Frank Herbert Destination Vo

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on their traditional organic islands. Drifting the seas had become much too
dangerous a life in this day of jagged coastlines and sea lanes choked with
kelp.
The majority who settled landside still called themselves "Islander" and
retained their old manners of dress and custom. Those Islanders whom she'd
known at the Preserve compound were either servants or security, close-mouthed
about their lives outside Flattery's great basalt walls. Many were horribly
mutated, a revulsion to Flattery but a fascination to her.
Crista Galli tucked the cover under her chin and stretched backward, unfolding
to the sunlight, aware of some new modesty in the company of Ben Ozette. She
had all of the intimacies of his life stored in her head, now, and she was
afraid of what he might think of her if he knew. She felt herself flush, a
bit of a voyeur, as she remembered his first night with Beatriz.
Men are so strange, Crista thought. He'd brought her here on the run from
Vashon security and the
Director, assured her that they were safely hidden in this tiny cubby, then he
sat up all night beside her rather than join her in bed. He'd already proven
immune to her deadly touch, and she liked the kiss as much as the daring
gesture of the kiss.
The attentions of other men, the Director among them, had taught her something
of the power of her beauty. Ben Ozette was attracted to her, that had been
clear the first time she'd looked into his eyes. They were green, something
like her own only darker. She treasured the one magic kiss they had shared
before she slept. She treasured his memories that now were hers, the family
she shared with him, his lovers . . .
Her reverie was interrupted by a shriek in the street below, then a long,
high-voiced wail that chilled her in spite of her warm bed. She lay quiet
while Ben set aside his cup and rose to the window.
They've found someone, she thought, someone who's been killed.
Ben had told her about the bodies in the streets in the morning, but it was
something too far from her life to imagine.
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"The death squads leave them for a lesson," he said. "Bodies are there in the
mornings for people to see when they go to work, when they take the children
to their creche. Some have no hands, some have no tongues or heads. Some are
mutilated obscenely. If you stop to look, you are questioned: 'Do you know
this man? Come with us.' No one wants to go with them. Sooner or later a
wife is notified, or a mother or a son. Then the body is removed."
Ben had seen hundreds of such bodies in his work, and she had glimpsed these
the night before in the speedy unreeling of his memories into her own. This
wail she thought must come from a mother who had just found her dead son.
Crista was not tempted to look outside. Ben returned to his watch at her
bedside.
Had he seen anything of her when she kissed him? Such a thing happened
sometimes with the kelp, but seldom anymore with herself. It had happened
with others who'd touched her. First, the shock of wide-eyed disbelief; then,
the unfocused eyes and the trembling; at last, the waking and the registry of
stark terror. For those who had been lucky enough to wake.
What did I show them? she wondered. Why some and not all? She had studied
the kelp's history and found no help there, precious little comfort. She
still smoldered over some research tech's pointed reference to her "family
tree."
She remembered how she had been kept alive down under by the cilia of the kelp
that probed the recesses of her body. She received the ministrations of the
mysterious, nearly mythological
Swimmers, the severest of human mutations. Adapted completely to water,
Swimmers resembled giant,
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0-%20The%20Ascension%20Factor.txt gilled salamanders more than humans. They
occupied caves, Oracles, abandoned Merman outposts and some kelp lagoons. She
had been one with the kelp, more kelp than human, for her first nineteen
years. There were some of Flattery's people who thought that she had been
manufactured by the kelp, but she herself believed that couldn't be true.
A lot of other Pandorans sported the green-eyed gene of the kelp, including
Ben. At a little over a meter and a half tall she could look over the heads [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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