HUMANKERRO: "Does the listener protect his own sense of understanding and consciousness?"

AVATA: "Ahhh, you are building barriers."

HUMANKERRO: "That's what you call the illusion of understanding, is it not?"

AVATA: "If you understand, then you cannot learn. By saying you understand, you construct barriers."

HUMANKERRO: "But I can remember understanding things."

AVATA: "Memory only understands the presence or absence of electrical signals."

HUMANKERRO: "Then what's the combination, the program for learning?"

AVATA: "Now you open the path. It is the program which counts in the most literal sense."

HUMANKERRO: "But what are the rules?"

AVATA: "Are there rules underlying every aspect of human life? Is that your question?"

HUMANKERRO: "That appears to be the question."

AVATA: "Then answer it. What are the rules for being human?"

HUMANKERRO: "But I asked you!"

AVATA: "But you are human and I am Avata."

HUMANKERRO: "Well, what are the rules for being Avata?"

AVATA: "Ahhhh, Humankerro, we embody such knowledge but we cannot know it."

HUMANKERRO: "You appear to be saying that such knowledge cannot be reduced to language."

AVATA: "Language cannot occur in a reference vacuum."

HUMANKERRO: "Don't we know what we're talking about?"

AVATA: "Using language involves much more than recognizing strings of words. Language and the world to which it refers. . ."

HUMANKERRO: "The script of the play."

AVATA: "The script, yes. The script of the game and its world must be interrelated. How can you substitute a word or some other symbol for every cellular element of your body?"

HUMANKERRO: "I can talk with my body."

AVATA: "For that, you do not need a script."
- Kerro Panille, The Avata, "Th...A Game"

The mystery of consciousness? Erroneous data - significant results.
- P. Weygand, Voidship Med-tech

OAKES WATCHED the sentry on the Colony scanner. The man writhed and screamed in agony. The evening light of Alki cast long purple shadows which twisted as the man flopped and turned. The Current Outside Activity circuits reproduced the sounds of the sentry with clear fidelity, terrifyingly immediate. The man might be just outside this cubby's hatch instead of on Colony's north perimeter as the sensor log indicated.

The screams turned to a hoarse growl, like a turbine running down. There came a convulsive flopping, shudders, then quiet.

Oakes found that the sentry's first screams still echoed in memory and would not be silenced.

Runners! Runners!

There was no escaping Pandora anywhere groundside. Colony remained under constant siege. And at the Redoubt - sterilization was their only solution. Kill everything.

Oakes found that he had pressed his hands to his ears trying to quiet the memory of those screams. Slowly, he brought his hands down to the scanner controls, looking at them as though they had betrayed him. He had just been running through the available sensors, scanning for any random COA which might require his attention. An.... and he had encountered horror.

Images continued to play in his mind.

The sentry had clawed at his own eyes, ripping out the nerve tissue which Runners found so succulent. But he must have known what every Colonist knew - there could be no help for him. Once Runners contacted nerve tissue they could not be stopped until they encysted their clutch of eggs in his brain.

Except that this particular sentry knew about chlorine. Had some residual hope clutched at his doomed awareness? Surely not. Once the Runners were in his flesh, that was too late even for chlorine.

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!

What information did he possess? The ship's consciousness? It had to be conscious. To assume otherwise would be to move backward - bad choice. Whatever else it might be, the ship could only be viewed as a complex intelligence.

A truly intelligent being might move seldom, but it would move surely and on the basis of reliable information which had been tested somehow for predictability.

Testing by large numbers or over a long time.

One or the other.

How long had the ship been testing its Shipmen? In a pure-chance universe, past results could not always guarantee predictions. Could the ship's decisions be predicted?

Oakes felt his heart thumping hard and fast. In this game, he truly felt himself come alive. It was like se.... but this could be even bigger - the biggest game in the universe.

If the ship's movements and choices could be predicted, they could be precipitated. He would have the key to quick and easy victory on Pandora. What action could he take to link the ship's powers to his own desires? Given the right information, he could control even a god.

Control!

What was prayer but a whining, sniveling attempt to control. Supplication? Threats?

If You don't get me assigned to Medical, Ship, I'll abandon WorShip!

So much for WorShip. The gods, if there were any, could have a good laugh.

Abruptly, he was sobered by memory of Illuyank's death.

Damn this place!

To walk in a shipside agrarium right no.... or even in a treedom....

He remembered once nightside on the ship, walking out through the shutter-baffles to a dome on the rim, pressing his forehead against the plaz to stare into the void. Out there, stars whirled in their slow spin and he had known, beyond a doubt, that they spun around him. But, in the face of those uncounted stars, he had felt himself slipping into a maw of terrifying black. On the other side of that plasmaglass barrier, whole galaxies awoke and whole galaxies died every second. No call for help could carry beyond the tip of his own tongue. No caress could survive the cold.

Who else in that universe was this much alone?

Ship.

The voice of his mind had spoken the unexpected. But he had known it for the truth, in that instant he had seen, in the plaz, the reflection of his own eyes melting into the dark between the stars. He recalled that he had stepped back in mute surprise.

That look! That same expression!

It had been on the face of the black man back on Earth when they took the man away.

Remembering, he realized it was the same expression he now saw in Legata's eyes.

In my eye.... in her eye.... in the eyes of the black man from my childhoo....

Now, feeling the groundside cubby around him, all of the concentric rings of walls and barriers which comprised Colony, he sensed how his unguarded body could be betrayed.

I could betray myself to myself.

And perhaps to others.

To Thomas?

To the ship?

No matter his denials, the mystery of deep space and inner space filled him with wonder and fear. This was a weakness and it required that he deal with it directly.

God or not, the ship was one of a kind. As I am.

And what i.... Ship were really God?

Oakes passed his tongue over his lips. He stood alone in the center of his cubby and listened.

For what am I listening?

He could only move by testing, by forcing the exchange, by groping beyond the ken of all other Shipmen. The key to the ship lay in its movements. Why did any organism move?

To seek pleasure, to avoid pain.

Food was pleasure. He felt hunger knot his stomach. Sex was pleasure. Where was Legata right now? Victory was pleasure. That would have to wait.

Let the pains demand their own actions.

Always the pendulum swung: pleasure/pai.... pleasure/pain. Intensity and period varied; the balance, the mean, did not.

What sweets would tempt a god? What thorn would lift a god's foot?

It came over Oakes that he had been standing for a long time in one position, his gaze fixed on the mandala pattern attached to his cubby wall. It copied the one he had left shipside. Legata had made this copy for him befor.... She had produced another in her finest hand and it already was displayed at the Redoubt. How he wished the Redoubt were ready! Demons gone, day side and nightside safe. Many times he had dreamed of stepping out into Pandora's double-sunshine, a light breeze ruffling his hair, Legata on his arm for a walk through gardens down to a gentle sea.

A sudden image of Legata clawing at her eyes replaced this pastoral vision. Oakes fought for a deep breath, his gaze fixed on the mandala.

Lewis has to destroy all of the demons - the kelp, everything!

It required a physical effort for Oakes to break himself away from his fixation on the mandala. He turned, walked three steps, stoppe.... He was facing the mandala!

What's happening to my mind?

Daydreaming. That had to be it, letting his mind wander. The pressure of all those demons outside Colony's perimeter walls overwhelmed him with feelings of vulnerability. He had lost the insulation he had enjoyed shipside - exchanged the perils of the ship for the perils of Pandora.

Who would ever have thought I'd miss the ship?

The damned Colonists were too brash, too quick. They thought they could barge in any time, interrupt anything. They talked too fast. Everything had to be done right now!

His com-console buzzed at him.

Oakes depressed a key. Murdoch's thin face stared at him from the screen. Murdoch began speaking without asking leave, without any preamble.

"My day side orders say you wanted Illuyank assigned t...."

"Illuyank's dead," Oakes said, his voice flat. He enjoyed the look of surprise on Murdoch's face. That was one of the reasons for secret random sampling among the spy sensors. No matter what horrors you found, the information could make you appear omnipotent.

"Find someone else for my guard squad," Oakes said. "Make it someone more suitable." He broke the connection.

There! That was the way they did it groundside. Quick decisions.

The reminder of Illuyank's death brought back the knot in his stomach. Food. He needed something to eat. He turned, and once more found himself looking at the mandala.

Things will simply have to slow down.

The mandala rippled before his eyes, myriad grotesque faces weaving in and out of the design, folding upon themselves.

Belatedly, he realized that one of the faces was that of Rachel Demarest. Silly bitch! The Scream Room had driven her out of her min.... what was left of her mind. Running outside like that! Enough people had seen the demons get her that no blame would be laid at his hatch. One problem gon.... but running outsid....

Everything reminds me of outside!

Someone else would have to be found to make the liquor deliveries to old Win Ferry. Pure grain spirits he wanted now. And Ferry would have to get the message - no more pestering questions about that Demarest woman.

Oakes found that his hands ached and he realized both fists were clenched. He forced himself to relax, began to rub at the beginnings of cramp in his fingers. Maybe another small drink of the win.... No!

All this frustration! For what?

Only one answer, the answer he had given Lewis so many times: For this world.

Victory would give them their own safe world. Unconsciously, his right hand went out and touched the mandala. What a price! And Legata - historian, search technician, beautiful woman - perhaps she would be his queen. He owed her that, at least. Empress. His finger traced the maze of lines in the mandala, flowing intricacies.

"Politics is your life, not mine" Lewis had said.

Lewis did not know what it cost. All Lewis wanted was his lab and the safety of the Redoubt.

"Leave me alone here. You can proclaim and make policy all you want."

They were a great team - one in front and one behind.

Maybe just a little bit of the wine. He picked up the bottle and sipped from it. This Raja Thomas would be eliminated soon. Another victim of the kelp.

Lewis ought to drink more of this wine. They've really improved it.

Oakes sipped the wine, aerated it across his tongue with a slurping sound which he knew always made Lewis uneasy.

"You really should treat yourself to some of this stuff, Jesus. You might smooth some of those lines out of your face."

"No thanks."

"All the more for me, then."

"You and Ferry."

"No. I can take it or leave it alone."

"We have urgent problems," Lewis kept saying.

But urgency should never mean hurry, incautious rushing about. He had told Lewis in no uncertain terms: "If we're relaxed and reasonable in our urgency to complete the Redoubt, the solutions we find will be relaxed and reasonable."

No need for chaos.

He slurped more of the wine while staring at the mandala. The way those lines twisted - they, too, appeared to come right out of chaos. But Legata had found the design of it, duplicated it twice. Design. Pandora had its design, too. He just had to find it. Peel away all of this dissonance, and there would be the foundations of order.

We'll finish off the kelp, the Runners. Chlorine. Lots of it. Things will start making sense around here pretty soon.

He lifted the bottle to take another sip, found that there was no more wine in it. He let the bottle slip out of his hand, heard it thump on the floor. As though that were the signal, his com-console buzzed at him once more.

Murdoch again.

"Demarest's people are asking for another meeting, Doctor."

"Stall them! I told you to s.... stall them."

"I'll try."

Murdoch did not sound very happy with the decision.

Oakes took two stabs with a finger to break the connection. How many times did you have to give an order around this damned place?

Once more, he focused on the mandala.

"We'll have some order around here pretty soon," he told it.

He realized then that he had taken too much wine. It sounded ridiculous, talking to himself in quarters this way, but he enjoyed hearing certain things, even if he had to be the one who voiced them.

"Gonna get some order around here."

Where was that damned Legata? Had to tell her to get some order into things.