The Ascension Factor

  “A hundred meters across!” Zentz gurgled.

  Zentz’s eyes were wild, the pupils dilating and constricting on both sides, dancing to some strange rhythm.

  Nevi didn’t answer. Zentz had started this raving about some giant hylighter as soon as Nevi had gotten the foil back in the air.

  “Crista Galli, kelp gone crazy,” Zentz went on, “giant hylighter grab whole foil …”

  “That’s hocus-pocus, and it’s in your head,” Nevi said.

  He knew Zentz couldn’t hear him, but it made Nevi feel better. His voice was calm and flat, a practiced calm that paid off whenever he had to work with Zentz. He knew it gave Zentz the creeps, and that always gave Nevi the edge. He wondered whether it would give Zentz the creeps in his dreams. He hoped so. Flying made Nevi nervous.

  The storm buffeted Nevi against the restraints in his command couch. Some of the updrafts along the coastline nearly emptied his stomach. Like most Pandorans, he preferred traveling the kelp’s subways, particularly during afternoon storms, but today speed was critical. The cat had played the mouse too loose. Maybe Zentz was right about their foil. Who knew what the kelp had shown him?

  If Ozette and Crista Galli got loose afoot in this country they might just wind up being dasher bait. Ozette didn’t strike him as the survival type. Nevi knew that Flattery needed both of them alive—for now. For now, what Flattery needed Nevi needed, and he didn’t want to get so comfortable out here that he forgot it.

  Zentz needs them alive more than anyone, he thought.

  The big question mark for Nevi was the hylighter—what would contact with that thing do to Crista Galli?

  Or what might it do for her?

  And something about those damned Zavatan squatters upcoast gave even Nevi the creeps. Nobody could farm the open country like that without some kind of protection. He wanted to know what that protection was. Or who. They kept one jump ahead of Flattery and the dashers—accomplishments that captured Nevi’s personal respect.

  The squall cleared occasionally, allowing Nevi glimpses of the coastline. Cloudfront pushed across both suns and confounded his perspective. He knew that thousands of square kilometers lay under Zavatan camouflage. It didn’t take much imagination to appreciate the value of that new fertile land below.

  In a matter of weeks the Zavatans turned bare rock into garden, pumped water and started up their smelly labs. The entire upcoast region was laced with streams and pockmarked with hundreds of small lakes. They’d already turned many of the lakes into fish farms. Their pitiful farms grew more than enough to sustain them, this Nevi knew. His information was better than Flattery’s, but Flattery didn’t pay him for information.

  Where does their surplus go? he wondered.

  He knew that when he discovered the answer to that one he would answer the Shadow question as well.

  No food, no Shadows, he thought.

  It would be a pity if Flattery managed to wipe out the farms to stop the supplies that he was sure were channeled to the underground. There must be a more profitable way …

  It occurred to him that the Shadows might win. He shrugged.

  Nevi admitted an admiration for these Zavatans, for their independence that Flattery couldn’t yet control. He didn’t intend to muddy his own hands, though this trip had already proved messy enough.

  Nevi smiled, a rare break in the steel of his countenance. He had plans for his retirement, and this upcoast region with its farmland and Pandora’s first, burgeoning forests appealed to him. The people up here just might want some professional protection soon. Protection from the likes of Flattery and his bungling Chief of Security.

  Lot of new squatters this year, he thought.

  Since the earthquakes started a few years ago people had turned to the surface for safety. Even with burmhouses it was easier to spot a dwelling than a tunnel, it wouldn’t take that much effort to map these people. Nevi flew into a sudden wall of weather and there wasn’t much possibility of spotting anything.

  Nevi kept his attention on the screen. The slash of rain against the metal skin and plaz of the cabin nearly deafened him. He switched on the landing lights to clarify the terrain. Still, visibility was a few hundred meters, tops. A buzzer reminded him that he was flying at the stall point.

  They were only a couple of kilometers downcoast from the overflight coordinates. Zentz camearound enough to set his couch up and hold his head.

  “So, how was it?” Nevi asked.

  “I don’t ever want to go back.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “Everywhere.” Zentz wiped his drool with his sleeve. “I went everywhere … at once. I saw them picked up.”

  “They’re around here somewhere.”

  “Beached,” Zentz said. “Down the cliff. Beached.”

  Nevi grunted his amusement. He imagined this gray land on a sunny day, blooming.

  Flattery couldn’t possibly send troops, he thought, they’d never come home at all.

  “Approaching set-down,” he said, and throttled back. “See them yet?”

  “No … yes!” Zentz pointed a shaking finger starboard. “There, look at the size of that … thing! I knew it was more than a dream.”

  Nevi was disgusted at the spit-spray of Zentz’s excitement. The squall moved on already as quickly as it had come, and visibility over the downed hylighter was good. The terrain, however, looked deadly. The crumple of downed foil was plainly visible amid the orange shards of the deflated hylighter.

  It was a monster, all right, and deflated it covered far more than the hundred-meter diameter it had occupied in the air. Almost half of it trailed the fifty meters down to the sea, and the rest lay crumpled in the narrow stretch of beach between the sea and the precipitous rocks. The foil appeared to be nearly intact right at the foot of the cliff.

  Nevi did not want to set down inside the perimeter of that thing—he’d seen what that blue dust did to some of those burned-out Zavatans who wandered dazed around the village. The strip of tideline was too narrow and the tides less predictable than he liked. The beach itself, from tideline to cliff, was a jumble of boulders. That meant a water landing or a set-down at the top of the cliff. He didn’t like the look of all that kelp in the water, or the positioning of the dead hylighter.

  “Electronic and infrared scan,” Nevi ordered. “I’m making a couple of passes so that we don’t get surprised down there. Then we’ll worry about how to get them out from under that thing.”

  Their situation suddenly struck Nevi as absurd. Flattery had positioned his precious Orbiter and had the Voidship nearly ready to go; he had plans to establish a steppingstone colony in a debris belt over a million kilometers away. Pandora’s moons were even more unstable than the planet. Even Nevi agreed that fleeing was the ultimate answer. But he doubted that it would be worth it in his own lifetime.

  Especially if he insisted on risking his life in a wrestling match with a hydrogen gasbag of hallucinatory dust and tentacles. He chose a set-down atop the cliff, near a trail that didn’t look too difficult. Zentz should be clear of his kelping by the time they reached bottom.

  If the girl’s as holy as they say, let’s see her get herself out of this one.

  Chapter 49

  That’s all Ship ever asked of us, that’s all WorShip was meant to be: find our own humanity and live up to it.

  —Kerro Panille, from The Clone Wars

  Rico sprung the galley hatch with a crowbar from the tool locker and saw Ben sitting up, fumbling with the catch of his harness.

  “Ben, buddy …”

  He stumbled over the crumbled deck to Ben’s couch, but was careful not to touch him. Ben’s Merman- green eyes seemed clear when they looked at him, but they weren’t tracking all that well. Both Ben and Crista were half-buried in debris from what was left of the galley.

  “Can you talk?”

  Ben’s voice caught in his throat. “I … I think so,” he said.

  “Sit back,” Rico said.

&n
bsp; His own head started a strange buzz, so he took a deep breath, let it out slow. “We’re not going anywhere for now, so relax.”

  He hesitated short of unclipping the last two restraints.

  “Crista …” Ben’s voice sounded foreign, distant. “Is she all right?”

  Rico felt his lips tingling, and his fingertips, too. Just like Ben to think of someone else first. He glanced over at the other couch. There was no movement. All the lights in the galley were out, but from where Rico knelt in the rubble it looked as if she wasn’t breathing.

  Shit!

  “Sit back,” Rico repeated, pushing Ben back. “I’ll check.” His muscles didn’t work quite as they should, and he felt as if he was moving in slow motion. The heavy rain that pelted their foil dimmed what little light seeped through the single uncovered port. Rico noticed that the shadows weren’t just shades of gray, but dancing hues of blue and green, backed up by flickering tongues of a cold yellow flame.

  A halo of yellow flame surrounded the prone form of Crista Galli. Rico couldn’t see any movement, but her lips were pink and that gave him hope. He moved to check for a pulse at her neck, then backed off. He couldn’t bring himself to touch her.

  She lay still, absolutely sagged, her mouth a little open. The inflated dive collar kept her head back and her airway clear. Even this way, Rico had to admit she was beautiful. For Ben’s sake, for the sake of the hungry people of Pandora, he hoped she stayed alive. As he watched, a green glow smoldered over her body. A fainter glow, also green but lighter-hued, came from himself. Pockets of green oozed out of him and, amoebalike, they crept the air. One of these joined with a similar pocket oozing away from Crista Galli. She was alive, no question about it. Now all he had to do was keep her that way.

  “Rico?”

  “Yeah, Ben,” he said.

  His voice sounded a long way away to himself.

  But it’s right here my voice is right here.

  “Is she all right?”

  Rico breathed in deeply, and some of the lime-green glow sped into his lungs like fog or dust.

  “She’s OK,” he said, fighting for control of his tongue. “Flattery gave her drugs a while back.”

  Rico turned slowly and saw his partner backlighted by the one piece of uncovered plaz. The rain that spatted against it struck sparks that shot out from Ben and ricocheted around the galley. Ben sat up rubbing his eyes, and a roil of fire moved with him. It was not the blue-green glow that captured Crista and Rico, but a sensuous warm glow like the throb of some membrane from the inside.

  The spore dust …

  “I think I’m dusted,” he told Ben in his new, slow way. “How do you feel?”

  “Headache,” he heard Ben say. “Helluva headache.”

  Ben’s speech was thick and slurred.

  “And my muscles don’t all want to go right, but they work. That shot did it.”

  Rico helped him sit up. Their two haloes arced and whirled around them. Ben held his head between his hands, doubled over nearly to his knees. “I see what you mean … I’m starting to feel a little dusted, myself. Long time.”

  “Yeah,” Rico said, letting out another slow breath, “long time. With Crista it’s drugs. Flattery’s drugs.”

  “Drugs, yeah,” Ben said. “She’s been laced up with something, something that Flattery wants people to think is kelp juice. Figures.”

  Ben stood on wobbly legs, holding Rico and the bulkhead, and made his way to Crista Galli. Rico watched as Ben checked her pulse, bent to her breathing.

  “She’s in there,” Ben said. “If she’s like I was, she can hear us, too.” He leaned down to her ear. “You’ll be all right,” he said, and patted her arm.

  Rico hoped it wasn’t a lie. Some panicky feeling in his gut told him that none of them would ever be all right. The green of his aura sucked itself tight against his body. When he stuffed his unease away, it crept out from him again and mixed with the others.

  The drugs are the danger, not her touch, he reminded himself. How long before they wear off?

  Rico knew that a single-dose dusting didn’t last that long in real time. He would have to remind himself that it was the dust that warped time. He knew they didn’t have much of it to spare. They could count on help from the kelp. This was something he felt, intuited.

  “We’d better see what we have left,” Ben said.

  Rico forced himself to focus. He knew Ben was right, and if they were both dusted then they both had to pay attention.

  “If we don’t pay attention, we’re dead,” Rico heard himself say. Ben just grunted.

  Rico pulled the lasgun from his belt, checked the charges. “They’ll know we’re down,” he said. “We have to get out from under this mess, we’re too easy to spot.”

  He braced himself against the upside-down bulkhead and grumbled, “Things were tough enough without all of us going to dreamland.”

  Rico started through the buckled-in hatch.

  “Bring me some dust,” Ben said. “That’s what we need to get her out of this.”

  “No way,” Rico said. “She’s had enough, right here. We don’t know what Flattery’s been doing to her. A heavy dose might kill her, you don’t know …”

  He heard his voice going on without him. Ben was insisting that he was right, that she’d already been dusted and it was bringing her around, that what she needed was more …

  “I’m serious, Rico. She needs it, and the antidote—you saw what it did to her. Think about it.”

  Rico didn’t understand, and he knew they didn’t have time to think about it.

  He didn’t say anything more, just turned on his heel and picked up Crista’s legs under the knees. Ben reached under her arms and they stumbled with her through the hatchway into what was left of the cabin.

  A few of the lights still worked, illuminating the burst-in walls and ceiling. The galley and aft portion of the foil remained upright, but the boat was twisted nearly in half at the cabin hatchway. The entire bow lay on its side. One of the wings had sprung from its retraction bay and sliced into the fuselage, peeling a section of hull away like a rind.

  Ben brushed away debris with his feet and they set Crista down. She called his name and gripped his arm. Rico went immediately to work trying to free them from the deflated hylighter and the wreckage. Some pockets of undissipated hydrogen worried him. The rain helped, but he worried about sparks—not the spiritual kind he’d seen in the galley, but the metal-to-rock kind that might flash the hydrogen.

  “There’s still some gas around here,” Rico warned them. “It shouldn’t be a problem but we should be careful. Our judgment’s been dusted, too, so we have to be extra careful. Don’t move around much until we get free.”

  Rico’s legs stood in the fuselage rip while the rest of him worked at using the wing section as a shield to push the dead hylighter away from the foil. With his head and shoulders in the open he could see that the foil lay next to the cliff, with the hylighter spread out between the foil and the sea. A small flap of the bag and two tentacles covered the foil. The whole scene whirled in a lightshow of spore-dust.

  No gas out here, he thought. Not with this good offshore breeze.

  Rico smelled a greasy char, sickly sweet, as he burned through the hylighter flap with his lasgun. Peeling it back from the fuselage made him even more lightheaded and wobbly-kneed. A thick, steamy smoke filled the cabin and Crista coughed behind him.

  “Crista!”

  Ben’s voice sounded happier than Rico had heard it in a long time. Releasing the flap of hylighter let in some air and some light. The rain had muddied most of the dust, but they’d still had a pretty stiff dose. Rico’s head felt as if it was ready to take a big plunge, as if he was clinging to some giant fluke just before it sounded for the deeps. He kept reminding himself aloud, “We’ve been dusted, it will pass soon” until it made him laugh. He ducked back inside. Crista leaned on one elbow, coughing and gasping, and shook her head.

  “Ben,” h
er voice gravelly, deep, “we are saved. Avata will see to it.”

  Just then a tentacle slithered through the hole above them. In a blink it snaked around Rico’s waist and snatched him back through the gap. Its grip on his waist was stronger than anything he’d felt in his lifetime, but it didn’t hurt. He heard a shout and felt a grab on his foot from Ben, then the hole and the foil receded from sight, and Rico couldn’t see anything but dark green water.

  Chapter 50

  Therefore, if it was more necessary in those days to satisfy the soldiers than the people, this was because the soldiers had more power than the people. Today … all rulers find it more necessary to satisfy the people than the soldiers, because the former now have more power than the latter.

  —Machiavelli, The Prince

  Holomaster Rico LaPush was a fine prize indeed. The Immensity respected this human LaPush as a sculptor of images, the best that the humans had ever mustered. For nearly a decade the Immensity had monitored human transmissions in all spectra. Through these transmissions it witnessed the inevitable unraveling of human politics. When it had its own data to compare, it found significant facts wanting. From humans it learned to lie, then learned the subtleties between lie and illusion, truth and illumination.

  The Immensity intended to learn holography. On its own it had mustered transient illusion at times—ghost ships at sea, phantom radio transmissions—the parlor tricks of broadcast. Holography was more precious than that. The Immensity knew humans, now, and human history. Holography, the pure language of imagery and symbol, would become the interspecies tongue.

  Other communications, of course, sufficed—electrical voice-talk of the humans. They spoke to each other of fish concentrations, weather, delivered the mysterious modulations that humans called “music.” Except for the music this had been easily understood, but not very interesting. Then the human they dared call “Kelpmaster” began using the kelp itself as a medium of conduction. This private communications channel linked the Orbiter with the Zavatan world, and the kelp heard everything. The Immensity spoke in pictures, and these words over the kelp channel helped weave a picture of the world as it was, and as it could be. Though the Kelpmaster listened, he lacked the subtleties of holography that the Immensity required.