Hali nodded and gathered her things. Her own pribox and recorder were beyond habit, a part of her physical self. She briefed Latina on the routine as she gathered her equipment, noting the log of synchronous beats, then ducked out through the curtain. The agrarium was a scene of intense dayside activity, a harvest in process. Hali wove her way through the dance of workers and found a servo going coreside. At Old Hull she took the slide to Central and dropped off at the Study passage which led to Worship Nine.

The red numeral winked at her as she found the hatch and slipped into the controlled blue gloom. She could not see Ferry anywhere, but there were perhaps thirty children in the five-to-seven age range sitting cross-legged around a holofocus at the center of the WorShip area. The focus showed a projection of a man in shipcloth white who was lying on bare ground and covering his eyes with both hands in great pain or fear.

“What is the lesson, children?”

The question was asked in the flat and emotionless tone of Ship’s ordinary instruction programs.

One of the boys pointed to another boy beside him and said: “He wants to know where the man’s name came from.”

The projected figure stood, appearing dazed, and a hand reached from outside the focus to steady him. The hand became another man in a long beige robe as the focus widened. Beside this other man, skittish and wild-eyed, danced a large white horse.

The children gasped as the horse stepped into, then out, then back into the holo. They clapped when the robed man got it under control.

Hali moved across to a WorShip couch overlooking this performance and sank into the cushions. She glanced around once more for Ferry. No sign of him. Typical. Tell her to hurry, then he was not here.

Neither of the projected figures was speaking, but now a voice in a strange tongue boomed from the holofocus. How familiar that tongue sounded! Hali felt that she could almost understand it—as though she had learned it in a dream. She tapped the translate switch on the arm of the couch beside her and the voice boomed once more: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

That voice! Where had she heard that voice?

The white-clad figure, still with hands over his eyes and concealing most of his face, rolled over and climbed to his feet with his back to Hali. She saw that he was not wearing a shipsuit after all, but a white robe which had clung to his long legs. The man stumbled back two steps now and fell once more. As he fell, he cried: “Who are you?”

The booming voice said: “I am Yaisuah, whom you persecute. It is hard for you to kick against the thorns.”

Hali sat in breathless quiet: Yaisuah! Yaisuah . . . Hesoos . . . Geezuz.