Peter Watts - Starfish

All in the few scant seconds before she crystallizes.

She seems to harden against the sound, against Scanlon's assault. Her face goes completely blank. She rises out of the chair, centimeters taller than she should be. One hand comes up, grabs Yves Scanlon by the throat. Pushes.

He staggers backwards into the lounge, flailing. The table appears to one side; he reaches out, steadies himself.

Suddenly, Beebe falls silent again.

Scanlon takes a deep breath. Another vampire has appeared in his peripheral vision, standing impassively at the mouth of the corridor; he ignores it. Directly ahead, Lenie Clarke is sitting down again in Communications, her back turned. Scanlon steps forward.

"It's Karl," she says before he can speak.

It takes a moment to register: Acton .

"But— that was months ago," Scanlon says. "You lost him."

"We lost him." She breathes, slowly. "He went down a smoker. It erupted."

"I'm sorry," Scanlon says. "I— didn't know."

"Yeah." Her voice is tight with controlled indifference. "He's too far down to— we can't get him back. Too dangerous." She turns to face him, impossibly calm. "Deadman switch still works, though. It'll keep screaming until the battery runs down." She shrugs. "So we keep the alarm off."

"I don't blame you," Scanlon says softly.

"Imagine," Clarke tells him, "how much your approval comforts me."

He turns to leave.

"Wait," she says. "I can zoom in for you. I can show you exactly where he died, maximum res."

"That's not necessary."

She stabs controls. "No problem. Naturally you're interested. What kind of mechanic wouldn't want to know the performance specs on his own creation?" She reshapes the display like a sculptor, hones it down and down until there's nothing left but a tangle of faint green lines and a red pulsing dot.

"He got wedged into an ancillary crevice," she says. "Looks like a tight fit even now, when all the flesh has been boiled away. Don't know how he managed to get down there when he was all in one piece." There's no stress in her voice at all. She could be talking about a friend's vacation.

Scanlon can feel her eyes on him; he keeps his on the screen.

"Fischer," he says. "What happened to him?"

From the corner of his eye: she starts to tense, turns it into a shrug. "Who knows? Maybe Archie got him."

"Archie?"

"Archie Toothis." Scanlon doesn't recognize the name; it's not in any of his files, as far as he knows. He considers, decides not to push it.

"Did Fischer's deadman go off, at least?"

"He didn't have one." She shrugs. "The abyss can kill you any number of ways, Scanlon. It doesn't always leave traces."

"I'm— I'm sorry if I upset you, Lenie."

One corner of her mouth barely twitches.

And he is sorry. Even though it's not his fault. I didn't make you what you are , he wants to say. I didn't smash you into junk, that was someone else. I just came along afterwards and found a use for you. I gave you a purpose, more of a purpose than you ever had back there.

Is that really so bad?

He doesn't dare ask aloud, so he turns to leave. And when Lenie Clarke lays one finger, very briefly, on the screen where Acton's icon flashes, he pretends not to notice.

TRANS/OFFI/260850:1352

I recently had an interesting conversation with Lenie Clarke. Although she didn't admit so openly— she is very well defended, and quite expert at hiding her feelings from laypeople— I believe that she and Karl Acton were sexually involved. This is a heartening discovery, insofar as my original profiles strongly suggested that such a relationship would develop. (Clarke has a history of relationships with Intermittent Explosives.) This adds a measure of empirical confidence to other, related predictions regarding rifter behavior.

I have also learned that Karl Acton, rather than simply disappearing, was actually killed by an erupting smoker. I don't know what he was doing down there— I'll continue to investigate— but the behavior itself seems foolish at best and quite possibly suicidal. Suicide is not consistent either with Karl Acton's DSM or ECM profiles, which must have been accurate when first derived. Suicide, therefore, would imply a degree of basic personality change. This is consistent with the trauma-addiction scenario. However, some sort of physical brain injury can not be ruled out. My search of the medical logs didn't turn up any head injuries, but was limited to living participants. Perhaps Acton was… different…

Oh. I found out who Archie Toothis is. Not in the personnel files at all. The library. Architeuthis : giant squid.

I think she was kidding.

At times like this it seems as if the world has always been black.

It hasn't, of course. Joel Kita caught a hint of ambient blue out the dorsal port just ten minutes ago. Right before they dropped through the deep scattering layer; pretty thin stuff compared to the old days, he's been told, but still impressive. Glowing siphonophores and flashlight fish and all. Still beautiful.

That's a thousand meters above them now. Right here there's nothing but the thin vertical slash of Beebe's transponder line. Joel has put the 'scaphe into a lazy spin during the drop, forward floods sweeping the water in a descending corkscrew. The transponder line swings past the main viewport every thirty seconds or so, keeping time, a bright vertical line against the dark.

Other than that, blackness.

A tiny monster bumps the port. Needle teeth so long the mouth can't close, an eel-like body studded with glowing photophores— fifteen, twenty centimeters long, tops. It's not even big enough to make a sound when it hits and then it's gone, spinning away above them.

"Viperfish," Jarvis says.

Joel glances around at his passenger, hunched up beside him to take advantage of what might laughingly be called "the view". Jarvis is some sort of cellular physiologist out of Rand/Washington U., here to collect a mysterious package in a plain brown wrapper.

"See many of those?" he asks now.

Joel shakes his head. "Not this far down. Kind of unusual."

"Yeah, well, this whole area is unusual. That's why I'm here."

Joel checks tactical, nudges a trim tab.

"Now viperfish, they're not supposed to get any bigger than the one you just saw," Jarvis remarks. "But there was a guy, oh, back in the 1930s— Beebe his name was, the same guy they named— anyway, he swore he saw one that was over two meters long."

Joel grunts. "Didn't know people came down here back then."

"Yeah, well, they were just starting out. And everyone had always thought deepwater fish were these puny little midgets, because that's all they ever brought up in their trawls. But then Beebe sees this big ripping viperfish, and people start thinking hey, maybe we only caught little ones because all the big ones could outswim the trawls. Maybe the deep sea really is teeming with giant monsters."

"It's not," Joel says. "At least, not that I've seen."

"Yeah, well, that's what most people think. Every now and then you get pieces of something weird washing up, though. And of course there's Megamouth. And your garden-variety giant squid."

"They never get down this far. I bet none of your other giants do either. Not enough food."

"Except for the vents," Jarvis says.

"Except for the vents."

"Actually," Jarvis amends, "except for this vent."

The transponder line swings past, a silent metronome.

"Yeah," says Joel after a moment. "Why is that?"

"Well, we're not sure. We're working on it, though. That's what I'm doing here. Gonna bag one of those scaly mothers."