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“I release them as Avata released them. Still they do what they do.”
Oakes looked at the departing demons. “What will they do?”
“When they are hungry, they will eat.”
It was too much for Oakes. “What do you want of me?”
“You’re a doctor,” Panille said. “There are wounded.”
Oakes pointed at Thomas. “You’d have me save him?”
“Only Ship or all of us together can save him,” Panille said.
“Ship!”
“Or all of us together—it’s the same thing.”
“Lies! You’re lying!”
“The idea of saving has many meanings,” Panille said. “There’s comfort in the intelligence and potential immortality of our own kind.”
Oakes backed one step away from Panille. “Lying words! This planet’s going to kill us all.”
“What are your senses for if not to be believed?” Panille asked. He gestured around him, met Hali’s rapt gaze. “We survive. We repair this planet. Avata, who kept this place in balance, is gone. But Vata is their daughter as much as mine.”
“Vata?” Oakes spat the word. “What’s this new nonsense?”
“Waela’s child has been born. She is called Vata. She carries the true seed of Avata placed there at her conception.”
“Another monster.” Oakes shook his head.
“Not at all. A beautiful child, as human in her form as her mother. Here, I will show you.”
Images began to play in Oakes’ awareness, howling through his mind on the carrier wave of the pellet in his neck. He wanted to tear the thing from his flesh. Oakes staggered backward, thrusting at Panille with one hand while the other hand clutched at the imbedded pellet.
“Nooooo . . . no . . . no!”
The images would not stop. Oakes fell backward to the sand and, as he fell, he heard the voice of Ship. He knew it was Ship. There was no escaping that presence as it expanded within him, not needing the pellet, not needing any device.
You see, Boss? You never needed a covenant of inflexible words. All you ever needed was self-respect, the self-worship which contains all of humankind and all the things that matter for your mutual immortality.
Pressing his hands to his head, Oakes rolled to his knees. He stared down at the sand, his eyes blurred by tears.
Slowly, Ship withdrew. It was a hot knife being pulled from Oakes’ brain. It left an aching void. He lowered his hands and heard the crunch of many feet on sand. Turning, he saw a long line of people—E-clones and Naturals—approaching from the Redoubt. Legata and Lewis led them. Beyond the refugees, Oakes saw smoke drifting on a sea wind, billowing from the wreckage of the Redoubt. His precious sanctuary was being destroyed! Everything! All of Oakes’ rage returned as he stumbled to his feet.
Damn You, Ship! You tricked me!
Oakes shook a fist at Legata. “You bitch, Legata!”
Lewis and Legata stopped about ten paces from Oakes. The refugees stopped behind them except for one tall E-clone female with fine features on a bulbous head. She stepped in front of Legata.
“You do not speak to her that way!” the E-clone shouted. “We have chosen her Ceepee. You do not speak to our Ceepee that way.”
“That’s crazy!” Oakes screamed it. “How can deformed monstrosities choose a Ceepee?”
The E-clone took a step toward Oakes, another. “Whom do you call monstrosity? What if we breed and breed here, and your kind becomes the freak?”
Oakes stared at her in horror.
“You ain’t so pretty, you know,” she said. “I look at me every day and every day I don’t look so bad. But every day you get uglier and uglier. What if I don’t think it’s right for any more uglies to be born?”
Legata stepped forward and touched the woman’s arm. “Enough.”
As Legata spoke, a dark shadow flowed over them. They looked up to see Ship passing between Rega and the plain—far lower than Ship had ever been before. The odd protrusions and wing shapes of the agraria were clearly visible. The shadow moved with an awesome slowness, an eternity in the passage. When the shadow touched him, Lewis began to laugh. All who heard him turned toward Lewis and most of them were in time to see him vanish. He became a white blur which dissolved and left nothing where he had stood.
“Why, Ship?” Panille spoke it aloud, startled by the disappearance.
They all heard the answer, a joyous clamor in their heads.
You needed a real devil, Jesus Lewis, the other half of Me. The real devil always goes with Me. Thomas remained his own devil—a special kind of demon, a goad. And now he knows. Humans, you have won your reprieve. You know how to worship.
In that instant, they all saw Ship’s intentions toward Thomas, the issue hanging on a fragile balance.
Thomas raised himself on one elbow, resisting Hali’s attempts to prevent it. “No, Ship,” he muttered. “Not back to hyb. I’m home.”
Legata intruded. “Let him go, Ship.”
If you can save him, he is yours.
Ship’s challenge rang through them.
Panille held fast to the awareness of Thomas and sent the call to Vata back in the medical shelter at the cliffs: Vata! Help us!
The old presence of Avata crept into his mind—attenuated but with nothing omitted. Vata was all of what had been . . . and more. Panille felt his daughter as the repository of those long eons when Avata had lived and learned, but welded now to everything human. She reached beyond the plain into the crew remaining aboard Ship, even into the dormant ones of hyb, giving them the new worship and weaving them into a single organism. They came together an awareness at a time . . . even Oakes. And when they were united, they moved threadlike into the flesh of Thomas, closing his wounds, repairing cells.
It was done and they left Thomas asleep on the litter.
Panille took a trembling breath and stared around him at the people on the plain. In the healing of Thomas, all of the wounded had been restored. There were bodies of the dead, but not a single maimed among the living. All stood silent under the shadow presence which slid across the plain.
Legata.
It was Ship again.
Still shaken by the experience of the sharing, she spoke aloud in a trembling voice. “Yes, Ship?”
