It seemed to Twisp that Kaleb took on his mother's features as he lay there in the pool. His hair appeared darker, and so did his skin. The kelp enveloped him as though he were in the palm of a giant hand. The lights around them leaped and danced to some silent music. Twisp recalled that day when Scudi placed her hands into the sea and pleaded with the kelp, "Help us," and it did. It saved their lives, and that moment had changed his life forever. It had changed all of their lives.
In the years since Scudi's death she had become something of a Pandoran historical monument, with many plaques and statues erected in her honor. When a massive earthquake ravaged the old Current Control site undersea, the carved glass statue of Scudi Wang was found intact, clutched in the fronds of a nearby stand of kelp. That sign of love from the kelp, that recognition of a symbol enraged Flattery and he entered into a vendetta against the kelp that continued to this day.
Twisp watched Kaleb recline on the back of the kelp root and it seemed as though the root surged up to cradle the young man closer.
"Twisp," he called from the pool, "that was what my mother wanted to do, isn't it? Shut off all supplies to Flattery, starve him out. All these years I have hunted in vain for the day she died, and now I have i..."
Kaleb started to weep, and Twisp had a difficult time making out his words.
"It would have worked then, it would have worked. But now he owns everything, everythin... and now there is no way. No way short of a miracle to reach all of the people at onc... to get them all to shut him out would tak... would take a sign from Go..."
His voice faded into a hum that seemed to keep time with the red and blue lights.
***
Increase the number of variables, but the axioms themselves never change.
Beatriz liked the feel of the free-fall spin. She kept her eyes closed and imagined herself sprawled across one of those warm organic beds the islanders grew. She wanted to be in a bed like that now with Dwarf MacIntosh, on some other world, under some other star. But of course a bed like that made no sense in near-zero-gee.
MacIntosh gave her one more gentle shove and drifted them both into "the webworks." This was a cavernous room at the Orbiter's tubular axis, sometimes called the "privacy park," often used for naps or meditation between duties, or for an occasional tryst by a desperate pair of lovers. A fine white netting crisscrossed the area, segmenting the huge space into a blur of booths and bins. Holo scenes turned some sections of web work into fantasy worlds, further removing the occupants from the worries of life aboard the Orbiter. All this Beatriz knew from her last tour, so today she kept her eyes shut tight.
"The disorientation is lasting longer this time," she told MacIntosh. "I really don't want to open my eyes."
"After what you went through today, I'm not surprised," he said. "I wouldn't want to open them, either."
She heard his fingers clicking at the keys on his belt messenger, and felt the sudden play of a warm light across her exposed hands and face.
"Well, we're now at Port of Angels, that lush Islander resort you've heard so much about. It's warm, feel it?"
Yes, the movement of air across her cheeks was warm, caressing. She could imagine herself on the beach at Port of Angels, letting her hair dry in the suns and stirring a cold drink. A plate of mango and papaya slices waited at her elbow. There was no wavesound here in the Orbiter, no pulse of the surf against her back that sometimes took her breath awa...
She opened her eyes. A sandy beach stretched away from her in both directions. Greenery poured over the clifftops down to the beach, and several little huts waited under their matched hats to cool her sun-drenched skin. As the two of them turned, the holo turned, responding to a reference point in the messenger.
The holo came complete with their footprints in the sand, following them up from the edge of a blue-green sea. The fictional ferry that had transported them to this illusion had already settled under the waves, leaving only a swirl of current and a trail of bubbles toward the horizon. Sea-pups yapped and dove from the rocks that lined the harbor, hunting fish startled out of hiding by the ferry.
"We needed a few minutes alone," MacIntosh said. "It will take more than a few minutes to clean up the mess up here, track them all down. We've got an exceptional crew, that's why they're up here. Warning's out, so this Brood doesn't stand a chance."
He held one of the overlarge loops at her belt to steer them lazily around inside the holo.
"No one knows who the Shadows are," he said. "Do you?"
"... no, I don't."
"That's because the Shadows don't exist. Ask any of them. They don't have meetings, pass messages or recruit. Things simply get don...ower blackout, kelpway shift - and something of Flattery's is lost. Supplies circle him, but don't land. Replacements don't sho..."
"That's what I mean," Beatriz said. "I want to know who does it, how do they know when to do it, and what happens."
MacIntosh held her tether and they spun in a lazy spiral through the webworks. The illusion that played across the nets, the beach resort, was tailored for her, designed to help reduce her orientation stress.
He's at home up here, she thought.
She was aware then that up didn't make the same sense now that it had a few hours ago.
"They call it 'tossing the bottle.' You throw something out to the waves, and it's chance. But if you control the waves, or a little part of them, then it's not chance anymore, it's a sure thing. The Shadows' nonsystem encourages every citizen to frustrate Flattery when they see the chance. Divert something this way - say, a subload of hydrogen generators - and go about your business and never do anything like that again. Someone out in the waves sees this diverted load of generators coming along, diverts it that wa... and in blinks it's headed upcoast to a settlement of Pioneers."
He spiraled a finger across the space they shared and bull's-eyed the palm of his other hand.
"Delivery." He winked. "Flattery's project loses and the people gain. No Shadows." He smiled. "It's brilliant. And everyone can play."
"Ye..."
Again, her thoughts were with Ben.
I wonder how long Ben's been playin...
"The Zavatans, Rico and Be..." MacIntosh hesitated, choosing his words, "they don't want Flattery killed. They just want him removed. After all he's done to them, they still don't want to kill him, simply because he's a human being. Do you know how incredible that is? Do you know how far you Pandorans have come from us?"
"Our enemies on Pandora have always been more vicious than ourselves," she said. "Except for the kelp. The kelp has killed its share of humans over the years."
"But who rattled its leash?" MacIntosh asked. "Who threw fire into its cage?''
She closed her eyes again and breathed in slow, deep breaths.
"Are you OK?"
She breathed in and out again, slowly.
"I don't know," she said. "I look around this scene, and I know it's manufactured, fiction, not rea... but people are following us. There are lasgun barrels behind the rocks and plants. Out of the corner of my eye I keep seeing people scurrying for cover."
He hugged her, and they finally kissed that kiss she'd been waiting for. This was no chap-lipped peck on the cheek, and it was just what she needed to bring her back to the world.