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“It pleases me that you have due respect for my…abilities,” he said. “But I promised you a very special part in this drama, and your time has not come yet. I would not sacrifice you here for nothing. You know one thing about me if you know nothing else: I kill for something, not for nothing. I value human life, Mr. Zentz, this you must realize. I value it for what I can get out of it, what I can spend it on. The word ‘value’ implies ‘commodity,’ don’t you think? The pleasure of killing ranks very low, in my book, as a good reason. Much as I might like to kill you just to get rid of a certain annoyance, I’m sure someone, somewhere would make it worth my while to wait for the right price, the right trade, the right favor. Understand?”
Zentz stared straight out the cabin plaz. He was pale, appeared slightly more bloated than usual, and his pasty fingers crawled nervously over each other’s backs.
“Do you know why I kill?” Zentz asked him.
Nevi finished the final attitude adjustment and settled onto the slightly choppy sea in a spot that he judged to be relatively clear of the kelp debris. As they descended, he saw that there was no clear spot. The struggle in this stand of kelp must have been tremendous.
“Yes, I know why you kill,” Nevi said. “Like any of the lower animals, you kill to eat. It is your job, and you see no further than that. You kill by orders, to someone else’s plan, because not to kill means you yourself die. That is a difference between the two of us. I think of myself as a sculptor, a societal sculptor. The populace is my stone, and I shape it chip by chip into a form that suits me. The stone keeps growing, and my task is a relentless one. But I have time.”
In a flurry at his board Nevi set the foil up for seawater intake and hydrogen conversion. The intakes clogged within blinks. Even with Zentz out there to clear them, this would take longer than Nevi felt they could afford. He checked the fuel gauge.
Fifteen minutes, he thought, maybe twenty at the outside. Shit!
“Forget the intakes,” Nevi said. “There’s a wild stand just northwest of here. We’ll set up there to take on fuel, then I’ll see what I can learn from the Director. Don’t worry. Leaving you to the kelp would be a waste, and I’m not a wasteful man.”
The convolutions of Zentz’s brow unwrinkled somewhat. He lifted his sullen bulk out of his couch and donned a dive suit.
“Just in case,” Zentz said, “I’m ready. I’ve heard about wild kelp. People disappear out here, and the kelp doesn’t have a reason.”
Nevi throttled up and lifted them off. Much as Zentz disgusted him, Nevi intended to keep him alive until the time came when it simply wasn’t handy to do that anymore.
The run to the blue sector took only ten minutes, and all the time they were heading into the afternoon squall. A black wall pushed across the sea toward them, though when they set down in the blue kelp’s lagoon they were haloed in the magnificent afternoon sun.
Nevi deployed the intakes, but a warning light on his console told him they were still clogged. He tried retracting and redeploying them, but they stayed clogged.
“Better get out there after all,” Nevi said. “And step on it. That squall’s moving in pretty fast.”
Zentz grumbled something, but trudged aft without complaining. Nevi noted from the console display that Zentz left the aft hatch open. He chuckled to himself.
He thinks he’ll sink me if I submerge, and blow out the flight controls if I take off.
Nevi knew ways around both of those situations, the simplest being to go aft and close the hatch. He was tempted to do that now, just to give Zentz a thrill, but decided against it. They’d be refueled in fifteen or twenty minutes and with luck would lift off ahead of the storm.
Nevi set out a call for Flattery on their private frequency, and received an immediate reply.
“Mr. Nevi,” Flattery said, “time is wasting. Do you have them yet?”
Nevi was surprised at the clarity of the reception. Indeed, the clarity of reception was unlike any that he’d experienced over the years. The activity of Pandora’s two suns interfered constantly with transmissions, and lately sabotage of transmitters by the vermin made things even worse. The kelp itself often garbled radio communication, but this time it seemed to embellish it.
“No,” he said, “we don’t have them. We’re refueling before the final push. I thought we were to make the most of this, get as many of the rebels as possible.”
“Forget it,” Flattery said. “I want Crista Galli now. She’s not to talk with anyone before she sees me, understand?”
“Right,” Nevi said, “I—”
“Tonight’s news is carrying notice of Ben Ozette’s death. He’s not to be seen, but I want him for my own. Do what you want with that LaPush bastard.”
“Do you need support back there?”
“No,” Flattery said. He sounded distracted. “No, I’ve taken care of it. We’ve called some security back from the Island docking sites and from demon patrols. These bastards … there are so many of them. They’ve looted the public market and its warehouse is dry. We must’ve shot three hundred of them, but they kept on coming. I’ve given orders to blow up any warehouses that are in danger of being looted. When they see their precious food blasted all over the landscape, they’ll think twice about this kind of thing. You stick to your job, I’ll handle things here. Don’t call me again unless you have them.”
Nevi was left listening to static and to the whine of the pumps processing out their hydrogen. He reached to break the connection, but hesitated. There was a pattern to the static, something he hadn’t noticed before. It seemed as if there was a music in the background, and voices from several conversations that he couldn’t quite pick out. Over and over, faint in the distance, he could hear the rhythmic repetition of Flattery’s voice saying, “Mr. Nevi, Mr. Nevi, Mr. Nevi …”
He closed the circuit and stared out over the sea toward the black curtain of storm. The surface chop had increased and a wind had come up that was blowing the foil out of the center of the lagoon and closer to the inner edge of blue kelp. He glanced at the fuel readout and was relieved that they were nearly full. What worried him was the distinct repetition of his name that continued, chantlike, even though he’d shut off the radio.
The fuel light indicated full, so he shut down the pumps and sounded a warning klaxon to Zentz before he retracted the intakes. He felt them thump into the bay, but still there was no sign of Zentz.
This was clear water, Nevi thought. He should’ve been back aboard after clearing the intakes once.
He sounded the klaxon again, twice, but heard nothing. The aft hatch light remained on. Nevi secured the console and started back toward the aft hatch. The chant got louder, more distinct, and behind it a babble of voices rose on the air. The hair on his arms rose, too, and Nevi armed his lasgun before leaving the cabin.
He felt a metallic taste on his tongue, a taste he’d heard others describe as fear. He spat once on the deck, but the insidious taste remained.
Chapter 33
Consciousness manifests itself indubitably in man and therefore, glimpsed in this one flash of light, it reveals itself as having a cosmic extension and consequently as being aureoled by limitless prolongations in space and time.
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Hymn of the Universe
The Immensity smelled trouble on the waters, a great disturbance from one of the coastal stands. The debris told a tale of struggle. Currents had changed suddenly, bringing the strange scents of fear and, just as suddenly, bliss. So far, the currents hadn’t changed back.
The little whiff of death that the Immensity caught on the current was human, not kelp. Perhaps the pruner has become pruned, it thought.
It stretched its outermost fronds coastward, but still could not contact the neighboring stand. Only fragments of messages drifted in on bits of torn fronds: Shards, frames, pieces of recordings—not the Oneness that the Immensity sought, not this “talk” that humans enjoyed and withheld from Others.
Th
en came the humans. They set into the Immensity from above, like hylighters reversing their lives, and with them they brought splinters of dreams from the stand next door.
