The Ascension Factor

"Love isn't a competition," he said. "It happens. There were tough times, living with B, but I don't have to bring up the bad parts to punish myself for missing the friendship, the good parts. I think she and I are both people who refuse to dislike someone we've loved. She's an exceptional person or I wouldn't have loved her. There was a lot of bliss, a lot of turmoil, no boredom at all. The bliss part she called 'our convergent lines.' Ultimately we each blamed the other for being impossible when it was our situation we couldn't bear. "

"Did you take the job of interviewing me because you knew that she was working with Flattery at the Preserve?"

He laughed again.

"You have me pegged, don't you? That's a yes and no answer. I thought, and still think, that your story is the most exciting thing I can show the rest of Pandora. I wouldn't have tried for it otherwise. But, yes, I did hope, in a moment of wallowing in loneliness, that I'd see her again."

"And.?"

"I did. The thrill was gone and we were good friends. Good friends who still work very well together."

"You knew that Flattery was buying us both off with those interviews, didn't you?" Crista asked.

She set her hat beside her on the deck and peeled off her headband and mantilla. She gave her matted hair a shake. She was relieved that he smiled at this as he gathered their utensils at the sideboard.

"I figured it out," he said. "That's why. this. Flattery pulled the corporate strings, denying air time before the first can was shot. But no one was told. I was paid, you were interviewed at length on five occasions — and this was the story of the century! He paid to have it done so he could kill it."

"Yes," she said, "with no pangs of conscience whatsoever. Look what it got him: We are here, together. I, at least, am happier. And hungry," she indicated her disguise, "in spite of how it looks."

Ben patted the lump of clothing strapped to her belly. "And fulfilled, too," he teased. He dared to stroke her cheek again with a smile and then busied himself setting out the food.

She watched the seascape as their foil slithered through the kelpways, her quick breaths fogging the plaz. Though the Preserve was a seaside base camp Crista never once had been allowed down to the shore. Flattery feared her relationship with the kelp, and saw to it that others around her did, too.

Ben nudged her shoulder and pointed through the starboard port toward the skeletal remains of a kelp outpost, dimly visible in the foil's deepwater lights. The kelp itself had been burned back to knobby stumps for a thousand meters all around.

"Report says kelp killed three families here, sixteen people," he said. "Vashon Security did their retaliatory number on the kelp, as you can see. They call it 'pruning.'"

Though it was shadowland beneath a weak wash of light and though the engines had quieted in submersible mode, Crista focused on the tingle at her shoulder where Ben had touched her. She fought back tears of joy at his touch. How could she explain this to him, who touched people and was touched at will?

He pulled two hot trays out of the unit and set them on the table. He dealt out napkins, spoons, chopsticks. She knew she needed food, strength, but some dreaminess had caught her up since boarding the foil and she didn't really want to shake it.

Sunlight strengthened her, this she knew. The beautiful kiss from Ben, that strengthened her, too. Something about this Rico LaPush also strengthened her, but she didn't know what.

Crista glanced again at Ben, beside her, as his eyes searched the dimness of the passing landscape.

"The Preserve is under attack," Ben said. She didn't respond. "You can watch it onscreen if you want." He indicated the briefing screen against the aft galley bulkhead. She preferred the old word "wall," but not many used it. Tribute to Pandora's watery history.

Though Ben talked on, Crista concentrated on her meal, eating half of Ben's as well, leaving him the vegetables. His words buzzed like a fat bee in the warm galley air. All the while a lullaby kept running through her head that no human ear had heard in two thousand years.

Hush little baby don't say a word

Momma's gonna buy you a mockingbird.

She had learned to be cautious wandering her memories, too. When the flashbacks started sometimes they took over, unpeeling whole sections of other people's lives. They lasted longer each time, dragging Crista through hours of lightning-fast memories. There was no focus, no fine-tuning, simply off or on.

First it was blinks, then seconds, moments. A minute of high-speed memory, lived with a full sensory component, could wring an entire lifetime out of the wet cloth of her mind. Her last flashback had terminated only after exhaustion and heavy sedation. It had lasted nearly four hours. Though conscious immediately, she had been dazed and unable to speak for three days. Flattery had used this as an excuse to further limit her life at his compound, and to adjust her medications.