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into an incredible spurt of growth.
This day something else drifted in on the currents. Something like an aura, a
fragrance,
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0-%20The%20Ascension%20Factor.txt something that kept the kelp from hugging
itself too tight, too long. Something stirred this blue kelp deep within
itself, setting its genetic memories tingling. Nothing would quite come to
the fore. Soon, the blue could no longer help itself and it opened its fronds
wide in hopes of a good strong whiff.
Feed men, then ask of them virtue.
-- Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Turbulence from the blasts hadn't settled yet when the Flying Fish pitched,
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helpless, to the surface. Rico's eyes teared instantly in the sudden glare of
afternoon sun that jammed the cockpit. He groped for his sunglasses and tried
to blink away the afterglow. To starboard, he saw a long gray line that must
be the coast. To port, two or three kilometers away, the surface seethed with
a mean white froth as far as he could see.
A puddle of seawater widened into a pool beneath Elvira's command couch. Her
nosebleed was slowing and she shook her head, trying to clear the concussion
that had hit her with the first of the depth-charges.
Anybody but Elvira would've been scrat bait out there, Rico thought.
Somehow she'd made it back into the engine-room airlock by herself, though
stunned and quivering from the blast. There were many other blasts, too many
to count.
"That goddamn Flattery's answer to everything is to blow it up," he grumbled.
Kelp lights winked out all around them as the sea was glutted with shredded
fronds and torn vines.
"Sister Kelp," Elvira said, following his gaze across the tumultuous surface,
"she retracts, saves herself."
"Elvira, I don't want to hear that 'Sister Kelp' crap. I want to get us out
of here."
"Overflights!" she warned, and pointed to two specks at ten o'clock off the
port cabin. Her hands automatically worked the dive sequence, but the engines
remained still.
"Jammed," she said, her face impassive and dazed. "Silt and . . . kelp in the
niters."
"Don't sweat it, Elvira," Rico said. He patted her arm. "They're the ones
who dropped the charges. If they carried all that payload, they're short on
fuel. At least we're not dealing with a bunch of mines out here."
Rico unharnessed himself and got Elvira a towel out of one of the lockers.
"Here," he said. "Dry yourself off, change into a new dive suit. We might be
here awhile and there's no sense you getting sick."
She took the towel, and it seemed to Rico that her senses were coming back.
"Flattery can track a one-seater coracle from port to port with the Orbiter,
anyway," he said.
"These guys can't set down out here, and with Crista Galli aboard they don't
dare blow us up.
Meanwhile, we've got to get her and Ben to some big medicine, and fast."
Two sonic booms rocked them further as the overflights dove in on them and
pulled out. Rico could make out the pilots' faces as the tiny aircraft
flashed past.
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"They're young, Elvira, did you see that? With their whole lives ahead of
them they chain themselves to Flattery." He fisted the arm of his couch and
grumbled, "Why do they do that? They should be out cuddling some young thing
in a hatchway somewhere. Didn't their mothers teach them any better?"
"Their mothers are hungry, Rico, and they're hungry now."
Rico glanced at Elvira with surprise. He was accustomed to speaking to her
but getting nothing but grunts for reply. She was already out of her
restraints and fighting the toss of the foil, making her way to the aft
lockers.
"You're not going out there again," he said. "The seas are a mess, nothing
can get through here."
"You will calm down," she said, and it sounded like an order. Elvira peeled
off her dive suit and toweled off her finely toned musculature with the candor
typical of Mermen. "Care for the others.
I will clean out the filters."
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