The Ascension Factor w-4

by Frank Herbert

  It's Mack, she thought. It's got to be!

  "Don't move!" Leon ordered. He unsnapped his harness and pointed a commanding finger at her. "I'll handle this. Your text will be onscreen in a few blinks. Standard cues. I'm remote director and you will follow my lead most carefully."

  He handed himself to the hatch, plugged in his headset and pressed the intercom key.

  "We're taping," he announced. "No admittance except for studio personnel."

  Beatriz held her breath. Though they did seal off for tapings and live broadcast, Holovision had always encouraged an audience. Many workers aboard the Orbiter enjoyed spending their free time watching her crew at work, and they had never been prohibited before.

  "It's Spud Soleus." The high voice crackled her own headset in its characteristic way, forcing a smile to her lips. "Current Control. We have an emergency situation over there. Dr. MacIntosh needs to talk with Beatriz Tatoosh right away."

  She felt a rush in her chest and color rising in her cheeks. Her palms continued to sweat.

  "She's going on the air live. Tell Dr. MacIntosh it'll have to wait."

  "It can't wait. Our burst line has failed and a chunk of grid's down."

  "We have orders," Leon said. His voice sounded hesitant. "Maybe after the sho..."

  "Dr. MacIntosh is Orbiter Command," Soleus said. "He has direct orders from Flattery to open that grid now. We need your burst line for a transmission. We need Beatriz Tatoosh for advice. I'm reminding you that all power relays switch through Current Control and we can shut you down."

  "Wait a blink," Leon said, his voice calming, "I'll see what we can do."

  He switched off the intercom and pressed his forehead against the bulkhead.

  "Shit!" he said, and bumped his forehead against the plasteel. His headset kept him from cartwheeling backward across the studio. "Shit!"

  Good for Spud! Beatriz thought. He'd lied to Leon about the circuitry. Some, but not all, was routed through Current Control. She and MacIntosh had set up the studio, and no one knew it better. But Leon didn't know that. Besides, he had enough problems. And Leon didn't dare move without orders from Brood. He couldn't alert Brood without alerting the entire Orbiter.

  Beatriz's heart tripped hard against her ribs and she blotted her damp palms against the thighs of her jumpsuit. In spite of the danger, she enjoyed Leon's dilemma.

  Anything to make them squirm, she thought.

  Leon tripped the intercom switch again.

  "No one's coming in here until after -"

  "We can transmit on your burst line with our own carrier frequency," Spud said. "We don't even need to get in your way. Dr. MacIntosh is in charge here and he said -"

  Leon slapped the switch off, unplugged his headset and thrust himself back toward his editing cubby. He crashed, out of control, into the other two techs. They disentangled limbs and cables, then hovered over each of his shoulders and whispered together heatedly.

  Beatriz slipped the two meters to the hatch and plugged in her headset. She switched the intercom back on and left the set to float beside the hatch only a couple of meters away. They didn't see her, and the move took fewer than four seconds by the big chronometer.

  Back at her console, Beatriz opened her com-line and punched out Mack's number. The telltale light would flash on consoles in each of the editing cubbies, this she knew. As she expected, it brought Leon to her nose to nose in a red-faced fury.

  "I told you not to try anything!" Leon snapped. He was no longer the meek videotech at an editing console. Now he was ranking officer of a security assault squad that was in a tight spot.

  "I'd slap the shit out of you if we didn't need your pretty face. We do have a backup plan, sister. Try that again and you'll get your own ride out the shuttle airlock - understand?"

  Beatriz had to hide a smile for the first time all day. He'd yelled at her - something that would have gone unheard elsewhere in the Obiter if she hadn't opened the intercom first, if she hadn't plugged in the headset just a step from where Leon stood. It did not take the best of her screen abilities to feign the terror that she'd already felt many times since waking this day.

  "I'll do what you say," she said, as loud as she dared. "I don't want to die like the others. I'll do what you say."

  Leon pushed back to his companions, but before he reached them the general alarm sounded with four long bursts from a klaxon overhead.

  Though startled by the noise, Beatriz was overjoyed. She recognized the signal from exercises in the past. Those four blasts meant "Fire, total involvement, Current Control sector." That sector included the Holovision studio.

  While Leon and the other two flurried around the studio, asking each other, "What the hell's going on?" Beatriz whispered to herself, "Spud, I love you."

  ***

  Power, like any other living being, will go to infinite lengths to maintain itself.

  - Ward Keel, The Apocryphal Notebooks

  The first thing Rico saw when he stepped through the hatchway into the galley was the still, open-eyed form of Crista Galli lying in her harness beside the plaz. Her pupils pulsed with a green brightness that Rico had never noticed before, and somehow he knew that whatever she saw now was not of this world. His first impulse was to run, to lock the hatch behind him, but he checked it.

  Ben sprawled on the deck beside her, one hand clutching her ankle and his legs quivering like a child's in a nightmare. To Rico, the whole scene was a nightmare.

  "Ben!" he called from the hatchway, but Ben didn't answer. He rushed to his best friend's side and saw that Ben's eyes, too, were open. Both of them were breathing, though Crista Galli's head was bent slightly forward and he heard a gurgle with each passage of air. Rico heeded Operations' warnings and didn't touch either one of them.

  "Shit!" he snapped, and fumbled in his left breast pocket for a slapshot. It was a red, tiny ampule about the size of the end of his little finger. Two needles jutted from one end, covered by a plastic case. He flipped the cover across the galley, careful to hold the prongs away from his own body.

  "Dammit, Ben, Operations said this toxin might be triggered if she got wet."

  This shot was titrated for his own body weight, the one he'd most hoped never to use. In one swift jab he stuck it into Ben's thigh.

  "Don't stop breathing, man," Rico begged. "Just don't stop breathing."

  He turned to Crista Galli, trying to control the sudden flash of anger burning in his chest. He knew it was more frustration than hate, but his body didn't know the difference.

  If she killed hi...

  The better part of his reason wouldn't let him finish the thought.

  A strangled moan surged from Crista's throat, an otherworldly moan that put the hair up on the back of Rico's neck.

  "Crista? Can you hear me?"

  Rico saw that she had some ability to move. She turned her hands palm upward in a gesture of helplessness, and her lips kept trying to form the words that wouldn't come.

  "Flatter..."

  The word was barely intelligible. She still looked straight ahead, and in a dreamlike slow motion finished her effort with, "...rugs."

  "Flattery gave you drugs?"

  She blinked her eyes once, slowly.

  "He gave you drugs to make you toxic? It's not the kelp?"

  Again, the slow blink and a nearly imperceptible nod.

  The Flying Fish took another lurch that sprawled Rico across the deck. He grabbed for a handhold and pressed himself against the bulkhead as the foil rolled onto its side, then righted.

  The foil's metal skin shrieked as something twisted it to its limits, then backed off.

  The kelp's pulling us apart, he thought. It knows she's in here!

  Crista was strapped in just as Ben must have left her, soaking wet, her disguise discarded. Rico made a jump for the seat next to her and strapped in just as the foil righted again and all was quiet. It was as though the kelp had one last spasm run through it before it could relax.

 
He checked Ben over as best he could without touching him. He was breathing easily and his color was good. There was some movement of his right hand toward Crista, and Rico thought this was a good sign. He gingerly opened Ben's left breast pocket and brought out the other slapshot for Crista. Her eyelids did a fast flutter-dance that seemed voluntary, and her left hand raised just a tiny bit at the fingertips, as though to push him away.

  Rico hesitated with the shot, and the fluttering stopped.

  What if it's no... the Tingle? he asked himself. Operations had warned him that the antidote itself might be fatal if administered needlessly to one of them. Maybe it would be fatal if given to her at all.

  If Flattery's been giving her something, maybe her body's different, he thought. Maybe the antidote woul... kill her.

  It was tempting to go ahead anyway, after what she'd done to his partner. No one would know, not even Ben. He readied himself to deliver it and her eyes went into their flutter again and her fingers made those pushing movements.

  But Flattery would like that, he thought. There's nothing more that he would like than being able to tell the world that Her Holiness Crista Galli died in the hands of the Shadows.

  The whole fiction began to unreel in his mind, clearly illumined all of a sudden against the backdrop of light that began to fill the galley's plaz.

  "Of course," he said to her, "it makes sense. He made you toxic so that no one would go near you. Then he went public and blamed this on you... relationship with the kelp, am I right?"

  Again, the barely perceptible nod and the slow blink. She seemed relieved, more relaxed, and he didn't think it was the toxin working.

  A sudden burst of light filled the galley and the foil began to lurch rhythmically. They were on the surface, and Elvira would be going out there to clear the intakes. At each lurch a tiny cry escaped Crista's throat, and tears streaked her cheeks. For the first time he felt as though he wanted to comfort her. He was just beginning to imagine how much Flattery had used her, how terrible and secret her life in the Preserve must have been.

  She was a curiosity, a prisoner, he thought, and he made her a monster.

  "Did this ever happen to yo... before Flattery gave you drugs?"

  Her eyes flicked side to side.

  "I think that he thought that your toxin would kill us. Then he would get you back and be a hero, warning the world again about how dangerous you are. And if I gave you this shot," he placed the unopened ampule carefully into his pocket, "then you would die and he would tell the world how we killed you. That would turn the world against us for sur..."

  She blinked a "yes," and Rico heard a moan from Ben.

  The intercom charged again, then Elvira asked, "Rico, everybody OK?"

  Ben's mouth struggled to speak, then he gave up and managed a slight nod. Crista, too, nodded and squeezed out a slow "Yesss."

  "Slapshot time," Rico said to the intercom. "They're not great, but improving. I'm all you've got right now. You going out for a little swim?"

  "Thought I would. Best watch the helm."

  "On my way," he said. He reassured himself that both Crista and Ben were safe, and that neither of them could be hurt where they lay.

  "I'll leave the intercom charged," he told them. "Talk to me once in a while, even if it's a grunt, OK? I'll be back when Elvira's finished out there."

  Crista raised her fingertips again, and wrenched out a couple of words.

  "Kel... happy."

  "The kelp is happy?" He threw his hands in the air, and spoke with undisguised sarcasm. "Then I'm happy. How the hell do you know?"

  She turned her palm up like a shrug.

  "Free - dom," she said, and repeated the word more slowly, "free - dom."

  A glance out the plaz showed him what appeared to be an infinite expanse of kelp lazing in the last of both afternoon suns. Alki, the small, distant sun, had begun a slow pulse almost a year ago and it was pulsing now. A very large, very black cloud was closing from seaward toward them. An occasional kelp frond rose slowly, then fell back with a slap and a splash.

  Like a wot in a bathtub, he thought.

  He had never seen the kelp play like this before.

  "I hope you're right," he said. "I truly hope you're right. It will make life so much easier for us, and so much harder for Flattery's people."

  He resisted the temptation to pat her shoulder and Ben's.

  "We're going to get you out of this, buddy," he said to Ben.

  He kept talking, more to himself than to Ben, as he hurried out the hatchway to the helm. He spoke to Ben over the intercom as he reviewed his instruments, as much for his own comfort as his partner's.

  "I hate to say it," Rico said, "but I think Current Control saved our butts. The kelp got us down here, wherever here is, and then started tearing at the cabin with those huge vines. Current Control must have been trying to get the original channel back, because the kelp was obviously fighting some kind of impulse. Either they blew a fuse or they gave the kelp its head completely. Whatever, it was the right thing to do."

  He resumed his instrument checkout.

  "That electrical pulse through the kelp must have screwed up our Navcom system," Rico said. "Most everything else looks OK. I closed off cooling outlets to the galley to head off that leak, just in case it's ready to pop someplace else. You two might get a little warm there between the engines. Once we're airborne, I'll figure a way to get you both up here."

  He finished the checkout and realized that they wouldn't be getting airborne after all. Not unless Elvira could remanufacture the hydraulics that withdrew their hydrofoils and extended airfoils.

  Ben doesn't need to know that now, he thought. For that matter, neither do I.

  "Speak to me, buddy. Anything."

  "Ric... OK."

  It came out loud and clear, though painfully slow, but it was enough to put a smile on Rico's face. He felt Elvira tugging kelp out of the inlets and tried the Navcom again. It was dead, not even a burst of static from the speakers.

  "Squall's coming in," he told Ben, "things might get rough again pretty soon."

  He didn't want to tell Ben that they were going to get really rough, now that they couldn't get above the storm. Without the Navcom, and with the kelp glutting up the ocean as far as the eye could see, Rico himself didn't want to think about how rough it was going to get.

  ***

  Anyone who threatens the mind or its symbolizing endangers the matrix of humanity itself.

  - Ward Keel, The Apocryphal Notebooks

  Ben had heard the boat's ballast blow as he stroked Crista's hair and cheek under the fine spray of the pinpoint galley leak. He remembered the taste of salt when his lips brushed her hair. Because of the taste of salt from the interior bulkhead he knew it was a cooling pipe leak, recycled seawater, nothing to worry about now that they were headed topside.

  He remembered that he and Crista had been talking, laughing, when suddenly his upper body began to tingle. His neck wouldn't move his head where it wanted to go. He tried to cry out but his mouth and throat wouldn't work. Crista slumped against her harness, limp, her eyes wide with fear and their green irises darkening nearly to blue.

  Oh, no, he remembered thinking. Oh, no, they were right.

  In lurching, spastic movements he lunged against Crista, sprawling across her legs. She had let out a little cry of surprise, but didn't resist. Ben saw that she couldn't. Whatever was happening to him was also happening to her. He had the advantage of more body mass, more muscle, so it was taking his body longer to shut down.

  He grabbed for Crista's harness to pull himself up but his hands turned to two heavy rocks at the ends of his arms. Within a blink he collapsed against her. He was able to see and breathe but trying to move only produced uncontrollable spasms. He slid down the couch to the deck into a position that didn't allow him to watch Crista. One of his hands remained on her ankle, and he felt her body spasm and relax much like his own. The antidote was in his pocket, and he couldn't
make his body work well enough to dig it out.

  Rico will think I'm a fool, he thought.

  Now that they'd lost their Navcom they couldn't function undersea, and they'd be bobbing squawks on the surface. Rico would have his hands full enough without thi... mess.

  Elvira's got a few tricks, he thought.

  Ben felt the Tingle rush like a hot blush down his back, out his shoulders and thighs. He tried to control his muscles again but couldn't. He was a helpless, quivering heap on the deck. He remembered feeling more betrayed than careless. Then he started traveling the convolutions of Crista's mind. Rico, the galley around them, the rest of the real universe played through a dark curtain that backdropped Crista's thoughts and memories. These images from her life unreeled in his brain.

  "Ben!" Rico said, his small voice rising to Ben from a great depth. He said more but Ben heard only the snap of the antidote against his singlesuit. He felt nothing but the Tingle throughout his body, but he was fully aware of Rico stretching him out on the deck.

  Time rippled like a dark fabric strung between himself and Rico. The white and stainless steel of the galley blended into a great glowing halo of yellowpanel that washed out everything behind the curtain of his mind.

  Ben understood much, now. A near-infinity of human memories slept in Crista Galli's head. Now many of them buzzed in his own, like solvent to solute, a wet solution filling up a dry. He felt the dry blossom of his mind unfold as it drank, petal by intricate petal, and behind it the shadow that was Rico LaPush rippled back and forth.

  Though he could see and hear, Ben felt a detachment from his body that was more curiosity to him than fear. He remembered the special show he'd done with Beatriz about people who returned from near-death, what they'd reported about this same detached feeling, this same comforting warmth that replaced all sensation in his skin except that Tingle. They said they'd viewed their bodies from certain vantage points in the room, watched the medics resuscitate them, remembered whole conversations that took place even when they showed no heartbeat on the monitor. They described watching the vital signs monitor with the same detached feeling that Ben had when he slumped to the deck.