The Ascension Factor

"You're willing to die in battle anyway," he told them. "Why not die feeding the poor?"

He was sending an army against Flattery, all right — an army of angels laden with food.

"Everything stops until everyone eats," was written on each pilgrim's shirt as they set out by the hundreds for the camps.

Twisp had renewed confidence that Kaleb's hatred of the Director would not turn the boy into another Flattery.

He's not a boy, he reminded himself, and he's safe in Avata. His mother saw to that.

Twisp remembered the time when he had needed convincing himself, when it was Kaleb's mother, Scudi Wang, who first thrust him into the kelpways of the mind. Her face came up in the sphere and it was the smiling face of the precocious teenager that Twisp remembered so well.

How could Brett not have loved her?

Twisp tugged his gray braid that tickled his neck. In the halo around Kaleb more images precipitated out of the light. They all seemed to be people he knew, and they all had one other thing in common.

They're all dead!

He heard a whimper behind him that must be Mose.

In that moment Kaleb became a bright shadow inside a brighter sphere, and he seemed to hover above the pool rather than float upon it. The manifestations, the flickering images around him, recited a few scenes from their pasts. Twisp was awed, but not afraid.

Everything swam in a pale radiance that pulsated slightly, like a child's fontanel. A similar pulse began to beat in the wave-slaps around the rim of the pool. The onlookers had ceased their chatter and begun their chant of renewal. It was a call-and-response chant, typical at blossom-time, an improvisation on an old theme that Twisp had heard his grandparents sing.

"Open the leaves. "

". and the blossoms, open. "

Kaleb was no longer visible inside the light. The light now was brighter than anything Twisp had experienced, but this cool brightness did not hurt his eyes. Indeed, he could not take his gaze from its hypnotic spell.

"It's everywhere," a tremulous voice shouted from the caverntop. "There's light on the waves, in the sky. everywhere."

Twisp recognized this breathless voice as Snej, the young assistant at Operations.

"And there are pictures in the light," another gasped, "just like this, only it covers the whole sky!"

When a great light took over the whole cavern, it became impossible for Twisp to make out the faces of his fellow Zavatans. Even Mose, as close as he was, became just another light inside the light.

Snej's voice came to him again, bell-like in its joy.

"Crista Galli is safe," she announced. "They are all safe. The fighting is at a standstill."

The bright sphere in front of Twisp unreeled the tideline drama of Ben and Crista Galli and their near-fatal encounter with Zentz and Spider Nevi. It seemed to Twisp that the event was more than visual. Though it must've taken up nearly an hour of real time, the scene was communicated to him in a matter of blinks. A cheer filled the cavern when Spider Nevi fell, and the images on the sphere shifted to another cavern, and to the terrified face of the Director.

All fell silent at the sight of Flattery, except for a few angry mutterings across the pool.

"Is this a miracle, Elder?"

"Flattery's being driven out," Twisp said. "I'd say that was more inevitability than miracle. Avata has decided that it's time to meet the Director."

The brightness inside the Oracle spread out from the sphere to bathe each observer. The darkest of them was a dazzle of light against light.

"Look, Elder!"

Twisp watched Mose lift his arms as though flying, and streams of thick white light pulsed from his fingertips to join with other light nearby. Though it was impossible for him to see detail, Twisp watched these same streams of light merge with others in midair. He was reminded of the time as a child when a cell bioarchitect visited his creche to show his classmates many wonders. One of these was a blowup holo of cytoplasmic streaming, of an amoeba pumping parts of itself into other parts of itself in order to move, to capture and digest prey.

"What are we, here?" he wondered aloud. "Predator or prey?"

The answer came in a rush that rocked Twisp back on his heels.

You are brother to me, as I am sibling to you.

His long arms shot out over the pool for balance. A hand reached out of the light and gripped his own. The grip felt real, the hand, wet. Kaleb stepped from the kelp root to the rim of the pool and kept a hold on Twisp's hand. The cavern around them was a din of babble as the Zavatans consulted Avata and each other. They encountered spirits of their ancestors that Avata released from the prisons of their genetic code.

"Let us join hands and thank Avata," Kaleb announced. His voice took on a new projection that stilled the babble but did not shock the ears.