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The touch of the infant teaches birth, and our hands are witness to the lesson

- Kerro Panille, the Histories

Vata did not experience true consciousness She skirted the shadow-edges of awareness Meh her neurons like tendrils from the kelp Sometimes she dreamed kelp dreahters - spore-filled gasbags that had died when the original kelp died Tears s, tears for the fate of those huge sky-bound globes tacking across the evening breezes of a hters clutched their ballast rocks in their two longest tentacles and Vata felt the cohts the in the dark of her mind Sometimes she folloareness of Duque, who floated beside her, sensing events within his thoughts Tiht when the gravitational wrenching of Pandora&039;s two suns destroyed the last huile land Duque repeatedly let his thoughts plunge into that experience And Vata, linked to the fearfulpartners on the same safety line, was forced to recreate dreams that soothed and calmed Duque&039;s terrors

"Duque escaped," she muttered in his mind, "Duque was taken away onto the sea where Hali Ekel tended his burns"

Duque would snuffle and whimper Had Vata been conscious, she would have heard with her own ears, because Vata and Duque shared the same life support at the center of Vashon Vata lay ed in nutrient, a monstrous mound of pink and blue flesh with definite huantic pink nipples lifted from the dark nutrient like twin mountains from a brown sea Duque drifted beside her, a satellite, her faenerations now, the two of them had been nurtured and reverenced in Vashon&039;s central complex - home of the Chaplain/Psychiatrist and the Couards kept watch on the pair under the command of the C/P It was a ritualized observation, which, in time, eroded the awe that Pandorans learned early from the reactions of their parents

"The two of them there like that They&039;ll always be there They&039;re our last link with Ship As long as they live, Ship is with us It&039;s WorShip keeps theh Duque occasionally knuckled an eye into glaring wakefulness and watched his guardians in the gloo pool that confined them, Vata&039;s responses never lifted to consciousness She breathed Her great body, responding to the kelp half of her genetic inheritance, absorbed energy froainst her skin Analysis of the nutrient betrayed traces of human waste products, which were removed by the sucker mouths of blind scrubberfish Occasionally, Vata would snort and an ar fro once row until it spread like kelp across the nutrient surface, tangling over the hairless skin of Duque and i the scrubberfish The C/P would come into the chamber then and, with a reverence touched by a certain amount of cupidity, would clip Vata&039;s locks The strands ashed and separated to be blessed and sold in short lengths as indulgences Even Merht them Sale of Vatahair had been the enerations

Duque, more aware than any other human of his curious link with Vata, puzzled over the connection when Vata&039;s intrusions left hi tiuardians, but when Duque spoke there was always a flurry of activity, the su of the C/P, and a different kind of watchfulness from the security

"She lives me," he said once, and this became a token label inscribed on the Vatahair containers

In these speaking ti the in a low and reverential voice

"Do you speak for Vata, Duque?"

"I speak"

That was all they ever got from him on this question Since it was known that Duque was one of the hundred or so original mutants who had been conceived with kelp intervention and thus bore kelp genes, they would sometimes ask him about the kelp that had once ruled Pandora&039;s now-endless sea

"Do you have memory of the kelp, Duque?"

"Avata," Duque corrected "I auments came out of this answer "Avata had been the kelp&039;s naians room for speculation

"He must mean that his consciousness exists at the bottom of the sea where the kelp lives"

"No! Re its tendrils to the sunlight? And the hylighters used rock for ballast "

"You&039;re all wrong He&039;s Vata&039;s grip on life He&039;s Vata&039;s rock"

And there was always someone ould harken back to WorShip and the stories of that distant planet where soiven the sa was ever solved by such arguns of wakefulness

"How is it that you and Vata do not die, Duque?"

"We wait"

"For what do you wait?"

"No answer"

This recurrent response precipitated several crises until the C/P of that time issued an order that Duque&039;s answers could only be broadcast by per and the ru except the C/P&039;s official version to the role of enerations now Current interest centered much more on the kelp that Mermen spread far and wide in Pandora&039;s planetary sea The kelp was thick and healthy, but showed no signs of acquiring consciousness

As the great Islands drifted they were seldoreen flatness of a kelp bed Everyone said it was a good thing Kelp formed nurseries for fish and everyone could see there were h they weren&039;t always easy to catch You couldn&039;t use a net ae fronds and were lost Even the dumb muree had learned to retreat into kelp sanctuary at the approach of fishermen

There was also the recurrent question of Ship, Ship as God and who had left humankind on Pandora

"Why did Ship abandon us here, Duque?"

All Duque would ever say was: "Ask Ship"

Many a C/P had engaged in much silent prayer over that one But Ship did not answer them At least, not with any voice that they could hear

It was a vexing question Would Ship return? Ship had left the hyb tanks in orbit around Pandora It was a strange orbit, sees There were those a Pandora&039;s Mermen and Islanders who said Vata waited for the hyb tanks to be brought down, that she would awaken when this occurred

No one doubted there was some link between Duque and Vata, so why not a link between Vata and the dor up there in the tanks?

"How are you linked to Vata?" a C/P asked

"How are you linked to me?" Duque responded

This was duly recorded in the Book of Duque and uments ensued It was noted, however, that whenever such questions were asked, Vata stirred Sorossly and sometimes with only the faintest movement over her vast flesh

"It&039;s like the safety line we use between divers down under," an astute Merman observed "You can always find your partner"

Vata&039;s tendril-awareness stirred to the linkage with genetic , she and Duque This she showed him many times Her memories, shared with Duque, showed a spectacular world of the vertical that Islanders could barely iine and holes did not do justice Only, she did not think of herself as one of the climbers, or even think of herself at all There was only the line, and the cli

First, we had to develop a landless life-style; second, we preserved what technology and harde could salvage Lewis left us with a teaacy We do not dare plunge our few precious children into a Stone Age

- Hali Ekel, the Journals

Ward Keel looked down fro petitioners in front of hie Merman with the tattoo of a criminal on his broine-red "E" for "Expatriate" This Merman could never return to the rich land under the sea and he knew the Islanders accepted hienes had not stabilized this timent would be He patted a damp cloth nervously over his exposed skin

The woman petitioner, his ht indentations where she should have had eyes She wore a long blue sari and when she walked Keel did not hear steps, only a rasping scrape She swayed from side to side and hummed to herself

Why does this one have to be the first case of theof all s!

"Our child deserves to live!" the Merman said His voice boomed in the chambers The Committee on Vital Forms often heard such loud protestation but this time Keel felt that the voluht for them both

As Chief Justice of the Committee it was too often Keel&039;s lot to perform that unsavory stroke of the pen, to speak directly the unutterable fears of the petitioners themselves Many tihter of life But today, in this case, there would be no laughter Keel sighed The Mer, made this matter politically sensitive Mermen were jealous of the births that they called "nor Merreat care," Keel said He glanced left and right at his fellow Committee reat curve of bubbly ceiling, on the soft living deck, on the records stacked in front of them - everywhere but on the petitioners The dirty as being left to Ward Keel

If they only knew, Keel thought A higher Coment on them, eventually He felt a deep compassion for the petitioners in front of himent

"The Committee has deterht -"is astrula "

"We want this child!" The man fisted the rail that separated hiuardians at the rear of the chambers came to attention The woman continued to hum and sway, not in time with the h a stack of plaz records and pulled out a sheet thick with figures and graphs

"The subject has been found to have a nuclear construction that harbors a reagent gene," he reported "This construction insures that the cellularits own cell walls "

"Then let us have our child until that death," the man blurted He swiped at his face with the daive us that much"

"Sir," Keel said, "for the love of humanity I cannot We have determined that this construction is communicable should there be any major viral invasion of the subject "

"Our child! Not a subject! Our child!"

"Enough!" Keel snapped Security moved silently into the aisle behind the Mer in the chamber ceased "We are sworn to protect human life, to perpetuate life forms that are not lethal deviants"

The Merman father stared upward, awed at the invocation of these terrible powers Even his , but a faint hum still issued fro, right here in front of you I a" But he bit back the iive in to hysteria he&039;d do it in his own quarters

Instead, he said, "We are empowered to carry out enetic mess we inherited fro in his hands and voice "We are in no way refreshed by a negative decision Take your wo again, cutting the man short

Keel raised his voice: "Usher! See these people out They will be given the usual priorities Ter all raph B Recess"

Keel arose and swept past the other Colance at the rest of the chales of the heartsick Meruished mind

As soon as he was alone in his office, Keel unstoppered a small flask of boo and poured hiht his breath as the warm clear liquid eased into his bloodstream He sat in the special chair at his desk then, eyes closed, and rested his long, thin neck against the ht of his massive head

He could notwithout recalling the moment when he, as an infant, had come before the Committee on Vital Forms People said it was not possible for him to remember that scene, but he did remember it - not in bits and sketches, but in its entirety His loo at his ment of the Committee They had been worried about the size of his head and the length of his thin neck Would prosthetics coe in hih he could not speak until growth caught up hat had been born in him, he knew those words

"This infant is unique," that old Chief Justice had said, reading from the medical report "His intestinesbile and enzyiant behind that enoraze had fixed on the naked infant in its s, thick and stubby Feet defor, waist pinched in Face rather small in that " the Justice cleared his throat, "enormous head" The Justice had looked at Keel&039;sthe extremely wide pelvis Obvious anatomical questions had lain unspoken in the man&039;s mind

"In spite of these difficulties, this subject is not a lethal deviant" The words issuing from the Justice&039;s mouth had all been in the medical report Keel, when he came to the Co it with a detached curiosity

"Face rather small " These were the very words in the report, just as he remembered them "Eyes, one brown and one blue" Keel smiled at the memory His eyes -"one brown and one blue" - could peek around fro hi his head His lashes were long and drooping When he relaxed, they fuzzed his view of the world Time had put smile wrinkles at the corners of his wide, thick-lipped rown until it stopped just short of his mouth The whole face, he knew froether, top to bottoht But those corner-placed eyes, they were the dominant feature - alert and wise

They lethe, too, sought in the subjects brought before hiet them out of this mess Brawn and dexterity, too, but these were useless without the intelligence to guide them

Keel closed his eyes and sank his neck even deeper into the cushioned supports The boo was having its desired effect He never drank the stuff without thinking how strange it was that this should come from the deadly nerve runners that had terrified his ancestors in the pioneer days of Pandora when real land protruded above the sea

"Worm hordes," the first observers had called them The worm hordes attacked war their way to the succulent brain where they encysted their clutches of eggs Even dashers feared theh, and nerve runners retreated to a subsea vector whose fermentation by-product was boo - sedative, narcotic, "happy juice"

He fondled the slass and took another sip

The door behind hiar what a singular mark of trust that was, even for an Islander

Or on Invitation, he thought

The beginnings of a wry s of the boo in his tongue and fingertips Now in his toes