The Ascension Factor

Twisp always thought that "chambers" was well-named. There were, indeed, many chambers beneath the rock — one for each of the council and several for support staff, as well as general meeting rooms and sleeping quarters. The complex was crude by Merman standards, primitive by the Director's standards. Repair crews worked throughout the area cleaning up the last of the damage of last year's great quake, already going down in oral history as "the great quake of '82."

Across the passageway from the elevator a hatch opened into Twisp's personal chamber, hewn out of glassy black rock. He swung the hatch open and motioned the gaping Mose inside.

"Sit here."

Twisp indicated a low couch to the left of the hatchway. The couch was organic, like the chairdog. It was a distinctly Islander cubby. The entire room measured barely four paces square.

Shelves filled up most of the black-rock walls, and on these shelves stood hundreds of books. They were the old kelp-pulps, a well-scarred library. Twisp had been a fisherman without holo or viewscreens. Bleached kelp pulp and hand presses in every little community turned out literature and news that was affordable and could be passed around.

Twisp dogged the hatch, then smiled.

"Borrow any books you like," he said. "They don't do anybody any good on the shelf."

Mose hung his head.

"I. I never told you," he stammered. One nail-bitten hand wrung the other.

"I can't read."

"I know," Twisp said. "You cover it well, it took me a long time to figure it."

"And you didn't say nothing.?"

"Only you could know when the time is right. There is always someone willing to teach, but that's no good until the pupil is ready to learn. Reading is easy. Writing, now that's a whole different story."

"I've never been very good at learning things."

"Cheer up," Twisp said. "You learned to talk, didn't you? Reading's not so different. We'll have coffee every day for a month, and you'll be reading well by the end of the month. How about if we start with coffee now and a lesson later today?"

Mose nodded, and his look brightened. Topside, among the Zavatans, he did not often get coffee since the Director had taken over production. But he'd wedded himself to Zavatan poverty, which was a step up from his family poverty. Among the Zavatans he'd found that nothing was to be expected, everything enjoyed. Twisp bent to the preparations, his long arms akimbo in front of the table.

A fold-out table and stone washbasin jutted from the wall across the room, beside the inset stove and cooler. Mose reclined into the old couch and let it suit his forms. He found it indescribably nicer than his pallet topside. One shelf beside the couch held several holo cubes. Most of the pictures on them were of a young, red-haired man and a small, dark-skinned girl.

"The meeting begins soon, Mose," Twisp said. The older man sighed without turning, and his gangly arms sagged a bit. He spooned out some of the odorful coffee into a small cooker.

"We will all share a soup there, in the old custom, or I would offer you something here. My cubby is your cubby. That hatchway leads to the head. This hatch," with a nod he indicated their entry, "leads to the general council chambers. Prepare yourself for a confusion of people doing strange things."

"That's the way things have been all my life."

Twisp laughed, "Well, you'll get along down here just fine. Do you remember the oath you took when you came among the Zavatans?"

"Yes, Elder. Of course I remember."

"Repeat it, please."

Mose cleared his throat and sat a little straighter, though Twisp still had his back to him.

"'I forswear henceforth all robbing and stealing of food and crops, the plunder and destruction of homes belonging to the people. I promise householders that they may roam at will and abide, unmolested, wherever dwelling; I swear this with uplifted hands. Nor will I bring plunder or destruction, not even to avenge life and limb. I profess good thoughts, good words, good deeds.'"

"Very well recited," Twisp said, and handed Mose his hot coffee. "You are here because the council needs your opinion. The council has a weighty decision before it today. It has not faced a decision this big before. It may involve asking the Zavatans, all of us, to break that oath, the part about avenging life and limb. We will need your witness to this meeting, and your opinion will help decide whether or not to break it."

Twisp sipped his own coffee, still standing over Mose, and noted the tremble in the younger monk's nail-bitten hands.

"Do you have an opinion on that, Mose?"

"Yes, Elder, I do."

There had been no hesitation in Mose's voice, and the tremble in his hands stilled.

"Swearing to an oath. well, that's for life. I swore to uphold that oath for life. That's what I did, and that's what I should do."

Mose accented his speech with a curt nod, but still did not look up.

So fearful, Twisp thought. This world is more habitable than it has ever been, but the people are more fearful, even of those closest to them.