The Ascension Factor
Chapter 22

MacIntosh turned his set on "full."
"Hold it!" he yelled. "Stand down, mister."
The security was obviously direct from groundside and lacked the skills for maneuvering in the axis area of the Orbiter. He spun around at the voice and let go his handhold. The momentum in near-zero-gee sent him spinning up the passageway toward MacIntosh. The man let go of his lasgun as he flailed for balance and Mack scooped it up as he sailed by.
Mack reached Spud as he started coming around.
"I heard them say they'd kill her," Spud said, through a mouthful of blood. "I pulled the alarm because I didn't know what else to do."
"Good thinking, Spud," he said. "Get a suit on in case we break vacuum."
The arriving volunteer fire squad crowded the passageway as Spud suited up, and close behind them the usual throng was forming. In spite of their bulky suits the squad moved with a grace that MacIntosh envied. He looked around for the owner of the lasgun, but the man had disappeared. The hatch to the studio remained sealed.
MacIntosh plugged his communicator directly into Spud's headset.
"Beatriz knows the drill," he said. "She'll suit up."
"Does she know the visual 'all clear' code?"
MacIntosh nodded.
"She knows it, but I'll bet she knows better than to use it."
It took two things to prevent a sealed-off fire area from being committed to vacuum: an automatic sensor signal "all clear" to the Orbiter computer, and a coded visual "all clear" signal to the computer. Since the sensors in the studio undoubtedly reported no sign of fire, the computer awaited the visual code indicating that a human had inspected the scene and declared it clear. Meanwhile, the suspect area remained sealed off, accessible only by fire personnel.
The intercom warned: "Attention axis deck, yellow sectors eight through sixteen. Vacuum instillation in three minutes. Vacuum in three minutes. Full pressure suit mandatory in these area..."
The electronic device that the fire squad used to enter sealed hatches didn't work on the first try, or the second. MacIntosh plugged his set into the bulkhead receptacle and tried direct contact with the studio.
Spud plugged into MacIntosh.
"Anything?" he asked.
MacIntosh shook his head. "Static. They're just no..."
On the third try the hatch sprang aside. The fire squad rushed in and MacIntosh shouldered himself behind them, hiding the lasgun as best he could. He was glad he did.
Beatriz was the only one who had managed to don a suit. She stood to the side of the hatch and grabbed MacIntosh as he raced through. The momentum spun him into the bulkhead beside her, but she had a good grip on a handhold so they both stayed put.
The others fumbled with the seals of their suits, surprised at the suddenness of the fire squad's entry. One of the newcomers made a clumsy dive for the back of the studio, but he was grabbed in flight by a firefighter and his partner who wrestled him to a handhold and restrained him. MacIntosh made sure the rest of them saw his lasgun and they stayed put.
Mack's squad finished their sweep of the room in less than a minute and one of them sent the "all clear, visual" signal back to the computer. The intercom announced "all clear," and MacIntosh unfastened his headgear. Beatriz beat him to it.
"They killed my crew," she shouted. "They killed your security squad and they have weapons back there in the lockers." One of the firelighters sailed to the back of the studio to search out the weapons cache.
"Hold these men," MacIntosh ordered, "and hand out whatever weapons they have, we're likely to need them."
The firefighters used various lines and straps from their pockets to truss up Leon and his two men. All three were confounded and helpless in zero-gee. The fire squad lived and worked in it every day, but MacIntosh still had to admire their ease of movement, even with three struggling captives in tow.
Beatriz hugged him tight and kissed him. Even through the added bulk of the vacuum suit, she felt good to him.
"I was hoping we could do that under other circumstances," he said. He felt her trembling and held her close.
"There are more of them," she said, "I counted thirty-two altogether. My guess is that their leader, Captain Brood, is with the OMC."
"Spud, you heard?"
"Yes, Dr. Mack."
"All this action's going to bring somebody down here. Seal off axis sector yellow, code admission only. We might seal a few of them in here with us, but it'll give us time to deal with the rest of them."
Spud activated the nearest console and completed the order in a blink.
MacIntosh motioned to the firefighter with the white headgear. "There's a big storage locker across the passageway that's empty. Seal these men in there and then meet me in the teaching lab next to Current Control. If you can find any weapons from our own security, bring them. I want your best tunnel rats, as many as you can muster."
"Aye, Commander," he said, then added, "these men are groundsiders, sir. You saw how clumsy they are. Our best weapons here are zero-gee and vacuum."
"You're right," MacIntosh said, taking Beatriz's hand, "and strategy. Let's move."
***
While the fat and flesh cleaving to the flame are devoured by it, you who cleave to it are yet alive.
- Zohar: The Book of Splendor
Spider Nevi hoped that Flattery was getting a humbling at the hands of the rabble, because Nevi was certainly getting a humbling out here at the hands of the kelp. He'd spotted Zentz floating on his back, only the whites of his eyes visible, the mouthpiece to his breathing apparatus discarded. A long strand of kelp wrapped his middle, and it reeled him steadily toward the side of the lagoon.
Lucky for Zentz that he'd had the presence of mind to inflate the collar of the suit. It kept his head and shoulders on the surface, though fat as he was his body floated nicely enough without it. Lucky, too, that Nevi had hit the vine quickly and on the first shot. He had Zentz all the way back to the foil before he felt the seethe of kelp anger on his heels. Zentz appeared to be breathing.
It would've been so much easier if he had drowned, Nevi thought. But I still might need him. A live body is a lot more useful than a dead one.
Nevi knew one thing for sure, he was getting out of reach of the kelp. One zombie on the crew was enough. The foil started a slow spin, and Nevi swore under his breath.
It's channeling us into its reach.
He managed to secure Zentz's collar with a line from the aft hatchway and pulled him aboard the foil. He used a boathook to brush off pieces of kelp frond that clung to the unconscious Zentz.
The whole situation had passed beyond the ridiculous for Nevi, now it was simply comic. It didn't matter to him whether Flattery stayed in power or not. Whoever was up there would need Spider Nevi and his services, and Nevi enjoyed that position. It was like having three or four good chess moves already set while the opponent was in check. Well, it was time Flattery learned his worth.
Send me out here, will he?
Zentz had been kelped, and the automatics in his dive suit kept him from swimming off to who-knows-where. They didn't keep him from struggling blindly against rescue. At sixty-five kilos, it took Nevi a while to wrestle the nearly one hundred kilos of Zentz inside the foil and harness him into his couch. He didn't know why he bothered, except that it would give Flattery something to play with if they didn't come back with Crista Galli and Ozette.
Nevi quickly maneuvered the foil to the center of the lagoon and prepared for vertical takeoff. It would eat up more fuel than he liked, but it would cut his odds of getting grabbed by that kelp stand.
He punched in the automatic VTO sequence and all of the power of the foil kicked him right in the seat of the pants. It swayed like a bug on a blade of grass until they were a safe hundred meters above the lagoon. He set the controls for straight-and-level and turned the foil loose. A routine ten-minute refueling had turned into nearly an hour's delay, and Nevi couldn't afford to waste another blink.
He listened to the radio and couldn't make heads or tails of the situation back at the Preserve. He'd tried to raise Flattery on their dedicated channel, but no one keyed him in at the other end. One fragment of transmission from an overflight came through and he shook his head in wonder.
What idiot talked Flattery into depth-charging the foil we're hunting?
He snapped off the radio and relaxed his grip on the controls. The afternoon turbulence didn't sit well on his stomach, so he flipped off the autopilot. He needed something to do besides listen to Zentz breathe through his drool. He kept the yellow arrow on his viewscreen pointed toward the green coordinates set down by the overflights.
He could tell, by the way Zentz squirmed in the copilot's couch, that the Chief of Security might be coming around.
Nevi had trouble suppressing a sneer at the mere thought of Zentz as chief of anything.
Chief Breach of Security, he thought. Chief of Insecurity.
Nevi had to admit that Zentz had held a difficult line against the increasing hostility of the villagers for nearly a year. A mob of villagers was one thing - this Crista Galli and her Shadow playmates were quite another.
"A hundred meters across!" Zentz gurgled.
Zentz's eyes were wild, the pupils dilating and constricting on both sides, dancing to some strange rhythm.
Nevi didn't answer. Zentz had started this raving about some giant hylighter as soon as Nevi had gotten the foil back in the air.
"Crista Galli, kelp gone crazy," Zentz went on, "giant hylighter grab whole foi..."
"That's hocus-pocus, and it's in your head," Nevi said.
He knew Zentz couldn't hear him, but it made Nevi feel better. His voice was calm and flat, a practiced calm that paid off whenever he had to work with Zentz. He knew it gave Zentz the creeps, and that always gave Nevi the edge. He wondered whether it would give Zentz the creeps in his dreams. He hoped so. It was this flying that made Nevi nervous.
The storm buffeted Nevi against the restraints in his command couch. Some of the updrafts along the coastline nearly emptied his stomach. Like most Pandorans, he preferred traveling the kelp's subways, particularly during afternoon storms, but today speed was critical. The cat had played the mouse too loose. Maybe Zentz was right about their foil. Who knew what the kelp had shown him?
If Ozette and Crista Galli got loose afoot in this country they might just wind up being dasher bait. Ozette didn't strike him as the survival type. Nevi knew that Flattery needed both of them alive - for now. For now, what Flattery needed Nevi needed, and he didn't want to get so comfortable out here that he forgot it.
Zentz needs them alive more than anyone, he thought.
The big question mark for Nevi was the hylighter - what would contact with that thing do to Crista Galli?
Or what might it do for her?
And something about those damned Zavatan squatters upcoast gave even Nevi the creeps. Nobody could farm the open country like that without some kind of protection. He wanted to know what that protection was. Or who. They kept one jump ahead of Flattery and the dashers - accomplishments that captured Nevi's personal respect.
The squall cleared occasionally, allowing Nevi glimpses of the coastline. Cloudfront pushed across both suns and confounded his perspective. He knew that thousands of square kilometers lay under Zavatan camouflage. It didn't take much imagination to appreciate the value of the new fertile land below.
In a matter of weeks the Zavatans turned bare rock into garden, pumped water and started up their smelly labs. The entire upcoast region was laced with streams and pockmarked with hundreds of small lakes. They'd already turned many of the lakes into fish farms. Their pitiful farms grew more than enough to sustain them, this Nevi knew. His information was better than Flattery's, but Flattery didn't pay him for information.
Where does their surplus go? he wondered.
He knew that when he discovered the answer to that one he would answer the Shadow question as well.
No food, no Shadows, he thought.
It would be a pity if Flattery managed to wipe out the farms to stop the supplies that he was sure were channeled to the underground. There must be a more profitable wa...
It occurred to him that the Shadows might win. He shrugged.
Nevi admitted an admiration for these Zavatans, for their independence that Flattery couldn't yet control. He didn't intend to muddy his own hands, though this trip had already proved messy enough.
Nevi smiled, a rare break in the steel of his countenance. He had plans for his retirement, and this upcoast region with its farmland and its new, burgeoning forests appealed to him. The people up here just might want some professional protection soon. Protection from the likes of Flattery and his bungling Chief of Security.
Lot of new squatters this year, he thought.
Since the earthquakes started a few years ago people had turned to the surface for safety. Even with burmhouses it was easier to spot a dwelling than a tunnel, it wouldn't take that much effort to map these people. Nevi flew into a sudden wall of weather and there wasn't much possibility of spotting anything.
Nevi kept his attention on the screen. The slash of rain against the metal skin and plaz of the cabin nearly deafened him. He switched on the landing lights to clarify the terrain. Still, visibility was a few hundred meters, tops. A buzzer reminded him that he was flying at the stall point.
They were only a couple of kilometers downcoast from the overflight coordinates. Zentz came around enough to set his couch up and hold his head.
"So, how was it?" Nevi asked.
"I don't ever want to go back."
"Where'd you go?"
"Everywhere." Zentz wiped his drool with his sleeve. "I went everywher... at once. I saw them picked up."
"They're around here somewhere."
"Beached," Zentz said. "Down the cliff. Beached."
Nevi grunted his amusement. He imagined this gray land on a sunny day, blooming.
Flattery couldn't possibly send troops, he thought, they'd never come home at all.
"Approaching set-down," he said, and throttled back. "See them yet?"
"N... yes!" He pointed a shaking finger starboard. "There, look at the size of tha... thing! I knew it was more than a dream."
Nevi was disgusted at the spit-spray of Zentz's excitement. The squall was moving on already as quickly as it had come, and visibility over the downed hylighter was good. The terrain, however, looked deadly. The crumple of downed foil was plainly visible amid the orange shards of the deflated hylighter.
It was a monster, all right, and deflated it covered far more than the hundred-meter diameter it had occupied in the air. Almost half of it trailed the fifty meters down to the sea, and the rest lay crumpled in the narrow stretch of beach between the sea and the precipitous rocks. The foil appeared to be nearly intact right at the foot of the cliff.
Nevi did not want to set down inside the perimeter of that thing - he'd seen what that blue dust did to some of those burned-out Zavatans who wandered dazed around the village. The strip of tideline was too narrow and the tides less predictable than he liked. The beach itself, from tideline to cliff, was a jumble of boulders. That meant a water landing or a set-down at the top of the cliff. He didn't like the look of all that kelp in the water, or the positioning of the dead hylighter.
"Electronic and infrared scan," Nevi ordered. "I'm making a couple of passes so that we don't get surprised down there. Then we'll worry about how to get them out from under that thing."
Their situation suddenly struck Nevi as absurd. Flattery had positioned his precious Orbiter and had the Voidship nearly ready to go; he had plans to establish a steppingstone colony in a debris belt over a million kilometers away. Pandora's moons were even more unstable than the planet. Even Nevi agreed that fleeing was the ultimate answer. But he doubted that it would be worth it in his own lifetime.
Especially if he insisted on risking his life in a wrestling match with a hydrogen gasbag of hallucinatory dust and tentacles. He chose a set-down atop the cliff, near a trail that didn't look too difficult. Zentz should be clear of his kelping by the time they reached bottom.
If the girl's as holy as they say, let's see her get herself out of this one.
***
That's all Ship ever asked of us, that's all WorShip was meant to be: find our own humanity and live up to it.
- Kerro Panille, from The Clone Wars.
Rico sprung the galley hatch with a crowbar from the tool locker and saw Ben sitting up, fumbling with the catch of his harness.
"Ben, budd..."
He stumbled over the crumbled deck to Ben's couch, but was careful not to touch him. Ben's Merman-green eyes seemed clear when they looked at him, but they weren't tracking all that well. Both Ben and Crista were half-buried in debris from what was left of the galley.
"Can you talk?"
Ben's voice caught in his throat. "... I think so," he said.
"Sit back," Rico said.
His own head started a strange buzz, so he took a deep breath, let it out slow. "We're not going anywhere for now, so relax."
He hesitated short of unclipping the last two restraints.
"Crist..." Ben's voice sounded foreign, distant. "Is she all right?"
Rico felt his lips tingling, and his fingertips, too. It was just like Ben to think of someone else first. He glanced over at the other couch. There was no movement. All the lights in the galley were out, but from where Rico knelt in the rubble it looked as if she wasn't breathing.
Shit!
"Sit back," Rico repeated, pushing Ben back. "I'll check." His muscles didn't work quite as they should, and he felt as if he was moving in slow motion. The heavy rain that pelted their foil dimmed what little light seeped through the single uncovered port. Rico noticed that the shadows weren't just shades of gray, but dancing hues of blue and green, backed up by flickering tongues of a cold yellow flame.
A halo of yellow flame surrounded the prone form of Crista Galli. Rico couldn't see any movement, but her lips were pink and that gave him hope. He moved to check for a pulse at her neck, then backed off. He couldn't bring himself to touch her.
She lay still, absolutely sagged, her mouth a little open. The inflated dive collar kept her head back and her airway clear. Even this way, Rico had to admit she was beautiful. For Ben's sake, for the sake of the hungry people of Pandora, he hoped she stayed alive. As he watched, a green glow smoldered over her body. A fainter glow, also green but lighter-hued, came from himself. Pockets of green oozed out of him and, amoebalike, they crept the air. One of these joined with a similar pocket oozing away from Crista Galli. She was alive, no question about it. Now all he had to do was keep her that way.
"Rico?"
"Yeah, Ben," he said.
His voice sounded a long way away to himself. But it's right here my voice is right here.
"Is she all right?"
Rico breathed in a deep breath, and some of the lime-green glow sped into his lungs like fog or dust.
"She's OK," he said, fighting for control of his tongue. "Flattery gave her drugs a while back."
Rico turned slowly and saw his partner backlighted by the one piece of uncovered plaz. The rain that spatted against it struck sparks that shot out from Ben and ricocheted around the galley. Ben sat up rubbing his eyes, and a roil of fire moved with him. It was not the blue-green glow that captured Crista and Rico, but a sensuous warm glow like the throb of some membrane from the inside.
The spore dus...
"I think I'm dusted," he told Ben in his new, slow way. "How do you feel?"
"Headache," he heard Ben say. "Helluva headache."
Ben's speech was thick and slurred.
"And my muscles don't all want to go right, but they work. That shot did it."
Rico helped him sit up. Their two haloes arced and whirled around them. Ben held his head between his hands, doubled over nearly to his knees.
"I see what you mea... I'm starting to feel a little dusted, myself. Long time."
"Yeah," Rico said, letting out another slow breath, "long time. With Crista it's drugs. Flattery's drugs."