The Ascension Factor

"Take it," was all she said. She bent her knee up to her skinny chest and Boggs clumsily unwound the line from around her ankle.

He crawled out from under the ledge, and as far as he could see down to the shore others were crawling out of holes, out from under pieces of cloth and rubbish. Here and there a wisp of smoke dared to breach the air.

Boggs found his cane, propped himself upright and stumped his way slowly toward the water. He'd thought himself too skinny to sweat, but sweat poured out of him nonetheless. It was a cold sweat at first, but the effort of picking his way through the rubbish and the dying warmed him up.

A small jetty shouldered the oncoming tide. It was an amalgam of blasted rock, about twenty meters long and five or six meters wide. The quartertide change tossed a few breakers over the black rock, soaking the dozen licensed fishermen who hunched against the spray.

It took Boggs over a half-hour to make it the hundred meters from the ledge to the base of the jetty. His vision was failing, but he scanned the tidelands for signs of the security patrol.

"Demon patrol," he muttered.

Vashon security sent regular patrols through refugee areas. Their stated purpose was to protect the people against hooded dashers and, lately, the terrifying boils of nerve runners that raced up from the south. Boggs shuddered. He had seen a boil of runners attack a family last season, entering through their eyes to clutch their slimy eggs inside their skulls. He had thought the family too weak to scream, but he was wrong. It was not a pretty sight, and the patrol took their sweet time burning them out.

Everyone knew security's real reason for patrolling the beach. It was to keep the people from feeding themselves. The Director passed rumors of black market fishing harvests that he said threatened the economy of Pandora. Boggs hadn't seen sign of these harvests yet, nor had he seen any sign of an economy. His mother's tiny radio taught him the word, but to him it would always be just a word.

A pyre smoldered to his left. Three small lumps of char lay atop a ring of rock, slightly higher than high tide. The poor couldn't even muster enough fuel to burn their dead. When enough of them accumulated, the security patrols amused themselves by flaming them with gushguns. They called it nerve runner practice.

Someone guarded the pyre on the other side of the rocks, and when Boggs edged closer he could see that it was Silva. He stopped and caught his breath. Silva was a girl his own age, and the rumors said that she had killed her younger sisters and brother while they slept. No one raised a hand against her now as she tended their pitiful fire. Boggs hoped she wouldn't see him. He needed bait, but he knew he couldn't fight for it.

He got down on all fours and crawled to the edge of the heap. He reached a hand up, felt around the hot rocks until he touched something that didn't feel like rock. He jerked, jerked harder and something came off in his hand. It was hot and peeling on one side, cold on the other. He couldn't bring himself to look, he just grabbed his cane and scuttled away. Silva hadn't seen him.

"I'll bring her a fish," he promised himself. "I'll catch fish for mother and the boys, and one for Silva."

The quartertide patrol was nowhere to be seen.

They've gone through already, he thought. They've gone through and checked the licenses and now they're up the beach checking for caches in the rocks.

Boggs stood apart from the other fishermen. They might turn him in because he was catching fish that were rightfully theirs. They might steal his fish and line, and beat him as they had beaten his father once.

. But they'll wait until I have the fish, he thought. That's what I'd do.

He hunkered down against the jetty so that he was barely visible from the shore, tied a rock onto his line and baited the hooks from the charred mess he clasped in his fist.

"It's bait," he reminded himself, "it's just bait."

He didn't have enough energy to plunk his bait out very far, so he left it on the bottom about a half dozen meters from the rocks. It was deep there, deep enough to take most of his line. He gave a tug now and then to make sure it was free. There was enough bait for two, possibly three more tries.

"You got a license, boy?"

The gruff voice behind him startled him, but he was too weak to move. He didn't say anything.

"You're late getting out here if you got a license. You only get one day, can't afford to waste it."

Some rocks clacked together as the man stepped down to where Boggs sat wedged into a cleft. He was skinny and sallow, with a wisp of a beard on his chin and no hair on his head. The skin on the top of his head was peeling and sores dotted his face.

"I'm an illegal, too," the old man said. "Figured it was my last chance. You?"

"Same."

He reached across Boggs, fingered the bait and put it down with a grunt.

"Same's me."

The voice was lower than illegal, it was ashamed.