The word tingled on her tongue as med-techs began to roll her gurney onto a shuttle. There was another face above her then—dream or reality? Small, a face like Lewis, but not Lewis. The voices all around were babble. She was being wheeled, pushed and probed, but her attention remained with the voice in her mind and the link she had seen to that intricate chain of humanity.

“She’s pregnant. That means shipside, the Natali. Orders.”

“How long’s she been pregnant?”

“Looks like more’n a month.”

That can’t be! she thought. I’ve just arrived here and Kerro and I. . .

She felt a doubled awareness of time then—one told her she had arrived at the Redoubt late in the same diurn that had seen their sub enter the lagoon. The other time-sense lived in her abdomen, and the clock there had gone mad . . . spinning, spinning, spinning. It raced completely out of pace with the clock in her head.

“She’ll be the Natali’s problem pretty soon,” someone said. Those were words in her ears. Time out of sync was more important. From the time Kerro had slipped into her. . . .

The time was out of phase. She knew only that she must be delivered shipside to the Natali. That was the way of WorShip.

How can that be, Avata?

She felt that she was meant to be pregnant and the act of conception was an Avata formality.

As the hatchway opened to the shuttle the lean-faced man took hold of the gurney and she saw that it was one of Murdoch’s people, a long-fingered clone who spoke in a falsetto. A shock of fear jolted her body.

“Am I going shipside?”

She couldn’t bring herself to ask the other half of the question, Or to Lab One?

“Yes,” he said, as she thumped across the threshold of the shuttle.

“What do we do now?” she asked aloud. And the voice from her mind said, Save the world.

Then the hatchdogs were secured and she slept.

Chapter 52

Chapter 52

CONSCIOUS: from Latin com, with scire (to know).

CONSCIENCE: from Latin com (intensive), with scire.

Conscious—to know; conscience—to know well (or, in the vernacular, to know better).

—Shiprecords

“SHIPSIDE!” OAKES screamed into the vocoder on his console, “Who ordered the TaoLini woman shipside?”

The med-tech facing him on the screen looked terrified and small. His little mouth worked itself into a stumble of words.

“You did, sir. I mean . . . orders. She’s pregnant, sir, and you signed the WorShip order sending all . . .”

“Don’t tell me what I signed!”

“No, sir. Are you ordering her back, sir?”

Oakes pressed a hand against his forehead.

Too late, now. The Natali have her. Reprocessing her groundside would mean an executive order and that would mean attention. The Redoubt was problem enough. Better to let the matter rest until something could be arranged . . . Damn! Why couldn’t we have moved the Natali down here . . .