The Jesus Incident (Destination: Void #2)

The Jesus Incident (Destination: Void #2) Page 42

Though a pendulum's arc may vary, its period does not. Each swing requires the same amount of time. Consider the last swing and its infinitesimal arc. That is where we are truly alive: in the last period of the pendulum.

- Kerro Panille, The Notebooks

LEGATA LOOKED past Oakes to the sea below the Redoubt. It was an orderly suns-set out there, Rega following Alki below the rim of the sea. A distant line of clouds boiled along the horizon's curve. Long waves rolled in to crash on the beach of their small bay. The surf lay out of sight beneath the cliffs upon which the Redoubt perched. Double walls of plaz plus an insulated foundation screened out most of the sounds, but she could feel the surf through her feet. She certainly could see the spray misting her view and beading the plaz along the view porch.

Orderly suns-set and disorderly sea.

She experienced a sense of calm which she knew to be false. Oakes had bolstered himself with alcohol, Lewis with work. They were still getting reports from Colony, but the last word suggested that the old Lab One site was under siege. Lucky thing Murdoch had been sent shipside.

Disorderly sea.

Only thin rags of kelp remained on the surface, and she found the absence of it a loss which she could not explain. Once kelp had dampened the surf. Now, wind whipped white froth across the wavetops. Had Lewis allowed for that?

"Why do you link the kelp and hylighters?" she asked. "You've seen the reports. They're vectors of the same creature or symbiotic partners."

"But it doesn't follow that they think."

Oakes directed a lidded stare at her, swirled an amber drink in a small glass. "Touch one of them and the other responds. They act together. They think." He gestured at the cliffs across the Redoubt's bay where a scattered line of hylighters hovered like watchful sentries.

"They're not attacking now," she said.

"They're planning."

"How can you be sure?"

"We plan."

"Maybe they're not like us. Maybe they're not very bright."

"Bright enough to pull out and regroup when they're losing."

"But they're only violent when we threaten them. They're jus......nuisance."

"Nuisance! They're a threat to our survival."

"Bu.... so beautiful." She stared across the small bay at the drifting orange bags, the stately way they tacked and turned, touching the cliff with their tendrils to steady themselves, avoiding their fellows.

Turning only her head, she shifted her attention to Oakes, and tried to swallow in a dry throat. He was staring down into his drink, gently swirling the liquid. Why wouldn't he talk about what was happening at Colony? She felt nervous precisely because Oakes no longer appeared nervous. It had been two full diurns since the food riot. What was happening? She sensed new powers being invoked - the bustling activity all through the Redoubt while Oakes stood here drinking and admiring the view with her. Not once in this period had Oakes turned to her with an assignment. She felt that she might be on probation for a new position. He could be testing her.

Does he suspect what I discovered about him shipside? Morgan Lon Oakes.

Impossible! He could not appear this calm in the face of that knowledge.

Oakes raised his eyebrows at her and tossed back his drink.

"They're beautiful, yes," he said. "Very pretty. So's a sun going nova, but you don't invite it into your life."

He turned back to the ever-present dispenser for another drink, and something about the mural on the inner wall of the porch caught his eyes, startling him. The thing seemed to mov.... like the waves of the sea.

"Morgan, may I have a drink, too?"

Her voice sounded small and weak against the background of the mural - yet she had created this mural. A gift. He had thought: She wants to please me. But no.... there was always something other than pleasing in the way she looked at him. What had she really meant with this painting? Was it to please him or disturb him? He stared at it. The painting was a splash of colors, much larger than the mandala for his new offices here. She called it: "Struggle at suns-set."

The mural recreated a scene they had witnessed earlier on holo: Colonists at a construction site near the sea fighting back a sudden swarm of hylighters. One Colonist dangled by a leg in mid-air, wide-eye.... Horror or hallucination? The doomed man pointed an accusing finger out of the painting directly at the observer. This detail had escaped Oakes before. He stared at it.

All the construction sites, the drilling sites, the mine heads - all of them were shut down now. Everything depended on the Redoubt.

Why did that figure in the painting look accusing?

"A drink, please, Morgan?"

He did not have to turn to know her expression, the tongue flickering out to wet her lips. What was she planning? He pressed the dispenser key for two drinks. The Scream Room had left its imprint on her, no doubt of that, but instead of making her more trustworth.... it had...What? He did not like the eagerness in her request for a drink. Was she going the way of that damned Win Ferry? Her report on Ferry was unsettling. They had to have somebody shipside they could trust!

Oakes returned to her side, handed her one of the drinks. The suns-set was shading into dark purples with a few streaks of rose higher in the sky.

"Is this the way I have to buy your favors now?" He focused on her drink.

She managed a smile. What did he mean by that question? Coming here had been far more difficult than she had imagined. Even armed with the new knowledge in her possessio.... even fleeing the turmoil at Colony - very difficult. A New Lab One with Lewis in charge was being built only a few blinks away, buried in the rocks of the Redoubt.

I'm free of that. I'm free.

But now she knew it would take more than conscious awareness of what had happened to her, much more, before she could feel completely liberated. Oakes still had his grasping hand in her psyche.

Her fingers trembled as she sipped from the glass he had handed her. It was pungent and bitter, a distillation, but she could feel it soothing her.

When the right time comes, Morgan Lon Oakes.

Oakes touched her hair, stroked her head. She did not lean toward him or away.

"In another few diurns," he said, "all that will remain of the kelp will be holo approximations and our memories. If we're right about the hylighters, they won't endure much longer." He glanced out the plaz where the after-glow of the setting suns had left golden luminescence in the sky and two fans of shadowy lines radiating upward from beyond the curve of the sea. "None too fond, eh, Legata?"

She shuddered as his fingers touched a nerve in her neck.

"Cold, Legata?"

"No."

She turned and her gaze fell on the mural. Sensors had ignited low illumination to compensate for the shadows filling the porch. The mural. It drank her mind.

I did that. Was it real or dream?

She stared into the mural at the world of her dreams, that peculiar soothsayer of the mind called imaginatio...world Oakes could never see without the intervention of someone like herself.

Again, she shuddered, recalling the holorecord which had inspired the painting: the eerie meanings of the hylighters and the whoosh and thump when they exploded, the tortured screams of burning Colonists. Even as she recalled the scene, she imagined the smell of burning hair. It seemed to fill the porch. She tore her attention away from the mural and stared out at the sea - all darkness out there except for a distant white line glowing along the horizon. It looked threatening, more threatening than her memories.

"Why did we have to build so near the sea?" she asked.

The question was out before she could think about it and she wished she had suppressed it.

The drink. It loosens the tongue.

"We're high above the sea, my dear, not very near at all."

"But it's so big an...."

"Legata! You helped draw the plans for our Redoubt. You agreed. I recall your words clearly: 'What we need is a place to get away, a safe place.'"

But that was before the Scream Room, she thought.

She forced herself to look at him. The dim illumination erased the soft edges of his features and left the shadows controlled by his skull.

What other plans does he have for me?

As though he heard the question in her mind, Oakes began to speak, addressing her reflection in the plaz.

"As soon as we get matters orderly down here, Legata, I'll want you to make a few trips back to the ship. We'll have to keep an eye on Ferry until we can find a replacement."

So he still needs me.

It was clear now that he feared going shipside more than he feared the terrors groundside. Why? How does Ship threaten him? She tried to imagine herself as Oakes back in his cubby shipside, completely surrounded by the presence of Ship. Not the ship. Ship! Did Oakes, after all, believe in Ship?

He put an arm around her waist. "You agreed, my dear."

She forced herself not to cringe, fearful of the artificial kindness in his tone, afraid of unknown plans he might have for her. What was the reasoning behind his decisions?

Perhaps there is no reason.

The futility of this thought frightened her even more than Morgan Oakes did. Morgan Lon Oakes. Could it be tha.... clones and the wild creatures of Pandor.... and Shipmen - that so many died merely because Oakes acted without reason?

He has his reasons.

Once more, she looked at her mural. What did I paint there? The doomed man stared back at her - the eyes, the melting flesh, the pointing finger, all screamed: You agreed! You agreed!

"You can't kill all of the creatures on this planet," she whispered, and shut her eyes tight.

He removed his arm from her waist. "Pardon me, Legata. I thought you said 'can't.'"

"...." She could not continue.

He took her arm above the elbow the way Murdoch had grasped her at the Scream Room! She felt him guide her across the porch, and she opened her eyes only when her shins touched the red couch. Firmly, he pressed her down into the cushions. She saw that she still clutched her drink, some of it still sloshing in the glass. She could not look up at Oakes. She was shaking so hard that small splashes of the drink jumped out of the glass to settle on her hand and thigh.

"Do I make you nervous, Legata?" He reached down to stroke her forehead, her cheek.

She could not answer. She remembered the last time he did this and began to cry silently, her shoulders stiff, tears flowing quietly down her cheeks.

Oakes dropped to the couch beside her, took the drink from her hand and put it somewhere aside on the floor. He began to massage the back of her neck, working the stiffness out of her shoulders. His fingers, his precise medical touch, knew where to reach her and how to ease through her defenses.

How can he touch me like this and be wrong?

She leaned forward, almost totally relaxed, and her elbow touched a damp spot on her thigh where she had spilled her drink. She knew in that instant that she could resist hi.... and that he would not expect the way of her resistance.

He does not know about the record I hid shipside.

His fingers continued to move so expertly, so full of pseudo-love.

He doesn't love me. If he loved me he wouldn'.... he wouldn'.... She shuddered at a memory of the Scream Room.

"Still cold, my dear?"

His practiced hands pulled her gently down onto the couch, eased the tensions from her throat and breast.

If he loved me, he wouldn't touch me this way and frighten me the way he does. What does he really want?

It had to be more than sex, more than her body which he knew how to ignite with such sureness. It had to be something far more profound.

How strange, the way he could go on talking to her at a time like this. His words seemed to make no sense whatsoever.

"...and in the recombinant process itself, we have gained an interesting side effect to the degeneration of the kelp."

Degeneration! Always degeneration!