“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 the Pandoran wind. There were mutterings and head-shakings among people around her—med-techs, several of them . . . 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. How . . .

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?