The Ascension Factor

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 dust.

"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 mean. 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."

"Drugs, yeah," Ben said. "She's been laced up with something, something that Flattery wants people to think is kelp juice. Figures."

Ben stood on wobbly legs, holding Rico and the bulkhead, and made his way to Crista Galli. Rico watched as Ben checked her pulse, bent to her breathing.

"She's in there," Ben said. "If she's like I was, she can hear us, too."

He leaned down to her ear.

"You'll be all right," he said, and patted her arm.

Rico hoped it wasn't a lie. Some panicky feeling in his gut told him that none of them would ever be all right. The green of his aura sucked itself tight against his body. When he stuffed his unease away, it crept out from him again and mixed with the others.

The drugs are the danger, not her touch, he reminded himself. How long before they wear off?

Rico knew that a single-dose dusting didn't last that long in real time. He would have to remind himself that it was the dust that warped time. He knew they didn't have much of it to spare. They could count on help from the kelp. This was something he felt, intuited.

It's the dust, he thought.

"We'd better see what we have left," Ben said.

Rico forced himself to focus. He knew Ben was right, and if they were both dusted then they both had to pay attention.

"If we don't pay attention, we're dead," Rico heard himself say.

Ben just grunted.

Rico pulled the lasgun from his belt, checked the charges. "They'll know we're down," he said. "We have to get out from under this mess, we're too easy to spot."

He braced himself against the upside-down bulkhead. "Things were tough enough without all of us going to dreamland."

Rico started out the buckled-in hatch.

"Bring me some dust," Ben said. "That's what we need to get her out of this."

"No way," Rico said. "She's had enough, right here. We don't know what Flattery's been doing to her. A heavy dose might kill her, you don't know. "

He heard his voice going on without him. Ben was insisting that he was right, that she'd already been dusted and it was bringing her around, that what she needed was more.

"I'm serious, Rico. She needs it, and the antidote — you saw what it did to her. Think about it."