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"Order"

His uard, who handed it to the attendant The attendant had only one eye, and she had to hold the list close to her face to read it Slowly, she crossed off certain items Kalan couldn&039;t see which ones He couldn&039;t read everything on the list, but hisby where it was He could see that about half of what they wanted was crossed out The attendant typed the remainder of the list onto a keyboard It hummed and clicked and then they waited for their food to coreat belt out of the wall

Kalan could stand at the very end of the belt and look along its length, but it didn&039;t give hiood view of the insides of the food place He could see that there were lots of people and lots of stacks of food, et their fish froht it funny, his father was a fisherman but they couldn&039;t eat his fish, they had to buy it from vendors like everyone else One man who had fished with his father for two years disappeared Kalan heard his parents talking, and they said it was because he s thee off the belt was his rice, wrapped in a package of pretty green paper froht five kilos would be His e inside his backpack, a perfect fit

Suddenly there were shouts from all around them at once He and his ether for protection under the lip of the conveyer belt Heavy doors slid down to close the opening over each belt and the larger gates that they&039;d coed shut Atheate was shut

"We&039;re hungry now!" one of theuards and Kalan saw blood puddle the deck beside hi weapons - sharpened pieces of metal with tape wrapped for a handle, sharpened pieces of wire People furiously slashed and poked and clubbed each other The Line people like Kalan and his mother curled up wherever they could

One of the looters grabbed Kalan&039;s pack but the boy held on tight Thethe pack up and snapped it like a whip, but Kalan still held on The man&039;s sunken-eyed face was spattered with blood fro breath reeked of rotten teeth

"Let go, boy, or I&039;ll cut you"

Kalan had a good grip with both hands, and he kept it A guard struck the looter on the back of his neck with a stunstick set on high Kalan felt the tiniest tingle of it trans to Kalan The man dropped with an "oof," then he didn&039;t rabbed hiuards clubbed the rest of the looters unconscious He tried not to look at the pulpy faces and splatterings of blood, but it seemed they were everywhere As he burrowed his face deep between his

She stroked his head and wept quietly, and he heard the security dragging off the bodies, beating so around

"Oh, babe," his mother cried and whispered, "this is no place for you This is no place for anybody"

Kalan ignored the barking of guards around them and concentrated on his rip he kept on their rice

Human hybernation is to animal hibernation as animal hibernation is to constant wakefulness In its reduction of life processes, hybernation approached absolute stasis It is nearer death than life

- Dictionary of Science, 155th edition

The Director, Raja Flattery, woke once again with a screaht was typical A tenaculous mass had snatched his head and wrenched it off his shoulders It dis members so that he could watch the action The tentacles becaers, and when they pulled the meat from his body&039;s bones there was only a sound like a ather his flesh and reasseed hihout the twenty-five years since the hybernation ordeal He had not wanted to admit it, but it was true that they orse since the incident with his shipht after night he felt the raw pain in eachpulled his veins and fibers apart His early training as a Chaplain/Psychiatrist on Moonbase had been little help this ti to heal himself

Get used to it, he told hi to be here for a while

Even in its after-fright reflection, his face in the cubbyside mirror oozed disdain His upraked black eyebrows raked upward even further, adding to the appearance of disdain He felt he wore that look well, he would remember to use it

What color were her eyes?

He couldn&039;t re about Alyssa Marsh was becoht she would become unimportant, as well

Flattery&039;s brown eyes stared down their own reflection His attention was caught by faint flickerings of colored lights through the plaz from a kelp bed beyond his cubby It was a much more mature stand than he&039;d suspected Early studies debated whether the kelp cohts If so, to whom?

At the Director&039;s orders, all kelp stands linked to Current Control were pruned back at the first sign of the lights A safety precaution

After the lights, that&039;s when the trouble starts He was sure that that patch had been pruned just a week ago at his directive Both Marsh and MacIntosh had harped on the kelp soto the that both of them said that pricked his ears was their corowth: "Explosive" They had both showed hiraphs but he had not appreciated their alarm until now Flattery dispatched a memo to have this stand of kelp pruned today

Beyond the kelp bed sprawled the greater lights of Kalaloch where bleary-eyed commuters already lined up for the Project ferry and The Line was stirring at ht hear the thankless clank of mill machinery or the occasional blast of an explosive weld

Crista Galli, he thought, and glanced at the time Only an hour since he&039;d fallen asleep Wherever she was, she and that Ozette, they wouldn&039;t dare move until curfew lifted Nohen it would be easy for them Nohen the roadways fill with people for the day, they will be bodies in a throng, anonyers found their way to Kalaloch every day He would order the press to quit calling theees" so that he could deal more directly with them Now that he had Holovision under control, he could focus on wiping out this maverick broadcast that called itself "Shadowbox" He knew in his gut that Ozette was the prong of thisto enjoy blunting

Through the plaz the Director couldof fires fro caee Co He would use whatever was in it to have the camp moved farther from the settlement perimeter Maybe downcoast a few klicks If they want protection, they can pay for it

The dirtbagger presence as a potential labor crop kept the factory workers and excavation crews sharp Dirtbaggers attracted predators - human and otherwise Flattery&039;s real objection was to their nu to surround hiee Co before he became known as "the Director," was always at work before dawn Rumors had come back to him that he went ht that was true His personal cubby resembled a cockpit in its wraparound array of forave hilove Nestled there at his console, shawl across his bare shoulders, Flattery flew the business of the world

He woke every night sweating and in stark terror after only a few hours&039; sleep He drea at his own hand while screa at himself to stop It was all nificent brain from the rest of her This was a subconscious display of vulnerability he could not allow to show It made him reclusive in many respects, as did the distrust for open spaces that had been deeply instilled in him at Moonbase

Flattery had not yet slept with a Pandoran wo with Alyssa back on Moonbase just before their departure for the void An attempt to continue the liaison on Pandora had failed She had preferred her excursions into the kelp to bedding the Director and had suffered the consequences Now it appeared that he suffered them, too

With Pandoran women there were trysts in the cushions, yes, and lively sex as often as he liked, particularly at first But each tiuest suite, and Flattery slept what little he could before the dreareat aphrodisiac

He didn&039;t sneer, it had served hie of favors offered, but sex didn&039;t i the world As miserable a little world as it was, it was his world and it would stay his until he left it

"Six months," he o"

Nearly three thousand humans had orbited Pandora in the hybernation tanks for a half-dozen centuries Of the original crew, only Flattery and Dwarf MacIntosh still survived There were the three Organic Mental Cores, of course, but they weren&039;t exactly hu Only one of the The other two had been infants selected personally by Flattery for their high intelligence and early demonstration of eer than thewrenched out of hybernation Pandora is an adequate little world

It becah

The native stock who preceded hiinal crew of the Voidship Earthling and the Earthling&039;s bioexperiments, were humans of a sort Flattery found them repulsive and decided early on that if one Voidship had found Pandora, anotherbetter Even if it didn&039;t, Flattery fancied Voidship life to be a sight more comfortable than this

They can all rot in this pest-hole, he thought It ss Flattery derived great pleasure frolittering position overhead He&039;d pinned a nificent jewel to the shirt of the sky, and he was proud of that

So creatures, enetics has been contaet off this planet His life at Moonbase had taught him well - space was a mediureat hardship, these Mermen had developed rocketry and their undersea launch site sophisticated enough to bring Flattery and the hyb tanks out of a centuries-old orbit If they could do that, he knew fro And now he had

If you control the world, you don&039;t worry about cost, he thought His only unrestrained eneroundside was a Pandoran, Spider Nevi Nevi hesitated at nothing to see that the Director&039;s special assignnht Dwarf MacIntosh, shipside commander on the Orbiter, to be such a man but lately Flattery wasn&039;t quite so sure The squad he was sending up today would find out soon enough

Theet Nevi to open up to hih he had presented ample opportunity

How do you entertain an assassin?

Most of Flattery&039;s fellow hu of the hybernation tanks Their original Voidship had been outfitted to bring theone over the horizon, leaving the Pandoran natives in pursuit of the hyb tanks and firm as ever in their belief that the Ship itself was God

Died immediately!

He snorted at the euphemism that his mind dealt him In that moment that the medtechs called "ih nerve-searing pain to last twelve lifeti of the tanks, who had known no illness during their sterile lives at Moonbase, died in the first few months of exposure to Pandora&039;s creatures -the otherwise that Flattery learned to respect were the catlike hooded dashers, venorazers and, deadliest of all in Flattery&039;s mind, this sea full of the kelp that the locals called "Avata" The first far-thinking Chaplain/Psychiatrist to encounter the kelp had had the good sense to wipe it out Flattery divertedit off was out of the question, so far

He had spent his recovery studying Pandoran history and the horrors that the planet had in store for him He and his shipreatest geological and social upheaval The planet was co It was a propitious tiods, and Flattery took swift advantage of it

He used his title as Chaplain/Psychiatrist, a position that still carried weight aanization of Pandoran mores and economics They chose him because they had never been without a Chaplain/Psychiatrist and because, as he ift to reift froood while to tell the another one

Flattery had been perceptive, shrewd, and because he noted soious leaders, he changed his title to, simply, "the Director" This freed him for some important economicthe crucial forod," he had told theods But I will direct you in your efforts to build a good life"

They didn&039;t knohat Flattery knew of the special training of Voidship Chaplain/Psychiatrists Pandoran histories revealed that Flattery&039;s clone sibling, Raja Flattery nuinal creas the failsafe device and appointed executioner of the very Voidship that had brought them all to Pandora

It is forbidden to release an artificial consciousness on the universe The directive was clear, though it was generally believed that any deep-space travel would require an artificial consciousness The Organic Mental Cores, "brain boxes" as the techs called theularity The Flattery nuer in ti that od

Raja Flattery, "the Nickel" Nohy didn&039;t he blow us all up as planned?