She had been educated by the kelp's store of genetic memories, human and otherwise. She knew without being taught. She'd heard echoes of the best and the worst of humanity fed to her mind for nearly twenty years. There were some other echoes, too.
The Others, the thoughts of Avata itself, those were the echoes that the Director feared.
"The kelp's sent her to spy on us," Flattery was heard to have said early on. "No telling what it's done to her subconscious."
Crista Galli was one of the great mysteries of genetics. The faithful claimed she was a miracle made flesh.
"I did it myself," she told him during their first interview, "as we all do."
Or, as she put it in their last interview: "I made good selections from the DNA buffet."
Flattery's fear had kept Crista under what he called "protective custody" for the past five years while the people clamored worldwide for a glimpse. The Director's Vashon Security Force provided the protection. It was the Vashon Security Force that hunted them now.
She could be a monster, Ben thought. Some kind of time bomb set by Avata to go off. when? Why?
The great body of kelp that some called "Avata" directed the flow of all currents and, therefore, all shipping planetwide. It calmed the ravages of Pandora's two-sun system, making land and the planet itself possible. Ben, and many others, believed that Avata had a mind of its own.
Crista Galli stirred, tucked herself further under the quilt and resumed her even breathing. Ben knew that killing her now while she slept might possibly save the world and himself. He had heard that argument among the rabid right, among those accustomed to working with Flattery.
Possibly.
But Ozette believed now that she could save the world for Avata and human alike, and for this he vowed to guard her every breath — for this, and for the stirrings of love that strained in old traces.
Spider Nevi and his thugs hunted the both of them now. Ben had wooed her away from the Director's very short leash, but Crista did the rest. Crista and Rico. Ben knew well that the leash would become a lash, a noose for himself and possibly for her next time and he had better see to it that there was no next time. Flattery had made it clear that there was nothing in the world more deadly, more valuable than Crista Galli. It was certain the man who'd made off with her wouldn't be lightly spared.
Ben was forty now. At fifteen he'd been plunged into war with the sinking of Guemes Island. Many thousands died that day, brutally slashed, burned, drowned at the attack of a huge Merman submersible, a kelp-trimmer that burst through the center of the old man-made island, lacerating everything in its path. Ben had been rimside when the sudden lurch and collapse sent him tumbling into the pink-frothed sea.
The years since and the horrors he had seen gave him a wisdom of sorts, an instinct for trouble and the escape hatch. This wisdom was only wisdom as long as he kept alive, and he remembered how easily he had thrown instinct out the porthole the time he fell in love with Beatriz. He had not thought that could happen again until the day he met Crista Galli, a meeting that had been half-motivated at the possibility of seeing Beatriz somewhere inside Flattery's compound. Crista had whispered, "Help me," that day, and while swimming in her green-eyed gaze he'd said, simply, "Yes."
In her head sleeps the Great Wisdom, he thought. If she can unlock it without destroying herself, she can help us all.
Even if it wasn't true, Ben knew that Flattery thought it was true, and that was good enough.
She rolled over, still asleep, and turned her face up at the prospect of the dim light.
Keep you away from light, they say, he thought. Keep you away from kelp, keep you away from the sea. Don't touch you. In his back pocket he carried the precautionary instructions in case he accidentally touched her bare skin.
And what would Operations think if they knew I'd kissed her?
He chuckled, and marveled at the power beside him in that room.
The Director had already seen to it that no interview of Crista Galli would ever be aired. Now, at Flattery's direction, Holovision had lured Beatriz with an extra hour of air time a week glorifying Flattery's "Project Voidship."