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He checked Ben over as best he could without touching him. He was breathing easily and his color was good. There was some movement of his right hand toward Crista, and Rico thought this was a good sign. He gingerly opened Ben’s left breast pocket and brought out the other slapshot for Crista. Her eyelids did a fast flutter-dance that seemed voluntary, and her left hand raised just a tiny bit at the fingertips, as though to push him away.
Rico hesitated with the shot, and the fluttering stopped.
What if it’s not … the Tingle? he asked himself. Operations had warned him that the antidote itself might be fatal if administered needlessly to one of them. Maybe it would be fatal if given to her at all.
If Flattery’s been giving her something, maybe her body’s different, he thought. Maybe the antidote would … kill her.
It was tempting to go ahead anyway, after what she’d done to his partner. No one would know, not even Ben. He readied himself to deliver it and her eyes went into their flutter again and her fingers made those pushing movements.
But Flattery would like that, he thought. There’s nothing more that he would like than being able to tell the world that Her Holiness Crista Galli died in the hands of the Shadows.
The whole fiction began to unreel in his mind, clearly illumined all of a sudden against the backdrop of light that began to fill the galley’s plaz.
“Of course,” he said to her, “it makes sense. He made you toxic so that no one would go near you. Then he went public and blamed this on your … relationship with the kelp, am I right?”
Again, the barely perceptible nod and the slow blink. She seemed relieved, more relaxed, and he didn’t think it was the toxin working.
A sudden burst of light filled the galley and the foil began to lurch rhythmically. They were on the surface, and Elvira would be going out there to clear the intakes. At each lurch a tiny cry escaped Crista’s throat, and tears streaked her cheeks. For the first time he felt as though he wanted to comfort her. He was just beginning to imagine how terrible and secret her life in the Preserve must have been.
She was a curiosity, a prisoner, he thought, and he made her a monster.
“Did this ever happen to you … before Flattery gave you drugs?” Her eyes flicked side to side.
“I think that he thought that your toxin would kill us. Then he would get you back and be a hero, warning the world again about how dangerous you are. And if I gave you this shot,” he placed the unopened ampule carefully into his pocket, “then you would die and he would tell the world how we killed you. That would turn the world against us for sure …”
She blinked a “yes,” and Rico heard a moan from Ben.
The intercom charged again, then Elvira asked, “Rico, everybody OK?”
Ben’s mouth struggled to speak, then he gave up and managed a slight nod. Crista, too, nodded and squeezed out a slow “Yesss.”
“Slapshot time,” Rico said to the intercom. “They’re not great, but improving. I’m all you’ve got right now. You going out for a little swim?”
“Thought I would. Best watch the helm.”
“On my way,” he said. He reassured himself that both Crista and Ben were safe, and that neither of them could be hurt where they lay.
“I’ll leave the intercom charged,” he told them. “Talk to me once in a while, even if it’s a grunt, OK? I’ll be back when Elvira’s finished out there.”
Crista raised her fingertips again, and wrenched out a couple of words. “Kelp … happy.”
“The kelp is happy?” He threw his hands in the air, and spoke with undisguised sarcasm. “Then I’m happy. How the hell do you know?”
She turned her palm up like a shrug. “Free—dom,” she said, and repeated the word more slowly, “free—dom.”
A glance out the plaz showed him what appeared to be an infinite expanse of kelp lazing in the last of both afternoon suns. Alki, the small, distant sun, had begun a slow pulse almost a year ago and it was pulsing now. A very large, very black cloud was closing from seaward toward them. An occasional kelp frond rose slowly, then fell back with a slap and a splash.
Like a wot in a bathtub, he thought. He had never seen the kelp play like this before.
“I hope you’re right,” he said. “I truly hope you’re right. It will make life so much easier for us, and so much harder for Flattery’s people.”
He resisted the temptation to pat her shoulder and Ben’s. “We’re going to get you out of this, buddy,” he said to Ben.
He kept talking, more to himself than to Ben, as he hurried out the hatchway to the helm. He spoke to Ben over the intercom as he reviewed his instruments, as much for his own comfort as his partner’s.
“I hate to say it,” Rico said, “but I think Current Control saved our butts. The kelp got us down here, wherever here is, and then started tearing at the cabin with those huge vines. Current Control must have been trying to get the original channel back, because the kelp was obviously fighting some kind of impulse. Either they blew a fuse or they gave the kelp its head completely. Whatever, it was the right thing to do.”
He resumed his instrument checkout.
“That electrical pulse through the kelp must have screwed up our Navcom system,” Rico said. “Most everything else looks OK. I closed off cooling outlets to the galley to head off that leak, just in case it’s ready to pop someplace else. You two might get a little warm there between the engines. Once we’re airborne, I’ll figure a way to get you both up here.”
He finished the checkout and realized that they wouldn’t be getting airborne after all. Not unless Elvira could remanufacture the hydraulics that withdrew their hydrofoils and extended airfoils.
Ben doesn’t need to know that now, he thought. For that matter, neither do I. “Speak to me, buddy. Anything.”
“Rico … OK.”
It came out loud and clear, though painfully slow, but it was enough to put a smile on Rico’s face. He felt Elvira tugging kelp out of the inlets and tried the Navcom again. It was dead, not even a burst of static from the speakers.
“Squall’s coming in,” he told Ben, “things might get rough again pretty soon.”
He didn’t want to tell Ben that they were going to get really rough, now that they couldn’t get above the storm. Without the Navcom, and with the kelp glutting up the ocean as far as the eye could see, Rico himself didn’t want to think about how rough it was going to get.
Chapter 39
Anyone who threatens the mind or its symbolizing endangers the matrix of humanity itself.
—Ward Keel, The Apocryphal Notebooks
Ben had heard the boat’s ballast blow as he stroked Crista’s hair and cheek under the fine spray of the pinpoint galley leak. He remembered the taste of salt when his lips brushed her hair. Because of the taste of salt from the interior bulkhead he knew it was a cooling pipe leak, recycled seawater, nothing to worry about now that they were headed topside.
He remembered that he and Crista had been talking, laughing, when suddenly his upper body began to tingle. His neck wouldn’t move his head where it wanted to go. He tried to cry out but his mouth and throat wouldn’t work. Crista slumped against her harness, limp, her eyes wide with fear and their green irises darkening nearly to blue.
Oh, no, he remembered thinking. Oh, no, they were right.
In lurching, spastic movements he lunged against Crista, sprawling across her legs. She had let out a little cry of surprise, but didn’t resist. Ben saw that she couldn’t. Whatever was happening to him was also happening to her. He had the advantage of more body mass, more muscle, so it was taking his body longer to shut down.
He grabbed for Crista’s harness to pull himself up but his hands turned to two heavy rocks at the ends of his arms. Within a blink he collapsed against her. He was able to see and breathe but trying to move only produced uncontrollable spasms. He slid down the couch to the deck into a position that didn’t allow him to watch Crista. One of his hands remained on her ankle, and
he felt her body spasm and relax much like his own. The antidote was in his pocket, and he couldn’t make his body work well enough to dig it out.
Rico will think I’m a fool, he thought.
