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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?”
