Poetry, like consciousness, drops the insignificant digits.

- Raja Flattery, Shiprecords

SHIP'S WARNING that this could be the end of humankind left Flattery with a sense of emptiness.

He stared into the blackness which surrounded him, trying to find some relief. Would Ship really break th.... recording? What did Ship mean by a recording?

Last chance.

His emotional responses told Flattery he had touched a deep core of affinity with his own kind. The thought that in some faraway future on a line through infinity there might be other humans to enjoy life as he had enjoyed it - this thought filled him with warm affections for such descendants.

"Do You really mean this is our last chance?" he asked.

"Much as it pains Me." Ship's response did not surprise him.

The words were torn from him: "Why don't You just tell us how t.... ?"

"Raj! How much of your free will would you give me!"

"How much would You take?"

"Believe Me. Raj, there are places where neither God nor Man dares intervene."

"And You want me to go down to this planet, put Your question to them, and help them answer Your demand?"

"Would you do that?"

"Could I refuse?"

"I seek choice, Raj, not compulsion or chance. Will you accept?"

Flattery thought about this. He could refuse. Why not? What did he owe thes.... thes.... Shipmen, these replay survivors? But they were sufficiently human that he could interbreed with them. Human. And he still sensed that core of pain when he thought about a universe devoid of humans.

One last chance for humankind? It might be interestin.... play. Or it might be one of Ship's illusions.

"Is all this just illusion, Ship?"

"No. The flesh exists to feel the things that flesh feels. Doubt everything except that."

"I either doubt everything or nothing."

"So be it. Will you play despite your doubts?"

"Will You tell me more about this play?"

"If you ask a correct question."

"What role am I playing?"

"Ahhh...." It was a sigh of beatific grace. "You play the living challenge."

Flattery knew that role. Living challenge. You made people find the best within themselves, a best which they might not suspect they possessed. But some would be destroyed by such a demand. Remembering the pain of responsibility for such destruction, he wanted to help in his decision but knew he dared not ask directly. Perhaps if he learned more about Ship's plan....

"Have You hidden in my memory things about the game that I should know?"

"Raj!" There was no mistaking the outrage. It flowed through him as though his body were a sudden sieve thrust beneath a hot cascade. Then, more softly: "I do not steal your memories, Raj."

"Then I'm to be something different, a new factor, in this game. What else is different?"

"The place of the test possesses a difference so profound it may test you beyond your capacities, Raj."

The many implications of this answer filled him with wonder. So there were things even an all-powerful being did not know, things even God or Satan might learn.

Ship made him fearful then by commenting on his unspoken thought.

"Given that marvelous and perilous condition which you call Time, power can be a weakness."

"Then what's this profound difference which will test me?"

"An element of the game which you must discover for yourself."

Flattery saw the pattern of it then: The decision had to be his own. Not compulsion. It was the difference between choice and chance. It was the difference between the precision of a holorecord replay and a brand-new performance where free will dominated. And the prize was another chance for humankind. The Chaplain/Psychiatrists' Manual said: "God does not play dice with Man." Obviously, someone had been wrong.

"Very well, Ship. I'll gamble with You."

"Excellent! And, Raj - when the dice roll there will be no outside interference to control how they fall."

He found the phraseology of this promise interesting, but sensed the futility of exploring it. Instead, he asked: "Where will we play?"

"On this planet which I call Pandora. A small frivolity."

"I presume Pandora's box already is open."

"Indeed. All the evils that can trouble Mankind have been released."

"I've accepted Your request. What happens now?"

For answer, Flattery felt the hyb locks release him, the soft restraints pulling away. Light glowed around him and he recognized a dehyb laboratory in one of the shipbays. The familiarity of the place dismayed him. He sat up and looked around. All of that time and thi.... this lab remained unchanged. But of course Ship was infinite and infinitely powerful. Nothing outside of Time was impossible for Ship.

Except getting humankind to decide on their manner of WorShip.

What if we fail this time?

Would Ship really break the recording? He felt it in his guts: Ship would erase them. No more humankin.... ever. Ship would go on to new distractions.

If we fail, we'll mature without flowering, never to send our seed through Infinity. Human evolution will stop here.

Have I changed in hyb? All that tim....

He slipped out of the tank enclosure and padded across to a full-length mirror set into one of the lab's curved walls. His naked flesh appeared unchanged from the last time he had seen it. His face retained its air of quizzical detachment, an expression others often thought calculating. The remote brown eyes and upraked black eyebrows had been both help and hindrance. Something in the human psyche said such features belonged only to superior creatures. But superiority could be an impossible burden.

"Ahhh, you sense a truth," Ship whispered.

Flattery tried to swallow in a dry throat. The mirror told him that his flesh had not aged. Time? He began to grasp what Ship meant by such a length of Time which was meaningless. Hyb held flesh in stasis no matter what the passage of Time. No maturity there. But what about his mind? What about that reflected construct for which his brain was the receiver? He felt that something had ripened in his awareness.

"I'm ready. How do I get down to Pandora?"

Ship spoke from a vocoder above the mirror. "There are several ways, transports which I have provided."

"So You deliver me to Pandora. I just walk in on them. 'Hi. I'm Raja Flattery. I've come to give you a big pain in the head.'"

"Flippancy does not suit you, Raj."

"I feel Your displeasure."

"Do you already regret your decision, Raj?"

"Can You tell me anything more about the problems on Pandora?"

"The most immediate problem is their encounter with an alien intelligence, the 'lectrokelp."

"Dangerous?"

"So they believe. The 'lectrokelp is close to infinite and humans fea...."

"Humans fear open spaces, never-ending open spaces. Humans fear their own intelligence because it's close to infinite."

"You delight Me, Raj!"

A feeling of joy washed over Flattery. It was so rich and powerful that he felt he might dissolve in it. He knew that the sensation did not originate with him, and it left him feeling drained, transparen.... bloodless.

Flattery pressed the heels of his hands against his tightly closed eyes. What a terrible thing that joy was! Because when it was gon.... when it was gon....

He whispered: "Unless You intend to kill me, don't do that again."

"As you choose." How cold and remote.

"I want to be human! That's what I was intended to be!"

"If that's the game you seek."

Flattery sensed Ship's disappointment, but this made him defensive and he turned to questions.

"Have Shipmen communicated with this alien intelligence, this 'lectrokelp?"

"No. They have studied it, but do not understand it."

Flattery took his hands away from his eyes. "Have Shipmen ever heard of Raja Flattery?"

"That's a name in the history which I teach them."

"Then I'd better take another name." He ruminated for a moment, then: "I'll call myself Raja Thomas."

"Excellent. Thomas for your doubts and Raja for your origins."

"Raja Thomas, communications expert - Ship's best friend. Here I come, ready or not."

"A game, yes. A game. An.... Raj?"

"What?"

"For an infinite being, Time produces boredom. Limits exist to how much Time I can tolerate."

"How much Time are You giving us to decide the way we'll WorShip?"

"At the proper moment you will be told. And one more thing -"

"Yes?"

"Do not be dismayed if I refer to you occasionally as My Devil."

He was a moment recovering his voice, then: "What can I do about it? You can call me whatever You like."

"I merely asked that you not be dismayed."

"Sure! And I'm King Canute telling the tides to stop!"

There was no response from Ship and Flattery wondered if he was to be left on his own to find his way down to this planet called Pandora. But presently, Ship spoke once more: "Now we will dress you in appropriate costume, Raj. There is a new Chaplain/Psychiatrist who rules the Shipmen. They call him Ceepee and, when he offends them, they call him The Boss. You can expect that The Boss will order you to attend him soon."