Peter Watts - Starfish

Clarke fins forward a few meters, Caraco at her side. The two women exchange looks.

Fischer, hanging upside down against the mesh. It's been four days since anyone's seen him.

Clarke gently sets down her carry bag; Caraco follows her lead. Two or three kicks bring them to within five meters of the intake. Machinery hums omnipresently, makes a sound deep enough to feel.

He's facing away from them, drifting from side to side, tugged by the gentle suction of the intake vent. The vent's grillwork is fuzzy with rooted growing things; small clams, tube worms, shadow crabs. Fischer pulls squirming clumps from the intake, leaves them to drift or to fall to the street below. He's cleaned maybe two meters square so far.

It's nice to see he still takes some duties seriously.

"Hey. Fischer," Caraco says.

He spins around as if shot. His forearm flails toward Clarke's face; she raises her own just in time. In the next instant he's bowled past her. She kicks, steadies herself. Fischer's heading for the darkness without looking back.

"Fischer," Clarke calls out. "Stop. It's okay."

He stops kicking for a moment, looks back over his shoulder.

"It's me," she buzzes. "And Judy. We won't hurt you."

Barely visible now, he rotates to a stop and turns to face them. Clarke risks a wave.

"Come on, Fischer. Give us a hand."

Caraco comes up behind her. "Lenie, what are you doing?" She's turned her vocoder down to a hiss. "He's too far gone, he's—"

Clarke cranks her own vocoder down. "Shut up, Judy." Up again. "What do you say, Fischer? Earn your pay."

He's coming back into the light, hesitantly, like a wild animal lured by the promise of food. Closer, Clarke can see the line of his jaw moving up and down under his hood. The motions are jerky, erratic, as though he's learning them for the first time.

Finally a noise comes out. "Oh— kay—"

Caraco goes back and retrieves their gear. Clarke offers a scraper to Fischer. After a moment, he takes it, clumsily, and follows them to number four.

"Jussst like," Fischer buzzes. "Old. T— times."

Caraco looks at Clarke. Clarke says nothing.

Near the end of the shift she looks around. "Fischer?"

Caraco pokes her head out from an access tunnel. "He's gone?"

"When did you see him last?"

Caraco's vocoder ticks a couple of times; the machinery always misinterprets hmmm. "Half hour ago, maybe."

Clarke puts her own vocoder on high. "Hey Fischer! You still around?"

No answer.

"Fischer, we're heading back in a bit. If you want to come along…"

Caraco just shakes her head.

It's a nightmare.

There's light everywhere, blinding, painful. He can barely move. Everything has such hard edges, and everywhere he looks the boundaries are too sharp. Sounds are like that too, clanks and shouts, every noise an exclamation of pain. He barely knows where he is. He doesn't know why he's there.

He's drowning.

" UNNNNNSEEEEELLLLLHHHHHIZZZZZMMMMOOUUUUUTH…"

The tubes in his chest suck at emptiness. The rest of his insides strain to inflate, but there's nothing there to fill them. He thrashes, panicky. Something gives with a snap. Sudden pain resonates in some faraway limb, floods the rest of his body a moment later. He tries to scream, but there's nothing inside to push out.

"HHIZZMMMOUTHFORRRKKRRIISSAAAAAKHEEEZSSUFFUKKATE—"

Someone pulls part of his face off. His insides fill with a rush; not the cold saline he's used to, but it helps. The burning in his chest eases.

"BIGGFFUKKINNGGMMISSTTAAKE—"

Pressure, painful and uneven. Things are holding him down, holding him up, banging into him. The noise is tinny, deafening. He remembers a sound—

— gravity—

— that applies somehow, but he doesn't know what it means. And then everything's spinning, and everything's familiar and horrible except for one thing, one glimpse of a face that calms him somehow—

Shadow?

— and the weight's gone, the pressure's gone, icewater calms his insides as he spirals back with her, outside again, where she used to be years ago—

She's showing him how to do it. She creeps into his room after the shouting stops, she crawls under the covers with him and she starts stroking his penis.

"Dad says this is what you do when you really love somebody," she whispers. And that scares him because they don't even like each other, he just wants her to go away and leave them all alone.

"Go away. I hate you," he says, but he’s too afraid to move.

"That's okay, then you don't have to do it for me." She’s trying to laugh, trying to pretend he was just kidding.

And then, still stroking: "Why are you always so mean to me?”

"I'm not mean."

"Are too."

"You're not supposed to be here."

"Can't we just be friends?" She rubs up against him. "I can do this whenever you want—"

"Go away. You can’t stay here."

"I can , maybe. If it works out, they said. But we have to like each other or they could send me back—”

"Good."

She's crying now, she's rubbing against him so hard the bed shakes, " Please can't you like me please I'll do anything I'll even— "

But he never finds out what she'll even do because that's when the door slams open and whatever happens after that, Gerry Fischer can't remember.

Shadow, I'm so sorry…

But she's back with him now, in the cold and the dark where it's safe. Somehow. Beebe's a dim gray glow in the distance. She floats against that backdrop like a black cardboard cutout.

"Shadow…" Not his voice.

"No." Not hers. "Lenie."

"Lenie…"

Twin crescents, thin as fingernails, reflect from her eyes. Even in two dimensions she's beautiful.

Mangled words buzz from her throat: "You know who I am? You can understand me?"

He nods, then wonders if she can see it. "Yeah."

"You don't— lately you're sort of gone, Fischer. Like you've forgotten how to be human."

He tries to laugh, but the vocoder can't handle it. "It comes and goes, I think. I'm…lucid now, anyway. That's the word, isn't it?"

"You shouldn't have come back inside." Machinery strips any feeling from her words. "He says he'll kill you. Maybe you should just stay out of his way."

"Okay," he says, and thinks it actually might be.

"I can bring food out, I guess. They don't care about that."

"That's okay. I can — go fishing."

"I'll call for a 'scaphe. It can pick you up out here."

"No. I can swim back up myself if I want to. Not far."

"Then I'll tell them to send someone."

"No."

A pause. "You can't swim all the way back to the mainland."

"I'll stay down here…a while…"

A tremor growls softly along the seabed.

"You sure?" Lenie says.

"Yeah." His arm hurts. He doesn't know why.

She turns slightly. The dim reflections vanish from her eyes for a long moment.

"I'm sorry, Gerry."

"Okay."

Lenie's silhouette twists around and faces back towards Beebe. "I should get going."

She doesn't leave. She doesn't say anything for almost a minute.

Then: "Who's Shadow?"

More silence.

"She's a…friend. When I was young."

"She means a lot to you." Not a question. "Do you want me to send her a message?"

"She's dead," Fischer says, marveling that he's really known it all along.

"Oh."

"Didn't mean to," he says. "But she had her own mom and dad, you know, why did she need mine ? She went back where she belonged. That's all."

"Where she belonged," Lenie buzzes, almost too softly to hear.

"Not my fault," he says. It's hard to talk. It didn't used to be this hard.