The Ascension Factor
Chapter 27

"I can take her back dead or alive, Ozette," Nevi's voice insisted. It was closer now, only a few steps away. "If she's dead, the world will think you killed her. If she's aliv... well, then everyone gets another chance."
"Going back there," she whispered, "that is not living."
"Don't worry, he knows how it's got to be."
Three more flashes burst through the light screen and pitted the boulder above them in a dazzle of red and violet. Ben wrapped his arms around Crista to sandwich her between himself and the rock. It seemed that the dust was bringing her out of a dream instead of into it. She felt her head and senses clear beyond anything she'd experienced in Flattery's custody.
"I think the dus... you were right about it," she told Ben. "It's offset whatever it was that Flattery gave me."
She pulled Ben's arms tighter around her and felt as though she were melting into him, her busy atoms scooting between the oscillations of his own. She felt herself disassemble into her qualities of light and shade. She was no longer so much a substance as an idea, an image, a dream. She felt no pain or pleasure, just a sense of transmission, of movement with purpose over which she had no control.
"Ben," she asked, over a stab of fear, "Ben, are you here?"
"Yes," his breath puffed her ear, "I'm here."
"I'm sorry," she said. She knew something was coming, some feral intensity crested her awareness and would not be cowed. "I'm sorry."
A sensation like the one she had felt at the dockside in Kalaloch welled up inside her, then burst with a loud crack that rolled outward from her heart like angry thunder. Everything around her stilled except the wet rush of the incoming tide.
Welcome home, Crista Galli.
The voice spoke through her mind, without the impediment of sound. It came at a rush from the dying hylighter, from Avata itself.
A refreshing sense of detachment, then a familiar disembodiment overcame her. The distinction between hylighter skin and her own blurred. She was encompassed within a familiar tingle. It was a muted, struggling tingle that she knew to be a kind of death in body that hatched the great hylighter of her mind. Her mind flexed its great sail in the sun and caught its first breath.
We hatched of the same vine, Crista Galli.
She remembered, now. Before the bombing that cut her free she had been rooted for safety in a pod of kelp. The memories filled her head so fast they stunned her. Ben's groan in her ear reeled her attention back to their huddle on the beach. The holo was gone, and enough of the mist lifted to reveal a scattering of bodies in the rocks.
"I thought I was dead," Ben said, rubbing his temples. "Ho... what have you done?"
Crista couldn't answer. She felt as though she straddled two worlds - one on the beach, with Ben, and one in the sea with her great guardian, Avata. The holo had switched off with the thunderclap, and Nevi lay on the beach, nearly within her reach, his eyes blinking stupidly and blood oozing from his red-veined nose. She got up slowly and retrieved his lasgun. Rico, though wobbly, was the first to recover and he did likewise with Zentz.
"My apologies, sister," Rico said, with a slight bow and a quizzical smile. "There is much this ignorant brother did not understand."
He reeled and nearly fell, but caught the side of a great rock and steadied himself.
Others around them, the stunned ones, began stirring and shaking their heads. A few, victims of the lasguns, would never stir again. She felt bigger now, taller, and it seemed that even Rico looked up to her. A deep breath of the mist-laden air cleared her mind and helped pulse a new strength to her young legs. The tide hissed up to her feet, and a few meters away it licked Nevi's outstretched form in the sand.
"So, Rico, do you still want to keep me from the kelp?"
He managed a laugh and shook his head.
"Two rules," he said. "The first: never argue with an armed woman."
She hefted Nevi's lasgun as though seeing it for the first time, then inquired, "And the second?"
"Never argue with an armed man."
She returned the laugh, and Ben joined them.
"You argued with Nevi," Ben said, "and look what it got him."
"I didn't argue with him," Rico said, "I tricked him - that is, Avata tricked him. Now we've got more work to do. Believe it or not, we have to save Flattery. If we don't -"
"Save Flattery?" Ben's bitterness dripped from his voice. "He started all this, he should suffer the consequences."
"Not if we all suffer," Crista said. "Not if human life on Pandora is extinguished. He can do that, I feel it. Rico is right. Flattery must be stopped, but he must stay alive."
The dozen stunned Zavatans struggled to regain their feet and their senses. Ben picked up Nevi under the arms and dragged him out of reach of the water. A Zavatan scout took over and trussed Nevi's thumbs together behind his back with a stout length of maki leader.
"That holo," Ben said, "I've never seen anything like it. How did you do that?"
"Thought you'd never ask," Rico said.
He picked up a length of kelp vine from the water's edge, caressed it momentarily and then dropped it back into the sea.
"That was the trick. I think our Zavatan friends here have these two zeroes under control. Follow me, I'd like you to meet my friend, Avata, the greatest holo studio in the world."
A warning shout went up from a scout at the clifftop, and simultaneously a hunt of dashers splashed out of the upcoast mist in a sinister blur. Ben snatched the heavy lasgun from Crista's hand and pushed her toward Rico. He fired a quick burst and the barest scent of ozone accompanied the snapping of the weapon. Two dashers crumpled in a flurry of screams and sand only a dozen meters away. The others began to feed on their dead, as was their instinct. A Zavatan scout emptied his charges into the rest of the hunt.
"They're s... so fast," she gasped, and discovered herself clinging to Rico's arm.
He did not cringe or push her away, but put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze.
"Not much time to think topside," Rico said. Then, to Ben, "I see you're still quick in your old age."
"Some of us stay young forever," he laughed. "Must be the company I keep."
Ben's hand took her own and the three of them caught their collective breath.
"If they're not too chewed up, we'll get you one of those hides for a souvenir," Rico told her.
"What would I do with a dead thing?" she asked. A huge cold finger ran a shudder down her spine. "I'm a lot more interested in life."
"Touche," Ben said. "Let's get going. I want a look at Rico's mystery studio."
A gust of breeze puffed the last of the mist off the tidelands and both afternoon suns caressed Crista's pale skin. The fabric of her dive suit rippled in sunlight as the tide reclaimed, amoebalike, the tumble of rocks that marked its upper reaches. With her hand clasped in Ben's she followed Rico as he scrambled away from the sea up to the cliff. Two Zavatan scouts in green singlesuits flanked a great entry way between boulders.
"In here," Rico said. "It's not nearly as scary as the way I came in. Watch your step, the wet rock is mighty slick."
Crista stood at the dark entry, feeling a pulse of damp air rush out at her. A series of carvings decorated the wall inside, carvings of intertwined kelp vines, fishes and suns. She turned her face upward for one more dose of light before facing the darkness.
"Look there," Ben said, pointing skyward, "hylighters. And they have the foil that these two came in on."
A half-dozen of them appeared from somewhere landward, two of them cradling the shiny foil in a snarl of tentacles. They all dropped in lazy circles to within a hundred meters of the beach. They valved off their hydrogen, fluting their peculiar songs that included one long shrill "all clear" whistle. Their great sails fluttered and snapped, tacking the coastal breeze. Sunlight through their sail membranes made them glow a dusky orange, and even this far away she could make out the delicate webwork of their veins.
"Guardians of the Oracle," one of the Zavatans said. "They, like you, are sent by Avata to help us. There is nothing to fear."
It seemed to her that their flutings called "Avaaaata, Avaaaata," on the wind.
"Come," Rico said, "let these guys mop up. There isn't much time."
They passed through the high portal of carved rock and, though she had expected darkness, they entered a chamber of magnificent light. The light came out of the pool itself, fanning out from the kelp and, like the warm breeze on her cheeks, it pulsed ever so slightly as though it, too, were alive.
"Avata brought me in through the sea," Rico told them. "There's an entry through the kelp itself into the pool. The entry closes off as the tide rises, then opens again at ebb. I just squeaked through. As you can see, it's well-occupied."
The strong sea-smell of the beach had been replaced with the scent of thousands of blossoms, but there were no blossoms in sight. A kelp root rose out of the pool at the center of the cavern, crowding all the way to the high domed ceiling.
"The root comes out of the ceiling," Ben said. "This rock was folded upside-down during the quake of '82. Look at that monster!"
She saw that it was true. It did not rise out of the pool but dropped into it. The top portion of root, thirty meters or more above their heads, was indistinguishable from the rock it clung to. Around it sparkled the thousands of reflections from its mineralization.
"This is an old one," she said, craning for a good look. "A very old one."
The cavern walls were terraced up to where the root joined the ceiling. The terraces were cultivated, and thick fruit vines carpeted the walls. A welcoming committee in brightly embroidered costumes smiled down at her from among the greenery. As the three of them stepped from the passageway to the edge of the pool applause broke out and the chant of "Cris-ta, Cris-ta, Cris-ta" pulsed with the brightening light.
"Look at yourself," Ben said, over the din, "you're glowing."
It was true. Except for where his hand held hers a light surrounded her body. It was not a reflection of the glow of the kelp on her white skin and white dive suit, because the pulse of this light matched the throb of her own heart. She felt stronger with every beat.
"Thank you," she said, bowing to the crowd. "Thank you all. Your hopes for a new Pandora will soon be fulfilled."
She stepped to the edge of the pool and became one with its emanation of white light and felt herself enter again the great heart of Avata. It was as though she opened a thousand eyes throughout the world and looked everywhere at once, and with some of these eyes she watched herself watching Avata at the pool.
She heard her voice rise to fill the cavern with a richness it had never held before.
"Fear is the coin of Flattery's realm," she announced. "We shall buy out his interest in kind."
Images leaped from the pool's surface at the sweep of her outstretched arms and filled the cavern like quick bright ghosts. Her body swelled to its limit in the seas, and she reached her thousands of arms skyward in joy.
A gasp escaped one of the sentries, then a shout.
"The kelp! Look at the kelp!"
But no one had to go outside for a look, it was all played before them inside the cavern. Throughout the seas of Pandora the kelp reached its great vines high above the surface. Colorful arcs of light bridged the gulfs between stands. Even hylighters trailed great streamers of light from their ballast, providing a link between isolated patches of wild and domestic kelp alike.
Rico smiled through the dazzle of light and Crista realized the difference between the Rico she had first met and the Rico who had saved them on the beach: This Rico was happy.
"You're looking at Avata," he shouted. "The kelp has risen. Long live Avata."
Applause and exclamations of joy gave way to the heavy background rhythms of water-drum and flute.
"But ho... ?"
Ben swallowed his question back, his eyes desperately trying to follow the display that surrounded him. A parade of ghosts from all over Pandora washed among the people in the cavern like a hologrammatic tide.
"Like the kelpways of the mind," Rico explained, "only it's no longer just a function of touch."
Rico turned to Crista and took both her hands into his own. The light around them leaped even higher.
"Though it seemed like moments, I was gone from you for years," he said. "I witnessed your life, my life, Flattery's life. He buried a secret in his own body that would kill the kelp should he die. If his heart stops a trigger releases his stockpile of toxin worldwide. It would paralyze the kelp in moments and kill it all off in hours. You see now we must isolate him, stop him, save him from his own ignorance. Enter the kelp. Tell the world what you know."
Crista felt herself pulled to the edge of the pool, and a murmur swept the chamber when she stepped onto the thick root of kelp. What she felt in that instant was joy. She became the very force of life in all of those present, and she entered the being of a young Kaleb Norton-Wang.
In blinks the webwork grew. In Oracles throughout the world people consulted the kelp and she entered the minds of them all as they entered her own. It was more a giving up of mind, a joining of the piece to the whole. She felt as though she spun like a mote on a current of air, and filaments of light snaked out from each of her cells into the world. One of them, from the center of her forehead, reached beyond the world to touch the faithful above it. From her perch aboard the Orbiter, she watched Pandora's seas become ashimmer with light.
So you see, Crista Galli, the voice inside her said, the severed vine regrafts itself. In you the parts are joined, and Avata is much more than the sum of its parts.
***
If you take any activity, any art, any discipline, any skill, take it and push it as far as it will go, push it beyond where it has ever been before, push it to the wildest edge of edges, then you force it into the realm of magic.
- T. Robbins
Dwarf MacIntosh had the axis areas of the Obiter evacuated and sealed off, with the exception of a handful of volunteers from the fire crew who remained as his security force. Mack was sure that Brood, when cornered, would resort to sabotage, so he instructed Spud to prepare separation charges that would blow the Orbiter free of the Voidship, if necessary. He was sure that Brood's focus would be Current Control, easily the most important and most sensitive installation in space.
With luck, he won't get both the ship and the Orbiter, Mack thought. With luck, he won't get anything at all.
Mack had always hated the feel of a weapon in his hand. Moonbase had taught all of them well, and his recent life in freefall gave him the advantage over Brood, but he didn't rise to the killing challenge as eagerly as some of his fellows. Mack was older than the rest of his Earthling shipmates. He had trained a lot of Voidship crews, finally gotten a flight of his own, at Flattery's request.
He didn't rise to the dying challenge anymore, either. Since Beatriz had come into his life he had found he wanted to live it more than ever. The prospect of facing Brood at the end of a lasgun struck a cold blow in his belly and set his hands to trembling. He gripped a handhold outside the main hatch to Current Control and tested the latch.
Unlocked.
He and three of his men sealed themselves in full vacuum suits and tested the squad frequency in their headsets.
"Ready one," he said.
"Ready two."
"Three."
"Yo, four."
"Foam only, if possible," he reminded them. "We didn't build all this to blow it up. Remember, the kelp hookups in there won't survive a vacuum, so we don't want a breach if we can help it. Blow vacuum as a last resort. Two and three, you're right and left. Four, I follow you. Check?"
Three fists clenched aloft, though "aloft" to Two was upside-down.
"Now!"
Mack pulled the hatch free and they spilled into the room that had been home for him for the past two years. Two was hit before he cleared the hatch but Three, using him as a shield, foamed both of Brood's henchmen and they hardened to immobility in blinks. Four tumbled to a ceiling position above Brood.
Brood himself sat calmly strapped into the control couch, his lasgun aimed idly at the Gridmaster. He had not even donned a vacuum suit over his fatigues.
Mack hesitated, his complete attention caught in the sighting dot of Brood's lasgun, which rested on the brain that controlled all the domestic kelp in the world.
"Dr. MacIntosh, shoot your two men or this thing is history."
In the immediate few blinks that followed, Mack's mind unreeled some light-speed logic.
He's got to be bluffing. If he wipes out the Gridmaster, there's no way he or anybody else could live on Pandora a year from now. That was when Mack realized that Brood didn't have to live on Pandora - not if he had the Voidship Nietzsche.
But he doesn't have the Nietzsche. Not yet.
"I might add," Brood said, "that if I'm killed, your OMC is also history. We can accommodate everyone, you see."
Mack saw the four techs reflected in a console panel. They ducked behind the next row of machines and were tracked by the muzzle of Four's lasgun. Mack hoped it wouldn't come to that. The men inside the foam cocoons might survive if they were cut free soon, but a lasgun firefight - messy, depressing.
Brood tapped the intercom on Mack's console.
"I left my man Ears back there to look after the OMC. You might've noticed how young he is. Nervous, too. That's been a problem in the past. You can ask your holo star what happens when Ears gets nervous. You OK back there, Ears?"
The voice on the intercom cleared its throat a couple of times before answering.
"Y-y-yeah, Boss, they're talking to me out there. But I ain't listening."
"Making progress on the hookup?"
"Yeah." The voice was young and reedy. "Tech says two more hours, tops."
"You're hooking up the OMC?" Mack's voice sounded as incredulous to him as he felt. "What the hell for?"
"We might want to take this thing out for a little spin, Doctor," Brood said. "Now, about those two lumps of shit, here. I told you to get rid of them."
"I won't do that, Captain," Mack said.
He unsealed his headpiece and set it aside. He sat in Spud's control couch and affected the same casual sprawl as Brood's.
"If you think I'm bluffin..."
"No, you're not bluffing. You'll do something. But the Gridmaster is one of your aces. You're not going to throw it away on something as trivial as my two men."
"They can leave."
Mack nodded to his men, and spoke into his headset.
"It's OK," he said. "Secure the hatch. Take these two and those four with you."
"They stay!"
"Everybody goes but you and me," Mack said. "You knew it would be that way, anyway. Your two guards may have a chance, this way. And the others, they wouldn't get anything done here until this i... settled. Am I right?"
Brood snorted his annoyance and waved them away. They backed out, pulling the wounded behind them, and Brood never wasted a glance. His attention remained on the Gridmaster's many screens that charted the world. A faint glow leaked out from behind the viewscreens, and Mack noticed a fine mist spreading from his holo stage near the turret.
The mysterious spill of a distinct white glow leaked under the console and licked at the heels of Brood's canvas boots. A similar glow lighted the base of their holo stage like a small moon on the deck. A reflection of light on the plasteel bulkhead meant that the turret, too, was suffused with this glow.
The kelp, he thought. What could it be up to?
Brood's lasgun still pointed at the Gridmaster, and by its displays Mack saw that the grids had reformed, but into neat rows of convoluted waves. Either Brood didn't notice the glow, or he didn't know it was unusual.
Something's overriding the whole system!
That, whatever it was, meant that the Gridmaster didn't matter. It was merely a recording instrument, no longer a tool of manipulation.
"Did Flattery send you?" Mack asked.
Brood's face, not an unhandsome one, turned up a lopsided smirk.