The Ascension Factor

Chapter 13

Manipulating the kelp electronically is like making a marionette out of a quadriplegic. The trick becomes keeping it a quadriplegic.
- Raja Flattery, from "Current Control from the Skies," Holovision feature
Crista felt a pressure on her whole being. It was not like the pressurized cabin, like air pressure. It was some indescribable containment of her self inside some huge envelope - like the pressure she imagined the positive pole of a magnet might feel when in the company of another positive pole.
"You don't have to be afraid of the kelp pulling this thing apart," she said. "Flattery's lab reports say it kept me alive underwater for twenty years. It can keep us aliv..."
"Can is the operative word here," Ben said.
He didn't look her in the eye, but hung his head over her restraints as if staring at them would right the foil and set them on their way. "If what you say is true, it wants you alive. The rest of us are compost."
"The kelp's not like that," she said. "You've been listening to Rico. It'... I knew it before Flattery's people cut it back, remember? It kept me alive, for all we know it kept others alive the same way."
"Lots of people spend lots of time down under," he muttered. "Nobody's seen anything like what happened to you."
"Why just me?"
When Ben's gaze did meet Crista's, goosebumps clustered her forearms. Everything that she knew about his kindness, his sacrifices for others, froze inside her with the chill of that look.
"I've wondered that," he said. "Others have wondered, too."
"That's why Flattery never let me get to the sea," she said. "He said it was to protect me, but I think he was just suspicious that I'm some kind of Avatan spy, a trigger of some sort. Maybe I was raised by a plant, but I can read people fairly well. Let m... touch the kelp. It will calm down, then, I know it will."
"Not a chance. If Flattery's right, if Operations is right, your chemistry is different now. It could kill you. I don't want anything to kill you."
"I don't want anything to kill anybody," she said, "but the kelp is confused. It's just lashing ou... nobody tells it anythin..."
With that the foil pitched upside-down. Ben hung on tight to a handhold, his face pressed into the plasteel bulkhead.
Crista tried to speak, upside-down and against the pressure of her restraints.
"Avata needs our help," she said, "and we need Avata. You have to help me do this, Ben."
There was that strange, stunning snap in the air, the same snap that had stilled a mob for moments at the pier. It was like the discharge of some great capacitor.
Crista felt their foil slowly roll, pull her tighter into her restraints, then right itself. She watched Ben drop his hands from his ears and sit up on the deck, shaking his head. The damaged foil moaned and chattered about them like mechanical teeth, but the fist of the kelp was gone.
Crista saw the flicker of the intercom charging, then heard Rico's tight voice:
"Ben, look at the kelp."
Only one of the starboard lights still probed the dark, so the view that Crista and Ben had from the galley's plaz was gray and black, dreamlike, cold. They hadn't dared activate the kelp's luciferase, it would make tracking too easy.
A fine seawater spray wetted them both as they watched the easy dance of deepwater kelp. This was the same kelp that, moments ago, quivered with a tension so strong she thought it might uproot itself.
Crista, herself, felt a relief that was more than just calm after the storm. It was a release, like the elation she had felt at the start of their journey when she slipped skyward, hitching her consciousness to the hylighter.
"Can't really see very well," Ben said. "Look at the size of those vines! Some of them are a half-dozen meters across and we can't even see bottom yet."
"That should tell you something," she said. "It should give you an idea of what the kelp's really like."
"What do you mean?"
"You said it yourself. Some of those stalks are nearly as thick as this foil is wide. For the kelp it must've been something like handling a squawk egg with pliers to keep from crushing us."
"Maybe so," Ben muttered. "We're headed topside and the kelp's apparently floating free. We'd better see what kind of damage we took before it changes its mind."
Lights dimmed in the galley, brightened and dimmed again.
"Elvira can't get the engines to fire," Ben said. "That's going to make a lot of things tough - including our oxygen production."
The gray hulks of kelp floated dreamlike outside their hull while the chunks of torn fronds and sediment ripped up by its struggle settled around them.
"See?" she said. "The kelp means us no harm. If you would let m..."
"We're all staying put!" Ben said. "The kelp simply stopped. Maybe it got whatever it wanted, maybe that wasn't us. No point in looking for more trouble." He nodded toward the spray that had already soaked both of them and started pooling water across the galley deck. "We've got a few details to clean up. Let's get at it."
Crista tugged at her harness.
"I can't do much until you get me out of this."
"Any damage back there?" Rico asked over the intercom.
"I think we popped a cooling pipe," Ben said. "It's not much of a leak now that we're surfacing. What do you have?"
"We're not terminal, but we're hurt. Elvira says 'topside,' so topside we go. You two OK?"
"We got a little wet," he said, stamping his feet in the gathering pool.
At that they both laughed - something she did not do often, something she'd discovered with him before. He opened a panel in the bulkhead beside her and reached inside.
Water plastered his hair to his head. Crista's felt just as flat, but when she saw herself reflected back in the plaz, a laugh still teasing her face, she liked what she saw. Her crop of wet white hair framed the green flash of her eyes. She saw that she had twisted in her harness, which explained why, now that things had quieted down, her right breast stung so badly. She wriggled herself free and tugged her clothes straight.
"There's a shutoff in here, somewhere," Ben muttered. He poked his head inside and bumped it. Whatever he said was unintelligible.
Crista's gaze fell on the holostrips of the Nightly News field crew, strips that covered the whole interior bulkhead of the galley. Shots of Beatriz, Rico, Ben and a half-dozen bearded strangers were interspersed with location stills of Ben and Rico, Ben and Beatriz - several of Ben and Beatriz. Crista didn't see Elvira up there.
"Beatriz is beautiful," she said, raising her voice so he could hear.
"Very."
"You look happy together," she said.
"Yes," he answered, also raising his voice so she could hear.
Then she heard a curse and a thump and the water stopped spraying. Ben came out of the access cabinet and wiped his face with the least damp spot on his shirt. His green eyes looked right into her own.
"When we were together, we were happy," he said. He did not turn to look at the pictures. "More often than not, we were on opposite sides of the world. Lately she's been up there." His thumb indicated the general direction of the Orbiter overhead.
"Do you wis... otherwise?"
"No," he sighed. "It's as it should be. I have things to do here."
Things to do! Crista thought. What she wanted him to say was, "It's as it should be. Now I've met you." But he didn't say that.
An odd feeling came over her, a dizziness and a weakness in the knees, a tingling in her temples. Like it had been with the hylighter, like her dreams.
A year ago Crista had begun dreaming dreams that came true. At first, they came only in the night. She knew they weren't dreams, but she despaired of calling them "visions." Lately, they came all the time, and inside the last one she forgot to breathe. Crista was sure they came from the kelp, and they were getting more intense.
She ha... feelings, that she'd always explained as "dreaming somebody else's dreams." It was something she now knew came from the kelp.
Today, now, she saw two things: She saw Rico in a green singlesuit, and that suit was the fruit on a great vine of kelp. In the distance beyond him she saw a stand of kelp with a human growing from each great vine, looking like a seascape of bowsprits with interesting carvings, or like bait.
The kelp grew a membrane, clear and gogglelike, about their eyes. It seemed a part of them, like fingernails, but never needed trimming. Their lungs would never want for air, their skimpy bones would soon forget land.
The second vision pulled away from the first and showed her the kelp from a tremendous height. One kelp vine snaked skyward and a cold light, like luciferase, touched its tip. The vine, the kelp bed, the planet itself began to glow. In the light below she watched the kelp writhe for a blink, then convolute itself into what appeared to be an immense, glowing brain. She felt a sense of easy grace that only came to her now in dreams.
Just as suddenly, the visions vanished. Crista was a dreamer, but these were not dreams. She was sure the kelp had a message for her.
I've got to get out there.
She stared into the picture of Ben and Beatriz, stared into Ben's eyes and concentrated on slowing her heart rate, slowing her breathin...
"I'm glad you're here, Ben," she said. "I'm glad it's as it should be with Beatriz. If all is well among us we can bring Flattery down. The kelp knows this, maybe Flattery knows it, too. Inside the kelp, I can find out what all this is. The kelp is vulnerable now, as we are vulnerable. It is stunned, not dead. Help me out there, I can make the difference."
"No," he said. "You're not going out there. We'll all stay aboard the foil. Once we're ashore we can get to an Oracle, or the beach."
"We don't have that much time," she said. "I don't know how I know it, but right now I could - become Avata, be the consciousness, the command center, the conscience of the kelp. Show me the way out."
"You don't know that," he said. "Your chemistry is different, you told me so yourself. Maybe it would keep you alive out there. Maybe it would keep you dead. Just wait a few -"
"We can't wait," she pleaded.
She sighed, rubbed her eyes and went on. "I think he's been using the kelp to gather data. I was blown up while they were doing it. Now he's found out what he wanted to know and he's heading offplanet at breakneck speed."
When she looked up she could see that he wanted to believe her. It had been the same way last night, when she saw that he wanted to kiss her. She just knew. As she knew there was something catastrophic imminent, and Flattery knew what it was, and Flattery was fleeing as fast as he could with as much as he could.
"Stay put," Ben said. His voice was softer, as softened as everything was now that the beating had stopped. He tousled her wet hair.
"Flattery isn't getting away today, so let's get out of this fix first. Give Rico and Elvira a chance to work their magic on the foil."
She could tell that he was convincing himself. He was afraid. She knew a little something about fear. The day she had been blown free of the kelp had been a day much like this. This time, she was headed in the right direction. It was quartertide in the afternoon and they were fewer than a dozen meters from daylight.
***
Short-term expedients always fail in the long term.
- Dwarf MacIntosh
Beatriz had taped here for the first time during the ceremonies that had welcomed Current Control's move aboard the Orbiter two years ago. She had received a tour on the arm of the mysterious Dr. MacIntosh, a dizzying tour that changed her life and included her first attempt to navigate in near-zero gravity.
Now a few of the captain's men held her incommunicado while the rest did what soldiers throughout history had done to secure a garrison among an unarmed and isolated populace. None of them moved comfortably in low gravity. Since her only contacts were with Brood's men, smuggling messages to Mack seemed out of the question.
What if they kill him, too? she wondered.
Mack was a very compassionate man, but one who immersed himself in his work and didn't often pay attention to the ways of the world more than 150 kilometers below them. It struck her, too, that that had been her own problem. Ben had seen it and tried to help.
I know Ben's alive, she thought, I feel it.
She hoped that Mack was alive, too. Partly because he was someone she genuinely liked, partly because she was sure that all of their fates depended on him.
Brood needs him, too, she thought. He'll use me as his bargaining chip.
The hatch slammed open and Yuri Brood sailed through. He rebounded into a safety webwork that was set up to catch rookies and keep damages minimal. Brood pointed to the bank of editing screens as he settled into the seat beside her.
"You think that because my men are warriors they can't do your show," he said. He was out of breath but seemed in good humor. "Well, we greenhorns have something to show you. The Director had us shoot this just before we left for the launch site. Leon turned in the rough copy on his way to the shuttle."
She tried not to watch the screens, which displayed clips that Brood's three techs had shot of the damage at Kalaloch. As each rolled up on a screen, a text of tentative script flashed across the console in front of her. There was no fighting apparent in any of their tapes. It only took her a glance to tell what he was up to.
"You're trying to make this look like a hylighter disaster," she said. "You can't get away with it - somebody else from Holovision must've been on the scen... word of mouth alon..."
She stopped when she saw his sneer. It was an expression that reminded her immediately of Flattery. Brood had the same narrow nose, dark, upraked brows, the same manner of tilting his head back to look down his nose at everyone.
Though he had been flushed and slightly out of breath when he came in, Brood seemed in no hurry now. He watched her eyes constantly, and this made her very nervous.
"You might have noticed how many new faces there are among the field crews these days," he said. "Quite a few new faces around the studios, too."
He smiled, and the smile chilled her.
"Are you saying that all of the crews have bee... replaced?"
"Lots of people looking for work these days," he said, "people willing to do the necessary thing to get the job done."
"Our job is reporting the news, telling the truth -"
His laugh cut her off.
"Your job was reporting the news, telling the truth," he said. "Our job is keeping order, and if distorting the truth a little helps keep order, then that's what I'll do. People are happier this way."
"People are dead this way, and you will have to keep killing the..."
"Watch this section," he ordered, and snapped his fingers at Leon, "they're sure to use it tonight. Isn't it a lot better view of the world than what you think you saw?"
Her console read:
"Lead: Kalaloch residents flee their homes in the aftermath of a hylighter explosion that split the settlement in two."
Scene, screen one: rescue of elderly woman from smoldering rubble of a habitat, a housing project: "OK darlin', you hold on now, OK?"
Voiceover: "Today Vashon Security Forces rescued this elderly woman from the char that was smoldering around her cubby. Death toll has exceeded one thousand. Authorities are now estimating more than fifteen thousand people to be homeless tonight, many of them seriously injured."
Scene, screen two: rescue crew in security uniforms alongside residents, rebuilding wall at the Preserve. Animals rounded up in background.
Voiceover: "Meanwhile thousands of animals are milling between the Preserve, where the explosion freed them, and the firestorm that laid waste to the edge of the village. Authorities here are anticipating return of most, if not all, of the Preserve's prize livestock, which includes the only breeding pair of llamas in existence."
Scene, screen three: heart of all the tenements, the habitats, that are still burning.
Voiceover: "In parts of Kalaloch the fires still burn, as they have for more than five hours. Much of the public market is destroyed, more than a hundred looters were reported shot in the first hours after the blast. A warehouse containing 70 percent of the sector's rice and dry beans will burn for days, according to fire officials. Most of this year's storage has been destroyed by flames, smoke or water. Disastrous food shortages are expected."
"Bu... but that's not even close to true!" Beatriz hissed. Her outrage broke the fear barrier. "Flattery has all that stuff buried in storage bins all over the Preserve."
"Shh," Brood said, still smiling. He placed a finger to his lips and nodded toward the screens.
Beatriz hated that smile, and she vowed to find a way to erase it.
Leon, the only journeyman tech of the three, frowned and cleared his throat. Even with Brood there, he wouldn't talk to her. He simply pointed at screen four.
Scene, screen four: the harbor, boats on fire at moorage and in the bay. Ferry terminal littered with bodies, most in bags, which the camera panned quickly, from a height.
Voiceover: "Authorities estimate that as many as five hundred commuters perished from the concussion as they changed shifts on the docks today. No ferries suffered any permanent damage and all are operating on schedule from the repair docks."
Scene, screen five: two crying women with commuter tags, holding their ears and comforting one another. Smoke and masts in the background.
Text: "Something hit our ears, and there was that blast from those thing... I don't know what happened to us. They're all dea..."
Voiceover: "Mrs. Gratzer and her neighbor claim that at least two class-four hylighters, attracted by fires in nearby refugee camps, exploded and destroyed several square miles of eastern Kalaloch. Dick Leach has lost three icehouses full of seafood."
Text: "All of our income for this year has been taken away from us, and all the bills that it took to produce that crop are still here."
Voiceover: "They will be eligible for low-interest Merman Mercantile loans."
Text: "If it comes to a loan we're going to have to probably pull out. We need a grant."
Scene, screen six: pullaway from the body bags laid out on Kalaloch pier.
Voiceover: "The ordeal seems to be over for these commuters, but the hardship's just beginning for tens of thousands of hungry, homeless families in the Kalaloch district."
All screens cut to black, then her console read: "Accepted for final edit, elapsed time to follow."
So, Brood was right all along, she thought. They're going to run it.
Beatriz didn't feel particularly afraid anymore, just tired and incredibly sad.
"I need to see Dr. MacIntosh," she said. "I was assigned a story on the OMC and the installation of the Bangasser drive, and I intend to do it."
"Dr. MacIntosh has his hands full right now," Brood said. "There's a crisis in Current Control, a priority crisis. He knows you're here."
"Then let me go to Current Control."
"No," he laughed, "no, I don't think so. He will come here when the time is right."
"What about the rest of them, the people here?"
"So far they suspect nothing. We have been very quiet, very selective. When shifts change, rations are left uneaten, then there will be talk. That will be hours from now, and we will be finished here."
"Then what?"
He answered with his smile and a half-salute.