WAELA SAT watching a holo of Panille as a child. Except for the projected action at the holofocus, it was quiet in the small teaching study where Hali Ekel had put her. The chair, a simple sling in a metal frame, presented the holocontrols on its arm beneath her right hand. Soft blue light suffused the room, down-toned to increase resolution at the holofocus. Each time the holosound subsided, a low susurration of venting air could be heard.

At frequent intervals, Waela turned her head slightly to the left and drank from a tube leading into a shiptit. Her left hand rested lightly on her abdomen and she was certain that the hand felt the growth of the fetus. There was no concealing the rapidity of that growth, but she tried not to think about it. Every time she was forced to confront the mystery of what was happening within her, she felt a hiccup of terror—a sensation which subsided in a blink as something dampened it.

A sense of isolation permeated the study—an accent on her awareness that she was being kept out of contact with ordinary shipside life. The Natali were doing this deliberately.

The pangs of terrible hunger controlled the movement of her mouth to the shiptit. She drank greedily and with feelings of guilt. Hali Ekel had not explained why there was a shiptit here, nor why Ship fed her from it when others were denied. Feelings of rebellion welled up in Waela from time to time, but these, too, were dampened by some automatic response. She continued to sit and stare at the holo of the young Panille.

At the moment, the holo showed him sleeping in his cubby. The register gave his age as only twelve standard annos at the time, and there was no mention of who had authorized this holo.

A Ship ‘coder rattled in the sleeping child’s cubby then, waking Panille. He sat up, stretched and yawned, then increased the cubby’s light level with one hand while rubbing his eyes with the other.

Ship’s voice filled the cubby with its awful clarity: “Last nightside, you claimed kinship with God. Why do you sleep? Gods need not sleep.”

Panille shrugged and stared at the ‘coder from which Ship’s voice issued. “Ship, have You ever stretched out as long as You can reach and yawned?”

Waela held her breath at the audacity of the child. This question suggested blasphemy and there was no reply.

Panille waited. Waela thought him patient for one so young.

“Well?” he asked, finally, smug in his adolescent logic.

“I’m sorry, young Kerro. I nodded my head but apparently you did not see it.”

“How could you nod? You don’t have a head to put on a pillow.”

Waela gasped. The child was challenging Ship because of Ship’s question about kinship with God. She waited for Ship’s response and marveled at it.