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Most of the subjects begged, offered anything for the pain to stop. Legata simply stared at the scanner, wide-eyed. Somewhere in her, he knew, there had been awareness that she was totally helpless, totally subject to his every whim. It was a conditioning process. He wanted her to be like the rest. He could deal with that.
But he had been unprepared for the shock of her difference. Yes, she was different. What a shock, finally discovering this magnificent difference, to know that he had destroyed it. Whatever private trust they might have had was gone forever.
Forever.
She would never again trust him completely. Oh, she would obey—perhaps even more promptly now. But no trust.
He felt himself shaking with this knowledge. Tense, distracted. He had to force himself to relax, to concentrate on something which comforted.
Nothing is forever, he thought.
Presently, he drifted into his own peculiar arena of sleep, but it was a sleep haunted by the design on his cubby wall. The design took on distorted shapes from the holo of Legata in the Scream Room.
And Pandora was right out there . . . and . . . and . . . tomorrow . . .
Chapter 35
Humankerro: “Does the listener project his own sense of understanding and consciousness?”
Avata: “Ahhh, you are building barriers.”
Humankerro: “That’s what you call the illusion of understanding, is it not?”
Avata: “If you understand, then you cannot learn. By saying you understand, you construct barriers.”
Humankerro: “But I can remember understanding things.”
Avata: “Memory only understands the presence or absence of electrical signals.”
Humankerro: “Then what’s the combination, the program for learning?”
Avata: “Now you open the path. It is the program which counts in the most literal sense.”
Humankerro: “But what are the rules?”
Avata: “Are there rules underlying every aspect of human life? Is that your question?”
Humankerro: “That appears to be the question.”
Avata: “Then answer it. What are the rules for being human?”
Humankerro: “But I asked you!”
Avata: “But you are human and I am Avata.”
Humankerro: “Well, what are the rules for being Avata?”
Avata: “Ahhhh, Humankerro, we embody such knowledge but we cannot know it.”
Humankerro: “You appear to be saying that such knowledge cannot be reduced to language.”
Avata: “Language cannot occur in a reference vacuum.”
Humankerro: “Don’t we know what we’re talking about?”
Avata: “Using language involves much more than recognizing strings of words. Language and the world to which it refers . . .”
Humankerro: “The script of the play?”
Avata: “The script, yes. The script of the game and its world must be interrelated. How can you substitute a word or some other symbol for every cellular element of your body?”
Humankerro: “I can talk with my body.”
Avata: “For that, you do not need a script.”
—Kerro Panille, The Avata, “The Q & A Game”
Chapter 36
The mystery of consciousness? Erroneous data—significant results.
—P. Weygand, Voidship Med-tech
OAKES WATCHED the sentry on the Colony scanner. The man writhed and screamed in agony. The evening light of Alki cast long purple shadows which twisted as the man flopped and turned. The Current Outside Activity circuits reproduced the sounds of the sentry with clear fidelity, terrifyingly immediate. The man might be just outside this cubby’s hatch instead of on Colony’s north perimeter as the sensor log indicated.
The screams turned to a hoarse growl, like a turbine running down. There came a convulsive flopping, shudders, then quiet.
Oakes found that the sentry’s first screams still echoed in memory and would not be silenced.
Runners! Runners!
There was no escaping Pandora anywhere groundside. Colony remained under constant siege. And at the Redoubt—sterilization was their only solution. Kill everything.
Oakes found that he had pressed his hands to his ears trying to quiet the memory of those screams. Slowly, he brought his hands down to the scanner controls, looking at them as though they had betrayed him. He had just been running through the available sensors, scanning for any random COA which might require his attention. And . . . and he had encountered horror.
Images continued to play in his mind.
The sentry had clawed at his own eyes, ripping out the nerve tissue which Runners found so succulent. But he must have known what every Colonist knew—there could be no help for him. Once Runners contacted nerve tissue they could not be stopped until they encysted their clutch of eggs in his brain.
Except that this particular sentry knew about chlorine. Had some residual hope clutched at his doomed awareness? Surely not. Once the Runners were in his flesh, that was too late even for chlorine.
To Oakes, the most horrible part of the incident was that he knew the sentry: Illuyank. Part of Murdoch’s Lab One crew. And before that, the doomed sentry had been with Lewis on Black Dragon Redoubt. Illuyank had been a survivor—three times running the P . . . and one of those who came back from Edmond Kingston’s team. Illuyank had even come shipside to report on Kingston’s failure.
I heard his report.
Movement in the scanner riveted Oakes’ attention. The sentry’s backup stepped into view (not too close!) with lasgun at the ready. The backup was marked as an ultimate coward by Colony rules. He had not been able to shoot the doomed Illuyank. So the Runners’ victim had died the most miserable death Pandora could offer.
Now, the backup aimed his gun and burned Illuyank’s head to char. Standard procedure. Cook them out. Those eggs, at least, would never hatch.
Oakes found the strength to switch off the scanner. His body was shaking so hard he could not move himself away from the console.
It had just been a routine scan, the kind of thing he did regularly shipside. The horror of this place!
What has the ship done to us?
Groundside—nowhere to turn for escape. No release from the knowledge that he could not survive on this synapse-quick world without multiple barriers and constant guarding.
And there was no turning back. Lewis was right. Colony required constant attention. Delicate decisions about personnel movements and assignments, the shifting of supplies and equipment to Redoubt—none of this could be trusted to shipside-groundside communications channels. Pandora required swift action and reaction. Lewis could not divide his attention between Redoubt and Colony.
Oakes pressed a thumb against the lump of pellet in his neck. Useless now. Groundside static interference limited range . . . and when that impediment lifted, as it did for brief moments, the random signals which came through proved that their secrecy had been breached.
The ship had to be the source of those signals. The ship! Still interfering. The pellets would have to come out at the first opportunity.
Oakes lifted a bottle from the floor beside his console. His hand still shook from the shock of Illuyank’s death. He tried to pour a glass of wine and slopped most of it over his console where the sticky red splash reminded him of blood pulsing out of the sentry’s empty sockets . . . out of his nose . . . his mouth . . .
The three tattooed hashmarks over Illuyank’s left eye remained burned in Oakes’ memory.
Damn this place!
Gripping the glass with both hands, Oakes drained what little remained in it. Even that small
swallow soothed his stomach.
At least I won’t throw up.
He put the empty glass on the lip of his console, and his gaze swept around the confines of his cubby. It was not big enough. He longed for the space he’d enjoyed shipside. But there could be no retreat—no return to the slavery of the ship.
We’re going to beat You, Ship!
Bravo!
Everything groundside reminded him that he did not belong here. The speed of the Colonists! There was nothing like that speed shipside. Oakes knew he was too heavy, too out of condition to consider keeping up, much less protecting himself. He needed constant guarding. It festered in him that Illuyank had been one of the people considered for his own guard force. Illuyank was supposed to be a survivor.
Even survivors die here.
He had to get out of this room, had to walk somewhere. But when he pushed himself away from the console to stand and turn around, he confronted another wall. It came to him then that the loss of his lavish shipside cubby was a greater blow than anticipated. He needed the Redoubt for physical and psychological reasons as well as for a secure base of command. This damned cubby was larger than any other groundside, but by the time they housed his command console, his holo equipment and the other accouterments of the Ceepee, he was almost crowded out.
There’s no room to breathe in here.
He put a hand to the hatchdogs, wanting the release of a walk in the corridors, but when his hand touched cold metal he realized how all of those corridors led to the open, unguarded surface of Pandora. The hatch was one more barrier against the ravages of this place.
I’ll eat something.
And perhaps Legata could be summoned on some pretext. Practical Legata. Lovely Legata. How useful she remained . . . except that he did not like what had happened deep in her eyes. Was it time to ask Lewis for a replacement? Oakes could not find the will to do this.
I made a mistake with her.
He could admit this only to himself. It had been a mistake sending Legata to the Scream Room.
She’s changed.
