Ship only knew how many Shipmen crawled the surface of Pandora or the myriad passageways of Ship. And all survived, to whatever degree of comfort or discomfort, because of Oakes and the efficiency of his managemen.... and because Lewis knew how to carry out orders with brutal efficiency. To her knowledge, no other Ceepee team could make such a claim in all the histories of Ship.
Ship will care for us.
She felt Ship around her now, the faint hummings and susurrations of nightside.
But Ship had never agreed to care for Shipmen.
At one time, she had been interested in Shipman's place in the Ship scheme of things. She had pored through a confusing lot of histories seeking some agreement, a covenant, some evidence of even rudimentary formal relationship between the people and their god.
Ship who is God.
All agreements save one had been made by Ceepees on behalf of Ship. Back in the earliest accounts, she had come on one recorded line, a direct demand from Ship: You must decide how you will WorShip Me.
That had to be the origin of present WorShip. It could be traced to Ship. But the demand appeared suitably vague and, when she had recounted it to Oakes, he had seen it as emphasizing the powers of the Ceepees.
"We, after all, command the WorShip."
If Ship were Go.... well, Ship still appeared to be unwilling to interfere directly in the management of Shipman affairs. Every visible thing Ship did could be attributed to work at maintaining itself.
Some Shipmen claimed they talked to Ship, and she had studied these people. They fell into two obvious categories: fools and non-fools. Most of the claimants had a history of talking to walls, bowls, items of clothing and such. But perhaps one out of every twenty who said they talked to Ship were Ship's best. For them, talking with Ship represented the single rare absurdity of their records. It fascinated her that, for this small group, the talking incidents were isolated and seemingly innocuous - almost as though Ship were checking in from time to time.
Unlike Oakes and Lewis, she did not count herself a disbeliever.
But God or not, Ship apparently refused to interfere in the private decisions of Shipmen.
So what if I decide to destroy Oakes?
Did Ship care for him, too?
Oakes was too cautious, too painstakingly right about the things he did. What if he were the only reason Colony had survived? Could she watch Colony wither and die, knowing she had done it?
Was the Scream Room right?
Only the holorecord could decide that for her. She had to see it.
She levered herself to her feet, found a singlesuit and slipped into it. There was a sense of urgency about her motions now compounded of the late hour and the terrors she knew she was holding at bay. A glance at her chrono showed only six hours to dayside. Six hours to call up those records, review them and cover her tracks. And those records spanned most of a diurn - perhaps forty hours. All she needed was to see the essence of it, though.
What did he do to me?
Without conscious decision, she headed for Oakes' abandoned shipside cubby, realizing her own choice only when she grasped the hatchdogs. Yes, the com-console would still be here. It was a good place to search out the record and review it. She knew the code which would call up the Scream Room holo. Her priority number would insure that she got it. And there was something exquisitely right about the choice of the place to do it.
As she keyed the hatchdogs on the cubby, she reminded herself: Whatever he wanted me to do, I did not do it. Some part of her knew that neither the pleasures nor the curiosities of the Scream Room had tempted her - neither ecstasy nor pain. But Oakes wanted her to believe in some willing debasement. He required that she believe.
He'll see.
She released the hatchdogs and stepped inside.
***
The family feeds its fledgling, and under the nest weaves twigs - Intelligence is a poor cousin to understanding.
THE DULL crimson of instruments and telltales filled the sub's core gondola with red shadows and played firelight flickers off every movement of the three people strapped in their seats around the tight arc of controls.
Thomas, intensely aware of the crushing pressure of water around them, glanced up at the depth repeater. This was not completely like a Voidship, after all. Instead of empty space, he sensed the inward pressing of the Pandoran sea. All he had to do was look directly up through the transparent dome of the gondola where it protruded from the carrier-sub and he could see the diminishing circle of glowing light which was the surface of the lagoon.
As he moved his head, he glimpsed Waela engaged in the same reflexive check of the repeater. She appeared to be taking it well. No residual fugue from her bad experiences down here.
He looked then at Kerro Panille. This poet was not what he had expected - young, yes - barely past twenty according to the records - but there was something more mature in Panille's manner.
The poet had been quiet during the descent, not even asking the expected questions, but his eyes missed very little. The way he cocked his head at new sounds betrayed his alertness. There had been no time really to train him for this. Waela had set Panille to watching the monitors on their communications program to signal when it began accepting the firefly patterns of the kelp. She had reserved for herself the instruments which reported the status of their linkage to the anchor cable. The anchor had been dropped in the center of a lagoon and now the cable guided their descent. The LTA rode close to the sea surface overhead, tightly tethered to the cable.
"He's very sensitive to unconscious communication," she had told Thomas before Panille's arrival at the hangar.
Thomas did not ask how she knew this. She already had confirmed the failure of her attempt to seduce Panille.
"Was he too naive? Did he know what yo.... ?"
"Oh, he knew. But he has this thing about his body being his own. Rather refreshing in a man."
"Is h.... do you think he's really working for Oakes?"
"He's not the type."
Thomas had to agree. Panille displayed an almost childlike openness.
Since the abortive and (she had to admit it) rather amateurish attempt at seduction, Waela had felt restrained with Panille. But the poet showed no such inhibition. He had shipside candor and, she suspected, would be rather more apt than not to walk openly into some deadly Pandoran peril out of curiosity.
I like him, she thought. I really like him.
But he would have to be educated swiftly to the dangers here or he would not last long enough to write another poem.
Ship really did send him, then, Thomas thought. Is he supposed to keep watch on me?
Thomas had reserved for himself the visual observation of the kelp-free pocket through which they were descending. It was a column of clear water about four hundred meters in diameter, a Pandoran "lagoon." They had not yet descended into the dark regions where the kelp played its light show.
Panille had been fascinated by the name lagoon when he had heard it. Ship had displayed an Earthside lagoon for him once - palm trees, an outrigger with white sails. Would Pandora ever see such play upon its seas?
He found himself acutely aware of every sensory impression about this experience. It was the stuff of countless poems. There was the faint hiss of air being recycled, the smell of human bodies too close and exuding their unspoken fears. He liked the way the red light played off the ladder which ran up to the hatch.
When Thomas had used the word lagoon to describe their destination, Panille had said: "The persistence of atavism." The remark had provoked a startled glance from Thomas.