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Was that challenge enough? He studied Oakes for a negative response. Oakes
was merely amused.
"Yes, Raja Lon Thomas. Go. Pandora will welcome you. Perhaps you'll survive
that welcome . . . for a time."
Not until much later when he was standing in the shipbay waiting to board the
groundside 'lighter did Thomas pause to wonder at where and how Oakes had
obtained those sybaritic furnishings for his expanded cubby.
From Ship?
The mind falls, the will drives on.
-- Kerro Panille, The Collected Poems
PANILLE EMERGED from Ferry's office dazed and fearfully excited.
Groundside!
He knew what Hali thought of old Ferry -- a bumbling fool, but there had been
something else in the old man. Ferry had seemed sly and vindictive, consumed
by unresolved hostilities. Even so, there was no evading his message.
I'm going groundside!
He had no time for dawdling -- his orders required him to be at Shipbay Fifty
in little more than an hour. Everything was controlled now by the time
demands of
Colony. It might be the last quarter of dayside here, but down at Colony it
would soon be dawn, and the shuttles from Ship tried to make their groundside
landings in the early hours there -- less hylighter activity then.
Hylighters . . . dawn . . . groundside . . .
The very words conveyed a sense of the exotic to him. No more of Ship's
passages and halls.
The full import of this change began to fill him. He could see and touch
'lectrokelp. He could test for himself how this alien intelligence performed.
Abruptly, Panille wanted to share his excitement with someone. He looked
around at the sterile reaches of Medical's corridors -- a few med-techs
hurrying about their business. None of the faces were friendly acquaintances.
Hali's face was nowhere among these impersonal passersby. Everything he saw
was just the bustle and movement of Medical's ordinary comings and goings.
Panille headed toward the main corridors. Medical's bright lights bothered
him.
It was a painful contrast with Ferry's office -- the clutter, the dank smells.
Ferry kept his office too dim.
Probably hiding the clutter even from himself.
It occurred to Panille then that Ferry's mind probably was like that office --
dim and confused.
A poor, confused old man.
At the first main corridor, Panille turned left toward his quarters. No time
to search out Hali and share this momentous change. There would be time for
sharing later -- at the next shipside period of rest and recuperation. He
would have much more to share then, too.
At his cubby, Panille shoved things into a shipcloth bag. He was not sure
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what to take. No telling when he might return. Recorder and spare charges,
certainly; a few keepsakes . . . clothes . . . notepads and a spare stylus.
And the silver net, of course. He stopped and held the net up to examine it
-- a gift from Ship, flexible silver and big enough to cover his head.
Panille smiled as he rolled the net and confined it in its own ties. Ship
seldom refused to answer one of his questions; refusal signaled a defect in
the question. But the day of this net had been memorable for refusals and
shifting responses from Ship.
Insatiable curiosity -- that was the hallmark of the poet and Ship certainly
knew this. He had been at the Instruction Terminal, his request. "Tell me
about Pandora."
Silence.
Ship wanted a specific question.
"What is the most dangerous creature on Pandora?"
Ship showed him a composite picture of a human.
Panille was irritated. "Why won't You satisfy my curiosity?"
"You were chosen for this special training because of your curiosity."
"Not because I'm a poet?"
"When did you become a poet?"
Panille remembered staring at his own reflection in the glistening surface of
the display screen where Ship revealed its symbolic patterns.
"Words are your tools but they are not enough," Ship said. "That is why there
are poets."
Panille had continued to stare at his reflection in the screen, caught by the
thought that it was a reflection but it also was displayed where Ship's
symbols danced. Am I a symbol? His appearance, he knew, was striking: the
only
Shipman who wore a beard and long hair. As usual, the hair was plaited back
and
bound in a golden ring at the nape of his neck. He was the picture of a poet
from the history holos.
"Ship, do You write my poetry?"
"You ask the question of the Zen placebo: 'How do I know I am me?' A
nonsense question as you, a poet, should know."
"I have to be sure my poetry is my own!"
"You truly believe I might try to direct your poetry?"
"I have to be certain."
"Very well. Here is a shield which will isolate you from Me. When you wear
it, your thoughts are your own."
"How can I be sure of that?"
"Try it."
The silvery net had come out of the pneumatic slot beside the screen. Fingers
trembling, Panille opened the round carrier, examined the contents and put the
net over his head, tucking his long black hair up into it. Immediately, he
sensed a special silence in his head. It was frightening at first and then
exciting.
I'm alone! Really alone!
The words which had flowed from him then had achieved extra energy, a
compulsive rhythm whose power touched his fellow Shipmen in strange ways. One
of the physicists refused to read or listen to his poetry.
"You twist my mind!" the old man shouted.
Panille chuckled at the memory and tucked the silver snood into his shipcloth
bag.
Zen placebo?
Panille shook his head; no time for such thoughts.
When the bag was full he decided that solved his packing problem. He took up
his bag and forced himself not to look back when he left. His cubby was the
past -- a place of furious writing periods and restless inner probings. He
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had spent many a sleepless night there and, for one period, had taken to
wandering the corridors looking for a cool breeze from a ventilator. Ship had
felt overly warm and uncommunicative then.
But it was really me; I was the uncommunicative one.
At Shipbay Fifty, he was told to wait in an alcove with no chair or bench. It
was a tiny metal-walled space too small for him even to stretch out on the
floor. There were two hatches: the one through which he had entered and
another directly opposite. Sensor lenses glittered at him from above the
hatches and he knew he was being watched.
Why? Could I have angered The Boss?
Waiting made him nervous.
Why did they tell me to get right out here if they were going to make me wait?
It was like that faraway time when his mother had taken him to the Shipmen.
He had been five years old, a child of Earth. She had taken him by the hand
up the ramp to Ship Reception. He had not even known what Ship meant then,
but he had been sensitized to what was about to happen to him because his
mother had explained it with great solemnity.
Panille remembered that day well -- a green spring day full of musty earth
smells which had not vanished from his memory in all the Shipdays since. Over
one shoulder, he had carried a small cotton bag containing the things his
mother had packed for him.
He looked down at the shipcloth bag into which he had crammed the things for
his groundside trip. Much more durable . . . larger.
The small cotton bag of that long-gone day had been limited to four kilos --
the posted maximum for Ship Reception. It had contained mostly clothing his
mother had made for him herself. He still had the amber stocking cap. And
there were four primitive photographs -- one of the father he had never seen
in the flesh, a father killed in a fishing accident. He was revealed as a
red-haired man with dark skin and a smile which survived him to warm his son.
One picture was his mother, unsmiling and work worn, but still with beautiful
eyes; one showed his father's parents, two intense faces which stared directly
into the recording lens; and one slightly larger picture showed "the family
place" which was, Kerro reminded himself, a patch of land on a patch of planet
lost long ago when its sun went nova. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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