The Jesus Incident (Destination: Void #2)

Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame and of enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding.

- Frankenstein's Monster Speaks, Shiprecords

AS THOMAS gave the signal for the attack, he experienced the almost paralyzing sensation that he was not aiming a blow at the Redoubt but was striking out at Ship.

You set this up, Ship! See what You've done? Ship gave no response. Thomas moved forward with his army. The air was hot on the plain below the cliffs, both suns climbing to their meridians. The light was brilliant, forcing him to squint when he looked toward the reflected glare of the suns. He smelled a flinty bitterness in the air, dust kicked up by his ragtag group. He looked left and right at them. Had anyone ever dreamed of such a wild mixture on such a venture? The Naturals in Avata's collection were a vanishing minority - swallowed up in the press of strange shapes: bulbous heads, oddly placed eyes, ears, noses and mouths; great barrel chests and scrawny ones, thin limbs and conventional fingers, ropey tendrils, feet and stumps. They strode and rocked and stumbled along in obedience to his command. The improvised wheels they had attached to the plasteel cutter grated in sand, bumped over small rocks. Muttering, grunting, wheezing, his people moved forward. Some of the E-clones chanted "Avata! Avata! Avata!" as they shuffled along. He noted that the demons moved with him at a distance, just as Panille had said they would.

Waiting to scavenge.

What did the demons see here? Panille had said that he and the hylighters could project false images to hold the demons in check. Certain of the E-clones, too, exhibited this skill. Thomas guessed it to be a side-effect of the recombinant experiments with the kelp. It seemed a fragile defense against such potent creatures. This whole venture was based on fragility - not enough weapons, not enough people, not enough time to plan and train.

He glanced back toward the cliffs, saw the arc of trailing demons, Panille walking among them without fear. A gigantic Dasher brushed against the poet, veered away. Thomas shuddered. Panille had said he would not take active part in killing, but would protect this army as well as he could. The med-tech and a hand-picked crew of aides waited at the foot of the cliff. Everything now depended on whether this force could so overawe the Redoubt's defenders that Oakes would capitulate.

At the chosen moment, Thomas gave the signal for his people to spread out, dispersing wide across the plain. If Panille's powers continued to work, the defenders would see only one small tightly massed target of attackers coming straight on into range of the Redoubt's weapons. Thomas joined the crew of the cutter as they veered off to the left.

As he moved, doubts welled up in him. By his time reckoning, they had only hours until Ship carried out the threat to end humankind forever. This venture seemed hopeless. He would have to overcome the Redoubt, assemble the survivors, find the proper WorShip and prove to Ship that humankind should endure.

Not enough time.

Panille! It was Panille's fault that they had been delayed so long. To every argument for the need to attack the Redoubt, Panille had interjected a quiet remonstrance.

The nest was paradise enough, he said.

No doubt it was a paradis...continuous growing season for Earth plants - no rot, no mold, no insect parasite.... not even any demons to threaten the people there.

The crater nest was a blastula of Earth, a chaotic jumble of elements looking for growth and order.

A one-kilometer circle of Eden does not a habitable planet make.

And always Panille there with his senseless observations: "What you do with the dirt beneath your feet, that is a prayer."

Is that what You want, Ship! That kind of prayer?

No answer from Ship - just the rustle of sand underfoot, the movement of his army as it spread out wide across the plain and continued to advance on the Redoubt.

I'm on my own here. No help from Ship.

He remembered the Voidship Earthling then - the ship which had become Ship. He remembered the crew, their long training on Moonbase. Where were they now? Any of them left in hyb? He longed to see Bickel again. John Bickel would be a good one to have here now - resourceful, direct. Where was Bickel now?

Sand grated under his feet like the sands of the exercise yard at Moonbase. Sands of the Moon, not of Earth. All those years, looking up to the Earth at night - the blue and white glory of it. His desires had not been for the stars, not for some mathematical conception at Tau Ceti. He had wanted only the Earth - that one place forbidden to him in all of the universe.

Pandora is not Earth.

But the nest was a temptation - so like the Earth of his dreams.

Probably not like the real Earth at all. What do I know of the real Earth?

His kind had known only the clone sections of Moonbase, forever separated from the human originals by the vitro shields. Always the vitro shields, always only a simulated Earth - just as the clones simulated humans.

They didn't want us taking strange diseases all over the universe.

A laugh escaped him.

Look at the disease we've brought to Pandora! War. And the disease called humankind.

A shout came from off to his right, bringing him out of his reverie. He saw that a beam from the Redoubt had incinerated a large rock ahead of them on the plain. Thomas signaled for wider separation. He looked back, saw Panille with his spreading pack of demons still walking imperturbably behind the army.

A terrible resentment of Panille welled up in Thomas then. Panille was a naturally born human.

I was grown in an axlotl tank!

How odd, he thought, that it should take all of these uncountable eons and an ultimate crisis here for him to realize how much he resented being a clone.

Clones from Moonbase are expressly forbidde....

The list of "Thou shall nots" had stretched on for page after page.

It is forbidden to come into contact with Natal humans or with Earth.

Banished from the Garden without benefit of sin.

What is felt by one is felt by all, Avata said.

Yes, Avata, but Pandora is not Earth.

Ship had said he was original material, though, some bit of what Earth had been. What memories of Earth tingled in the genes sparkling at the tips of his fingers?

It was very hot out here on the plain, glaring hot. Exposed. Could Panille's projection truly confuse the Redoubt's defenders? Panille had confused the probes, that was a fact. And Thomas recalled his own mental linkage with Bitten, the control program for the freighter which had brought such a cornucopia of supplies. As Panille said, the ability to communicate was also the ability to dissemble.

What if Panille just left them out here, dropped the masking projection? What if Panille were wounde.... or killed? Panille should have stayed back by the cliffs.

That's just like a clone, missing the obvious.

The old taunt rang through his ears. Just like a clone! All the human efforts at instilling pride in the clones had vanished before the taunts. Clones were supposed to be extra-human, built for precision performance. Humans did not like that. Clones of Moonbase did not look different from humans, did not talk different...but separation developed eccentricities. Just like a clone.

He imagined a Moonbase instructor, looking at him out of that blasphemous screen, lecturing on the intricacies of systems monitors, reprimanding: "That's just like a clone, walking out on paradise."

His army was almost into range of the Redoubt's smallest weapons now, less than two hundred meters away. Thomas shook himself out of his reverie - hell of a way for a general to behave! He looked left and right. They were well fanned out. He paused beside a tall, black rock - taller than he. The Redoubt loomed ahead, prickly with the muzzles of its cutters. Panille could not come any closer. Thomas turned and waved for Panille to stop, saw the poet obey. The army would have to go on alone from here. They could not risk their most valuable weapon.

The rock beside him began to glow. Thomas leaped to the right as the rock erupted in molten orange. A tiny splash of it burned his left arm. He ignored it, shouted: "Attack!"

His mob started a shambling run toward the Redoubt. As they moved, exterior hatches in the Redoubt's perimeter snapped open. Defenders swarmed onto the plain carrying 'burners and lasguns. They raced forward in a confused mass toward Panille's projected images. As they came within a few meters, their confusion increased. Targets dissolved before them. They stumbled left and right, shooting. Random shots dropped some of the army. The Redoubt's cutters began to sparkle with incandescent beams which probed the plain.

"Fire!" Thomas screamed. "Fire!"

Some of his people obeyed. But the Redoubt's defenders presented the same genetic mix as the army's. Attackers and defenders, indistinguishable without uniforms, stumbled into each other. Searing beams wavered in wild arcs, cutting friend and foe alike. Bloody bodies lay on the plain - some dismembered, some screaming. Thomas stared in horror at the arterial geyser from a headless torso directly to his left. Red spray splashed all around as the body tumbled forward.

What have I done? What have I done?

None of these people, attackers or defenders, knew how to fight a proper war. They were hysterical instruments of destruction - nothing more. Fewer than a fourth of the defenders had reached his army. What did it matter? The plain around the Redoubt was a bloody shambles.

He signaled to the cutter crew on his left. "Cut through their wall!" But his crew had been decimated, the cutter's improvised wheels disabled. It stood canted over to its right, the deadly muzzle pointed at the ground. The survivors crouched behind the cutter.

Thomas whirled and looked back at Panille. The poet stood immobile amidst the waiting pack of demons. Two Dashers crouched on his right like obedient dogs. The horrible line of Pandora's killer species reached left and right in a wide arc around the scene of carnage.

Rage coursed through Thomas. You haven't beaten me, Ship! He stumbled, panting across to the cutter, grasped its heavy barrel and heaved it around. Four strong clones had been needed to lift the thing back at the cliff. In his rage, he moved it by himself, tipping it against a rock until it was trained on a blank stretch of Redoubt wall. The surviving crew members cowered away from him as he leaped to the controls and activated the beam. A blinding blue line leaped out to the Redoubt, melting the wall. Upper structure sloughed away, slipping down into the molten pool.

Reason returned to Thomas. He stepped back, again, again. He was twenty paces from the humming cutter when the defense weapons found it. The cutter exploded as beam confronted beam. Thomas did not even feel the sharp chunk of metal which penetrated his chest.