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If you know this of the alien intelligence and still find it alien, you do not knohat it is to be human

- Kerro Panille, Translations from the Avata

You are called Project Consciousness, but your true goal is to explore beyond the imprinted pattern of all humankind Inevitably, you must ask: Is consciousness only a special kind of hallucination? Do you raise consciousness or lower its threshold? The danger in the latter course is that you bring up the ue: you are confined to action

- Original Charge to the Voidship Chaplain/Psychiatrist

ON THESE nightside walks through the ship, Oakes liked toalong He had worked long and hard to reroundside Fe his face and most of his official duties were carried out by minions There was the routine WorShip in the corridor chapels, the food allotroundside, a minimal endorsement of the many functions that the ship carried out with no human intervention Ceepee rule was supposed to be noston had once said: "We have too daet into trouble"

Meht as he took his nocturnal prowl Through the outer passages, sensor eyes and ears dotted corridor walls and ceilings They strung the vectors of attention, di

Still no word froata’s preliminary report left tooout on his own? Iuts for such a move He was the eternal behind-the-scenes operator, not a front ency, then?

Oakes felt that tooto a head around hi this poet, this Kerro Panille, groundside And the new Ceepee the ship had brought out of hyb! Both poet and Ceepee would have to be bundled into the sae and watched carefully And it would soon be tiainst the kelp People were getting hungry enough groundside that they were ready for scapegoats

And that disturbing incident with the air in his cubby Had the ship really tried to asphyxiate him? Or poison him?

Oakes turned a corner and found hireen arrows on the walls indicating that it led outward fro into a converging distance

Out of habit he noticed the activation of each sensor as he neared it Each mechanical eye followed his pace faithfully, and, as he approached the limits of its vision, the next one rolled its wary cyclopean pupil around to catch his approach He had to admit that, in Shipuarded watchfulness, but the idea that a possibly ence waited behind that e

He had never known a sensor towith a robox unisingle-minded repair and defense device that respected no life or limb save that of Ship

THE ship, da, preparation - even he could not shake theence, to do so?

He sighed He expected to sway no one What he expected was that he would use the tools at hand With intelligence, he felt that one could turn anything to advantage Even a dangerous tool such as Lewis

Another pair of sensors caught his attention, this ti Bays It was quiet here and pervaded by that odd sht htside which sometimes coincided with Shiptime, but often did not All the industry of dayside was put away for the community of sleep

Except in two places, he reraria

Oakes stopped and studied the line of sensors He, of all Shipmen, should appreciate them He had access to the movements they recorded Every detail of shipside life was supposed to be his And he had seen to it that the groundside colony was similarly equipped Ship’s watchfulness was his own

"The er we are in our choices"

Kingston’s voice ca days

What a raw but marvelously trainable bit of huston had been almost a master of control Al choices When it caston had refused certain choices

I do not refuse