The Ascension Factor

"I'm glad you're here, Ben," she said. "I'm glad it's as it should be with Beatriz. If all is well among us we can bring Flattery down. The kelp knows this, maybe Flattery knows it, too. Inside the kelp, I can find out what all this is. The kelp is vulnerable now, as we are vulnerable. It is stunned, not dead. Help me out there, I can make the difference."

"No," he said. "You're not going out there. We'll all stay aboard the foil. Once we're ashore we can get to an Oracle, or the beach."

"We don't have that much time," she said. "I don't know how I know it, but right now I could — become Avata, be the consciousness, the command center, the conscience of the kelp. Show me the way out."

"You don't know that," he said. "Your chemistry is different, you told me so yourself. Maybe it would keep you alive out there. Maybe it would keep you dead. Just wait a few — "

"We can't wait," she pleaded.

She sighed, rubbed her eyes and went on. "I think he's been using the kelp to gather data. I was blown up while they were doing it. Now he's found out what he wanted to know and he's heading offplanet at breakneck speed."

When she looked up she could see that he wanted to believe her. It had been the same way last night, when she saw that he wanted to kiss her. She just knew. As she knew there was something catastrophic imminent, and Flattery knew what it was, and Flattery was fleeing as fast as he could with as much as he could.

"Stay put," Ben said. His voice was softer, as softened as everything was now that the beating had stopped. He tousled her wet hair.

"Flattery isn't getting away today, so let's get out of this fix first. Give Rico and Elvira a chance to work their magic on the foil."

She could tell that he was convincing himself. He was afraid. She knew a little something about fear. The day she had been blown free of the kelp had been a day much like this. This time, she was headed in the right direction. It was quartertide in the afternoon and they were fewer than a dozen meters from daylight.

* * *

Short-term expedients always fail in the long term.

— Dwarf MacIntosh

Beatriz had taped here for the first time during the ceremonies that had welcomed Current Control's move aboard the Orbiter two years ago. She had received a tour on the arm of the mysterious Dr. MacIntosh, a dizzying tour that changed her life and included her first attempt to navigate in near-zero gravity.

Now a few of the captain's men held her incommunicado while the rest did what soldiers throughout history had done to secure a garrison among an unarmed and isolated populace. None of them moved comfortably in low gravity. Since her only contacts were with Brood's men, smuggling messages to Mack seemed out of the question.

What if they kill him, too? she wondered.

Mack was a very compassionate man, but one who immersed himself in his work and didn't often pay attention to the ways of the world more than 150 kilometers below them. It struck her, too, that that had been her own problem. Ben had seen it and tried to help.

I know Ben's alive, she thought, I feel it.

She hoped that Mack was alive, too. Partly because he was someone she genuinely liked, partly because she was sure that all of their fates depended on him.

Brood needs him, too, she thought. He'll use me as his bargaining chip.

The hatch slammed open and Yuri Brood sailed through. He rebounded into a safety webwork that was set up to catch rookies and keep damages minimal. Brood pointed to the bank of editing screens as he settled into the seat beside her.

"You think that because my men are warriors they can't do your show," he said. He was out of breath but seemed in good humor. "Well, we greenhorns have something to show you. The Director had us shoot this just before we left for the launch site. Leon turned in the rough copy on his way to the shuttle."

She tried not to watch the screens, which displayed clips that Brood's three techs had shot of the damage at Kalaloch. As each rolled up on a screen, a text of tentative script flashed across the console in front of her. There was no fighting apparent in any of their tapes. It only took her a glance to tell what he was up to.

"You're trying to make this look like a hylighter disaster," she said. "You can't get away with it — somebody else from Holovision must've been on the scene. word of mouth alone. "

She stopped when she saw his sneer. It was an expression that reminded her immediately of Flattery. Brood had the same narrow nose, dark, upraked brows, the same manner of tilting his head back to look down his nose at everyone.

Though he had been flushed and slightly out of breath when he came in, Brood seemed in no hurry now. He watched her eyes constantly, and this made her very nervous.

"You might have noticed how many new faces there are among the field crews these days," he said. "Quite a few new faces around the studios, too."

He smiled, and the smile chilled her.

"Are you saying that all of the crews have been. replaced?"