Peter Watts - Starfish

Take control.

I believe some sort of Ganzfeld Effect may be at work here. The dark, weightless abyssal environment might impoverish the senses enough to push the signal-to-noise ratio past threshold. My observations suggest that the women may be more sensitive than the men, which is consistent given their larger corpus callosa and consequent advantage in intercortical processing speed..

Whatever the cause of this phenomenon, it has yet to affect me. Perhaps it just takes a little time.

Oh, one other thing. I was unable to find any record of Karl Acton using the medical scanner. I've asked Clarke and Brander about this, neither could remember Acton actually using the machine. Given the number of injuries on record for everyone else, I find this surprising.

Yves Scanlon sits at the table and forces himself to eat with a mouth gone utterly dry. He hears the vampires moving downstairs, moving along the corridor, moving just behind him. He doesn’t turn around. He mustn’t show any weakness. He can’t betray any lack of confidence.

Vampires, he knows now, are like dogs. They can smell fear.

His head is full of sampled sounds, looping endlessly. You’re not among friends here, Scanlon. Don’t make us into enemies. That was Brander, five minutes ago, whispering in Scanlon’s ear before dropping down into the wetroom. And Caraco click click clicking her bread knife against the table until he could barely hear himself think. And Nakata and that stupid giggle of hers. And Patricia Rowan, sometime in the imagined future, sneering Well if you can't even handle a routine assignment without starting a revolt it's no wonder we didn't trust you…

Or perhaps, echoing back along a different timeline, a terse call to the GA: We lost Scanlon. Sorry.

And underlying it all, that long, hollow, icy sound, slithering along the floor of his brain. That thing. That thing that nobody mentions. The voice in the abyss. It sounds nearby tonight, whatever it is.

Not that that matters to the vampires. They’re sealing their ‘skins while Scanlon sits frozen at the end of his meal, they’re grabbing their fins, dropping outside in ones and twos, deserting him. They’re going out there, with the moaning thing.

Scanlon wonders, over the voices in his head, if it can get inside. If this is the night they bring it back with them.

The vampires are all gone. After a while, even the voices in Scanlon’s head start to fade. Most of them.

This is insane. I can't just sit here.

There’s one voice he didn’t hear tonight. Lenie Clarke just sat there through the whole fiasco, watching. Clarke’s the one they look to, all right. She doesn't talk much, but they pay attention when she does. Scanlon wonders what she tells them, when he’s not around.

Can’t just sit here. And it’s not that bad. It’s not as though they really threatened me—

You’re not among friends here, Scanlon.

— not explicitly.

He tries to figure out exactly where he lost them. It seemed like a reasonable enough proposition. The prospect of shorter tours shouldn't have put them off like that. Even if they are addicted to this godawful place, it was just a suggestion . Scanlon went out of his way to be completely nonthreatening. Unless they took exception to his mention of their carelessness in the safety department. But that should have been old news; they not only knew the chances they were taking, they flaunted them.

Who am I kidding? That's not when I lost them. I shouldn't have mentioned Lubin, shouldn't have used him as an example.

It made so much sense at the time, though. Scanlon knows Lubin’s an outsider, even down here. Scanlon’s not an idiot, he can read the signs even behind the eyecaps. Lubin's different from the other vampires. Using him as an example should have been the safest thing in the world. Scapegoats have been a respected part of the therapeutic arsenal for hundreds of years.

Look, you want to end up like Lubin? He sleeps outside, for Christ’s sake!

Scanlon puts his head in his hands. How was I supposed to know they all did?

Maybe he should have. He could have monitored sonar more closely. Or timed them when they went into their cubbies, seen how long they stayed inside. There were things he could have done, he knows.

Maybe I really did fuck up. Maybe. If only I’d—

Jesus, that sounds close. What is—

Shut up! Just shut the fuck up!

Maybe it shows up on sonar.

Scanlon takes a breath and ducks into Comm. He’s had basic training on the gear, of course; it’s all pretty intuitive anyway. He didn’t really need Clarke’s grudging tutorial. A few seconds’ effort elicits a tactical overview: vampires, strung like beads on an invisible line between Beebe and the Throat. Another one off to the west, heading for the Throat; probably Lubin. Random topography. Nothing else.

As he watches, the four icons closest to Beebe edge a pixel or two closer to Main Street. The fifth in line is way out ahead, almost as far out as Lubin. Nearly at the Throat already.

Wait a second.

Vampires: Brander, Caraco, Clarke, Lubin, Nakata. Right.

Icons: one, two, three, four, five—

Six.

Scanlon stares at the screen. Oh shit.

Beebe’s phone link is very old-school; a direct line, not even routed through the telemetry and comm servers. It’s almost Victorian in its simplicity, guaranteed to stay on-line through any systems crash short of an implosion. Scanlon has never used it before. Why should he? The moment he calls home he’s admitting he can’t do the job by himself.

Now he hits the call stud without a moment’s hesitation. “This is Scanlon, Human Resources. I’ve got a bit of a—”

The line stays dark.

He tries again. Dead.

Shit shit shit. Somehow, though, he isn’t surprised.

I could call the vampires. I could order them to come back in. I have the authority. It’s an amusing thought for a few moments.

At least the Voice seems to have faded. He thinks he can hear it, if he concentrates, but it’s so faint it could even be his imagination.

Beebe squeezes down on him. He looks back at the tactical display, hopefully. One, two, three, f—

Oh shit.

He doesn’t remember going outside. He remembers struggling into his preshmesh, and picking up a sonar pistol, and now he’s on the seabed, under Beebe. He takes a bearing, checks it, checks it again. It doesn’t change.

He creeps away from the light, towards the Throat. He fights with himself for endless moments, wins; his headlamp stays doused. No sense in broadcasting his presence.

He swims blind, hugging the bottom. Every now and then he takes a bearing, resets his course. Scanlon zigzags across the sea floor. Eventually the abyss begins to lighten before him.

Something moans, directly ahead.

It doesn’t sound lonely any more. It sounds cold and hungry and utterly inhuman. Scanlon freezes like a night creature caught in headlights.

After a while the sound goes away.

The Throat glimmers half-resolved, maybe twenty meters ahead. It looks like a spectral collection of buildings and derricks set down on the moon. Murky copper lights spills down from floods set half-way up the generators. Scanlon circles, just beyond the light.

Something moves, off to the left.

An alien sigh.

He flattens down onto the bottom, eyes closed. Grow up, Scanlon. Whatever it is, it can’t hurt you. Nothing can bite through preshmesh.