She had no thought of fatigue now. There was food shipside when she needed it. The power of Oakes’ position made that no problem. She sent her message to Oakes groundside, turned to the console.

Somewhere in the records there would be a useful fact or two. Something Oakes had hidden or that he did not even know about himself—perhaps something he had done and did not want revealed. He was good at this concealment game but she knew herself to be better at it.

She began at the main computer—Ship’s major interface with Shipmen.

Would it take fancy programming? A painstaking search through coded relationships which could hide bits of data far in the recesses of offshoot circuitry such as that Ox gate? How about the Ox gate? She hid things there, but had never asked it about Oakes.

She tapped out a test routine, keyed it and waited.

Presently, data began flowing across the small screen on the console. She stared. That simple? It was as though the material were waiting for her to ask. As though someone had prepared a bio for her to discover. Everything she needed was there—facts and figures.

“Suspect everyone,” Oakes had said. “Trust no one.”

And here he was being proved right beyond his wildest fears. The text kept rolling out. She backed it up, keyed for printout, and set it in motion once more.

The heading of the record was the most surprising thing of all.

MORGAN LON OAKES.

Cloned. Raised, as he would put it, “like a common vegetable.” Out of the axolotl tanks and into an Earthside womb.

Why?

There it was even as she asked. “To conceal the fact that it could be done, the birth was made to appear natural.”

It was a feat of politics worthy of Ship . . . or Oakes. Did he know? How could he know? She stopped the printout and asked who else had called up this data.

“Ship.”

It was an answer she had never before seen. Ship had worked with this data. Fearfully, she asked why Ship had called up the bio on Oakes.

“To store it in a special record for Kerro Panille should he ever desire to write a history.”

She pulled her hands away from the keys. Am I talking to Ship?

Panille was one of those who said he talked to Ship. Not one of the fools, then.

Am I a fool?

She found herself more fearful of this discovery than she had been of the Scream Room. Ship dealt in powers far beyond those of Oakes and Lewis and Murdoch. She glanced around the enlarged cubby—pretentious damned place. Her gaze fell on the mandala. He had taken the movable hangings. The mystical design lay exposed against a bare metal bulkhead of silvery gray. It appeared lifeless to her, robbed of some original breath.

I’m not worthy of talking to Ship.