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

Oakes was the second cynical Chaplain to take on the burden of Ship.
    The first Ceepee not chosen by the damned ship!
    Except . . . there was this new Ceepee, he reminded himself, this man without a name who was being sent groundside to talk to the damned vegetables . . . the ’lectrokelp.
    He will not be my successor!
    There were many ways that a man in power could delay things to his own advantage. Even as I am now delaying the ship’s request that we send this poet . . . this whatsisname, Panille, groundside.
    Why did the ship want a poet groundside? Did that have anything to do with this new Ceepee? A drop of sweat trickled into his right eye.
    Oakes grew aware that his breathing had become labored. Heart attack? He pushed himself off the low divan. Have to get help. There was pain all through his chest. Damn! He had too many unfinished plans. He couldn’t just go this way. Not now! He staggered to the hatch but the hatch dogs refused to turn under his fingers. The air was cooler here, though, and he grew aware of a faint hissing from the equalizer valve over the hatch. Pressure difference? He did not understand how that could be. The ship controlled the interior environment. Everyone knew that.
    “What’re you doing, you damned mechanical monster?” he whispered. “Trying to kill me?”
    It was getting easier to breathe. He pressed his head against the cool metal of the hatch, drew in several deep breaths. The pain in his chest receded. When he tried the hatch dogs again they turned, but he did not open the hatch. He knew his symptoms could be explained by asphyxia . . . or anxiety.
    Asphyxia?
    He opened the hatch and peered out into an empty corridor, the dim blue-violet illumination of nightside. Presently, he closed the hatch and stared across his cubby.
    Another message from the ship? He would have to go groundside soon . . . as soon as Lewis made it safe for him down there.
    Lewis, get that Redoubt ready for us!
    Would the ship really kill him? No doubt it could. He would have to be very circumspect, very careful. And he would have to train a successor. Too many things unfinished to have them end with his own death.
    I can’t leave the choice of my successor to the ship.
    Even if it killed him, the damned ship could not be allowed to beat him.
    It’s been a long time. Maybe the ship’s original program has run out.
    What if Pandora were the place for a long winding-down process? Kick the fledglings out of the nest a millimeter at a time.
    His gaze picked out details of the cubby: erotic wall hangings, servopanels, the soft opulence of divans . . .
    Who will move in here after me?
    He had thought he might choose Lewis, provided Lewis worked out well. Lewis was bright enough for some dazzling lab work, but dull politically. A dedicated man.
    Dedicated! He’s a weasel and does what he’s told.
    Oakes crossed to his favorite divan, fawn soft cushions. He sat down and fluffed the cushions under the small of his back. What did he care about Lewis? This flesh that called itself Oakes would be long gone when the next Chaplain took over. At the very least he would be in hyb, dependent on the systems of the ship. And it may not be a good idea to tempt Lewis with that much power, power that would be contingent upon Oakes’ own death. After all, death was the specialty of Jesus Lewis.
    “No, no,” Lewis had said to Oakes privately, “it’s not death—I give them life, I give them life. They’re engineered clones, Doctor E-clones. I remind you of that. If I give them life, for whatever purpose, it is mine to take away.”
    “I don’t want to hear it.” He waved Lewis away with a brush of his hand.
    “Have it your way,” Lewis said, “but that doesn’t change the facts. I do what I have to do. And I do it for you . . .”
    Yes, Lewis was a brilliant man. He had learned many new and useful genetic manipulation techniques from the genetics of the ’lectrokelp, that most insidious indigent species on