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The grip of winter tightened on the garden. The birds which needed the warmth of summer were long gone. The hardier ones who would stay with us during the cold months could be found singing and scrapping close to the namana trees.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡssi9nWz3Wq
In the mornings there was mist that lingered behind the garden walls. At midday the shadows were long and spindly and the sunlight revealed spiderwebs stretched between trees. Evenings came quickly with a shower of rain and after that a smell of leaf mold. The nights were cold and a fire was lit in Adama's rooms.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdMrumGqNTb
Could it be that Adama thrived on the winter?213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4y0AIxCX81
One morning he was up early and I came upon him standing outside his rooms with a blanket over his shoulders and breathing white vapor into the air. He had also pressed his hand against the patterns of frost on his window pane and a print of his palm was beginning to dribble. I felt hope at this. He was showing an interest in the world beyond himself.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXPA7LWeXdh
But under the blanket he was nude. For a while nudity and washing became his personal obsession. He seemed to believe that clothes were a filthy skin and sometimes he'd wash himself until he was raw. I think he wore the blanket like a hair-shirt. The mortification of the flesh is an ancient theme especially with those who feel guilt. I've got many references to it. I was amused in my dry way to observe that Serpentine was more concerned by his fervent ambitions than I was. She saw the sores, I saw the mind straining for cleanliness and for the one and only time I told her to be calm. By showing himself naked to the world he was trying to make a naked psyche.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9yZwTR60VE
Later that day it started to snow. The snow came in large, soft chunks where several flakes had clung together. Smith amazed me by saying that he could smell the snow coming. That was in the morning when the sky was still clear.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgz5yFYTsMr
About noon the wind started from the south and quickly the sky darkened. I floated up into the trees above Adama's cell and looked out over the walls of the garden. The sea was leaden below the dark, gathering clouds. In the monastery, bright lights were already twinkling in windows though it was barely into the afternoon. The first flakes of snow drifted down like ash. Then the fall turned steady. The headland and the shuttleport vanished.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFLvmYaG0xl
I looked out across the garden and could see the white flakes disappear on the surface of the river where it wound slowly through the limestone caves. The snow settled on the rocks by the river and on the slopes of the hills and on the Pectanile, revealing the curves of that monument like the sleek gray shape of a dolphin. The snow tumbled through the bare trees and built on branches and clung to the dry bark. The temperature dropped steadily and as the snow covered the land the quality of sound changed. Every sound was softened, even the call of the Macron which has a voice that's been compared to the crying of the damned in the dreaded Omega Tome213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJb9KTtw7qu
When I looked down I saw Adama. The silly man was pulling off his clothes and throwing them down in the slush in front of his little house. Naked he spread his arms and turned in a circle stamping his feet so that every part of him was touched by the snow.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡk5O6TDqccF
Serpentine arrived with a clatter and a roar. She scolded Adama and sent him inside waving her dexetels. He retreated before her like a reluctant child. I swooped down to gather up his sodden, stiffening clothes and took them inside.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡb5w0MeG2Sw
Adama was already in bed. He lay on his back and the covers were pressed tightly under his chin in a no-nonsense manner. Serpentine was over him, a thermo-scanner held in one of her dexetels. There was a smell of broth cooking.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbGS0VlJUz8
As I came in Adama sneezed heartily and I can record that this first day of snow gave Adama a mighty cold which kept him in bed for many days. For me this was a bonus. As Adama sneezed and snuffed and Serpentine fussed, I was able to speak to him. The cold took his body over and left his mind free.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPTPs4z7TOy
The following story, fit in its own way to be a winter's tale told by a roaring fire while the cold dark wraps around the house like a scarf, was recounted to me by Adama as he lay on his back, immobilized by Serpentine and the sheets.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLLlwMjaaP6
I murmured the hypnotic trigger and his eyes shut and his face became animated.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡp6fikMdxWY
"Tell me about the Galactica," I said. "How'd you survive on the crippled starship? Did you actually visit the bio-crystalline core? Tell me."213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9emKcSKWWf
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ADAMA'S NARRATIVE213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9P1jihTss3
I slept well. Yes, despite my worries I slept well. I think that when one sees the shape of the disaster that's befallen one, then relaxation can come. It's doubt that causes the sleepless, red-eyed night.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgIE2CMe2T1
When I awoke I found that a plan had formed in my mind. The key to so many of our problems was in the malfunction of the bio-crystalline brain of the Galactica. I knew how that brain had grown in part from my own consciousness and I decided to visit the seed chamber to see if I could put matters to rights or maybe change things for the better.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡx2cGAsYqA7
The main seed chamber of the Galactica was a circular room located some comfortable distance beneath my command chambers. It was an area which was hard to access as nobody had anticipated that anyone would ever need to visit the chamber while the Galactica was in transit. But access was possible, of course.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡg2Np9hyCjp
I ate breakfast, pampering myself somewhat with fresh bread, boiled eggs and Callrine broth such as Ila once made for me. The ingredients were not in short supply in my quarters, though I know that my bread had never known yeast, nor had my eggs ever known a chicken and my Warrad broth came from a freeze-dried packet. For reasons best known to themselves, the planners of the Galactica had made sure that the Commander had a decade's supply of excellent food. I suspect that they considered that food equals morale. I also suspect that in giving me ten yahrens' supply they had calculated on providing me with a yahren of variety before repetition set in. I was grateful for this consideration. The broth in particular was excellent and I could taste the herbs and remembered the chant that Ila sang: "Stringweed for courage, Bluleaf for sight, Meat for the hunter, Bring strength in the night."213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfRQ4SOhMkn
Rested and fed, I donned my survival suit. Then, with the anti-grav unit strapped to my back, I made my way through my apartment, my toes merely brushing the floor, as I pushed myself along. I went past the room where Starbuck/Guell had died. I was moving in the opposite direction to the ramp that led down to the staff canteen. This particular corridor ended in a little alcove which contained an entry to a transit shaft. There was a standard control panel and I tapped out the access code adding my own personal code and palm print. The answer flashed back that the transit system wasn't working. This was as I expected. I operated the override switch and a section of the floor slowly slid open. There was a rush of air and an alarm bell rang briefly until all pressures had balanced. I looked down into a black well. It seemed to suck at me. I knew that if I'd fallen down that shaft without the anti-grav unit I would have been compacted to an eighth of my size at the bottom.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJAUY4XK6nj
I switched on my suit lights and increased the anti-grav power so that I was floating and then I pushed myself out over the black hole. A slight adjustment of the power and I began to sink. I passed the rim. My lights lit up the depressed emergency handholds which were set into the wall of the transit chute and which rose past my eyes. There was just enough room for me to descend without bumping the walls. The presence of the gravity pack meant that I couldn't bend and look downward, so I used my hands to direct me and pushed myself downward, feet first.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPQYXP8CdYy
I didn't know how far I needed to descend. I measured each rung as a foot and when my counting reached ninety-eight, my feet suddenly touched something. My reaction of surprise was such that I sent myself back up the chute by several feet. The next time I landed I was ready.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmCDq0OnI4n
I was on the roof of one of the transit seats. It must've been parked here at the moment when the power went off. I turned around slowly, wondering if I would find myself trapped in the chute, but discovered that I was just under the roof of an oblong chamber which was filled with pipes and festoons of cable and conduit trunking. It was easy for me to step off the roof of the transit seat and sink slowly down to the ground.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8hZXRGKmJ0
The lights of my suit showed the room starkly. The walls and pipes were stenciled with technical graffiti which defined their function. Beside these were scrawled dates and autographs. Many different construction teams had worked here. The room was little more than a vast junction box where many parts of the Galactica met.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhJWmrYGxkD
One pipe was particularly important to me. It was about two feet in diameter and stretched the length of the chamber without any bends or curves. It was the color of old, rubbed ivory----this was the ceramic jacket you understand---and within I knew were the organic threads of the bio-crystalline brain. It had grown within this pipe, advancing as the Galactica grew and adding more and more strands as the complexity of the ship increased.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1aaArQCnTW
I began to lope slowly beside this pipe, ducking occasionally to avoid cross-pieces, until finally I came to the entrance to an airlock. It had a notice printed in red on its surface.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUokd77iJhb
"WARNING. Bio-crystalline Seed Chamber. Only authorized personnel are permitted to enter this airlock. Unauthorized persons seeking to gain entry are advised that their action will place them in extreme danger."213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUuVUSKdFjN
This was a standard announcement and the entire bio-crystalline system was protected behind similar airlocks. What the notice meant was that any unauthorized attempt to enter would result in alarms and the sudden closing of doors and (sometimes) a beam of lethal radiation.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrlkQs0VBSR
I of course should've been safe. My credentials were sterling. I was part father of the bio-crystalline consciousness and could be admitted without fuss or question. Even so, given the odd state of the Galactica, I doubted.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkTNCbxtWo5
I removed my glove and placed the palm of my right hand firmly on the black identification plate. I felt a warmth under my hand and a prickling. Three magnetic locks suddenly closed over my wrist and held me tight. If I were in imposter these locks would never release until I was either dead or captured. They held me for over a minute and then withdrew. A message flashed up on the black tile where I'd pressed my hand. "Welcome, Commander Adama. Beyond this door the vacuum is absolute. Be sure you're wearing your vacc-suit. The vacuum lock won't function if it detects exhalation or body heat. Now you may proceed."213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4IFMFOJUlw
I palmed the lock again and the door slid open. I stepped inside and the door nudged me as the magnetic locks closed. At about head height facing me there was a glowing green pressure panel marked VACUUM DEMAND and I touched this. Immediately, I was aware of a vibration as the pumps got to work. I felt my survival suit changed shape about me as it compensated for the lack of external pressure. The green panel paled to gray and finally brightened to red as the atmosphere disappeared. It changed its wording and announced: "Vacuum established. There will be a delay of 60 seconds."213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQFip3B8Ggk
I knew what it was doing. The delay was to establish that my survival suit wasn't leaking. The procedure was for the protection of the bio-crystalline brain.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4UIhz0JaPG
I and my vacc-suit passed the test! The panel blinked once and then a message in yellow flashed up. "You may now proceed into the bio-crystalline Seed Chamber. The atmosphere lock will stay open."213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMrDjrsJ8mS
Before me there was a jerking movement and part of the wall began to slide open. I stood and watched. No bright light flooded in though I knew this room should've been filled with a the silver effulgence of the working neuro-crystalline seeds. I can't say that darkness flooded in though that was my impression. I didn't move because I wasn't anxious to advance until I could see my way clear.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoBHbJWNxlz
And when the doors were at last open I found myself peering into a chamber filled with shadows and blackened shapes of sculptured ash. My way was blocked by things like soot-coated trees, which hung broken and deformed from the roof. I stepped forward and at the same time brought my suit lights to their maximum brilliance an drove the shadows away.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYwKVTgWwzh
The shadows moved as I advanced and that was scary, but stranger still was the absolute stillness of the blackened bio-crystalline shapes. Death is so still. I have had my fill of that stillness. I raised my arm which glittered with energy and touched the dark branches which barred my way. They broke at my touch and crumbled and fell and smashed like black glass, silently. Black dust rippled across the floor in a single shockwave and then everything became still again. Such a fall deserved a roaring.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbEokpiCPM9
All the troubles of the Galactica were clear before my eyes. I'd never been in this room before but I knew that it should have been throbbing with light and energy.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoz73CPh5tm
I stepped out of the vacuum lock and ducked under the dark branches. I was aware of the crushing and crumbling of bio-crystalline fiber under my feet. The whole floor was littered with broken branches and I stepped over them. Those I touched crumbled.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7HnFJDuHbM
The room I entered wasn't large. I advanced to the middle and looked around. Surveying the damage, I wondered how the Galactica still managed to function. Maybe the symbol transformation generators were supplying the necessary intelligence. But then I saw, close to the vacuum lock, a single gleam of light in the seed through and the pale shape of living bio-crystalline fibers climbing up to the roof and branching. This wasn't bio-crystallism in its full and healthy fluorescence, but it was life. I moved over to the seed through as quickly as I could, ducking under the dark elephantine growths and pushing the fallen parts aside. I found that three crystals were still vital. One was hectic but the other two glowed with a steady white fire. I switched my suit lights off and was able to follow the branching paleness of the living fibers. They fed into all the main trunklines. These fibers, no doubt assisted by the STGs, were all that was keeping the Galactica alive. 213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4Wh6FQ2iHE
I now knew what I had to do and felt an uncanny optimism. My plan was bold but offered hope. I intended to replace as many of the dead crystals as I could with new ones and try to make them grow. I would feed them with my own thought.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8MAazCRHOK
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The Galactica carried spare living seed-crystals, held in a state of suspended consciousness, in the seedbank close to my quarters.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbgsvUndU39
I spent the next two hours trekking back and forth carrying the seed containers down to the seed chamber. I then started cleaning the trough. Some of the dead crystals were glassy and the fibers growing from them were brittle. They were enameled, and their blackness contrived to reflect my suit lights with a deep amber glow. These seeds had died quickly, shriveling within the lattices of their crystal supports. Others had died more slowly and these resembled large candles that had been exposed to sunlight under glass and which had melted into monstrous striated shapes. In their dying they had spattered the floor like teardrops of pitch. I cleared them all, reasoning that the presence of any dead bio-crystalline fiber might exert a negative influence on the new seeds. The old linkages in the troughs were useless and so I prepared new beds of vetruontine and then placed the crystals so that they touched the existing living seeds.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡY55xWIbLiM
I'm not a skilled bio-crystalline engineer but I knew enough to have confidence that my procedure was sound. When a new sensory/logic chain is being developed, seeds are often linked in this way. My hope was that the new seeds would be vitalized by the old seeds and that the old seeds would be strengthened and rejuvenated by proximity to the new. Above all I wanted the tenuous command structure to be strengthened for without that nothing was possible. I felt confidence since the seeds which were still vital had obviously survived the words ordeal and were hence of great strength.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡViUwAelB5g
I cleared the seed chamber as well as I could. I brought vacuo-sacks down from above and shoveled the heavy black dust and shattered fragments of bio-crystalline circuitry into them. Then I lugged the sacks up to my apartment and handed them over to the disposal unit. I saw them fired from the ship. I saw them describe stunted arcs before plunging straight down to the surface. When they hit the stony ground they exploded and the black dust and fragments quickly lifted and then settled leaving pools of ash.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgBlhSqnTxf
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Over the next few days I visited the crystals morning and night. To help their development I kept my communication room live and I spent a part of each day lying in my couch pouring my mind into the bio-crystalline darkness. Occasionally I received an echo of my thought back and that gave me hope. I was like a nurse with a comatose patient: even a repeated whisper tells of consciousness.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡb5WW4jkyr6
On the third day I visited the chamber I could just detect a glow spreading from the central seeds to the outer ones. It was like a fire catching from embers. Looking closely I could see that the seeds had begun to bond sending out small filaments of bio-crystalline fiber. They resembled patterns of frost.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN6uobGsNxj
By the fifth day the glow was clearly perceptible and from the door of the vacuo-lock it was as if a candle were burning in the still chamber.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡx3PQcQAzR5
That candle (if I may call it that) brought me more joy than a thousand prayer lights of St. Dionysos. At the same time, I was realistic. There was no way I could restore the Galactica to full operation. Too much might still fall into decay. But at least we were no longer sliding helplessly into ruin and death. We were making a stand and the Galactica was responding!213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgyAjRKO2XM
I didn't tell my colleagues what was happening as I didn't want to get their hopes up. They had their hands full as it was, hunting through the ship, making what repairs they could and isolating those areas which couldn't be saved. The crematorium in the Galactica was fractured and useless and so we held funerals for the dead and scored out graves in the rock and sand of the planet and buried the corpses.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡX6NsxoxJpI
There came the day, it would've been some three weeks after we landed, that I was lying in my couch reaching out to the consciousness of the Galactica, that I heard a sleepy, somewhat feline voice, murmur, "Hello, Adama. I've been listening to you for days, gathering you in, but only today have I found the strength to reply. We're in a sorry way. But all is not lost. Tell me how I can help."213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNQE1gSBFVZ
Frack, felgercarb and shit! The naïveté of bio-crystalline consciousness sometimes spites me. I suppose because bio-crystalline brains have the power of speech and their expression sounds thoughtful, we assume they've got the wisdom of the human. But they don't.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXzawSa1bUP
"You can help us in many ways, my friend," I said and then decided to test the power of the healing brain. In the canteen which had become our center of operations there was a malfunction in the heating system. The heaters had begun to turn themselves off and on at will. This was not dangerous to us but was inconvenient and costly in terms of energy. I asked the newly-awakened consciousness to try and fix this situation.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEImjQyVidI
And so it did.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFVEmmeCot1
Within mili-centons the temperature controls had been corrected and the heating system in the canteen was functioning as it should. This change was noticed by those who were living there.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡF1VmewHqZ1
When next I visited the dining area people told me of the change, wondering what had happened and glad that the Galactica seemed to be returning to normal. They felt hopeful.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn2TmsWFJmM
I didn't tell them about my visits to the bio-crystalline chamber and how the new seeds were growing. That news would keep. 213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡi9D3U8rqZK
We stood in silence, feeling the awful drag of the planet's gravity and gave thanks to God that we were still alive.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYbPyk80YYp
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And with these words, Adama's face became tranquil and moments later his eyes opened. He sneezed suddenly and violently. I think it was the need to sneeze that had brought him out of his trance.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbTQiKf6Czs
I was pleased with this report. I could hear the real man. I could sense a focusing down on his experience. We are moving into his narrative but there is a long journey ahead. I also knew that I must not rush things despite my impatience.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvWmd4wf3bS
Just as bio-crystalline fiber grows slowly, so Adama slowly grows toward health.213Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMIgwWv0D9I
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