It's you damned Avata/hylighters! Keep that Panille out of my mind! Yes, I said MY mind.
Darkness. He was aware of darkness and of motion, sensations of controlled movement, glimpses of light and a glaring sun, then craggy rocks. He could see Rega low on a castellated rock horizon. There was flesh around him and he knew it for his own.
I'm Raja Flattery, Chaplain/Psychiatrist o.... No! I'm Raja Thomas, Ship's Devil!
He looked down to find himself strapped into his command couch. There was no motion to the gondola. When he looked out through the plaz he could see solid groun...damp stretch of Pandoran soil studded with native plants: odd spikey things with fluting silver leaves. He turned his head and there was Waela seated on the deck, completely naked. She was staring at two singlesuits. One of them, Thomas saw, carried Waela's shoulder badge of the LTA service, and the othe.... the other was Panille's.
Thomas looked all around the gondola. Panille was not there.
Waela turned to look up at Thomas. "I think it was real. I think we really did make love. And I was in his head while he was in me."
Thomas pushed himself hard against the back of his seat, his memory struggling for the bits and pieces of what had happened to them. Where was the damned poet? He could not survive out there.
Waela moved her tongue against her teeth. She felt that she had lost track of time. She had been out of her body in some new place, but now she knew her body better than ever before. Images. She recalled the earlier, more terrible moments off the south coast of The Egg when she had sprawled on a kelp leaf, fighting for her sanity. This recent experience in the gondola was not the same, but one partook of the other. In both, she felt the aftermath as a loosening of her identity and a mixing of linear memories, shaking bits of her past out of place.
Thomas unfastened his seat restraints, stood and peered out through the filtering plaz. He felt that something had reached into his psyche and drained away the energy. What are we doing here? How did we get here?
There was no sign of hylighters.
What are Avata?
The gondola had been deposited in a broad pocket of flat land surrounded by a rock rim. The place looked vaguely familiar. The outline of the west ri.... He stared at it, caught up in a fugue state of attempted recollection.
"Where are we?" That was Waela.
His throat was too dry to respond. It took a moment of convulsive attempts to swallow before he could speak.
".... think we're somewhere near Oakes' Redoubt. Those rock...He pointed.
"Where's Kerro?"
"Not here."
"He can't be outside. The demons!"
She stood and stared all around over the obstructing panels of instruments, craning her neck to peer every direction. That fool poet! She looked up at the hatch. It was still open.
In that instant an LTA drifted over the rim of rocks to the west; the glare of Rega setting ringed it in a golden halo. The LTA was valved down to a landing beside the gondola, the hiss of its loud vents stirred up the dust. The gondola was a conventional landside type, armored against demons and studded with weapons. The side hatch opened a crack and a voice called from within: "You can make it if you run! No demons near."
Hastily, Waela stood and slipped into her suit. It was like putting on familiar flesh. She felt her sense of identity firming.
I must not think about what has happened. I'm alive. We're rescued.
But somewhere within her she thought she heard a voice crying names: "Kerr.... Ji.... Kerr.... where are you?"
There was no answer, just Thomas insisting that she follow only after he had tested the outside. Damn fool! I'm faster than he is. But she went quietly up the ladder behind him, watched him slide down the smooth plaz curve of the gondola, then followed on his heels. The rescue hatch of the other gondola swung wide as they reached it, and they were jerked inside by two pairs of hands. They were in familiar red shadows with the Shipmen at defensive stations all around the interior.
Waela heard the hatch slammed and dogged behind her, felt the gondola lift, swinging. There was the humming of a scanner as it passed over her body. A voice at her ear said: "They're clean."
Only then did she realize that she stood in a sealed-off bubble within the rescue gondola. This spoke of only one threat: Nerve Runners!
There were Runners in the area.
She felt a deep sense of gratitude for the Shipman who had scanned them, risking contact with Runners. Turning, she saw a long-armed monstrosity only vaguely Shipman in shape.
"We take you Lab Oneside," he said and his mouth was a toothless black hole.
***
In a fit of enthusiastic madness I created a rational creature and was bound towards him to assure, as far as was in my power, his happiness and well-being. This was my duty, but there was another still paramount to that. My duties towards the beings of my own species had greater claims to my attention because they included a greater proportion of happiness or misery.
THOMAS STRETCHED himself in the hammock of a cell and watched a fly creep its way across his ceiling. There were no ports in this cell, no chrono. He had no way of estimating the time.
The fly skirted the protrusion of a sensor eye.
"So we brought you, too." Thomas spoke aloud to the fly. "It wouldn't surprise me to find a few rats skulking around this place. Non-human rats, that is."
The fly stopped and rubbed its wings. Thomas listened. There was a steady stream of footsteps up and down the passage outside his locked hatch. It had been locked from the outside, no handle in here.
He knew he was somewhere within Oakes' infamous Redoubt, the fortress outpost on Black Dragon. They had taken all of his clothing, every possession, leaving him with a poorly fitted green singlesuit.
"Quarantine!" he snorted, still talking aloud. "At Moonbase we called it 'the hole.'"
Some of those footsteps outside were running. Everything was rush-rush here. He wondered what was happening. What was going on over at Colony? Where had they taken Waela? They had told him he was headed for debriefing. It turned out to be a quick once-over by a strange med-tech and isolation in this cell. Quarantine! Before they had closed the hatch, he had glimpsed a sign across the way: "Lab One." So they had a Lab One here, to.... or they had moved the other one from Colony.
He was aware of the sensor eye prying at him from the ceiling. The cell was spartan - the hammock, a fixed desk, a sink, an old-style composting toilet without seat.
Once more, he looked at the fly. It had progressed to the far corner of the cell.
"Ishmael," he said. "I think I'll call you Ishmael."
...his hand will be against every man and every man's hand against him, and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.
Ship's unmistakable presence filled Thomas' head so suddenly that he clapped his hands over his ears in reflex.
"Ship!" He closed his eyes and found that he was near tears. I can't give in to hysteria! I can't!
Why not, Devil? Hysteria has its moments. Particularly among humans.
"There isn't time for hysteria." He opened his eyes, brought his hands away from his ears, and spoke in the general direction of the ceiling sensor. "We have to solve Your problem of WorShip. They won't listen to me. I'll have to take direct action."
Ship was relentless: Not MY problem! Your problem.
"My problem, then. I'm going to share it with the others."
It is time to talk of endings, Raj.
He glared at the sensor, as though that were the origin of the presence in his head.
"You mea.... break the recording?"