Frank Herbert - The Jesus Incident

"Spinnerets," Lewis hissed.

The entire room became so quiet that the air was brittle with listening.

Legata continued, busy at the console.

Lewis turned to the Naturals guarding the Command Center. "Harcourt, you and Javo take a 'burner and see what you can do to cut through that Spinneret mesh."

The men did not respond.

Legata smiled to herself at the continued quiet in the room. She could feel the tensions building to the precise moment she desired. It had been right to wait.

There was a heavy stirring in the room. She glanced back, saw more clones pressing into the center from the passage. Some of them were the more outre E-types. Most appeared to be wounded. They obviously were looking for someone. A guttural voice called out from amidst the newcomers: "We need medics!"

Lewis faced the two Naturals he had ordered to meet the Spinneret attack. "You refuse to obey my orders?"

Harcourt, his face red, repeated his protest: "Send some clones. That's what they're for."

From somewhere in the center of the room, a thin voice shouted: "We're not going out there!"

"Why should they go?" Legata asked.

"You stay out of this, Legata!" Oakes screamed.

"Just tell them why clones should go," she said.

"You know why!"

"No, I don't."

"Because the first out on any dangerous mission are clones. Harcourt's right. Clones first. That's the way it's always been, and that's the way it'll be."

So he's pitching for the loyalty of the Naturals.

Legata looked at Lewis, met his gaze head on. Was that amusement in his eyes? No matter. She depressed a key on the console controlling the big screen, watched the people in the room. They could not miss what was happening on the screen. She had set the program to fill it.

Ye.... the room was becoming a tableau, all attention shifting to the screen, locking on it.

Puzzled, Oakes turned to look at the screen, saw his own likeness there. Below the image, a biographical printout was rolling. He stared at the heading: "Morgan Lon Oakes. Ref. Original File, Morgan Hempstead, cell dono...."

Oakes found it difficult to breathe. It was a trick! He glanced at Legata and the cold stare he met there iced his backbone.

"Morga...." How sweet her voice sounded. "...I found your records, Morgan. See Ship's imprimatur on the printout? Ship vouches for the truth of this record."

A tic twitched the corner of Oakes' left eyelid. He tried to swallow.

This is not happening! Muttering drifted through the room. "Oakes a clone? Ship's eyes!"

Legata stepped away from the console, moved to within a meter of Oakes. "Your nam.... that's the name of the woman who bore you - for a fee."

Oakes found his voice: "This is a lie! My parent.... our sun went nov....... ."

"Ship says not so." She waved at the screen. "See?"

The data continued to roll: Date of cell implantation, address of pseudo-parents, name....

Lewis came up to stand at Oakes' shoulder. "Why, Legata?" There was no denying the amusement in his voice.

She refused to take her attention from the stricken look on Oakes' face. Why do I want to comfort him?

"The Scream Room was a mistake," she whispered.

Someone off toward the edge of the room shouted: "Clones first! Send the clone out!" It began as a chant, grew to a pounding rage: "Send the clone out!"

Oakes screamed: "No!"

But hands grabbed him and Legata was powerless to prevent it in the crush of people without using her great strength to kill. She found herself unable to do this. Oakes' voice screaming: "No! Please, no!" grew fainter across the room, out into the passage, was lost in the shouting of the mob.

Lewis moved to the console, shut off the data, keyed a high sensor still free of the Spinneret webs. It showed the sudden gush of a 'burner opening a gap through the web where the wall had been breached by a cutter beam from outside. Presently, Oakes stumbled into view outside, running alone across Pandora's deadly plain.

WAELA SAT on the edge of the cot in the obstetrics alcove they had improvised. She could hear Ferry working with the wounded out in the emergency area. He had not even noticed her leave his side. Supply crates screened her area and she sat in the fabric-diffused shadows, taking shallow breaths to slow the contractions.

The prediction of Hali's pribox and her own inner voice had been correct. The baby was going to be born on its own schedule and despite anything else that might be happening.

Waela leaned back on the cot.

I'm not afraid. Why am I not afraid?

She felt that a voice spoke to her from her womb - It will be as it will be.

The quiet was broken by a babble of voices and another rush of footsteps into the medical shelter. How many batches of the wounded did that make? She had lost count.

A particularly hard contraction forced a gasp from her.

It's time. It's really time.

She felt that she had been put on a long slide, unable to get off, unable to change a single thing that would happen. This was inevitable, growing from that moment in the sub's gondola.

How could I have stopped that? There was no way.

"Where's that TaoLini woman? We need her help out here."

It was Ferry's familiar wheeze. Waela thrust herself upright, staggered to her feet and made her way heavily back to the emergency area of the shelter. She paused in the entrance as another contraction gripped her.

"I'm here. What do you want?"

Ferry glanced up from applying celltape to a wounded E-clone.

"Somebody has to go outside and decide which people are most in need of emergency treatment. I don't have time."

She stumbled toward the exit.

"Wait." The bleary old eyes focused on her. "What's wrong with you?"

"It'.... I'...." She clutched the edge of the treatment table, looked down at a wounded E-clone.

"You'd better go back and lie down," Ferry said.

"But you nee...."

"I'll decide what has to be done!"

"But you sai...."

"I changed my mind." He finished with the E-clone on the table, looked down at the bulging eyes which protruded from the corners of the clone's temples. "You. You're well enough to go outside and see that I get the worst cases first."

She shook her head. "He doesn't know anything abou...."

"He knows when somebody's dying. Don't you?" Ferry helped the clone off the table, and Waela saw the burn splash across the man's right shoulder.

"He's wounded," Waela protested. "He can'...."

"We're all wounded," Ferry said. She heard hysteria in his voice. "Everybody's wounded. You go back now and lie down. Let the wounded take care of the wounded."

"What will yo.... ?"

"I'll be back when I've finished with this lot. The...." He leered at her, old yellow teeth. "Maybe a baby. You see? I'm a poet, too. Maybe you'll like me now."

Waela felt the old snake of fear wriggle up her spine.

Another burn victim staggered into the emergency area, a spidery young female with elongated neck and head, gigantic eyes. Ferry helped her onto the emergency table, signaled a clone from secondary treatment to come in and help. A stump-legged figure clumped in, held the wounded woman's shoulders.

Waela turned away, unable to look at the pain in the woman's eyes. How silent she was!

"I'll be in soon," Ferry called as Waela left.

She stopped at the fabric closure to the rear of the shelter. "I can tend to myself. Hali taught me t...."