The Ascension Factor

He's methodical, like a Merman, Doob thought. Gray's ice-blue eyes kept watch for movement around the track. Out in the open, this close to the perimeter, there were risks of other dangers than humans. Gray continued to talk in his slow, quiet way.

"They're Islanders without islands," he said. "There are thousands of them up there - Flattery has no idea there are that many. They have camouflage for overflights. The ratty little gardens that we see from the air are meant to be seen. Under the camouflage, and undergroun... that's a whole different story. They make bubbly out of the nutrient vats the same way they used to. Except now, instead of growing islands out of it, they spray it in a foam across rock like this and grow plants on it a week later. They make it out of garbage and sewage, just like the old days.

"On flat land, or the second time around, the bubbly is formed into a centimeter-thick sheet of organic gel, twelve meters across. Seeds are impregnated in rows into the gel, then they spread it across bare rock or sand, or last year's garden. It holds nutrients, water and defense from predators, all in a time-release bonding. Wouldn't Stella love to see this?"

"Sounds like her idea of heaven," Doob said. "She misses the island life, even though ours was grounded when we were five. I miss it, too, I guess. Not the drifting so much as the freedom. We worried about grounding, but we weren't afraid of each other." This last Doob offered with some reservation. To admit that you were afraid of security was to imply that you had reason to be afraid. Fear was grounds for investigation.

"Yes," Gray sighed, "we are afraid of each other, aren't we? Even you and I. Up there," he nodded upcoast, "they're wary, but they're not afraid."

"What did you do about your report? Did yo... ?"

"Did I expose their happiness? Did I betray the only sign of humanity I've witnessed in almost twenty years? No. No, I lied, and I made sure my camera lied. But I'm not as brave as you think. I know what Flattery suspected - that there were settlements, illegal food. But I also know what Flattery wanted. He wanted it to be rag-tag, not worth going after, because he doesn't have the force to stop it! Look around you, Doob." Gray swept his arm, taking in the horizon on all sides. "This takes every bit of manpower he's got, and he's losing it. There were riots in the settlement today, big riots, and there will be more. The news is not news, it's fiction outlined by Flattery and written by his personal fools. His lies keep us small, and as long as we're small he keeps control.

"No, he didn't want there to be anything big upcoast, so when I showed him a few raggedy-assed dirtpokers, it made him happy. So, maybe he'll stay here. His major forces are here and in Victoria, with a lot of sea patrols on the fishing fleet. The world is a lot bigger than that, Doob. It's a lot bigger, and getting bigger every day. I think you and Stella should go up there."

"What?"

Doob banged his head coming out of the control panel. "Are you crazy? She's going to hav... . I mean, we can't think about anything like that right now. We've got to stay put."

"Doob, I know she's going to have a baby. Stella told Billie and Billie told me this morning. She can't hide it much longer, anyway. You'll have to make new food coupon applications, people may visit your place, you can't risk that."

Doob sighed, then spit out the driver's porthole.

"Shit," he muttered.

"Listen," Gray said. "There's a way out of this. How's the Cushette over water?"

"Well, it's OK when it's running. No match for a foil, though, or one of those security pursuit boats."

Gray looked back at the bed of the track. It was a dumpable storage bin two meters wide by four meters long. Doob made his coupons hauling equipment for construction crews up and down the beaches of Kalaloch.

"Can you get three hundred klicks out of this thing over rough terrain?"

Doob shook his head. "No way. Two hundred, tops. With a converter, and access to seawater, I could probably drive around the world."

"Yeah," Gray said, pulling at his chin. "But there's no seawater inland, and converters won't work in streams or lakes. I have an old high-pressure tank at my place, that would get you the whole way."

"What are you talking about?" Doob ran a nervous hand through his kinky brown hair. "You think we can just drive this track upcoast as bold as you please? They'll crisp our butts before we hit the high reaches."

"That's why you don't go that way," Gray said. "I have a map, and I have a plan. If I can get you, Stella and this track upcoast to my Zavatan contacts, would you go?"

Doob looked up in time to see a security detachment leave the perimeter and start toward the track across the rocks. They were still a couple hundred meters off, but they didn't look happy.

"Shit," Doob said.

He replaced the control panel cover and started the engine. He began to pivot his machine on its left track to go back home.

"No," Gray shouted. "We set out to get a starter for that Cushette, and that's what we'll do. Give them a wave."

Gray waved at the security squad, and so did Doob. The squad leader waved back, and the men turned back to the perimeter road where it was easier going.

"See?" Gray hollered. "It's like that everywhere. Learn what's easiest for them, and you can get by. We'll talk more about the upcoast trip on the way back. I've got it all figured, don't worry."

He flashed Doob a smile, a big one, and Doob caught himself smiling back.

Gardens, he thought. Stella will love that for sure.

***

Not by refraining from action does one attain freedom from action. Not by mere renunciation does one attain supreme perfection.
- from Zavatan Conversations with the Avata, Queets Twisp, elder

Twisp always thought that "chambers" was well-named. There were, indeed, many chambers beneath the rock - one for each of the council and several for support staff, as well as general meeting rooms and sleeping quarters. The complex was crude by Merman standards, primitive by the Director's standards. Repair crews worked throughout the area cleaning up the last of the damage of last year's great quake, already going down in oral history as "the great quake of '82."

Across the passageway from the elevator a hatch opened into Twisp's personal chamber, hewn out of glassy black rock. He swung the hatch open and motioned the gaping Mose inside.

"Sit here."

Twisp indicated a low couch to the left of the hatchway. The couch was organic, like the chairdog. It was a distinctly Islander cubby. The entire room measured barely four paces square.

Shelves filled up most of the black-rock walls, and on these shelves stood hundreds of books. They were the old kelp-pulps, a well-scarred library. Twisp had been a fisherman without holo or viewscreens. Bleached kelp pulp and hand presses in every little community turned out literature and news that was affordable and could be passed around.

Twisp dogged the hatch, then smiled.

"Borrow any books you like," he said. "They don't do anybody any good on the shelf."

Mose hung his head.

"... I never told you," he stammered. One nail-bitten hand wrung the other.

"I can't read."

"I know," Twisp said. "You cover it well, it took me a long time to figure it."

"And you didn't say nothin... ?"

"Only you could know when the time is right. There is always someone willing to teach, but that's no good until the pupil is ready to learn. Reading is easy. Writing, now that's a whole different story."

"I've never been very good at learning things."

"Cheer up," Twisp said. "You learned to talk, didn't you? Reading's not so different. We'll have coffee every day for a month, and you'll be reading well by the end of the month. How about if we start with coffee now and a lesson later today?"

Mose nodded, and his look brightened. Topside, among the Zavatans, he did not often get coffee since the Director had taken over production. But he'd wedded himself to Zavatan poverty, which was a step up from his family poverty. Among the Zavatans he'd found that nothing was to be expected, everything enjoyed. Twisp bent to the preparations, his long arms akimbo in front of the table.

A fold-out table and stone washbasin jutted from the wall across the room, beside the inset stove and cooler. Mose reclined into the old couch and let it suit his forms. He found it indescribably nicer than his pallet topside. One shelf beside the couch held several holo cubes. Most of the pictures on them were of a young, red-haired man and a small, dark-skinned girl.

"The meeting begins soon, Mose," Twisp said. The older man sighed without turning, and his gangly arms sagged a bit. He spooned out some of the odorful coffee into a small cooker.

"We will all share a soup there, in the old custom, or I would offer you something here. My cubby is your cubby. That hatchway leads to the head. This hatch," with a nod he indicated their entry, "leads to the general council chambers. Prepare yourself for a confusion of people doing strange things."

"That's the way things have been all my life."

Twisp laughed, "Well, you'll get along down here just fine. Do you remember the oath you took when you came among the Zavatans?"

"Yes, Elder. Of course I remember."

"Repeat it, please."

Mose cleared his throat and sat a little straighter, though Twisp still had his back to him.

"'I forswear henceforth all robbing and stealing of food and crops, the plunder and destruction of homes belonging to the people. I promise householders that they may roam at will and abide, unmolested, wherever dwelling; I swear this with uplifted hands. Nor will I bring plunder or destruction, not even to avenge life and limb. I profess good thoughts, good words, good deeds.'"

"Very well recited," Twisp said, and handed Mose his hot coffee. "You are here because the council needs your opinion. The council has a weighty decision before it today. It has not faced a decision this big before. It may involve asking the Zavatans, all of us, to break that oath, the part about avenging life and limb. We will need your witness to this meeting, and your opinion will help decide whether or not to break it."

Twisp sipped his own coffee, still standing over Mose, and noted the tremble in the younger monk's nail-bitten hands.

"Do you have an opinion on that, Mose?"

"Yes, Elder, I do."

There had been no hesitation in Mose's voice, and the tremble in his hands stilled.

"Swearing to an oat... well, that's for life. I swore to uphold that oath for life. That's what I did, and that's what I should do."

Mose accented his speech with a curt nod, but still did not look up.

So fearful, Twisp thought. This world is more habitable than it has ever been, but the people are more fearful, even of those closest to them.

A knock at the chamberside hatch startled them both. Twisp opened it to a young, red-haired woman carrying a clipboard. She was shapely, enhancing the green fatigues characteristic of the Kelp Clan. The name above her left breast pocket read, "Snej." Her blue eyes were rimmed in red, and swollen.

She's been crying!

"Five minutes to council, sir," she said, and sniffed as delicately as she could. "These are our latest briefing notes." Her gaze kept his own, but her voice lowered. "Project Goddess may be lost, sir. No word or sign of them for hours."

Her lips trembled under tight control, and fresh tears welled over reddened rims. He noted a general air of depression among the support crew.

"LaPush was transmitting hourly bursts from his camer..."

"There's a wide-band communications problem, too," she said. "Kelp channels are clear, but conventional broadcasts seem to be jammed. Sometimes clear, sometimes not. Maybe it's sun-spots, but it doesn't act like sunspots. Too selective."

She reached up a sleeve for her handkerchief and blew her nose.

"You're upset," Twisp said. "Can I help?"

"Yes, sir. You can get Rico back for me. I know Crista Galli is importan... most important. Bu... ."

"You're console monitor today?"

She nodded, dabbing at her eyes with her sleeve.

"Concentrate on communications to or from Flattery's compound and shuttle everything to council chambers. We'll get them bac... Rico and Ozette don't panic under fire."

This last seemed to rally the young woman. She blew her nose, straightened her shoulders.

"Thanks," she said. "I'm sorr... I'd better get back. Thanks."

Mose followed Twisp out the hatchway and they strolled the huge, domed information center bustling with people. Mose recognized some of the villager refugees he'd seen pass through the cavern above. They all wore either the green fatigues of the redhead, Snej, or the dark brown singlesuits he recognized as belonging to the newer Landsteward Clan.

Twisp's step took on a spring more youthful than his gray braid as he traversed the deck of this room of makeshift desks, view-screens, stacks of papers, cables across the deck. This was his work of twenty-five years: Operations, the heart and being of the mysterious Shadows worldwide.

"Flattery thinks we're in Victoria," Twisp had told the council at the beginning, "and I want the rest of the world to think so, too. The Shadows will be an illusion, a fiction that we make as we go. The entire world is at stake, perhaps every human life. We must have appropriate patience."

He hoped that they still had appropriate patience.

Twisp cleared some storage units from an old chairdog and indicated to Mose that he should sit. A large plaz shield separated them from the ominous quiet of a roomful of techs. The redhead, Snej, nodded to Twisp and tried a smile.

Snej reminded Twisp a little of Ambassador Kareen Ale, a friend of his who had been one of the first victims of Flattery's death squad.

She saved a lot of lives, he thought. And she was so damned pretty.

Twisp shook off the painful memory and settled himself into his console's couch. The other council members' couches were arranged, like his own, as spokes in a wheel, each with access to a console, viewscreen and a central holo stage.

Twisp discarded his threadbare robe. Underneath, he wore a rust-colored singlesuit of the Hylighter Clan. The clasped-hands insignia at his right breast represented the informal symbol of the Shadows. Like Twisp, each of the other three consuls was accompanied by a civilian witness. One couch remained empty, its viewscreen blank.

The other three witnesses, like Mose, sat in wide-eyed awe at the maps and data spread out before them. Twisp cleared his throat and spoke the simple, awful words that some of the council had waited more than twenty years to hear:

"Brothers and sisters, it is time."

After the ancient blessing of the food they shared the ritual bowl of soup in silence. It was a classic Islander broth, nearly clear with a couple of bright orange muree curled at the bottom of the bowl. Chips of green onion floated the top, their crisp scent wafting the chambers.

The one vacant couch belonged to Dwarf MacIntosh, survivor of the very hybernation tanks that bore the Director, Raja Flattery. MacIntosh had rejected Flattery's greed for the more familiar zenlike philosophies of the Zavatans. He shaved his head, he said, "In grief at the loss of Flattery's soul, and as a reminder to keep my own."

Years ago, MacIntosh and Flattery had disagreed openly, heatedly, on many occasions. Rumor said that Flattery had removed Current Control to the Orbiter so that he could remove MacIntosh to the Orbiter. Mack had recently perfected a console-communication system that used the kelp itself as a carrier. All of the systems in chambers were tied into the kelp. Along with a code, also devised by MacIntosh, each console was capable of direct, immediate contact with Current Control.

I hope we can keep these lines open, Twisp thought. That could be jamming on the conventional channels, or just sun activity. If it's sun, it probably won't take out the kelp channel as well.

He reserved a mental note to remind Snej to check the kelp channel for Rico's film. With luck it could've been picked up and stored there.

After taking food together, Twisp received their affirmations calmly, as they presented them calmly, though what they pronounced could degenerate into a roll call of death worldwide. Every face in the room reflected the heaviness of the matter. They all agreed that it was time. It was just as important that they all agreed on what exactly it was time for.

Venus Brass, the eldest at seventy-five years, had seen her husband and children assassinated at the Director's orders, herself missing death by a fluke. A slow-moving, big-hearted, quickwitted Islander woman, Venus, with her husband, had built a food distribution empire. It was taken over by Flattery and wedded to Merman Mercantile. They transported fish and produce from small suppliers like Twisp to public markets for a percentage of the catch. Flattery did the only distribution now, where and when he chose and at a membership fee too high for a solo operation to afford.

Kaleb Norton-Wang, rightful heir to Merman Mercantile, was the youngest consul at twenty-three. Son of Scudi Wang, herself heiress to Merman Mercantile, and Brett Norton, Twisp's fishing partner, Kaleb had seen his parents killed when their boat mysteriously exploded one night at dockside. That was before anyone had learned to suspect Flattery's hand in such things.

Kaleb had slipped landside that night to play with some of the other children. He was ten years old, and supper conversation for months had been about Flattery, and his takeover maneuvers with Merman Mercantile.

Twisp, wakened from his coracle nearby, had found the boy screaming on the pier watching his family's boat burn. Twisp and Kaleb fled together to the barely habitable high reaches. Like his deceased father, Kaleb could see in the dark. His mother's inner acuity and her personal allegiance to the kelp gave Kaleb a formidable intelligence. He, like his mother, could communicate directly with the kelp by touch. He found it too painful to meet his parents' memories in the kelp, so he seldom explored the kelp-ways of the mind.

He's too bitter, Twisp thought. Bitter pulls you down, gets you to make mistakes that you can't afford.

He hadn't seen much of Kaleb lately. The boy's district was Victoria, Flattery's only solid stronghold upcoast. Twisp feared that Kaleb had met the challenge of that command so that he could wreak a personal vengeance on Flattery and his people. He hoped that he had taught Kaleb well enough that the boy wouldn't respond to Flattery the way Flattery had responded to his parents.

The upcoast inland regions were represented by Mona Flatwing, a red-faced, middle-aged woman who was speaking now.

"We are in a comfortable position," she said.

Her deep brown eyes glittered and her husky voice spoke with a heavy Islander lilt.

"Each of our households has foodstuffs for six months. We have surplus stores enough to handle a major refugee influx through next harvest. Consul from the coast tells me that we are in a similar position with our seafoods."

Venus Brass nodded affirmation.

"Frankly," Mona continued, "our people do not want to come down here to fight. They left here to get away from that, they've made good lives upcoast, they want to be left alone. They will accept anyone of good faith who seeks refuge, as always. The usual preparations have been made for defense, but I must emphasize this point: These people do not want to kill anyone."

Again, a nod from Venus Brass. Her shaky, high-pitched voice contrasted with Mona's.

"It is the same with our people," she said. "They use the freedom of the sea to get away from 'the troubles,' as they call them. They're a brave and hardy lot. Among them they amass quite a fleet and assault force. But like Kaleb's people, they live among Flattery's people when landside, they trade with them, families are intermarried. They do not want to kill anyone, particularly family. You've seen how Flattery has shuffled his troops to accommodate that attitude -"

Bam!

Kaleb's fist on his notestand startled everyone.

Twisp clenched a fist in reflex, then unclenched it slowly on his knee.

"This is Flattery's dream council," Kaleb said. His voice carried the sharp bitterness that Twisp often heard in it lately. "We are talking here of doing nothing to curb this madness, this wholesale murder. Was I the only one who witnessed what happened out there today?"

"Talking about what we will not do is preface to talking about -"

"Is preface to nothing, as usual," Kaleb interrupted. "It's historically true that humans are hungry only because humans allow it. We must simply not allow it, not for another day, not for another hour."

Venus withdrew as though she'd been slapped, then folded her arms across her thin chest.

"Did your people start this business today?" she asked.

Kaleb smiled, and the exuberance of it accented his youthful appearance.

He's a one who's gone beyond his years, Twisp thought. Far enough that he knows when to use that smile.

"That is Flattery's doing," Kaleb said. "I have another plan, one more consistent with our ideals. My people committed, and my contacts tell me that many of yours will, too."

"And then what?" Mona hissed, and sat forward. "Doing something will get their attention. Flattery will send securit..."

It was an old argument, but Kaleb heard it out. At one point he looked across the table at Twisp. The eagerness that gleamed in his young eyes reminded Twisp of Kaleb's father when he was that age - smart, daring, impetuous. Brett Norton had killed once, out of reflex, but that killing had saved Twisp and Kaleb's mother.

Mona finished recounting her people's position.

"They'll take in refugees, but they won't leave the livelihoods they've built from nothing. Eluding detection is much preferable to facing conflict."

"I understand," Kaleb said. "That's the swiftgrazer's way. Something else is true of swifties - if a swiftie is hungry the whole rob's hungry. We've coordinated with and we have a plan rolling that will feed the rob."

Twisp repressed a smile.

I guess he listened to my swiftgrazer pitch, after all.

Twisp knew that, among the council, there was no such thing as rank. They would vote to participate or not, and to go the ways their decisions dictated.

"We each have plans," Twisp said, "now they will become a single plan. Project Goddess is four hours overdue their upcoast checkpoint. That will merit some consideration as well, this session."