The Ox gate gave her its open-files response and she asked for anything available about Jesus Lewis.
Immediately the activity light at the command console winked out. She jiggled the switch. Nothing. She tried the override sequence, Oakes' private code, the vocoder. Nothing.
When I asked for material on Lewis.
It had to be a coincidence. She went through the entire contact routine once more. Ship's records could not be brought into this console. She stood up, went out and into the passage, through the tension and bustle of E-clone Processing, and borrowed one of their consoles. Same result.
We're cut off.
She thanked the pale, thin-fingered E-clone who had stepped aside at her request and returned to her own cubby. She knew that the right thing to do would be to tell Oakes. With Colony gone and no communication to Ship, they were isolated, alone in the wilderness that pressed inward all around the Redoubt.
Yes - Oakes would have to be told. She sat down at her desk, called on Voice-Only when nothing else responded, and when he snapped that he was busy, insisted that her information transcended any other business.
Oakes heard her out in silence, then: "We're trapped."
"How can we be trapped?" she asked. "There's no one to trap us."
"They've set us up," he insisted. "Wait there for me."
The 'coder blapped at his sudden disconnection and it was only then she realized that Oakes had not asked where she was. Did he spy on her all the time? How much of what I di.... how much did he see?
In less than a minute, Oakes stepped through the hatch, his white singlesuit drenched in sweat. He was speaking as he entered, crackling tension in his voice.
"That TaoLini woman, Panille and Thomas - they're out to destroy us!"
He stopped just inside the room, glared down at her across the comdesk.
"That's impossible! I saw the hylighter carry Thomas off. And Panill...."
"They're alive, I tell you! Alive and plotting against us."
"Ho.... ?"
"More clones have revolted! And we've had a strange message from Ferry, threatening. They're somewhere nearby, some valley, Lewis thinks. People and equipment. They're going to attack."
"How could anyon.... ?"
"Probe flights, Lewis is sending out probes. And there is something out there. They're able to drive our search instruments crazy - some kind of interference that Lewis can't explain - but we're still getting indications of a lot of life and metal."
"Where?"
"South." He gestured vaguely. "What were you doing when the ship broke contact?"
"Nothing," she lied. "The circuitry just went dead."
"We need that contact, the people still up there, the material and food. Get them back."
"I've tried. Here, see for yourself." She slid out of the seat and gestured for him to take it.
"N.... no." He seemed actually afraid to sit at her comdesk. ".... trust your efforts. I jus...."
She slipped back into her seat. "You just what?"
"Nothing. See if you can contact Lewis. Tell him to meet me at the Command Center."
Oakes turned on his heel. The hatch hissed closed behind him.
She keyed a search for Lewis and fed the message into it, then tried once more to contact Ship. No response. She sat back and stared at the comdesk. A feeling of regret swept over her, pre-remorse, a sense of sorrow over the Morgan Oakes who might have been. He was nearing the very kind of desperation she wanted.
Let someone attack the Redoubt. Whatever happened, she would be ready with the material she had stored here.
At the worst possible moment, Morgan Lon Oakes! You may be able to appreciate my timing, although you never have before.
Would it happen in front of Thomas? Was it possible that Thomas had survived and would lead an attack? She thought it distinctly possible. Thomas - another Ceepee. The unfailing Thomas who had seen her run the P, who had helped her in that desperate hour, then said nothing of it to anyone.
Discreet. Kind and discreet. Almost a lost breed.
Doubts began to fill her mind then. Perhaps the survival of humans groundside really did depend on Oakes and Lewis. But Colony was gone and the Redoubt was clearly under siege from the planet, if not from some nebulous force headed by Thomas. She thought of the Scream Room then. Where did the Scream Room figure in any scheme of survival? The Scream Room was unjustifiable by any standards. It betrayed negative, anti-survival impulses. Everything about it, that proceeded from it, brought death or hunger or a terrifying subservience. No - not survival.
Oakes put me through the Scream Room.
Nothing would ever change that. But Thomas had guarded the perimeter hatch for her. His were survival instincts. She determined then that she would see what she could do to keep the Thomas breed from dying out.
At what cost? she wondered then, her doubts returning. At what cost?
***
A horrible feeling came over m...terrible amusement, for I believed that humankind, through the filtering of Ship's manipulations and the great passage of time, had lost the very ability to engage in war. I thought war had been bred and conditioned out of them at the very moment when they needed this ability the most.
WHILE HALI was making another examination of Waela's condition and well before the freighter reached atmosphere, Bitten's metallic voice barked at them from the overhead 'coder.
"Do you know a Kerro Panille?"
Waela stirred and mumbled at the sound, then rubbed both hands over her mounded abdomen.
"Yes, we know Panille," Hali said. She closed and sealed her pribox. "Why?"
"You wish to land at some place other than Colony," Bitten intoned. "That now may be possible."
Ferry glared up toward the 'coder. "You said we had to land at Colony!"
"I have been in contact with Kerro Panille," Bitten said. "He asserts that Colony has been destroyed."
"Destroyed?" Hali sat stiffly in her couch, dumb with shock.
Ferry gripped the arms of his command couch, knuckles white. "But we're programmed for landing at Colony."
"I remind you that I am the emergency program," Bitten said. "Present conditions fit the definition of emergency."
"Then where can we land?" Hali asked. And she felt the stirrings of hope. Contact with Kerro!
"Panille asserts that I can make a sea landing near an occupied site called the Redoubt. He is prepared to guide us to that landing."
Hali checked the fastenings which held Waela in the passenger couch, returned to her own seat and strapped in. The plaz directly in front of her framed a brilliant circle of cloud-covered planet.
"They meant us to die," Ferry muttered. "Damn them!"
"Do you desire to land at the alternate site?" Bitten asked.
"Yes, land us there," Hali said.
"There is risk," Bitten said.
"Land us there!" Ferry shouted.
"A normal tone of voice suffices for conversational direction of this program," Bitten said.
Ferry stared at Hali. "They meant us to die."
"I heard you. What do you mean?"
"Murdoch said we would have to go to Colony."
Hali looked at him, weighing his words. Was the man unaware of what he had just told her?
"So it was a set-up," she said. "You staged that fight."
Ferry remained silent, blinking at her.
"But you cut off one of Murdoch's ears," Hali said, remembering.
Ferry bared his old teeth in a terrible grin. "He did something to my Rachel. I know he did."
Hali crossed her arms over her breast, hearing all the unspoken things in Ferry's words. Her gaze went to the laser scalpel clipped in a breast pocket of Ferry's singlesuit: a thin stylus with death or life in its mechanism.