The Ascension Factor

by Frank Herbert

  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 not … 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 would … 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 your … 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 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 you … 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 sure …”

  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. “Kelp … 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.”

  “Rico … 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.

  Chapter 39

  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 this … 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.

  His view, however, was distinctly from someone else’s body, someone else’s mind. This was a wot’s mind, down under, looking upward toward the sun from the middle depths of a kelp lagoon. His range of vision was limited to straight ahead. It was slightly blurry and a light halo surrounded the rim above. Way up there, backlit by the glowing suns, he saw Rico’s busy shadow. The lagoon was full of Swimmers, those legendary gilled humans, undulating in and out of channels above her.

  This was Crista as a child. This was Ben as Crista as a child.

  He sensed that Rico was very worried and he wanted to tell him, “It’s OK, I’m here,” but nothing would come out.

  One Swimmer in particular attended her, an older female. Ben had never seen a Swimmer. He’d imagined them as grotesque, slimy creatures with wide mouths and stupid eyes, and rudimentary, ratlike tails. The female who attended Crista now was about his own age. Her red fan of gill fluttered furiously at her shoulders as she fed the girl slices of raw fish. Crista dangled from the kelp, and the Swimmer female came up to her from the deeps. She did not, or would not, speak.

  From somewhere behind the halo, very far above Ben’s upturned face, Rico’s voice echoed, “I’m going to settle you here and keep you warm.”

  Ben felt the lagoon receding, and Rico’s voice with it.

  “Crista is still breathing,” Rico said. “I don’t know whether you can hear me or not, Ben, but we’ll get you out of here. You’ll be OK. The goddamned girl is OK. We’re almost topside. We’ll get you someplace.” Rico’s voice was tinged with hysteria, and he sounded close to tears. “We’ll get you someplace, buddy, you just hang on.” Then Rico was gone.

  Ben found he could leave the womblike kelp, and if he imagined walking a corridor toward himself he became more aware of the galley, the foil around him. He felt he could walk a gossamer bridge between Crista’s mind and his own.

  A sudden dazzle of light in the galley and a change in the pitch of the foil told Ben that they had surfaced. Ben wondered whether he would die this way, fully conscious, feeling that last exhalation and unable to suck in air. He remembered the time that he and Rico almost drowned, when Guemes Island was sabotaged and sunk. He had nearly panicked then, but he felt no such panic now, simply a numb obedience to his fate.

  He found himself wondering about things that should terrify him: would the neurotoxin, whatever it was, paralyze his breathing muscles? His heart muscle? He wished that Rico had propped him up a little to make it easier, though already the tingling had stopped.

  The slapshot works, he thought.

  He wanted to cross that gossamer bridge to Crista again, but he felt himself moving further away from the bridge and back into the foil, The deck under him was uncomfortable, and he found that he could squirm a little to change position. He was definitely improving. He’d been dimly aware of a voice coming in over the intercom, it was Rico’s voice, and it came in again, sounding worried.

  “Speak to me, buddy. Anything.”

  Ben tried his throat again. It was dry, and didn’t want to work quite right, but he managed to squeeze out: “Rico … OK.”

  He heard Crista breathing, but she still hadn’t stirred.

  I wonder what happens to her?

  “Squall’s coming in,” Rico announced, “things might get rough again pretty soon.”

  Ben wanted to laugh, tried to come back at Rico with, “Rough? What do you call this?” but it all came out a garble.

  Chapter 40

  The new ruler must inevitably distress those over whom he establishes his rule. So it happens that he makes enemies of all those whom he has injured in occupying the new principality, and yet he cannot keep the friendship of those who have set him up.

  —Machiavelli, The Prince

  Flattery spurned the safety of his quarters for a brazen tour in the sunshine topside. Nevi and Zentz were on their mission and out of his way, the ragtag rebellion was failing under his security force, and he knew that whoever had Crista Galli had a big handful of trouble. He smiled widely to himself and turned his face to the sky. He loved the sky, the weather—how different from the controlled susurrations of Moonbase air! It was nearly time for the afternoon rain. Like the few previous survivors of hybernation who had been reared in the sterility of Moonbase, Flattery had a feeling for weather.

  He chose a parapet that looked downcoast, across the Preserve and into the wretched village that spilled from his gate. A boil of black smoke fanned inland with the upcoming wind. Flattery wore his brightest red lounging jacket so that the vermin could see he was very much alive, still very much the Director. So close to the borders of battle—now they would see the mettle they tested!

  The presence of two suns unnerved him, even after these many years. Information from his kelp studies, from his geologists, proved that they were ripping the planet’s crust like so much flatbread. The worst was yet to come, and he didn’t intend to wait around for it.

  Ventana, one of his messengers, approached the walkway below him. “Reports on the kelpway disruption, Sir.” She waved a messenger.

  He signaled one of the guards, who inspected the device and then brought it to him. Flattery pulled his white hat farther down to shade his forehead. The wide-brimmed style was Islander, for political effect, and a white hat because Flattery believed that white placed him on the side of Truth and Justice at a glance. He did not retrieve the reports immediately. He knew what was inside: nothing. And by this time the afternoon cloud cover obscured an Orbiter view of the number eight sector.

  His passion for weather did not include the suns’ ravages of his uncooperative skin. Two pink blotches peeled on his forehead and Flattery tried not to scratch them. His personal physici
an had removed two such spots only a month ago, and now this.

  The people have to see me, he thought. There is no substitute for the proper exposure.

  His three most trusted bodyguards accompanied him at a distance, their Pandoran instincts keeping them ever on the move. His vantage point was a bluff overlooking the compound, the village and the bay. To his back were the only higher points for many klicks—the high reaches, home of the worthless Zavatans. A lot of these Zavatans, like the peasantry, believed in Ship and the eventual return of this Ship as some sort of mechanical messiah. The thought made him laugh, and his guards looked at him curiously.

  “Stand down, gentlemen,” he told them. “As you can see, there’s nothing down there that can reach us.”

  “Begging the Director’s pardon,” one of the guards, Aumock, spoke up. “It’s my job to never stand down.”

  Flattery nodded his approval. This one bears watching. “Very good,” he said. “I appreciate your dedication.”

  Aumock, a Merman from good stock, didn’t swell with the praise. He was already back to scanning the area for movement.

  “Nothing up here but Zavatans,” Flattery said.

  “Are you sure they’re nothing, sir?” Aumock replied.

  This was the first time his guard had offered a comment in his ten-month tour of service at Flattery’s side. Flattery merely grunted a response.

  He had his suspicions about these Zavatans—always the same number of them appearing about, but seldom the same faces. Flattery was no fool. He was, after all, a Chaplain/Psychiatrist and had done impeccable study in the history of oppressed religions. He was uncomfortable with a nearby population that was potentially hostile, whose numbers seemed impossible to determine, and whose general fitness appeared far better than that of most of his security.