The Jesus Incident - Page 61/66

Man also knows not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falls suddenly upon them.

- Christian Book of the Dead, Shiprecords

"BLOW THAT cutter. Give me the particulars later." Lewis switched off the com-line, and turned to face Oakes across the Command Center. As though this act conveyed some deep communication, they both turned to look up at the big screen.

The bustle of activity around them went on - some fifty people guiding the Redoubt's defenses under the eyes of the armed Naturals quietly watchful at the edges of the room. But to Legata, who stood near Oakes, it seemed that the noise level went down dramatically. She, too, stared at the screen.

It was early Rega morning out there, and the light showed the massed ring of hylighters, the waiting mobs of demons at the cliffs - all strangely held in check. Something new had been added this morning, however. A naked man sat on a flat rock pinnacle to the southeast, hylighter tentacles brushing against him. Sensor amplification had showed his features in close-up - the poet, Kerro Panille.

On the floor of the plain beneath Panille stood a plasteel cutter fitted with wheels, E-clones and what appeared to be Naturals grouped around it. The cutter's deadly nozzle was pointed toward the Redoubt - too far away for that model to do any damage, but unmistakably menacing.

The most menacing thing of all was the fact that no demon moved to molest any of the people waiting beside the cutter. Pandora's terrible creatures waited with the others in mysterious docility.

"We should know in a blink or two," Lewis said. He threaded his way through the room's activities to stand near Oakes and Legata. All of them stared up at the screen.

"Can't we send some people out there?" Oakes asked. "We could take that thing with a direct attack."

"Who would we send out?" Lewis asked.

"Clones. We have clones up to here!" He brushed the edge of his right hand across his throat. "And we don't have enough food. They could get through if we sent enough of them."

"Why would clones do that?" Legata asked.

"What?" Oakes glared at her audacity.

"Why would clones obey an order to attack? They can see the demons out there. And there'll be Runners somewhere on that plain. Why would clones take the risk?"

"To save themselves, of course. If they stay here and do nothin...." Oakes' voice trailed off.

"Your fate is their fate," she said. "Maybe worse. They'll ask why you aren't out there with them."

"Becaus.... I'm the Ceepee! I'm worth more than they are to our survival."

"Worth more to them than they are worth to themselves?"

"Legata, what are yo.... ?" Oakes was interrupted by a brilliant flash of light and a blast so close that the concussion popped his ears and took his breath away. Sensor images vanished from the big screen to be replaced by static flashes of light. Legata, thrown backward by the blast, steadied herself against a fixed control console. Lewis had sprawled on the floor and, as he climbed to his feet, they all heard screams and clattering feet in the passage outside the Command Center.

Oakes gestured to Legata. "Get that screen working!"

"We must've hit that cutter," Lewis said.

Legata leaped to the screen controls, keyed an emergency search for active sensors, found a high one which looked out over the Redoubt to the distant cliff with its bank of hylighters. Panille still sat on the pinnacle, the plasteel cutter and its crew remained at their cliffbase. Nothing appeared to have changed.

They could all hear the sound of pounding against the Command Center's hatch. Someone across the room opened it. Immediately, the Center filled with people, a menagerie of E-clones and Naturals, all crying and screaming: "Runners! Runners! Seal off!"

Lewis whirled to the nearest console, slapped the key for the Seal Off program. As hatches hissed shut, they saw on the screen the first wave of people shrieking in terror at the inner edge of the Redoubt. Legata turreted the high sensor to follow them and they all saw the smoking break in the Redoubt's perimeter, the flood of people fleeing it and being brought up short at sealed hatches. Fists beat a muffled drumming on the hatches, the sound made all the more terrible by its distance from the sensor. It gave the whole scene a marionette quality.

Lewis suddenly darted across the room, grabbed the arm of one of the newcomers and returned to Oakes with the man. Legata recognized him as a crew supervisor, a Natural named Marco.

"What the hell happened out there?" Oakes demanded.

"I don't know." The man blinked in confusion, stared up at the screen rather than at Oakes. "We took one of the new cutters, the long-range ones, and we hit within a meter of them."

"You missed them?" Oakes screamed it, his face red with rage.

"No! No, sir. A meter's good enough. That close will melt bedrock for ten meters all around. It's jus...."

"That's all right, Marco," Lewis said. "Just describe what you saw."

"It was that man up on the rocks." Marco pointed at the screen.

"He didn't do anything," Oakes said. "We were looking at the screen the whole time and h...."

"Let Marco tell what he saw," Lewis interrupted.

"It was almost too fast for the eye to see," the supervisor said. "Our beam hit less than a meter away. I saw the ground out there begin to glow. Then the bea.... bent. It bent right up toward that man on the rock. I thought I saw him glow, then the beam came right back at us!"

"Our cutter's gone?" Lewis asked.

"It went up so fast only a few of us escaped."

"Send out some clones," Oakes said.

An unmistakable press of bodies moved toward him as he spoke and, too late, he realized his danger. More than half the Command Center crew was composed of clones and most of the refugees who now crowded the room were clones.

"Sure!" someone shouted from the press of people. "You stay here while we take the risk!"

Another voice, gravelly and full of gutturals, took it up from another corner of the crowd: "Yes, send out some clones. More meat for the demons. A diversion while you Naturals tiptoe home to Colony and your wine!"

Oakes glanced at the ring of faces pressing toward him. Even the Naturals among them appeared angry. This was not the time to tell them that Colony no longer existed. They would know their power then. They would know how much he needed them.

"No!" Oakes waved a hand in the air. "All survival decisions belong to the Ceepee. I am Ship's envoy and voice here!"

"Ohhh, it's Ship now!" someone shouted.

"We will not run home to Colony," Oakes said. "We will stand here at your sid.... to the last man, if necessary."

The guttural voice responded: "You're damn right you're not leaving!"

The room took on an odd sense of quiet into which Lewis' voice came clearly: "We will not be beaten."

Oakes picked it up: "We have almost eliminated the kelp that kept us from gardening the sea. The hylighters will go next. A few rebels will not stand in the way of the good life we can make for ourselves here."

Oakes glanced at Lewis, surprised a flitting smile there.

"Tell us what to do," Lewis said.

One of Lewis' minions in the crowd responded on cue: "Yes, tell us."

How well early conditioning pays off, Oakes thought. And he said: "First, we have to take stock of our situation."

"I've been watching the screen," Lewis said. "I don't see any Runners. Have you seen any, Legata?"

"No, not a one."

"Not one Runner has tried to enter the Redoubt," Lewis said. "They remember the chlorine."

"Have you looked at the whole perimeter?" someone demanded.

"No, but look at those people near that break in our wall." Lewis pointed. "Not a one of them's in trouble. I'm going to open the hatches."

"No!" Oakes stepped forward. "Whoever asked that question is right. We have to be sure." He turned toward Legata. "Do you have enough sensors to scan the perimeter?"

"Not completel.... but Jesus is right. Nothing's attacking our people out there."

"Send some volunteers out with portable sensors, then," Lewis said. "We could use a few repair crews as well. I'll go with 'em, if you like."

Oakes stared at Lewis. Could the man really be that brave? Runners remembering chlorine? Impossible. Something else was holding the demons in check. As he thought this, Oakes experienced the abrupt sensation that the entire planet was out there, waiting just for the proper moment to attack and kill him.

Taking his silence for agreement, Lewis pressed his way through the crowd, selecting people as he moved. "Yo.... yo.... yo.... yo.... Come with me. Larius, you get a repair crew together, take the down-chart and get busy restoring our eyes and ears."

Lewis popped a hatch at the far side of the room, waved his volunteers through, and turned before joining them. "All right, Morgan, it's up to you."

What did he mean by that? Oakes watched the hatch seal behind Lewis. I have to do something!

"Everybody back to work," Oakes said. "Everybody but the Command Center crew outside in the passage." They were reluctant to move.

"Nothing came in the hatch when Jesus opened it," Oakes said. "Go on. We have work to do. So do you."

"Leave the hatch open if you want," Legata said. Oakes did not like that, but the suggestion moved them. People began leaving. Legata turned back to the control console for the big screen. Oakes moved to the side, becoming intensely aware of the musky smell which surrounded her.

"We're fighting the whole damned planet," he muttered. He watched while portable sensors and repairs began restoring the big screen's overview of the Redoubt's operation. As service returned, it became apparent that something had destroyed some seventy degrees of perimeter sensors below the ten-meter level. Burned-out relays had put other sensors out of service. The damage was far less than he had feared. He began to breathe more easily, realizing only then how tension had tightened his chest.

Lewis returned after a time, crossed to Oakes and Legata at the screen. "Did you want those people to stay in the passage?"

Oakes shook his head. "No." He continued to watch the screen.

"I sent them about their business," Lewis said. "Nothing seems to've changed outside. Why are they waiting?"

"War of nerves," Oakes said.

"Perhaps."

"We must devise a plan of attack," Oakes said. "The clones must be convinced that it's necessary to attack."

Lewis stared at the play of Legata's hands across the screen controls, glancing now and then up at the COA she produced. Rega was much higher in the sky now and Alki was beginning to creep above the horizon. It was brilliant out on the plain, every detail washed in light.

"How will you convince the clones?" Lewis asked.

"Get a few of them in here," Oakes said.

Lewis directed a questioning stare at Oakes, but turned and obeyed. He returned with twelve E-clones whose appearance had been held closer to the Natural standard except for the introduction of extra musculature in arms and legs. They were a type Oakes had always thought bulged in a repellant way, but he masked his dislike. Lewis stopped the group in an arc about three paces from Oakes.

Studying the faces, Oakes recognized some of the group which had fled into the Command Center earlier. There was no avoiding the distrust in their expressions. And Oakes noted that Lewis had seen fit to don a bolstered lasgun and that the Naturals around the edges of the room were alert and watchful.

"I will not go back to Colony," Oakes began. "Never. We are here t...."

"You might run back to Ship!" It was a clone standing just to the left of Lewis.

"Ship will not respond to us," Legata said. "We are on our own."

Damn her! Oakes went pale. Didn't she know how dangerous it was to betray your dependence on others?

"We are being tested, that's all," Oakes said. He glanced at Lewis, surprised another fleeting grin on the man's face.

"Maybe we're supposed to go outside and run for it," Legata said. Her fingers danced across the screen's controls. "Maybe it's just a game like the Scream Room or running the P."

What is she doing? Oakes wondered. He shot a glance at her, but Legata continued to direct the screen's controls.

"They're doing something," she said.

Every eye turned toward the screen whose entire area she had focused on the view toward the cliffs. Panille was standing now, his right hand clutching a hylighter tentacle. More E-clones and others had massed around the cutter on the plain below him. Demons had moved out from the cliff shadows. Even the enclosing arc of hylighters appeared more agitated, moving about, changing altitude.

Legata zoomed in on a man standing beside the cutter's left wheel.

"Thomas," she said. "But the hylighter...."

"He's in league with 'em," Lewis said. "Has been all along!"

Legata stared out at the plain. Was that possible? She had been about to expose Oakes as a clone, but now she hesitated. What did she really know about Thomas?

As she thought this, Thomas lowered his right arm and Panille, atop the pinnacle, was picked up by one of the giant bags, carried gently down to the plain.

Thomas and his people were moving forward now, a ragged advance but spreading out on both sides of the cutter.

"There must be at least a thousand of them," Lewis muttered. "Where'd they get that many people?"

"What're the demons doing?" Legata asked.

The creatures had spread out below the cliff - Dashers, Spinnerets, Flatwings and more - even a few of the rare Grunchers. They were following the attackers but slowly and at a distance.

"If they get that cutter within range of us, we're through," Oakes said. He rounded on Lewis. "Now will you send out some attackers?"

"We have no choice," Lewis said. He glanced at the clones beside him. "You all see that, don't you?"

All of them were staring up at the screen, intently focused on the advancing cutter and the outrider demons.

"It's plain to see," Lewis said. "They cut open our perimeter and let the demons in. We're all dead then. But if we can stop the...."

"Everybody!" Oakes called out. "I grant full status as a Natural to every clone who volunteers. These rebels are the last real threat to our survival. When they're gone, we'll make a paradise out of this planet."

Slowly, but with growing momentum, the arc of clones moved toward the passage hatch. More joined them as they moved.

"Keep them moving, Lewis," Oakes said. "Issue weapons as they go out. We'll win by the weight of numbers alone."