Peter Watts - Starfish

The workstation fell silent.

Rowan wants to see me. The VP in charge of the GA's whole Northwest franchise wants to see me. Me.

He was thinking into sudden silence. Scanlon realised the workstation had stopped talking. "Next," he said.

"Fundamentalist acquitted of murder in the destruction of a smart gel," the station recited. "Tagged to—"

Didn't she say I'd be working with her, though? Wasn't that the deal when I first came on?

"— AI, cognition, and legal."

Yeah. That's what they said. Ten years ago.

"Ahh— summary, nontechnical," Scanlon told the machine.

"Victim was a smart gel on temporary loan to the Ontario Science Center as part of a public exhibit on artificial intelligence. Accused admitted to the act, stating that neuron cultures" — the workstation changed voices, neatly inserting a sound bite— " desecrate the human soul .

"Expert defense witnesses, including a smart gel online from Rutgers, testified that neuron cultures lack the primitive midbrain structures necessary to experience pain, fear, or a desire for self-preservation. Defense argued that the concept of a 'right' is intended to protect individuals from unwarranted suffering. Since smart gels are incapable of physical or mental distress of any sort, they have no rights to protect regardless of their level of self-awareness. This reasoning was eloquently summarized during the Defense's closing statement: 'Gels themselves don't care whether they live or die. Why should we? The verdict is under appeal. Crosslinked to next item under AI and World News."

Scanlon swallowed a mouthful of powdered albumin. "List expert defense witnesses, names only."

"Phillip Quan. Lily Kozlowski. David Childs—"

"Stop." Lily Kozlowski. He knew her, from back at UCLA. An expert witness. Shit. Maybe I should have kissed a few more asses in grad school…

Scanlon snorted. "Next."

"Net infections down fifteen percent."

Problems with the Rifters, she said. I wonder… "Summary, nontechnical."

"Viral infections on the Internet have declined fifteen percent in the past six months, due to the ongoing installation of smart gels at critical nodes along the net's backbone. Digital infections find it nearly impossible to infect smart gels, each of which has a unique and flexible system architecture. In light of these most recent results, some experts are predicting a safe return to casual e-mail by the end of—"

"Ah, fuck. Cancel."

Come on, Yves. You've been waiting for years for those idiots to recognise your abilities. Maybe this is it. Don't blow it by looking too eager.

"Waiting," said the station.

Only what if she doesn't wait? What if she gets impatient and goes for someone else? What if—

"Tag the last phone call and reply." Scanlon stared at the dregs of his breakfast while the connection went up.

"Admin," said a voice that sounded real.

"Yves Scanlon for Patricia Rowan."

"Dr. Rowan is occupied. Her simulator is expecting your call. This conversation is being monitored for quality control purposes." A click, and another voice that sounded real: "Hello, Dr. Scanlon."

His Master's voice.

It rumbles up the slope from the abyssal plain, bouncing an echo that registers five hundred meters outside Beebe's official sonar range. It's moving at almost ten meters a second, not remarkable for a submarine but this thing's so close to the bottom it has to be running on treads. Six hundred meters out it crosses a small spreading zone and slews to a stop.

"What is it?" wonders Lenie Clarke.

Alice Nakata fiddles with the focus. The unknown has started up again at a crawl, edging along the length of the spread at less than one meter a second.

"It's feeding," Nakata says. "Polymetallic sulfides, perhaps."

Clarke considers. "I want to check it out."

"Yes. Shall I notify the GA?"

"Why?"

"It is probably foreign. It might not be legal."

Clarke looks at the other woman.

"There are fines for unauthorised incursions into territorial waters," Nakata says.

"Alice, really." Clarke shakes her head. "Who cares?"

Lubin is off the scope, probably sleeping on the bottom somewhere. They leave him a note. Brander and Caraco are out replacing the bearings on number six; a tremor cracked the casing last shift, jammed two thousand kilograms of mud and grit into the works. Still, the other generators are more than able to take up the slack. Brander and Caraco grab their squids and join the parade.

"We should keep our lights down," Nakata buzzes as they leave the Throat. "And stay very close to the bottom. It may frighten easily."

They follow the bearing, their lights dimmed to embers, through darkness almost impenetrable even to rifter eyes. Caraco pulls up beside Clarke: "I'm heading into the wild blue yonder after this. Wanna come?"

A shiver of second-hand revulsion tickles Clarke's insides; from Nakata, of course. Nakata used to join Caraco on her daily swim up Beebe's transponder line, until about two weeks ago. Something happened up at the deep scattering layer — nothing dangerous, apparently, but it left Alice absolutely cold at the prospect of going anywhere near the surface. Caraco's been pestering the others to pace her ever since.

Clarke shakes her head. "Didn't you get enough of a workout slurping all that shit out of number six?"

Caraco shrugs. "Different muscle groups."

"How far do you go now?"

"Up to a thousand. Give me another ten shifts and I'll be lapping all the way to the surface."

A sound has been rising around them, so gradually that Clarke can't pin down the moment she first noticed it; a grumbling, mechanical noise, the distant sound of rocks being pulverized between great molars.

Flickers of nervousness flash back and forth in the group. Clarke tries to rein herself in. She knows what's coming, they all do, it's not nearly as dangerous as the risks they face every shift. It's not dangerous at all—

— unless it's got defenses we don't know about—

— but that sound , the sheer size of this thing on the scope— We're all scared. We know there's nothing to be afraid of, but all we can hear are teeth gnashing in the darkness…

It's bad enough dealing with her own hardwired apprehension. It doesn't help to be tuned in to everyone else's.

A faint pulse of surprise from Brander, in the lead. Then from Nakata, next in line, a split-second before Clarke herself feels a slap of sluggish turbulence. Caraco, forewarned, barely radiates anything when the plume washes over her.

The darkness has become fractionally more absolute, the water itself more viscous. They hold station in a stream that's half mud, half seawater.

"Exhaust wake," Brander vibrates. He has to raise his voice slightly to be heard over the sound of feeding machinery.

They turn and follow the trail upstream, keeping to the plume's edge more by touch than sight. The ambient grumble swells to full-blown cacophony, resolves into a dozen different voices; pile-drivers, muffled explosions, the sounds of cement mixers. Clarke can barely think above the waterborne racket, or the rising apprehension in four separate minds, and suddenly it's right there , just for a moment, a great segmented tread climbing up around a gear wheel two stories high, rolling away in the murk.

" Jesus. It's fucking huge ." Brander, his vocoder cranked.

They move together, aiming their squids high and cruising up at an angle. Clarke tastes the thrill from three other sets of adrenals, adds her own and sends it back, a vicarious feedback loop. With their lamps on minimum the viz can't be more than three meters; even in front of Clarke's face the world is barely more than shadows on shadows, dimly lit by headlights bobbing to either side.