"Ben!" he called from the hatchway, but Ben didn't answer. He rushed to his best friend's side and saw that Ben's eyes, too, were open. Both of them were breathing, though Crista Galli's head was bent slightly forward and he heard a gurgle with each passage of air. Rico heeded Operations' warnings and didn't touch either one of them.
"Shit!" he snapped, and fumbled in his left breast pocket for a slapshot. It was a red, tiny ampule about the size of the end of his little finger. Two needles jutted from one end, covered by a plastic case. He flipped the cover across the galley, careful to hold the prongs away from his own body.
"Dammit, Ben, Operations said this toxin might be triggered if she got wet."
This shot was titrated for his own body weight, the one he'd most hoped never to use. In one swift jab he stuck it into Ben's thigh.
"Don't stop breathing, man," Rico begged. "Just don't stop breathing."
He turned to Crista Galli, trying to control the sudden flash of anger burning in his chest. He knew it was more frustration than hate, but his body didn't know the difference.
If she killed hi...
The better part of his reason wouldn't let him finish the thought.
A strangled moan surged from Crista's throat, an otherworldly moan that put the hair up on the back of Rico's neck.
"Crista? Can you hear me?"
Rico saw that she had some ability to move. She turned her hands palm upward in a gesture of helplessness, and her lips kept trying to form the words that wouldn't come.
"Flatter..."
The word was barely intelligible. She still looked straight ahead, and in a dreamlike slow motion finished her effort with, "...rugs."
"Flattery gave you drugs?"
She blinked her eyes once, slowly.
"He gave you drugs to make you toxic? It's not the kelp?"
Again, the slow blink and a nearly imperceptible nod.
The Flying Fish took another lurch that sprawled Rico across the deck. He grabbed for a handhold and pressed himself against the bulkhead as the foil rolled onto its side, then righted.
The foil's metal skin shrieked as something twisted it to its limits, then backed off.
The kelp's pulling us apart, he thought. It knows she's in here!
Crista was strapped in just as Ben must have left her, soaking wet, her disguise discarded. Rico made a jump for the seat next to her and strapped in just as the foil righted again and all was quiet. It was as though the kelp had one last spasm run through it before it could relax.
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 no... 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 woul... 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 you... 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 much Flattery had used her, 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 yo... 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 sur..."
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.
"Kel... 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."