Why do I remember that man?

It seemed as though he spent all of his private hours asking himself questions lately. Questions led to more questions, led ultimately, daily, to the one question that he refused to admit into his consciousness. Until now.

He voiced the question aloud to himself, tested it on his tongue like the long-awaited wine.

“What if the damned ship is God?”

Chapter 5

Human hybernation is to animal hibernation as animal hibernation is to constant wakefulness. In its reduction of life processes, hybernation approaches absolute stasis. It is nearer death than life.

—Dictionary of Science, 101st Edition

RAJA FLATTERY lay quietly in the hybernation cocoon while he fought to overcome his terrors.

Ship has me.

Moody waves confused his memories but he knew several things. He could almost project these things onto the ebon blackness which surrounded him.

I was Chaplain/Psychiatrist on the Voidship Earthling.

We were supposed to produce an artificial consciousness. Very dangerous, that.

And they had produced . . . something. That something was Ship, a being of seemingly infinite powers.

God or Satan?

Flattery did not know. But Ship had created a paradise planet for its cargo of clones and then had introduced a new concept: WorShip. It had demanded that the human clones decide how they would WorShip.

We failed in that, too.

Was it because they were clones, every one of them? They had certainly been expendable. They had known this from the first moments of their childhood awareness on Moonbase.

Again, fear swept through him.

I must be resolute, Flattery told himself. God or Satan, whatever this power may be, I’m helpless before it unless I remain resolute.

“As long as you believe yourself helpless, you remain helpless even though resolute,” Ship said.

“So You read my mind, too.”

“Read? That is hardly the word.”

Ship’s voice came from the darkness all around him. It conveyed a sense of remote concerns which Flattery could not fathom. Every time Ship spoke he felt himself reduced to a mote. He combed his way through a furry sense of subjugation, but every thought amplified this feeling of being caged and inadequate.

What could a mere human do against a power such as Ship?

There were questions in his mind, though, and he knew that Ship sometimes answered questions.

“How long have I been in hyb?”

“That length of time would be meaningless to you.”

“Try me.”

“I am trying you.”

“Tell me how long I’ve been in hyb.”

The words were barely out of his mouth before he felt panic at what he had done. You did not address God that way . . . or Satan.

“Why not, Raj?”

Ship’s voice had taken on an air of camaraderie, but so precise was the modulation his flesh tingled with it.

“Because . . . because . . .”

“Because of what I could do to you?”

“Yes.”

“Ahhhhh, Raj, when will you awaken?”

“I am awake.”

“No matter. You have been in hybernation for a very long time as you reckon time.”