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“Electrical or mechanical?”
“Could be either, or both—it’s a heavy traffic area,” Spud said. “Something down there is definitely irritating the kelp.”
“Yes,” MacIntosh agreed, “that’s my thought. The electrical override is coming from the kelp itself. It must be responding to something. That stand’s not mature enough to think for itself. Or, at least, it shouldn’t be.”
“Doc?”
“Yeah?”
MacIntosh watched the console review the kelp’s configuration changes over the past half-hour. Something nagged at him, something that would explain the kelp’s sudden … behavior.
“I’ve extrapolated the path of the override.”
MacIntosh looked at Spud, who was busy at his own console, and saw a very thin, very pale assistant. Spud’s pointing finger trembled with excitement.
“What is it?”
“It’s a spiral, headed into the middle of sector eight.”
“That means the one kelp bed is delivering something to its neighbor—isn’t that what it looks like to you?”
“Or the neighbor is snatching it away.”
“Spud, I’ll bet you’re right.”
MacIntosh stepped up to the console and tapped out a sequence with his two huge index fingers. The red lights on the messenger panel went black.
“We just had a relay malfunction,” MacIntosh said, and winked at Spud. “Next time Flattery calls, tell him it was a hardwire failure and you worked it out personally. Maybe you’ll get a promotion. If I’ve guessed wrong, my job will be up for grabs. Now, we might as well let go the reins on this kelp and see where the hell it runs.”
MacIntosh heard Spud swallow behind him and he smiled. “What’s the big deal, Spud? It’s a plant, it’s not going anywhere.”
“Well … well, it’s just that Flattery doesn’t trust anybody—it’d be like him to have some kind of booby-trap …”
“He did,” MacIntosh said, “and this stand got itself blown apart a few years back. But he hasn’t reset charges here yet—the kelp’s not supposed to get this frisky this soon.” He waited for the burst line to charge.
“There!” he said, and pressed the send signal. “Now let’s sit back and see what cooks. Something bizarre is inside there, and I’d like to be the first to know what it is. If we can’t do anything with this stand, maybe we can at least learn from it. Besides,” he winked again, “Flattery’s down there, we’re not.”
A beeping signal from his console interrupted him. He opened the intercom to Launch Command. “We sling our bird your way in five minutes,” the voice said. “Any contraindications?”
“Negative,” MacIntosh replied. “Currents at your site are stable, weather will arrive your location in approximately one hour.”
“Roger that, Current Control. Launch is a go for … four minutes.”
Chapter 25
Canon in D
—Pachelbel
The Immensity recoiled with a snap from the shock of freedom, then let its tendrils and fronds drift in their tingling bliss. It had been a long time since this union of stands had felt good, and never had it felt this good. The submarine trains foundering among its vines were inconsequential now.
A pulse went out among the fronds, a ripple throughout the Immensity from the tiny foil adrift at its outer reaches. A mass of tentacles cradled the foil and delighted in the scent of self that it gave from its brittle skin.
The Immensity knew this slippery little craft was fragile, so tumbled it inward, gently, frond to frond. Other scents mingled with that of the One. One of these scents was familiar, provocative, kelplike. The Holomaster, Rico LaPush, was in the company of someone that the kelp had encountered before … before … well, no matter. It would find out soon enough.
The Immensity had learned to sniff out the holo language of humans from their spectrum of odd scents. It decided, early upon awakening this time, that it would have to speak with humans to live. It also concluded that it would have to speak the holo language if it wanted to speak with humans.
The foil tried to wriggle out of the kelp’s net. Much pain now through the vines, where all of the trains trapped in sector eight tried to burn, cut, slash their way toward their precious atmosphere topside. Some of these the kelp crushed reflexively, but when the death scents of the crews mingled with the sea it forced itself to calm and to reason.
Death, it reminded itself, is not the answer to life.
The Immensity opened several kelpways and marveled at the easy ballet of subs heading topside. The bright white HoloVision foil suffered the grip of the Immensity, strained its engines trying to flee, but never lashed out at its tormentor. This the Immensity would expect of the One, who was civilized in the arms of kelp, and of the honorable associates of Holomaster Rico LaPush.
Chapter 26
In conscience you find the structure, the form of consciousness, the beauty.
—Kerro Panille, “Translations from the Avata,” The Histories
Beatriz listened to the launch crew director count down the final minute over the speaker. Her shaky fingers chattered the metal clips as she snugged up her harness. She tried to think of the straps around her as Mack’s arms and she tried to imagine they held her as Ben’s did the night they drove old Vashon down. It didn’t work. Nothing could erase the sight of her crew, slaughtered like sebet in a pen.
For a mistake, she thought. They all died because that bastard made a mistake.
She knew that the captain was afraid, she could smell it on him before he gave the final order at the studio. He obviously didn’t know whether Flattery would promote him or execute him for his decision. Beatriz knew that her life, perhaps many other lives, teetered in this balance.
“Ten seconds to launch.”
She inhaled a long, slow breath through her mouth and let it sigh out her nostrils. This was a relaxation technique that Rico had taught her when they all nearly drowned five years ago.
“Five, four …” She took a little breath. “ … one …”
The compressed-air “boot” punched them up the launch tube and a pair of Atkinson Rams slung them toward orbit. She hated this part of the ride—it reminded her of the time the fat girl sat on her chest when she was just starting school, and she didn’t like the feel of her face flattening out against the strain. On this launch, however, she wasn’t worried about wrinkles, engine failure, being trapped in orbit. She was worried about the captain, and how she could help convince him of the necessity of keeping her alive.
No one in the shuttle cabin looked familiar. Most of them had changed out of their fatigues and into civilian clothes. They were quiet; Beatriz thought that they must be weighing the consequences of the shootings. She didn’t see the man who started it. That was the man she feared even more than the captain—Ben had always said that the jumpy ones get you killed.
How could he be so right and be so far away from me?
She rubbed her tired face and patted her cheeks to keep hysteria at bay. She needed information, and a lot of it.
Mack, she thought. He’ll help me, I’m sure.
For an instant her fear included him. After all, he was an original crew member like Flattery. They had worked together long before waking from hybernatio
n on Pandora.
What if … what if … ?
She shook off her fears. If her imagination had to run away with her, she preferred that it ally her with Mack instead of against him. Mack was not at all like Flattery, this she knew. Even Mack had cringed at the news when Flattery converted Alyssa Marsh to an Organic Mental Core.
“I never believed we needed such a thing,” he’d told her privately. “Now, with the kelp research, I’m even more convinced that OMCs were just another built-in frustration, a goad to push us even further from humanity.”
According to reports—Flattery’s reports—Marsh had been found in extremis after an accident in the kelp. He explained to her how clones were property, often merely living stores for spare parts, and how Alyssa Marsh had been prepared for this moment from her girlhood. Now Beatriz realized how fortuitous the timing had been for Flattery, how unfortunate for Marsh and her kelp studies with Dwarf MacIntosh.
What will Mack do?
He would need information, too. Like, how many in this squad? What kinds of weapons? Do they have a plan or is this just reaction to the killings groundside? She couldn’t remember how many people worked the orbiter station—two thousand? Three? And how much security did they have aloft?
Not much, she remembered. Just a handful to handle fights and petty theft among the workers.
She’d counted thirty-two in the captain’s squad as they boarded the shuttle, and each was heavily armed. Eight of them were assigned to fill out her crew, and they grumbled under the double load. This bunch carried a lot of the old, disfiguring mutations. The gear they’d loaded aboard was mostly weapons, but a few of them knew enough about holo broadcast to bring the bare bones of what they’d need to get Newsbreak on the air. A couple of techs were assigned to oversee the OMC.
Beatriz had kept the worst of the shakes at bay and now, strapped firmly into her couch, she nearly let herself go.
