"Traded three in the market for coffee," he said, and thumped a bag down on the table in front of her. "You won your scholarship to the college, but I'll bet it don't cover this. Let me know when you need some more."
She had been sixteen that day, and unable to know how to thank him. He hurried past her out the hatch, the dead lizards making wet sounds behind him.
A flicker of hatches raced past, each connected to the artery of years. Some dead-ended at years-that-might-have-been. She opened another, this time an Islander hatch of heavy weatherseal, and found herself inside her family's first temporary shelter on real land. It was an organic structure, like the islands, but darker and more brittle than those that ran the seas.
Her grandfather was there, hoisting a glass of blossom wine, and all of her family joined him in a toast.
"To our busy Bea, graduate of the Holographic Academy and new floor director for Holovision Nightly News."
She remembered that toast. It came on the 475th anniversary of the departure of Ship from Pandora. It had become an occasion for somber celebration over the years, with a place left empty at table. Originally this was intended to represent the absence of Ship, but in more recent times the gesture had become a memorial to a family's dead.
"Ship did us a great favor by leaving," her grandfather said.
There was much protestation at this remark. She hadn't remembered hearing this conversation years ago, but it pricked her curiosity now.
"Ship left us the hyb tanks, that's true," her grandfather said. "But we went up there and got them down. And we got them down without any help from anyone or anything inside of them. That's what will raise us up out of our misery - our genius, our tenacity, ourselves. Flattery's just another spoiled brat looking for a handout. You talk about ascension, Momma. We are the ascension factor and, thanks to Ship, we will rise up one day to greet the dawn and we will keep on risin... that right, little girl?"
The party laughter faded and a single hatch floated like a blue jewel ahead of her, waiting. It was like many of the Orbiter's hatches, fitted into the deck instead of the bulkhead. Across the shimmering blue of its lightlike surface the hatch cover read: "Present." She reached for the double-action handle and felt the cool satin of the well-polished steel in her palm. She pulled the hatch wide and dove inside.
She had the same sense of a headlong tumble, like her early clumsy progress in the near-zero-gravity of the Orbiter's axis. She sensed everything about her as though she had a body, and that body was hyper-alert, but she still saw no evidence of one. She sensed others, too, not far away, and part of this sense told her she had nothing to fear. The translucence of the glow about her folded and thickened, forming a shadow at her left shoulder. In a blink it precipitated into Dwarf MacIntosh.
"Beatriz!" He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her. "Now I know I've died," he laughed, "I must be in heaven."
"We haven't died," she said. "But we may have gone to heaven. Something's happened with the kelp hookups. I know that I'm still holding onto them outside the OMC chamber, but I also know that I'm here with yo..."
"Yeah, the kelp hookups and holo stage in Current Control got a glow to them, then the viewscreen... the whole world seemed to be shining down there. At first I thought it had something to do with those goons that Flattery sent up here. Now I think it has more to do with the kelp disturbances, the grid collapse. I think that your friend Mr. Ozette and Crista Galli are at the bottom of this."
"But how? We're in orbit. The kelp we touch here touches nothing else. It could just be a psychic disturbance, but then you wouldn't be here with me."
"It's the light," Mack said. "The kelp uses chemicals to communicate, this we've known for some time. Now we've taught it to use light. That holo stage I built for experimentation - it works perfectly, and all components came from the kelp, only the kelp has gone a few steps further. The kelp takes pieces of light, breaks them into components, encodes them chemically or electrically, then reproduces them at will. It's something I refined from what cryptographers used to call the 'Digital Encoding System.' You know more about holography than I do, you tell me what's going on."
"If you're right," she said, "if this is the kelp's holography, then it's learned to use light as both a wave and a particle. We can hug each other, yet we're just holo projections of some kind, right? Maybe the kelp has found another dimension."
"Yes," a woman's voice said, "we are the reorganization of light and shade. Where light goes, we go."
"Are yo... Avata?" Beatriz asked.
A gentle laugh replied, a laugh like moonlight across flat water. A third figure began its mysterious materialization out of the glow. It was a woman, as radiant as the light around them, and because of that she was barely visible. Beatriz recognized her immediately.
"Crista Galli," she gasped. She looked around for sign of another figure, for Ben, but all she saw was the translucent sphere that held them.
"Don't worry, Beatriz, Ben and Rico are with me. As you and Dr. MacIntosh are with the Orbiter crew. What they see now are the shells of our beings, the husks of ourselves. What we meet here is the being itself."
"But I can see you, hear you," Mack said. "Beatriz and I actually touched."
Crista laughed again, and Beatriz felt a giggle coming that she couldn't suppress.
I am safe here, she thought. Brood, Flattery, they can't get me here.
"That's right, we're safe," Crista said. Beatriz realized then that thought was as good as speech in this strange place. Or is it a place?
"Yes, this is a place. It is a who as well as a what and a where. Dr. MacIntosh, we have substance because our minds have made a perceptual jump along with the light. Things change to accommodate our differing subconscious. Did you see a lot of hatches?"
Beatriz watched him hold out his hands, look down at his feet, puzzled.
"Yes, I did, bu..."
"And one reminded you of something pleasant, so you opened it?"
"Yes, and I wound up here."
"So did I," Beatriz said. "But an earlier one led m... back. Back to my family years ago."
"It was Avata's way of reassuring you," Crista said. "It took you to a familiar, comfortable place. You have been terrified lately. Avata does not want your terror. She wants your expertise."
"Expertise?" Beatriz swept a hand out to indicate their surround. "After this, what could I possibly offer?"
"You'll see. Think of this as Shadowbox, as the biggest holo studio in the world, with nearly the whole world as its stage. We will put Flattery at its center, show him off to the world. What then?"
"Stop people from destroying each other," Mack said. "They have not been able to get at him, so they will destroy his engines of power. If they do that, they endanger all of us, Avata included. Exposing Flattery might be more dangerous than you think."
"But look at our method," Beatriz said. "It's incredibly powerful. It will appear as a message from the gods, a vision, a miracle."
"I saw light shimmering above all kelp stands from Current Control," Mack said. "Is that really happening?"
"Yes," Crista nodded, "it is."
"Then we already have the world's attention, right? Everybody must've stopped in their tracks to take a look."
"My people stopped long enough to enjoy the light show," someone said. "They're heading for Kalaloch with everything they have."
Another figure precipitated out of light, a muscular male figure with red hair. Though Beatriz had never met Kaleb Norton-Wang before, she realized that she knew his past nearly as well as her own. At the same moment, she realized this was true of Crista Galli and Mack, as well.