . .”
“He knows when somebody’s dying. Don’t you?” Ferry helped the clone off the table, and Waela saw the burn splash across the man’s right shoulder.
“He’s wounded,” Waela protested. “He can’t . . .”
“We’re all wounded,” Ferry said. She heard hysteria in his voice. “Everybody’s wounded. You go back now and lie down. Let the wounded take care of the wounded.”
“What will you . . .”
“I’ll be back when I’ve finished with this lot. Then . . .” He leered at her, old yellow teeth. “Maybe a baby. You see? I’m a poet, too. Maybe you’ll like me now.”
Waela felt the old snake of fear wriggle up her spine.
Another burn victim staggered into the emergency area, a spidery young female with elongated neck and head, gigantic eyes. Ferry helped her onto the emergency table, signaled a clone from secondary treatment to come in and help. A stump-legged figure clumped in, held the wounded woman’s shoulders.
Waela turned away, unable to look at the pain in the woman’s eyes. How silent she was!
“I’ll be in soon,” Ferry called as Waela left.
She stopped at the fabric closure to the rear of the shelter. “I can tend to myself. Hali taught me to . . .”
Ferry laughed. “Hali, sweet bloom of youth, taught you nothing! You’re not a young woman, TaoLini, and this is your first baby. Like it or not, you’ll need me. You’ll see.”
Another contraction seized her as she stumbled into her alcove. She doubled over until it passed, then made her way through the gloom to the cot, threw herself on it. Another long, hard cramp rippled the length of her abdomen, followed immediately by an even harder one. She inhaled a deep breath, then a third constriction began. Suddenly, the cot was drenched with amniotic fluid.
Oh, Ship! The baby’s coming now. She’s coming . . .
Waela clenched her eyes tightly closed, her entire body taken up in the elemental force moving within her. She had no memory of calling out, but when she opened her eyes, Ferry was there with the long-fingered dwarf she had seen in the outer area of the medical shelter.
The dwarf bent over her face. “I’m Milo Kurz.” His eyes were overlarge and protruding. “What do you want me to do?”
Ferry stood behind the dwarf, wringing his hands. Perspiration stood out on his forehead and all the hysterical bravado she had seen in the emergency area was gone.
“The baby’s not coming now,” he said.
“It’s coming,” she gasped.
“But the med-tech’s not back. The Natali . . .”
“You said you could help me.”
“But I’ve never . . .”
Another contraction rippled through her. “Don’t just stand there! Help me! Damn you, help me!”
Kurz stroked her forehead.
Twice, Ferry reached toward her, and twice pulled back.
“Please!” Waela screamed it between gasps. “The baby must be turned! Please turn her!”
“I can’t!” Ferry backed away from the cot.
Waela glared up at the dwarf. “Kurz . . . please. The baby has to be turned. Could you . . .” Another gasping contraction silenced her.
When it passed, she heard the dwarf’s voice, low and calm. “Tell me what to do, sister.”
“Try to slip your hands around the baby and turn her. She has one arm up and keeping her head from . . . ohhhhhh!”
Waela tasted blood where she had bitten her own lip, but the pain cleared her head. She opened her eyes, saw the dwarf kneeling between her legs, felt his hands—gentle, sure.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhh,” he said.
“What . . . what . . .” It was Ferry, standing at the exit from the alcove, ready to flee.
“The baby tells me what to do,” Kurz said. His eyes closed, his breathing slowed. “This infant has a name,” he said. “She is called Vata.”
Out, out.
Waela heard the voice in her head. She saw darkness, smelled blood, felt her nose stuffed with . . . with . . .
“Am I being born here?” Kurz asked. He leaned back in a rapturous movement,
held up a glistening infant wriggling in his hands.
“How did you do that?” Ferry demanded.
Waela threw her arms wide, felt the baby delivered to her breast. She felt the dwarf touching her, touching the infant—Vata, Vata, Vata . . . Visions of her own life mingled with scenes which she knew had occurred to Kurz. What a sweet and gentle man! She saw the battle at the Redoubt, felt Kurz being wounded. Other scenes unreeled before her closed eyes like a speeded holo. She felt Panille’s presence. She heard Panille’s voice in her head! Terrifying. She could not shut it out.
The touch of the infant teaches birth, and our hands are witness to the lesson. That was Panille, but he was not here in the medical shelter.
She sensed the people they had left aboard Ship then—the hydroponics workers, the crew going about their business along the myriad passages . . . even the dormant ones in hyb: All were one with her mind for an instant. She felt them pause in their shared awareness. She felt the questions in their minds. Their terror became her terror.
What is happening to me? Please, what is happening?
We live! We live!
All the other people vanished from her awareness as she heard/felt those words. Only the speaker of those words remained with her—a tiny voice, a chant, an enormous relief. We live! Waela opened her eyes, looked up into the eyes of the dwarf.
“I have seen everything,” he whispered. “The infant . . .”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Vata . . . our Vata . . .”
“Something’s happening,” Ferry said. “What is it?” He put his hands to his temples. “Get out of there! Get out, I say!” He collapsed, writhing.
Waela looked at Kurz. “Help him.”
Kurz stood up. “Yes, of course. The worst of the wounded first.”
Chapter 69
In that hour when the Egyptians died in the Red Sea the ministers wished to sing the song of praise before the Holy One, but he rebuked them saying: My handiwork is drowning in the sea; would you utter a song before me in honor of that?
—The Sanhedrin, Shiprecords
OAKES FELT his heart pumping too fast. Perspiration drenched his green singlesuit. His feet hurt. Still, he staggered away from the Redoubt.
Legata, how could you?
When he could move no farther, he sank to the sand, venturing his first look back. They were not pursuing.
They might’ve killed me!
Black char fringed the distant hole in the web where the mob had burned a passage to eject him. He stared at the hole. His chest pained him with each breath. Slowly he grew conscious of sounds other than his own gasping. The ground under his hand was trembling with some distant thunder. Waves!
Oakes looked toward the sea. The tide was higher than he had ever seen it. A white line marked the entire sea horizon. Gigantic waves crashed against the headland where they had built the shuttle facility. Even as he watched, a great wedge of headland slid into the waves, opening a jagged gap in the shuttle hangar. He staggered to his feet, stared. Black objects moved in the white foam of the crashing sea. Rocks! There were rocks larger than a man in that surf. Even as he watched, the garden—his precious garden—sloughed away.
Mewling cries like near-forgotten seabirds insinuated themselves across the spume. He looked up and turned around once, completely. Hylighters? Gone. Not one orange bag danced in the sky or hovered above the cliffs.
The cries continued.
Oakes looked toward the cliffs where Thomas had begun the attack. Bodies. The battleground lay there with pieces of people twitching in the harsh glare of the suns. Figures moved among the wounded, lifting some on litters and carrying them toward the cliffs.
Once more, Oakes stared back at the Redoubt. Certain death lay there. He turned toward the battleground and for the first time, saw the demons. A shudder convulsed him. The demons were a silent mob sitting in a wide arc beyond the battleground. A single human in a white garment stood in their midst. Oakes recognized the poet, Kerro Panille.
Those cries! It was the wounded and the dying.
Oakes staggered toward Panille. What did it matter? Send your demons against me, poet!
Here was the fringe of the battleground . . . mutilated bodies. Oakes stepped on a dismembered hand. It cupped his boot in reflex, and he leaped away from it. He wanted to run back to the Redoubt, back to Legata. His body refused. He could only shuffle on toward Panille, who stood tall amidst the demons.
Why do they just sit there?
Oakes stopped only a few meters from Panille.
“You.” Oakes was surprised by the flat sound of his own voice.
“Yes.”
The poet’s voice came clearly through the pellet in Oakes’ neck and there was no movement of Panille’s mouth. “You’re finished, Oakes.”
“You! You’re the one who wrecked things for me! You’re the reason Lewis and I couldn’t . . .”
“Nothing is wrecked, Oakes. Life here has just begun.”
Panille’s lips did not move, yet that voice rang through the neck pellet!
“You’re not speaking . . . but I can hear you.”
“That is Avata’s gift to us.”
“Avata?”
“The hylighters and the kelp—they are one: Avata.”
“So this planet’s really beaten us.”
“Not the planet, nor Legata.”
“The ship then. It’s hounded me down at last.”
“Not Ship.”
“Lewis! He did this. He and Legata!”
Oakes felt his tears begin. Lewis and Legata. He was unable to meet Panille’s steady gaze. Lewis and Legata. A Flatwing moved away from the poet, crawled onto the toe of Oakes’ boot, rested its bristling head there. Oakes stared down at it in horror, unable to command his own muscles. Frustration forced words from him.
“Tell me who did this!”
“You know who did it.”
An anguished cry was wrenched from Oakes’ throat: “Noooooooooooo!”
“You did it, Oakes. You and Thomas.”
“I didn’t!”
Panille merely stared at him.
“Tell your demons to kill me then!” Oakes hurled the words at Panille.
“They are not my demons.”
“Why don’t they attack?”
“Because I show them a world which some would call illusion. No creature attacks what it sees, only what it thinks it sees.”
Oakes stared at Panille in horror. Illusion. This poet could fill my mind with illusion?
“The ship taught you how to do that!”
“Avata taught me.”
A feeling of hysteria crept into Oakes. “And your Avata’s done for . . . all gone!”
“Not before teaching us the universe of alternate realities. And Avata lives in us yet.”
Oakes stared down at the deadly Flatwing on his boot. “What does it see?” He pointed a shaking finger at the creature.
“Something of its own life.”
A crash shook the ground all around them and the Flatwing crept off his boot to squat quietly on the sand. Oakes looked toward the source of the sound, saw that another coveside section of the Redoubt had slipped away into the surf. The white line of the horizon had moved right up to the land—thunderous waves. The cove amplified the waves, condensing them and sending them high against the shore. Oakes stared in dumb horror as another section of the Redoubt ripped away and fell from view.
“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 Hal
i.
Panille answered: “He is dying. A chest wound and a flash bum.”
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 long . . . 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 long . . . so long. Panille knows. It’s the rock . . . 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.
“What . . . 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 comer. 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’ve . . . I’ve . . .” 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.