The Ascension Factor

***

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 ca

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 other 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 fa

The presence of two suns u

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. It was 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 physician 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 sca

"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.

They actually run up these cliffs, he mused. Why?

It was here, on the bare overlook above the Preserve, that he reviewed the latest messages regarding the Holovision foil and the curious rebellion of the largest stand of kelp in the region.

"So, Marta, do you really believe that they've turned back?" he asked.

His communications officer, a little plump for her regulation blue jumpsuit, managed a quick chew at her lip before responding. Flattery had bedded her once and recalled that her touch was far more satisfying than her looks. She'd been a slender young thing then - four, maybe five years ago. She had started as a bodyguard, but showed a facility with electronics that impressed his engineers. When she requested a transfer, he had granted it. It was just as well, the move headed off the rumors and the inevitable discomfort of extracting himself from a sticky personal situation.

"... I don't know," she said. "The device that I placed personally on their foil is working perfectly, and its course is consistent with a return to this -"

"Bah!" Flattery blurted. "They're not stupid. I insisted that you place the device on or inside her person and you took it upon yourself to place it elsewhere. A Current Control outpost has already confirmed the device to be aboard a crippled sub train dragging a few thousand kilos of dead fish."

Flattery enjoyed the stu

"I was afraid," she said. "I was afraid to touch her."

Marta hung her head as though expecting a blade. The merciless suns here on the bluff widened the circles of sweat forming under her armpits. It was that heavy, sticky time on the coast just before the rain squalls hit. He didn't have to sniff to smell the rain.

Flattery remembered that time with her. It had been afternoon and their skin poured sweat. Tiny black hairs from his chest had stuck to her small white breasts. She hadn't been so afraid of him then, just a little bit in awe, which made things easier.

Dammit! he muttered to himself. Bitten by the fiction again.

He drew himself up to his full height, nearly two heads taller than Marta.

"Didn't I assure you that it was safe?"

This he delivered in his most consoling voice.

She nodded, but still did not lift her head.

Flattery was very pleased with himself. If this woman who knew him so well was afraid of Crista, of what her touch might do, then these strangers must be terrified. Thanks to his foresight in the begi

The neurotoxin would be oozing from her every pore by now, and the fiction he had laid down so carefully for so long would become true. Everyone, particularly the enemy, would see it with their own eyes. Only he, the Director, could save her. Those Shadows would soon find themselves in the presence of a monster that they could not afford to keep.

The wonders of chemistry, he thought, and smiled.

Aloud, he reassured Marta.

"I understand your fear," he said. "The important thing is that we were not fooled by their amateurish attempt at deception. What do you have to report on damage here?"

Both of them flinched at the simultaneous crackle of two lasguns, and Flattery turned to see that his guards had cooked a pair of hooded dashers closing from the direction of the high reaches.