The Ascension Factor

He finished the checkout and realized that they wouldn't be getting airborne after all. Not unless Elvira could remanufacture the hydraulics that withdrew their hydrofoils and extended airfoils.



Ben doesn't need to know that now, he thought. For that matter, neither do I.



"Speak to me, buddy. Anything."



"Ric... OK."



It came out loud and clear, though painfully slow, but it was enough to put a smile on Rico's face. He felt Elvira tugging kelp out of the inlets and tried the Navcom again. It was dead, not even a burst of static from the speakers.



"Squall's coming in," he told Ben, "things might get rough again pretty soon."



He didn't want to tell Ben that they were going to get really rough, now that they couldn't get above the storm. Without the Navcom, and with the kelp glutting up the ocean as far as the eye could see, Rico himself didn't want to think about how rough it was going to get.



***



Anyone who threatens the mind or its symbolizing endangers the matrix of humanity itself.

- Ward Keel, The Apocryphal Notebooks



Ben had heard the boat's ballast blow as he stroked Crista's hair and cheek under the fine spray of the pinpoint galley leak. He remembered the taste of salt when his lips brushed her hair. Because of the taste of salt from the interior bulkhead he knew it was a cooling pipe leak, recycled seawater, nothing to worry about now that they were headed topside.



He remembered that he and Crista had been talking, laughing, when suddenly his upper body began to tingle. His neck wouldn't move his head where it wanted to go. He tried to cry out but his mouth and throat wouldn't work. Crista slumped against her harness, limp, her eyes wide with fear and their green irises darkening nearly to blue.



Oh, no, he remembered thinking. Oh, no, they were right.



In lurching, spastic movements he lunged against Crista, sprawling across her legs. She had let out a little cry of surprise, but didn't resist. Ben saw that she couldn't. Whatever was happening to him was also happening to her. He had the advantage of more body mass, more muscle, so it was taking his body longer to shut down.



He grabbed for Crista's harness to pull himself up but his hands turned to two heavy rocks at the ends of his arms. Within a blink he collapsed against her. He was able to see and breathe but trying to move only produced uncontrollable spasms. He slid down the couch to the deck into a position that didn't allow him to watch Crista. One of his hands remained on her ankle, and he felt her body spasm and relax much like his own. The antidote was in his pocket, and he couldn't make his body work well enough to dig it out.



Rico will think I'm a fool, he thought.



Now that they'd lost their Navcom they couldn't function undersea, and they'd be bobbing squawks on the surface. Rico would have his hands full enough without thi... mess.



Elvira's got a few tricks, he thought.



Ben felt the Tingle rush like a hot blush down his back, out his shoulders and thighs. He tried to control his muscles again but couldn't. He was a helpless, quivering heap on the deck. He remembered feeling more betrayed than careless. Then he started traveling the convolutions of Crista's mind. Rico, the galley around them, the rest of the real universe played through a dark curtain that backdropped Crista's thoughts and memories. These images from her life unreeled in his brain.



"Ben!" Rico said, his small voice rising to Ben from a great depth. He said more but Ben heard only the snap of the antidote against his singlesuit. He felt nothing but the Tingle throughout his body, but he was fully aware of Rico stretching him out on the deck.



Time rippled like a dark fabric strung between himself and Rico. The white and stainless steel of the galley blended into a great glowing halo of yellowpanel that washed out everything behind the curtain of his mind.



Ben understood much, now. A near-infinity of human memories slept in Crista Galli's head. Now many of them buzzed in his own, like solvent to solute, a wet solution filling up a dry. He felt the dry blossom of his mind unfold as it drank, petal by intricate petal, and behind it the shadow that was Rico LaPush rippled back and forth.



Though he could see and hear, Ben felt a detachment from his body that was more curiosity to him than fear. He remembered the special show he'd done with Beatriz about people who returned from near-death, what they'd reported about this same detached feeling, this same comforting warmth that replaced all sensation in his skin except that Tingle. They said they'd viewed their bodies from certain vantage points in the room, watched the medics resuscitate them, remembered whole conversations that took place even when they showed no heartbeat on the monitor. They described watching the vital signs monitor with the same detached feeling that Ben had when he slumped to the deck.



His view, however, was distinctly from someone else's body, someone else's mind. This was a wot's mind, down under, looking upward toward the sun from the middle depths of a kelp lagoon. His range of vision was limited to straight ahead. It was slightly blurry and a light halo surrounded the rim above. Way up there, backlit by the glowing suns, he saw Rico's busy shadow. The lagoon was full of Swimmers, those legendary gilled humans, undulating in and out of channels above her.



This was Crista as a child. This was Ben as Crista as a child.



He sensed that Rico was very worried and he wanted to tell him, "It's OK, I'm here," but nothing would come out.



One Swimmer in particular attended her, an older female. Ben had never seen a Swimmer. He'd imagined them as grotesque, slimy creatures with wide mouths and stupid eyes, and rudimentary, ratlike tails. The female who attended Crista now was about his own age. Her red fan of gill fluttered furiously at her shoulders as she fed the girl slices of raw fish. Crista dangled from the kelp, and the Swimmer female came up to her from the deeps. She did not, or would not, speak.



From somewhere behind the halo, very far above Ben's upturned face, Rico's voice echoed, "I'm going to settle you here and keep you warm."



Ben felt the lagoon receding, and Rico's voice with it.



"Crista is still breathing," Rico said. "I don't know whether you can hear me or not, Ben, but we'll get you out of here. You'll be OK. The goddamned girl is OK. We're almost topside. We'll get you someplace." Rico's voice was tinged with hysteria, and he sounded close to tears. "We'll get you someplace, buddy, you just hang on." A squeeze at his shoulder, then Rico was gone.



Ben found he could leave the womblike kelp, and if he imagined walking a corridor toward himself he became more aware of the galley, the foil around him. He felt he could walk a gossamer bridge between Crista's mind and his own.



A sudden dazzle of light in the galley and a change in the pitch of the foil told Ben that they had surfaced. Ben wondered whether he would die this way, fully conscious, feeling that last exhalation and unable to suck in air. He remembered the time that he and Rico almost drowned, when Guemes Island was sabotaged and sunk. He had nearly panicked then, but he felt no such panic now, simply a numb obedience to his fate.



He found himself wondering about things that should terrify him: would the neurotoxin, whatever it was, paralyze his breathing muscles? His heart muscle? He wished that Rico had propped him up a little to make it easier, though already the tingling had stopped.



The slapshot works, he thought.



He wanted to cross that gossamer bridge to Crista again, but he felt himself moving farther away from the bridge and back into the foil, The deck under him was uncomfortable, and he found that he could squirm a little to change position. He was definitely improving. He'd been dimly aware of a voice coming in over the intercom, it was Rico's voice, and it came in again, sounding worried.



"Speak to me, buddy. Anything."



Ben tried his throat again. It was dry, and didn't want to work quite right, but he managed to squeeze out: "Ric... OK."



He heard Crista breathing, but she still hadn't stirred.



I wonder what happens to her?



"Squall's coming in," Rico announced, "things might get rough again pretty soon."



Ben wanted to laugh, tried to come back at Rico with, "Rough? What do you call this?" but it all came out a garble.



***



The new ruler must inevitably distress those over whom he establishes his rule. So it happens that he makes enemies of all those whom he has injured in occupying the new principality, and yet he cannot keep the friendship of those who have set him up.

- Machiavelli, The Prince



Flattery spurned the safety of his quarters for a brazen tour in the sunshine topside. Nevi and Zentz were on their mission and out of his way, the ragtag rebellion was failing under his security force, and he knew that whoever had Crista Galli had a big handful of trouble. He smiled widely to himself and turned his face to the sky. He loved the sky, the weather - how different from the controlled susurrations of Moonbase air! It was nearly time for the afternoon rain. Like the few other survivors of hybernation who had been reared in the sterility of Moonbase, Flattery had a feeling for weather.



He chose a parapet that looked downcoast, across the Preserve and into the wretched village that spilled from his gate. A boil of black smoke fanned inland with the upcoming wind. Flattery wore his brightest red lounging jacket so that the vermin could see he was very much alive, still very much the Director. So close to the borders of battle - now they would see the mettle they tested!



The presence of two suns unnerved him, even after these many years. Information from his kelp studies, from his geologists, proved that they were ripping the planet's crust like so much flatbread. The worst was yet to come, and he didn't intend to wait around for it.



Ventana, one of his messengers, approached the walkway below him.



"Reports on the kelpway disruption, sir."



She waved a messenger.



He signaled one of the guards, who inspected the device and then brought it to him. Flattery pulled his white hat farther down to shade his forehead. The wide-brimmed style was Islander, for political effect. It was a white hat because Flattery believed that white placed him on the side of truth and justice at a glance. He did not retrieve the reports immediately. He knew what was inside: nothing. And by this time the afternoon cloud cover obscured an Orbiter view of the number eight sector.



His passion for weather did not include the suns' ravages of his uncooperative skin. Two pink blotches peeled on his forehead and Flattery tried not to scratch them. His personal physician had removed two such spots only a month ago, and now this.



The people have to see me, he thought. There is no substitute for the proper exposure.



His three most trusted bodyguards accompanied him at a distance, their Pandoran instincts keeping them ever on the move. His vantage point was a bluff overlooking the compound, the village and the bay. To his back were the only higher points for many klicks - the high reaches, home of the worthless Zavatans. A lot of these Zavatans, like the peasantry, believed in Ship and the eventual return of this Ship as some sort of mechanical messiah. The thought made him laugh, and his guards looked at him curiously.



"Stand down, gentlemen," he told them. "As you can see, there's nothing down there that can reach us."



"Begging the Director's pardon," one of the guards, Aumock, spoke up. "It's my job to never stand down."



Flattery nodded his approval. This one bears watching.



"Very good," he said. "I appreciate your dedication."



Aumock, a Merman from good stock, didn't swell with the praise. He was already back to scanning the area for movement.



"Nothing up here but Zavatans," Flattery said.



"Are you sure they're nothing, sir?" Aumock replied.



This was the first time his guard had offered a comment in his ten-month tour of service at Flattery's side. Flattery merely grunted a response.



He had his suspicions about these Zavatans - always the same number of them appearing about, but seldom the same faces. Flattery was no fool. He was, after all, a Chaplain/Psychiatrist and had done impeccable study in the history of oppressed religions. He was uncomfortable with a nearby population that was potentially hostile, whose numbers seemed impossible to determine, and whose general fitness appeared far better than that of most of his security.



They actually run up these cliffs, he mused. Why?



It was here, on the bare overlook above the Preserve, that he reviewed the latest messages regarding the Holovision foil and the curious rebellion of the largest stand of kelp in the region.



"So, Marta, do you really believe that they've turned back?" he asked.



His communications officer, a little plump for her regulation blue jumpsuit, managed a quick chew at her lip before responding. Flattery had bedded her once and recalled that her touch was far more satisfying than her looks. She'd been a slender young thing then - four, maybe five years ago. She had started as a bodyguard, but showed a facility with electronics that impressed his engineers. When she requested a transfer, he had granted it. It was just as well, the move headed off the rumors and the inevitable discomfort of extracting himself from a sticky personal situation.



"... I don't know," she said. "The device that I placed personally on their foil is working perfectly, and its course is consistent with a return to this -"



"Bah!" Flattery blurted. "They're not stupid. I insisted that you place the device on or inside her person and you took it upon yourself to place it elsewhere. A Current Control outpost has already confirmed the device to be aboard a crippled sub train dragging a few thousand kilos of dead fish."



Flattery enjoyed the stunned look that flattened her face. She looked small and pale now.



"I was afraid," she said. "I was afraid to touch her."



Marta hung her head as though expecting a blade. The merciless suns here on the bluff widened the circles of sweat forming under her armpits. It was that heavy, sticky time on the coast just before the rain squalls hit. He didn't have to sniff to smell the rain.



Flattery remembered that time with her. It had been afternoon and their skin poured sweat. Tiny black hairs from his chest had stuck to her small white breasts. She hadn't been so afraid of him then, just a little bit in awe, which made things easier.



Dammit! he muttered to himself. Bitten by the fiction again.



He drew himself up to his full height, nearly two heads taller than Marta.



"Didn't I assure you that it was safe?"



This he delivered in his most consoling voice.



She nodded, but still did not lift her head.



Flattery was very pleased with himself. If this woman who knew him so well was afraid of Crista, of what her touch might do, then these strangers must be terrified. Thanks to his foresight in the beginning and her daily "medications," Crista should be withdrawing violently by now, exhibiting the very symptoms attributed to her touch. Perhaps by now she'd be catatonic - something else he'd engineered to see that she was brought back to him.



The neurotoxin would be oozing from her every pore by now, and the fiction he had laid down so carefully for so long would become true. Everyone, particularly the enemy, would see it with their own eyes. Only he, the Director, could save her. Those Shadows would soon find themselves in the presence of a monster that they could not afford to keep.



The wonders of chemistry, he thought, and smiled.



Aloud, he reassured Marta.



"I understand your fear," he said. "The important thing is that we were not fooled by their amateurish attempt at deception. What do you have to report on damage here?"



Both of them flinched at the simultaneous crackle of two lasguns, and Flattery turned to see that his guards had cooked a pair of hooded dashers closing from the direction of the high reaches.



"I wonde..."



He didn't finish the rest aloud. What he wondered was whether or not the Zavatans were training dashers.



"I want studies on dasher sightings coordinated with known Zavatan positions," he said.



Marta nodded and unholstered the electronic link at her side. The movement drew a subtle shift in Aumock's position. Marta didn't notice that his lasgun muzzle had focused on her head before the link cleared daylight. She clicked out her coded entry in her usual unhurried manner.



Flattery knew something of the Zavatans and their history, but not nearly as much as he'd like. They were patient, organized, and they scavenged everything. If rumor was correct, they grew illicit crops in the upcoast regions and distributed them among refugees. Flattery resented this because it seriously weakened his bargaining position with the masses. He did not have the manpower to police thousands of square kilometers of rugged countryside and complete Project Voidship at the same time. Project Voidship was infinitely more important.



He saluted approval as one of the men went over the wall to fetch the dasher skins.



That much less for the Zavatans, he thought.



He made a mental note to see what the lab would have to say about where the dashers had been, with whom, what they were eating, when and why.



"And your report on the fighting?" he asked.



"Compound perimeter is secure," she said.



Marta pressed the spot behind her right ear that activated the receive mode of her messenger implant.



"I'm getting a lot of interference here, don't know the cause. Minimal damage to the compound - the expected rubble but mostly cosmetic, as usual. Rocks and sticks are no match for lasguns. Prisoners are being held in the courtyard." She paused as more information fed into her messenger.



"Reports on the power station, the ferry terminal and the grid situation," he ordered.



Marta fed something into her messenger, then her expression changed. The facade of the impartial reporter wrinkled into concern at her brow, and she leaned forward as information vibrated her mastoid bone, washed through the fluids and hairs of her inner ear to her brain.



"There is a massive force congregating at the power station," she said. "The squad of security that attacked our detachment at the site has dug in and persisted. The refugee camp is less than a kilometer away. People from the camp are backing up the rebel squad, just out of lasgun range of our defense."



"Operation H," Flattery barked. "If they keep coming, have air support shift to the camp."



Marta paled further. She lowered her voice so that the guards wouldn't hear.



"Operation H, si... they'd see it from the camp. If you jelly the attackers, witnesses will know it wasn't a hylighter."



"Use an LTA," he said. "We have a few balloons in the hangar that look like hylighters. Get them into the air. We'll worry about witnesses later. I want that squad burned, I want anyone backing them up burned. Is that understood?"



Marta nodded, and her fingers flickered the orders across her instrument.



"The ferries?"



"Operational, sir. The current shift reported on time. Casualties high, but replacements are already on-site receiving training. The OMC launch lit off and docked at Orbiter station, no update. Current Control terminated their signal to the kelp in sector eight, there is no grid but no aggressive activity."



"Terminated?"



Flattery regretted the lie to MacIntosh. He was sure that the kelp would yield, given the full electrical prod long enough. He had never thought that MacIntosh would terminate the signal.



Idiot! What could he be thinking, giving the kelp its head. Doesn't he know how much we need those kelpways open?



He inhaled one long, slow breath, half in the left nostril, half in the right. He let it out just as slowly.



"Is it working?" he asked.



"A few merchant vessels lost," she said. "Most have surfaced, making repairs. They will not fare well in the storm."



"Order Dr. MacIntosh to reestablish the kelpways, or I will do it my way from here. He has one hour."



"Yes, sir."



Flattery's mood blackened. Two small explosions and a flash came from the center of Kalaloch. He signaled one of his guards.



"Have security get what they can from the leaders of this rabble. I don't expect much. Then have the rest of them staked in the open." He surveyed the cliffside behind him that led to the high reaches. "Have them staked up there," he said, "so that everyone below can study the results of their decision in detail. It shouldn't take long."



It was what Marta had told him about the kelp that interested him the most. He'd fabricated such an intricate web of deception about Crista Galli that Flattery himself had difficulty remembering which was his masterful illusion and which reality. His earliest warnings to keep her from any contact with the kelp was based more on hunch than data, but it was clear to him now that his hunch had been good.



The kelp could actually smell her!



"I ordered Current Control to opt for a surgical solution," Marta said. "They have one hour to achieve the grid by any other means. I explained that there were too many subs at stake."



"Will it be necessary to dissect the entire stand?"



"No," she said. "Like the mob, it should convert easily with minimal damage to the affected area. That corridor will not have the flexibility it once had, but it will be navigable as soon as the debris is swept."



"When it's over, have samples sent to the lab," he said. "Complete analysis. Find out why it could resist Current Control, then render it down for the toxin stockpile."



"The Zavatan..." she began, "it would be good politics t..."



"To give them what's left of the kelp?" He snorted in disgust. "Let them dredge their own. I don't want to be party to their heresy. And I want a lot of toxin on hand, I have a surprise yet for those 'vermin,' as Nevi calls them."



Marta noted the orders into the messenger at her waist.



It was clear to Flattery that the kelp must have sensed Crista Galli's presence. How else to explain this rebellion? It had occurred along the plotted route of Ozette's foil after Marta's device was jettisoned.



The kelp must have sensed her when the bug hit the water, he thought. He smiled again, partly out of a distant relief at not being aboard the Flying Fish at the time, but largely at the predicament that now embroiled Ozette and his Shadows.



"Overflights?" he asked.



"Bad weather already in," she replied. "Low probability of contact, high probability of loss. Two Grasshoppers available in the area, but they are frail and of limited range. Do you have orders for them?"



"Observation patterns as weather permits," he said. "I want to see who they turn to when they're in big trouble. Nevi will be on the scene soon enough."