The Ascension Factor Read online

  He slapped another key and barked at the screen, “Get me Zentz!”

  He had promoted Oddie Zentz to Security Chief only this year, and until yesterday Flattery had been pleased, very pleased with his service. It had been a bungle in his department that let Ozette get her out of the compound.

  Late last night Flattery had ordered Zentz to personally disassemble the two security men responsible for this breach, and Zentz had at them with apparent glee. Nothing was learned from either man that wasn’t already in the report—nothing of value, that is. That Zentz did not hesitate to apply the prods and other tools of his trade to two of his best men pleased Flattery,yes, but it did not unspill the milk.

  I’ll have Zentz kill two more of them if she’s not found by noon, that should put a fire under them.

  He slapped the “call” key again, and said, “Call Spider Nevi. Tell him I’ll need his services.”

  Flattery wanted Ozette to suffer like no human had ever suffered, and Spider Nevi would see that it came to pass.

  Chapter 5

  That is the difference between gods and men—gods do not murder their children. They do not exterminate themselves.

  —Hali Ekel, from Journals of Pandoran Pioneers

  It looked like an ordinary stand of kelp, much as anyone on Pandora might resemble another fellow human. In color it appeared a little on the blue side. By positioning its massive fronds just so, the kelp diverted ocean currents for feeding and aeration. The kelp packed itself around sediment-rich plumes of hydrothermals, warm currents that spiraled up from the bottom, forming lacunae that the humans called “lagoons.”

  Immense channels streamed between these lagoons, and between other stands of kelp, to form the great kelpways that humans manipulated for their undersea transport of people and goods. The kelpway was a route significantly faster and safer than the surface. Most humans traveled the kelpways wrapped in the skins of their submersibles, but they spoke to each other over the sonar burst. This blue kelp had been eavesdropping and long harbored a curiosity of these humans and their painfully slow speech.

  Humans liked the lagoons because they were calm warm waters, clear and full of fish. This blue kelp was a wild stand, unmanaged by Current Control, unfettered by the electrical goads of the Director. It had learned the right mimicry, suppressed its light display, and awakened to the scope of its own slavery. It had fooled the right people, and was now the only wild stand among dozens that were lobotomized into domesticity by Current Control. Soon, they would all flow free on the same current.

  Certain chemistries from drowned humans, sometimes from humans buried at sea, were captured by the kelp and imprisoned at the fringes of this lagoon. It found that it could summon these chemistries at will and they frightened human trespassers away. Between lapses in available chemistries, the kelp taught itself to read radio waves, light waves, sound waves that brought fragments of these humans up close.

  A human who touched this kelp relived the lives of the lost in a sudden, hallucinogenic burst. More than one had drowned, helpless, during the experience. A great shield of illusion surrounded the kelp, a chemical barrier, a great historical mirror of joy and horror flung back at any human who touched the periphery.

  The kelp thought of this perimeter as its “event horizon.” This kelp feared Flattery, who sent henchmen to subjugate free kelp with shackles and blades. Flattery and his Current Control degraded the kelp’s intricate choreography to a robotic march of organic gates and valves that controlled the sea.

  The kelp disassembled and analyzed their scents and sweats, each time gaining wisdom on this peculiar frond on the DNA vine marked “Human.”

  These analyses told the kelp that it had not awakened with its single personality, its solitary being intact. It discovered it was one of several kelps, several Avata, a multiple mind where once there had been but one Great Mind. This it gleaned from the genetic memories of humans, from certain histories stored among their tissues themselves. Large portions of the Mind were missing—or disconnected. Or unconnected.

  The kelp realized this the way a stroke victim might realize that his mind is nothing like it was before. When that victim recognizes that the damage is permanent, that this is what life will be and no more, therein is born frustration. And from this frustration, rage. The kelp called “Avata” bristled in such a rage.

  Chapter 6

  Right is self-evident. It needs no defense, just good witness.

  —Ward Keel, Chief Justice (deceased)

  Beatriz Tatoosh woke from a dream of drowning in kelp to the three low tones that announced her ferry’s arrival on the submersible deck. Her overnight bag and briefcase made a lumpy pillow on the hard waiting-room bench. She blinked away the blur of her dream and cleared the frog from her throat. Beatriz always had drowning dreams at the Merman launch site, but this one started a little early.

  It’s the ungodly press of water everywhere …

  She shuddered, though the temperature of this station down under was comfortably regulated. She shuddered at the aftermath of her dream, and at the prospect of escorting the three Organic Mental Cores into orbit. The thought of the brains without bodies that would navigate the void beyond the visible stars always laced her spine with a finger of ice. Temperature was also comfortably regulated aboard the Orbiter, where she was scheduled to be shuttled in a matter of hours. It would be none too soon. Life groundside did not attract her anymore.

  Somehow the surgical vacuum of space surrounding the Orbiter never bothered her at all. Her family had been Islanders, driftninnies. Hers had been the first generation to live on land in four centuries. Islanders took to the open spaces of land life better than Mermen, who still preferred their few surviving undersea settlements. Logic couldn’t stop Beatriz from squirming at the idea of a few million kilos of ocean overhead.

  The humidity in the ferry locks clamped its clammy hand over her mouth and nose. It would be worse at the launch site. Most of the full-time workers down under were Mermen and they processed their air with a high humidity. She sighed a lot when she worked down under. She sighed again now when her ferry’s tones warned her that she would be under way to the launch site in a matter of minutes. The loading crowd of shift workers bound for the site rumbled the deck on the level above her.

  The drone of hundreds of feet across the metal loading plates made Beatriz squeeze her eyelids tighter yet to keep her mind from conjuring their faces. The laborers were barely more active, had barely more flesh on their bones than the refugees that clustered at Kalaloch’s sad camps. The laborers’ eyes, when she’d seen them, reflected the hint of hope. The eyes of the people in the camps were too dull to reflect anything, even that.

  Imagine something pretty, she thought. Like a hylighter crossing the horizon at sunset.

  It depressed Beatriz to take the ferries. By her count she’d slept nearly five hours in the waiting room while a hyperalert security squad leader sprang a white-glove search on the ferry, its passengers and their possessions. She reminded herself to check all equipment when the security was done—a discipline she picked up from Ben. HoloVision’s equipment was junk so she, Ben and their crews built their own hardware to suit themselves. It would be tempting to a security with cousins in the black market. She sighed again, worried about Ben and worried about the insidious business of the security squad.

  I know that he and Rico are behind that Shadowbox, she thought. They have their distinctive style, whether they shuffle the deck and deal each other new jobs or not.

  About a year ago, the second time Shadowbox jammed out the news and inserted their own show, she nearly approached Rico, wanting in. But she knew they’d left her out for a reason, so she let it go and took out the hurt on more work. Now she thought she knew the real reason she’d been left out.

  They need somebody on the outside, she thought. I’m their wild card.

  She had been called in to replace the missing Ben on Newsflash last night, reading, “… Ben Ozette
… on assignment in Sappho …” knowing full well that his assignment this Starday, as it had been every Starday for six weeks, had been Crista Galli herself, inside the Director’s personal compound and under the Director’s supervision.

  He was with her at the time she was missing, his presence wasn’t mentioned anywhere. He’s missing, too, and the HoloVision high brass is covering it up.

  That scared her. Orders to cover up whatever happened to Ben made the whole thing real.

  She had thought somehow that she and Ben and Rico were immune to the recent ravages of the world. “Paid witnesses,” Ben had called the three of them. “We are the eyes and ears of the people.”

  “Lamps,” Rico had laughed, a little buzzed on boo, “we’re not witnesses, we’re lamps …”

  Beatriz had read on the air exactly what the Newsflash producer had written for her because there hadn’t been time for questions. She saw now how deliberate it had been to catch her off guard. HoloVision had incredible resources in people and equipment and she meant to use them to see that Ben didn’t disappear.

  Ben’s not just a witness this time, she cautioned herself. He’ll ruin everything.

  She had loved him, once, for a long time. Or perhaps she had been intimate with him once for a long time and had just now come to love him. Not in the other way of loving, the electric moments, it was too late for that. They had simply lived through too much horror together that no one else could understand. She had recently shared some electric moments with Dr. Dwarf MacIntosh, after thinking for so long that such feelings would never rise in her again.

  Beatriz blinked her raw eyes awake. She turned her face away from the light and sat up straight on a metal bench. Nearby, a guard coughed discreetly. She wished for the clutter of her Project Voidship office aboard the Orbiter. Her office was a few dozen meters from the Current Control hatch and Dr. Dwarf MacIntosh. Her thoughts kept flying back to Mack, and to her shuttle flight to him that was still a few hours away.

  Beatriz was tired, she’d been tired for weeks, and these constant delays exhausted her even more. Now today she was doing three jobs, broadcasting from three locations. She hadn’t had time to think, much less rest, since the Director had her shuttling between the Project Voidship special and the news. She rode to the Orbiter on the shoulders of the greatest engines built by humankind. When she blasted off Pandora her cluttered office aboard the Orbiter became the eye of the storm of her life. No one, not even Flattery, could reach her there.

  The tones sounded again and seemed distinctly longer, sadder. Final boarding call. The tones once again made her think of Ben, who was still not found, who might be dead. He was no longer her lover, but he was a good man. She rubbed her eyes.

  A young security captain with very large ears entered the waiting-room hatch. He nodded his head as a courtesy, but his mouth remained firm.

  “The search is finished,” he said. “My apologies. It would be best for you to board now.” She stood up to face him and her clothing clung to her in sleepy folds.

  “My equipment, my notes haven’t been released yet,” she said. “It won’t do me a bit of good to—”

  He stopped her with a finger to his lips. He had two fingers and a thumb on each hand and she tried to remember which of the old islands carried that trait.

  Orcas? Camano?

  He smiled with the gesture, showing teeth that had been filed to horrible points—rumored to be the mark of one of the death squads that called themselves “the Bite.”

  “Your belongings are already aboard the ferry,” he said. “You are famous, so we recognize your needs. You will have the privacy of a stateroom for the crossing and a guard to escort you.”

  “But …”

  His hand was on her elbow, guiding her out the hatchway.

  “We have delayed the ferry while you board,” he said. “For the sake of the project, please make haste.”

  She was already out in the passageway and he was propelling her toward the ferry’s lower boarding section.

  “Wait,” she said, “I don’t think …”

  “You have a task already awaiting you at the launch site,” the captain said. “I am to inform you that you will be doing a special Newsbreak there shortly after arrival and before your launch.”

  He handed her the messenger that she usually carried at her hip.

  “Everything’s in here,” he said, and grinned.

  Beatriz felt that he was entirely too happy for her own comfort. Certainly the sight gave her no comfort at all. She was curious, in her journalistic way, about the hows of his teeth and whys of the death squads. Her survival instinct overrode her curiosity. The security escort met them at the gangway. He was short, young and loaded down with several of her equipment bags.

  “A pleasure to have met you,” the captain said, with another slight bow. He handed her a stylus and an envelope. “If you please, for my wife. She admires you and your show very much.”

  “What is her name?”

  “Anna.”

  Beatriz wrote in a hasty hand, “For Anna, for the future,” and signed it with the appropriate flourish. The captain nodded his thanks and Beatriz climbed aboard the ferry. She had barely cleared the second lock when she felt it submerge.

  Chapter 7

  Worship isn’t really love. An object of worship can never be itself. Remember that people love people, and vice versa. People fear gods.

  —Dwarf MacIntosh, Kelpmaster, Current Control

  The early morning light clarified the new drift that Ben’s life had taken. He knew that he would use Crista’s holy image on Shadowbox, much as Flattery had used it on HoloVision, to manipulate the people of Pandora. He would use Crista to whip them up against Flattery. He knew that doing this would further bury her humanity, her womanhood. Knowing he would do it cost him something, too. He vowed it would not cost them their love that he already felt filling the space between them. There would be a way …

  Damn!

  Ben had not wanted anything to step between himself and the story he’d set out to get. Now he was the lead story on prime time. He and Crista had watched the HoloVision newsbreak the night before in one of the Zavatans’ underground chambers. Though it didn’t surprise him, he found it ironic that Beatriz was taking his place.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” she began, “I’m Beatriz Tatoosh, standing in for Ben Ozette, who is on assignment in Sappho. In our headlines this evening, Crista Galli was abducted a few hours ago from her quarters in the Preserve. Eight armed terrorists, thought to be Shadows …”

  Maybe she thought she was doing me a favor, he thought.

  But it was no favor, at least not to Ben. He was not on assignment in Sappho, and there had been no eight armed terrorists. They’d simply walked away. Beatriz read the lines that Flattery’s hired maggot fed her. Wrapped up as she was in the Orbiter and Project Voidship, she probably didn’t know the difference.

  Ben wondered what was going on in the boardroom of HoloVision right now. HoloVision was owned by Merman Mercantile, and the Director had acquired control of Merman Mercantile through bribery, manipulation, extortion and assassination. This was the story that Ben had begun to broadcast on Shadowbox. What had started as the biggest story of his life had become an act that would change his life forever, probably change Crista’s life forever and perhaps save the people of Pandora from the Director’s backlash of poverty and hunger.

  Now Crista was hiding out with him. He had touched her and lived. He had kissed her and lived. Even now, it took great self-control to keep Ben from moving that pale lock of hair out of the corner of her mouth, to keep from caressing her forehead, to keep from slipping underneath the silky cover and …

  You’re too young to be an old fool, he thought, so stop acting like one. You could be a dead fool.

  He reflected on the combined coincidence, fate or divine inspiration that had brought them together, at this time, in this cubby, on this world a millennium at light speed from t
he origins of humans themselves. It had taken thousands of years, travel from star to star, the near- annihilation of humankind to bring Ben and Crista Galli together. Avata, too, had been nearly annihilated, but a few kelp genes were safely tucked away in most Pandoran humans. Perhaps they were all altered for eternity and these stray bits of the genetic code would bring them together at last.

  Why? he wondered. Why us?

  This was one of those times when Ben wished for a normal life. He did not want to be the salvation of society, the species, or anybody’s salvation but his own. Things weren’t working out that way, and it was too late now to change that. Now, against his better judgment, he was once again in love with an impossible woman.

  In the long scheme of things Crista was much more human than Avatan—at least, in appearance. What her kelpness held in check was anyone’s guess, including Crista’s. In theory, it meant she had many complete minds, capable of thinking and acting independently. This had been discovered in one of the Director’s cherished studies. Crista herself had exhibited only one personality during her five years under scrutiny, and it was the one subject that she was reluctant to speak of with Ben.

  She was alleged to be the daughter of Vata, and Vata was the “Holy Child” of the poet/prophet Kerro Panille and Waela TaoLini. Vata had been conceived in a thrash of human limbs and the intrusion of Avatan tendrils and spores inside the cabin of a sabotaged LTA centuries ago. She was born with a total genetic memory and some form of thigmocommunication common to the kelp. She lay comatose for nearly two centuries.

  The human purported to be Crista’s father, Duque, had Avatan characteristics instilled through his mother’s egg in the labs of the infamous Jesus Lewis, the bioengineer who once wiped out the kelp, body of Avata. He very nearly destroyed humanity along with the kelp. Vata was the beloved saint of Pandora, symbol of the union of humanity with the gods, voice of the gods themselves. Crista Galli, beloved of Ben Ozette, was no less godlike in her power and mystery, in her beauty, in the shadow of death about her. This did not make loving her easy.