The Ascension Factor

Flattery detected a definite shudder across Marta's shoulders at the mention of Nevi's name.

That's why I use him, he thought. Mere mention of his name gets results.

He dismissed Marta and surveyed the landscape, his landscape, that fell away before him. Metallic-looking wihi glinted sunlight back at him. Their short, daggerlike leaves deployed toward the bursts of ultraviolet pulsing from Alki. Flattery admired this dangerous little plant for its tenacity and for the protection it afforded his compound. Its seeds lay dormant undersea for two centuries, waiting to flourish when the oceans rolled back again. It flourished now, and made going difficult for predators near the compound - human or otherwise.

A rob of tiny swiftgrazers darted among the wihi to his left, near the cliff's rise to the high reaches. Though reputed to eat anything softer than rock, the grazers preferred to avoid humans. They had survived, like many Earthside rodents, by hiding aboard the organic islands throughout the floods. The poor often chanced netting them for foo...angerous task. He'd watched an old Islander swarmed to death on this very spot only two years ago. The man had netted only half the rob. The other half waited in the rocks for his return, then set upon his legs until he fell. It was over in a matter of blinks, and Flattery considered it an education. He ordered the whole rob burned out at the nests, of course, and their charred bodies delivered to the villagers. Strictly political.

The Director knew that anything that protected itself to that extreme could be made to protect him, too. His greenskeeper had a way with animals as well as plants, and now several rob of swiftgrazers nested in vulnerable approach points to the compound. This was one such rob, stationed near the trail to the high reaches. He watched them often, particularly in the evening when their slender, rusty backs caught the sunlight and rippled among the silver wihi.

"Look there!" his guard warned, and Flattery saw the skulking back of a dasher approach the rob. The guard set his lasgun for the distance about the limit of his effective range, and raised it. Flattery motioned him to wait.

The dasher closed the final twenty meters in three blurring bounds, slapping at the little animals and stunning them. There were too many, and the dasher was skinny from hunger. It tried to gulp a few of them down but the pause was all the rob needed to regroup. The dasher seemed to melt off its odd bones. Flattery smiled again, as the afternoon clouds gathered offshore.

"Beautiful, aren't they?" he asked no one. "Just beautiful."

***

We're more than our ideas.
- Prudence Lon Weygand, M.D., number five, original crew, Voidship Earthling

Twisp the Zavatan elder watched the Director watch the swiftgrazers strip an ailing hooded dasher to bone. The sight reminded him of the old days when he was a simple fisherman at sea. The last effects of blue spore-dust heightened this memory of schools of scrat that devoured maki a thousand times their size in blinks. Twisp had a healthy respect for scrat, and for swiftgrazers.

Furry little bandits, he thought. One thing about them always made him smile. Their fragile little penises detached during mating, leaving a small fleshy plug in the female that her body absorbed. It kept sperm in, and subsequent suitors out, guaranteeing the genetic survival of the first to mount. The male grew another within weeks, but not soon enough to breed twice in one cycle.

Something of a game developed among many Pandoran men at the expense of the swiftgrazers. The trick was to trap a swiftgrazer and snatch its penis. They were considered a delicacy, and it was said that the Director enjoyed them steamed atop his salads. It wasn't easy to isolate a single swiftgrazer. Many a drunk pulled back stumps where there had been fingers.

The little animals looked like a band of robbers, with their masks across their twitchy noses and their nervous way of having at least half of the rob on alert. He had never known them to attack humans unless molested, but when they attacked it was with a fury, a complete abandon that chilled him. He did not care to find out the limits of their patience.

Twisp admired swiftgrazers for the way they stuck together. There was no such thing as a hungry swiftie. If one swiftie was hungry, the whole rob was hungry. The Shadows claimed that the people of Pandora would be like swiftgrazers when the time came.

"The time is now," Twisp whispered, watching Flattery.

His whisper was swallowed in the wind. Just enough spore-dust twinkled in his veins to lend a background music to the gusts of the incoming storm.

The wind whistled back, "Yesss," here in the high reaches, as it always did at sea. Only inside, behind the plaz and dogged hatches, did he ever hear it moan, "Nooo." The first time had been nearly thirty years ago, in the company of a woman he couldn't forget. The wind had been right then, and Twisp's broad shoulders sagged a little when he realized it was right now.

The rob of swifties finished their kill. Most of them stood upright on their slender bodies, sniffing the wind and yawning. The pink of their long tongues flickered visibly as they licked their rusty snouts.

Twisp trained his monks with scrat and swiftgrazers in mind. The sequestered Zavatans, like the Shadows of every settlement, were honed and ready, prepared to fight, prepared to go hungry. Still, he desperately wanted to find another way.

He asked the wind, "How can I save the people and Flattery, too?"

A crisp lull stilled the afternoon.

Twisp had long ago noted that the Director cultivated certain rob and eliminated others. Careful observation bore fruit - Twisp knew all of the swiftgrazers' secret warrens and the myriad entrances topside. It was this kind of patience and attention to detail that he knew they all would need to turn aside the cruel momentum of Flattery and his machine.

Beyond the scene of this little death in front of him the greater deaths of charred villagers fanned out from the smoking ruins of the Preserve. As the afternoon winds once again gathered their storm, so did hunger unite Pandora against its most vicious enemy. Twisp watched clumps of the inevitable refugees stagger the trail to the rumor of safety among the Zavatans in the high reaches.

New recruits for us, for the Shadows.

His smile was a grim one. Pandorans had never been a warlike lot. There had always been too few humans, too many demons. Even hungry as they were, Pandorans were reluctant to pick up arms against their fellows. Flattery paid his security force, and paid them well, to fight other humans. The disease that Twisp thought he had nipped years ago had burst into an epidemic under Flattery.

"I, too, believed in him at first," Twisp said. "Was that wrong?"

He knew what the wind would say before he heard it. He had been lazy, he had hoped someone else would take care of it. Like everyone else, he had only wanted to live his simple life quietly.

Twisp's own patience was worn threadbare as his robe. For nearly twenty-five years he had hoped that Pandora would shrug off the Director's mantle of hunger and fear. Hope, he knew, had even less substance than dreams. It implied waiting, and too many hungry Pandorans didn't have the luxury of waiting. It was a death sentence, and time was the prosecution.

When Flattery had seized power, he insinuated himself first into control of Merman Mercantile and then acquired control of all food distribution. He bought into transportation and communications worldwide. This had been accomplished by the deaths of, several of Twisp's friends, people who had owned Merman Mercantile and Current Control.

Too many accidents, too many coincidences.

He fought a familiar lump at his throat. They all had been young, naive, and none of them stood a chance against the cunning of the Director. Now, as always, only Flattery could afford to wait.

How ironic, Twisp thought, that those who can afford to wait don't have to. I wonder if there's anything left for him to hope for?

"Elder!"

Twisp cringed inwardly at the panting voice of the young Mose behind him. He felt impatience enough bursting in his breast without being nettled by Mose.

"What is it?"

The younger monk would not approach the precipitous edge of rock outcrop that Twisp occupied, this he knew. He admitted to himself that it was a little game he played with Mose.

"Why do you stand out there?" the younger asked, his voice tinged with a whine.

"Why do you stand back there?"

Still, Twisp did not turn, though he knew he would do so.

"Your presence is requested in chambers. It is urgent. There are many preparations afoot that I do not understand."

Twisp did not answer.

"Elder, can you hear me?"

Still no answer.

"Elder, please do not make me come out there again. You know that it shakes my wattles in a fearsome way."

Twisp chuckled to himself and turned to join Mose at the cavern entrance. The afternoon rains had begun, anyway, pattering like swiftgrazers in the scrub. He knew already what Operations must have decided. That it was time to stop hoping. That Flattery and his kind must go. That the people were rising up unorganized and undefended. That the Zavatans and the Shadows held the only means and position to guarantee his fall. That once again thousands would die in the greater name of life and, of course, liberty. When there was nothing else to boil down, it always boiled down to hunger.

"Come with me to Operations," Twisp said, "and I'll show you something to pink your wattles. You will then be witness to something fearsome, indeed."

Twisp bowed once at the cavern entrance, in respect, and entered, the billow of his orange robe a beacon against the darkened afternoon.

The dim vestibule inside was guarded by two young novices with shaved heads and lasguns. The boy looked to be about fifteen and his shaved head revealed a high crest of bone atop his skull, which made him taller than Twisp, though their eyes met at the same height. Both he and the girl wore the black, armored jumpsuits of the Dasher Clan. Both were suitably alert, their quick brown eyes negating their relaxed posture. Together they swung the plasteel hatch outward on its gimbals and admitted the two monks to the cavern within the high reaches.

It was not dashers and flatwings that these doors walled out, but the Director and his Vashon Security Force. Through the years Twisp himself had become a master of security. Incursions by VSF had been few and unsuccessful. They viewed the Zavatans as harmless, spineless weaklings who were kelp-drugged or insane.

"Illusion is our strongest weapon," Twisp had lectured the young novices. "Appear to be foolish, mad, poor and ugly - who would want to take you then? Note how the mold wins the fruit by its appearance alone."

The first chamber was the one that was inspected periodically by Vashon Security Force. Rough-hewn out of rock, it housed three hundred Zavatans of the nine clans spread out along the walls, with common meeting and dining areas. There were mazes of cubbies in three levels, hung with hundreds of tapestries that helped muffle the din of three hundred voices echoing inside the cavern.

Lighting was the usual hot-glow type driven by four hydrogen generators housed in the rock beneath them. The appearance was of primitive squalor, and security inspectors sent here by the Director seldom stayed for more than a cursory look. This was where Mose lived. Twisp, too, had a cubby here - third level, to the right of the main entrance - but he seldom slept there. For more than a year Twisp had lived in the private chambers of the group known to the Shadows as "Operations."

Twisp ascended to the second level with Mose in tow. He stepped behind an old Islander tapestry into an alcove that would not be noticed except perhaps by children at play. He approached an undamaged section of basalt bulkhead carved with elaborate histories of human and kelp interactions. The section that he faced, titled "The Lazarus Effect," was simply a huge bas-relief figure of a human hand, index finger extended, touching a strand of kelp that rose from the sea.

Twisp pulled the finger out from the bulkhead and, with the snick of a dagger leaving its sheath, a section of rock sprang outward. When Operations met for Zavatan business, they met inside this labyrinth of rock. Its many repairs betrayed the instability of Pandora's geology, and its routes were constantly changing. Few knew the passageways, and none as well as the Islander Twisp, Chief of Operations.

Mose swallowed hard and paled conspicuously. There were tales of thousands of villagers and common folk who sought safety among the Zavatans, never to be seen again. Mose himself had seen hundreds come into the great cavern behind them who had never come out. Operations referred to them as "Messengers from the Poor," and hinted that they were relocated worldwide. Though Mose had heard this rumor, he had never seen evidence to back it up. Mose seldom admitted that he'd been born and lived out his meager years within five kilometers of where he now stood.

They never come back out this hatch!

Twisp smiled at the younger monk's obvious fear.

Why do I like teasing him? he wondered. I remember Brett took it so wel...

He shook his head. Dwelling on his dead partner was nonproductive. Cleaning up the nest of assassins who'd killed him would do everybody some good.

"Come," Twisp said. "You will be safe with me. It is time the Zavatan muscle flexed itself."

With a smile, Twisp stepped into the well-lighted passageway. Mose's eyes couldn't have widened further. When he hesitated, Twisp placed a large hand on his shoulder.

Mose, too, stepped inside and the panel snicked shut behind them.

"I want you to remember everything you see here today."

Mose swallowed hard again and nodded.

"Ye... Elder."

Mose did not look thrilled. His already pale face was drawn tight, the surgical scars along his hairline and neck glowed an angry pink. He alternately pulled at his robe and wrung his hands.

The raw silence of this stone passageway contrasted heavily with the steady din of the cavern they left behind them. The passageway was lighted by a cold source, neither bright nor dim, and it carried the pale green hues of Merman design. As in many Merman complexes, the walls met at right angles in a precision that annoyed many Islanders. These walls were carved by a plasteel welder, and except for fault damage they ran perfectly straight, perfectly smooth.

An electronic voice from overhead startled Mose:

"Security code for companion?"

"One-three," Twisp said.

"Continue."

They set out down the passageway and Mose asked, "Where are we?"

"You will see."

"What do they mean, 'security code'?"

"We have checks within checks," Twisp explained. "Had you been an enemy holding me hostage, this passage would have been sealed off with both of us in it. Perhaps I would be rescued, perhaps not. You, at least, would have been killed."

Twisp felt Mose walk closer to him yet.

"Operations is far beneath us, even below the ocean floor."

"Mermen did this?" Mose asked.

The passageway turned left abruptly and ended at a blank wall. Twisp pressed his palm to a depression on the wall and a panel slid back to reveal a tiny room, barely large enough for a half dozen people.

"Humans did this," Twisp answered. "Islanders and Mermen alike."

The panel slid shut behind them. Twisp spoke the single word "Operations," and the room began to descend with the two of them inside.

"Oh, Elde..."

Mose held on to Twisp's long arm.

"Don't be afraid," Twisp said. "There is no magic here. You will see many wonders, all human wonders. Our brothers and sisters will know of them, presently. Didn't I say this would pink your wattles?"

At this, Mose laughed, but he continued to clutch Twisp's arm throughout their rapid descent.

***

I am afraid, too, like all my fellow-men, of the future too heavy with mystery and too wholly new, towards which time is driving me.
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Hymn of the Universe, the Zavatan Collection

Doob muscled the controls of his track as it lurched across the rocky no man's land between the periphery road and the settlement. The track's ride was a kidney-buster, but it wasn't confined to the few flat roads like Stella's little Cushette. In spite of the beating, the track didn't seem to break down as often, either. This was the third trip to the salvage yard for Doob and Gray this month - all three to fix Stella's five-year-old Cushette.

"You should get a top on this thing," Gray hollered.

Both men were soaked in the sudden afternoon rain, their short hair plastered like thick wet paint onto their heads.

"I like it," Doob hollered back. "My mom always said it's good for the complexion."

"That's what they say about sex."

That was the first glimmer of humor that Doob had seen from Gray all day. Gray had come by a half-hour ago after getting off work in the settlement. He was grim-lipped and humorless, which was not at all like the relaxed Gray who lived next door. Gray worked some security job for the Director's personal staff, so when he didn't feel like talking Doob knew better than to ask questions.

Doob was full of questions today, though. There was a skyful of smoke over the settlement that worried him in spite of the news.

"A good rain'll clear the air," Doob said. "It's good for the brain, too. I wish it would grow something out here besides more rock."

"Those Zavatans," Gray said, "they could do it."

"Do what?"

"Get something to grow here. They have huge farms all over the upcoast regions. Just like the Islanders, but they've moved the islands inland."

Doob looked at Gray incredulously. He had heard rumors, of course, everybody had.

"You're not kidding, are you? They grow food up there and the Director lets them get away with it?"

"That's right. He can't keep control up there and down here, too."

"But everything up there's just cliff face and roc..."

"That's what you hear," Gray said. "Where do you hear it?"

"Well, on the news. I don't know anyone who's actually traveled overland up there."

"I have."

Doob glanced over at his best friend. Something had happened to him today, something that changed his whole disposition. Gray was a lot of fun. He'd come home, drink some boo with Doob, tinker with the vehicles. Sometimes, when Doob could afford it, they'd take their wives to the settlement for an evening of wine and buzzboard. Gray was definitely no fun today, but Gray had been upcoast and Doob was very curious.

"You have?" Doob asked. "Wel... what was it like?"

He knew the danger of this question. He suspected that whatever it was that Gray had to tell him about the upcoast region was something that wouldn't be healthy to know.

"It was beautiful," Gray said.

He spoke up, but his voice was still hard to hear over the noise of the track's exhaust.

"They have gardens, hundreds of them. A rock ranch like this one would grow corn in one season up there. And every little garden is bordered by flowers, all color..."

It was the wistful expression on Gray's face that worried Doob. Doob had seen that expression often since Gray got back from wherever it was that the Director's people had sent him. Gray didn't volunteer information, and Doob knew better than to ask. The less he knew about that kind of stuff, the longer his life span, he was sure of that.

Besides, he listened to dangerous politics from his roommate, Stella. Like Doob, she was twenty-two, but she hung around with artists and tried to act older. She had converted most of their living space to a multilevel hydroponics garden, and she grew mushrooms under their rooms. Gray knew this, of course, but he pretended not to. Stella came from a long line of Islander gardeners. Her family owned patents to seeds mutated specifically to Pandora, and about three centuries of know-how in hydroponics. Doob thought she could probably make the walls sprout if he let her.

Stella talked nonstop, but this didn't bother Doob. It meant that he didn't have to say much, and that was the way Doob liked things.

Gray signaled him to shut down the engine. The track backfired once and stopped atop a rock ledge that afforded them a sweeping view all around.

"I want to believe I can trust you," Gray said. "There are some things I need to talk about."

Doob swallowed, then nodded.

"Sure, Gray. I'm a little scared, you know."

Gray smiled, but it was a grim smile.

"You should be," he said. He pointed to the refugee sprawl ahead. "There are starving people out there who would kill you for one meal out of Stella's garden. Flattery's people would kill you for growing illegal food. I might kill you if you told anybody what I'm about to tell you."

Doob sucked in his breath. From Gray's steady gaze, Doob knew he wasn't kidding. He also knew that he needed to hear whatever Gray needed to say.

"Even Stella?"

Gray's eyes softened. Doob knew how much he liked Stella. He treated her like the daughter that Gray and Billie never had.

"We'll see," Gray said. "Hear me out."

Gray spoke in a near-whisper, and his gaze darted around them nervously. Doob hunched close to Gray and pretended to be working on the track's control panel. He had the distinct feeling they were being watched.

"I've been gone a month, you knew that," Gray said. "They sent me upcoast, to spy on some Zavatans up there. They set me up with a story, a lapel camera, a way in and out. Overflights showed some signs of illegal fishing and food production, Flattery wanted details. What I saw there changed my life."

He lifted off the lid to the control panel and propped it up. Both Gray and Billie had been raised down under in Merman settlements.