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The quality of entle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth hihtiest in the htiest
- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Vashon Literature Repository
Jephtha Twain suffered the most exquisite pain for three days, and that was the point The Warrior&039;s Union thugs were professionals, if he passed out he simply wasted their time In his three days at their hands he had never passed out They knew that he was no good to theony had been the penalty he paid for wasting their ti him at last they hooked him up, as he knew they would, to the obsidian cliff below the high reaches Subversives were often hooked up to die in full view of the settle of the lesson was never clear
The three from the Warrior&039;s Union hooked him up there in the dark, as they&039;d taken hiht them cowards for this His left eyelid was less swollen than the right, and he ed to work it open A pale hint of dawn pried the starry sky away frohts of a commuter ferry ed at the dark dockside down below him in the settlees of workers at Project Voidship
Running lights froht sea&039;s blackness all the way from the settlement at Kalaloch out to the project&039;s launch tower coanic dikes and rock jetties fanned out both up- and downcoast of Kalaloch, supporting the new aquaculture projects of Merman Mercantile, none of which had hired Jephtha after his fishing gear had been seized and his license revoked His partner had kept a couple of fish for hi them dockside The Director&039;s "new economy" prohibited this, and the Director&039;s henchmen made a lesson of the both of them
Under the opening sky of hten, then separate froling free of its wounded skin like awretch of his flesh from atop a boulder a couple of meters away This far south, Pandora&039;s days lasted nearly fourteen hours He wondered how many more breaths he had left in his sack of cracked ribs and pain
Marica, he thought, my Marica and our three little wots The Warrior&039;s Union said they&039;d hunt the to tell They would claierous, subversive They would start on the children toJephtha squeezed his good eye closed against his blood and shame
The Director&039;s "special squad" of the Warrior&039;s Union had pierced Jephtha&039;s chest and back with maki hooks, steel fishhooks with a cruel incurve the size of his thuht like armor across his chest The steel snaffles and cable leaders hung to his knees like a kilt The glitter of the hooks, as well as the smell of his blood, would attract the dasher that would kill hiht thousands of anions on hundreds of longlines Most of the with hisfro the skin of his chest, and twelve through his back He thought this had a significance, too, but they had not told him what it was But they had told him what he&039;d wanted to know for years
The Shadows are real! Jephtha played the thought over and over The Shadows are real!
Everyone had heard about these Shadows, but no one he knew had ever met one Now in the last few months had come the mysterious broadcasts that came on the holo or the telly or the radio made by "Shadowbox" Everybody said those were the work of the Shadows There were stories in every village about their fight to depose the Director, Raja Flattery, and hahtly News reported daily on Shadow activities: detoured supplies, food theft, sabotage Anything unpopular or harmful to the Director&039;s cause was laid at the Shadows&039; hatch, including natural disasters "Shadowbox," using pirated air space and great expertise, reported on the Director
Jephtha had whispered aroundto join up with the Shadows, but no word cah hope that he had set out to strike his own blow He understood, now, that this was how the Shadoorked
He&039;d wanted to destroy the seat of power itself - the main electrical station between the Director&039;s private co settlement adjacent to it, Kalaloch
The power station that Jephtha chose was a hydrogen retrieval plant that supplied hydrogen, oxygen and electricity to all of the subcontractors in the Director&039;s space progra the plant would set Flattery&039;s precious Project Voidship and his orbiting factory on its heels for a while The poor of the toere used to doing without, Jephtha reasoned Thousands didn&039;t even have electricity It would be this new Voidship project and Flattery ould be most crippled He should have known that the Director&039;s security had already thought of that
The interrogation had been very old-fashioned, as ht easily and forced to stand naked under a hood for three days while being tortured for nothing Now a host of steel snaffles clinked against hooks whenever any of his musclesThat just s crawled his left leg, fluttering their wings in some ritual dance, but neither bit
Dashers, he prayed If it&039;s anything, let it be dashers and quick That hat they&039;d hung him out there for - dasher bait The hooded dasher would strike hi up on thea pretty price in the village uards, and he&039;d heard theet for the hide He didn&039;t want to be nibbled to death, a dasher would accommodate him nicely His mouth was so dry frohed
In this hungry downslide of his life Jephtha had dared to hope for two things: to join up with the Shadows, and to glimpse Her Holiness, Crista Galli He had tried his best with the Shadows Here, chained to the rocks overlooking the Director&039;s coreat household through his darkening vision
One of thehtheaded, and he puffed his chest against the hooks and thought, If I were a Shadow, I&039;d get her out of there
Crista Galli was the holy innocent, awoo When Flattery&039;s people blew up a rogue kelp bed five years back, Crista Galli surfaced with the debris How she&039;d been raised by the kelp underwater and delivered back to humankind was one of those mysteries that Jephtha and his family accepted simply as "miracle"
It was rumored that Crista Galli held the hope for Pandora&039;s salvation People clairy, heal the sick, co The Director, a Chaplain/Psychiatrist, kept her locked away
"She needs protection," Flattery had said "She greith the kelp, she needs to knohat it is to be human"
How ironic that Flattery would set out to teach her how to be human Jephtha kneith the clarity of his pain-transcendence, that she was the Director&039;s prisoner down there as much as all Pandorans were his slaves Except for now, at the base of the high reaches, Jephtha&039;s chains had been invisible: hunger chains, propaganda chains, the chain of fear that rattled in his head like cold teeth
He prayed that the security would not find Marica and the wots The settle fish
Mayb
He shook his head, clink-clinking the terrible hooks and snaffles He felt nothing except the cool breeze that wafted up froht the fa on the beach
There! At that port high in the one, but Jephtha&039;s heart raced His good eye was not focusing and a new darkness was upon him, but he was sure that the form he&039;d seen had been the pale Crista Galli
She can&039;t know of this, he thought If she knehat a monster Raja Flattery is, and she could do it, she would destroy hihts again turned to Marica and the wots The thoughts were not so hts as drea an upcoast field in the sunlight The single sun was bright but not scorching, there were no bugs Their bare feet were cushioned by the fleshy blossoms of a thousand kinds of flower
A dasher shriek from somewhere below jerked his, nowhere on Pandora to stroll barefoot through blossoms He knew that Vashon security and the Warrior&039;s Union were known for their persistence, their efficiency, their ruthlessness They were after his wife and their children, and they would find them His last hope was that the dasher would find him before they hooked as left of Marica up here by his side
Again we have let another Chaplain/Psychiatrist kill tens of thousands of us - Islander and Merman alike This new C/P, Raja Flattery, calls hi and bared the throat for the last tiht through the single plasers It outlined the sparse but colorful furnishings of this cubby in shades of gray The cubby itself, though squarely on land and squarely gridded to a continent, reflected traditions of a culture freely afloat for nearly five centuries on Pandora&039;s seas
These Islanders, the biowizards of Pandora, grew everything They grew their cups and bowls, the fas, shelves and the islands theanically furnished, and under the old laarranted a heft of supply chits that converted easily to food coupons Black-h price for the Director to pay to assimilate the Islander culture that had been dashed to the rocks the day he splashed down on the sea
As the grip of dawn strengthened intoof clasped hands that enriched this small cubby Red and blue fishes swareen leaves of kelp Orange fin and blue leaf joined at the foot of the hanging to forht stitch of the pattern and its crisp colors all rippled with the progress of dawn A sleeper&039;s chest rose and fell gently on the bed beneath thelassat the head of the bed Islanders had always enjoyed the light and in building their islands they let it in wherever they could They persisted in light, even though most of them were now solidly s Mers they wall out - Islanders preferred the light, the breezes, the s This cubby was sularly inspected, a part of the shopkeeper&039;s quarters It was a second-floor street room above the new Ace of Cups coffee shop at Kalaloch harbor A huge white coffee cup swung from a steel rod beneath the
Al caainst the bulkhead below Respirations caught, then resu squawk and the wind-chiainst a host of h to reveal a seated figure beside the bed The posture was one of alert stillness This stillness was broken by an occasional ure sat, back to the wall, beside the plaz and facing the hatch First light glinted fro, intricately inlaid Islander cup of hardwood and mother-of-pearl The hand that held the cup was ure leaned forward once, noting the depth of the sleeper&039;s odd, open-eyed sluht across the bay outside their roo of shadows inside, and their relentless crawl
The watcher, Ben Ozette, pulled the cover higher over the sleeper&039;s bare shoulder to ward off reen irises stayed ith the onset of dawn He closed her eyes for her with his thumb She didn&039;t seem to mind The shudder that passed over hi chill
She was a picture of white - white hair, eyelashes, eyebrows and a very fair porcelain skin Her shaggy white hair was cropped around her face, falling nearly to her shoulders in the back It was a perfect fraht eyes His hand strayed to the pillow, then back
His profile in the light revealed the high cheekbones, aquiline nose and high eyebrows of his Merman ancestry In his years as a reporter for Holovision, Ben Ozette had become famous, his face as familiar planetwide as that of a brother or a husband Listeners ide recognized his voice immediately On their Shadowbox broadcasts, however, he becahts - in disguise, of course Now their family, friends, coworkers would feel the snap of Flattery&039;s wrath
They hadn&039;t exactly had ti their weekly interviews, they both noticed how everyone, including coe as they taped The next tiusto Then last night they si hunted by Flattery&039;s goons dried Ben&039;s mouth a little He sipped a little more water
Maybe it&039;s true, ht She&039;s too perfectly beautiful to be an accident
If the Director&039;s rown by the kelp, not soed by the exareen-eyed albino feestion of sea water; agitated, recent ed to be poor, possibly absent"
It had been five years since she washed out of the sea and into the news, and in that five years Flattery had allowed no one but his lab people near her Ben has asked to do the story out of curiosity, and wound up pursuing ained for He&039;d learned to hate the Director, and as he watched Crista&039;s fitful sleep, he wasn&039;t the least bit sorry
He had to admit that, yes, he knew from the first that it had always been a ht Flattery and Holovision too openly and too long
A recent Shadowbox accused Holovision of being a ent that would not regain credibility until it became worker-owned Ben had leveled the same attack at the production assistant the previous day
Ben found hiandistic little specials that Flattery&039;s technicians were grinding out Ben and Rico had bought or built their own cameras and laserbases to minimize the company&039;s intimidation and Flattery&039;s interference Now they had full-tiitives, he thought
Ben Ozette eased back into the old chairdog and let the sleeper lie Of all the deadliness on Pandora, this sleeper could be the most deadly It was rumored that people had died at her touch, and this was not just the Director&039;s professional rumor mill Ben had dared touch her, and he was not yet one of the dead It was ruht
He whispered her na skipped, she sniffed once, twice and settled down
Crista Galli had green eyes Even now they opened ever so slightly, turning toward the sun, visible but not waking
Eerie
Ben&039;s last love, his longest love, had brown eyes She had also been his only love, practically speaking That was Beatriz Her coffee-colored eyes becaainst the shadows Yes, Beatriz They were still good friends, and she would take this hard Ben&039;s heart jumped a beat whenever their wakes crossed, and they crossed often at Holovision
Beatriz took on her series about Flattery&039;s space program, she ay for weeks at a time Ben freelanced docudramas on earthquake survivors, Islander relocation camps and an in-depth series on the kelp His latest project featured Crista Galli and her life since her rescue in the kelp
Flattery agreed to the series and Ben agreed to confine the material to her rescue and subsequent rehabilitation This project led him into Raja Flattery&039;s most sacred closets, and further away from Beatriz The Holovision rumor mill claimed that she and the Orbiter Co each other lately Through his own choice Ben and Beatriz had been separated for nearly a year He knew she&039;d find someone else eventually Now that it was real he decided he&039;d better get used to it
Beatriz Tatoosh was the hest Like Ben, she did field work for Holovision Nightly News She also hosted a weekly feature on the Director&039;s "Project Voidship," a project of great religious and economic controversy Beatriz chalad he&039;d kept her away from the Shadowbox plan At least she didn&039;t have to be on the run