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He stopped her with a finger to his lips He had two fingers and a thumb on each hand and she tried to remember which of the old islands carried that trait

Orcas? Ca teeth that had been filed to horrible points - rumored to be the mark of one of the death squads that called thes are already aboard the ferry," he said "You are fanize your needs You will have the privacy of a stateroouard to escort you"

"Bu"

His hand was on her elbow, guiding her out the hatchway

"We have delayed the ferry while you board," he said "For the sake of the project, please eway and he was propelling her toward the ferry&039;s lower boarding section

"Wait," she said, "I don&039;t thin"

"You have a task already awaiting you at the launch site," the captain said "I a a special Newsbreak there shortly after arrival and before your launch"

He handed her the &039;s in here," he said, and grinned

Beatriz felt that he was entirely too happy for her own coave her no comfort at all She was curious, in her journalistic way, about the hows and whys of the death squads Her survival instinct overrode her curiosity The security escortand loaded doith several of her equips

"A pleasure to have ht bow He handed her a stylus and an envelope "If you please, for my wife She admires you and your show very much"

"What is her name?"

"Anna"

Beatriz wrote in a hasty hand, "For Anna, for the future," and signed it with the appropriate flourish The captain nodded his thanks and Beatriz climbed aboard the ferry She had barely cleared the second lock when she felt it sube

Worship isn&039;t really love An object of worship can never be itself Reods

- Dwarf MacIntosh, Kelpht clarified the new drift that Ben&039;s life had taken He knew that he would use Crista&039;s holy ie on Shadowbox, much as Flattery had used it on Holovision, to manipulate the people of Pandora He would use Crista to whip the this would further bury her hu he would do it cost hi, too He vowed it would not cost the the space between them There would be a wa

Da to step between hiet Noas the lead story on prime tiht before in one of the Zavatans&039; underground chah it didn&039;t surprise hi his place

"Good evening, ladies and gentle in for Ben Ozette, who is on assign, Crista Galli was abducted a few hours ago froht to be Shadow"

Maybe she thought she was doing ht

But it was no favor, at least not to Ben He was not on assignht armed terrorists They&039;d simply walked away Beatriz read the lines that Flattery&039;s hired ot fed her Wrapped up as she was in the Orbiter and Project Voidship, she probably didn&039;t know the difference

Ben wondered as going on in the boardrooht now Holovision ned by Merman Mercantile, and the Director had acquired control of Merh bribery, manipulation, extortion and assassination This was the story that Ben had begun to broadcast on Shadowbox What had started as the biggest story of his life had becoe Crista&039;s life forever and perhaps save the people of Pandora froer

Now Crista was hiding out with him He had touched her and lived He had kissed her and lived Even now, it took great self-control to keep Ben fro that pale lock of hair out of the corner of herher forehead, to keep fro underneath the silky cover an

You&039;re too young to be an old fool, he thought, so stop acting like one You could be a dead fool

He reflected on the coht theether, at this tiht speed froins of humans themselves It had taken thousands of years, travel fro Ben and Crista Galli together Avata, too, had been nearly annihilated, but a few kelp genes were safely tucked away in most Pandoran humans Perhaps they were all altered for eternity and these stray bits of the genetic code would bring theether at last

Why? he wondered Why us?

This was one of those times when Ben wished for a normal life He did not want to be the salvation of society, the species, or anybody&039;s salvation but his own Things weren&039;t working out that way, and it was too late now to change that Now, against his better judgain in love with an is Crista was much more human than Avatan - at least, in appearance What her kelpness held in check was anyone&039;s guess, including Crista&039;s In theory, itand acting independently This had been discovered in one of the Director&039;s cherished studies Crista herself had exhibited only one personality during her five years under scrutiny, and it was the one subject that she was reluctant to speak of with Ben

She was alleged to be the daughter of Vata, and Vata was the "Holy Child" of the poet/prophet Kerro Panille and Waela TaoLini Vata had been conceived in a thrash of human limbs and the intrusion of Avatan tendrils and spores inside the cabin of a sabotaged LTA centuries ago She was born with a total genetic mocommunication common to the kelp She lay comatose for nearly two centuries

The human purported to be Crista&039;s father, Duque, had Avatan characteristics instilled through hisin the labs of the infaineer who once wiped out the kelp, body of Avata He very nearly destroyed hu with the kelp Vata was the beloved saint of Pandora, syods theodlike in her power and mystery, in her beauty, in the shadow of death about her This did nother easy

Ben knew that the kelp - Avata - had been the survival key to humans on Pandora It was difficult, maybe impossible, for humans to relate to a sentien kelp And this new kelp was not the same creature that the pioneers had encountered Ben had studied The Histories enough to agree with the experts - this kelp was frag of old Many of the faithful a the people of Pandora claimed that this hy Avata formed Crista Galli, to present itself in an acceptable for support

Then what does it want?

To live!

The sudden thought intruded on hishinized He listened deep inside hi more came The sleeper still slept

The kelp, the body of Avata, was responsible for the stability of the very planet itself One moon had pulverized itself to asteroids while several continents had ripped apart like tissue paper after the kelp was killed off by the bioengineer Jesus Lewis Now, the kelp was replanted and the land masses returned after a couple of centuries under the sea Hu to live on land as well as on or undersea It pained Ben that people were still just scratching in dirt when they should be thriving

That&039;s the Director&039;s fault, he reminded hinize publicly the sentience of the kelp and used it simply as a mechanism, a series of powerful switches that controlled ide currents and, to so more difficult daily There was more kelp daily, and very little of it was hooked up to Current Control

The kelp is resisting Flattery, he thought When it breaks completely free, I want it to have a conscience

Ben&039;s diligent research, with a few leads from Crista, uncovered the secret reports and he knew the real depth of Flattery&039;s interest in what one paper called "the Avata Phenomenon" Ben had spoken with the Zavatans, monks in the hills who used the kelp in their rituals

Crista says the Director should be consulting the kelp! he thought And I get the saain, and he knew she would wake soon She would see the dockside shops fill with vendors and hear the s! We have licensed squawk eggs today!" This was one of the many small pleasures that the Director had denied her - human companionship Ben knew that he, too, in his ould deny her this

For now, he reminded hiether

From the coffee shop below he could hear the faint scrape of furniture, the metallic clink of utensils and china

Ben Ozette leaned back against the wall and let out a long, slow breath Though he&039;d refused to admit it until now, he was surprised to be alive He&039;d not only touched the forbidden Crista Galli, but he&039;d kissed her It elve hours later and he was still breathing They&039;dthem down He waited for Crista to wake, for Rico&039;s code-knock at the door, to see what they wouldin the west, you say at once, "A shower is co," and so it comes to pass And when you see the south wind blow, you say, "There will be a scorching heat," and so it coe the face of the sky and of the earth; but how is it that you do not judge this ti up that ht the carved cup in Ben Ozette&039;s hand, and of his hand She wanted that hand to touch her, to brush her cheek or rest on her shoulder It was so still, that hand balancing the cup on his knee, that she lay there for a while wondering whether he had fallen asleep sitting up beside the bed She shuddered at the thought of sitting in one of those pieces of ghastly Islander furniture, a living creature that they called "chairdog"

Kalaloch, too, aking outside She heard the stirrings of people and the stutter of engines starting as the dozer and crawler crews headed for another day&039;s work advancing the perirounded islands also woke froreater Kalaloch

Crista listened to the closer, warht, what if I&039;d killed hi the news lead as Ben hihtly News correspondent Ben Ozette was kissed to death last night on assignmen" The warmth, the taste of that kiss replayed itself in her iven up on

Ben suffered no ill effects, which she attributed to the action of Flattery&039;s daily dose of antidote, still in her system Yet she had received the flood of Ben&039;s past with the touch of his lips to her own, a cascade of memories, emotions and fear that nearly paralyzed her with its unexpected clarity and force

There were these matters of his life that she preferred not to know: Ben&039;s first kiss, a pretty redhead; his last kiss, Beatriz Tatoosh Both of these and ered on her own lips She witnessed his first loveh theof Guenated her very cells, waiting for her own eer that would call them to life

She had received his memories with his kiss, too stunned to tell hiht were his dreaan of truth in a body riddled with lies She knew that he, like herself, was vulnerable and lonely and had a life to live for others She did not want to keep this from him, the fact that she noned his life She did not want to lose him now that they had finally found each other, and she did not want to be the death of hile," as people called it - this kelp death that supposedly lurked in her touch as it did in some kelp, within her very chemistry Sometimes she didn&039;t believe it, either Flattery himself had developed the antidote, which he saw to it that she received daily It did not dies she received, such as Ben&039;s ht send Still, none dared touch her and all of her attendants in Flattery&039;s compound kept her at a safe distance

This was the firstin her memory that she did not wake up to attendants, endless tests, to the difficult task of being a revered prisoner in the great house of the Director Crista had slept the refreshing sleep of the newborn in spite of their escape, their hiding, her first kiss An eh her stomach as delicious aromas rose to her of pastries, hot breads, coffee

Sorill Meat was so she craved Flattery&039;s labtechs had explained this to her, so her protein synthesis, but she knew this siered for fresh fruits of all kinds, and nuts and grains The very thought of a salad gagged her and always had

Though they&039;d fled here in the night, Crista had et from the Director&039;s complex at the Preserve to this Islander community at Kalaloch She was re of the local geography save that she was near the sea, relieving soer that rumbled within

She heard the sea noet pulse over the babble of street vendors and the increasing traffic of the day Pandorans were an early lot, she&039;d heard, but unhurried It is difficult for the hungry to hurry Only a very few re the seas had becoed 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&039;d known at the Preserve compound were either servants or security, close-reat 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 ht think of her if he knew She felt herself flush, a bit of a voyeur, as she ree, Crista thought He&039;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&039;d already proven immune to her deadly touch, and she liked the kiss as esture of the kiss

The attentions of otherof the power of her beauty Ben Ozette was attracted to her, that had been clear the first ti like her own only darker She treasured the one ic kiss they had shared before she slept She treasured his memories that noere hers, the family she shared with him, his lover

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