The Ascension Factor: Pandora Sequence Read online

  Crista Galli carried a sadness about her that Rico didn’t like. He could take fear, or anger, or even hysteria but sadness felt too much like bad luck. They’d started out with that. When she reached out a tentative hand toward Ben, Rico stopped her with a word.

  “No,” he said. “I’m sorry. I can’t let you touch him.”

  “Your fear?” she shot back, “or this ‘Operations’? He is clothed.”

  “My fear.”

  She was hurt when Ben remained silent.

  Crista shrank back from him, and Rico slipped into the Guemes dialect that he’d set aside years ago.

  “Among Islanders, I am merely advising one of my sisters that she needs to recognize the depth of trust and love that the people have for her,” he said, with a curt nod of his head. “They speak out to her when the speaking is painful.”

  “And the fear?”

  Good! Rico thought. She won’t be bullied.

  He continued to speak to her in the manner of the Guemes Islanders.

  “This sister apprises the brother well. Let the brother remind the sister that only the unknown is feared. Perhaps the sister will set this brother at ease, in time. Shall we begin?”

  She was quiet then, and Rico liked that about her. Whatever curse she carried, she carried it with grace. He had known Ben Ozette for twenty-five years. Rico had fallen in love with a dozen women during that time, but Ben had only fallen once. Rico remembered that Ben had looked at Beatriz Tatoosh the same way he now looked at Crista Galli.

  It’s about time, he thought, and smiled to himself. Beatriz is tight with that guy MacIntosh. Ben needs somebody solid, too.

  Everybody knew that relationships within the industry had to be short-lived, and that families were impossible. With all of the travel and stress something, somewhere, had to give and it was usually the relationship. Rico had given up long ago and was currently seeing a redhead who worked full-time for Operations.

  “The harbor,” Rico said as they started down the ramp. “It’s a madhouse there and so far no security near the Flying Fish. Victoria’s as secure as Victoria gets, so we’ll head up there. Risky, but not so risky as this.”

  They turned right, walking slowly down the pier, toward the crowd at dockside. Rico trailed slightly behind the couple, keeping buildings and hatchways close, and didn’t speak. He nearly stumbled into the Galli girl several times as she stopped suddenly to stare at some of the shops and the relics of herself that were sold there. At each shop, she pulled the mantilla closer about her face.

  So, it’s true, Rico thought. She doesn’t know!

  He watched her reach out toward a tasteless vest in a glass case that bore the inscription: “Vest of Crista Galli, worn at age twelve. Not for sale.” Also arranged about the case were various microscope slides with blood smears on them, a clipping of hair too obviously dark to be hers and several bits of cloth—all with price tags, all claiming to come from “Her Holiness,” Crista Galli. Above the case was scrawled a hand-lettered warning: “Extreme danger, do not touch. Safety packaging included with each sale.”

  You’d think she’d never seen a dog before, he thought, watching her, or a chicken—she sure went loony over those goddamn chickens.

  Rico dawdled close behind them and tried not to listen to their talk. He hadn’t eaten since the previous morning and the charcoal spatter of hot food set his stomach rumbling. He was a little nervous, plenty could still go wrong. But the diversion had taken one patrol off their backs.

  If the boys are doing their jobs, we shouldn’t see a security between here and the boat.

  Just as he thought it he knew better, but there was no calling the thought back and there was no calling back the two security guards rounding the corner ahead of them. Rico pressed a switch on the broadcast unit in his pocket. A third explosion went off near the harbor but neither guard took the bait. Rico sighed and adjusted the lasgun at the back of his waistband. It was an older model, short-range. He remembered thinking, as the two guards veered across the street toward them, how difficult it had become to buy spare charges.

  Ben and Crista saw the security and slowed to a stop. Commuters and street vendors pressed past them in waves. Rico stopped, too, a few paces behind them and in front of a deep hatchway. With the new explosion there was a renewed flurry among those crowding toward the harbor, and Rico was not happy that Ben had stopped. Both of the men approaching wore the khaki fatigues of the Vashon Security Forces, rank four. They were both burly, armed only with stunsticks, nearly normal but with the creased ears and fat lower lips betraying certain internal defects typical of Lost Islanders.

  Just as Rico’s hand clutched the grips of his lasgun, Crista Galli stepped forward, exaggerating the rolling walk of the heavily pregnant. She spoke, her hand upraised and head tilted in the Guemes fashion of greeting.

  “Brothers,” she said, “this mother cannot find a rest station and she is in great need.” This she delivered matter-of-factly, and turned her palm up. Though the guards were obviously jumpy, the response was automatic.

  “Up two streets, one street left. The shops—”

  The other security gave his partner a shove and interrupted: “This could be the start of a Shadow attack … let’s move! Sister, get out of the street. You two,” he pointed to Ben and Rico, “get her inside someplace and lay low.”

  The two guards huffed toward their station at the harbor and Rico let out the breath he’d been holding in a low whistle. It was a coded whistle, from their childhood days, that any Islander wot would recognize as “all clear.”

  “You sure made Rico happy,” Ben said, grinning.

  “Got it all on tape, too,” Rico said. He tapped a tiny lens at his shirtfront. “It’ll look great in your memoirs.”

  He nodded at Crista.

  “Good job thinking, helluva good job acting.” He rechecked the charges in the camera at his belt and buffed the lapel lens with his sleeve. The lens looked like a small pin made of a glossy gray stone.

  “Shouldn’t we get out of here?” Crista asked. “You heard what he said, the Shadows—”

  “Are us,” Rico interrupted in a whisper, “and there will be no attack. The villagers might bust loose, though. Things are pretty hot. The Flying Fish is down there.” He pointed out the “Pier Four” sign just ahead.

  One of the huge cross-bay ferries had surfaced dockside, unwilling to risk explosive damage in the comparatively shallow waters of the bay. Foot passengers from all over Pandora streamed out of the rear hatch, while two- and three-wheeled vehicles crowded the roadway. The morning dust changed to mud under all the feet and mud splashed up from wheels to stain the hems of fine Islander embroidery. Islanders even dressed up to go to market.

  About half of the crowd that elbowed back down the pier wore the plastic ID tag around their necks that marked them as Project Voidship employees. Whatever they did, they did it for Flattery’s paycheck. This was a huge village, huge enough to strain the bonds of family, and today many of the dockside vendors threw catcalls and curses after the workers from the shuttle launch site.

  The pier itself was a bridge between two subway mouths—one from the village to the pier, and another that loaded onto the submarine ferry. Vendors crowded the station entrances, selling tubes of suntan lotion, sodas, dried fruits. Here the smell of charcoal and the spatter of grilled fish were drowned out in the babble of the crowds.

  Suddenly, one of Rico’s greatest fears was made real. An Islander refugee, carrying a placard and wet to the skin from a firehosing, rushed down the crowded pier and attacked one of the commuters. They both fell in a tumble and, out of reflex as much as anger, the knot of commuters began kicking at him. Several dozen refugees tried in their weak way to free him, then to fight back, but within a matter of blinks they were all set upon and beaten.

  Rico and Ben closed tight on Crista Galli and Rico looked for a way down the pier. Screams of anger turned to grunts of pain all around them. Bodies splashed into the bay and
the hot morning was filled with curses and the wet red smack of fists on skin.

  Crista kept her arms folded in front of her and her hands in her sleeves, like many of the old Islander women. She seemed locked in position with her hand out, like a figure from a wot’s game of freeze-tag. As they worked through the crowd she stumbled on the Islander’s battered placard and Rico saw that it read, “Give a Brother a Break!”

  A splintering sound and the wail of bent bracing came from behind them, then screams of fear. Rico saw, over his shoulder, that a portion of the pier had given way and hundreds of people spilled into the water.

  That might cool things for now, he thought, but not for long.

  “Walk slower,” Rico said at Crista Galli’s ear. “You’re tired and pregnant and haven’t eaten since last night.”

  He knew that the last was true. He thought of all the meals he’d missed as a wot, wondered when was the last time Crista Galli or the Director had missed a meal. He and Ben missed plenty working the news business, but that was different. When Rico was a wot, he hadn’t chosen to go hungry.

  He scanned the beach where it broke out from the Islander settlement on the coast and flattened to a grassy plateau at the village perimeter. Security gathered there in their black personnel carriers, waiting for the crowd to tire before it was their turn to work them over. A bloody frenzy this close to the perimeter, and relatively open to beach and bay, might bring in dashers. The sight of a hunt of dashers would disperse the crowd, then security could take down the dashers and hardly wrinkle a crease in their fatigues.

  Rico’s visual and electronic sweep of the area detected no signs of security on the pier itself. He had nothing that would detect the high-power listening devices that the Director favored lately.

  Crista stared straight ahead as they walked, eyes widely dilated, and Ben took her elbow.

  “Tell them before we go that they are all one. Make them understand that they are all the same being and if they cut off their arms and legs they’ll die …”

  Ben gripped her elbow and gave it a shake. Rico saw her eyes as she turned to face him. They went from wild, wide and unfocused to normal. Rico noted that Ben was careful and didn’t touch her skin.

  “We’re going to Port Hope,” he lied, talking quickly as they walked. “The lake there is beautiful this time of year, and even with the altitude you will find it warm at night. The older Islands are too vulnerable. We have strong loyalties among the Mermen but you can’t move freely in their settlements down under. Our immediate danger is security. The Director’s got spotter planes up all along the coast, particularly near the Preserve. Of course, there are his Skyhawks. At sea we are vulnerable to the kelp,” he paused, and when Crista looked his way he nodded, then continued, “and the Director’s new fleet of foils, some of which he conveniently sold to Vashon security. Of course, we also have his spies among us.”

  Rico was relieved. What Ben had said was for the benefit of listening devices, not for Crista Galli. He was sure, by her blank stare, that she had not understood a word.

  She shuffled on through the shouts and cries along Pier Four as though she heard nothing. Rico saw that there were more boats burning now, maybe a dozen, and firefighters were trying to push them away from the others. One of the Vashon Security Forces power foils steamed full-tilt toward the blaze from the Preserve side of the water.

  The Flying Fish, HoloVision’s private foil, was within sight at the end of the slip. Rico felt the tease of adrenaline in his belly. He hoped that Operations had briefed Elvira, pilot of the Flying Fish. She didn’t much care for sudden changes of plans, and she really didn’t like encounters with Vashon Security.

  Elvira was the toughest pilot that HoloVision had ever hired. No one inconvenienced Elvira. To Rico’s knowledge she had no politics, no hobbies, no friends and no religious convictions whatsoever. Her sole passion was to pilot the hottest hydrogen-ram foil in the world as often and as fast as possible. In surface mode she was highly competent; in undersea mode or flight she had no equal in the world. She had flown Ben and Rico in and out of more hot assignments than he could count. This would undoubtedly be the hottest.

  Ben caught Rico’s gaze and raised a quizzical eyebrow, nodding toward the girl.

  Rico scratched his two-day beard. Crista turned to stare past him at the crowd that now had worked its way up the pier, gathering bodies and momentum, and was now fanning out into the streets of Kalaloch.

  Everyone who was to remember this event recalled that the morning air split with a crack like summer thunder, or a whip. No echo, not a breath of breeze. Even a cluster of fussing children nearby silenced themselves in their mother’s skirts.

  Rico touched a fingertip to each of his ears, acutely conscious of the scratchings at each contour, each follicle and fold. If a shock wave had hit his ears, they’d still be ringing.

  She did that in my … in our minds!

  Crista felt the sudden clap of stillness crack with her anger. She was glad that Ben and Rico were the first to recover, though what she saw in their eyes was clearly fear. The mob had stopped, momentarily stunned and looking about for a weapon, then it boiled anew at the onslaught of the truckloads of Vashon Security that came to meet it.

  Crista spun away from them and boarded the Flying Fish, still affecting the wide-beamed walk of the largely pregnant. She stood on the deck, beside the cabin hatchway, hugging herself and looking out to sea. The children started fussing again, stunned villagers rubbed their ears and began to move. Rico noticed that the boat fires had spread to the pier itself and some of the shops. Both ferries at the slip had submerged, empty, for safety. Rico approached Crista at the rail while Ben cast off the lines.

  “This was coming for months,” Rico said, “you could tell by the feel in the streets. They’ve had enough. It’s too soon, and they’re not organized. It will fail, for them. Some will be drawn out after us. Some, to the harbor. Others, to the attack that is inevitable inside the settlement. That will leave the Preserve weak …”

  “It’s too well-protected,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact. “They will fail.”

  She fixed Rico with those striking green eyes. He noticed, once again, that they were dilated in spite of the sunlight.

  “I know how you felt now, back there, when you were so afraid of my touch.” She smoothed the dress over her makeshift belly. “What I know of the Shadows and what you know of me are the same. I only know what Flattery told me. I don’t know whether you should fear my touch. Do you know whether I should fear yours?”

  When he didn’t answer she turned and shuffled into the cabin of the HoloVision foil in silence.

  Chapter 13

  Evil is in the eye of the beholder.

  —Spider Nevi, special assistant to the Director

  Lights had been suitably dimmed in the Director’s holo suite, and one tight spotlight illuminated his face from below. This effect accentuated Flattery’s height, nearly a head taller than the average Pandoran, and it added an imperiousness to his stature that pleased him.

  An empty holo cassette teetered across the red armrest of his favorite recliner. One fluorescent orange sticker on the cassette read “For Eyes Only,” and under that was handwritten: “TD, S. Nevi only.” Under that was stamped in black: “Extreme Penalty.” Flattery smiled at the euphemism. At his direction, all those who violated the “Extreme Penalty” sanction became the homework of Spider Nevi’s apprentice interrogators. Messy business, security.

  “Mr. Nevi,” he acknowledged, with a nod.

  “Mr. Director.”

  As usual, Spider Nevi’s face was unreadable, even to Flattery’s expert training as a Chaplain/Psychiatrist. Nevi had been prompt, unhurried, arriving in a snappy gray cut of a Merman lounging suit right at the first blood of dawn.

  “Zentz hasn’t found them,” Flattery said. His voice was clipped, betraying more anger than he wished.

  “It was Zentz who lost them,” Nevi countered.

  F
lattery grunted. He hadn’t needed the reminder, especially from Nevi.

  “You find them,” he said, and jabbed a finger at the air between them. “Bring back the girl, wring what you can from the others. Save Ozette for a special occasion. He’s at the bottom of this Shadowbox and they’ve got to be shut down now.”

  Nevi nodded, and the agreement was struck. Bounty would be worked out later, as usual. Nevi’s terms were always reasonable, even on difficult matters, because he liked his work. His was the kind of work that might go unpracticed if it weren’t for the Director.

  Every art has its canvas, Flattery thought.

  “The airstrip is secure,” Nevi said. “There were preparations for them there, including a half- dozen collaborators, so we have cut them off. Solid intelligence. Zentz’s men are turning the usual screws in the village. They will be forced to move the girl soon. Overland is out, that would be insane. It would have to be by water, and under diversion to get out of here. My guess would be Victoria. It would pay to wait and make as big a sweep as possible, don’t you think?”

  “You have the docks under watch?”

  “Of course. The HoloVision foil is bugged, a precaution. Your sensor system is now keyed into it.” Nevi glanced at the clock on Flattery’s console. “You should be able to tune them in just about any time.”

  Flattery shifted slightly in his command couch, betraying his uneasiness at this loss of control. Nevi was second-guessing his moves, and he didn’t like it.

  “Well,” Flattery said, splitting his face with a smile, “this is magnificent! We will have them all—and you will be rewarded for this. Zentz grumbles that you steal away his best men but, dammit, you get the job done.” He slapped his palm on the tabletop and held the smile.

  Spider Nevi’s expression did not change, and he said nothing. His only response was the barest perceptible nod of his horrible head. The shape of it was more or less normal, except for the mucous slit where the nose should be. Nevi’s dark skin was shot through with a glowing web work of red veins. His dark eyes glittered, missed nothing.