The Ascension Factor

He sealed Ben's suit and inflated the collar, just in case. When Rico turned to Crista Galli, he saw that she was crying. Her red-rimmed, swollen eyes stared at Ben's deathlike form on the galley deck. She seemed to be conscious and aware.

"Can you understand me?" Rico asked. In spite of her restraints, he remained well out of reach.

She nodded.

"Yes."

"Have you ever had this reaction before?"

"Yes." Her voice was slurred. "Once. Before he gave me shots. I pretended to take pills, spit them out later."

"What will happen next?"

She tried a shrug. "More of the same. Maybe seizures. It takes. a while." She added, in a slurred whisper, "Nobody's ever made me feel like a human being except Ben."

Rico noticed that the pupils of her eyes dilated and constricted wildly.

Must be some potent drugs, he mused. Damn that Flattery.

"We are in the open," he explained, "and helpless. You need to have a dive suit on in case we go into the water."

It flashed on him then what Flattery must've realized all along, what Operations warned in their instructions: "Do not let her into the water. Do not let her contact the kelp." This was speculation, precaution. There would be no other choice if Vashon security showed up, there was no point worrying about it.

"I can help you with it if you can't do it yourself. I'm sorry to say this, but I'd rather not touch you,"

He held the suit out to her at arm's length.

"I can't get out of this harness," she said.

Rico tapped the quick-release mechanism and she was free. He recoiled from her, partly as a reflex, partly because the foil pitched his way.

At this, she cringed away from him, her face even more pale and her jaw set.

"And what do you think I am?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said. "Do you?"

"I know that I don't think. I can't think that I do this. " She gestured limply at Ben. "It can't be me!"

"It's the drugs," Rico said.

He tried to keep the anger out of his voice. She needed reassurance, not another enemy. "Remember, the drugs are Flattery's doing, not yours."

Her tears, the way she looked at Ben seemed like the genuine article.

But look at what happened to Ben, he cautioned himself.

"Get your suit on," Rico said. "We don't have much time."

Crista had to slip out of her dress to don the dive suit. Rico knelt beside Ben, a hand on his forehead. He moved a little, and Rico took it for a good sign. His breathing was much stronger.

Crista did not seem modest at all, nor did she look like a monster.

Probably spent so much time as a lab animal she didn't have a chance to get shy.

Rico, like Ben, had been raised among Islanders, a generally shy lot. Rico admitted to himself that Crista had the best-looking legs he'd ever seen. Again, he thought of Snej back at Operations, and sighed. He planned to send a message to her, too, along with whatever he'd think of to say to Operations. He turned back to Crista Galli.

A little pale, he thought.

She seemed very weak, and struggled just to pull her suit on and fasten the seals. Her breathing was rapid and shallow. Her forehead beaded sweat and she was still more pale than when Rico had first seen her in the village. Her eyes were doing their dilation trick and he noticed an uncontrollable tremor in her legs.

"Can you get back into your harness?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"No," she said, her voice weaker now. "It's starting. "

She was drifting out again. She lay down on her couch, eyes still open.

"Are you still with us?" he asked. "Can you hear me?"

"Yes," she said. "Yes."

Rico still didn't want to touch her. Whatever it was, it had nearly killed Ben and he wasn't about to let the same thing happen to himself. He reached around her carefully and snicked the harness into place, then snugged it up with a jerk. He pushed the head of the couch back so that she lay flat. By then Crista was unconscious again.

Rico hurried into his own suit and noted that the seas had calmed somewhat. He could hear the thump and scrape of Elvira at the hull ports, and hoped that the kelp wouldn't set her hallucinating as it did some people. She seemed to have been all right before.

"It'd be just our luck," he muttered to himself. "Best damned pilot in the whole damned world thinking her gauges are grapefruits."

There was a very loud scrape, more of a long, slithering rasp across the top of the foil. Then another. It was the same serpentine sound that the kelp had made when it grabbed them. Rico jumped for the cabin, but it was too late.

The whole foil tipped on its side and he was thrown against the port bulkhead so hard it knocked the wind out of him. He saw, through the swarm of black amoebas across his vision, that they were airborne. He was jostled again, not so much this time, and as the bow of the foil tilted upward he saw them being pulled up into a mass of hylighter tentacles.

"Shit!"

He struggled to his knees and crawled the upended bulkhead to the command couch under the plaz. He could flip open a port and get a shot at it with his lasgun.