Oakes chuckled, amused by the thought of WorShip reduced to tending plants in an agrarium. What a grand sight they must be in the eyes of a god! A pack of sniveling beggars. What kind of a god kept its charges in poverty to hear them beg? Oakes could understand a touch of subjugation, but . . . this? This spoke to something else.

Someone had to be boss, and the rest have to be reminded of that occasionally. Otherwise, how can anything be organized to work?

No; he heard the message. It said that the ship’s programs were running out. All of the problems were being dumped on the Ceepee’s shoulders.

Look at those workers!

He knew they did not have the time to make the ordering decisions for their own lives. When? After work? Then the body was tired and the mind was dulled into a personal reverie which precluded insightful judgments for the good of all.

The good of all—that’s my job.

He freed them from the agony of the decisions which they were not well informed enough, not energetic enough, nor even intelligent enough to make. It was the Ceepee who gave them that more pleasant gift of drifting time, the time to seek their own ease and recreations.

Recreation . . . Re-creation.

The association flitted through his mind. Re-creation was where they were made new again, where all they worked for was made real, where they lived. Looking down at the agrarium workers in the holofocus, Oakes felt like the conductor of an intricate musical score. He reminded himself to remember that analogy for the next general meeting.

Conductor of a symphony.

He liked that. It was food for thought. Did the ship have such thoughts? He experienced a sudden feeling of affinity for the ship, his enemy.

What food are we that we deserve reverence and care? What manna? Could the ship . . .

His reverie was shattered by the abrupt opening hiss of his cubby hatch.

Who dared . . .

The hatch slammed back against the bulkhead and Lewis darted through, sealed the opening behind him and dogged it. He was breathing hard and, instead of his usual self-effacing brown fatigues, he wore a crisp new issue singlesuit of dark green.

“Lewis!”

Oakes was overjoyed to see the man . . . and then dismayed. When Lewis turned at the sealed hatch, it was apparent that his face bore signs of quick medical patchwork to cover numerous cuts and bruises. And he was limping.

Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Judgment prepares you to enter the stream of chance and use your will. You use judgment to modulate will. Thinking is the performance of the moment. You sit in judgment, a convection center for the currents where past prepares a future. It is a balancing act.

—Kerro Panille, The Avata Argue