"What?"
"It requires an even number of players, men or women. Each one buys into The Game with a certain number of food chits. They pair off any way they wish, and each one draws a wihi stick from a basket. They compare, and the longest stick wins a round. The shorter stick of the pair is eliminated, so those drawing the longer sticks pair up. They draw again, and so on until there is only one couple."
"What about the food chits?"
"The players up the ante every round, so if there are a lot of people, The Game gets pretty expensive."
"Does the last couple divide the chits?"
"No, they draw again. The one who draws the longer stick wins the chits."
"That seems boring enough."
"Yes."
She hesitated, then: "The loser runs the perimeter."
She said it offhand, without as much as a blink.
"You mean they run around the outsid.... ?" his thumb hung in the air over his shoulder.
She nodded. "They run it naked."
"But they can't possibl.... that's almost ten kilometers out in the ope...."
"Some make it."
"But why? Not for food, it's not that bad yet, is it?"
"No, not for food. For favors, jobs, quarters, partners. For the thrill. For the chance to go out with a flash from a boring life. The long sticks are the losers. Food chits are a consolation prize. The winner gets to run the P."
Thomas let out a long breath.
"What are the odds?"
"By experience, they work out just like the rest of The Game - fifty-fifty. Half don't make it."
"And it's legal?"
It was her turn to look at him quizzically.
"They have the right to their own bodies."
He turned to watch the people playing thi.... this game.
The crew had paired up, drawn, paired up, drawn, and was now down to the last pair. A man and a woman this time. The man had no nose, but wrinkled slits in his forehead pulsed with the moisture that Thomas took for breath. The woman looked vaguely like someone he had known.
They drew, and the woman matched longer. The crowd cheered and helped her gather her winnings. They tucked them in her collar and sleeves and belt. The last of the wine was passed around and the group began moving toward the west quarter exterior hatch.
"He's really going out there?" Thomas followed them with his eyes.
"Did you notice his right eyebrow?"
"Yes," he looked up at her, "it looked as though he had two eyebrows above it. And the nos...."
"Those were tattoos, hash marks. You get one for running the P."
"Then this is his third?"
"That's right. His odds are still fifty-fifty. But there is a groundside saying: 'You go once, you've had your flirt with death. You go twice, you live twice. Go three times and go for me.'"
"Charming."
"It's a good game."
"You ever play it, TaoLini?"
She swallowed, and the glow faded out of her skin.
"No."
"A friend?"
She nodded.
"Let's get back to work," he said, and walked her slowly back to the hangar.
Waela remembered this exchange with the odd feeling that she had missed something in Thomas' responses.
Thomas would not even pause for WorShip. He permitted a grudging rest, hardly a hesitation, only when fatigue had them dropping programs and forgetting coordinates. During one of these rests he had started an odd conversation with her and it kept her awake now.
What was he trying to say to me?
They had been seated in the globe of plaz which would shield them in the depths of the sea. Workmen continued their activity all around the outside. She and Thomas sat so close to each other that they had been required to learn a special rhythm to keep from bumping elbows. Waela had missed the right sequence of keys for the dive train three times running. "Take a rest."
There was accusation in his tone, but she sank back into the sheltered contours of her seat, thankful for any relief, thankful even for the crash-harness which supported her. Muscles did not have to do what the harness did.
Presently, Thomas' voice intruded on her consciousness. "Once upon a time there was a fourteen-year-old girl. She lived on Earth, on a chicken farm."
I lived on a chicken farm, Waela thought, then: He's talking about me!
She opened her eyes.
"So, you've pried into my records."
"That's my job."
A fourteen-year-old girl on a chicken farm. His job! She thought about that girl she had been - child of emigrants, grubbers in the dirt. Technopeasants. Gaulish middle-class.
I broke away from that.
N.... to be honest, she had to admit that she had run away. A sun going nova meant little to a fourteen-year-old girl, a girl whose body had become a woman's much earlier than her contemporaries.
I ran away to Ship.
She had held such conversations with herself many times. Waela closed her eyes. It was as though two people occupied her consciousness. One of them she called "Runaway," and the other, "Honesty." Runaway had objected to Shipman life and railed against groundside dangers.
Runaway asked, "Why was I chosen for this damned risky life, anyway?"
Honesty replied, "As I recall it, you volunteered."
"Then I must've parked my brains somewhere. What in hell was I thinking?"
"What do you know about Hell?" Honesty asked.
"Yeah, I have to know Hell before I can understand Paradise. Isn't that what the Ceepee says?"
"You have it backwards, as usual."
"You know why I volunteered, dammit!" The Runaway voice was edged with tears.
"Yea - because he died. Ten years with him and then - poof."
"He died! That's all you have to say about it, 'He died.'"
"What else would there be to say?" Honesty's voice was level, sure.
"You're as bad as the Ceepee, always answering with questions. What'd Jim do to deserve that?"
"He tested for limits and found them when he ran the P."
"But why doesn't Ship or the Ceepee ever talk about it?"
"About death?" Honesty paused. "What's there to talk about? Jim is dead and you're alive, and that's much more important."
"Is it? Sometimes I wonde.... I wonder what's going to happen to me."
"You live until you die."
"But what's going to happen?"
Honesty paused again, uncharacteristically, and said, "You fight to live."
Waela! Waela, wake up!
It was Thomas' voice. She opened her eyes, tipped her head onto the seatback and looked at him. Light glittered from the plaza above him and there was the sound of workmen pounding metal out in the hangar. She noted that Thomas, too, looked tired but was fighting it.
"I was telling you a story about Earth," he said.
"Why?"
"It's important to me. That fourteen-year-old girl had such dreams. Do you still have dreams about your life?"
Her skin began a nervous glow. Does he read minds?
"Dreams?" She closed her eyes and sighed. "What do I need with dreams? I have my work."
"Is that enough?"
"Enough?" she laughed. "That's not my worry. Ship is sending down my prince, remember?"
"Don't blaspheme!"
"I'm not blaspheming, you are. Why do I have to seduce this poor idiot poet whe....?"
"We won't argue that again. Leave now. Quit. But no more arguments."
"I'm not a quitter!"
"So I've noticed."
"Why did you pry into my records?"
"I was trying to recapture that girl. If she won't start with dreams, maybe she'll get somewhere with dreamers. I want to tell her what's become of those dreams."
"Well, what's become of them?"
"She still has them; she always will."
***
You speak of gods. Very well. Avata speaks that language now. Avata says consciousness is the Species-God's gift to the individual. Conscience is the Individual-God's gift to the species. In conscience you find the structure, the form of consciousness, the beauty.