If you know this of the alien intelligence and still find it alien, you do not know what it is to be human.
- Kerro Panille, Translations from the Avata
You are called Project Consciousness, but your true goal is to explore beyond the imprinted pattern of all humankind. Inevitably, you must ask: Is consciousness only a special kind of hallucination? Do you raise consciousness or lower its threshold? The danger in the latter course is that you bring up the military analogue: you are confined to action.
- Original Charge to the Voidship Chaplain/Psychiatrist
ON THESE nightside walks through the ship, Oakes liked to move without purpose, without the persona of Ceepee tagging along. He had worked long and hard to remain just a name both shipside and groundside. Few saw his face and most of his official duties were carried out by minions. There was the routine WorShip in the corridor chapels, the food allotments groundside, a minimal endorsement of the many functions that the ship carried out with no human intervention. Ceepee rule was supposed to be nominal. But he wanted more.
Kingston had once said: "We have too damned much idle time. We're idle hands and we can get into trouble."
Memories of Kingston were much with Oakes this night as he took his nocturnal prowl. Through the outer passages, sensor eyes and ears dotted corridor walls and ceilings. They strung themselves ahead and behind in diminishing vectors of attention, dim glistenings in the blue-violet nightside lighting.
Still no word from Lewis, This rankled. Legata's preliminary report left too many unanswered questions. Was Lewis striking out on his own? Impossible! Lewis did not have the guts for such a move. He was the eternal behind-the-scenes operator, not a front man.
What was the emergency, then?
Oakes felt that too many things were coming to a head around him. They could not delay much longer on sending this poet, this Kerro Panille, groundside. And the new Ceepee the ship had brought out of hyb! Both poet and Ceepee would have to be bundled into the same package and watched carefully. And it would soon be time to start an eradication project against the kelp. People were getting hungry enough groundside that they were ready for scapegoats.
And that disturbing incident with the air in his cubby. Had the ship really tried to asphyxiate him? Or poison him?
Oakes turned a corner and found himself in a long corridor with iridescent green arrows on the walls indicating that it led outward from shipcenter. The ceiling sensors were dots receding into a converging distance.
Out of habit he noticed the activation of each sensor as he neared it. Each mechanical eye followed his pace faithfully, and, as he approached the limits of its vision, the next one rolled its wary cyclopean pupil around to catch his approach. He had to admit that, in Shipman or machine, he appreciated this sense of guarded watchfulness, but the idea that a possibly malevolent intelligence waited behind that movement set his nerves on edge.
He had never known a sensor to malfunction. To tamper with one meant dealing with a robox uni...single-minded repair and defense device that respected no life or limb save that of Ship.
THE ship, dammit!
Those years of programming, preparation - even he could not shake them. How did he expect others of lesser will, lesser intelligence, to do so?
He sighed. He expected to sway no one. What he expected was that he would use the tools at hand. With intelligence, he felt that one could turn anything to advantage. Even a dangerous tool such as Lewis.
Another pair of sensors caught his attention, this time outside the access to the Docking Bays. It was quiet here and pervaded by that odd smell compounded from uncounted sleeping people. Not even freight moved during Colony's nightside which sometimes coincided with Shiptime, but often did not. All the industry of dayside was put away for the community of sleep.
Except in two places, he reminded himself: life-support and the agraria.
Oakes stopped and studied the line of sensors. He, of all Shipmen, should appreciate them. He had access to the movements they recorded. Every detail of shipside life was supposed to be his. And he had seen to it that the groundside colony was similarly equipped. Ship's watchfulness was his own.
"The more we know, the stronger we are in our choices."
Kingston's voice came to him from his training days.
What a raw but marvelously trainable bit of human material I was!
Kingston had been almost a master of control. Almost. And control was a function of strong choices. When it came down to it, Kingston had refused certain choices.
I do not refuse.
Choices resulted from information. He had learned that lesson well.