Free The Pandora Sequence: The Jesus Incident, the Lazarus Effect, the Ascension Factor by Frank Herbert

pride in what he saw there. Not just fat, no. Here was a mature man in his middle years. The Boss. The silver at his temples spoke of dignity and importance. And although he was . . . plump, his skin remained soft and clear, testimony to the care he took preserving the appearance of youth.
    Women liked that.
    What if the ship is Ship . . . is truly God?
    The air felt dirty in his lungs and he realized he was breathing much too rapidly.
    Doubts.
    The damned ship was not going to respond to his doubts. Never had. Wouldn’t talk to him; wouldn’t feed him. He had to feed himself from the ship’s limited hydroponics gardens. How long could he continue to trust them? Not enough food for everyone. The very thought increased his appetite.
    He stared at the unfinished glass of wine—dark amber, oily on the inner surface of the glass. There was a wet puddle under the glass, a stain on the brown surface.
    I’m the Ceepee.
    The Ceepee was supposed to believe in Ship. In his own cynical way, old Kingston had insisted on this.
    I don’t believe.
    Was that why a new Ceepee was being sent groundside?
    Oakes ground his teeth together.
    I’ll kill the bastard!
    He spoke it aloud, intensely aware of how the words echoed in his cubby.
    “Hear that, Ship? I’ll kill the bastard!”
    Oakes half expected a response to this blasphemy. He knew this because he caught himself holding his breath, listening hard to the shadows at the edges of his cubby.
    How did you test for godhood?
    How do you separate a powerful mechanical phenomenology, a trick of technological mirrors, from a . . . from a miracle?
    If God did not play dice, as the Ceepees were always told, what might God play? Perhaps dice was not challenge enough for a god. What was risk enough to tempt a god out of silence or reverie . . . out of a god’s lair?
    It was a stupefying question—to challenge God at God’s own game?
    Oakes nodded to himself.
    In the game, perhaps, is the miracle. Miracle of Consciousness? It was no trick to make a machine self-programming, self-perpetuating. Complex, true, and unimaginably costly . . .
    Not unimaginably, he cautioned himself.
    He shook his head to drive out the half-dream.
    If people did it, then it’s imaginable, tangible, somehow explainable. Gods move in other circles.
    The question was: which circles? And if you could define those circles, their limits, you could know the limits of the god within them. What limits, then? He thought about energy. Energy remained a function of mass and speed. Even a god might have to be somewhere within the denominator of—what kind of mass, how much, how fast?
    Maybe godhood is simply another expansion of limits. Because our vision dims is no reason to conclude that infinity lies beyond.
    His training as a Chaplain had always been subservient to his training as a scientist and medical man. He knew that to test data truly he could not close the doors on experiment or assume that what he wished would necessarily be so.
    It was what you did with data, not the data, that was important. Every king, every emperor had to know that one. Even his theology master had agreed.
    “Sell ’em on God. It’s for their own good. Pin the little everyday miracles on God and you’ve got ’em; you don’t need to move mountains. If you’re good enough, people will move the mountains for you in the name of God.”
    Ahh, yes. That had been Edmond Kingston, a real Chaplain/Psychiatrist out of the ship’s oldest traditions, but still a cynic.
    Oakes heaved a deep sigh. Those had been quiet days shipside, days of tolerance and security of purpose. The machinery of the monster around them ran smoothly. God had been remote and most Shipmen remained in hyb.
    But that had been before Pandora. Bad luck for old Kingston that the ship had put them in orbit around Pandora. Good old Edmond, dead on Pandora with the fourth settlement attempt. Not a trace recovered, not a cell. Gone now, into whatever passed for eternity. And Morgan