The Ascension Factor

"Going back there," she whispered, "that is not living."

"Don't worry, he knows how it's got to be."

Three more flashes burst through the light screen and pitted the boulder above them in a dazzle of red and violet. Ben wrapped his arms around Crista to sandwich her between himself and the rock. It seemed that the dust was bringing her out of a dream instead of into it. She felt her head and senses clear beyond anything she'd experienced in Flattery's custody.

"I think the dus... you were right about it," she told Ben. "It's offset whatever it was that Flattery gave me."

She pulled Ben's arms tighter around her and felt as though she were melting into him, her busy atoms scooting between the oscillations of his own. She felt herself disassemble into her qualities of light and shade. She was no longer so much a substance as an idea, an image, a dream. She felt no pain or pleasure, just a sense of transmission, of movement with purpose over which she had no control.

"Ben," she asked, over a stab of fear, "Ben, are you here?"

"Yes," his breath puffed her ear, "I'm here."

"I'm sorry," she said. She knew something was coming, some feral intensity crested her awareness and would not be cowed. "I'm sorry."

A sensation like the one she had felt at the dockside in Kalaloch welled up inside her, then burst with a loud crack that rolled outward from her heart like angry thunder. Everything around her stilled except the wet rush of the incoming tide.

Welcome home, Crista Galli.

The voice spoke through her mind, without the impediment of sound. It came at a rush from the dying hylighter, from Avata itself.

A refreshing sense of detachment, then a familiar disembodiment overcame her. The distinction between hylighter skin and her own blurred. She was encompassed within a familiar tingle. It was a muted, struggling tingle that she knew to be a kind of death in body that hatched the great hylighter of her mind. Her mind flexed its great sail in the sun and caught its first breath.

We hatched of the same vine, Crista Galli.

She remembered, now. Before the bombing that cut her free she had been rooted for safety in a pod of kelp. The memories filled her head so fast they stu

"I thought I was dead," Ben said, rubbing his temples. "Ho... what have you done?"

Crista couldn't answer. She felt as though she straddled two worlds - one on the beach, with Ben, and one in the sea with her great guardian, Avata. The holo had switched off with the thunderclap, and Nevi lay on the beach, nearly within her reach, his eyes blinking stupidly and blood oozing from his red-veined nose. She got up slowly and retrieved his lasgun. Rico, though wobbly, was the first to recover and he did likewise with Zentz.

"My apologies, sister," Rico said, with a slight bow and a quizzical smile. "There is much this ignorant brother did not understand."

He reeled and nearly fell, but caught the side of a great rock and steadied himself.

Others around them, the stu

"So, Rico, do you still want to keep me from the kelp?"

He managed a laugh and shook his head.

"Two rules," he said. "The first: never argue with an armed woman."

She hefted Nevi's lasgun as though seeing it for the first time, then inquired, "And the second?"

"Never argue with an armed man."

She returned the laugh, and Ben joined them.

"You argued with Nevi," Ben said, "and look what it got him."

"I didn't argue with him," Rico said, "I tricked him - that is, Avata tricked him. Now we've got more work to do. Believe it or not, we have to save Flattery. If we don't -"

"Save Flattery?" Ben's bitterness dripped from his voice. "He started all this, he should suffer the consequences."

"Not if we all suffer," Crista said. "Not if human life on Pandora is extinguished. He can do that, I feel it. Rico is right. Flattery must be stopped, but he must stay alive."

The dozen stu

"That holo," Ben said, "I've never seen anything like it. How did you do that?"

"Thought you'd never ask," Rico said.

He picked up a length of kelp vine from the water's edge, caressed it momentarily and then dropped it back into the sea.

"That was the trick. I think our Zavatan friends here have these two zeroes under control. Follow me, I'd like you to meet my friend, Avata, the greatest holo studio in the world."

A warning shout went up from a scout at the clifftop, and simultaneously a hunt of dashers splashed out of the upcoast mist in a sinister blur. Ben snatched the heavy lasgun from Crista's hand and pushed her toward Rico. He fired a quick burst and the barest scent of ozone accompanied the snapping of the weapon. Two dashers crumpled in a flurry of screams and sand only a dozen meters away. The others began to feed on their dead, as was their instinct. A Zavatan scout emptied his charges into the rest of the hunt.

"They're s... so fast," she gasped, and discovered herself clinging to Rico's arm.

He did not cringe or push her away, but put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze.

"Not much time to think topside," Rico said. Then, to Ben, "I see you're still quick in your old age."

"Some of us stay young forever," he laughed. "Must be the company I keep."

Ben's hand took her own and the three of them caught their collective breath.

"If they're not too chewed up, we'll get you one of those hides for a souvenir," Rico told her.

"What would I do with a dead thing?" she asked. A huge cold finger ran a shudder down her spine. "I'm a lot more interested in life."

"Touche," Ben said. "Let's get going. I want a look at Rico's mystery studio."

A gust of breeze puffed the last of the mist off the tidelands and both afternoon suns caressed Crista's pale skin. The fabric of her dive suit rippled in sunlight as the tide reclaimed, amoebalike, the tumble of rocks that marked its upper reaches. With her hand clasped in Ben's she followed Rico as he scrambled away from the sea up to the cliff. Two Zavatan scouts in green singlesuits flanked a great entry way between boulders.

"In here," Rico said. "It's not nearly as scary as the way I came in. Watch your step, the wet rock is mighty slick."

Crista stood at the dark entry, feeling a pulse of damp air rush out at her. A series of carvings decorated the wall inside, carvings of intertwined kelp vines, fishes and suns. She turned her face upward for one more dose of light before facing the darkness.

"Look there," Ben said, pointing skyward, "hylighters. And they have the foil that these two came in on."

A half-dozen of them appeared from somewhere landward, two of them cradling the shiny foil in a snarl of tentacles. They all dropped in lazy circles to within a hundred meters of the beach. They valved off their hydrogen, fluting their peculiar songs that included one long shrill "all clear" whistle. Their great sails fluttered and snapped, tacking the coastal breeze. Sunlight through their sail membranes made them glow a dusky orange, and even this far away she could make out the delicate webwork of their veins.