The Pandora Sequence: The Jesus Incident, the Lazarus Effect, the Ascension Factor (37 page)

Chapter 63

SHIP: I have taught you about the classical Pandora and her box.

PANILLE: I know how this planet got its name.

SHIP: Where would you hide when the serpents and shadows oozed out of the box?

PANILLE: Under the lid, of course.

—Kerro Panille, Shiprecords

WAELA FELT that she lived only in a dream, unable to trust any reality. She held her eyes closed, a tight seal against the world beyond her flesh. This was not enough. Part of her awareness told her that she was controlling the landing approach of a freighter.
Insane!
Another part recorded the moments before the suns lifted in the shadow of Black Dragon. Panille was there, too, somewhere low in the shadow.
I’m hallucinating.

Hali!

Waela felt anxiety coming from Hali . . . and Hali was nearby. It was an odd anxiety—tension overlain with a deliberate effort to remain calm.

Hali is terribly afraid and even more afraid that she will show it. She wants someone to take charge.

Of course—Hali has never been off Ship before.

Waela tried to move her lips, tried to form reassuring words, but her mouth was too dry. Speech required enormous effort. She felt trapped, convinced that she lay strapped into a passenger couch in a freighter diving toward heavy surf.

A piece of Kerro’s poems floated through Waela’s awareness then, and she focused on it in both fascination and fear, having no memory of where she had heard this poem:

Your course will be true when you sight

the blue line of sunrise, at night

low in the shadow of Black Dragon.

Hali was there, too, listening to the fragment and rejecting it. A wave of emotion rushed over Waela, made her want to reach out and hold Hali close, to cry with her. She knew this emotion—love of the same man. But she saw Pandora very close now—a raging white line of surf. Waela wanted to cringe away from it. She could feel the child in her womb, another awareness whose share of life reached out and out and out and out. . . .

A cry escaped her, but the sound was lost in the abrupt roaring, metal-straining protest as the freighter made its first contact with the sea. For a few blinks, the ride smoothed; there was a gliding sensation followed by a cushioned deceleration and lifting, then a grating, grinding cacophony which ended in a thumping and stillness.

“Where are the people?” That was Hali’s voice.

Waela opened her eyes, looked upward at the ceiling of the freighter’s sparse cabin—metal beams, soft illumination, a winking red light. Somewhere there was a sound of surf. The freighter creaked and popped. Abruptly, it tipped a full degree.

“There’s someone.” That was old Ferry.

Waela turned her head, saw Ferry and Hali releasing themselves from the command couches. The plaz beyond them framed a seamed barrier of black rock only a few meters away illuminated by wavering beams of artificial light.

Ferry’s hand moved to a control in front of him. There was a hiss near Waela’s feet, then the sudden rush of cold sea wind through an open hatchway. It was night beyond those moving lights. The hatch was blocked for a moment by the entrance of two people. As though awakening from a dream, Waela recognized them—Panille and Thomas.

“Waela!” They spoke in unison, both appearing startled at the sight of her.

Hali pushed herself away from the control console, intensely aware that Panille was focused on Waela’s mounded abdomen. Neither Panille nor the man with him, she realized, had expected to see Waela, and certainly not in the full bloom of pregnancy.

“Kerro,” Hali said.

He faced her, equally startled. “Hali?”

Thomas threw his head back in sudden laughter. “You see? A surprise package from Ship!”

Waela fumbled with the straps holding her to the couch. Hali rushed to assist her, released the straps and helped her off the couch. The sound of the surf was loud and they could feel its pounding through their feet.

“Hello,” Waela said. She took three short steps up to Thomas, hugged him.

Hali tried to identify the play of emotions across the man’s face.
Fear?

Panille touched Hali’s arm. “This is Raja Thomas, leader of the army and nemesis of Morgan Oakes.”

“Army?” Hali looked from Panille to Thomas.

Thomas gently released Waela’s grip around his waist, steadied her while he directed a glare at Panille. “You joke about this?”

“Never.” Panille shook his head.

Hali could not understand the exchange. She started to frame a question, but Thomas spoke first.

“What else is in the freighter?”

The Bitten program responded, a crackling voice from the overhead ‘coder, full of baps and bursts of static but the listing of the cargo manifest remained understandable.

“Weapons!” Thomas said. He ran to the open hatch, shouted something to people outside, whirled back. “We have to unload this thing before the surf breaks it up or Oakes’ people destroy it. Everybody out!”

Hali felt a touch on her shoulder, Ferry standing there. “I think I’m owed an explanation.” Even his demands were shaded in whines.

“Later,” Thomas said. “There’s a guide right outside who’ll take you to our camp. She’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

“Demons?” Ferry asked.

“Nothing like that around here,” Thomas said. “Now hurry it up while . . .”

“You can’t dismiss him just like that!” Hali protested. “If it weren’t for him, Murdoch would have . . . We’d be dead!”

Panille directed a quizzical stare at Hali, then at Ferry. “Hali, this old man works for Oakes . . . and for himself. He’s an expert at the game of power politics and he knows that we’re a highly negotiable commodity.”

“That’s all past,” Ferry sputtered. The veins in his nose stood out like worms.

“Your guide’s waiting,” Thomas said.

“Her name’s Rue,” Panille said. “You might remember her better as Rachel Demarest’s cubbymate.”

Ferry swallowed, started to speak, swallowed again, then: “Rachel?”

Panille shook his head slowly from side to side.

A single tear formed at the corner of Ferry’s right eye, slid down his veined cheek. He took a deep, trembling breath, turned and shuffled toward the hatch. All the energy and urgency he had displayed earlier were drained from him.

“He really did save us,” Hali said. “I know he’s a spy but . . .”

“Who are you?” Thomas asked.

“This is Med-tech Hali Ekel,” Panille said.

Hali looked up at Thomas—so tall! His eyes held her. He appeared to be in some ageless ring of middle age, but when she took the hand he held out to her, it felt firm and youthful. A commanding hand, confident. She grew aware then that Waela and Kerro were touching. Kerro’s arm was around Waela’s shoulder, guiding her toward the hatchway.

“Med-tech,” Thomas said. “You’ll be a great help to us, Hali Ekel. Come this way.”

Hali resisted the pressure of his arm and watched Kerro reach out, inquisitive, to touch Waela’s abdomen with one finger.

Thomas saw the gesture and focused on Waela. “Something’s wrong with her. She should not be that big . . .”

Thomas loves her
, Hali thought. The sound of concern was plain in his voice.

“My pribox says she’s only a few diurns from parturition,” Hali said.

“That can’t be!”

“But it is. Only a few diurns. Otherwise . . .” Hali shrugged. “. . . she appears to be healthy.”

“That’s impossible, I say. It takes much longer for a baby to develop into . . .”

“Lewis does it. You heard what the E-clones said.” That was Kerro returned from the hatchway, not concealing a faint amusement at Thomas’ confusion.

“Yes, but . . “ Thomas shook his head.

“Can you climb down to the beach by yourself, Hali?” Panille asked. “The rear of the freighter is already breaking up. And I think Waela . . .”

“Yes, of course.” She moved past him—the familiar face and familiar voice, his body much thinner than she remembered, though. It struck her then:
He’s not the Kerro I knew! He’s changed . . . so different.

Behind her, she heard Thomas muttering: “I want to examine that woman myself.”

Chapter 64

Man also knows not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falls suddenly upon them.

—Christian Book of the Dead,
Shiprecords

“BLOW THAT cutter. Give me the particulars later.” Lewis switched off the com-line, and turned to face Oakes across the Command Center. As though this act conveyed some deep communication, they both turned to look up at the big screen.

The bustle of activity around them went on—some fifty people guiding the Redoubt’s defenses under the eyes of the armed Naturals quietly watchful at the edges of the room. But to Legata, who stood near Oakes, it seemed that the noise level went down dramatically. She, too, stared at the screen.

It was early Rega morning out there, and the light showed the massed ring of hylighters, the waiting mobs of demons at the cliffs—all strangely held in check. Something new had been added this morning, however. A naked man sat on a flat rock pinnacle to the southeast, hylighter tentacles brushing against him. Sensor amplification had showed his features in close-up—the poet, Kerro Panille.

On the floor of the plain beneath Panille stood a plasteel-cutter fitted with wheels, E-clones and what appeared to be Naturals grouped around it. The cutter’s deadly nozzle was pointed toward the Redoubt—too far away for that model to do any damage, but unmistakably menacing.

The most menacing thing of all was the fact that no demon moved to molest any of the people waiting beside the cutter. Pandora’s terrible creatures waited with the others in mysterious docility.

“We should know in a blink or two,” Lewis said. He threaded his way through the room’s activities to stand near Oakes and Legata. All of them stared up at the screen.

“Can’t we send some people out there?” Oakes asked. “We could take that thing with a direct attack.”

“Who would we send out?” Lewis asked.

“Clones. We have clones up to here!” He brushed the edge of his right hand across his throat. “And we don’t have enough food. They could get through if we sent enough of them.”

“Why would clones do that?” Legata asked.

“What?” Oakes glared at her audacity.

“Why would clones obey an order to attack? They can see the demons out there. And there’ll be Runners somewhere on that plain. Why would clones take the risk?”

“To save themselves, of course. If they stay here and do nothing . . .” Oakes’ voice trailed off.

“Your fate is their fate,” she said. “Maybe worse. They’ll ask why you aren’t out there with them.”

“Because . . . I’m the Ceepee! I’m worth more than they are to our survival.”

“Worth more to them than they are worth to themselves?”

“Legata, what are you . . .” Oakes was interrupted by a brilliant flash of light and a blast so close that the concussion popped his ears and took his breath away. Sensor images vanished from the big screen to be replaced by static flashes of light. Legata, thrown backward by the blast, steadied herself against a fixed control console. Lewis had sprawled on the floor and, as he climbed to his feet, they all heard screams and clattering feet in the passage outside the Command Center.

Oakes gestured to Legata. “Get that screen working!”

“We must’ve hit that cutter,” Lewis said.

Legata leaped to the screen controls, keyed an emergency search for active sensors, found a high one which looked out over the Redoubt to the distant cliff with its bank of hylighters. Panille still sat on the pinnacle, the plasteel cutter and its crew remained at their cliffbase. Nothing appeared to have changed.

They could all hear the sound of pounding against the Command Center’s hatch. Someone across the room opened it. Immediately, the Center filled with people, a menagerie of E-clones and Naturals, all crying and screaming: “Runners! Runners! Seal off!”

Lewis whirled to the nearest console, slapped the key for the Seal Off program. As hatches hissed shut, they saw on the screen the first wave of people shrieking in terror at the inner edge of the Redoubt. Legata turreted the high sensor to follow them and they all saw the smoking break in the Redoubt’s perimeter, the flood of people fleeing it and being brought up short at sealed hatches. Fists beat a muffled drumming on the hatches, the sound made all the more terrible by its distance from the sensor. It gave the whole scene a marionette quality.

Lewis suddenly darted across the room, grabbed the arm of one of the newcomers and returned to Oakes with the man. Legata recognized him as a crew supervisor, a Natural named Marco.

“What the hell happened out there?” Oakes demanded.

“I don’t know.” The man blinked in confusion, stared up at the screen rather than at Oakes. “We took one of the new cutters, the long-range ones, and we hit within a meter of them.”

“You missed them?” Oakes screamed it, his face red with rage.

“No! No, sir. A meter’s good enough. That close will melt bedrock for ten meters all around. It’s just . . .”

“That’s all right, Marco,” Lewis said. “Just describe what you saw.”

“It was that man up on the rocks.” Marco pointed at the screen.

“He didn’t do anything,” Oakes said. “We were looking at the screen the whole time and he . . .”

“Let Marco tell what he saw,” Lewis interrupted.

“It was almost too fast for the eye to see,” the supervisor said. “Our beam hit less than a meter away. I saw the ground out there begin to glow. Then the beam . . . bent. It bent right up toward that man on the rock. I thought I saw him glow, then the beam came right back at us!”

“Our cutter’s gone?” Lewis asked.

“It went up so fast only a few of us escaped.”

“Send out some clones,” Oakes said.

An unmistakable press of bodies moved toward him as he spoke and, too late, he realized his danger. More than half the Command Center crew was composed of clones and most of the refugees who now crowded the room were clones.

“Sure!” someone shouted from the press of people. “You stay here while we take the risk!”

Another voice, gravelly and full of gutturals, took it up from another comer of the crowd: “Yes, send out some clones. More meat for the demons. A diversion while you Naturals tiptoe home to Colony and your wine!”

Oakes glanced at the ring of faces pressing toward him. Even the Naturals among them appeared angry. This was not the time to tell them that Colony no longer existed. They would know their power then. They would know how much he needed them.

“No!” Oakes waved a hand in the air. “All survival decisions belong to the Ceepee. I am Ship’s envoy and voice here!”

“Ohhh, it’s
Ship
now!” someone shouted.

“We will not run home to Colony,” Oakes said. “We will stand here at your side . . . to the last man, if necessary.”

The guttural voice responded: “You’re damn right you’re not leaving!”

The room took on an odd sense of quiet into which Lewis’ voice came clearly: “We will not be beaten.”

Oakes picked it up: “We have almost eliminated the kelp that kept us from gardening the sea. The hylighters will go next. A few rebels will not stand in the way of the good life we can make for ourselves here.”

Oakes glanced at Lewis, surprised a flitting smile there.

“Tell us what to do,” Lewis said.

One of Lewis’ minions in the crowd responded on cue: “Yes, tell us.”

How well early conditioning pays off
, Oakes thought. And he said: “First, we have to take stock of our situation.”

“I’ve been watching the screen,” Lewis said. “I don’t see any Runners. Have you seen any, Legata?”

“No, not a one.”

“Not one Runner has tried to enter the Redoubt,” Lewis said. “They remember the chlorine.”

“Have you looked at the whole perimeter?” someone demanded.

“No, but look at those people near that break in our wall.” Lewis pointed. “Not a one of them’s in trouble. I’m going to open the hatches.”

“No!” Oakes stepped forward. “Whoever asked that question is right. We have to be sure.” He turned toward Legata. “Do you have enough sensors to scan the perimeter?”

“Not completely . . . but Jesus is right. Nothing’s attacking our people out there.”

“Send some volunteers out with portable sensors, then,” Lewis said. “We could use a few repair crews as well. I’ll go with ’em, if you like.”

Oakes stared at Lewis.
Could the man really be that brave? Runners remembering chlorine? Impossible.
Something else was holding the demons in check. As he thought this, Oakes experienced the abrupt sensation that the entire planet was out there, waiting just for the proper moment to attack and kill him.

Taking his silence for agreement, Lewis pressed his way through the crowd, selecting people as he moved. “You . . . you . . . you . . . you . . . Come with me. Larius, you get a repair crew together, take the down-chart and get busy restoring our eyes and ears.”

Lewis popped a hatch at the far side of the room, waved his volunteers through, and turned before joining them. “All right, Morgan, it’s up to you.”

What did he mean by that?
Oakes watched the hatch seal behind Lewis.
I have to do something!

“Everybody back to work,” Oakes said. “Everybody but the Command Center crew outside in the passage.”

They were reluctant to move.

“Nothing came in the hatch when Jesus opened it,” Oakes said. “Go on. We have work to do. So do you.”

“Leave the hatch open if you want,” Legata said.

Oakes did not like that, but the suggestion moved them. People began leaving. Legata turned back to the control console for the big screen. Oakes moved to her side, becoming intensely aware of the musky smell which surrounded her.

“We’re fighting the whole damned planet,” he muttered.

He watched while portable sensors and repairs began restoring the big screen’s overview of the Redoubt’s operation. As service returned, it became apparent that something had destroyed some seventy degrees of perimeter sensors below the ten-meter level. Burned-out relays had put other sensors out of service. The damage was far less than he had feared. He began to breathe more easily, realizing only then how tension had tightened his chest.

Lewis returned after a time, crossed to Oakes and Legata at the screen. “Did you want those people to stay in the passage?”

Oakes shook his head. “No.” He continued to watch the screen.

“I sent them about their business,” Lewis said. “Nothing seems to’ve changed outside. Why are they waiting?”

“War of nerves,” Oakes said.

“Perhaps.”

“We must devise a plan of attack,” Oakes said. “The clones must be convinced that it’s necessary to attack.”

Lewis stared at the play of Legata’s hands across the screen controls, glancing now and then up at the COA she produced. Rega was much higher in the sky now and Alki was beginning to creep above the horizon. It was brilliant out on the plain, every detail washed in light.

“How will you convince the clones?” Lewis asked.

“Get a few of them in here,” Oakes said.

Lewis directed a questioning stare at Oakes, but turned and obeyed. He returned with twelve E-clones whose appearance had been held closer to the Natural standard except for the introduction of extra musculature in arms and legs. They were a type Oakes had always thought bulged in a repellant way, but he masked his dislike. Lewis stopped the group in an arc about three paces from Oakes.

Studying the faces, Oakes recognized some of the group which had fled into the Command Center earlier. There was no avoiding the distrust in their expressions. And Oakes noted that Lewis had seen fit to don a holstered lasgun and that the Naturals around the edges of the room were alert and watchful.

“I will not go back to Colony,” Oakes began. “Never. We are here to . . .”

“You might run back to Ship!” It was a clone standing just to the left of Lewis.

“Ship will not respond to us,” Legata said. “We are on our own.”

Damn her!
Oakes went pale.
Didn’t she know how dangerous it was to betray your dependence on others?

“We are being tested, that’s all,” Oakes said. He glanced at Lewis, surprised another fleeting grin on the man’s face.

“Maybe we’re supposed to go outside and run for it,” Legata said. Her fingers danced across the screen’s controls. “Maybe it’s just a game like the Scream Room or running the P.”

What is she doing?
Oakes wondered. He shot a glance at her, but Legata continued to direct the screen’s controls.

“They’re doing something,” she said.

Every eye turned toward the screen whose entire area she had focused on the view toward the cliffs. Panille was standing now, his right hand clutching a hylighter tentacle. More E-clones and others had massed around the cutter on the plain below him. Demons had moved out from the cliff shadows. Even the enclosing arc of hylighters appeared more agitated, moving about, changing altitude.

Legata zoomed in on a man standing beside the cutter’s left wheel.

“Thomas,” she said. “But the hylighters . . .”

“He’s in league with ’em,” Lewis said. “Has been all along!”

Legata stared out at the plain. Was that possible? She had been about to expose Oakes as a clone, but now she hesitated. What did she really know about Thomas?

As she thought this, Thomas lowered his right arm and Panille, atop the pinnacle, was picked up by one of the giant bags, carried gently down to the plain.

Thomas and his people were moving forward now, a ragged advance but spreading out on both sides of the cutter.

“There must be at least a thousand of them,” Lewis muttered. “Where’d they get that many people?”

“What’re the demons doing?” Legata asked.

The creatures had spread out below the cliff—Dashers, Spinnerets, Flatwings and more—even a few of the rare Grunchers. They were following the attackers but slowly and at a distance.

“If they get that cutter within range of us, we’re through,” Oakes said. He rounded on Lewis. “Now will you send out some attackers?”

“We have no choice,” Lewis said. He glanced at the clones beside him. “You all see that, don’t you?”