The Jesus Incident

Chapter Ten

A good bureaucracy is the best tool of oppression ever invented.
- Jesus Lewis, The Oakes Diaries
WHEN REGA had set behind the western hills, Waela TaoLini turned atop her craggy vantage to watch the red-orange ball of Alki cross the southern horizon in its first passage of the diurn. She had only been forced to kill three demons in the past hour and there seemed little more to do on this watch except mark the distant line of powdery red to the south where they had burned out a Nerve Runner boil just two diurns past. But it looked as though they had sterilized the area, although she could still detect an occasional whiff of burned acid from that direction. But Swift Grazers were already into the red, gorging on the dead Runners. The bulbous little multipeds would not venture anywhere near a live boil of Runners.
As usual, she stood tall and alert on watch. She did not feel unusually exposed on the crag. There was a 'scape hatch and slide tunnel one step away on her left. A sensor atop the tunnel's marker pole kept constant watch on her. She carried a gushburner and lasgun, but even more important, she knew her own reflexes. Conditioned by the harsh requirements of Pandora, she could match anything except a massed attack by the planet's predators.
And the Nerve Runner invasion had been turned back.
Waela crouched then and stared down across the southern plain to the rim of hills. Without conscious volition, her gaze darted left, right; she stood and turned, repeated this procedure. It was all random, constant movement.
"Try to look everywhere at once." That was the watchword.
Her yellow flaresuit was damp with perspiration. She was tall and slim and she knew this gave her an advantage here. On patrol, she walked tall. Other times, she pulled in her shoulders and tried to appear shorter. Men did not like taller women, a continually bothersome fact which amplified her constant concern over her unavoidable peculiarity; her skin changed color through a broad spectrum from blue to orange in response to her moods, a system not under conscious control. Right now, her exposed skin betrayed the pale pink of repressed fear. Her hair was black and cropped at the neck. Her eyes were brown and shaded in epicanthic folds, but she felt that she had a slender and attractive nose which complemented her broad chin and full lips.
"Waela, you're some kind of chameleon throwback," one of her friends had said. But he was dead now, drowned under the kelp.
She sighed.
"Rrrrrssss!"
She turned to the sound and, by reflex, gunned out two Flatwings, thin and multilegged ground racers about ten centimeters long, Poisonous things!
Alki was four diameters above the southern horizon now, sending long shadows northward and painting a red-purple glow across the distant sea to the west.
Waela liked this particular watch station for its view of the sea. It was the highest vantage connected to Colony. They called it simply "Peak."
A line of hylighters drifted through the sky along the distant shoreline. Judging by their apparent size from this distance, they were giants. As with others among the Shipmen/Colonists, she had studied the native life carefully, making the usual comparisons against Shiprecords. The hylighters were, indeed, like giant airborne Portuguese men-of-war, great orange creatures born in the sea. Steadied by its long black tendrils, a hylighter could adjust the great membrane atop its buoyant bag and tack into the wind. They moved with a strange precision, usually in groups of twenty or more, and Waela found herself on the side of those who argued for some intelligence in these gentle creatures.
Hylighters were a nuisance, yes. They were buoyed by hydrogen and that, coupled with Pandora's frequent electrical storms, made the creatures into lethal firebombs. In common with the 'lectrokelp, they were useless as food. Even to touch them produced weird mental effects - hysteria and even, sometimes, convulsions. Standing orders were to explode them at a distance when they approached Colony.
Almost without thinking about it, she noted a Spinneret creeping up the Peak on her left. It was a big one. She guessed it would equal the five kilos of the largest ever taken. Because the high-density, molelike creature was Pandora's only slow mover, she took her time responding. Every opportunity to study Pandora's predators had to be used. It was as gray-black as the rocks and she guessed its length at about thirty centimeters, not counting the spinner tail. The first Colonists to encounter Spinnerets had been trapped in the sticky fog the things released through that tail appendage.
Waela chewed her lower lip, watching the Spinneret's purposeful approach. It had seen her; no doubt of that. The sticky mesh of (he Spinneret's fog produced a peculiar paralysis. It rendered everything it touched immobile, but alive and alert. The nearsighted Spinneret, having trapped a victim, could suck the captive dry at a slow and agonizing pace.
"Close enough," she whispered as the thing paused fewer than five meters below her and started turning to bring its lethal spinner into play. A quick red wash of the gushburner incinerated the Spinneret. She watched the remains tumble off the Peak.
Alki was now eight diameters above the horizon and she knew her watch was almost over. She had been ordered to assess possible dangerous activity among the free-roaming predators. They all knew the reason for watching outside Colony's barriers. The visible human in a yellow flaresuit would attract predators. "We're bait out there," one of her friends had said. Waela resented the assignment, but in a place of common perils she knew she had to share every danger. That was Colony's social glue. Even though she would get extra food chits for this, she could not help resenting it.
There were other dangers more important to her, and she saw this assignment as a symptom of perilous change in Colony priorities. Her place was out studying the kelp. As the sole survivor of the original study teams, she was the perfect choice for assembling a new team.
Are they phasing out our research?
There were rumors all through Colony. The materials and energy could not be spared for construction of strong-enough submersibles. The LTAs could not be spared. Lighter-Than-Air was still the most reliable groundside transport for the mining and drilling outposts, and, because they had been built to simulate hylighters, they attracted minimal attention from predators. Hylighters appeared to be immune to the predators.
She could see the rationale of the arguments. Kelp interfered with the aquaculture project and food was short. The argument for extermination, though, she saw as one of dangerous ignorance.
We need more information.
Almost casually, she gunned out a Hooded Dasher, noting that it was the first one seen anywhere near the Peak in twenty diurns.
The kelp must be studied. We must learn.
What did they know about the kelp after all the lives spent and all the frustrating dives?
Fireflies in the night of the sea, someone called them.
The kelp extruded nodules from its giant stems and those nodules glowed with a million firecolors. She agreed with all the others who had seen it and lived to report: the pulsing and glowing nodules were a hypnotic symphony, and the lights might, just might, be a form of communication. There did seem to be purpose in the glowing play of light, discernible patterns.
The kelp covered the planet's seas except for the random patch of open water called "lagoons." In a planet with only two major land masses, this represented a gigantic spread of life.
Once again, she returned to that unavoidable argument: what did they really know about the kelp?
It's conscious, it thinks.
She was certain of it. The challenge of this problem engaged her imagination with a totality she had never dreamed possible. It had caught others as well. It was polarizing Colony. And the extermination arguments could not be thrown out.
Can you eat the kelp?
You could not eat it. The stuff was disorienting, probably hallucinogenic. The source of this effect had thus far defied Colony chemists to isolate it.
It had this in common with the hylighters. The illusive substance had been dubbed "fraggo" because "it fragments the psyche."
That alone said to Waela that the kelp should be preserved for study.
Once more, she was forced to kill a Hooded Dasher. The long black shape went tumbling down the Peak, green blood gushing from it.
That's too many of them, she thought.
Warily, she examined her surroundings, probing for movement below her in the rocks. Nothing. She was still scanning the area this way moments later when her relief stepped out of the hatch. She recognized him, Scott Burik, an LTA fitter on the nightside shift. He was a small man with prematurely aged features, but he was as quick as any other Colonist, already scanning the area around them. She told him about the two Dashers as she passed over the 'burner.
"Good rest," he said.
She slipped into the hatch, heard it slam behind her then slid down to debriefing where she turned in her kill count and made her assessment of COA - Current Outside Activity.
The debriefing room was windowless with pale yellow walls and a single comdesk. Ary Arenson, a blond, gray-eyed man who never seemed to change expression, sat behind it. Everyone said he worked for Jesus Lewis, a rumor which predisposed Waela to walk and talk softly with him. Odd things happened to people who displeased Lewis.
She was tired now with a fatigue which watch always produced, a drained feeling, as though she were victim of a psychic Spinneret. The routine questions bored her.
"Yes, the Nerve Runner area appears sterilized."
At the end of it, Arenson handed her a small square of brown Colony paper with a message which restored her energy. She read it at a glance:
"Report to Main Hangar for new kelp research team assignment."
Arenson was glancing at his Comscreen as she read the note and now he changed expression, a wry smile. "Your replacemen...." He pointed upward toward the Peak with his chin. "...just got it. A Dasher chewed his guts out. Stand by a blink. They're sending another replacement."