The Ascension Factor Read online

  She nodded, started to say, “So did we,” but nothing came out of her throat but a croak.

  For the first time she noticed his name, stitched above the Vashon Security insignia at his left breast: “Brood.” Her only wish right now was that she would live long enough to see Captain Brood die.

  He turned back to the studio and its seventeen dead warm bodies. Beatriz looked once again at herself on the monitor. The tape replayed an interview with Dwarf MacIntosh, Kelpmaster of Current Control. He was one of the few humans, other than Flattery, to survive the opening of the hyb tanks twenty-five years ago. He was so tall she’d had to stand on a box to do the interview. She had met him on her first flight to the new orbital complex, the day after her last night with Ben. Within a month she was sure that she was in love.

  “Bag ’em up,” the captain told his men. “Squeegee this place down, seal it off, then get all their production shit aboard.”

  He bowed to her then, opened the hatch for her and said, “We’re expecting the replacements for your crew any minute. They are my men, and will do as they’re told. My squad and I will travel along, to see that you do, too.”

  Chapter 24

  The mind at ease is a dead mind.

  —Dwarf MacIntosh, Kelpmaster, Current Control

  Dwarf MacIntosh floated in the turretlike chamber of Current Control and surveyed the planet below for the birth of a certain squall at sea. About this time every day a swirl of clouds materialized over Pandora’s largest wild kelp bed. It was some comfort now to see this squall forming; something was normal today even though the behavior of the kelp was completely loco. Today, humans didn’t make much sense to him, either.

  “The Turret,” as he called it, was a plasma-glass extravagance of materials and workmanship that MacIntosh had fabricated for himself before installing Current Control in the orbital station.

  I’d have taken the job anyway, Mack admitted, but only to himself. “Kelpmaster” wasn’t so much a job to him as it was a privilege. He couldn’t have allowed any of Flattery’s goons such an easy throttlehold on the kelp. Besides, he felt much more comfortable in orbit than he did on Pandora’s surface.

  Like Flattery, Mack had been cloned, raised and trained in the sterility of Moonbase, in the hyperregimentation and clonophobia of Moonbase. His whole life, until hybernation, had been spent orbiting an Earth that, for him and for all clones, never existed. In those days, Flattery had openly pined for a life Earthside, but even then Dwarf MacIntosh looked outward, past Earth’s measly system to the possibilities beyond.

  From his turret Mack observed and charted many of these possibilities. He named them, but not the few special names he saved for his unborn children. He had spent the past two years above Pandora, refusing the usual R&R rotations groundside. In that time MacIntosh had not recognized a single star that would lead them Earthward. He liked it that way.

  Dwarf MacIntosh awoke from hybernation on Pandora one day in indescribable pain and found himself in the middle of nowhere, galactically speaking. In spite of the planet’s horrors he was in his own heaven among a trillion brand-new stars. The other survivors clung to that little wretch of a planet and most of them died there. Alyssa Marsh … well, she died, too. She died the day Moonbase started imprinting her for backup OMC.

  Mack and Flattery shared a dream of driving farther into the void. Mack felt it a pity, in a way, since he had never liked Flattery, even during training with him back at Moonbase. Their differences had come out lately over management of the kelp.

  If Flattery had any idea of what we’ve done, of what the kelp is—

  “Dr. MacIntosh, shuttle’s set for launch.”

  Mack handed himself out of the turret and with one foot-thrust sailed across the huge control room to his personal console. Spud Soleus, his first assistant, busied himself at the primary terminal.

  A glance at the number six display told Mack that the kelp in the SLS sector was performing as directed. The number eight display was a different story, however. The great kelp bed down-coast of Victoria was still a writhing tangle. No telling how many freighters were lost in there. He punched up another batch of coffee.

  “What’s the delay?”

  Spud shrugged his skinny shoulders, keeping to his console.

  “They said something about replacements for the news crew. You know Flattery, can’t do anything without crowing to the press.”

  “Who’s been replaced?” he asked. He felt his heart jump a bit. He’d been hoping … no, planning to see Beatriz Tatoosh again. He’d thought about Beatriz Tatoosh daily from the moment her shuttle left nearly two months ago. His dreams took up where his thoughts left off, and he had dreamed up the hope that she could make a permanent base aboard the Orbiter.

  “Don’t know,” Spud said. “Don’t know why, neither. Everything was cool just a while ago for Newsbreak. Did you see it?”

  MacIntosh shook his head.

  “Yeah, you were in your turret. The Tatoosh woman did the show, said something about Ben Ozette missing. That must throw their staffing off or something.”

  “Yeah,” Mack said, “he’s a little goody-goody for me, but he means well. He’s sure been on the Director’s tail lately.”

  Dwarf could see Spud’s frown reflected in one of the dead screens.

  “It’s not a good idea to get on the Director’s tail,” Spud said. “Not good at all. If you didn’t see the Newsbreak, then you didn’t see yourself, either.”

  “Me? What … ?”

  “That show they did when you first installed this station,” Spud said. “They reran it. Your hair wasn’t as gray two years ago. I wish that Beatriz Tatoosh would look at me the way she looked at you.”

  “Stow it!” MacIntosh said.

  Soleus’s shoulders sagged slightly, but he kept at his board in silence.

  “Sorry,” MacIntosh said.

  “Inappropriate,” Spud replied.

  “Want me to take it now?”

  “I wish somebody would. What the hell’s happening to our kelp?”

  “It’s not our kelp,” MacIntosh reminded him. “The kelp is its own … self. We’re keeping it in chains. It’s doing what any enslaved being with dignity does—it’s fighting the chains.”

  “But Flattery’s men will just prune it back, or worse yet they’ll stump the whole stand.”

  “Not forever. There is a basic problem with slavery. The master is enslaved by the slave.”

  “C’mon, Dr. Mack …”

  MacIntosh laughed.

  “It’s true,” he said. “Look at history, that’s easy enough. And Flattery, of all people, should know better. We clones were the slaves of our age. First-generation clones had it real tough. They were grown as organ farms for the donors. They needed us, but they needed us to do what we were told. Now he’s enslaved the kelp, stunted its reason, because he needs it to do what it’s told. He can’t keep cutting it back, because he can’t afford the regrowth time.”

  “So, what’ll happen?”

  “A showdown,” MacIntosh said. “And if Flattery’s still groundside when it comes he’d better hope that the kelp needs him for something or I wouldn’t give you two bits for his chances.”

  “Two bits of what?”

  MacIntosh laughed again, a big bark of a laugh to match his size.

  “I wouldn’t want to guess how old that expression is,” he said. “When I was at Moonbase, two bits was a quarter, which was a quarter of a dollar, which was the currency we used. But it started way before that.”

  “We’d say, ‘I wouldn’t give a dasher turd for his chances.’”

  “That’s probably a better assessment.”

  MacIntosh pointed at the six red lights blinking on their messenger console. “Whose calls are we not taking?”

  “The Director,” Spud said, and swiveled his chair from the console board. “He wants us to do something about the kelp in sector eight, as though we weren’t trying.”

  “Do somethin
g … hah! If we push any harder we’ll fry our board, and that kelp, and anybody inside it.”

  “I wonder what it is that the kelp wants?”

  “What if we gave it its head?” MacIntosh mused. “That would be one way to find out. What could it do that it hasn’t already done?”

  Spud shrugged, and said, “You’ve got my vote. How you going to convince the Director?”

  A glance at the display showed the entire stand of kelp to be twisting itself into a vortex, like the whirlpool in a drain. As near as MacIntosh could tell, Current Control was at its maximum limit of restraint.

  Spud pointed at the display. “There’s a focus of electrical override here. Whatever’s bugging the kelp is right there.”

  “Electrical or mechanical?”

  “Could be either, or both—it’s a heavy traffic area,” Spud said. “Something down there is definitely irritating the kelp.”

  “Yes,” MacIntosh agreed, “that’s my thought. The electrical override is coming from the kelp itself. It must be responding to something. That stand’s not mature enough to think for itself. Or, at least, it shouldn’t be.”

  “Doc?”

  “Yeah?”

  MacIntosh watched the console review the kelp’s configuration changes over the past half-hour. Something nagged at him, something that would explain the kelp’s sudden … behavior.

  “I’ve extrapolated the path of the override.”

  MacIntosh looked at Spud, who was busy at his own console, and saw a very thin, very pale assistant. Spud’s pointing finger trembled with excitement.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a spiral, headed into the middle of sector eight.”

  “That means the one kelp bed is delivering something to its neighbor—isn’t that what it looks like to you?”

  “Or the neighbor is snatching it away.”

  “Spud, I’ll bet you’re right.”

  MacIntosh stepped up to the console and tapped out a sequence with his two huge index fingers. The red lights on the messenger panel went black.

  “We just had a relay malfunction,” MacIntosh said, and winked at Spud. “Next time Flattery calls, tell him it was a hardwire failure and you worked it out personally. Maybe you’ll get a promotion. If I’ve guessed wrong, my job will be up for grabs. Now, we might as well let go the reins on this kelp and see where the hell it runs.”

  MacIntosh heard Spud swallow behind him and he smiled. “What’s the big deal, Spud? It’s a plant, it’s not going anywhere.”

  “Well … well, it’s just that Flattery doesn’t trust anybody—it’d be like him to have some kind of booby-trap …”

  “He did,” MacIntosh said, “and this stand got itself blown apart a few years back. But he hasn’t reset charges here yet—the kelp’s not supposed to get this frisky this soon.” He waited for the burst line to charge.

  “There!” he said, and pressed the send signal. “Now let’s sit back and see what cooks. Something bizarre is inside there, and I’d like to be the first to know what it is. If we can’t do anything with this stand, maybe we can at least learn from it. Besides,” he winked again, “Flattery’s down there, we’re not.”

  A beeping signal from his console interrupted him. He opened the intercom to Launch Command. “We sling our bird your way in five minutes,” the voice said. “Any contraindications?”

  “Negative,” MacIntosh replied. “Currents at your site are stable, weather will arrive your location in approximately one hour.”

  “Roger that, Current Control. Launch is a go for … four minutes.”

  Chapter 25

  Canon in D

  —Pachelbel

  The Immensity recoiled with a snap from the shock of freedom, then let its tendrils and fronds drift in their tingling bliss. It had been a long time since this union of stands had felt good, and never had it felt this good. The submarine trains foundering among its vines were inconsequential now.

  A pulse went out among the fronds, a ripple throughout the Immensity from the tiny foil adrift at its outer reaches. A mass of tentacles cradled the foil and delighted in the scent of self that it gave from its brittle skin.

  The Immensity knew this slippery little craft was fragile, so tumbled it inward, gently, frond to frond. Other scents mingled with that of the One. One of these scents was familiar, provocative, kelplike. The Holomaster, Rico LaPush, was in the company of someone that the kelp had encountered before … before … well, no matter. It would find out soon enough.

  The Immensity had learned to sniff out the holo language of humans from their spectrum of odd scents. It decided, early upon awakening this time, that it would have to speak with humans to live. It also concluded that it would have to speak the holo language if it wanted to speak with humans.

  The foil tried to wriggle out of the kelp’s net. Much pain now through the vines, where all of the trains trapped in sector eight tried to burn, cut, slash their way toward their precious atmosphere topside. Some of these the kelp crushed reflexively, but when the death scents of the crews mingled with the sea it forced itself to calm and to reason.

  Death, it reminded itself, is not the answer to life.

  The Immensity opened several kelpways and marveled at the easy ballet of subs heading topside. The bright white HoloVision foil suffered the grip of the Immensity, strained its engines trying to flee, but never lashed out at its tormentor. This the Immensity would expect of the One, who was civilized in the arms of kelp, and of the honorable associates of Holomaster Rico LaPush.

  Chapter 26

  In conscience you find the structure, the form of consciousness, the beauty.

  —Kerro Panille, “Translations from the Avata,” The Histories

  Beatriz listened to the launch crew director count down the final minute over the speaker. Her shaky fingers chattered the metal clips as she snugged up her harness. She tried to think of the straps around her as Mack’s arms and she tried to imagine they held her as Ben’s did the night they drove old Vashon down. It didn’t work. Nothing could erase the sight of her crew, slaughtered like sebet in a pen.

  For a mistake, she thought. They all died because that bastard made a mistake.

  She knew that the captain was afraid, she could smell it on him before he gave the final order at the studio. He obviously didn’t know whether Flattery would promote him or execute him for his decision. Beatriz knew that her life, perhaps many other lives, teetered in this balance.

  “Ten seconds to launch.”

  She inhaled a long, slow breath through her mouth and let it sigh out her nostrils. This was a relaxation technique that Rico had taught her when they all nearly drowned five years ago.

  “Five, four …” She took a little breath. “ … one …”

  The compressed-air “boot” punched them up the launch tube and a pair of Atkinson Rams slung them toward orbit. She hated this part of the ride—it reminded her of the time the fat girl sat on her chest when she was just starting school, and she didn’t like the feel of her face flattening out against the strain. On this launch, however, she wasn’t worried about wrinkles, engine failure, being trapped in orbit. She was worried about the captain, and how she could help convince him of the necessity of keeping her alive.

  No one in the shuttle cabin looked familiar. Most of them had changed out of their fatigues and into civilian clothes. They were quiet; Beatriz thought that they must be weighing the consequences of the shootings. She didn’t see the man who started it. That was the man she feared even more than the captain—Ben had always said that the jumpy ones get you killed.

  How could he be so right and be so far away from me?

  She rubbed her tired face and patted her cheeks to keep hysteria at bay. She needed information, and a lot of it.

  Mack, she thought. He’ll help me, I’m sure.

  For an instant her fear included him. After all, he was an original crew member like Flattery. They had worked together long before waking from hybernatio
n on Pandora.

  What if … what if … ?

  She shook off her fears. If her imagination had to run away with her, she preferred that it ally her with Mack instead of against him. Mack was not at all like Flattery, this she knew. Even Mack had cringed at the news when Flattery converted Alyssa Marsh to an Organic Mental Core.

  “I never believed we needed such a thing,” he’d told her privately. “Now, with the kelp research, I’m even more convinced that OMCs were just another built-in frustration, a goad to push us even further from humanity.”

  According to reports—Flattery’s reports—Marsh had been found in extremis after an accident in the kelp. He explained to her how clones were property, often merely living stores for spare parts, and how Alyssa Marsh had been prepared for this moment from her girlhood. Now Beatriz realized how fortuitous the timing had been for Flattery, how unfortunate for Marsh and her kelp studies with Dwarf MacIntosh.

  What will Mack do?

  He would need information, too. Like, how many in this squad? What kinds of weapons? Do they have a plan or is this just reaction to the killings groundside? She couldn’t remember how many people worked the orbiter station—two thousand? Three? And how much security did they have aloft?

  Not much, she remembered. Just a handful to handle fights and petty theft among the workers.

  She’d counted thirty-two in the captain’s squad as they boarded the shuttle, and each was heavily armed. Eight of them were assigned to fill out her crew, and they grumbled under the double load. This bunch carried a lot of the old, disfiguring mutations. The gear they’d loaded aboard was mostly weapons, but a few of them knew enough about holo broadcast to bring the bare bones of what they’d need to get Newsbreak on the air. A couple of techs were assigned to oversee the OMC.

  Beatriz had kept the worst of the shakes at bay and now, strapped firmly into her couch, she nearly let herself go.