The Ascension Factor

"I have heard of this," said one, "but never have I seen the like."

"Not even his mother, the great Scudi Wang, was such a one," said another.

Twisp found it difficult to hold back the torrent of words that memory triggered at his tongue. Memories - they kept Twisp out of the kelp, just as they drew Kaleb inward. The kelp was like a lifeboat to Kaleb, an anchor to Twisp.

A strange mist coalesced above the top of the pool. Every atom in the cavern became charged with a visible hum, and everything above the waterline glowed in a cool green haze. Half-formed images - fragments of someone's past - flickered in and out of the haze. Twisp saw fire and a baby at the breast, a memo to Captain Yuri Brood, the brown, sensual curve of a wet breast in candlelight. It was a tumble down a soundless tunnel, just the slosh and thlip of the sea accentuating the drift.

Twisp had the sense of reliving something, of deja vu without the vu. He heard a voice out of the mist, a woman's voice.

"He will contact one of the upcoast Oracles," it announced, "there is news of Crista Galli and the others. Through me Kaleb will meet my son, and through him, Raja Flattery. He will explore Flattery's inner being. Without secrets he cannot rule, and with the kelp there are no secrets. Kaleb will pick up the DNA path that leads to Flattery's hatch. Avata will transmit what he sees there throughout Pandora."

The whole cavern had become the stage for a giant holo projection. Soon, the babble and squall of life that went with the images swelled in the background. The mist had become a whirling ball of color and sound, its movements jerky and confused.

"Kaleb must focus his attention," Twisp said. "It is easy to get lost following the maze of someone else's life. He must filter Avata as we filter our senses. Then we will have a plan."

***

One who withdraws oneself from actions, but ponders on their pleasures in the heart, such a one is under a delusion and is a false swimmer of the Way.
- Zavatan Conversations with the Avata, Queets Twisp, elder

Flattery took his afternoon coffee in the Greens, enjoying an impromptu stroll among the orange-throated orchids. They clung to the rock clefts deep in the cavern, their blossoms a pastel cascade. Condensation drip-dripped its paltry rain on leaves and wet rock, on the great flat surface of the pool.

Kelp lights surged bright in the pool, reflected in from the nearby bed. He paused a moment. This was something different, and the kelp, like Flattery, seldom did anything different.

Flattery turned on his heel and dog-trotted back to his command bunker.

"I ordered this stand of kelp pruned," he snapped, and jabbed a finger seaward for emphasis. "I want it pruned now."

Marta snapped something into her messenger.

"Not good enough," Flattery said. He signaled his personal squad.

"Franklin, see that it's done. Use the mortar unit down on the beach."

"Aye, aye."

Franklin carried a pouch at his waist. Inside were the sandals, papers and diary of the first man he'd ever killed. He said he was saving them for the man's family, they would want them. Franklin slipped with a warrior's shadowy ease out the hatch.

"We can't loosen up, now," Flattery told Marta. "Everything will go perfectly if we don't get careless. That kelp bed is our only back door. We need it secure now. Do you understand my concern?"

Malta nodded, then sighed.

"Well," she said, "I have some concerns of my own. Strange things are happening to communications." "What kinds of 'strange things'?"

"Random transmission sources of high-speed images, hundreds of sources, strong ones, and they seem to be all around us."

"They are all around us," he hissed. "That kelp. Well, we've taken care of that. Damage news, Orbiter news, Crista Galli news?"

"Nevi and Zentz have landed. They spotted the Galli girl and Ozette and anticipate no problem bringing them in."

"LaPush?"

"Snatched by the kelp. The pilot was caught in our charges, condition unknown."

Snatched by the kelp!

All this kelp talk was making Flattery nervous. He caught himself running his sweaty hand through his hair. Aumock's gaze caught his own, and he knew that his guard had seen that moment of fear.

"Kelpways secure?"

"We think so," she said. "We -"

"You think so?"

"Brood's squad is aboard the Orbiter. No further reports. The Holovision Newsbreak that was scheduled from the Orbiter did not air."

"We're on auxiliary power," the colonel interrupted. "Failure at main plan... shit, it's no wonder that these troops got through our security. They are our security. "The Reptile Brigade,' we called them. Shit."

"Does that mean a 'Code Brutus'?" Flattery asked.

The colonel shook his head.

"No, Director. This is an isolated unit of troops, here. Their objective was the power station and now that they've taken it we expect them to defend it."

"Defend it?" Flattery raged. "They don't have to defend it, they blew it up! What would you do if you were them?"

"I'd - I'd know that I'd crossed the Rubicon," the colonel said. "Since there's no turning back, I'd head right for the top."

"Well, goddammit, take appropriate measures. Your ass is on the line here, too, mister."

Marta flagged his attention.

"I ordered sub coverage of the seaside entry doubled," she said. "I received no confirmation and don't know whether they heard me. Also negative messenger contact with the beachside mortar. The response we get is gibberish."

An icy panic tightened his stomach.

Not the kelp, he thought. It can't be that. It has to be somebody controlling the kelp. But who?

The likely possibilities came to two: Dwarf MacIntosh or the ambitious and resourceful Captain Brood. Crista Galli was an unlikely possibility. Suddenly Flattery felt the full impact of this interference.

We're cut off, he thought. Our whole strength was in coordination, and now we're cut off.

A rally was clearly in order.

"We got a little flabby, people," he said, "a little careless. This harmless little exercise could have cost us our butts, let's tighten up our action."

He'd caught them with their pants down, whipped them a bit, now he'd have to coddle them, comfort them.

"Reports on the bomb in the upper office just in."

He picked up Maria's messenger and held it over his head.

"Dick and Matt are alive, the rest didn't make it. May the perpetual light shine upon them."

They all responded, "May the perpetual light shine upon them," and drew a little closer out of reflex.

"It could have been us, folks. It could still be us if we don't tighten up. Consider direct orders the only secure communication. Information in, nothing out."

"Aye, aye."

Viewscreens and holo stages in his bunker began to flicker, barely perceptibly, then splashed high-speed displays of color throughout the room. Occasionally he glimpsed a face he recognized in the blur. It was his own face.

"What do we know about Current Control?" he asked.

His staff and guards stood transfixed in the surreal wash of color that visually drenched them all. They stagger-stepped to their posts, displaying the same disorientation that Flattery himself felt.

"Current Control turned the kelp in sector eight loose," Marta reported, "then it turned loose all the kelp worldwide. Sensors now indicate that everything's intact. The kelp appears to be online again. High suspicion for Gridmaster failure."

"Brood's mission?"

"No news. Holovision covered the launch site incident with a Newsbreak report on the deaths of the Tatoosh field crew 'at the hands of Shadow extremists.'"

The colors that dazzled the room remained as bright but their swirl slowed to a less dizzying rate. Flattery thought he detected a woman's voice, faint in the distance, somehow familiar. Almost as though she called his name.

"Continued fighting in food distribution centers," Marta said. "Too many looters to shoot. The usual 'we're hungry now!' crowd. Some of our people opened warehouses. All stores outside our perimeter have been breached."

That's thousands of shuttleloads of food, he bristled. That's my contingency, my lifetime Voidship supply.

"Dried grains to feed three thousand for ten years," he said. "Dried fish enough to feed fifty thousand. Add water, pat together and cook. Instant wine - add a package to a liter of plain water and stir. Bread and fish for the multitudes, water into win... if this Voidship could time-travel I could be Jesus Christ himself. Shit."

***

Consciousness, the gift of the serpent.
- Raja Lon Flattery, number five model, Shiprecords

A lean-faced security, armed with both stunstick and lasgun, blocked MacIntosh at the hatchway to Current Control.

"Halt!"

He motioned Mack and his men to stop, and gripped a handhold to keep his bearing.

"Obiter Command," Mack said, "who the hell are you?"

"Security," the man said, and emphasized his point with his lasgun. "Captain Brood has the details. We are under the Director's orders to secure Current Control."

MacIntosh pushed off from the bulkhead behind him and sprang the gap. A push to the shoulder and a spin to the wrist later, MacIntosh had both the stunstick and lasgun. The sputtering security was pinned head down against the passageway bulkhead by two of Mack's firefighters.

"You'll get the hang of it in a day or two," MacIntosh said, and smiled, "if you live that long. Whether you live that long depends on how much you tell me, right now."

"That's all I know," he said, his voice edging a whine.

"Airlock time," Mack said. His men tumbled the security down the passageway to the freight airlock adjacent to Current Control.

"No, no, don't do this," the security pleaded. "That's all I know, that's really all I know."

"How many in your squad?"

"Sixteen."

Mack opened the inner hatchway to the airlock.

"My information says different - how many came up on this load, and are there more already aboard?"

"It's just us, Commander. Sixteen troops and sixteen techs."

"Where are they?"

Silence.

"Airlock time, gentlemen," Mack said. "Let's decompress slow. Anything you might think of to tell us, you can tell us from inside the lock. We'll stop decompressing when we've heard the whole song."

As Mack spun the hatchdog closed behind the security, he saw a half-dozen more of his men step off the elevator in full gear. Mack twisted the dial that sent air hissing audibly from the lock. His prisoner immediately became hysterical.

"Shuttle crew is ours," he said. "Two troops, three crew stayed aboard. Holo crew was two troops, three techs. OMC crew was three troops, two techs. Current Control, four troops, four techs, counting myself and Captain Brood. The rest secured the Voidship. Please, don't let the air out. Don't put me out."

"Keep him inside in case I change my mind," Mack ordered. "We can add to our collection here as things develop. We need Brood so we can find out what Flattery's up to. Hooking up the OMC, taking over Current Control and the Voidshi... sounds like things are going worse for the Director than he lets on. Maybe he's getting ready to take the Voidship for a little spin around the system."

The intruder code, a tone-and-light warning, flashed at all corridor intersections. It was a drill that Mack had never taken seriously, now he wished he had.

"Rat, you and your people take the shuttle. Barb, you work the Voidship and know it better than anybody here. Take Willis and his engineers. Remember, no lasguns. You have your vacuum suits on, use them. The rest of us will handle this little nest here. If Flattery doesn't trust us anymore, let's make it worth his while."

Mack knew that he had the edge over Brood as long as they met in the near-zero gravity in Current Control. Brood's techs might figure out the old hardware that ran Current Control, but the new organic hookups throughout the Orbiter and ship, grown by Islanders specifically for MacIntosh, might be a surprise. These kelp fibers bent light and encoded messages chemoelectrically within cell nuclei. This enabled kelp to bring light to the ocean depths and messages to the Orbiter. The switching speed and capacity of kelp hookups far outstripped any hardware that Pandorans had developed.

Too late, Raj, Mack thought. Current Control will never be the same.

Brood could only fail. In the time it would take his techs to figure out Mack's secret system they would all be grandparents.

***

The is is holy and the void is home.
- Huston Smith

Hot suns melted through the thick, post-squall mist to scorch the albino nose and exposed arms of Crista Galli. When an offshore gust caught the mist in a whirl it freshened her hot skin like silk. She had felt the whump of breakers in the surf beyond the fog and now she could see just how close the waves really came.

"Tide's shifted again," Ben told her.

He held her right hand but his voice sounded empty with distance, thick-tongued. He blinked a lot, and his motions were slow, exaggerated.

Dusted, she thought. I wonder how it feels.

She was convinced now that the dust had returned her to reality, rather than removed her from it. It was her personal antidote, an antiamnesiac that spun valves and opened the stream of memory.

She remembered Zentz, too. He had been a mere captain when he came into the lab at the Preserve that made up her home. He took away the researcher who was talking with her at the time, a young Islander woman who taught social psychiatry at TaoLini College. Once a week Addie came to question Crista about her dreams and always spent the afternoon with her in the solarium over tea. Crista had awakened in that lab a twenty-year-old female human without a single memory.

The psychiatrist, Addie Cloudshadow, tried to get those memories back. In the process she became Crista's first friend. Because of Zentz, Crista hadn't dared another friend until Ben. Zentz had walked into the lab that day with his weapon drawn, said simply, "Come with me," and shot Addie just outside Crista's hatch. Crista was sedated through her hysteria, and Flattery promised to take care of Zentz. Four years later Zentz surfaced as Flattery's Chief of Security and Crista vowed to escape the Preserve.

Today the mist kept her from seeing either up or down the beach. That glimpse of Zentz would have terrified her a day ago, but today she was not afraid. Something in the flash of kelp-memory warned her of Nevi, the other shadow in the mist, but it also illuminated a tension between the two that she knew would work to their favor.

The kelp had replayed for her Nevi's refueling incident, and she'd even forayed briefly into Zentz's mind. She had never seen anything so filled with horror and fear. She felt hate there, too, but it had long ago given way to a fear of Flattery that, itself, became an intense personal fear of Spider Nevi.

Divided they fall, she thought.

Flattery's world was coming apart, fighting itself, dying a thrashing death faster than it could inflict death on others. This was what Zentz had seen when the kelp grabbed him, and only Crista knew the strength of his resolve not to die at Flattery's feet or at Nevi's hand.

Crista had one open view from where she stood in the rocks, over the boil of breakers and out to sea. Though the tidelands wallowed in their salty fog, the sea itself glistened out to meet the sky somewhere in the distance. As far as the eye could sea, huge fronds of kelp rose lazily from the sea and splashed lazily back. Crista found comfort in the play of the kelp and the infinity of the horizon.

"What a time to be dusted," Ben mumbled, and shook his head.

"Rico has a plan," Crista whispered, "and he's ready to start it righ... now."

Crista Galli felt her hair prickle when Rico's electric dance of light crackled up like a shield around her. The high suns roiled fog off the wet beach and coated her skin with a fine grit of salt. The mist enhanced the surreal quality of Rico's lifesize hologram. From the back side it was like looking through a fogged mirror that refused her reflection. Crista watched the barest shadows of Nevi and the others as they ghosted the boundaries of the holo image that erased herself and Ben from the visible landscape.

Nevi and Zentz positioned themselves behind the light curtain, calling out strategy codes to each other.

"Flank sweep, left," Nevi said. His voice was unhurried, precise. "Cover high. I'll take point and ground."

"But the... they disappeared!"

"It's a trick," Nevi said, "a camera trick. They're in there and can't get out. Position?"

"Secure. Ten meters, left flank. I can't see shit in this soup."

Zentz spoke more with a gargle than with real words.

"Ozette!" Nevi called, "she's sick. She goes back or she dies, you know that. It's not a choice. Send her out."

Ben's finger went to his lips.

"He can't see us," Ben whispered. "Don't move."

She couldn't tell one person from the other. The gigantic holo danced on its curtain of mist. Surreal figures outside the holo field became a futile blur. Three lasgun flashes burst the curtain of rippling light and a cascade of prisms lighted up all around her. Ben pulled her to the ground and in a blink the image reformed.

"Stay low and don't move," he whispered. "This is the perfect holo. Perfect!"

She wriggled with him into a fold of hylighter against a black lava boulder. Though faint, a wisp of images rose out of the hylighter skin and filled her mind in a steady unraveling of Pandora's tangled politics. The thick skin of the hylighter held the warmth of afternoon sunlight. With Ben tucked close against her she felt safe. Flashes of sunlight sparkled intermittently throughout the hologram that surrounded them. Crista drew a new strength with the hylighter's touch, and a confidence that insisted Nevi would fail.

"They can't see us as long as we stay inside the image," Ben whispered. His voice strained with the effort of focusing through the dust coursing his veins. He kept low, but his quick eyes took in all of the scene that they could.

"This is incredible!" he marveled. "We're inside a hol... where the hell did he get the triangulators to bring this off? And the resolutio... ?"

"From the kelp," Crista said. "He got everything he needed from Avata."

"I wish we could see what the hell's happening," Ben whispered. "Right now we're inside a hole in the light show. See this edge here? Rico's holo follows the outline of our hylighter. He's made a stage out of a hylighter skin."

His finger reached out to the edge of the hylighter skin and appeared to disappear as he pushed it through the hologram. A momentary flutter of light and shadow around his finger was the only sign of disturbance of the image.

"The mist makes the illusion especially colorful," he said. "All the tiny flashes that you see are the lasers catching a water droplet spinning in the mist - kind of pretty."