Yes," he said, as she thumped across the threshold of the shuttle.
What do we do now?" she asked aloud. And the voice from her mind said, Save the world.
Then the hatchdogs were secured and she slept.
CONSCIOUS: from Latin com, with scire (to know).
CONSCIENCE: from Latin com (intensive), with scire.
Conscious - to know; conscience - to know well (or, in the vernacular, to know better).
"SHIPSIDE!" OAKES screamed into the vocoder on his console. "Who ordered the TaoLini woman shipside?"
The med-tech facing him on the screen looked terrified and small. His little mouth worked itself into a stumble of words.
"You did, sir. I mea.... orders. She's pregnant, sir, and you signed the WorShip order sending al...."
"Don't tell me what I signed!"
"No, sir. Are you ordering her back, sir?"
Oakes pressed a hand against his forehead.
Too late, now. The Natali have her. Reprocessing her ground-side would mean an executive order and that would mean attention. The Redoubt was problem enough. Better to let the matter rest until something could be arrange.... Damn! Why couldn't we have moved the Natali down her.... ?
"I want to talk to Murdoch."
"He is shipside, sir."
"I know he's shipside! Get him on a line to me as soon as you can!"
He smacked the key on the console with the side of his fist and the frightened little med-tech's face faded.
Damn! Just when things were going right!
He looked out over the clear bay beside the shuttle station. No more kelp there anyway. The perimeter lights and the arcs from the nightside crew's torches reflected the flat calm of the water.
No kelp. It'll be gone from Pandora before we know it.
That left Ship.
The ship.
And now, that TaoLini woman. No telling what she knows. Thomas could have convinced her of anything. After all, he was a Ceepee....
Oakes turned back to his console and activated the holo of Thomas' debriefing.
Thomas sat in the center of the room, a cell three meters square. He faced the sensor. A tall woman from Behavioral stood facing Thomas and he was shaking his head from side to side.
"No time. No time. 'You must decide how you will WorShip,' Ship says and the clue is in the sea. I know it's in the sea. WorShi.... WorShip. And there is no time, after all the eons and all these world.... no time. No time...." Oakes switched off the holo in disgust.
The kelp got to him, that's for sure. Maybe it's just as well.
He paced back to the plaz which screened the ocean view, and watched the dazzle of the welders and cutters play across the water.
The kelp is a trade, he thought. Thomas wasn't all that far off. With the kelp gone, we buy ourselves time and with time we buy a world. Not a bad barter.
He retraced his steps again and again, plaz to console, console to plaz.... Having that TaoLini woman shipside was too big a variable - something would have to be done.
Damn that tech! His fist came down again. He should've double-talked her into Lab One instead of letting her go shipside. Can't the fool think for himself? Do I have to make every decision?
He knew Murdoch was up there in a power-scrimmage with Ferry, but they were Lewis' people and it was Lewis' business. This whole fiasco was really Lewis' fault.
"Until they interfere with the Ceepee," he said aloud, pointing an affirmative finger at his reflection in the plaz. On the other side of the reflection, the quiet bay began to pick up the rhythmic rush rush of small waves licking at the beach.
Inflection is the adjective of language. It carries the subtleties of delight and horror, the essence of culture and social process. Such is the light-pattern displayed by the kelp; such is the song of the hylighter.
WAELA SAT watching a holo of Panille as a child. Except for the projected action at the holofocus, it was quiet in the small teaching study where Hali Ekel had put her. The chair, a simple sling in a metal frame, presented the holocontrols on its arm beneath her right hand. Soft blue light suffused the room, down-toned to increase resolution at the holofocus. Each time the holosound subsided, a low sussuration of venting air could be heard.
At frequent intervals, Waela turned her head slightly to the left and drank from a tube leading into a shiptit. Her left hand rested lightly on her abdomen and she was certain that the hand felt the growth of the fetus. There was no concealing the rapidity of that growth, but she tried not to think about it. Every time she was forced to confront the mystery of what was happening within her, she felt a hiccup of terro...sensation which subsided in a blink as something dampened it.
A sense of isolation permeated the study - an accent on her awareness that she was being kept out of contact with ordinary shipside life. The Natali were doing this deliberately.
The pangs of terrible hunger controlled the movement of her mouth to the shiptit. She drank greedily and with feelings of guilt. Hali Ekel had not explained why there was a shiptit here, nor why Ship fed her from it when others were denied. Feelings of rebellion welled up in Waela from time to time, but these, too, were dampened by some automatic response. She continued to sit and stare at the holo of the young Panille.
At the moment, the holo showed him sleeping in his cubby. The register gave his age as only twelve standard annos at the time, and there was no mention of who had authorized this holo.
A Ship 'coder rattled in the sleeping child's cubby then, waking Panille. He sat up, stretched and yawned, then increased the cubby's light level with one hand while rubbing his eyes with the other.
Ship's voice filled the cubby with its awful clarity: "Last night-side, you claimed kinship with God. Why do you sleep? Gods need not sleep."
Panille shrugged and stared at the 'coder from which Ship's voice issued. "Ship, have You ever stretched out as long as You can reach and yawned?"
Waela held her breath at the audacity of the child. This question suggested blasphemy and there was no reply.
Panille waited. Waela thought him patient for one so young.
"Well?" he asked, finally, smug in his adolescent logic.
"I'm sorry, young Kerro. I nodded my head but apparently you did not see it."
"How could you nod? You don't have a head to put on a pillow."
Waela gasped. The child was challenging Ship because of Ship's question about kinship with God. She waited for Ship's response and marveled at it.
"Perhaps the head I nod and the muscles I stretch are simply not within your field of vision."