To Oakes, the most horrible part of the incident was that he knew the sentry: Illuyank. Part of Murdoch's Lab One crew. And before that, the doomed sentry had been with Lewis on Black Dragon Redoubt. Illuyank had been a survivor - three times running th.... . and one of those who came back from Edmond Kingston's team. Illuyank had even come shipside to report on Kingston's failure.
I heard his report.
Movement in the scanner riveted Oakes' attention. The sentry's backup stepped into view (not too close!) with lasgun at the ready. The backup was marked as an ultimate coward by Colony rules. He had not been able to shoot the doomed Illuyank. So the Runners' victim had died the most miserable death Pandora could offer.
Now, the backup aimed his gun and burned Illuyank's head to char. Standard procedure. Cook them out. Those eggs, at least, would never hatch.
Oakes found the strength to switch off the scanner. His body was shaking so hard he could not move himself away from the console.
It had just been a routine scan, the kind of thing he did regularly shipside. The horror of this place!
What has the ship done to us?
Groundside - nowhere to turn for escape. No release from the knowledge that he could not survive on this synapse-quick world without multiple barriers and constant guarding.
And there was no turning back. Lewis was right. Colony required constant attention. Delicate decisions about personnel movements and assignments, the shifting of supplies and equipment to Redoubt - none of this could be trusted to shipside-groundside communications channels. Pandora required swift action and reaction. Lewis could not divide his attention between Redoubt and Colony.
Oakes pressed a thumb against the lump of pellet in his neck. Useless now. Groundside static interference limited rang.... and when that impediment lifted, as it did for brief moments, the random signals which came through proved that their secrecy had been breached.
The ship had to be the source of those signals. The ship! Still interfering. The pellets would have to come out at the first opportunity.
Oakes lifted a bottle from the floor beside his console. His hand still shook from the shock of Illuyank's death. He tried to pour a glass of wine and slopped most of it over his console where the sticky red splash reminded him of blood pulsing out of the sentry's empty socket.... out of his nos.... his mout....
The three tattooed hashmarks over Illuyank's left eye remained burned in Oakes' memory.
Damn this place!
Gripping the glass with both hands, Oakes drained what little remained in it. Even that small swallow soothed his stomach.
At least I won't throw up.
He put the empty glass on the lip of his console, and his gaze swept around the confines of his cubby. It was not big enough. He longed for the space he'd enjoyed shipside. But there could be no retreat - no return to the slavery of the ship.
We're going to beat You, Ship!
Bravo!
Everything groundside reminded him that he did not belong here. The speed of the Colonists! There was nothing like that speed shipside. Oakes knew he was too heavy, too out of condition to consider keeping up, much less protecting himself. He needed constant guarding. It festered in him that Illuyank had been one of the people considered for his own guard force. Illuyank was supposed to be a survivor.
Even survivors die here.
He had to get out of this room, had to walk somewhere. But when he pushed himself away from the console to stand and turn around, he confronted another wall. It came to him then that the loss of his lavish shipside cubby was a greater blow than anticipated. He needed the Redoubt for physical and psychological reasons as well as for a secure base of command. This damned cubby was larger than any other groundside, but by the time they housed his command console, his holo equipment and the other accoutrements of the Ceepee, he was almost crowded out.
There's no room to breathe in here.
He put a hand to the hatchdogs, wanting the release of a walk in the corridors, but when his hand touched cold metal he realized how all of those corridors led to the open, unguarded surface of Pandora. The hatch was one more barrier against the ravages of this place.
I'll eat something.
And perhaps Legata could be summoned on some pretext. Practical Legata. Lovely Legata. How useful she remaine.... except that he did not like what had happened deep in her eyes. Was it time to ask Lewis for a replacement? Oakes could not find the will to do this.
I made a mistake with her.
He could admit this only to himself. It had been a mistake sending Legata to the Scream Room.
She's changed.
She reminded him now of the shipside agrarium workers. What had really impressed him out there was the difference between those workers and other Shipmen. Agrarium workers were a tight-lipped lot and always busy - sometimes noisy in their work but silent in themselves.
That was it. Legata had become silent in herself.
She was like the agrarium workers, containing seriousness, almost a reverenc.... not the grimness found in the Vitro labs or around the axolotl tanks where Lewis produced his miracle.... but something else.
It occurred to Oakes that the agraria were the only parts of the ship where he had felt out of place. This thought disturbed him.
Legata makes me feel out of place now.
And there was no escaping the choices he had made. He would have to live with the consequences. Choices resulted from information. He had acted on bad information.
Who gave me that bad information? Lewis?
What control systems reposed in the information, leading inevitably to certain choices?
Such a simple question.
He turned it over in his mind, feeling that it put him on the track of something vital. Perhaps it was the key to the ship's true nature. A key somewhere in the flow of information.
Information-to-choice-to-action.
Simple, always simple. The true scientist was required to suspect complexity.
Occam's razor really cuts.
What choices did the ship make and on the basis of what information? Would the ship openly oppose moving the Natali groundside, for instance? The move could not yet be made, but the possibility of open opposition excited him. He longed for such opposition.
Show your hand, you mechanical monster!
The ship can act without hands.
But could the ship act without curiosity and without leaving clues?
As an intelligent, questioning being, Oakes felt the constant need to sharpen his curiosity, to keep himself in motion. He might not always move smoothly - that business with Legata - but he had to mov.... in jumps and fits and start.... whatever. The success of his movements stayed relative to his own intelligence and the information available.
Better information.
Excitement shot through him. With the right information, could he design the test which would prove, once and for all, that the ship was not God? An end to the ship's pretenses forever!