The Ascension Factor

***

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and fligh...

The Orbiter collared the Voidship's nose in a flat wide ring of plasteel. The two cylindrical bodies spun in concert on their long axes. Soon the ring would slip away to remain in orbit around Pandora while its Voidship plied the dark folds of the universe. At the helm would be an OMC, a stripped-down human brain.

The Organic Mental Cores had a definite edge over the mechanical navigators, and this had been determined clearly long ago by experimenters at Moonbase. Navigation in all planes required subtleties of discrimination and symbol-generation that hardware never achieved. The disembodied, unencumbered brain took pleasure, or so they said, in plotting the impossible course. One goad worked on OMCs that had no effect on mechanical navigators - the OMC needed this job to stay alive.

The particular OMC that the techs were preparing for installation, the Alyssa Marsh number six, felt no pain or bodily pleasure as the microlaser welded in the necessary hookups. She had been trained in astronavigation at Moonbase and had borne a child in the year after splashdown on Pandora. The story that she filtered back to Flattery had the child die in an earthquake, and Alyssa Marsh had launched herself into her kelp study project with a passion. Her body had been crushed in a kelp station accident, but Flattery saw to it that her silent brain lived on.

Soon she would be silent no more. Soon her brain would have a body that it could move - the Voidship Nietzsche. She would navigate knowing the differences between ability and desire, knowing the need for dreams. Right now she lay genderless behind a pair of locked hatches dreaming of a banquet where Flattery was the host and she was both the honored guest and the main dish.

Dwarf MacIntosh gathered his forces outside both hatches and tried once more to contact Captain Brood. There was no reply from the OMC chamber. Three of the four monitors inside were blacked out, but the one remaining showed an overhead view of the long, specialized fingers of a nerve tech probing the webwork that encased what remained of Alyssa Marsh.

"Hookup's not scheduled until next week," someone said. "What's going on in there?"

A lasgun barrel appeared on the screen, pointed at the tech. The long, spidery fingers froze, then ascended from the surface of the brain toward the screen, then backed out of view.

"That fool better not touch off his lasgun in there," somebody else drawled, "or we be stardust."

"Hold your fire, Captain," MacIntosh ordered. "This is MacIntosh. You're in a high-explosive area -"

"Brood's dead," a voice interrupted, a voice that cracked with youth and fear. "May Ship accept him. May Ship forgive and accept us all."

The lasgun barrel tilted up toward the viewscreen and in a flash the last monitor went blank.

Beatriz tugged at Mack's sleeve.

"He's an Islander," she said. "The old religion, like my family. Some believe this project, to build an image and likeness of Ship, to be blasphemy. Some believe that the OMC should be allowed to die, that it - she - is a human being held here against their will and enslaved."

MacIntosh covered the intercom receiver with his hand.

"I don't necessarily believe that Brood's dead," he told her. "That would be too easy. And why shoot out the monitor instead of the OMC? You're an Islander, you talk to him. Play the religion angle, set up to get him on the air if that's what he wants. My men here will help you out."

"Where are you going?"

He saw the unbridled fear in her eyes at the prospect that he would leave her.

What have they done to her? he wondered.

He gripped her shoulders while his men floated the passageway feigning inattention to their covert affections.

"Spud and I know a few ins and outs of this Orbiter that don't show up on schematic."

She held him as close as their vacuum suits would allow.

"I could take anything but losing you," she said. "I know I'm making a spectacle of myself in front of your men, but I couldn't let it go unsaid."

"I'm glad you didn't," he said, and smiled. He kissed her in spite of the throat-clearings, harrumphs and chuckles of his crew.

"Chief Hubbard will stay here with you while his men secure this area. By your estimate, we're still missing a few of Brood's men. He's up to something, I have that feeling."

With a half-salute to the chief, MacIntosh propelled himself toward Current Control with his compressed-air backpack.

***

Dark, unfeeling and unloving powers determine human destiny.

Rico couldn't see through the illusion and he knew that Ben could not see him, either. Nor could Ben see Nevi and Zentz. Rico whistled the "get down" signal, hoping that the couple wouldn't run out of the boundaries of the image. They would be visible then, and in the open against an incoming tide. Rico dropped when Nevi started shooting.

Time to send him a more suitable surprise, Rico thought.

He wriggled into a position of better cover.

Nevi laid a pattern of fire into the rocks that hid Ben and Crista. Zentz covered Nevi's rear, keeping the dozen local Zavatans pi

"Save charges," he warned Zentz. "We might be here awhile."

All was quiet except for their harsh breathing, the seething of the incoming tide and the high-pitched ping of weapon barrels cooling.

Rico was held firmly around the waist by a budding tip of kelp vine. It reminded him of his father's arm, and the way it used to pick him off the deck in one swoop. The feathery bud of kelp felt like the palm of a small woman's hand on his belly, covering his navel, hugging him from behind.

An image of Snej flashed through his mind and just as suddenly Snej's face appeared in thin air about ten meters in front of Nevi. The rising tide licked at the hylighter skin beneath her and hissed over Nevi's boot.

"What the hel... ?"

Nevi advanced a step, two steps. Zentz moved with him, backward, step for step. He glanced over his shoulder and paled when he saw Snej. He snapped his attention back to their rear defense.

"The redhead," he gurgled, "where's the rest of her?"

Rico found he could reinforce the intensity of the image by looking at it, concentrating on it. It was like a huge coil of energy feeding on itself, refining itself, awakening. After a couple of slow, calming breaths he was able to materialize the rest of her. She stood there in her green singlesuit, hands on her hips, staring at Nevi. She was a bit larger than life size. He wondered if he could make her speak.

"Well," Nevi said, "she's here, now."

Another glance over his shoulder and Zentz began a wet, ragged breathing that Rico could hear a dozen meters away over the surf. He placed his back tight against Nevi's.

"Shit, Nevi, a head that grows a body," he whined. "Let's get back to the foil."

"Shut up."

Nevi stopped and looked over the scene behind Snej. It was nearly the same view that Rico had: black rocky stretch of beach between the tide and the cliff, a cluster of large basalt boulders and a foil draped with the wet shards of an unexploded hylighter. In the downcoast distance the great expanse of sea glowed like green lava against the black cliffs.

"Where are they?" Nevi asked her. "I want them."

A two-toned whistle told Rico that the Zavatans were in position to rush the two men. He noticed that his illusion of Snej didn't cast a shadow.

Don't think I can manage that, too, he thought. Talking will be enough of a challenge.