The Ascension Factor

"It's Ric..."

"We're dusted enough," Ben said.

He stepped down from the foil to the ground and reached up for her.

"Try not to touch the hylighter. We're probably safest scaling the cliff."

"No!"

The word was torn from her throat before she could think about it.

"Not the cliff," she said. "I feel something there. I saw them up there, Nevi and Zentz. They're after us."

Ben pulled her free of the wreckage and they stood on the unsteady footing of the slickrock beach.

"OK," he said, and sighed, "I believe you. If not the cliff, then where?"

She couldn't help looking at the sea.

"We can't go there," he said. "Please don't ask me to take you there. Maybe you can live in there, but I can't."

He glanced quickly around them, biting his lip.

"If you can see Rico, how do we get to him?"

She couldn't resist caressing the remnant of hylighter draped over the foil. Though a plant, and clearly dead, it emanated a warmth that pleased her. It tickled something in her memory, something distant about her childhood. The kelp had protected her, nurtured her, educated her chemically in the customs of her fellow humans. She knew at a touch that this hylighter was from the same stand.

She turned in a slow circle, sca

That is selfish, some voice warned her. Selfish is no longer acceptable.

She had heard about the barre

"There."

She took Ben's hand and pointed out a huge black boulder with a single silver wihi clinging to its top. It was about thirty meters upcoast, halfway between cliff and tideline.

"That's where we want to be."

That was when Nevi and Zentz stepped out from behind the boulder, lasguns drawn, picking their way across the rocks toward them. Crista wasn't surprised, nor frightened. She heard Ben mutter "Shit!" under his breath and saw his head twitch quickly left to right, looking for a dodge. But she knew it wasn't necessary. She knew.

The moment came together for her like a great conception. All the world silenced itself - the waves, the breeze, the cautious footsteps of two murderers clattering across wet stones.

"Hands on top of your heads, step away from the foil." Zentz delivered his orders with a shaky voice tinged with slobber.

"Yes," Crista told Ben, "that's where we want to be."

They clung to each other's hands in the stone-still afternoon and watched the huge boulder lift itself back from the ground behind Nevi and Zentz. It came up smoothly, quietly, as though on hinges. Neither man heard a thing.

"Hands on your heads!"

The boulder laid itself carefully down behind them and out of the shadow beneath it climbed a half-dozen men armed only with ropes and throwing nets.

"Tell me you see it, too," Ben whispered. "Tell me I'm not still dusted."

"It is as it should be," she whispered back, her voice a singsong. "There is a great moment at our feet, and it will not be stayed."

Something about the way Nevi's gaze met her own must have given it away. Without a backward glance he sprang sideways, beachward, and whirled. The first net was already settling over the surprised Zentz and another, poorly thrown, grazed Nevi's arms. Two flashes from his lasgun brought down both netmen, but Zentz flailed in a hopeless tangle. When Nevi whirled back, Crista Galli stared down the business end of his lasgun. Even at thirty paces it looked huge.

"I'll kill her," he a

Everyone froze, and in the silence that went with this stillness Crista felt that they were all graceful subjects inside some great painting. She knew who the painter must be.

Nevi half-crouched in careful aim, his colorful face unreadable, his eyes fixed only on Crista Galli. She felt her head clearing, the return of wave-slaps against rock.

But there's somethin...

It was something she hadn't felt since she'd been dredged up from the sea, something familia...

"Co

Ben breathed beside her and she felt it as her own breath. They were one person, pulses synchronized with rainbows, waves and the great heartbeat of the void. She knew the choices in his mind and marveled at the sacrifice he was prepared to make. She saw the play in his mind: spin her by the hand, get between her and Nevi, take the hit while the netmen brought him down. At the moment he elected to move, she touched his shoulder.

"No," she said, "it's not necessary. Can you feel it?"

"I feel those sights on my chest," he said. "He's the only thing standing between us and -"

"Destiny?" she asked. "There is nothing between us and destiny."

The image of Rico stood behind Nevi, gesturing wildly to her, still smiling.

Nevi came out of his crouch, moved carefully across the rain-wet rocks toward them. She liked the smell of the rain, a different wetness than the smell of the sea, easier on the lungs but not as rich. The scent of the sea, of the dead hylighter, lay heavily beside her like a sleeping lover.

"Do you see?" she asked Ben, and smiled.

"I think I do," he said.

Nevi barked a few orders and two of the surviving netmen slowly began to disentangle Zentz. Crista Galli had that feeling again, the feeling of being a subject in a painting.

"Be still," she whispered.

Ben didn't move.

Nevi stopped walking, a look of surprise washed over his face.

"Where are they?" he shouted, and he shaded his eyes even though the sun was to his back. "Where did they go?"

Crista suppressed a giggle, and the figure of Rico applauded silently from behind Spider Nevi.

"I don't understand," Ben said. "Are we invisible?"

"We're not invisible," she said, "we're simply not visible. He can't pick us out of this landscape. I think it's a trick that Rico has taught the kelp."

Ben squeezed her hand and started to speak, but that was when the shooting started.

***

I will this morning climb up in spirit to the high places, bearing with me the hopes and the miseries of my mother; and ther... upon all that in the world of human flesh is now about to be born or to die beneath the rising sun I will call down the Fire.

Twisp walked Kaleb to the flickering lights at the Oracle's edge. This was a small cavern, a subset of the great root that Flattery had burned out a few thousand meters downcoast. This was a hushed place, a place to breathe iodine on the salt air and feel the cool pulse of the sea.

Kaleb trod the well-worn path with his father's bearing - tall, shoulders back, large eyes alert to every nuance of light and motion. While his parents lived no one had consulted the Oracle as often as he. In the dim light by the poolside Twisp saw that Kaleb's adolescent gangliness had transmuted into the epitome of athletic grace.

"You are the man your father would most like to know," Twisp said.

"And you are the man my father most liked."

The two of them stood together at the poolside, watching the flickerings of kelp just beneath the surface. Both men kept their voices low, though the kelp chamber carried every whisper to its farthest cra