Page 34 (1/2)

HUMANKERRO: "Does the listener protect his own sense of understanding and consciousness?"

AVATA: "Ahhh, you are building barriers"

HUMANKERRO: "That’s what you call the illusion of understanding, is it not?"

AVATA: "If you understand, then you cannot learn By saying you understand, you construct barriers"

HUMANKERRO: "But I can res"

AVATA: "Memory only understands the presence or absence of electrical signals"

HUMANKERRO: "Then what’s the co?"

AVATA: "Now you open the path It is the program which counts in the most literal sense"

HUMANKERRO: "But what are the rules?"

AVATA: "Are there rules underlying every aspect of human life? Is that your question?"

HUMANKERRO: "That appears to be the question"

AVATA: "Then answer it What are the rules for being human?"

HUMANKERRO: "But I asked you!"

AVATA: "But you are human and I am Avata"

HUMANKERRO: "Well, what are the rules for being Avata?"

AVATA: "Ahhhh, Hue but we cannot know it"

HUMANKERRO: "You appear to be saying that such knowledge cannot be reduced to language"

AVATA: "Language cannot occur in a reference vacuum"

HUMANKERRO: "Don’t we knoe’re talking about?"

AVATA: "Using language involves e and the world to which it refers"

HUMANKERRO: "The script of the play"

AVATA: "The script, yes The script of the game and its world must be interrelated How can you substitute a word or some other symbol for every cellular element of your body?"

HUMANKERRO: "I can talk with my body"

AVATA: "For that, you do not need a script"

- Kerro Panille, The Avata, "ThA Game"

The nificant results

- P Weygand, Voidship Med-tech

OAKES WATCHED the sentry on the Colony scanner The ht of Alki cast long purple shadohich twisted as the man flopped and turned The Current Outside Activity circuits reproduced the sounds of the sentry with clear fidelity, terrifyingly iht be just outside this cubby’s hatch instead of on Colony’s north peri indicated

The screa down There ca, shudders, then quiet

Oakes found that the sentry’s first screams still echoed in memory and would not be silenced

Runners! Runners!

There was no escaping Pandora anywhere groundside Colony ree And at the Redoubt - sterilization was their only solution Kill everything

Oakes found that he had pressed his hands to his ears trying to quiet the ht his hands down to the scanner controls, looking at the through the available sensors, scanning for any randoht require his attention An and he had encountered horror

Ies continued to play in his mind

The sentry had clawed at his own eyes, ripping out the nerve tissue which Runners found so succulent But he must have knohat every Colonist knew - there could be no help for him Once Runners contacted nerve tissue they could not be stopped until they encysted their clutch of eggs in his brain

Except that this particular sentry knew about chlorine Had some residual hope clutched at his doomed awareness? Surely not Once the Runners were in his flesh, that was too late even for chlorine

To Oakes, the most horrible part of the incident was that he knew the sentry: Illuyank Part of Murdoch’s Lab One crew And before that, the dooon Redoubt Illuyank had been a survivor - three ti thand one of those who caston’s teaston’s failure

I heard his report

Movement in the scanner riveted Oakes’ attention The sentry’s backup stepped into view (not too close!) with lasgun at the ready The backup was marked as an ultimate coward by Colony rules He had not been able to shoot the doomed Illuyank So the Runners’ victim had died the most miserable death Pandora could offer

Now, the backup aiun and burned Illuyank’s head to char Standard procedure Cook thes, at least, would never hatch

Oakes found the strength to switch off the scanner His body was shaking so hard he could not move himself away from the console

It had just been a routine scan, the kind of thing he did regularly shipside The horror of this place!

What has the ship done to us?

Groundside - nowhere to turn for escape No release froe that he could not survive on this synapse-quick world without

And there was no turning back Leas right Colony required constant attention Delicate decisions about personnelof supplies and equiproundside communications channels Pandora required swift action and reaction Lewis could not divide his attention between Redoubt and Colony

Oakes pressed a thuainst the lump of pellet in his neck Useless now Groundside static interference li and when that inals which cah proved that their secrecy had been breached

The ship had to be the source of those signals The ship! Still interfering The pellets would have to come out at the first opportunity

Oakes lifted a bottle from the floor beside his console His hand still shook frolass of wine and slopped most of it over his console where the sticky red splash re out of the sentry’s empty socket out of his nos his mout

The three tattooed hashmarks over Illuyank’s left eye remained burned in Oakes’the glass with both hands, Oakes drained what little remained in it Even that small s soothed his stomach

At least I won’t throw up

He put the eaze swept around the confines of his cubby It was not big enough He longed for the space he’d enjoyed shipside But there could be no retreat - no return to the slavery of the ship

We’re going to beat You, Ship!

Bravo!

Everything groundside re here The speed of the Colonists! There was nothing like that speed shipside Oakes kneas too heavy, too out of condition to consider keeping up,It festered in him that Illuyank had been one of the people considered for his own guard force Illuyank was supposed to be a survivor

Even survivors die here

He had to get out of this room, had to walk somewhere But when he pushed himself away from the console to stand and turn around, he confronted another wall It came to hireater blow than anticipated He needed the Redoubt for physical and psychological reasons as well as for a secure base of coroundside, but by the time they housed his command console, his holo equipment and the other accoutrements of the Ceepee, he was almost crowded out

There’s no room to breathe in here

He put a hand to the hatchdogs, wanting the release of a walk in the corridors, but when his hand touched cold metal he realized how all of those corridors led to the open, unguarded surface of Pandora The hatch was one es of this place

I’ll eat soata could be suata How useful she remaine except that he did not like what had happened deep in her eyes Was it time to ask Lewis for a replacement? Oakes could not find the will to do this

I made a mistake with her

He could adata to the Screaed

She rerarium workers What had really impressed him out there was the difference between those workers and other Shipht-lipped lot and always busy - sometimes noisy in their work but silent in theata had becorariu seriousness, alrimness found in the Vitro labs or around the axolotl tanks where Lewis produced hiselse

It occurred to Oakes that the agraria were the only parts of the ship where he had felt out of place This thought disturbed hiata makes me feel out of place now

And there was no escaping the choices he had made He would have to live with the consequences Choices resulted from inforave me that bad information? Lewis?

What control syste inevitably to certain choices?

Such a simple question

He turned it over in hisvital Perhaps it was the key to the ship’s true nature A key somewhere in the flow of information

Information-to-choice-to-action

Simple, always simple The true scientist was required to suspect complexity

Occam’s razor really cuts

What choices did the ship make and on the basis of what inforroundside, for instance? The move could not yet be made, but the possibility of open opposition excited hied for such opposition

Show your hand, you mechanical monster!

The ship can act without hands