The Ascension Factor w-4

by Frank Herbert

  MacIntosh pointed at the six red lights blinking on their messenger console. "Whose calls are we not taking?"

  "The Director," Spud said, and swiveled his chair from the console board. "He wants us to do something about the kelp in sector eight, as though we weren't trying."

  "Do somethin... hah! If we push any harder we'll fry our board, and that kelp, and anybody inside it."

  "I wonder what it is that the kelp wants?"

  "What if we gave it its head?" MacIntosh mused. "That would be one way to find out. What could it do that it hasn't already done?"

  Spud shrugged, and said, "You've got my vote. How you going to convince the Director?"

  A glance at the display showed the entire stand of kelp to be twisting itself into a vortex, like the whirlpool in a drain. As near as MacIntosh could tell, Current Control was at its maximum limit of restraint.

  Spud pointed at the display.

  "There's a focus of electrical override here. Whatever's bugging the kelp is right there."

  "Electrical or mechanical?"

  "Could be either, or both - it's a heavy traffic area," Spud said. "Something down there is definitely irritating the kelp."

  "Yes," MacIntosh agreed, "that's my thought. The electrical override is coming from the kelp itself. It must be responding to something. That stand's not mature enough to think for itself. Or, at least, it shouldn't be."

  "Doc?"

  "Yeah?"

  MacIntosh watched the console review the kelp's configuration changes over the past half-hour. Something nagged at him, something that would explain the kelp's sudde... behavior.

  "I've extrapolated the path of the override."

  MacIntosh looked at Spud, who was busy at his own console, and saw a very thin, very pale assistant. Spud's pointing finger trembled with excitement.

  "What is it?"

  "It's a spiral, headed into the middle of sector eight."

  "That means the one kelp bed is delivering something to its neighbor - isn't that what it looks like to you?"

  "Or the neighbor is snatching it away."

  "Spud, I'll bet you're right."

  MacIntosh stepped up to the console and tapped out a sequence with his two huge index fingers. The red lights on the messenger panel went black.

  "We just had a relay malfunction," MacIntosh said, and winked at Spud. "Next time Flattery calls, tell him it was a hardwire failure and you worked it out personally. Maybe you'll get a promotion. If I've guessed wrong, my job will be up for grabs. Now, we might as well let go the reins on this kelp and see where the hell it runs."

  MacIntosh heard Spud swallow behind him and he smiled.

  "What's the big deal, Spud? It's a plant, it's not going anywhere."

  "Wel... well, it's just that Flattery doesn't trust anybody - it'd be like him to have some kind of booby-tra..."

  "He did," MacIntosh said, "and this stand got itself blown apart a few years back. But he hasn't reset charges here yet - the kelp's not supposed to get this frisky this soon." He waited for the burst line to charge.

  "There!" he said, and pressed the send signal. "Now let's sit back and see what cooks. Something bizarre is inside there, and I'd like to be the first to know what it is. If we can't do anything with this stand, maybe we can at least learn from it. Besides," he winked again, "Flattery's down there, we're not."

  A beeping signal from his console interrupted him. He opened the intercom to Launch Command.

  "We sling our bird your way in five minutes," the voice said. "Any contraindications?"

  "Negative," MacIntosh replied. "Currents at your site are stable, weather will arrive your location in approximately one hour."

  "Roger that, Current Control. Launch is a go fo... four minutes."

  ***

  Canon in D

  - Pachelbel

  The Immensity recoiled with a snap from the shock of freedom, then let its tendrils and fronds drift in their tingling bliss. It had been a long time since this union of stands had felt good, and never had it felt this good. The submarine trains foundering among its vines were inconsequential now.

  A pulse went out among the fronds, a ripple throughout the Immensity from the tiny foil adrift at its outer reaches. A mass of tentacles cradled the foil and delighted in the scent of self that it gave from its brittle skin.

  The little craft was slippery and the Immensity knew it to be extremely fragile, so it was gently tumbled frond to frond inward. Other scents mingled with that of the One. One of these scents was familiar, provocative, kelplike. The Holomaster, Rico LaPush, was in the company of someone that the kelp had encountered befor... befor... well, no matter. It would find out soon enough.

  The Immensity had learned to sniff out the holo language of humans from their spectrum of odd scents. It decided, early upon awakening this time, that it would have to speak with humans to live. It also concluded that it would have to speak the holo language if it wanted to speak with humans.

  The foil tried to wriggle out of the kelp's net. There was much pain now through the vines, where all of the trains trapped in sector eight were trying to burn, cut, slash their way toward their precious atmosphere topside. Some of these the kelp crushed reflexively, but when the death scents of the crews mingled with the sea it forced itself to calm and to reason.

  Death, it reminded itself, is not the answer to life.

  The Immensity managed to open several kelpways and marveled at the easy ballet of subs heading topside. Only the bright white Holovision foil suffered the grip of the Immensity. It strained its engines trying to flee, but never lashed out at its tormentor. This the Immensity would expect of the One, who was civilized in the arms of kelp, and of the honorable associates of Holomaster Rico LaPush.

  ***

  In conscience you find the structure, the form of consciousness, the beauty.

  - Kerro Panille, "Translations from the Avata," The Histories

  Beatriz listened to the launch crew director count down the final minute over the speaker. Her shaky fingers chattered the metal clips as she snugged up her harness. She tried to think of the straps around her as Mack's arms and she tried to imagine they held her as Ben's did the night they drove old Vashon down. It didn't work. Nothing could erase the sight of her crew, slaughtered like sebet in a pen.

  For a mistake, she thought. They all died because that bastard made a mistake.

  She knew that the captain was afraid, she could smell it on him before he gave the final order at the studio. He obviously didn't know whether Flattery would promote him or execute him for his decision. Beatriz knew that her life, perhaps many other lives, teetered in this balance.

  "Ten seconds to launch."

  She inhaled a long, slow breath through her mouth and let it sigh out her nostrils. This was a relaxation technique that Rico had taught her when they all nearly drowned five years ago.

  "Five, fou..."

  She took a little breath.

  ... on..."

  The compressed-air "boot" punched them up the launch tube and a pair of Atkinson Rams slung them toward orbit. This was the part of the ride she hated - it reminded her of the time the fat girl sat on her chest when she was just starting school, and she didn't like the feel of her face flattening out against the strain. On this launch, however, she wasn't worried about wrinkles, engine failure, being trapped in orbit. She was worried about the captain, and how she could help convince him of the necessity of keeping her alive.

  No one in the shuttle cabin looked familiar. Most of them had changed out of their fatigues and into civilian clothes. They were quiet; Beatriz thought that they must be weighing the consequences of the shootings. She didn't see the man who started it. That was the man she feared even more than the captain - Ben had always said that the jumpy ones get you killed.

  How could he be so right and be so far away from me?

  She rubbed her tired face and patted her cheeks to keep hysteria at bay. She needed information, and a lot of it.r />
  Mack, she thought. He'll help me, I'm sure.

  For an instant her fear included him. After all, he was an original crew member like Flattery. They had worked together long before waking from hybernation on Pandora.

  What i... what i... ?

  She shook off her fears. If her imagination had to run away with her, she preferred that it ally her with Mack instead of against him. Mack was not at all like Flattery, this she knew. Even Mack had cringed at the news when Flattery converted Alyssa Marsh to an Organic Mental Core.

  "I never believed we needed such a thing," he'd told her privately. "Now, with the kelp research, I'm even more convinced that OMCs were just another built-in frustration, a goad to push us even further from humanity."

  According to reports - Flattery's reports - Marsh had been found in extremis after an accident in the kelp. He explained to her how clones were property, often merely living stores for spare parts, and how Alyssa Marsh had been prepared for this moment from her girlhood. Now Beatriz realized how fortuitous the timing had been for Flattery, how unfortunate for Marsh and her kelp studies with Dwarf MacIntosh.

  What will Mack do?

  He would need information, too. Like, how many in this squad? What kinds of weapons? Do they have a plan or is this just reaction to the killings groundside? She couldn't remember how many people worked the orbiter station - two thousand? Three? And how much security did they have aloft?

  Not much, she remembered. Just a handful to handle fights and petty theft among the workers.

  She'd counted thirty-two in the captain's squad as they boarded the shuttle, and each was heavily armed. Eight of them were assigned to fill out her crew, and they grumbled under the double load. This bunch carried a lot of the old, disfiguring mutations. The gear they'd loaded aboard was mostly weapons, but a few of them knew enough about holo broadcast to bring the bare bones of what they'd need to get Newsbreak on the air. A couple of techs were assigned to oversee the OMC.

  Beatriz had kept the worst of the shakes at bay and now, strapped firmly into her couch, she nearly let herself go.

  No, she warned herself, hold tight. I can't help anyone dead. I am the only witness against them.

  She hoped that the console tape survived back there, and that someone sympathetic would find it.

  Who would they show it to that could do anything? she wondered. Flattery?

  Beatriz grunted a laugh at herself, then felt the captain's grip on her shoulder. It was firm, not painful. It was not gentle. It reminded her of her father's grip the night he died, and it lightened the same when their engines shut down. This man was the same age as her youngest brother, but there was infinity in his dark eyes. She didn't see much wisdom.

  "I know what you're thinking," he said. "I have taken hundreds of prisoners, I have been a prisoner. Believe me, I know what you're thinking."

  He gestured the guard beside her away and, surprisingly clumsy in zero-gee, moved up to join her. His voice sounded gravelly, strained, as though it had been screaming. He continued speaking, while his men drifted out of earshot, their glances furtive and their conversations spare.

  "We are both in a bad spot, you and I. We both need out of it."

  She had to agree.

  "Up here it will be all or nothing, we are trapped. There is no escape for either one of us that doesn't require both of us."

  To this, too, she had to agree.

  But only for the moment, she assured herself, only until I find Mack.

  Beatriz realized that, much as it disgusted her, her life depended on communicating with this man.

  "You are a military man, an officer. How is it that you walk yourself out the plank like this? You wouldn't have done it on reflex. This is a plan and w... I simply fall into i..."

  "My God, you're perceptive," the words came in a rush, the captain's eyes aglitter. "We can only win, Flattery is finished. We have the Voidship and Orbiter - enough food stores for years. We control their currents and weather. We have Flattery's precious Organic Mental Core - shit, we can hook it up to the ship ourselves and fly out of her..."

  She didn't hear the rest. Her mind focused on what he'd said at the beginning: "enough food stores for years."

  If he kills everyone aboard the Orbiter.

  ... He'll have to throw it in," the captain was saying. "The rabble will have at him down there, and he doesn't dare destroy everything that he's worked for up here. Whoever beats him on the ground then can deal with me."

  He's really going to do this, she thought. He's going to kill everyone aboard.

  He took her hand and she snapped it back with a revulsion that she couldn't hide.

  "Us," he said. "I meant they can deal with us. You and me. They'll believe whatever you tell them, at least for a while." He leaned closer, whispered, "You don't want to make another mistake, get more people killed."

  She propelled herself out of her couch, not caring where the thrust might throw her in the gravity-free cabin. No one pursued her. The first handhold she grabbed stopped her beside a pair of security, younger than the young captain, who were reviewing the basics of holo camera triangulation.

  They really intend to go on the air, she thought.

  She looked back at the captain. He had his back to her, briefing several men. The tone of his voice, briskness of his gestures told her that he meant business. It was true, he could do it without her. It was true, that by helping him she might save others. She could not bring herself to speak to him, to go to him in any way. She sighed, and interrupted her two new cameramen.

  "No," she said, "with that setup the alpha set only gets fifteen degrees of pan. OK if you're covering a launch, but we'll be inside, in a small spac..."

  As she instructed the two young amateurs she saw Brood watching her. He winked at her once, and she successfully suppressed the shudder that tempted her spine.

  "They'll want to see this Organic Mental Core in transport, and they'll want to know something about its - her - background. Let's start by getting some of that in the can."

  She passed the two-hour flight instructing her camera operators, two men and a woman, none of whom she recognized from the massacre at the SLS studio. Beatriz preferred their company, even if they did answer to the captain. Whether by accident or design, she did not encounter any of that squad during their flight.

  The Organic Mental Core was a living brain, enclosed in an intricate plasma-glass container that made allowances for the hookups to come. A complex plug would connect the brain with the control system aboard the Voidship. What she didn't expect horrified her the most.

  They're supported b... bodies!

  She had done a report on such a thing several years ago. Scientists had connected a brain from a crushed body to a healthy body that had suffered a massive head injury. Each kept the other alive, though there had been no way to communicate with the healthy brain. At that time it was simply trapped in there, cut off from all sensation, alive and dreaming. She took a deep breath and let the reporter in her take over.

  The medtech in charge had a number of active facial tics and each of her questions seemed to accelerate them. She learned nothing about the principle that she hadn't already learned through research or through Dwarf MacIntosh.

  "...s you well know, it was because of a failure in the OMCs that we wound up on Pandora."

  "I understand that the OMCs were traditionally taken from infants with fatal birth defects. This OMC is from an adult human. How will the performance differ?"

  "Twofold," the tech replied. "First, this person was dying at the time of conversion, therefore it - she - should be thankful for an extension of her life in a useful, indeed noble, role. Second, this person survived the longest hybernation known to humankind and woke to life on Pandora. She knows that if humans are to survive, it must be elsewhere. She can take comfort in being the instrument of that survival."

  "Does she know any of this?"

  The tech looked perplexed.

  "Much o
f this was included in her early training. The rest we extrapolate from the evidence."

  "What was she like as a person?"

  "What do you mean?"

  The tech's tics accelerated rapidly to a very distracting crescendo.

  "You're saying, essentially, that she will accept this duty because of love for humanity. Did she have love in her life? A man? Children?"

  Her camera crew was warming to the task. They had not brought a monitor into the tiny space, and now she wished they had. It might be an OK piece, after all.

  While staring at this brain behind glass, Beatriz knew that it was alive, a person. She also realized that the tech was surrounded by the squad that had murdered her crew and he probably hadn't the slightest inkling of what had happened.

  No one will know if I don't tell them, Beatriz thought. I'm like this brain, cut off but alive inside. I wonder what she dreams?

  "I know very little about the person," he said. "It's in the record. I do know that she had a child that was given up for adoption so that she could continue her studies in the kelp outposts."

  "Dr. MacIntosh stated two years ago that Organic Mental Cores were crude, cruel, inefficient and unnecessary," she said. "Do you have a comment on that?"

  The tech cleared his throat.

  "I respect Dr. MacIntosh. He, along with the Director and this OMC, is one of the last survivors of the original flight of the old Earthling - 'Ship,' if you prefer. Yes, it's true that there were failures, and this required some compensation, but those bugs have been worked out."

  "For some of our viewers, your term 'compensation' might seem a little cold. The 'compensation' you refer to was the first known creation of an artificial intelligence - one that turned out to be smarter than its creators, one that many believe is the personality 'Ship,' one that most Pandorans still revere as a god. Why did your department pursue the failed course of OMCs, severed living brains, rather than pick up on the artificial intelligence?"

  "We were instructed to take this course."