The Ascension Factor

"Flattery takes excruciating pains to stay away from the kelp," Crista said. "He won't even have kelp-paper products in his compound. He must be drawn out to the kelp."

"Or driven out," Kaleb said.

"Or the kelp has to come to him," Beatriz said. "Maybe that's possible. There are the Zavatans. "

Yes, a voice that surrounded them said, Yes, the Zavatans. Suddenly the light cleared around them and Beatriz saw what was left of Kalaloch sprawled out, wounded, beneath her. She floated above the settlement at a great height, with a comfortable sense of well-being that could only be wind buoying her.

"Ah, Beatriz, you have found the hylighter," Crista's voice said. "Let us all join hands in Avata and be with her, now."

Beatriz was vaguely aware of her existence in the light. She felt Mack's hand on her right and Kaleb's to her left, but the sensations she received were from her hylighter perceptions, and these steered her in a tightening circle high above Flattery's Preserve. Three more hylighters tacked her way, and each one snapped its full sail in their traditional greeting.

She hovered directly above the blackened remains of the earlier hylighter explosion. Hundreds of people scrambled in and out of the cover of rubble, pressing in on Flattery's compound. Many of them wore the drab fatigues of his own security forces.

"We must get to Flattery before they do," Crista said. "If he's killed, there may be no hope for Avata, no hope for any of us."

Beatriz valved off some hydrogen and dropped closer, tightening her gyre. Though certain of the combatants below pointed upward to her presence, none raised a weapon or fired on her.

Everyone topside is on one side now, she thought. Exploding a hylighter would be suicide.

She wondered whether Flattery had any faithful snipers in the nearby hills.

Now that she was only a few hundred meters above the compound she noticed dozens of people in orange singlesuits popping out of underground cover throughout the area. The dozens became fifty, a hundred, more. all Zavatans of the Hylighter Clan. Swiftgrazers had fled the fire zone and scrambled into their burrows about the compound, and now the Zavatans were placing small orange flags at the entrances to these burrows.

They're showing the villagers the way into Flattery's bunkers, she thought. If we can get inside first, we might be able to trap him.

"Excellent!" Mack's voice said. "And even if we don't, he has his seaward escape and we drive him straight into Avata."

The other three hylighters were immense, their supple tendrils dragging ballast nearly fifty meters below their gasbag bodies.

From this vantage point she had the opportunity to see the wildlife from Flattery's Preserve scattered at the periphery of the scene. They had been a luxury, these mysterious Earthside animals. They got food and health care when people starved, but she did not regret their survival.

The people will care for them at least as well as Flattery did, she thought. Ben was right, there isn't a shortage of food, just a very selective distribution.

She drifted low enough to the ground to make out individual Zavatans waving at her and shouting their greetings. The tips of her two longest tentacles stung when they touched the wihi tops. This close to the ground she found maneuvering nearly impossible, but felt no fear-sense from her hylighter host.

Fear not, human, the Avata voice said. Let the ending for this spore-bag mark our birth together on Pandora.

"What do you mean, 'ending'?"

Unlike humans, we crush ourselves under our own weight when grounded. Without the ultimate fire our spore-dusts are trapped forever inside their shells.

"You mean, unless you explode your spores are sterile?"

Yes. Now, you see, we are already too low to recover. I will live in you, now. Hurry. The others, too, must hurry. Find each tentacle a hole, chase Flattery out. Avata will. Avata.

Beatriz felt as though a ballast rock lay on her chest, she could barely breathe. One by one her ten tentacles found burrows marked by the Zavatans and began their twining into the depths of Pandoran stone. She heard the other three hylighters valving off their hydrogen nearby.

"What is this like for them?" she wondered to her friends. "Like a mother smothering a crying child to save the village?" Then she was alive in the tentacles. It was like having ten sets of eyes, and the light that grew from the dying hylighter turned a groping mystery into a warren of horrors. Eyes looked back at her — eyes and tiny, needlelike teeth pulled back in a hissing snarl. She pushed forward and they attacked, biting off chunks of tentacle as she backed them further into the maze.

"I can't stand it!" she screamed. "They're biting my face! They're horrible little. "

"Beatriz, listen to me."

It was Mack's voice. Mack was nearby, but he didn't know what was down here, he hadn't seen these little. things biting and biting, and down here she couldn't close her eyes because it seemed that the whole hylighter became eyes to her.