And the Lord said, "Behold, the people is one, and they have all one languag.... and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do. Let us go down and confound their language that they may not understand one another's speech."

- Christian Book of the Dead, Shiprecords

FROM THE instant the first tentacles brushed her face to the moment she boarded the shuttle for Ship, Waela lived in a blur of past-present-future which she could not control. Kerro was gone and Thomas was not available, this much she knew. And contact with the hylighters had left her with a voice in her mind. It flared there in flashes of total demand. She wavered between accepting the voice and believing herself insane.

The voice of Honesty would not answer, but this new voice intruded without warning. When it came, she felt herself filled with the same conceptual ecstasy she had felt in the gondola.

It is the Avata way of learning.

The voice kept repeating this. When she questioned, answers came, but in a jargon which confused her.

Like electricity, humanwaela, knowledge flows between poles. It activates and charges all that it touches. It changes that which moves it and moves within it. You are such a pole.

She knew what the words meant, but they went together in a confusing way.

And all the while, she remained vaguely aware of the processing procedure when the rescue gondola deposited them at Colony. Thomas was taken away somewhere and she was rushed into a medical unit for debriefing. The session was run by Lewis - astonishing!

It was right there that the first demanding flash hit her.

Waela. I have found the Avata.

She knew there was no sound, but the voice filled her sense of hearing. It was Kerro Panille, no denying it. Not his voice, but his identity recognized in an internal way which could not be disguised. She knew it as she knew herself. But she didn't even know that Kerro was alive!

I'm alive.

Then he had found some way of reaching ou.... or of reaching in.

Either that or I'm insane, she thought.

She did not feel insane as she stood in the Medical section's glaring tile-white cubicle looking across a metal table at Lewis. Hands supported her. It was nightside; she knew this. Rega had been setting and they had brought her directly in here. Lewis was speaking to her and she kept shaking her head, unable to answer him because of that voice in her mind. An older med-tech said something to Lewis. She heard three words. "...too soon fo...."

Then the whirl of that intruding voice returned. She was uncertain whether she recognized words - or whether it really could be called a voice - but she knew what was being said. It was a non-language, and she knew this when she found that she could not distinguish between "I" and "We" in Kerro's communication. A language barrier was down.

In that instant of recognition, she knew Avata as Kerro Panille knew Avata. She wondered how she learned this lesson, this ancient bit of human history.

How did I learn, Kerro Panille?

What is done to one is felt by all, humanwaela.

"Why am I humanwaela?" She asked it aloud and saw an odd expression come over the face of Lewis as he turned from talking to the med-tech. This did not bother her. She felt her mind drifting lazily in Pandoran wind. There were mutterings and headshakings among people around her - med-techs, several of the.... an entire team. She filtered them out. Nothing was more important than the voice in her mind.

You are humanwaela because you are at once human and at once Waela. There may be such a time as this is not so. Then you will be human.

"When will that be?"

The cold node of a pribox drilled the back of her left hand, tingled up her arm and sent her down a whirlwind of dis-timed memories which were not her own.

When you know all that otherhumans know, and otherhumans know all of you, then you are human.

She concentrated on that magnificent universe of the interior which this concept opened before her. Avata. She had no sensation of time while she floated in the arms of Avata, or whether Avata was really with her. If it was just a dream, she wanted it never to end.

Only you can end it, humanwaela. See?

Memories poured into her - from that first sensory awareness of the first Avata to the coming of Shipmen to Pandora and then to her rescue from the gondola - everything poured into her through a timeless flash, a non-linear stream of sensations.

This is not hallucination!

She saw humans, Shipman/humans of many suns, and uncounted histories which died with them. It baffled her how she understood this. Ho.... ?

She heard the voice in her mind: This we trade with those we touch. Lives of all humans alive in each of you. But you and humankerro are the first to recognize the trade. Others resist and fear. Fear erases. Humanthomas resists, but out of humanfear, not out of humanthomas fear. There is something he will not trade.

Waela found herself eavesdropping through another's eyes. She was looking in a mirror and the face that looked back was Raja Thomas. A shaking hand explored the face, a wan face, tired. She heard a voice which she knew to be Ship's.

Raj.

Then there were no more mind pictures. He blanked her out. Rejected.

She found herself alone on a gurney in a Redoubt passage.

So Thomas is on speaking terms with Ship.

"Why?" The question was a dry crackle in her throat and a nearby med-tech bent over her. "You'll be shipside soon, dear. Don't worry." The gurney's straps hurt her breasts.

This is Pandora, humanwaela. All evil has been released here.

There was that voice again. Not Kerro. Avata?

The word tingled on her tongue as med-techs began to roll her gurney onto a shuttle. There was another face above her then - dream or reality? Small, a face like Lewis, but not Lewis. The voices all around were babble. She was being wheeled, pushed and probed, but her attention remained with the voice in her mind and the link she had seen to that intricate chain of humanity.

"She's pregnant. That means shipside, the Natali. Orders."

"How long's she been pregnant?"

"Looks like more'n a month."

That can't be! she thought. I've just arrived here and Kerro an.... .

She felt a doubled awareness of time then - one told her she had arrived at the Redoubt late in the same diurn that had seen their sub enter the lagoon. The other time-sense lived in her abdomen, and the clock there had gone ma.... spinning, spinning, spinning. It raced completely out of pace with the clock in her head.

"She'll be the Natali's problem pretty soon," someone said. Those were words in her ears. Time out of sync was more important. From the time Kerro had slipped into her....

The time was out of phase. She knew only that she must be delivered shipside to the Natali. That was the way of WorShip.

How can that be, Avata?

She felt that she was meant to be pregnant and the act of conception was an Avata formality.

As the hatchway opened to the shuttle the lean-faced man took hold of the gurney and she saw that it was one of Murdoch's people, a long-fingered clone who spoke in a falsetto. A shock of fear jolted her body.

Am I going shipside?"

She couldn't bring herself to ask the other half of the question, Or to Lab One!

Yes," he said, as she thumped across the threshold of the shuttle.

What do we do now?" she asked aloud. And the voice from her mind said, Save the world.

Then the hatchdogs were secured and she slept.

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