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Her gaze fell on her reflection in the roan She liked her body - the suppleness, the firmness To men, it appeared intensely fee breasts But even her breasts were firram which few besides herself and Oakes knew she enjoyed Now, though, she saw red s of softness down her thighs where there were le with the hammock

She held up her left hand and stared at it The fingers ached In that slender arth of five men She had discovered this early and, afraid it would mean a life of body-work instead of ift But she could not hide from what the mirror showed - the shambles she had made of her hammock and the marks on her flesh

What to do?

She refused to go back to the wine Sas beginning to cool on her skin Her thick hair was stuck to her face and neck - daer felt perspiration trickle down the sreen eyes stared back at her fro sensors

Darih the memory barrier! What happened to me?

Scream Room

She spoke it aloud: "Screaers kneaded her neck, her back

Abruptly, ih her lis There was a rainbow of sad clones ans slick, wavin

I took none of theth had stunned the clones

Blood! She saw blood on her arms

But I did not join them! None of it! She knew it And because she knew it, there was a new strength in her An objectifying freedolared from her eyes when she stared once more into the mirror

The holorecord!

Oakes had offered to play it for her, a else ther a fearful watching She had refused

"No-o-o Perhaps some other time"

And her stomach was a knot of terror

The wine or the holorecord? There was a certainty in her that it had to be one or the other, and she experienced an abrupt wave of sympathy for old Win Ferry

What did they do to that poor old bastard?

There was no doubt about her choice It had to be the holo, not the bottle She had to see herself as she had appeared to Oakes This was the horror required of her before the nightmares could be stopped

Before Oakes and Lewis and Murdoch could be stopped

If they’re stopped, who keeps Colony alive?

Shipmen had tried four times - four leaders, four failures "Failure" was the Shiphter, suicide, ood Search Technician to winkle out

The present Colony had suffered setbacks, true, but nothing even close to total wipeout - no retreat en masse back to the insulated corridors of Ship Pandora had becoroiser And the wisest of all, beyond question, were Oakes and Lewis

Ship only kne many Shipeways of Ship And all survived, to whatever degree of comfort or discoemen and because Lewis kne to carry out orders with brutal efficiency To her knowledge, no other Ceepee team could make such a claim in all the histories of Ship

Ship will care for us

She felt Ship around her now, the faint huhtside

But Ship had never agreed to care for Shipmen

At one time, she had been interested in Ships She had pored through a confusing lot of histories seeking soreement, a covenant, some evidence of even rudiod

Ship who is God

All agreements save one had been made by Ceepees on behalf of Ship Back in the earliest accounts, she had come on one recorded line, a direct demand from Ship: You must decide how you will WorShip Me

That had to be the origin of present WorShip It could be traced to Ship But the deue and, when she had recounted it to Oakes, he had seen it as e the powers of the Ceepees

"We, after all, command the WorShip"

If Ship were Go well, Ship still appeared to be unwilling to interfere directly in theShip did could be attributed to work atitself

Some Shipmen claimed they talked to Ship, and she had studied these people They fell into two obvious categories: fools and non-fools Most of the clai to walls, bowls, ite and such But perhaps one out of every twenty who said they talked to Ship were Ship’s best For thele rare absurdity of their records It fascinated her that, for this sly innocuous - al in from time to time

Unlike Oakes and Lewis, she did not count herself a disbeliever

But God or not, Ship apparently refused to interfere in the private decisions of Shipmen

So what if I decide to destroy Oakes?

Did Ship care for hily right about the things he did What if he were the only reason Colony had survived? Could she watch Colony wither and die, knowing she had done it?

Was the Screaht?

Only the holorecord could decide that for her She had to see it

She levered herself to her feet, found a singlesuit and slipped into it There was a sense of urgency about her motions now compounded of the late hour and the terrors she knew she was holding at bay A glance at her chrono showed only six hours to dayside Six hours to call up those records, review them and cover her tracks And those records spanned most of a diurn - perhaps forty hours All she needed was to see the essence of it, though

What did he do to me?

Without conscious decision, she headed for Oakes’ abandoned shipside cubby, realizing her own choice only when she grasped the hatchdogs Yes, the coood place to search out the record and review it She knew the code which would call up the Screaot it And there was soht about the choice of the place to do it

As she keyed the hatchdogs on the cubby, she reminded herself: Whatever he wanted me to do, I did not do it Some part of her knew that neither the pleasures nor the curiosities of the Scream Room had tempted her - neither ecstasy nor pain But Oakes wanted her to believe in so debasement He required that she believe

He’ll see

She released the hatchdogs and stepped inside