Page 35 of The Jesus Incident (The Pandora Sequence 1)

If this is a lesson, I want to know what happens to him!

Ahhhh, Ekel, you want so much!

Won’t You tell me?

I will tell you this: Those who remember him travel this world over teaching peace and love. For this they suffer murder and torture and they incite great wars in his name, many bloody events even worse than what you have just seen.

She stopped. There were rude buildings just ahead and she felt that she would be more protected in among them. They were more like . . . corridors, like Ship’s own passages. But she was filled with outrage. What kind of a lesson is this? What good is it?

Ekel, your kind cannot learn peace until you are drenched in violence. You have to disgust yourselves beyond all anger and fear until you learn that neither extortion nor exhortation moves a god. Then you need something to which you can cling. All this takes a long time. It is a difficult lesson.

Why?

Partly because of your doubts.

Is that why You brought me here? To settle my doubts?

There was no response and she felt suddenly bereft, as though Ship had abandoned her. Would Ship do that?

Ship?

What do you hear, Ekel?

She bent her head, listening. Hurried footsteps. She turned. A group of people rushed past her down the hillside. A young man hurried behind this group. He stopped beside Hali.

“You stayed the whole time and did not curse him. Did you love him, too?”

She nodded. The young man’s voice was rich and compelling. He took her hand.

“I am called John. Will you pray with me in this hour of our sadness?”

She nodded and touched her lips pretending that she could not speak.

“Oh, dear woman. If he had but said the word, your affliction would have passed from you. He was a great man. They mocked him as the son of God, but all he claimed was a kinship to Man. ‘The Son of Man,’” he said. That is the difference between gods and men—gods do not murder their children. They do not exterminate themselves.”

She sensed then in this young man’s manner and his voice the power of that event on the hillside. It frightened her, but she realized that this encounter was an important part of what Ship wanted her to experience.

Some things break free of Time, she thought.

You can come back to your own flesh now, Ekel, Ship said.

Wait!

John was praying, his eyes closed, his grip firm on her hand. She felt it was vital to hear his words.

“Lord,” he said, “we are gathered here in your name. One in the foolishness of youth and the other infirm with age, we ask that you remember us as we remember you. As long as there are eyes to read and ears to hear, you will not be forgotten. . . .”

She listened to the earnestness of the prayer as it unraveled from his mind. The firm touch of his hand pleased her. There were faint veins on his eyelids which trembled as he spoke. She did not even mind the universal stink which came from him as it came from all of those she had encountered here. He was dark, like Kerro, but he had wild, wiry hair that framed his smooth face and accented his intensity.

I could love this man!

Careful, Ekel

Ship’s warning amused her as much as her own thought had surprised her. But one look at the old, liver-spotted hand that John held reminded her she walked in another time. This was an old woman’s body which enclosed her awareness.

“. . . we ask this in Yaisuah’s name,” John concluded. He released her hand, patted her shoulder. “It would not be good for you to be seen with us.”

She nodded,

“Soon we will meet again,” he said, “at this house or that, and we will talk more of the Master and the home to which he has returned.”

She thanked him with her eyes and watched him until he turned a comer and was gone among the houses below her.

I want to go home, Ship.

There came a moment of blankness and, once more, the tunnel passage, then the lab’s dazzling lights pained her eyes after the Earthside dusk.

But those other eyes weren’t the same as these eyes!

She sat up, feeling the vital agility of this familiar flesh. It reassured her that Ship had kept the promise to return her to her own body.

Ship?

Ask, Ekel.

You said I would learn about interfering with Time. Did I interfere?

I interfered, Ekel. Do you understand the consequences?

She thought about John’s voice in prayer, the power in him—the terrible power which Yaisuah’s death had released. It was unleashed power, capable of joy or agony. The sense of that power terrified her. Ship interfered and this power resulted. What good was such power?

What is your choice, Ekel?

Joy or agony—the choice is mine?

What choice, Ekel?

How do I choose?

By choosing, by learning.

I do not want that power!

But now you have it.

Why?

Because you asked.

I didn’t know.

That is often the case when you ask.

I want joy but I don’t know how to choose!

You will learn.

She swung her feet off the yellow couch, crossed to the screen and keyboard where this terrifying experience had begun. Her mind felt ancient suddenly, an old mind in a young body.

I did ask; I started it . . . back in that ancient time when all I wanted was Kerro Panille.

She sat down at the keyboard and stared into the screen. Her fingers strayed over the keys. They felt familiar, yet strange. Kerro’s fingers had touched these keys. She saw this instrument suddenly as a container which held raw experiences at a distance. You did not have to go in person. This machine made terrible things acceptable. She took a deep breath and punched the keys: ANCIENT HISTORY RECORDS—YAISUAH/JESUS.

But Ship was not through intruding.

If there is any of it you wish to s

ee in person, Ekel, you have but to ask.

The very thought sent shudders through her body.

This is my body and I’m staying in it.

That, Ekel, is a choice which you may have to share.

Chapter 30

My imagination was too much exalted by my first success to permit me to doubt of my ability to give life to an animal as complex and wonderful as man.

—Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Shiprecords

“I LIKE to call this the Flower Room,” Murdoch said, leading Rachel Demarest across the open area to the lock. It was bright there, and she did not like the way the younger clones pulled back from Murdoch. A clone herself, she had heard the stories about this place and wanted to hold back, to delay what was happening. But it was her only chance at the Oakes/Lewis political circle. Murdoch kept a strong grip on her arm just above the elbow and she knew the pain he could cause if she hesitated.

Murdoch stopped at the lock and glanced at his charge.

This one won’t carry any more petitions, he thought.

The slightly blue cast to her skin, her nervous, gangly limbs made her appear cold.

“Perhaps you and I could work something out,” she said, and pressed her hip against him.

Murdoch was tempted . . . but that blue skin!

“I’m sorry, but this is standard for everyone who works here. There are things we need to know—and things that you need to know, too.”

He really was sorry, remembering dimly some of the things which had happened to him during his own Scream Room initiation. There were things which he did not remember, too—a disturbing fact in itself. But orders were orders.

“Is this the place you call the Scream Room?” Her voice was barely a whisper as she stared at the hatch into the lock.

“It’s the Flower Room,” he said. “All of these beautiful young clones . . .” He waved vaguely at the room behind her. “All of them come from here.”

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