The Ascension Factor

***

To be conscious, you must surmount illusion.

The series of explosions dropped by Flattery's Skyhawks from the surface wounded the green kelp in sector eight, killed tens of thousands of fishes and a pod of bottlenose porpoises and roiled up enough sediment to clog submersible filters for a fifty-click radius. A huge stand of blue kelp neighboring sector eight retracted all of its fronds instinctively and clamped itself as tight around its central lagoon as possible. In this configuration, its leaves were packed so tight that it could barely breathe. Feeding was out of the question.

The blue kelp, when fully deployed, reached a diameter of nearly one hundred kilometers. Its outer fringes bordered domestic kelp projects for nearly 280 degrees of its circumference; the rest faced open ocean and some of it was growing daily at a visible rate. For its own safety, it kept out of contact with the domestic kelps. These were slaves to the humans, bound to the electric whip, this much the blue gathered from the dying shards that drifted its way. There would be many such shards soon. Kelp death always followed these explosions. Other deaths followed, too, at times feeding the blue kelp into an incredible spurt of growth.

This day something else drifted in on the currents. Something like an aura, a fragrance, something that kept the kelp from hugging itself too tight, too long. Something stirred this blue kelp deep within itself, setting its genetic memories tingling. Nothing would quite come to the fore. Soon, the blue could no longer help itself and it opened its fronds wide in hopes of a good strong whiff.

***

Feed men, then ask of them virtue.

Turbulence from the blasts hadn't settled yet when the Flying Fish pitched, helpless, to the surface. Rico's eyes teared instantly in the sudden glare of afternoon sun that jammed the cockpit. He groped for his sunglasses and tried to blink away the afterglow. To starboard, he saw a long gray line that must be the coast. To port, two or three kilometers away, the surface seethed with a mean white froth as far as he could see.

A puddle of seawater widened into a pool beneath Elvira's command couch. Her nosebleed was slowing and she shook her head, trying to clear the concussion that had hit her with the first of the depth-charges.

Anybody but Elvira would've been scrat bait out there, Rico thought.

Somehow she'd made it back into the engine-room airlock by herself, though stu

"That goddamn Flattery's answer to everything is to blow it up," he grumbled.

Kelp lights winked out all around them as the sea was glutted with shredded fronds and torn vines.

"Sister Kelp," Elvira said, following his gaze across the tumultuous surface, "she retracts, saves herself."

"Elvira, I don't want to hear that 'Sister Kelp' crap. I want to get us out of here."

"Overflights!" she warned, and pointed to two specks at ten o'clock off the port cabin. Her hands automatically worked the dive sequence, but the engines remained still.

"Jammed," she said, her face impassive and dazed. "Silt an... kelp in the niters."

"Don't sweat it, Elvira," Rico said. He patted her arm. "They're the ones who dropped the charges. If they carried all that payload, they're short on fuel. At least we're not dealing with a bunch of mines out here."

Rico unharnessed himself and got Elvira a towel out of one of the lockers.

"Here," he said. "Dry yourself off, change into a new dive suit. We might be here awhile and there's no sense you getting sick."

She took the towel, and it seemed to Rico that her senses were coming back.

"Flattery can track a one-seater coracle from port to port with the Orbiter, anyway," he said. "These guys can't set down out here, and with Crista Galli aboard they don't dare blow us up. Meanwhile, we've got to get her and Ben to some big medicine, and fast."

Two sonic booms rocked them further as the overflights dove in on them and pulled out. Rico could make out the pilots' faces as the tiny aircraft flashed past.

"They're young, Elvira, did you see that? With their whole lives ahead of them they chain themselves to Flattery." He fisted the arm of his couch and grumbled, "Why do they do that? They should be out cuddling some young thing in a hatchway somewhere. Didn't their mothers teach them any better?"

"Their mothers are hungry, Rico, and they're hungry now."

Rico glanced at Elvira with surprise. He was accustomed to speaking to her but getting nothing but grunts for reply. She was already out of her restraints and fighting the toss of the foil, making her way to the aft lockers.

"You're not going out there again," he said. "The seas are a mess, nothing can get through here."

"You will calm down," she said, and it sounded like an order. Elvira peeled off her dive suit and toweled off her finely toned musculature with the candor typical of Mermen. "Care for the others. I will clean out the filters."

As she slipped into a fresh suit, Rico realized he'd been aroused at the sight of Elvira's pale body. Even her thumb-sized nipples seemed muscular in the chill. He would never approach Elvira, both of them knew that, but the surprise of his arousal reminded Rico of Snej, and how much he'd missed her.

Elvira's plan was the logical thing, he knew. He ticked off a list of priorities.

Ben and Crista, he thought. Keep them breathing. Monitor the radio, prepare for surprises by Vashon security.

Elvira swept past him to the hatch without so much as a glance. Rico fought the pitch and roll of the foil to the lockers and pulled out three more dive suits. He worked himself along by handholds in the bulkhead back to the galley. On his way, he listened to the crackle of the radio and the report from the overflights.

"Skywatch leader to base. Charges away. We have your fish, over."

"Roger, Skywatch. We mark your position. Our bird is launched. ETA thirty minutes. Status report."

Thirty minutes! Rico thought.

Their bird must be a foil, and a fast one.

Not room for a lot of hardware or a lot of bodies - good. We might have a few surprises for them.

The radio continued to chatter about the condition of the Flying Fish and speculation on the occupants, but they were quickly out of range.

Rico bent over Ben and saw that he was immobile, his chest was not rising and falling, but his color wasn't bad. He put his cheek to Ben's mouth and detected the slightest breath. Checking the pulse at Ben's neck, he noted that his partner's heart was beating, but only a few beats per minute, His eyes were open, but still. They looked dry, so Rico opened and closed the lids a few times to lubricate them, then left them closed.

He unhooked the restraints and struggled to get Ben into one of the dive suits.

"We're topside," he said, hoping Ben could hear. "They threw some charges at the kelp, but I think it's just surface damage. Elvira's out there unclogging the intakes. Flattery's people have a foil on our tail, they'll be here in no time. We may have to go over the rail."

He heard a groan from Crista Galli, and saw that she was trying to sit up against her restraints.

"Your girlfriend's coming around," he said. "I'll get her into a suit, then get into the code book and let Operations know what's going on. Everybody else seems to know where we are."

He sealed Ben's suit and inflated the collar, just in case. When Rico turned to Crista Galli, he saw that she was crying. Her red-rimmed, swollen eyes stared at Ben's deathlike form on the galley deck. She seemed to be conscious and aware.