Peter Watts - Starfish

Caraco holds her knees tightly against her chest. She can feel the scars there, a raised web of old tissue from the time they cut her open. Eyes still shut, she runs her fingers along the ridges.

I want my eyes back.

But all she has now are these naked, fleshy things that anyone can see. She opens them the merest crack, peeks between her fingers. She's alone.

"We have to know some things, Judy. For your own good. We need to know how you found out."

" Found out what? " she cries, her face in hands. "I was just… exercising…"

"It's okay, Judy. There's no hurry. You can rest now, if you want. Oh, and there are clothes in the drawer on your right."

She shakes her head. She doesn't care about clothes, she's been naked in front of worse monsters than these. It's only skin.

I want my eyes.

Dead air from the speaker.

"Did you copy that?" Brander says after five seconds have passed.

"Yes. Yes, of course." The line hums for a second. "It just comes as a bit of a shock, that's all. It's just— very bad news."

Clarke frowns, and says nothing.

"Maybe she got detoured by a current at the thermocline," the speaker suggests. "Or caught up in a Langmuir cell. Are you sure she isn't still above the scattering layer somewhere?"

"Of course we're s—" Nakata bursts out, and stops. Ken Lubin has just laid a cautionary hand on her shoulder.

There's a moment's silence.

"It is night up there," Brander says finally. The deep scattering layer rises with darkness, spreads thin near the surface until daylight chases it back down. "And we'd be able to get her voice channel even if sonar couldn't get through. But maybe we should go up there ourselves and look around."

"No. That won't be necessary," says the speaker. "In fact, it might be dangerous, until we know more about what happened to Caraco."

"So we don't even look for her?" Nakata looks at the others, outrage and astonishment mingling on her face. "She could be hurt, she could be—"

"Excuse me, Ms.—"

"Nakata! Alice Nakata! I can not believe —"

"Ms. Nakata, we are looking for her. We've already scrambled a search team to scour the surface. But you're in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. You simply don't have the resources to cover the necessary volume." A deep breath, carried flawlessly down four hundred kilometers of fiberop. "On the other hand, if Ms. Caraco is at all mobile, she'll most likely try and make it back to Beebe. If you want to search, your best odds are to look close to home."

Nakata looks helplessly around the room. Lubin stands expressionless; after a moment he puts one finger to his lips. Brander glances back and forth between them.

Lenie Clarke looks away.

"And you don't have any idea what might have happened to her?" the GA asks.

Brander grits his teeth. "I said , some kind of sonar spike. No detail. We thought you might be able to tell us something."

"I'm sorry. We don't know. It's just unfortunate that she wandered so far from Beebe. The ocean, it's— well, not always safe. It's even possible a squid got her. She was at the right depth."

Nakata's head is shaking. " No ," she whispers.

"Be sure and call if anything turns up," the speaker says. "We're setting up the search plan now, so if there's nothing else—"

"There is," Lubin says.

"Oh?"

"There's an unmanned installation a few klicks northwest of us. Recently installed."

"Really?"

"You don't know about it?"

"Hang on, I'm punching it up." The speaker falls briefly silent. "Got it. My God, that's way out of your back yard. I'm surprised you even picked it up."

"What is it?" Lubin says. Clarke watches him, the hairs on her neck stirring.

"Seismology rig, it says here. OSU put it down there for some study on natural radioactives and tectonics. You should really keep away from it, it's a bit hot. Carrying some calibration isotopes."

"Unshielded?"

"Apparently."

"Doesn't that scramble the onboard?" Lubin wants to know.

Nakata stares at him, open-mouthed and angry. "Who cares ! Judy's missing !"

She's got a point. Lubin barely even talks to the other rifters; coming from him, this interchange with the drybacks almost qualifies as babbling.

"Says here it's an optical processor," the speaker says after a brief pause. "Radiation doesn't bother it. But I think Al— Ms. Nakata is right, your first priority—"

Lubin reaches past Brander and kills the connection.

"Hey," Brander says sharply.

Nakata gives Lubin a blank angry stare and disappears from the hatchway. Clarke hears her retreat into her cubby and dog the hatch. Brander looks up at Lubin. "Maybe it hasn't dawned on you, Ken, but Judy just might be dead. We're kind of upset about that. Alice especially."

Lubin nods, expressionless.

"So I've got to wonder why you chose this moment to grill the GA about the technical specs on a fucking seismic rig."

"That's not what it is," Lubin says.

"Yeah?" Brander rises, twisting up out of the console chair. "And just what—"

"Mike," says Clarke.

"What?"

She shakes her head. "They said an optical CPU."

"So the fuck wh— " Brander stops in mid-epithet. Anger drains from his face.

"Not a gel," Clarke says. "A chip. That's what they're saying."

"But why lie to us?" Brander asks, "when we can just go out there and feel …"

"They don't know we can do that, remember?" She lets out a little smile, like a secret shared between friends. "They don't know anything about us. All they've got is their files."

"Not any more," Brander reminds her. "Now they've got Judy."

"They've got us too," Lubin adds. "Quarantined."

"Alice. It's me."

A soft voice through hard metal: "Come…"

Clarke pulls the hatch open, steps through.

Alice Nakata looks up from her pallet as the hatch sighs shut. Almond eyes, dark and startling, reflect in the dimmed light. One hand goes to her face: "Oh. Excuse me, I'll…" She fumbles at the bedhead compartment, where her eyecaps float in plastic vials.

"Hey. No problem." Clarke reaches out, stops just short of touching Nakata's arm. "I like your eyes, I've always— well…"

"I should not be sulking in here anyway," Nakata says, rising. "I'm going outside."

"Alice—"

"I am not going to just let her disappear out there. Are you coming?"

Clarke sighs. "Alice, the GA's right. There's just too much volume. If she's still out there, she knows where we are."

"If? Where else would she be?"

Clarke looks at the deck, reviewing possibilities.

"I–I think the drybacks took her," she says at last. "I think they'll take us, too, if we go after her."

Nakata stares at Clarke with disquieting human eyes. "Why? Why would they do that?"

"I don't know."

Nakata sags back on the pallet. Clarke sits down beside her.

Neither woman speaks for a while.

"I'm sorry," Clarke says at last. She doesn't know what else to say. "We all are."

Alice Nakata stares at the floor. Her eyes are bright, but not overflowing. "Not all," she whispers. "Ken seemed more interested in—"

"Ken had his reasons. They're lying to us, Alice."

"They always lied to us," Nakata says softly, not looking up. And then: "I should have been there."

"Why?"

"I don't know. If there'd been two of us, maybe…"

"Then we'd have lost both of you."

"You don't know that. Maybe it wasn't the drybacks at all, maybe she just ran into something… living."

Clarke doesn't speak. She's heard the same stories Nakata has. Confirmed reports of people getting eaten by Archie date back over a hundred years. Not many, of course; humans and giant squid don't run into each other that often. Even rifters swim too deep for such encounters.