The Ascension Factor

Somewhere in his mind he thought he detected a grunt of approval.

***

We Islanders understand current and flow. We understand that conditions and times change. To change, then, is normal.
- Ward Keel, The Apocryphal Notebooks

Newsbreak should air within the hour, but Beatriz knew that this team would not make their deadline. They were having some kind of transmission problem that they refused to share with her, but she saw the results on her screens. Whenever their tape was ready for its burst groundside, a review showed that it had been tampered with. Someone seemed to be editing the editors. It was just as well. Leon told her that the short clip she prepared on the OMC would not be transmitted groundside for approval, anyway.

She recalled an incident several years ago, when Current Control was still undersea in a Merman compound. They were taping one of Flattery's "spiritual hours," a propagandistic little chat with the people of Pandora. All went well until transmission time.

The kelp interfered, that was the only answer at the time - and an unpopular one. The kelp jammed broadcasts, made deletions on tape...

The hair on her neck prickled at the thought. She remembered how, finally, it edited tapes and changed the chronology of broadcasts, flipped images and voiceover around to make Flattery look like a fool and make the broadcast adhere more closely to the truth.

Mack and I wired a lot of kelp fiber into this system, she thought.

Any delay suited Beatriz just fine. She needed more time to figure out how to say on the air what wasn't in the script without getting herself and others killed. They would only trust her with a token appearance, she would have to make the most of it when the time came. Most Pandorans, even the poor, listened in on radio. She wanted to reach them all. She hoped it wasn't just hysteria that told her the kelp was on her side.

If there's a coup in progress, who's at the bottom of it? she wondered.

She ticked off the likely suspects: any of several board members of Merman Mercantile, the Shadows, displaced Islanders, Brood - probably acting for someone else from Vashon Security Force...

Or maybe the Zavatans, she thought, though she knew it was not their drift. Their response to political trouble was to dig in deeper, to flee further into the high reaches or the formidable upcoast regions.

Brood's an opportunist, she thought. The killings at the launch site were a mistake, and he's trying to make the best of it. If there is an organized coup, he'll wait and throw in with whoever seems to be winning.

Beatriz realized that Flattery had no friends and damned few allies. Everyone had good reason for hating him. He had come to Pandora sporting his savior's cap when the very planet had turned on them, and then he turned on them.

"I am your Chaplain/Psychiatrist," he'd told them, "I can restructure your world, and I can save you all. Your children deserve better than this."

Why did everyone believe him?

Her years at Holovision gave her the answer. He was on the air daily, either in person or via his "motivational series," a collection of tapes that she had not seen as propagandistic until now. She had even helped produce several, including her recent upbeat series on the Voidship. Everyone believed him because Flattery kept them too busy to do otherwise.

Flattery had become the most formidable demon in a world of demons, only he was human. Worse yet, he was pure human, without any of the kelp genes and other genetic tinkerings that Pandorans had to endure. Beatriz knew this now. He did it with their help, with her help. Though trapped, she felt an exhilaration at the notion that Brood's men couldn't shoot a clear signal groundside. They might need her yet.

If I do this show as written, I'll be helping him again.

She realized what it was she was helping Flattery to do. She wasn't helping him rescue a world in geological and social flux. She wasn't helping him resettle the homeless Islanders whose organic cities broke up on the rocks of the new continents, or rescue Mermen whose undersea settlements had broken like crackers at the recent buckling of the ocean floor.

I'm helping him escape, she thought. He's not building this "Tin Egg" to explore the nearby stars. It's his personal lifeboat.

She cursed under her breath and fisted the console in front of her, but gently, gently. She might need it later. The reflection that bounced back from her screen was of a woman she didn't recognize. The hair color was black, cropped and shaggy like her own, but the haunted brown eyes of her reflection stared out of bloodshot sclera, surrounded by two dark hollows that frightened her. Her nose was red and her complexion pasty for one so dark. Out of reflex she reached for a com-line to call Nephertiti to makeup, then stopped. Nephertiti would never brush her hair again, never again whisper in her ear at the countdown: "You're gorgeous, B, knock "em out!"

She fisted the console again in despair. Leon glanced her way, but busied himself trying to iron out the glitch with transmissions to the groundside studio. He and his men were unfamiliar with the zero-gee of the Orbiter's axis, and every small task that required movement seemed to anger them more.

Beatriz knew her performance as written would be helping Brood, too, and this was more than she could bear. He was overseeing the delivery of the OMC to its crypt aboard the Voidship and mercifully out of her sight. If Leon didn't get past the jamming influence on their burst channel, Brood would be back, and he would be mad. She didn't relish the thought of Brood in a tantrum.

Dwarf MacIntosh was a normal human, a blue-eyed clone from hyb, and Beatriz was a near-normal Islander. Mutations had leveled off over the past few generations and most Islanders, though shorter and darker, appeared as normal as MacIntosh and Flattery. Appearances, among Pandorans, had dictated their lives from the start.

Flattery's not normal, she thought. His mind is a mutation, an abomination. Humans should not trample their own kind.

She knew the history of slavery Earthside, and members of her own family lived with the aftermath of the genetic slavery of Jesus Lewis. Today she had awakened at last to Ben's accusations that Flattery had enslaved Pandora, Mermen and Islanders alike, and his grip only got tighter while the people got hungrier.

The past twenty-five years had been a cumulative string of disasters planetwide: The sea bottom had fractured along a kelp root line to form the first strip of land. More such fractures followed, always along the gigantic roots of kelp beds. The consequent upheavals destroyed dozens of Merman settlements down under and caused the sinking or deliberate grounding of most of the floating organic cities of the Islanders, her own among them. Refugees swarmed to the primitive coastal settlements by the thousands, forced to learn to survive again on land after nearly three centuries on or under the sea. Flattery had not eased their burden, only added to it.

"This whole planet's trying to kill us," Mack had told her the first time they talked, "we don't need to give it a hand."

But Mack took no action against Flattery. He put all of his waking hours and a good number of his dreaming hours into perfecting the Orbiter station as a jumpoff point to the stars. He did this while directing Current Control and becoming the world's expert on its most mysterious resident, the kelp. He worked backward to define his priorities.

"We need Current Control," he said. "The kelp is fascinating, but reality dictates that we get supplies through it or people die. Controlling the kelp makes this project easier, it makes settlement life easier, it guarantees results."

That was when he invented the Gridmaster, which bypassed the undersea multibuilding complex of the Mermen's Current Control and allowed the major grid system to be operated from orbit. The Merman complex undersea had sustained heavy damage, but it still carried the hardware and installed new grids. With the Gridmaster in operation, one person could handle all of the kelpways in the richest of Pandora's hemispheres.

Beatriz had stood at Mack's side two years ago as his special guest the day the Gridmaster went on-line. Though officially a Holovision correspondent for the event, Beatriz liked to believe that there had been more to Mack's invitation than the business at hand. The spark of his blue eyes lit unmistakably in her presence, and they had enjoyed long talks floating through the axis of Orbiter nights and reclining in the webworks. What had begun as the opportunistic brush of hands against hands became a full-fledged love affair.

I hope we get another chance, she thought, and sighed to head off tears.

A red flash above the hatchway startled her, then flashed again. It was the studio equivalent of a doorbell that alerted each console throughout the room. It was customary to lock the studio when taping a show.

Someone wants in.

Whoever was out there was not one of Brood's men. She knew this because of the fear that bloomed in pale petals across Leon's face.

It's Mack, she thought. It's got to be!

"Don't move!" Leon ordered. He unsnapped his harness and pointed a commanding finger at her. "I'll handle this. Your text will be onscreen in a few blinks. Standard cues. I'm remote director and you will follow my lead most carefully."

He handed himself to the hatch, plugged in his headset and pressed the intercom key.

"We're taping," he announced. "No admittance except for studio personnel."

Beatriz held her breath. Though they did seal off for tapings and live broadcast, Holovision had always encouraged an audience. Many workers aboard the Orbiter enjoyed spending their free time watching her crew at work, and they had never been prohibited before.

"It's Spud Soleus." The high voice crackled her own headset in its characteristic way, forcing a smile to her lips. "Current Control. We have an emergency situation over there. Dr. MacIntosh needs to talk with Beatriz Tatoosh right away."

She felt a rush in her chest and color rising in her cheeks. Her palms continued to sweat.

"She's going on the air live. Tell Dr. MacIntosh it'll have to wait."

"It can't wait. Our burst line has failed and a chunk of grid's down."

"We have orders," Leon said. His voice sounded hesitant. "Maybe after the sho..."

"Dr. MacIntosh is Orbiter Command," Soleus said. "He has direct orders from Flattery to open that grid now. We need your burst line for a transmission. We need Beatriz Tatoosh for advice. I'm reminding you that all power relays switch through Current Control and we can shut you down."

"Wait a blink," Leon said, his voice calming, "I'll see what we can do."

He switched off the intercom and pressed his forehead against the bulkhead.

"Shit!" he said, and bumped his forehead against the plasteel. His headset kept him from cartwheeling backward across the studio. "Shit!"

Good for Spud! Beatriz thought. He'd lied to Leon about the circuitry. Some, but not all, was routed through Current Control. She and MacIntosh had set up the studio, and no one knew it better. But Leon didn't know that. Besides, he had enough problems. And Leon didn't dare move without orders from Brood. He couldn't alert Brood without alerting the entire Orbiter.

Beatriz's heart tripped hard against her ribs and she blotted her damp palms against the thighs of her jumpsuit. In spite of the danger, she enjoyed Leon's dilemma.

Anything to make them squirm, she thought.

Leon tripped the intercom switch again.

"No one's coming in here until after -"

"We can transmit on your burst line with our own carrier frequency," Spud said. "We don't even need to get in your way. Dr. MacIntosh is in charge here and he said -"

Leon slapped the switch off, unplugged his headset and thrust himself back toward his editing cubby. He crashed, out of control, into the other two techs. They disentangled limbs and cables, then hovered over each of his shoulders and whispered together heatedly.

Beatriz slipped the two meters to the hatch and plugged in her headset. She switched the intercom back on and left the set to float beside the hatch only a couple of meters away. They didn't see her, and the move took fewer than four seconds by the big chronometer.

Back at her console, Beatriz opened her com-line and punched out Mack's number. The telltale light would flash on consoles in each of the editing cubbies, this she knew. As she expected, it brought Leon to her nose to nose in a red-faced fury.

"I told you not to try anything!" Leon snapped. He was no longer the meek videotech at an editing console. Now he was ranking officer of a security assault squad that was in a tight spot.

"I'd slap the shit out of you if we didn't need your pretty face. We do have a backup plan, sister. Try that again and you'll get your own ride out the shuttle airlock - understand?"

Beatriz had to hide a smile for the first time all day. He'd yelled at her - something that would have gone unheard elsewhere in the Obiter if she hadn't opened the intercom first, if she hadn't plugged in the headset just a step from where Leon stood. It did not take the best of her screen abilities to feign the terror that she'd already felt many times since waking this day.

"I'll do what you say," she said, as loud as she dared. "I don't want to die like the others. I'll do what you say."

Leon pushed back to his companions, but before he reached them the general alarm sounded with four long bursts from a klaxon overhead.

Though startled by the noise, Beatriz was overjoyed. She recognized the signal from exercises in the past. Those four blasts meant "Fire, total involvement, Current Control sector." That sector included the Holovision studio.

While Leon and the other two flurried around the studio, asking each other, "What the hell's going on?" Beatriz whispered to herself, "Spud, I love you."

***

Power, like any other living being, will go to infinite lengths to maintain itself.
- Ward Keel, The Apocryphal Notebooks

The first thing Rico saw when he stepped through the hatchway into the galley was the still, open-eyed form of Crista Galli lying in her harness beside the plaz. Her pupils pulsed with a green brightness that Rico had never noticed before, and somehow he knew that whatever she saw now was not of this world. His first impulse was to run, to lock the hatch behind him, but he checked it.

Ben sprawled on the deck beside her, one hand clutching her ankle and his legs quivering like a child's in a nightmare. To Rico, the whole scene was a nightmare.

"Ben!" he called from the hatchway, but Ben didn't answer. He rushed to his best friend's side and saw that Ben's eyes, too, were open. Both of them were breathing, though Crista Galli's head was bent slightly forward and he heard a gurgle with each passage of air. Rico heeded Operations' warnings and didn't touch either one of them.

"Shit!" he snapped, and fumbled in his left breast pocket for a slapshot. It was a red, tiny ampule about the size of the end of his little finger. Two needles jutted from one end, covered by a plastic case. He flipped the cover across the galley, careful to hold the prongs away from his own body.

"Dammit, Ben, Operations said this toxin might be triggered if she got wet."

This shot was titrated for his own body weight, the one he'd most hoped never to use. In one swift jab he stuck it into Ben's thigh.

"Don't stop breathing, man," Rico begged. "Just don't stop breathing."

He turned to Crista Galli, trying to control the sudden flash of anger burning in his chest. He knew it was more frustration than hate, but his body didn't know the difference.

If she killed hi...

The better part of his reason wouldn't let him finish the thought.

A strangled moan surged from Crista's throat, an otherworldly moan that put the hair up on the back of Rico's neck.

"Crista? Can you hear me?"

Rico saw that she had some ability to move. She turned her hands palm upward in a gesture of helplessness, and her lips kept trying to form the words that wouldn't come.

"Flatter..."

The word was barely intelligible. She still looked straight ahead, and in a dreamlike slow motion finished her effort with, "...rugs."

"Flattery gave you drugs?"

She blinked her eyes once, slowly.

"He gave you drugs to make you toxic? It's not the kelp?"

Again, the slow blink and a nearly imperceptible nod.

The Flying Fish took another lurch that sprawled Rico across the deck. He grabbed for a handhold and pressed himself against the bulkhead as the foil rolled onto its side, then righted.

The foil's metal skin shrieked as something twisted it to its limits, then backed off.

The kelp's pulling us apart, he thought. It knows she's in here!

Crista was strapped in just as Ben must have left her, soaking wet, her disguise discarded. Rico made a jump for the seat next to her and strapped in just as the foil righted again and all was quiet. It was as though the kelp had one last spasm run through it before it could relax.

He checked Ben over as best he could without touching him. He was breathing easily and his color was good. There was some movement of his right hand toward Crista, and Rico thought this was a good sign. He gingerly opened Ben's left breast pocket and brought out the other slapshot for Crista. Her eyelids did a fast flutter-dance that seemed voluntary, and her left hand raised just a tiny bit at the fingertips, as though to push him away.

Rico hesitated with the shot, and the fluttering stopped.

What if it's no... the Tingle? he asked himself. Operations had warned him that the antidote itself might be fatal if administered needlessly to one of them. Maybe it would be fatal if given to her at all.

If Flattery's been giving her something, maybe her body's different, he thought. Maybe the antidote woul... kill her.

It was tempting to go ahead anyway, after what she'd done to his partner. No one would know, not even Ben. He readied himself to deliver it and her eyes went into their flutter again and her fingers made those pushing movements.

But Flattery would like that, he thought. There's nothing more that he would like than being able to tell the world that Her Holiness Crista Galli died in the hands of the Shadows.

The whole fiction began to unreel in his mind, clearly illumined all of a sudden against the backdrop of light that began to fill the galley's plaz.

"Of course," he said to her, "it makes sense. He made you toxic so that no one would go near you. Then he went public and blamed this on you... relationship with the kelp, am I right?"

Again, the barely perceptible nod and the slow blink. She seemed relieved, more relaxed, and he didn't think it was the toxin working.

A sudden burst of light filled the galley and the foil began to lurch rhythmically. They were on the surface, and Elvira would be going out there to clear the intakes. At each lurch a tiny cry escaped Crista's throat, and tears streaked her cheeks. For the first time he felt as though he wanted to comfort her. He was just beginning to imagine how much Flattery had used her, how terrible and secret her life in the Preserve must have been.

She was a curiosity, a prisoner, he thought, and he made her a monster.

"Did this ever happen to yo... before Flattery gave you drugs?"

Her eyes flicked side to side.

"I think that he thought that your toxin would kill us. Then he would get you back and be a hero, warning the world again about how dangerous you are. And if I gave you this shot," he placed the unopened ampule carefully into his pocket, "then you would die and he would tell the world how we killed you. That would turn the world against us for sur..."

She blinked a "yes," and Rico heard a moan from Ben.

The intercom charged again, then Elvira asked, "Rico, everybody OK?"

Ben's mouth struggled to speak, then he gave up and managed a slight nod. Crista, too, nodded and squeezed out a slow "Yesss."

"Slapshot time," Rico said to the intercom. "They're not great, but improving. I'm all you've got right now. You going out for a little swim?"

"Thought I would. Best watch the helm."

"On my way," he said. He reassured himself that both Crista and Ben were safe, and that neither of them could be hurt where they lay.

"I'll leave the intercom charged," he told them. "Talk to me once in a while, even if it's a grunt, OK? I'll be back when Elvira's finished out there."

Crista raised her fingertips again, and wrenched out a couple of words.

"Kel... happy."

"The kelp is happy?" He threw his hands in the air, and spoke with undisguised sarcasm. "Then I'm happy. How the hell do you know?"

She turned her palm up like a shrug.

"Free - dom," she said, and repeated the word more slowly, "free - dom."

A glance out the plaz showed him what appeared to be an infinite expanse of kelp lazing in the last of both afternoon suns. Alki, the small, distant sun, had begun a slow pulse almost a year ago and it was pulsing now. A very large, very black cloud was closing from seaward toward them. An occasional kelp frond rose slowly, then fell back with a slap and a splash.

Like a wot in a bathtub, he thought.

He had never seen the kelp play like this before.

"I hope you're right," he said. "I truly hope you're right. It will make life so much easier for us, and so much harder for Flattery's people."

He resisted the temptation to pat her shoulder and Ben's.

"We're going to get you out of this, buddy," he said to Ben.

He kept talking, more to himself than to Ben, as he hurried out the hatchway to the helm. He spoke to Ben over the intercom as he reviewed his instruments, as much for his own comfort as his partner's.

"I hate to say it," Rico said, "but I think Current Control saved our butts. The kelp got us down here, wherever here is, and then started tearing at the cabin with those huge vines. Current Control must have been trying to get the original channel back, because the kelp was obviously fighting some kind of impulse. Either they blew a fuse or they gave the kelp its head completely. Whatever, it was the right thing to do."

He resumed his instrument checkout.

"That electrical pulse through the kelp must have screwed up our Navcom system," Rico said. "Most everything else looks OK. I closed off cooling outlets to the galley to head off that leak, just in case it's ready to pop someplace else. You two might get a little warm there between the engines. Once we're airborne, I'll figure a way to get you both up here."