The Ascension Factor Read online

  She stepped from the semi-dim cabin into a warm yellow glow. The galley was a bright room of Island Cedar, yellowburl and brass. She could imagine a HoloVision Nightly News crew spread out over the two tables with coffee and notes in the half-hour before air time. It was a clean, well-lighted space. Holo cubes of the crew in action on various assignments sat in a rack against the inboard bulkhead. Crista sat at the first of two hexagonal tables and pulled down a couple of the cubes to look at.

  “These really stand out at you,” she said, moving the holograms through different angles of light. “Nothing in Flattery’s collection matches these for quality.”

  “Thanks to Rico,” Ben said. “He’s a born inventor. He’d be a rich man today if Flattery’s Merman Mercantile hadn’t jumped into the middle of things. Our stuff is good because Rico makes up the equipment himself. We always roll with the best.”

  “She’s very pretty,” Crista said, holding a scene of Ben and Beatriz with their arms around each other. “You two have worked together for a long time. Were you in love, the two of you?”

  Ben cleared his throat and pushed a few icons. She heard the whirr of galley machinery at work.

  “Now it’s hard to know whether we were truly in love or whether we’d just survived so much together that we felt no one else could understand—except maybe Rico, of course.”

  “And you made love with her?”

  “Yes.”

  Ben stood with his back to her, staring at the backs of his hands on the countertop. “Yes, we made love. For several years. Given our lives, it would have been impossible that we didn’t.”

  “But now you’re not?”

  She saw the slightest shake of the back of his head.

  “No.”

  “Does that make you sad? Do you miss her?”

  When he turned to her she saw the consternation on his face, the struggle he seemed to be having with words. She thought perhaps he’d started out to lie to her, but with a sigh he changed his mind.

  “Yes,” he said, “I miss her. Not as a lover, that’s past and would be too clumsy to rekindle. I miss working with her because she’s so goddamn good at getting people to talk in front of cameras. Rico handled the techno stuff, and between us she and I could get to the bottom of most anything. I think she’s in love with MacIntosh up in Current Control, but I don’t think she’s admitted it,yet. If it’s true, it should make life easier for both of us.”

  “If one of you is in love, then that takes the heat off?”

  Ben laughed. “I suppose you could say that, yes.”

  She lowered her gaze to the cube that her hands passed back and forth in front of her. “Could you ever be in love with me?”

  He laughed a soft laugh, picked up her hand and leaned closer.

  “I remember everything about you,” he said. “That first day I saw you in Flattery’s lab, when you looked at me over your shoulder and smiled … I had a feeling when our eyes met like I’ve never had before. I still get it every time I see you, think of you, dream of you. Isn’t that something like love?”

  Her pale skin flushed red from the neck of her dress to the roots of her shaggy white hair at her forehead.

  “It’s the same for me,” she said. “But I have nothing to compare with. And how could I live up to whatever you’ve shared with … her?”

  “Love isn’t a competition,” he said. “It happens. I had some tough times, living with B, but I don’t have to bring up the bad parts to punish myself for missing the friendship, the good parts. I think she and I are both people who refuse to dislike someone we’ve loved. She’s an exceptional person or I wouldn’t have loved her. A lot of bliss, a lot of turmoil, but no boredom at all. The bliss part she called ‘our convergent lines.’ Ultimately we blamed each other for being impossible when it was our situation we couldn’t bear …”

  His green eyes darkened and, for a moment, went somewhere…somewhen.

  Crista squeezed his hand.

  “Did you take the job of interviewing me because you knew that she was working on Flattery’s project at the Preserve?”

  He laughed again, an easy laugh, as though they and the boat were all that existed—no Flattery, no Warrior’s Union, just a little outing under the sea.

  “That’s yes and no,” he said. “I think your story is the most exciting thing I can show the rest of Pandora. I wouldn’t have tried for it otherwise. But, yes, I did hope, in a moment of wallowing in loneliness, that I’d see her again.”

  “And … ?”

  “I did.” He shrugged. “The thrill was gone and we were good friends. Good friends who still work very well together.”

  “You knew that Flattery was buying off all three of us with those interviews, didn’t you?” Crista asked.

  She set her hat beside her on the deck and peeled off her headband and mantilla while still holding his hand. She gave her matted hair a shake, and he let go her hand to gather their utensils at the sideboard.

  He held my hand longer than the sum of all human touches in my memory!

  “I figured it out,” he said. “That’s why … this. Flattery pulled the corporate strings, denying air time before the first beam was shot. But no one was told. I was paid, you were interviewed at length on five occasions—and this was the story of the century! He paid to have it done so he could kill it.”

  “Yes,” she said, “with no pangs of conscience whatsoever. Look what it got him: We are here, together. I, at least, am happier. And hungry,” she indicated her disguise, “in spite of how it looks.”

  Ben patted the lump of clothing strapped to her belly. “And fulfilled, too,” he teased. He dared to stroke her cheek again with a smile before fetching two very solid mugs of very hot coffee. In rough current, the mugs didn’t slide the table like the utensils.

  She watched the seascape as their foil slithered through the kelpways, her quick breaths fogging the plaz. Though the Preserve was a seaside base camp, Crista never once had been allowed down to the beach. Flattery feared her relationship with the kelp, and saw to it that others around her did, too.

  Ben nudged her shoulder and pointed through the starboard port toward the skeletal remains of a kelp outpost, dimly visible in the foil’s deepwater lights. The kelp itself had been burned back to knobby stumps for a thousand meters all around.

  “Report says kelp killed three families here, sixteen people,” he said. “Vashon Security did their retaliatory number on the kelp, as you can see. They call it ‘pruning.’”

  Though it was shadowland beneath a weak wash of light and though the engines had quieted in submersible mode, Crista focused on the tingle at her shoulder where Ben had touched her. She fought back tears of joy. How could she explain this to him, who touched people and was touched at will?

  He pulled two hot trays out of the galley and set them on the table. He dealt out little containers of red, green and yellow sauces. She knew she needed food, strength, but some dreaminess had caught her up since boarding the foil and she didn’t really want to shake it.

  Sunlight strengthened her, this she knew. The beautiful kiss from Ben, that strengthened her, too. Something about this Rico LaPush also strengthened her, but she didn’t know what.

  Crista glanced again at Ben, beside her, as his gaze searched the dimness of the passing landscape.

  “The Preserve is under attack,” Ben said. She didn’t respond. “You can watch it onscreen if you want.” He indicated the briefing screen against the aft galley bulkhead. She preferred the old word “wall,” but not many used it. Tribute to Pandora’s watery history and Islander influence. Hunger broke through her reverie, and she chose the chopsticks.

  Though Ben talked on, Crista concentrated on her meal, eating half of Ben’s as well, leaving him the vegetables. His words buzzed like a fat bee in the warm galley air. All the while a lullaby kept running through her head that no human ear had heard in two thousand years.

  Hush little baby don’t say a word

 
Momma’s gonna buy you a mockingbird …

  She had learned to be cautious wandering her memories, too. When the flashbacks started sometimes they took over, unpeeling whole sections of other people’s lives. They lasted longer each time, dragging Crista through hours of lightning-fast memories: no focus, no fine-tuning, simply off or on.

  First it was blinks, then seconds, moments. A minute of high-speed memory, lived with a full sensory component, could wring an entire lifetime out of the wet cloth of her mind. Her last flashback had terminated only after exhaustion and heavy sedation. It had lasted nearly four hours. Though conscious immediately, she had been dazed and unable to speak for three days. Flattery had used this as an excuse to further limit her life at his compound, and to adjust her medications.

  She felt that same dazedness now, but no onslaught of memories, no sweat, no fear.

  “Crista Galli,” Ben said, “you have quite the life awaiting you. You are ‘the One, Her Holiness,’ a living legend. You are the most important person alive today.”

  She felt an uneasiness at what he said, and sought reason to feel uneasy at the way he said it. She clung to the word “person”, something she had never been called.

  “‘The One’?” she muttered. “‘The One’ to do what?”

  “You are the One for whom they have waited in suffering for so long,” he said. “Depending on whom you believe, you are the last salvation of humankind, or you are the kelp’s secret weapon to eradicate humans forever. In your glimpse of the people of Kalaloch you must have felt your power. There is a lot for you to learn, and quickly. We will help you with that. But because one does not touch a god, one does not come before a god scratching one’s fleas, you will see only the best side of the faithful, and the worst side of the rest.”

  “When the people know me, know it’s all a—”

  “They will not know you,” he interrupted. “Not the ‘you’ that you mean. They want to believe something else too much to stop them. Faith can do that.

  “You must be careful, you must be quiet. And you must be a mystery. We need that mystery to beat Flattery. You will see plenty of need before very much longer, and I think you will agree with me. Eat the rest if you’re still hungry. We may not always be among those who have food.”

  She was hungry, very hungry. She drank the broth from her soup, left the vegetables again and picked out the meat. She also picked out the meat from the sandwich he made her. She ate the bread in tiny bites to make it last longer.

  She thought she could tell Ben, tell them all something of need. Touch was a human need and she was mostly human. At times someone would touch her by accident or quickly in a breathless dare. The daring ones, she recognized now, must be the religious zealots, the Zavatans that Ben had told her about. There was no way to know which way it would be: embarrassment or death.

  When she let Ben kiss her the previous night she had known it was possible that he would die. She had the strongest feeling that she would die, too, and somehow that made it all right. For the first time she felt mortal, and risked it. When neither of them died, she even kissed him back a little. Her heart pumped something like fear, even at the memory. Afterward, in his green eyes so nearly like her own, she saw the glitter of laughter and a good dare taken.

  He looked so happy!

  She remembered that few people around her had ever looked happy, except the Director. Mostly, they seemed afraid.

  “Why did you kiss me?” she asked. A flush crept out of her collar. She didn’t want to look at him but finally couldn’t help it. He was smiling.

  “Because you let me.”

  “You weren’t afraid … ?”

  “Afraid you wouldn’t like it? Yes. Afraid of what you might do to me? No.” He laughed. “I have a theory. If people expect to go crazy when they touch you, then that’s what they do. It’s a hysteria, that’s all …”

  She put her palm on his chest and said, evenly, “You don’t know anything about me. You were lucky … we were lucky.” She patted his shirt. “You didn’t sleep,” she said. “If it’s necessary that one of us sit up, I can do it from now on.”

  Something dark passed over his expression.

  “There were arrangements,” he said, “with some of the women we’ll meet upcoast—you were to stay with them. It was assumed that you would prefer …”

  “It has to be you,” she insisted. “You have no woman in your life, isn’t that right?”

  “That’s right, but it’s not a matter of …”

  “What’s it a matter of?” she blurted. “Don’t you like me?”

  Maybe surprise lifted the darkness from his face, or maybe it was the blush. “I like you,” he said. “I like you a lot.”

  “Then it’s settled,” she said. “I can stay with you.”

  “It’s not as easy as that.”

  “It is if ‘The One’ makes it so,” she said. “Get some rest between now and then. If you really are immune to me, you’re going to need it.”

  Chapter 20

  Intervention into destiny by god or man requires the most delicate care.

  —Dwarf MacIntosh, Kelpmaster, Current Control

  Raja Flattery’s private bunker lay safely beneath almost thirty meters of Pandoran stone. High, domelike ceilings held back the psychological crush and some well-chosen holograms draped the walls with scenes from outside the walls. Above him, in the rubble of his surface compound, Flattery’s security finished the last roundup of resisters.

  “Stand down the fighting and send in the medics.”

  Thanks to the hylighters, there would be a lot of burns. He spoke the order into his console and didn’t wait for acknowledgment. His bunker area was honeycombed with cubicles, and those cubicles were occupied by the underlings who carried out his orders and asked no questions. Fewer than a handful had personal access to the Director.

  Ironic, how a little fire can cool things down.

  His security teams mopped up the carnage overhead and formed stark little shadows hunching under Pandora’s unforgiving suns. Though the sterile images of battle came into his bunker by holo, the Director thought he sniffed a distinct stench of burning hair beside him at the console. The imagination … the mind … what incredible tools.

  His personal security team waited just outside his hatch, a precaution. There was no place on Pandora that he could flee to that would be as secure as his own compound. Certainly there was nowhere as luxurious. A brunch of sebet simmered in Orcas Red spread out at his left hand. There was a fine bite to these Pandoran wines that pleased him, even early in the day.

  “Captain,” he spoke to the shadowy figure at his hatch, “that camera team, were they deployed as scheduled?”

  “Yes, sir,” the captain’s back stiffened. “Captain Brood’s men have been at the launch site since daybreak. They know what you want.”

  “And the HoloVision people, the ones the studio sent out to cover this … mess?”

  “Captain Brood suggested letting them film, sir. When it’s done, his team can access their film, as well as their cameras and other equipment. He says—”

  Flattery shouted at his attendant, “Captain, did anyone give this … Captain Brood … permission to start thinking? Did you?”

  The stiffened spine stiffened even more. “No, sir.”

  Flattery was thankful that the shadows hid the man’s face. There was no profile to it. Where the captain’s nose should be there were two moist slits that separated a very wide set of eyes. When Flattery talked with Nevi, at least he could focus on the man’s eyes. This man wasn’t that interesting, and Flattery had all too much time to dwell on the malformed face.

  Flattery spoke in his most reasonable tone.

  “I want nothing to go on HoloVision today without my prior approval. Brood’s team is to receive priority treatment, even if we have to replace the entire production staff, understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get their manager into my office within the hour
, that puffy little maggot Milhous. We need cooperation and I don’t want any slip-ups. Tell him to bring some canned stuff that we can use to preempt today until Brood’s men get their tapes. No sense in the rest of the world getting inspired by what’s going on here.”

  “Right, sir. Right away, sir.”

  “Captain?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re a good man, Captain. Your family will be pleased that you’re working with me.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  The man’s back retreated through the main hatchway to the offices. Flattery sighed. He watered the wine a bit and raised a glass to his own firmness under duress. He toasted his search teams, who fanned out even now to burn the last of the bodies up in the rocks. This was a Zavatan influence, this burning of bodies. It was a practice that Flattery welcomed and supported. The traditional burials at sea turned into a ghastly sight and a health hazard on Pandora’s few beaches.

  Bodies washing up everywhere …

  He suppressed a shudder at the memory. It was more than disgusting, it was a religious and economic disaster. Every nitwit who touched the kelp in the process came back a prophet. The entire Pandoran social structure was shattered by the recent geological changes alone, but this kelp business made it a madhouse.

  Women of the settlements wouldn’t buy fish for a week after a traditional sea burial. They didn’t want to take a chance on eating fish that had eaten old Uncle Dak. There were times, early in Flattery’s rise to power, when he had seen hundreds of embroidered burial bags washed up on the beach at a time, and the local fleets wouldn’t fish for a month. Flattery’s answer was to buy out the importers, stockpile everything, and control the seaways.

  “Control,” he muttered. “That’s the key. Control.”

  Flattery toasted the holo that played in the center of his quarters. His men had been forced to inflict heavier casualties than he preferred, and it would raise hob with the work force just at a time when he needed things smooth. Still, their way was best. There were plenty of replacements, though starvation made them dim-witted weaklings. Things would be slow during the training period.