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She reminded him now of the shipside agrarium workers. What had really impressed him out there was the difference between those workers and other Shipmen. Agrarium workers were a tight-lipped lot and always busy—sometimes noisy in their work but silent in themselves.
That was it. Legata had become silent in herself.
She was like the agrarium workers, containing seriousness, almost a reverence . . . not the grimness found in the Vitro labs or around the axolotl tanks where Lewis produced his miracles . . . but something else.
It occurred to Oakes that the agraria were the only parts of the ship where he had felt out of place. This thought disturbed him.
Legata makes me feel out of place now.
And there was no escaping the choices he had made. He would have to live with the consequences. Choices resulted from information. He had acted on bad information.
Who gave me that bad information? Lewis?
What control systems reposed in the information, leading inevitably to certain choices?
Such a simple question.
He turned it over in his mind, feeling that it put him on the track of something vital. Perhaps it was the key to the ship’s true nature. A key somewhere in the flow of information.
Information-to-choice-to-action.
Simple, always simple. The true scientist was required to suspect complexity.
Occam’s razor really cuts.
What choices did the ship make and on the basis of what information? Would the ship openly oppose moving the Natali groundside, for instance? The move could not yet be made, but the possibility of open opposition excited him. He longed for such opposition.
Show your hand, you mechanical monster!
The ship can act without hands.
But could the ship act without curiosity and without leaving clues?
As an intelligent, questioning being, Oakes felt the constant need to sharpen his curiosity, to keep himself in motion. He might not always move smoothly—that business with Legata—but he had to move . . . in jumps and fits and starts. . . whatever. The success of his movements stayed relative to his own intelligence and the information available.
Better information.
Excitement shot through him. With the right information, could he design the test which would prove, once and for all, that the ship was not God? An end to the ship’s pretenses forever!
What information did he possess? The ship’s consciousness? It had to be conscious. To assume otherwise would be to move backward—bad choice. Whatever else it might be, the ship could only be viewed as a complex intelligence.
A truly intelligent being might move seldom, but it would move surely and on the basis of reliable information which had been tested somehow for predictability.
Testing by large numbers or over a long time.
One or the other.
How long had the ship been testing its Shipmen? In a pure-chance universe, past results could not always guarantee predictions. Could the ship’s decisions be predicted?
Oakes felt his heart thumping hard and fast. In this game, he truly felt himself come alive. It was like sex . . . but this could be even bigger—the biggest game in the universe.
If the ship’s movements and choices could be predicted, they could be precipitated. He would have the key to quick and easy victory on Pandora. What action could he take to link the ship’s powers to his own desires? Given the right information, he could control even a god.
Control!
What was prayer but a whining, sniveling attempt to control. Supplication? Threats?
If You don’t get me assigned to Medical, Ship, I’ll abandon WorShip!
So much for WorShip. The gods, if there were any, could have a good laugh.
Abruptly, he was sobered by memory of Illuyank’s death.
Damn this place!
To walk in a shipside agrarium right now . . . or even in a treedome . . .
He remembered once nightside on the ship, walking out through the shutter-baffles to a dome on the rim, pressing his forehead against the plaz to stare into the void. Out there, stars whirled in their slow spin and he had known, beyond a doubt, that they spun around him. But, in the face of those uncounted stars, he had felt himself slipping into a maw of terrifying black. On the other side of that plasmaglass barrier, whole galaxies awoke and whole galaxies died every second. No call for help could carry beyond the tip of his own tongue. No caress could survive the cold.
Who else in that universe was this much alone?
Ship.
The voice of his mind had spoken the unexpected. But he had known it for the truth. In that instant he had seen, in the plaz, the reflection of his own eyes melting into the dark between the stars. He recalled that he had stepped back in mute surprise.
That look! That same expression!
It had been on the face of the black man back on Earth when they took the man away.
Remembering, he realized it was the same expression he now saw in Legata’s eyes.
In my eyes . . . in her eyes . . . in the eyes of the black man from my childhood . . .
Now, feeling the groundside cubby around him, all of the concentric rings of walls and barriers which comprised Colony, he sensed how his unguarded body could be betrayed.
I could betray myself to myself.
And perhaps to others.
To Thomas?
To the ship?
No matter his denials, the mystery of deep space and inner space filled him with wonder and fear. This was a weakness and it required that he deal with it directly.
God or not, the ship was one of a kind. As I am.
And what if . . . Ship were really God?
Oakes passed his tongue over his lips. He stood alone in the center of his cubby and listened.
For what am I listening?
He could only move by testing, by forcing the exchange, by groping beyond the ken of all other Shipmen. The key to the ship lay in its movements. Why did any organism move?
To seek pleasure, to avoid pain.
Food was pleasure. He felt hunger knot his stomach. Sex was pleasure. Where was Legata right now? Victory was pleasure. That would have to wait.
Let the pains demand their own actions.
Always the pendulum swung: pleasure/pain . . . pleasure/pain. Intensity and period varied; the balance, the mean, did not.
What sweets would tempt a god? What thorn would lift a god’s foot?
It came over Oakes that he had been standing for a long time in one position, his gaze fixed on the mandala pattern attached to his cubby wall. It copied the one he had left shipside. Legata had made this copy for him before . . . She had produced another in her finest hand and it already was displayed at the Redoubt. How he wished the Redoubt were ready! Demons gone, dayside and nightside safe. Many times he had dreamed of stepping out into Pandora’s double-sunshine, a light breeze ruffling his hair, Legata on his arm for a walk through gardens down to a gentle sea.
A sudden image of Legata clawing at her eyes replaced this pastoral vision. Oakes fought for a deep breath, his gaze fixed on the mandala.
Lewis has to destroy all of the demons—the kelp, everything!
It required a physical effort for Oakes to break himself away from his fixation on the mandala. He turned, walked three steps, stopped . . . He was facing the mandala!
What’s happening to my mind?
Daydreaming. That had to be it, letting his mind wander. The pressure of all those demons outside Colony’s perimeter walls overwhelmed him with feelings of vulnerability. He had lost the insulation he had enjoyed shipside—exchanged the perils of the ship for the perils of Pandora.
Who would ever have thought I’d miss the ship?
The damned Colonists were too brash, too quick. They thought they could barge in any time, interrupt anything. They talked too fast. Everything had to be done right now!
His com-console buzzed at him.
Oakes depressed a key. Murdoch’s t
hin face stared at him from the screen. Murdoch began speaking without asking leave, without any preamble.
“My dayside orders say you wanted Illuyank assigned to . . .”
“Illuyank’s dead,” Oakes said, his voice flat. He enjoyed the look of surprise on Murdoch’s face. That was one of the reasons for secret random sampling among the spy sensors. No matter what horrors you found, the information could make you appear omnipotent.
“Find someone else for my guard squad,” Oakes said. “Make it someone more suitable.” He broke the connection.
There! That was the way they did it groundside. Quick decisions.
The reminder of Illuyank’s death brought back the knot in his stomach. Food. He needed something to eat. He turned, and once more found himself looking at the mandala.
Things will simply have to slow down.
The mandala rippled before his eyes, myriad grotesque faces weaving in and out of the design, folding upon themselves.
