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She wanted to glance back. There had been some strangely shaped people hugging the rear of the throngs in the room, some with colors even stranger than her own. Something in Murdoch’s manner prevented her from turning.
He took her hand then and placed her palm on the sensor-scribe beside the hatch—”To record your entry time.” She felt an odd stinging sensation as her palm touched the scribe.
Murdoch smiled, but there was no mirth in it. His free hand went out to the lock-cycling switch. The hatch hissed open and he thrust her into it.
“In you go.”
She heard the hatch seal behind her, but her attention was on the inner hatch as it opened. When it had swung wide, she realized that what she had thought was a grotesque statue standing there was actually a naked living creature framed by the open end of the lock. And . . . and there were tears streaming down the creature’s cheeks.
“Come in, my dear.” His voice was full of hoarse gruntings.
She moved toward him hesitantly, aware that Murdoch was watching through the sensors overhead. The room she entered was lighted by corner tubes which filled the entire space with a deep red illumination.
The gargoyle took her arm as the hatch sealed behind her and he swung her into the room.
His arms are too long.
“I am Jessup,” he said. “Come to me when you are through.”
Rachel looked around at a circle of grinning figures—some of them male, some female. There were among them creatures even more grotesque than Jessup. She saw that a male with short arms and bulbous head directly in front of her had an enormous erection. He bent over to grasp it and point it at her.
These people are real! she thought. This is not a nightmare.
The rumors she had heard did not even begin to describe this place.
“Clones,” Jessup whispered beside her, as though he had been reading her mind. “All clones and they owe their lives to Jesus Lewis.”
Clones? These aren’t clones; they’re recombinant mutants.
“But clones are people,” she whispered.
Bulbous-head lurched one step toward her, still holding that enormous erection pointed at her.
“Clones are property,” Jessup said, his voice firm but still with those odd gruntings in it. “Lewis says it and it must be true. You may develop an . . . appreciation for certain of them.”
Jessup started to move away, but she clutched his arm. How cold his flesh was! “No . . . wait.”
“Yes?” Grunting.
“What . . . what happens here?”
Jessup looked at the waiting circle. “They are children, just children. Only weeks old.”
“But they’re . . .”
“Lewis can grow a full clone in a matter of days.”
“Days?” She was clutching at any delay. “How . . . I mean, the energy . . .”
“We eat a lot of burst in here. Lewis says this is the reason his people invented burst.”
She nodded. The food shortage—it would be amplified enormously by the requirements of making burst.
Jessup leaned close to her ear, whispered: “And Lewis learned some beautiful tricks from the kelp.”
She looked at him, full at him—that too-wide face with its toothless mouth and high cheeks, the pinpoint eyes, the receding forehead and protruding chin. Her gaze traveled down his body—enormous chest, but sunken and incurving . . . and narrow hips . . . pipestem legs . . . He was . . . he was not just he, she saw, but both sexes. And now she understood the grunting. He was fucking himself . . . herself! Little muscles at the crotch moved the . . .
Rachel whirled away, her mind searching wildly for something, anything to say.
“Why are you crying?” Her voice was too high.
“Ohhh, I always cry. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Bulbous-head lurched another step toward her and the circle moved with him.
“Entertainment time,” Jessup said and pushed her roughly toward Bulbous-head.
She felt hands clutching her, turning her, and, presently, her memory left her . . . but for a long time she felt that she heard screams and she wondered if they might be her screams.
Chapter 31
Absolute dependence is the hallmark of religion. It posits the supplicant and the one who dispenses gifts. The supplicant employs ritual and prayer in the attempt to influence (control) the dispenser of gifts. The kinship between this relationship and the days of absolute monarchs cannot be overlooked. This dependence on supplication gives to the keeper of those two essentials—the ritual paraphernalia and the purity of prayerful forms (that is, to the Chaplain)—a power akin to that of the gift dispenser.
—“Training the Chaplain/Psychiatrist,” Moonbase Documents (from Shiprecords)
RAJA THOMAS strode along a Colony passage with Waela TaoLini at his side. They both wore insulated yellow singlesuits with collar attachments for breather-helmets. It was first-light of Rega outside, but in here was the soft gold of dayside illumination that any Colonist could remember from shipside.
The food of this diurn’s first meal sat heavily in his stomach and he wondered at that. They were adding some odd filler to the food. What was happening to the shipside agraria? Could it be possible, as Oakes’ people hinted, that Ship was cutting down on hydroponics output?
Waela was oddly silent as she matched his pace. He glanced at her and found her studying him. Their eyes flicked past a confrontation too brief to call recognition, but an orange glow suffused her neck and face.
Waela stared straight ahead. They were bound for the test-launch apron to inspect the new submersible gondola and its carrier. It would be tried first in the enclosed and insulated tank at the hangar before being risked in Pandora’s unpredictable ocean.
Why can’t I just say no? she wondered. She did not have to get at the poet in the way Thomas ordered. There were other ways. It occurred to her then to ask herself about the society of Thomas’ origins. What was his conditioning that he thinks sex is the best way to lower the psyche’s guards?
As happened on rare occasions when she was with others, Honesty spoke within her head: “Men ruled and women were a subordinate class.”
She knew this had to be true. It fitted his behavior.
Thomas was speaking silently to himself: I am Thomas. I am Thomas. I am Thomas . . .
The strange thing about this inner chant which he had adopted as his personal litany was that it increased his sensitivity to doubts. Could it be something built into the name?
Waela no longer trusts me . . . if she ever did.
What is this poet and where is he? Processing was taking an unconscionably long time with him. Will he be an arm of Ship?
Why were they getting a poet on their team? It had to be a clue to Ship’s plans. Obscure, perhaps . . . convoluted . . . but a clue. This might be the element of the deadly game which he was required to discover for himself.
How much time do we have?
Ship did not always play the game by rules that were just and fair.
You’re not always fair, are You, Ship?
If you mean even-handed, yes, l am fair. The answer surprised Thomas. He had not expected Ship to respond while he walked along this corridor.
Thomas glanced at Waela—silent woman. Her color had returned to its normal pale pink. Did Ship ever talk to her?
I talk to her quite often, Devil. She calls me Honesty.
Thomas missed a step in surprise.
Does she know it’s You?
She is not conscious of that, no.
Do You talk to others without their knowing?
Too many, very many.
Thomas and Waela turned a comer into another portless passage, this one illuminated by the pale blue of overhead strip lighting—the color code which told them that it led outside somewhere up ahead. He glanced at Waela’s hip, saw the ever-present lasgun in its holster there.
Waela broke the silence. “Those new clones that Oakes says are being used out on Dra
