Peter Watts - Maelstrom

"Pleased to meet you, Lenie. What brings you way up here?"

"Just hiking through," she said. "To Jasper."

"Got family there? Friends?"

Lenie didn't even answer. "Tracy," she said instead, "where's your mom?"

"She's—" Tracy began, and couldn't finish.

It was like something clamped down in her throat. Where's your mom? She didn't know. She did know. But Dad wouldn't talk about it—

Mommy's gone, Lima bean. It's just us for a while.

How long was a while?

Mommy's gone.

Suddenly, Dad's fingers were gripping her shoulders so hard it hurt.

Mommy's—

"The quake," her dad said, and his voice was tight the way it got when he was really mad.

— gone .

"I'm sorry," said the strange woman. "I didn't know."

"Yeah, well maybe next time just think a bit before—"

"You're right. It was thoughtless. I'm sorry."

"Yeah." Dad didn't sound convinced.

"I—it was the same for me," Lenie said. "Family."

"I'm sorry," Tracy's dad said, and suddenly he didn't sound angry at all any more. He must have thought that Lenie was talking about the quake.

Somehow, Tracy knew that wasn't true.

"Look," her dad was saying, "You're welcome to rest up here for a day or two if you want. Plenty of food. There's two beds. Tracy and I can double up."

"That's okay," Lenie said. "I'll sleep on the floor."

"It's no problem, really. We double up sometimes anyway, don't we, Bean?"

"Do you." Lenie's voice was strange and flat. "I see."

"And we—we've all been through so much, you know. We've all—lost so much. We should help each other out when we get the chance, don't you think?"

"Oh yes," Lenie said, and she was looking right at Tracy. "Definitely."

After breakfast the next morning Tracy went down by the water. There was a little shelf of rock that stuck out over a steep drop-off; Tracy could lean over the edge and see her own dark reflection staring back up at her. The clear, gray-blue water faded darkly behind. Sometimes Tracy would drop little rocks into the water and follow them down, but the darkness always swallowed them before they hit bottom.

Suddenly, just like the night before, there was another reflection looking back at her.

"It's beautiful down there," Lenie said at her shoulder. "Peaceful."

"It's deep," Tracy said.

"Not deep enough."

Tracy squirmed around on the rock and looked up at the strange lady. She'd taken off her white contacts; her eyes were a pale, pale blue.

"I haven't seen any fish down there yet," Tracy said.

Lenie sat down beside her, cross-legged. "It's glacial."

"I know," Tracy said proudly. She pointed at the icy ridge on the far side of the lake. "That covered half the world, a long time ago."

Lenie smiled a little. "Did it, now?"

" Ten thousand years ago," Tracy said. "And even just a hundred years ago it came almost to where we are now, and it was twenty meters high, and people would come and ride on it with snowmobiles and things."

"Did your dad tell you that?"

Tracy nodded. "My Dad's a forest ecologist ." She pointed to a clump of trees a little ways away. "Those are Douglas fir . There's lots of them around now because they can survive fires and droughts and bugs. The other trees aren't doing so well, though." She looked back down into the cold clear water. "I haven't seen any fish yet."

"Did your—dad say there were fish in there?" Lenie asked.

"He told me to keep looking. He said maybe I'd get lucky."

Lenie said something that ended in igures .

Tracy looked back at her. "What?"

"Nothing, sweetie." Lenie reached out and ruffled Tracy's hair. "Just—well, maybe you shouldn't believe everything your daddy tells you."

"Why not?"

"Sometimes people don't always tell the truth."

"Oh, I know that . But he's my dad ."

Lenie sighed, but then her face got a little brighter. "Did you know there are places where the fish glow like lightsticks?"

"Are not ."

"Are too. Way down at the very bottom of the ocean. I've seen them myself."

"You have?"

"And some of them have teeth that are so big —" Lenie held her hands apart, almost wide enough for Tracy's shoulders to fit— "they can't even close their mouths all the way."

" Now who's lying?" Tracy asked.

Lenie put a hand on her heart. "I swear."

"You mean like sharks?"

"No. Different."

"Wow." Lenie was very strange, but she was nice. "Dad says there aren't very many fish left."

"Well, these are way down deep."

"Wow," Tracy said again. She flipped back onto her stomach and stared down into the water. "Maybe there's fish like that down there."

"No."

"It's really deep. You can't see bottom."

"Believe me, Trace. It's just a lot of gravel and old punky driftwood and insect casings."

"Yah, well how would you know?"

"Actually—" Lenie began.

" Dad said to keep looking."

"I bet your dad says lots of things," Lenie said in a strange voice. "Isn't that right?"

Tracy looked back at her. Lenie wasn't smiling any more. She looked very serious.

"I bet he touches you sometimes, doesn't he?" Lenie was almost whispering. "When the two of you double up , at night."

"Well, sure," said Tracy. "Sometimes."

"And he probably said it was okay, right?"

Tracy was confused. "He never talks about it. He just does it."

"And it's your little secret, right? You don't—you didn't talk about it with your mom."

"I don't—" Mom— "He doesn't want me talking about—" She couldn't finish.

"That's okay," Lenie smiled, and it was sad and friendly smile all at once. "You're a good kid, you know that, Tracy? You're a really good kid."

"She's the best," Tracy's dad said, and Lenie's face went as blank as a mask.

He had filled up his big daypack and Tracy's little one. Tracy scrambled up and got hers. Her dad was looking at Lenie, and he seemed a little bit puzzled, but then he said, "We're going to check out an old animal trail back around the ridge. Maybe see us a deer or a badger. Few hours, anyway. You're welcome to join us if you—"

Lenie shook her head stiffly. "Thanks, no. I think I'll just—"

And then she stopped, and looked at Tracy, and looked back at Tracy's dad.

"Yeah, okay," she said. "Maybe I should, at that."

Health Warning

From: CSIRA Regional HazWatch, N'AmPac WH

Distribution: All pacification and surveillance personnel, N'AmPac Refugee Strip

Type: Deficiency sydrome

Scale: local

Rating: 4.6

Be advised that the local incidence of deficiency symptoms within the refugee population has increased between 46° and 47° N. Latitude. Be on the watch for early symptoms such as hair loss, skin flaking, and shedding of fingernails; more advanced cases are developing massive bruising and symptoms of second-stage starvation (loss of >18 % body mass, edema, incipient kwashiorkor and scurvy). Blindness, spasms, and full-blown diabetes have not yet been observed, but are expected to develop.

This appears to be a terminal condition, the cause of which remains undetermined. Although the symptoms are consistent with advanced malnutrition, samples taken from local Calvin cyclers are nutritionally complete. The cyclers are also producing the prescribed concentrations of SAM-g, but we have found less than half the effective dosage in blood samples from some individuals. BE AWARE THAT SOME REFUGEES MAY BE OFF THEIR MEDS, AND MAY THEREFORE BE UNCOOPERATIVE OR EVEN HOSTILE.