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for her unconscious patient.
"Near shore. Panille asserts there will be help where we land."
"What about the demons?" Ferry asked.
"If that is a reference to native fauna, you can protect yourselves with the
weapons in this freighter's cargo."
"You carry . . . weapons?" Hali asked.
"The cargo manifest lists food concentrates, building equipment and tools,
medical supplies, groundsuits and weapons."
Hali shook her head. "I knew you needed weapons to survive groundside, but I
didn't know they were being made shipside."
"Do you know what a weapon is?" Ferry asked, looking directly at Hali.
She thought of her history holos, and the soldiers at the Hill of Skulls.
"Oh, yes. I know about weapons."
"This laser scalpel." Ferry touched the stylus shape at his breast. "Acid
concentrates, plasteel cutters for construction teams, knives, axes . . ."
Hali swallowed past a lump in her throat. Every bit of her med-tech training
cried out against this. "If we prepare to . . . kill," the word was barely a
sigh past her lips, "then we will kill."
"Down here, it's kill or be killed," Ferry said. "That's the way The Boss
wants it."
In that instant, the freighter skipped into the first thin surface of
Pandora's atmosphere. Vibration hummed all through the cabin, then smoothed.
"Can't we run away?" Hali asked. Her voice was a low whisper.
"Nowhere to run," Ferry said. "You must know that. All Shipmen learn enough
about groundside to know that."
Fight or flee, Hali thought, and nowhere to flee. And it occurred to her that
Pandora was a place where people were made into primitives.
"Trust me," Ferry said, and the quavering in his old voice made the statement
pathetic.
"Yes, of course," Hali said.
She felt the freighter's braking thrust then as it pressed her against the
restraining harness, and she glanced back to reassure herself that Waela
remained secure.
"We will land in the cradle of the sea," Hali said. "That's what Waela said.
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Remember?"
"What does she know?" Ferry demanded, and it was his fearful, querulous tone,
the one which had made her despise him.
This the true human knows:
the strings of all the ways make up a cable of great strength and great
purpose. . . .
-- Kerro Panille, The Collected Poems
FOR A long time Panille sat in the shadows of the seaside cliff while he felt
the approaching presence from space. The sea lay below him down a rugged
path, the cliffs soared high behind. Avata had been the first to tell him
about this problem and, for a few blinks, he had fallen back into Thomas' ways
of thinking.
The Redoubt will know about this freighter, will send its weapons against it.
But Avata soothed him, told him that Avata would transmit false images to the
Redoubt's systems, concealing the freighter's passage. Avata would continue
to mask the nest's location with similar projections.
The rock was cold against Panille's back. From time to time, he opened and
closed his eyes. When his eyes were open he was vaguely aware of the amber
glow from Double Dusk -- the sky alight from two suns dodging just below
Pandora's horizon.
Ship would know he was here and what he was doing. Nothing escaped Ship. Did
that omnipotent awareness work through phenomena similar to those of Avata?
Was it awareness of even the most minute changes in electrical impulses? Or
was it some other form of energy which Ship and Avata monitored?
That presence from space was coming closer . . . closer. He felt it, then he
saw it.
The freighter skipped up the horizon, a great stone crossing the surface of a
glassy sea. The fall into atmosphere was deceptive. The freighter had
entered
Pandora's pull at the lowest point on the horizon. It streaked a long upward
arc as Panille felt it fill his awareness. It grew larger with its approach
around the planet's curvature, and he saw it now falling white-hot toward him.
The crunch of gravel told him of Thomas' approach, but Panille had only a
single purpose now. The approaching freighter was himself and he was diving
through the sky alight with amber.
"Can you do it?" Thomas asked.
"I am doing it," Panille whispered. He begrudged the distraction of
answering.
Until he had seen the pinpoint of that first glow against the Pandoran dusk,
Panille had not been sure he could master this thing.
"I'm thinking them in," he whispered. There was awe and wonder in his voice.
"Who is coming?" Thomas asked.
"Avata did not say."
Thomas emitted a wry, jibing chuckle. "It's a surprise package from Ship.
Maybe more recruits for me."
He moved around Panille and climbed down out of sight along the narrow path,
his figure a mysterious movement in the half light.
Going to the shore where the surf crashes. The surf will make this landing
perilous.
As the last sound of Thomas faded from Panille's awareness, darkness fell --
the
Double Dark in which Pandora's greatest mysteries blossomed.
Panille thought of himself now as a beacon. He was a signal transmitter in a
known position. The freighter and its unknown passengers depended on his
constancy. Avata wanted this freighter to land here. He trusted Avata.
Come to the sea, he thought. The sea . . . the sea . . .
Hylighters began whistling along a rock ledge ahead of him and he knew it was
time to join Thomas on the shore. He got up stiffly. It had been a long wait
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on the observation ledge. Knowing this, he had scavenged a singlesuit of
white shipcloth which Avata had stored in the nest.
A hylighter positioned itself above and behind him as he began the slow climb
down to the shore. Panille sensed tentacles dangling near, ready to grasp him
should he fall.
Avata, Brother, he thought.
It fluted a brief reply.
The sharp rocks and the difficulty of the dark cliff path were second nature
to
Panille's body. He did not have to think about the climb. And he found that
he could maintain the beacon while his thoughts wandered. His mind strayed
back to
Thomas' unbelieving interrogation.
Thomas demanded explanations and refused to believe almost everything he
heard.
He believes Avata projects strange images into his mind. He believes I have
learned from Avata, that I am a master of hallucination. He believes only
what he can touch, and then he doubts that.
Panille recalled his own words: "Avata is not hallucinogenic. They are not
even they. That's why I use the term Avata. That's why I call a hylighter
Avata."
"I know that word!" Thomas was accusatory.
"The Oneness which is present in the many. It's a word from one of the old
languages of my mother's people."
"Your mother?" Thomas was astounded.
"Didn't Ship tell you? I was womb-bred, womb-grown and nursed. I thought you
said Ship told you everything."
Thomas flashed him a dark scowl which showed that Panille was striking at
sensitive areas. But nothing had stopped Thomas from forming his army -- no
warnings about Avata's nature, no jibes at Thomas' limited information. Half
of the army waited above them now -- a mixed crew of E-clones and normals --
all of them praying that the freighter from Ship was bringing weapons and
other support. Some had descended earlier to wait among the rocks at the base
of the cliff.
Above Panille in the darkness, his Avatan guardian shared amusement and dismay
at these thoughts.
Can that army save you? Panille asked.
Avata will die in only a few diurns. Then it may be that a rebirth can occur.
Oakes hasn't beaten you yet, Panille said. Lewis with his poisons and his
virus, none of them understand about power.
Soft flutings rippled from the hylighter, the nearest Avata came to betraying
doubts. Panille wondered then: Was this futility aroused by Thomas' efforts,
or by the imminent end of Avata -- no more of 'lectrokelp/hylighters, no more
of the individual cells, the great plural-singular unity?
This thought disturbed him and he thought angrily as he worked his way down
the steep trail to the shore: If you think you're done, then you are
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