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He turned to watch the people playing this . . . this game.
The crew had paired up, drawn, paired up, drawn, and was now down to the last pair. A man and a woman this time. The man had no nose, but wrinkled slits in his forehead pulsed with the moisture that Thomas took for breath. The woman looked vaguely like someone he had known.
They drew, and the woman matched longer. The crowd cheered and helped her gather her winnings. They tucked them in her collar and sleeves and belt. The last of the wine was passed around and the group began moving toward the west quarter exterior hatch.
“He’s really going out there?” Thomas followed them with his eyes.
“Did you notice his right eyebrow?”
“Yes,” he looked up at her, “it looked as though he had two eyebrows above it. And the nose . . .”
“Those were tattoos, hash marks. You get one for running the P.”
“Then this is his third? . . .”
“That’s right. His odds are still fifty-fifty. But there is a groundside saying: ‘You go once, you’ve had your flirt with death. You go twice, you live twice. Go three times and go for me.’”
“Charming.”
“It’s a good game.”
“You ever play it, TaoLini?”
She swallowed, and the glow faded out of her skin.
“No.”
“A friend?”
She nodded.
“Let’s get back to work,” he said, and walked her slowly back to the hangar.
Waela remembered this exchange with the odd feeling that she had missed something in Thomas’ responses.
Thomas would not even pause for WorShip. He permitted a grudging rest, hardly a hesitation, only when fatigue had them dropping programs and forgetting coordinates. During one of these rests he had started an odd conversation with her and it kept her awake now.
What was he trying to say to me?
They had been seated in the globe of plaz which would shield them in the depths of the sea. Workmen continued their activity all around the outside. She and Thomas sat so close to each other that they had been required to learn a special rhythm to keep from bumping elbows. Waela had missed the right sequence of keys for the dive train three times running.
“Take a rest.”
There was accusation in his tone, but she sank back into the sheltered contours of her seat, thankful for any relief, thankful even for the crash-harness which supported her. Muscles did not have to do what the harness did.
Presently, Thomas’ voice intruded on her consciousness.
“Once upon a time there was a fourteen-year-old girl. She lived on Earth, on a chicken farm.”
Lived on a chicken farm, Waela thought, then: He’s talking about me!
She opened her eyes.
“So, you’ve pried into my records.”
“That’s my job.”
A fourteen-year-old girl on a chicken farm. Her job!
She thought about that girl she had been—child of emigrants, grubbers in the dirt. Technopeasants. Gaulish middle-class.
I broke away from that.
No . . . to be honest, she had to admit that she had run away. A sun going nova meant little to a fourteen-year-old girl, a girl whose body had become a woman’s much earlier than her contemporaries.
I ran away to Ship.
She had held such conversations with herself many times. Waela closed her eyes. It was as though two people occupied her consciousness. One of them she called “Runaway,” and the other, “Honesty.” Runaway had objected to Shipman life and railed against groundside dangers.
Runaway asked, “Why was I chosen for this damned risky life, anyway?
Honesty replied, “As I recall it, you volunteered.”
“Then I must’ve parked my brains somewhere. What in hell was I thinking?”
“What do you know about Hell?” Honesty asked.
“Yeah, I have to know Hell before I can understand Paradise. Isn’t that what the Ceepee says?”
“You have it backwards, as usual.”
“You know why I volunteered, dammit!” The Runaway voice was edged with tears.
“Yes—because he died. Ten years with him and then—poof.”
“He died! That’s all you have to say about it, ‘He died.’”
“What else would there be to say?” Honesty’s voice was level, sure.
“You’re as bad as the Ceepee, always answering with questions. What’d Jim do to deserve that?”
“He tested for limits and found them when he ran the P.”
“But why doesn’t Ship or the Ceepee ever talk about it?”
“About death?” Honesty paused. “What’s there to talk about? Jim is dead and you’re alive, and that’s much more important.”
“Is it? Sometimes I wonder . . . I wonder what’s going to happen to me.”
“You live until you die.”
“But what’s going to happen!”
Honesty paused again, uncharacteristically, and said, “You fight to live.”
Waela! Waela, wake up!
It was Thomas’ voice. She opened her eyes, tipped her head onto the seatback and looked at him. Light glittered from the plaza above him and there was the sound of workmen pounding metal out in the hangar. She noted that Thomas, too, looked tired but was fighting it.
“I was telling you a story about Earth,” he said.
“Why?”
“It’s important to me. That fourteen-year-old girl had such dreams. Do you still have dreams about your life?”
Her skin began a nervous glow. Does he read minds?
“Dreams?” She closed her eyes and sighed. “What do I need with dreams? I have my work.”
“Is that enough?”
“Enough?” she laughed. “That’s not my worry. Ship is sending down my prince, remember?”
“Don’t blaspheme!”
“I’m not blaspheming, you are. Why do I have to seduce this poor idiot poet when . . .”
“We won’t argue that again. Leave now. Quit. But no more arguments.”
“I’m not a quitter!”
“So I’ve noticed.”
“Why did you pry into my records?”
“I was trying to recapture that girl. If she won’t start with dreams, maybe she’ll get somewhere with dreamers. I want to tell her what’s become of those dreams.”
“Well, what’s become of them?”
“She still has them; she always will.”
Chapter 25
You specie of gods. Very well. Avata speaks that language now. Avata says consciousness is the Species-God’s gift to the individual. Conscience is the Individual-God’s gift to the species. In conscience you find the structure, the form of consciousness, the beauty.
—Kerro Panille, Translations from the Avata
HALI FELT no passage of time, but when the echoes of her own voice stopped reverberating in her consciousness, she found she was facing herself. She still sensed the tiny teaching lab which Ship had revealed behind the terminal in Records. And there was her own flesh in that lab. Her body lay stretched out on the yellow couch, and she stared down at it without knowing how she did this. Light filled the lab, splashed from
every surface. It startled her how different she appeared from the mirror image she had known all of her life. The slick yellow material of the couch accented her brown skin. She thought the brilliance of the light should be dazzling, but could feel no discomfort. Where her short black hair stopped below her left ear there was a dark mole. Her nose ring caught the light and glittered against her skin. An odd aura surrounded her body.
She wanted to speak and for a panic-seized instant wondered how she could do this. It was as though she struggled to get back into her body. Sudden calm washed her and she heard Ship’s voice.
“I am here, Ekel.”
“Is that like hybernation?” She had no sensation of speaking, but heard her own voice.
“Far more difficult, Ekel. I show you this because you must remember it.”
“I’ll remember.”
Abruptly, she felt herself tumbling slowly in darkness. And at the front of her awareness was Ship’s promise to give her another body for this experience. An old woman’s body.
How will that feel?
There was no answer except the tunnel. It was a long, warm tunnel and the most disturbing thing was that it contained no heartbeat, no pulse at all. But there was a glimmer of light at some distance and she could glimpse a hillside beyond the light. Raised shipside, she understood corridors without thinking about them, but when she emerged through the oval whiteness it was a shock to find herself in an unconfined area.
Now, there was a pulsebeat, though. It was in her breast. She put a hand there, felt rough fabric and looked down. The hand was dark, old and wrinkled.
That’s not my hand!
She looked around. It was a hillside. She felt the deep vulnerability of her presence here. There was sunlight, a golden glowing which felt good to this body. She looked at her feet, her arms: an old body. And there were other people at a distance.
Ship spoke in her mind: “It will take a moment for you to become acquainted with this body. Do not try to rush it.”
Yes—she could feel her awareness creeping outward through halting linkages. Sandals covered her feet; she felt the straps. Rough ground underfoot when she tried two shuffling steps. Fabric swished against her ankles—a coarsely woven sack of a garment. She felt how it abraded her shoulders when she moved; it was the only garment covering her body . . . no. There was a piece of cloth wound around her hair. She reached up and touched it, turning as she did this to face downhill.
