"They're breeding people who're faster than the demons."
That was the popular story.
"Oakes and Lewis want nothing but servile zombies!"
Thomas had heard that story from one of the new militants, a fiery young woman associate of Rachel Demarest.
Slowly, he sat up and tried to probe the darkness around him.
Odd I should awaken at this hour.
He touched the light plate on the wall beside his head and a dim glow replaced the dark. The cubby appeared boringly normal: his singlesuit draped over a slidesea.... sandals. Everything as it should be.
"I feel like a damned Spinneret down here."
He spoke it aloud while rubbing his face. Presently, he summoned a servo, then slipped into his clothing while waiting for it. The servo buzzed his hatch and he stepped out into an empty passage lighted by the widely spaced ceiling bulbs of nightside. Seating himself in the servo, he ordered it to take him topside. He felt oppressed by the travel time, the weight of construction overhead.
I never needed open spaces shipside. Maybe I'm going native.
The servo emitted an irritating hum full of subsonics.
At the surface autosentry checkpoint, he keyed his code into the system. With the green go signal came the blinking yellow light for Condition 2. He swore under his breath, then turned to the lockers beside the topside hatch and took out a lasgun. He knew the hatch would not open unless he did this. The weapon felt clumsy in his hands and, when he holstered it, he was intensely conscious of the weight at his waist.
"Doesn't take much sense to know you shouldn't live in a place if you have to carry a gun." He muttered it, but his voice was loud enough that the blue acknowledge light winked at him from the sentry plate.
Still the hatch remained sealed to him. His hand was moving toward the override switch when he saw the little blinker at the bottom of the plate demanding: "Purpose of movement?"
"Work inspection," he said.
The system digested this, then opened the hatch.
Thomas slipped off the servo and strode out into the topside corridors, sure now of why he had awakened at this hour.
Lab One.
It was a mystery of peculiar odor.
He found himself presently in the darkened perimeter halls, passing an occasional worker and the well-spaced extrusions of sentry posts, each with its armed occupant paying attention only to the nightside landscape.
Plaz ports showed Thomas that it was moonlight out there, two moons quartering the southern horizon. Pandora's night was a buzz of shadows.
After a space, the ring passage ramped downward into a hatch-distribution dome about thirty meters in diameter. The passage to Lab One was indicated by an "L-1" sign on his right. He had taken only two steps toward it when it opened and a woman emerged, slamming the hatch behind her. It was dim in the dome, lighted only by the moonlight coming in through plaz ports on his left, but there was no mistaking the almost disjointed agitation in her movements.
The woman darted toward him, grabbing his arm as he passed, dragging him along toward the external ports with a strength which astonished him.
"Come here! I need you."
Her voice was husky and full of odd undertones. Her face and arms were a mass of scratches and he sensed the unmistakable odor of blood on her light singlesuit.
"Wha...."
"Don't question me!"
There was wildness, a touch of insanity, in her voice.
And she was beautiful.
She released him when they reached the barrier wall, and he saw the dim outline of an emergency hatch to Pandora's perilous open air. Her hands were busy at the hatch controls, keying the override system in a way that did not set off the alarms. One of her hands reached out and grabbed his right wrist, guiding his hand to the lock mechanism. Such strength in her!
"When I say so, open this hatch. Wait twenty-three minutes, then look for me. Let me in."
Before he could find the words to protest, she slipped out of her singlesuit and thrust it at him. He caught it involuntarily with his free hand. She already was crouching to thong her feet and he saw that she had a magnificent body - smooth muscles, a supple perfection - but swatches of Celltape criss-crossed her skin.
"What's happened to you?"
"I warned you once not to question." She spoke without looking up, and he sensed the wild power in her. Dangerous. Very dangerous. No inhibitions.
"You're going to run the P," he said. He glanced around, looking for someone, anyone, to call on for help. The circle of the distribution dome contained no other people.
"Bet on me," she said, standing.
"How will I tell the twenty-three minutes?" he asked.
She crowded close to him and slapped a panel beside the emergency hatch. Immediately, he heard the sentry circuit's hum, then a deep male voice: "Post Nine clear."
A tiny screen above the circuit speaker glowed with red numerals: 2:29.
"The hatch," she said.
There was no way to avoid it; he had felt her wild strength. He undogged the hatch and she thrust past him, swinging it wide as she dashed out into the open, turning right. Her body was a silver blur in the moonlight and he saw a dark shadow coming up behind her. His gun was in his hand without thinking about it and he cooked a Hooded Dasher that was only a step behind her. She did not turn.
His hands were shaking as he resealed the hatch.
Running the P!
He glanced at the time signal: 2:29. She had said twenty-three minutes. That would put her back at the hatch by 2:52.
It occurred to him then that the perimeter was just under ten kilometers.
It can't be done! No one can run ten kilometers in twenty-three minutes!
But she had come from the passage to Lab One. He unwadded her singlesuit. Blood on it, no doubt of that. Her name was stitched over the left breast: Legata.
He wondered if it was a first or last name.
Or a title?
He peered out of the plaz port, looking to the left where she would have to appear if she really did run the perimeter.
What would a Legata be?
A voice on the sentry circuit startled him: "Someone's out there, pretty far out."
Another voice answered: "It's a woman running the P. She just rounded Post Thirty-Eight."
"Who is it?"
"Too far out to identify."
Thomas found himself praying for her to make it as he listened to each succeeding post report the runner. But he knew there was not much chance. Since learning about The Game from Waela, he had looked into the statistics. Fifty-fifty in dayside, yes. But nightside, fewer than one in fifty made it.
The timer beside his head moved with an agonizing slowness: 2:48. It seemed to him that it took an hour shifting to 2:49. The sentries were silent now.
Why didn't the sentries mark her passage?
As though to answer him, a voice on the circuit said: "She just rounded East Eighty-Nine!"
"Who the hell is that out there?"
"She's still too far out to identify."
Thomas drew his lasgun and put a hand on the hatchdog. The word was that the last minutes were the worst, Pandora's demons ganging up on the runner. He peered out into the moonshadows.
2:50.
He spun the hatchdog, opened it a crack. No movement.... Nothing. Not even a demon. He found that he was swearing under his breath, muttering: "Come on, Legata. Come on. You can do it. Don't blow the fucking run at the end!"
Something flickered in the shadows off to his left. He swung the hatch wide.
There she was!
It was like a dance - leaping, dodging. Something large and black swerved behind her. Thomas took careful aim and burned another Dasher as she sped past him without breaking her stride. There was a musky odor of perspiration from her. He slammed the hatch and dogged it. Something crashed into the barrier as he sealed it.
Too late, you fucker!
He turned to see her sl
ipping through the Lab One hatchway, her singlesuit in hand. She waved to him as the hatch hissed shut.
Legata, he thought. Then: Ten klicks in twenty-three minutes!
There was a babble of conversation on the sentry circuit.
"Anybody know who that was?"
"Negative. Where'd she go?"
"Somewhere over near Lab One dome."
"Sheee-it! That must've been the fastest time ever."
Thomas slapped the switch to shut them off, but not before a male voice said: "I'd sure like to have that little honey chasin...."
Thomas crossed over to the Lab One hatch, heaved on the dog. It refused to move, sealed.
All that just to put a hashmark above her eyebrow?
N.... it had to be much more than the mark of success.
What were they doing down there in Lab One?
Again, he tried the hatchdog. It refused to budge. He shook his head and walked slowly back to the autosentry gate where he picked up a servo and rode it to his quarters. All the way down he kept wondering:
What the hell's a Legata?
***
The clone of a clone does not necessarily stay closer to the original than a clone of the older original. It depends on cellular interference and other elements which may be introduced. Passage of time always introduces other elements.
- Jesus Lewis, The New Cloning Manual
OAKES SNAPPED off the holo and swiveled his chair around to stare at the design on the wall of his groundside cubby.
He did not like this place. It was smaller than his quarters shipside. The air smelled strange. He did not like the casual way some of the Colonists treated him. He found himself constantly aware of Pandora's surfac.... right out there.
Never mind that it was many layers of Colony construction beyond his quarters, it was right out there.
Despite the few familiar furnishings he had brought groundside, this place would never feel as comfortable as his old shipside cubby.
Except that the dangers of the ship - the dangers which only he knew - were more distant.
Oakes sighed.
It was late dayside and he still had many things to do, but what he had seen on the holo compelled his attention.
A most unsatisfactory performance.
He chewed at his lower lip. N.... it was more than unsatisfactory. Disturbing.
Oakes leaned back and tried to relax. The holo of Legata's visit to the Scream Room filled him with disquiet. He shook his head. In spite of the drug suppressing her cortical responses, she had resisted. Nothing in her Scream Room performance could be held against he.... excep.... no. She had done nothing.
Nothing!
If he had not seen it for himsel.... Would she ask to see this holo? He thought not, but nothing was certain. None of the others had asked to see their holos, although everyone knew such a record was made.
Legata had not performed according to pattern. Things were done to her and she resisted other things. The holo gave him no absolutely secure hold on her.
If she sees that holo, she'll know.
How could he keep the record of it from the best-known Search Technician?
Was it a mistak.... sending her into the Scream Room?
But he thought he still knew her. Yes. She would not take action against him unless she were in great pain. And she might not ask for the holo. Migh.... not.
Not once in the Scream Room had Legata sought her own pleasure. She had acted only in reaction to the application of pain.
Pain that I commanded.
This made him uncomfortable.
It was necessary!
Given an adversary as potent as the ship, he had to take extreme measures. He had to explore the limits.
I'm justified.
Legata had not even required sedation after emerging from the Scream Room.
Where did she go, dashing off like that with only the minimal Celltape on her wounds?
She had returned naked, carrying her singlesuit.
Oakes had heard the rumors that someone had run the perimeter in that interval. Surely not Legata. A coincidence, no more. And the proof of it was that she wore no hashmark.
Damn fool! Running in the open at night like that!
He would have liked to prohibit The Game, but Lewis had warned him off this, and his own good sense had agreed. There was no way to prevent The Game without wasting too much manpower policing all the hatches. Besides, The Game vented certain impulses of violence.
Legata running the perimeter?
Certainly not!
Efficient damned woman! She was expected back at work by evening, the physical marks of her Scream Room experience almost gone. He looked at the notes beside his left hand. Unconsciously, he had addressed them to her.
"Check on possible relationship between waxing of Alki and growth of 'lectrokelp. Have Lab One begin two LH clones. Map new data on dissidents - special attention to those associated with Rachel Demarest."
Would Legata even take his orders now?
The picture of Legata's face from the holorecord kept slipping back into his mind.
She trusted me.
Had she really trusted him? Why else would she go back to Lab One when her misgivings about it were all that apparent? With anyone else, he would have laughed at such musings, but not with Legata. She was painfully different from the others and he had already taken her too far.
Entertainment time.
It had not been as entertaining as he had expected. He recalled the first potent look of betrayal in her eyes when the sonics hit her. The sonics had driven away the clones; they already had taken their entertainment. But even heavy pain had not moved Legata. Despite sedation, she could hear Murdoch's commands. And the sedation had been designed to suppress her wil.... but she resisted. Murdoch's commands told her what to do, the clone was prepared, the equipment set - but even then, she had to be totally awash with pain before inflicting anything like her own agony on the clone. Most of the time, her gaze had sought out the holo scanner. She had stared directly into the scanner, and the dimming of her eyes gave him no pleasure, no pleasure at all.
She won't remember. They never do.
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 ther.... an.... and...tomorro....
***
HUMANKERRO: "Does the listener protect 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, "Th...A Game"
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.
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