The Ascension Factor

He marked the time on his log and swung the bow of the foil seaward. Ahead of him lay the vast coastal kelp bed and its infernal lights, blinking at him.

The beachside morta... they didn't stump this stand as I ordered.

Somehow, the sight of blue and red flickerings across the depths ahead of him filled him with as much fear as the mysterious glare that backed him out of the Greens. Flattery didn't like the feeling of fear.

What if they lob their charges in now? I'd be a dead squawk.

Out of habit, Flattery turned his fear to aggression and throttled himself into the kelp.

The going was much easier than he'd anticipated. Waters off Kalaloch were quiet in spite of the loss of Current Control. That is, they were quiet except for a strange tidal pulse that pursued him from the Greens into open water. The uncontrolled kelp kept the major kelpway to the launch site open. Flattery attributed this to habit, or to perseverance of the last signal sent from Current Control. He was well into the thick of the stand before he realized his mistake.

Several things happened at once, any one of them enough to shake Flattery's resolve to regroup at the launch site. He ran out of fuel less than a kilometer from the perimeter of the site. Instruments showed all fuel-filter membranes functioning normally. Before the foil stalled out and left him adrift in the kelp, Flattery noticed that the CO2 in his cabin was higher than usual. The gas diffusion membranes were functioning, but seemingly in reverse.

I'm out of fuel, in the kelp, and my foil is filtering CO2 instead of O2 to the cabin.

He looked at these facts logically, hoping that logic would stave off the hysteria that bubbled at the back of his throat. He could shuttle ballast as long as his power supply lasted, but if he had to maneuver by battery he wouldn't last long. No one responded to any of the undersea burst frequencies, and his Navcom sent back no signal. It was as though he floated in the center of a black hole. Everything that went out from his foil was swallowed up.

It must be the kelp, he reasoned. It's fouled up our communications before, even the histories tell us that.

He regretted his leniency with the kelp. It was something that made his life easier, so he had let the explosive growth of this reportedly dangerous species continue beyond his ability to control it.

Couldn't herd people and kelp at the same time, he thought, and yawned.

CO2's getting me already.

The yawn frightened him into a flurry of activity, but the oxygen level in his cabin was already low enough to slow his thinking and his hands. He found that, even under electrical power, he couldn't nose any further through the kelp. Blowing ballast did no good, either. It simply depleted his already feeble batteries.

This damned kelp is sucking the life out of me!

He stabilized the foil at fewer than twenty meters below the surface. His instruments refused to function, and visibility faded quickly as sunset tipped the scales toward night. Around him, the kelp pulled back from his foil and certain of the kelp fronds began to glow. It was the same kind of cold white glow that had filled the Greens just before he dove.

"This is some kind of Shadow sabotage," he growled. "You'll all regret this!"

Within moments he was wrapped inside a sphere of light so bright that details inside the foil became invisible to him. The glare continued to be bright even though he shut his eyes and covered them with his hands. Voices babbled like red music at the back of his mind.

A warning buzzer droned from the overhead panel and the automatic repeated: "Cabin air unsafe, don airpacks."

How long had it been warning him? He remembered, he remembere...

Light.

This was a woman's voice, someone he knew well. But it wasn't the Galli woma... The buzzer exhausted itself to an electric rattle and Flattery shook his head.

"I need air!" he gasped.

The sound of his own voice broke him free of the suffocation trance of the carbon dioxide.

Flattery clawed through a crew locker for his dive suit. He didn't bother with all of the fastenings, but tightened down the faceplate and activated the air supply. The Director's white hands trembled beyond his control, but at last he could breathe.

I've got to show them who's in charge! he thought.

His training always lurked inside, but something about adrenaline slung it free. An old Islander proverb echoed in his mind: "Stir a dasher, feed a dasher."

I am the dasher and I will strike.

Flattery repeated this to himself a few times while carefully slowing his breathing.

"What do you want?" he shouted into the faceplate. "If you kill me, you'll die. You'll all die!"

His breath fogged the plaz in front of him but it didn't diminish the cold white glare at all. In fact, as he looked closer at the beads of condensation on his faceplate he saw faces inside, hundreds of tiny faces suspended in translucence, one or more glittering inside each droplet.

Killing is your way, not ours.

That voice, inside his own head, chilled something deep in his belly. He could not mistake the familiar Moonbase accent of his shipmate Alyssa Marsh. She had been more than shipmate for a while, but hers had always been a cool intimacy. But it couldn't be Alyssa Marsh because she wa... well, not dead exactl...

"Wha... what is going on here?"

The rasping that he heard across the cabin ceiling and around the foil could only be kelp vines. They snaked across the cabin plaz without diminishing the white radiance that pierced his eyelids, his retinas, his very being. The foil lurched, then its metallic skin shrieked as the kelp began to tear it apart. Flattery hurried to seal his dive suit. He had already armed two lasguns, but he grabbed a couple of spare air packs instead.

You may fight if you wish, Alyssa's voice told him, you will not be killed. You will not be harmed in any way.

"She had a terrible accident in the kelp" had been Flattery's official version of her body's demise. Now scenes from her life danced in the light around him. And he saw her great secret. Cool as Flattery was, it chilled him just the same.

Alyssa had slipped away on a long-term job in the kelp, knowing she could stretch six months of research in wild kelp beds to nine or ten months without any trouble. He'd wanted to be rid of her, she'd sensed that. If he knew she were pregnant he would destroy the child, of this she was sure. He would probably destroy her, too. Not one in ten thousand clones ever got the chance for a baby. Flattery, Alyssa and Mack were very possibly the last living members of their original crew of 3,006, each one the clone of some long-lost donor.

The Broods took him, and Yuri he was called. There were no other children at this kelp outpost, so Yuri spent his first two years undersea with fourteen adults.

Flattery closed his eyes, retreated into himself.

It was just the once, his mind pleaded. Just the tim...

"Do you think it's what I expected my body to do?" she asked.

The images stayed on the other side of his eyelids, but her voice came right into his mind.

How would I suspect, you didn't stick aroun... your work in the kel...

Now the scenes came inside his head. Flattery watched as he personally "dismantled" Alyssa and he himself performed the transplant to the life support surrogate and severed her brain forever from its body.

"All you have to do is consult the kelp," he heard Mack telling Brood. "You'll have your answer for sure, then. You can follow your genetic line back as far as you have the patience to follow."

"I know who my father is," Brood said. "It's him, Raja Flattery."

In one gigantic twist the foil ripped apart at the cabin seam and the sea burst in on Flattery. When the pieces fell away from him the sphere of light remained, and more images danced across the surface of the sphere. He saw Nevi and Zentz captured at the beach, and Brood's attack on the Orbiter. A panorama of disaster played out for him and he watched his precious Preserve go down in plunder.

All along the coastline huge whips of kelp flung themselves skyward and lit up the sea with their pale green glow.

You have much to learn, Raja Flattery, Alyssa said. You are an intelligent man, perhaps even the genius that you believe yourself to be. Ultimately, that is what will save you.

Something grabbed at his right ankle and he spun away. It grabbed again and held, then pinned his arms when he tried to batter at it with a spare air pack. He was already exhausted, and found himself in a dreamlike state that made resistance more work than it was worth.

As I told you the night you killed me, I don't think you understand the immensity of this being.

Beatriz watched Flattery's memory take over, and he broadcast the entire scene of Alyssa Marsh's separation from her body. Hole screens, viewscreens, kelp beds, the air and sky themselves lit up with Alyssa Marsh's memories of her final encounter with Flattery.

You owe me a body, she said, and she said it in that same flat, emotionless tone that had made her his first pick for this crew a lifetime ago.

The kelp began to enciliate Flattery, to encapsulize him inside a life-support pod. It had been the same with Crista Galli, as it had been with Vata and Duque before her. Beatriz felt the cilia seeking out his blood vessels to adjust his oxygen level and pH. Others would feed him, recycle his wastes and protect him from flesh-eaters. She felt this as she sensed the world through the hylighter's skin.

Flattery had the show, and the whole world was watching.

***

So many things fail to interest us, simply because they don't find in us enough surfaces on which to live, and what we have to do then is to increase the number of planes in our mind, so that a much larger number of themes can find a place in it at the same time.
- Jose Ortega y Gasset

Twisp felt a moment of hysteria play flip-flop with his stomach as a sphere of cool light encompassed the young Kaleb. Twisp had sent a boy upcoast and now a man came back. He had known the boy's father the day he changed from child to man. Suddenly that old sense of loss iced his spine, and he stood a little straighter at the poolside.

Kaleb's a lot like his father, he thought. Obstinate, sure, outrage...

Kaleb's father, Brett, had been outraged at the sight of thousands of fellow Islanders stacked dead in a Merman plaza, outraged that humans would murder children in their beds and parents at their prayers.

An entire Island, sunk!

Twisp had heard about the sinking of Guemes Island, he'd seen holos of the grim rescue scene, but Brett had seen the sledges of limp bodies, heard the rattle in dying throats.

As though picking up his thoughts, the bright surface of the sphere played back some of those moments, far clearer here than in his memory.

Other images played there, too - nebulized, indistinct, as though making up their minds about being. He saw in them replays of the scenes Kaleb fought with his people. He had resisted the majority of his forces who wanted Flattery's blood. They chose to move without him, and Kaleb stood up to them.

"You're willing to die in battle anyway," he told them. "Why not die feeding the poor?"

He was sending an army against Flattery, all right - an army of angels laden with food.

"Everything stops until everyone eats," was written on each pilgrim's shirt as they set out by the hundreds for the camps.

Twisp had renewed confidence that Kaleb's hatred of the Director would not turn the boy into another Flattery.

He's not a boy, he reminded himself, and he's safe in Avata. His mother saw to that.

Twisp remembered the time when he had needed convincing himself, when it was Kaleb's mother, Scudi Wang, who first thrust him into the kelpways of the mind. Her face came up in the sphere and it was the smiling face of the precocious teenager that Twisp remembered so well.

How could Brett not have loved her?

Twisp tugged his gray braid that tickled his neck. In the halo around Kaleb more images precipitated out of the light. They all seemed to be people he knew, and they all had one other thing in common.

They're all dead!

He heard a whimper behind him that must be Mose.

In that moment Kaleb became a bright shadow inside a brighter sphere, and he seemed to hover above the pool rather than float upon it. The manifestations, the flickering images around him, recited a few scenes from their pasts. Twisp was awed, but not afraid.

Everything swam in a pale radiance that pulsated slightly, like a child's fontanel. A similar pulse began to beat in the wave-slaps around the rim of the pool. The onlookers had ceased their chatter and begun their chant of renewal. It was a call-and-response chant, typical at blossom-time, an improvisation on an old theme that Twisp had heard his grandparents sing.

"Open the leave..."

... and the blossoms, ope..."

Kaleb was no longer visible inside the light. The light now was brighter than anything Twisp had experienced, but this cool brightness did not hurt his eyes. Indeed, he could not take his gaze from its hypnotic spell.

"It's everywhere," a tremulous voice shouted from the caverntop. "There's light on the waves, in the sk... everywhere."

Twisp recognized this breathless voice as Snej, the young assistant at Operations.

"And there are pictures in the light," another gasped, "just like this, only it covers the whole sky!"

When a great light took over the whole cavern, it became impossible for Twisp to make out the faces of his fellow Zavatans. Even Mose, as close as he was, became just another light inside the light.

Snej's voice came to him again, bell-like in its joy.

"Crista Galli is safe," she announced. "They are all safe. The fighting is at a standstill."

The bright sphere in front of Twisp unreeled the tideline drama of Ben and Crista Galli and their near-fatal encounter with Zentz and Spider Nevi. It seemed to Twisp that the event was more than visual. Though it must've taken up nearly an hour of real time, the scene was communicated to him in a matter of blinks. A cheer filled the cavern when Spider Nevi fell, and the images on the sphere shifted to another cavern, and to the terrified face of the Director.

All fell silent at the sight of Flattery, except for a few angry mutterings across the pool.

"Is this a miracle, Elder?"

"Flattery's being driven out," Twisp said. "I'd say that was more inevitability than miracle. Avata has decided that it's time to meet the Director."

The brightness inside the Oracle spread out from the sphere to bathe each observer. The darkest of them was a dazzle of light against light.

"Look, Elder!"

Twisp watched Mose lift his arms as though flying, and streams of thick white light pulsed from his fingertips to join with other light nearby. Though it was impossible for him to see detail, Twisp watched these same streams of light merge with others in midair. He was reminded of the time as a child when a cell bioarchitect visited his creche to show his classmates many wonders. One of these was a blowup holo of cytoplasmic streaming, of an amoeba pumping parts of itself into other parts of itself in order to move, to capture and digest prey.

"What are we, here?" he wondered aloud. "Predator or prey?"

The answer came in a rush that rocked Twisp back on his heels.

You are brother to me, as I am sibling to you.

His long arms shot out over the pool for balance. A hand reached out of the light and gripped his own. The grip felt real, the hand, wet. Kaleb stepped from the kelp root to the rim of the pool and kept a hold on Twisp's hand. The cavern around them was a din of babble as the Zavatans consulted Avata and each other. They encountered spirits of their ancestors that Avata released from the prisons of their genetic code.

"Let us join hands and thank Avata," Kaleb announced. His voice took on a new projection that stilled the babble but did not shock the ears.

"Avata has dismembered the monster that Flattery built out of our people and has taken him prisoner. He will be reeducated, as we have been, in the inviolable rights that the living have to life. Tonight, everyone will eat. Humans are through suffering at the hands of fellow humans."

Everyone in the cavern linked hands, and the light flowed through them from the pool and then flowed back. Figures and faces, bits of imagery tumbled along the brightening stream. Gasps of wonder and cries of delight filled the chamber.

Then the cavern itself dissolved from view. Ceiling, walls, the rock beneath their feet were no longer visible. All Twisp could see was a serpentine of people holding hands surrounded by something he could only describe as a light-mist. All Pandorans were linked with this group and they all stood together on an immense plain of light. It was warm there, and for once there was no fear of demons, or security, or hunger.

Twisp withdrew quietly from the poolside celebration, found his robe in his quarters and sought out his favorite rock overlook above Kalaloch.

Below Twisp's rock outcrop the night air clarified against a glisten of sea. An old tracked vehicle clanked its stubborn way up the trail and at first Twisp's reflexes tightened. A Cushette followed the track, both vehicles piled high with belongings and wallowing with the effort. These people were already leaving Kalaloch, bound for something better with their bedding and their hope.

"Welcome," Twisp whispered. His attitude was exuberant, but his body exhausted.

They will be all right, he marveled.

He thought first of Kaleb, who had left his bitterness behind him in the kelp, who would soon enough bring the grandchildren of Brett and Scudi to hear stories at their uncle Twisp's knee.

He could guess how it would be for the rest from what he'd seen in the kelp.

Ben and Crista were a match made on Pandora, but sealed in Avata, and they would help develop opportunities to improve the lives of Pandorans for many decades to come. Twisp had a feeling, when the light penetrated him, that Rico and Snej would take up housekeeping somewhere nearby.

The Voidship Nietzsche, with Alyssa Marsh at the helm, would speed Mack and Beatriz beyond the limits of light-contact with Pandora. It would take the humans and their new-found symbiote, Avata, to another world, which, if not perfect when they discovered it, would make humans happy with the work toward perfection.

Some new insight told Twisp that Yuri Brood would receive a reprieve aboard the Nietzsche and would acquire the necessary spirituality by tending his mother, the OMC Alyssa Marsh. Through the kelp hookups, Alyssa Marsh had found her new body and her son. Her son would write out the musings of this OMC, which would become the manual for human behavior for generation...ociology of Ascension. Their shipload of pilgrims would people a new star, and the sea of a planet of that star.

Raja Flattery would live on in the kelp, his needs met, a prisoner of his own selfishness and greed. People would meet him there from time to time, and legends of him would prevail throughout the generations.

Though Pandora's days were numbered, Twisp would live his days out roaming Pandora, working hard to improve the lot of everyone. He knew now that he would not be the one to see the end, and was happy for that.

I'll be known as "the old man of the high reaches," I suppose, Twisp mused.

All was quiet in the settlement below. The glow that had swelled out of the sea and encompassed Kalaloch now sank back to the sea. A cool shimmer remained, ghostlike, at the surface. Two moons and a skyful of stars beamed down on Twisp's gray head. An occasional cheer broke the silence, and Twisp listened as the tinkling sounds of nighttime laughter rent the ancient cloak of death and fear.