Peter Watts - Maelstrom

Recommendations: Continue ongoing efforts to alter present trajectory. Allocate Fallback Options budget as follows:

1. Orbital: 25%

2. Cheyenne: 5%

3. M.A. Ridge: 50%

4. Metamorph: 20%

She'd become a scavenger in her own home.

Sou-Hon Perreault virtually lived in her office now. It held everything of importance: a window on the world. A purpose. A sanctuary.

She still had to eat, though, and use the toilet. Once or twice a day she'd venture from her cave and see to life's necessities. Most of the time she didn't have to deal with Martin; his contracts took him into the field more often than not.

But now— oh God, why now of all times? — he was in the living room when she came back.

He was digging around in the aquarium, his back turned. She almost got past.

"The male died," he said.

"What?"

He turned to face her. A damselfish, pale and stiff, weighted the dip net in his hand. One milky eye stared blindly through the mesh.

"He looks like he's been dead for a while," Martin said.

She looked past him to the aquarium. Brown algae filmed the glass. Inside, the glorious anemone was shrunken and frayed; its tentacles twitched feebly in the current.

"Jesus, Marty. You couldn't even be bothered to clean the tank?"

"I just got home. I've been in Fairbanks for the past two weeks."

She'd forgotten.

"Sou, the prescriptions aren't working. I really think we should consider wiring you up with a therapist."

"I'm fine," she said automatically.

"You're not fine. I've looked into it already, we can afford it. It'll be available around the clock, whenever you need it."

"I don't trust therapists."

"Sou, it'd be a part of you . It already is, in a way, they just haven't—isolated it yet. And it runs pathways right to your temporal lobe, so you can talk to it as easily as you can talk to anyone."

"You want to cut out a part of my brain."

"No, Sou, just rewire it. Did you know the brain can support over a hundred fully sentient personalities? It doesn't affect sensory or motor performance at all. This would just be one , and it'd take up such a small amount of space—"

"My husband, the walking brochure."

"Sou—"

"It's multiple personality disorder, Martin. I don't care what cute name they give it these days, and I don't care how many of our friends live happy fulfilling lives because they hear voices in their heads. It's sick."

"Sou, please. I love you. I'm only trying to help."

"Then get out of my way."

She ran for shelter.

Sou-Hon. Are you there?

"Yes."

Good. Stand by.

Static. A brief spiderweb of connections and intercepts, orange filaments proliferating across a continent. Then no visual front and center, darkness everywhere else.

Go ahead.

"Lenie?" Perreault said.

"So. I wondered when they'd get around to this."

"Get around to what?"

"Hijacking my visor. Sou-Hon, right?"

"Right."

"They got that right, at least."

Perreault took a grateful breath. "You okay?"

"I got out. Thanks partly to you, I guess. That was you in the 'fly, wasn't it? At Yankton?"

"That was me."

"Thanks."

"Don't thank me. Thank—"

A damselfish flashed across Perreault's mind, safe in a nest of stinging tentacles.

"…anemone," she finished softly.

Silence on the line. Then: "Thank an enemy. That makes a lot of sense."

Perreault shook her head. " Sea anemone. It's this undersea ambush predator, it eats fish but sometimes—"

"I know what a sea anemone is, Suze. So what?"

"Everything's been perverted, somehow. The 'flies, the matchmakers— the whole system's done a one-eighty, it's protecting the very thing it was supposed to attack. You see?"

"Not really. But I was never that big on metaphors." A soft laugh. "I still can't get used to being a starfish."

Perreault wondered but didn't ask.

"This anemone of yours," Clarke said. "It kicks ass. It's powerful ."

"Yes."

"So why is it so fucking stupid ?"

"What do you mean?"

"It doesn't seem to have any kind of focus, you know? I saw the threads—it described me a thousand different ways and then it just went with the one that stuck. I don't know how many head cases it threw at me, through my watch, my visor—they even started coming at me out of vending machines, did you know that? — and it wasn't until I stopped talking to anyone else that it settled on you. Any haploid would've known better than to audition most of those assholes, but your anemone is just—random. Why is that?"

"I don't know."

"Didn't you ever wonder?"

She had, of course. But somehow it hadn't seemed to matter that much.

"Maybe that's why you made the cut," Clarke said.

"Why?"

"You're a good soldier. You need a cause, you follow orders, you don't ask embarrassing questions." A whisper of static. Then: "Why are you helping me, Sou? You've seen the threads."

"You said the threads were bullshit," Perreault said.

"Most of them are. Almost all. But they blew up Channer. They must have known the kind of collateral that would bring down, and they did it anyway. They burned the Strip. And the life down there on the rift, it was—God knows what was down there. What I brought back."

"I thought your blood tested clean."

"Tests only see what they're looking for. You haven't answered my question."

And still she didn't, for a very long time.

"Because they tried to hammer you down," she said at last. "And you're still here."

"Huh." A long breath whispered through the headset. "You ever have a dog, Sou-Hon? As a pet?"

"No."

"You know what happens when you keep a dog locked away from every living thing, except you visit once a day and kick the shit out of him?"

Perreault laughed nervously. "Someone actually tried that?"

"What happens is, the dog's a social animal, and it gets so lonely it actually looks forward to the shit-kicking. It asks to be kicked. It begs."

"What are you saying?"

"Maybe everyone's just so used to being kicked around, they'll help out anyone they think has a big enough boot."

"Or maybe," Perreault said, "we're so fucking tired of being kicked that we're finally lining up with anyone who kicks back."

"Yeah? At any cost?"

"What do we have to lose?"

"You have no idea."

"But you did. You must have known all along. If the danger was really so great, why didn't you turn yourself in? Save the world? Save yourself ?"

"The world had it coming," Clarke said softly.

"Is that what you’re doing? Just—getting revenge on nine billion people you never even met?"

"I don't know. Maybe before."

"Now?"

"I just—" Clarke's voice broke. Pain and confusion flooded through the breach. "Sou, I want to go home ."

"So go," Perreault said gently. "I'll help you."

A ragged breath, brought back under tight control: "No."

"You could really use—"

"Look, you're not just a—a traveling companion any more. I don't think either of us was really on the scope before Yankton, but they know about us now, and you—you really got in their way. If they haven't tracked you down already, they're damn well working on it."

"You're forgetting about our anemone."

"No I'm not. I just don't trust the fucking thing."

"Look—"

"Sou-Hon, thanks for everything. I mean that. But it's too dangerous. Every second we talk, our trail gets brighter. You really want to help me, then help yourself. Don't try to talk to me again. Go away. Go somewhere safe."