The Ascension Factor

She had given him up to an upwardly mobile Merman couple rather than risk what would happen if Flattery found out she'd borne him a son. She had been afraid he would kill her and take the son, turning him into another ruthless Director.

I should've kept him, she thought. He's turned out like Flattery, anyway.

The boy would know by now — she'd left the appropriate papers hidden in her cubby before Flattery reduced her to a convoluted lump of pink tissue. It had been her last act of sentimentality.

"Your body betrays you," Flattery growled that last day. "You've had a child. Where is it?"

"I gave it up," she said. "You know how I am about my work. I have no time for anything but the kelp. A child. well, it was only a temporary inconvenience."

It was the kind of argument that Flattery would make, and he bought it. He never seemed to suspect that the child was his. Their liaison had been brief enough and long enough ago that Flattery seemed not to remember it at all. He had made no further reference to it after she left his cubby for the last time more than twenty years back. He only grunted his acknowledgment, probably thinking that the child was the product of a recent indiscretion. He could not deny her passion for her work in the kelp. Only Dwarf MacIntosh shared her passion for delving into this mysterious near-consciousness that filled Pandora's seas.

I should have kept him with me in the kelp, she thought. Now he's become what I'd most feared and I've lost his presence, too.

In her present state, the OMC Alyssa Marsh dwelt often on that birth and those few precious moments her child had been with her. He had stopped crying immediately after birth, happy to watch the Natali as they cleaned up his mother and the room. He had a full head of black hair and seemed fully alert right from the start.

"He was a month overdue," the midwife said. "Looks like he wasn't wasting his time in there."

After a few minutes she handed him to the couple who would give him their name. Frederick and Kazimira Brood had visited her weekly for the past few months, and they had made full arrangements for his care. It would cost Alyssa dearly, but she wanted him to have the best of chances. Flattery was determined to turn Kalaloch into a real city, the center of Pandoran thought and commerce. He had hired the young Broods — an architect and a social geographer — to build the security warehouses and garrisons for his troops. There was talk at the time that they might get the university contract. Who could have foreseen the changes in Pandora, the changes in Flattery then?

I could, she thought. I thought development of the kelp as an ally more important than raising my son.

If she had had her body with her, she would have let out a long, slow breath to relieve the tension that would have been brewing in her belly. She had neither belly nor breath and her reason now was relatively free of emotion.

I did the right thing, she thought. In the grand scheme of humankind, I did the right thing.

* * *

Even if they, with minds overcome by greed, see no evil in the destruction of a family, see no sin in the treachery to friends, shall we not, who see the evil of destruction, shall we not refrain from this terrible deed?

— from Zavatan Conversations with the Avata, Queets Twisp, elder

Flutterby Bodeen unrolled her precious bolt of stolen muslin across the dusty attic deck. Her three young schoolmates clapped in their excitement.

"You did it!" Jaka cheered. He was twelve, lanky, and the only boy. His father, like Flutterby's, worked down under at the Shuttle Launch Site, or SLS. His mother also worked at Merman Hyperconductor, so their family received nearly double the usual scrip at The Line.

"Shhh!" Flutterby warned them. "We don't want them finding us now. Leet, did you get the paints?"

Leet, at eleven the youngest of the four, pulled four thick tubes from under her bulky cotton blouse.

"Here," she said, without looking up, "I couldn't get black."

"Green!" Jaka blew out an impatient breath. "You want them to think we're Shadows? You know they all use green. "

"Shush!" Dana emphasized her point with a finger at her lips and an exaggerated scowl. "Maybe we are Shadows now, did you ever think of that? They'll treat us the same if we're caught, you know."

"OK, OK," Flutterby interrupted. "We're not going to get caught unless we're here all day. Dana, Jaka, we're supposed to be practicing our music, so you two play awhile. Leet and I will each make a banner, then we'll play so you can do two."

"Security's all over the street this morning," Dana warned.

"It's because of Crista Galli. Maybe they think she's around here, somewhere. "

"Maybe she is around here. "

"We should have a lookout. "

"They won't come in while wots are practicing," Flutterby said, and put her hand up to quiet the others. "Who wants to have anything to do with music lessons? Besides," she sniffed, and her chin raised a fraction, "my brother's a security. I know how they think."