A gasp escaped one of the sentries, then a shout.
"The kelp! Look at the kelp!"
But no one had to go outside for a look, it was all played before them inside the cavern. Throughout the seas of Pandora the kelp reached its great vines high above the surface. Colorful arcs of light bridged the gulfs between stands. Even hylighters trailed great streamers of light from their ballast, providing a link between isolated patches of wild and domestic kelp alike.
Rico smiled through the dazzle of light and Crista realized the difference between the Rico she had first met and the Rico who had saved them on the beach: This Rico was happy.
"You're looking at Avata," he shouted. "The kelp has risen. Long live Avata."
Applause and exclamations of joy gave way to the heavy background rhythms of water-drum and flute.
"But ho... ?"
Ben swallowed his question back, his eyes desperately trying to follow the display that surrounded him. A parade of ghosts from all over Pandora washed among the people in the cavern like a hologrammatic tide.
"Like the kelpways of the mind," Rico explained, "only it's no longer just a function of touch."
Rico turned to Crista and took both her hands into his own. The light around them leaped even higher.
"Though it seemed like moments, I was gone from you for years," he said. "I witnessed your life, my life, Flattery's life. He buried a secret in his own body that would kill the kelp should he die. If his heart stops a trigger releases his stockpile of toxin worldwide. It would paralyze the kelp in moments and kill it all off in hours. You see now we must isolate him, stop him, save him from his own ignorance. Enter the kelp. Tell the world what you know."
Crista felt herself pulled to the edge of the pool, and a murmur swept the chamber when she stepped onto the thick root of kelp. What she felt in that instant was joy. She became the very force of life in all of those present, and she entered the being of a young Kaleb Norton-Wang.
In blinks the webwork grew. In Oracles throughout the world people consulted the kelp and she entered the minds of them all as they entered her own. It was more a giving up of mind, a joining of the piece to the whole. She felt as though she spun like a mote on a current of air, and filaments of light snaked out from each of her cells into the world. One of them, from the center of her forehead, reached beyond the world to touch the faithful above it. From her perch aboard the Orbiter, she watched Pandora's seas become ashimmer with light.
So you see, Crista Galli, the voice inside her said, the severed vine regrafts itself. In you the parts are joined, and Avata is much more than the sum of its parts.
***
If you take any activity, any art, any discipline, any skill, take it and push it as far as it will go, push it beyond where it has ever been before, push it to the wildest edge of edges, then you force it into the realm of magic.
Dwarf MacIntosh had the axis areas of the Obiter evacuated and sealed off, with the exception of a handful of volunteers from the fire crew who remained as his security force. Mack was sure that Brood, when cornered, would resort to sabotage, so he instructed Spud to prepare separation charges that would blow the Orbiter free of the Voidship, if necessary. He was sure that Brood's focus would be Current Control, easily the most important and most sensitive installation in space.
With luck, he won't get both the ship and the Orbiter, Mack thought. With luck, he won't get anything at all.
Mack had always hated the feel of a weapon in his hand. Moonbase had taught all of them well, and his recent life in freefall gave him the advantage over Brood, but he didn't rise to the killing challenge as eagerly as some of his fellows. Mack was older than the rest of his Earthling shipmates. He had trained a lot of Voidship crews, finally gotten a flight of his own, at Flattery's request.
He didn't rise to the dying challenge anymore, either. Since Beatriz had come into his life he had found he wanted to live it more than ever. The prospect of facing Brood at the end of a lasgun struck a cold blow in his belly and set his hands to trembling. He gripped a handhold outside the main hatch to Current Control and tested the latch.
Unlocked.
He and three of his men sealed themselves in full vacuum suits and tested the squad frequency in their headsets.
"Ready one," he said.
"Ready two."
"Three."
"Yo, four."
"Foam only, if possible," he reminded them. "We didn't build all this to blow it up. Remember, the kelp hookups in there won't survive a vacuum, so we don't want a breach if we can help it. Blow vacuum as a last resort. Two and three, you're right and left. Four, I follow you. Check?"
Three fists clenched aloft, though "aloft" to Two was upside-down.
"Now!"
Mack pulled the hatch free and they spilled into the room that had been home for him for the past two years. Two was hit before he cleared the hatch but Three, using him as a shield, foamed both of Brood's henchmen and they hardened to immobility in blinks. Four tumbled to a ceiling position above Brood.
Brood himself sat calmly strapped into the control couch, his lasgun aimed idly at the Gridmaster. He had not even donned a vacuum suit over his fatigues.
Mack hesitated, his complete attention caught in the sighting dot of Brood's lasgun, which rested on the brain that controlled all the domestic kelp in the world.
"Dr. MacIntosh, shoot your two men or this thing is history."
In the immediate few blinks that followed, Mack's mind unreeled some light-speed logic.
He's got to be bluffing. If he wipes out the Gridmaster, there's no way he or anybody else could live on Pandora a year from now. That was when Mack realized that Brood didn't have to live on Pandora - not if he had the Voidship Nietzsche.
But he doesn't have the Nietzsche. Not yet.
"I might add," Brood said, "that if I'm killed, your OMC is also history. We can accommodate everyone, you see."
Mack saw the four techs reflected in a console panel. They ducked behind the next row of machines and were tracked by the muzzle of Four's lasgun. Mack hoped it wouldn't come to that. The men inside the foam cocoons might survive if they were cut free soon, but a lasgun firefight - messy, depressing.
Brood tapped the intercom on Mack's console.
"I left my man Ears back there to look after the OMC. You might've noticed how young he is. Nervous, too. That's been a problem in the past. You can ask your holo star what happens when Ears gets nervous. You OK back there, Ears?"
The voice on the intercom cleared its throat a couple of times before answering.
"Y-y-yeah, Boss, they're talking to me out there. But I ain't listening."
"Making progress on the hookup?"
"Yeah." The voice was young and reedy. "Tech says two more hours, tops."
"You're hooking up the OMC?" Mack's voice sounded as incredulous to him as he felt. "What the hell for?"
"We might want to take this thing out for a little spin, Doctor," Brood said. "Now, about those two lumps of shit, here. I told you to get rid of them."
"I won't do that, Captain," Mack said.
He unsealed his headpiece and set it aside. He sat in Spud's control couch and affected the same casual sprawl as Brood's.
"If you think I'm bluffin..."
"No, you're not bluffing. You'll do something. But the Gridmaster is one of your aces. You're not going to throw it away on something as trivial as my two men."
"They can leave."
Mack nodded to his men, and spoke into his headset.
"It's OK," he said. "Secure the hatch. Take these two and those four with you."