The Ascension Factor: Pandora Sequence

by Frank Herbert

  How ironic, Twisp thought, that those who can afford to wait don’t have to. I wonder if there’s anything left for him to hope for?

  “Elder!”

  Twisp cringed inwardly at the panting voice of the young Mose behind him. He felt impatience enough bursting in his breast without being nettled by Mose.

  “What is it?”

  The younger monk would not approach the precipitous edge of rock outcrop that Twisp occupied, this he knew. He admitted to himself that it was a little game he played with Mose.

  “Why do you stand out there?” the younger asked, his voice tinged with a whine.

  “Why do you stand back there?”

  Still, Twisp did not turn, though he knew he would do so.

  “Your presence is requested in chambers. It is urgent. There are many preparations afoot that I do not understand.”

  Twisp did not answer.

  “Elder, can you hear me?”

  Still no answer.

  “Elder, please do not make me come out there again. You know that it shakes my wattles in a fearsome way.”

  Twisp chuckled to himself and turned to join Mose at the cavern entrance. The afternoon rains had begun, anyway, pattering like swiftgrazers in the scrub. He knew already what Operations must have decided. That it was time to stop hoping. That Flattery and his kind must go. That the people were rising up unorganized and undefended. That the Zavatans and the Shadows held the only means and position to guarantee his fall. That once again thousands would die in the greater name of Life and, of course, Liberty. When there was nothing else to boil down, it always boiled down to Bread.

  “Come with me to Operations,” Twisp said, “and I’ll show you something to pink your wattles. You will then be witness to something fearsome, indeed.”

  Twisp bowed once at the cavern entrance, in respect, and entered, the billow of his orange robe a beacon against the darkened afternoon.

  The dim vestibule inside was guarded by two young novices with shaved heads and lasguns. The boy looked to be about fifteen and his glistening head revealed a high crest of bone atop his skull, which made him taller than Twisp, though their eyes met at the same height. Both he and the girl wore the black, armored jumpsuits of the Dasher Clan. Both were suitably alert, their quick brown eyes negating their relaxed posture. Together they swung the plasteel hatch outward on its gimbals and admitted the two monks to the cavern within the high reaches.

  It was not dashers and flatwings that these doors walled out, but the Director and his Vashon Security Force. Through the years Twisp himself had become a master of security. Incursions by VSF had been few and unsuccessful. They viewed the Zavatans as harmless, spineless weaklings who were kelp-drugged or insane.

  “Illusion is our strongest weapon,” Twisp had lectured the young novices. “Appear to be foolish, mad, poor and ugly—who would want to take you then? Note how the mold wins the fruit by its appearance alone.”

  The first chamber was the one that was inspected periodically by Vashon Security Force. Rough-hewn out of rock, it housed three hundred Zavatans of the nine clans spread out along the walls, with common meeting and dining areas. Mazes of cubbies in three levels had bulkheads hung with hundreds of tapestries that muffled the din of three hundred voices echoing inside the cavern.

  Lighting was the usual hot-glow type driven by four hydrogen generators housed in the rock beneath them. The appearance was of primitive squalor, and security inspectors sent here by the Director seldom stayed for more than a cursory look. This was where Mose lived. Twisp, too, had a cubby here—third level, to the right of the main entrance—but he seldom slept there. For more than a year Twisp had lived in the private chambers of the group known to the Shadows as “Operations.”

  Twisp ascended to the second level with Mose in tow. He stepped behind an old Islander tapestry into an alcove that would not be noticed except perhaps by children at play. He approached an undamaged section of basalt bulkhead carved with elaborate histories of human and kelp interactions. The section that he faced, titled “The Lazarus Effect,” was simply a huge bas-relief figure of a human hand, index finger extended, touching a strand of kelp that rose from the sea.

  Twisp pulled the finger out from the bulkhead and, with the snick of a dagger leaving its sheath, a section of rock sprang outward. When Operations met for Zavatan business, they met inside this labyrinth of rock. Its many repairs betrayed the instability of Pandora’s geology, and its routes were constantly changing. Few knew the passageways, and none as well as the Islander Twisp, Chief of Operations.

  Mose swallowed hard and paled conspicuously. Tales abounded of thousands of villagers and common folk who sought safety among the Zavatans, never to be seen again. Mose himself had seen hundreds come into the great cavern behind them who had never come out. Operations referred to them as “Messengers from the Poor,” and hinted that they were relocated worldwide. Though Mose had heard this rumor, he had never seen evidence to back it up. Mose seldom admitted that he’d been born and lived out his meager years within five kilometers of where he now stood.

  They never come back out this hatch!

  Twisp smiled at the younger monk’s obvious fear.

  Why do I like teasing him? he wondered. I remember Brett took it so well …

  He shook his head. Dwelling on his dead partner was nonproductive. Cleaning up the nest of assassins who’d killed him would do everybody some good.

  “Come,” Twisp said. “You will be safe with me. It is time the Zavatan muscle flexed itself.”

  With a smile, Twisp stepped into the well-lighted passageway. Mose’s eyes couldn’t have widened further. When he hesitated, Twisp placed a large hand on his shoulder.

  Mose, too, stepped inside and the panel snicked shut behind them. “I want you to remember everything you see here today.”

  Mose swallowed hard again and nodded. “Yes … Elder.”

  Mose did not look thrilled. His already pale face was drawn tight, the surgical scars along his hairline and neck glowed an angry pink. He alternately pulled at his robe and wrung his hands.

  The raw silence of this stone passageway contrasted heavily with the steady din of the cavern they left behind them. The passageway was lighted by a cold source, neither bright nor dim, and it carried the pale green hues of Merman design. As in many Merman complexes, the walls met at right angles in a precision that annoyed many Islanders. These walls were carved by a plasteel welder, and except for fault damage they ran perfectly straight, perfectly smooth.

  An electronic voice from overhead startled Mose: “Security code for companion?”

  “One-three,” Twisp said. “Continue.”

  They set out down the passageway and Mose asked, “Where are we?”

  “You will see.”

  “What do they mean, ‘security code’?”

  “We have checks within checks,” Twisp explained. “Had you been an enemy holding me hostage, this passage would have been sealed off with both of us in it. Perhaps I would be rescued, perhaps not. You, at least, would have been killed.”

  Twisp felt Mose walk closer to him yet. “Operations is far beneath us, even below the ocean floor.”

  “Mermen did this?” Mose asked.

  The passageway turned left abruptly and ended at a blank wall. Twisp pressed his palm to a depression on the wall and a panel slid back to reveal a tiny room, barely large enough for a half dozen people.

  “Humans did this,” Twisp answered. “Islanders and Mermen alike.”

  The panel slid shut behind them. Twisp spoke the single word “Operations,” and the room began to descend with the two of them inside.

  “Oh, Elder …”

  Mose held on to Twisp’s long arm.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Twisp said. “There is no magic here. You will see many wonders, all human wonders. Our brothers and sisters will know of them, presently. Didn’t I say this would pink your wattles?”

  At this, Mose laughed, but he continued to cl
utch Twisp’s arm throughout their rapid descent.

  Chapter 42

  I am afraid, too, like all my fellow-men, of the future too heavy with mystery and too wholly new, towards which time is driving me.

  —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Hymn of the Universe, the Zavatan Collection

  Doob muscled the controls of his track as it lurched across the rocky no man’s land between the periphery road and the settlement. The track’s ride was a kidney-buster, but it wasn’t confined to the few flat roads like Stella’s little Cushette. In spite of the beating, the track didn’t seem to break down as often, either. This was the third trip to the salvage yard for Doob and Gray this month—all three to fix Stella’s five-year-old Cushette.

  “You should get a top on this thing,” Gray hollered.

  Both men were soaked in the sudden afternoon rain, their short hair plastered like thick wet paint onto their heads.

  “I like the rain,” Doob hollered back. “My mom always said it’s good for the complexion.”

  “That’s what my dad said about sex.”

  That was the first glimmer of humor that Doob had seen from Gray all day. Gray had come by a half- hour ago after getting off work in the settlement. He was grim-lipped and humorless, not at all the relaxed Gray who lived next door. Gray worked some security job for the Director’s personal staff, so when he didn’t feel like talking, Doob knew better than to push.

  Doob was full of questions today, though. A skyful of smoke over the settlement worried him in spite of the news.

  “A good rain’ll clear the air,” Doob said. “It’s good for the brain, too. I wish it would grow something out here besides more rock.”

  “Those Zavatans,” Gray said, “they could do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Get something to grow here. They have huge farms all over the upcoast regions. Just like the Islanders, but they’ve moved the islands inland.”

  Doob looked at Gray incredulously. He had heard rumors, of course, everybody had.

  “You’re not kidding, are you? They grow food up there and the Director lets them get away with it?”

  “That’s right. He can’t keep control up there and down here, too.”

  “But everything up there’s just cliff face and rock …”

  “That’s what you hear,” Gray said. “Where do you hear it?”

  “Well, on the news. I don’t know anyone who’s actually traveled overland up there.” “I have.”

  Doob glanced over at his best friend. Something had happened to him today, something that changed his whole disposition. Gray was a lot of fun. He’d come home, drink some boo with Doob, tinker with the vehicles. Sometimes, when Doob could afford it, they’d take their wives to the settlement for an evening of dropvine wine and buzzboard. Gray was definitely no fun today, but Gray had been upcoast, and Doob was very curious.

  “You have?” Doob asked. “Well … what was it like?”

  He knew the danger of this question. He suspected that whatever it was that Gray had to tell him about the upcoast region was something that wouldn’t be healthy to know.

  “It was beautiful,” Gray said. He spoke up, but his voice was still hard to hear over the noise of the track’s exhaust.

  “They have gardens, hundreds of them. A rock ranch like this one would grow corn in one season up there. And every little garden is bordered by flowers, all colors …”

  The wistful expression on Gray’s face worried Doob. Doob had seen that expression often since Gray got back from wherever the Director’s people sent him. Gray didn’t volunteer information, and Doob knew better than to ask. The less he knew about that kind of stuff, the longer his life span, he was sure of that.

  Besides, he listened to dangerous politics from his roommate, Stella. Like Doob, she was twenty-two cycles Pandoran, but she hung around with artists and tried to act older. She had converted most of their living space to a multilevel hydroponics garden, and she grew mushrooms under their rooms. Gray knew this, of course, but he pretended not to. Stella came from a long line of Islander gardeners. Her family owned patents to seeds mutated specifically to Pandora, and about three centuries of know-how in hydroponics. Doob thought she could probably make the walls sprout if he let her.

  Stella talked nonstop, but this didn’t bother Doob. That way he didn’t have to say much, and that was the way Doob liked things.

  Gray signaled him to shut down the engine. The track backfired once and stopped atop a rock ledge that afforded them a sweeping view all around.

  “I want to believe I can trust you,” Gray said. “There are some things I need to talk about.”

  Doob swallowed, then nodded.

  “Sure, Gray. I’m a little scared, you know.”

  Gray smiled, but it was a grim smile.

  “You should be,” he said. He pointed to the refugee sprawl ahead. “Starving people out there would kill you for one meal out of Stella’s garden. Flattery’s people would kill you for growing illegal food. I might kill you if you told anybody what I’m about to tell you.”

  Doob sucked in his breath. From Gray’s steady gaze, Doob knew he wasn’t kidding. He also knew that he needed to hear whatever Gray needed to say.

  “Even Stella?”

  Gray’s eyes softened. Doob knew how much he liked Stella. He treated her like the daughter that Gray and Billie never had.

  “We’ll see,” Gray said. “Hear me out.”

  Gray spoke in a near-whisper, and his gaze darted around them nervously. Doob hunched close to Gray and pretended to be working on the track’s control panel. He had the distinct feeling they were being watched.

  “I’ve been gone a month, you knew that,” Gray said. “They sent me upcoast, to spy on some Zavatans up there. They set me up with a story, a lapel camera, a way in and out. Overflights showed some signs of illegal fishing and food production, Flattery wanted details. What I saw there changed my life.”

  He lifted off the lid to the control panel and propped it up. Both Gray and Billie had been raised down under in Merman settlements.

  He’s methodical, like a Merman, Doob thought.

  Gray’s ice-blue eyes kept watch for movement around the track. Out in the open, this close to the perimeter, there were risks of other dangers than humans. Gray continued to talk in his slow, quiet way.

  “They’re Islanders, like you, without islands,” he said. “Thousands of them—Flattery has no idea how many. They have camouflage for overflights. The ratty little gardens that we see from the air are meant to be seen. Under the camouflage, and underground … that’s a whole different story. They make bubbly out of the nutrient vats the same way they used to form their islands. Except now, instead of growing islands out of it, they spray it in a foam across rock like this and grow plants on it a week later. They make it out of garbage and sewage, just like the old days.

  “On flat land, or the second time around, the bubbly is formed into a centimeter-thick sheet of organic gel, twelve meters across. Seeds are impregnated in rows into the gel, then they spread it across bare rock or sand, or last year’s garden. It holds nutrients, water and defense from predators, all in a time-release bonding. Wouldn’t Stella love to see this?”

  “Sounds like her idea of heaven,” Doob said. “She misses the island life, even though ours was grounded when we were five. I miss it, too, I guess. Not the drifting so much as the freedom. We worried about grounding, but we weren’t afraid of each other.” This last Doob offered with some reservation. To admit that you were afraid of security was to imply that you had reason to be afraid. Fear was grounds for investigation.

  “Yes,” Gray sighed, “we are afraid of each other, aren’t we? Even you and I. Up there,” he nodded upcoast, “they’re wary, but they’re not afraid.”

  “What did you do about your report? Did you … ?”

  “Did I expose their happiness? Did I betray the only sign of humanity I’ve witnessed in almost twenty years? No. No, I lied, and I made sur
e my camera lied. But I’m not as brave as you think. I know what Flattery suspected—that there were settlements, illegal food. But I also know what Flattery wanted. He wanted it to be rag-tag, not worth going after, because he doesn’t have the force to stop it! Look around you, Doob.” Gray swept his arm, taking in the horizon on all sides. “This takes every bit of manpower he’s got, and he’s losing it. There were riots in the settlement today, big riots, and there will be more. The news is not news, it’s fiction outlined by Flattery and written by his personal fools. His lies keep us small, and as long as we’re small he keeps control.

  “No, he didn’t want there to be anything big upcoast, so when I showed him a few raggedy-assed dirtpokers, it made him happy. So, maybe he’ll stay here. His major forces are here and in Victoria, with a lot of sea patrols on the fishing fleet. The world is a lot bigger than that, Doob. It’s a lot bigger, and getting bigger every day. I think you and Stella should go up there.”

  “What?”

  Doob banged his head coming out of the control panel. “Are you crazy? She’s going to have a … I mean, we can’t think about anything like that right now. We’ve got to stay put.”

  “Doob, I know she’s going to have a baby. Stella told Billie and Billie told me this morning. She can’t hide it much longer, anyway. You’ll have to make new food coupon applications, people may visit your place, you can’t risk that.”

  Doob sighed, then spit out the driver’s porthole.

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  “Listen,” Gray said. “There’s a way out of this. How’s the Cushette over water?”

  “Well, it’s OK when it’s running. No match for a foil, though, or one of those security pursuit boats.”

  Gray looked back at the bed of the track. It was a dumpable storage bin two meters wide by four meters long. Doob made his coupons hauling equipment across the rocks for construction crews up and down the beaches of Kalaloch.