The Pandora Sequence: The Jesus Incident, the Lazarus Effect, the Ascension Factor Read Online Free PDF Page A

ancestral experiences to yours, but they were picked up at different points in their social development.”
    Flattery sensed confusion in this answer and made a decision not to probe it . . . not yet. He wanted to try another tack.
    “What do You mean they were picked up? ;
    “They thought of it as rescue. In each instance; their sun was about to nova.”
    “More of Your doing?”
    “They have been prepared most carefully for your arrival, Raj.”
    “How have they been prepared?”
    “They have a Chaplain/Psychiatrist who teaches hate. They have Sy Murdoch who has learned the lesson well. They have a woman named Hamill whose extraordinary strength goes deeper than anyone suspects. They have an old man named Ferry who believes everything can be bought. They have Waela and she is worthy of careful attention. They have a young poet named Kerro Panille, and they have Hali Ekel, who thinks she wants the poet. They have people who have been cloned and engineered for strange occupations. They have hungers, fears, joys . . .”
    “You call that preparation?”
    “Yes, and I call it involvement.”
    “Which is what You want from me!”
    “Involvement, yes.”
    “Give me one compelling reason I should go down there.”
    “I do not compel such things.”
    Not a responsive answer, but Flattery knew he would have to accept it.
    “So I’m to arrive. Where and how?”
    “There is a planet beneath us. Most Shipmen are on that planet—Colonists.”
    “And they must decide how they are supposed to WorShip?”
    “You are still perceptive, Raj.”
    “What’d they say when You put the question to them?”
    “I have not put this question to them. That, I hope, will be your task.”
    Flattery shuddered. He knew that game. It was in him to shout a refusal, to rage and invite Ship’s worst reprisal. But something in this dialogue held his tongue.
    “What happens if they fail?”
    “I break the . . . recording.”

Chapter 6

    Dig your stubborn heels
    Firm into dirt.
    And where is the dirt going?
    —Kerro Panille, The Collected Poems

    KERRO PANILLE finished the last briefing on Pandoran geology and switched off his holo. It was well past the hour of midmeal, but he felt no hunger. Ship’s air tasted stale in the tiny teaching cubby and this surprised him until he realized he had sealed off the secret hatch into this place, leaving only the floor vent. I’ve been sitting on the floor vent.
    This amused him. He stood and stretched, recalling the lessons of the holo. Dreams of real dirt, real seas, real air had played so long in his imagination that he feared now the real thing might disappoint him. He knew himself to be no novice at image-building in his mind . . . and no novice to the disappointments of reality.
    At such times he felt much older than his twenty annos. And he looked for reassurance in a shiny surface to reflect his own features. He found a small area of the hatch plate polished by the many passages of his own hand when entering this place.
    Yes—his dark skin retained the smoothness of youth and the darker beard curled with its usual vigor around his mouth. He had to admit it was a generous mouth. And the nose was a pirate’s nose. Not many Shipmen even knew there had ever been such people as pirates.
    His eyes appeared much older than twenty, though. No escaping that.
    Ship did that to me. No . . . He shook his head. Honesty could not be evaded. The special thing Ship and I have between us—that made my eyes look old.
    There were realities within realities. This thing that made him a poet kept him digging beneath every surface like a child pawing through pages of glyphs. Even when reality disappointed, he had to seek it.
    The power of disappointment.
    He recognized that power as distinct from frustration. It contained the power to regroup, rethink, react. It forced him to listen to himself as he listened to others.
    Kerro knew what most people shipside thought about him.
    They were convinced he could hear