Peter Watts - Starfish

Clarke takes a small step back. Okay. Fine. If he thinks he can fuck with Lubin he's on his own.

But Lubin isn't showing any of the signs. No change in stance, no change in breathing, his hands stay unclenched at his sides. When he speaks, his voice is calm and even. "If it'll make you feel any better, by all means; call upstairs and tell them I'm still alive. Tell them you lied. If they »

The eyes don't change. That flat white stare persists while the flesh around it twitches , suddenly, and now Clarke can see the signs, the slight lean forward, the subtle cording of veins and tendons in the throat. Brander sees them too. He's standing still as a dog caught in headlights.

Fuck fuck fuck he's going to blow…

But she's wrong again. Impossibly, Lubin relaxes. "As for your endearing desire to get to know me," — laying a casual hand on Brander's shoulder— "you're luckier than you know that that hasn't happened."

Lubin takes back his hand, steps towards the ladder. "I'll go along with whatever you decide, as long as it doesn't involve tampering with nuclear explosives. In the meantime, I'm going outside. It's getting close in here."

He drops through the floor. Nobody else moves. The sound of the airlock flooding seems especially loud.

" Jesus , Mike," Lenie breathes at last.

"Since when was he calling the shots?" Brander seems to have regained some of his bravado. He casts a hostile glance through the deck. "I don't trust that fucker. No matter what he says. Probably tuning us in right now."

"If he is, I doubt he's picking up anything you haven't already shouted at him."

"Listen," says Nakata. "We must do something."

Brander throws his hands in the air. "What choice is there? If we don't disarm the fucking thing, we either get the hell out of here or we sit around and wait to get incinerated. Not really a tough decision if you ask me."

Isn't it , Clarke wonders.

"We cannot leave by the surface," Nakata points out, "if they got Judy…"

"So we hug the bottom," Brander says. "Right. Scam their sonar. We'd have to leave the squids behind, they'd be too easy to track."

Nakata nods.

"Lenie? What?"

Clarke looks up. Brander and Nakata are both staring at her. "I didn't say anything."

"You look like you don't approve."

"It's three hundred klicks to Vancouver Island, Mike. Minimum. It could take over a week to make it without squids, assuming we don't get lost."

"Our compasses work fine once we're away from the rift. And it's a pretty big continent, Len; we'd have to try pretty hard not to bump into it."

"And what do we do when we get there? How would we make it past the Strip?"

Brander shrugs. "Sure. For all we know the refs could eat us alive, if our tubes don't choke on all the shit floating around back there. But really, Len, would you rather take your chances with a ticking nuke? It's not like we're drowning in options."

"Sure." Clarke moves one hand in a gesture of surrender. "Fine."

"Your problem, Len, is you've always been a fatalist," Brander pronounces.

She has to smile at that. Not always.

"There is also the question of food," Nakata says. "To bring enough for the trip will slow us considerably."

I don't want to leave, Clarke realizes. Even now. Isn't that stupid.

"— don't think speed is much of a concern," Brander is saying. "If this thing goes off in the next few days an few extra meters per hour won't to do us much good anyway."

"We could travel light and forage on the way," Clarke muses, her mind wandering. "Gerry does okay."

"Gerry," Brander repeats, suddenly subdued.

A moment's silence. Beebe shivers with the small distant cry of Lubin's memorial.

"Oh God," Brander says softly. "That thing can really get on your nerves after a while."

There was a sound.

Not a voice. It had been days since he'd heard any voice but his own. Not the food dispenser or the toilet. Not the familiar crunch of his feet over dismembered machinery. Not even the sound of breaking plastic or the clang of metal under assault; he'd already destroyed everything he could, given up on the rest.

No, this was something else. A hissing sound. It took him a few moments to remember what it was.

The access hatch, pressurizing.

He craned his neck until he could see around the corner of an intervening cabinet. The usual red light glowed from the wall to one side of the big metal ellipse. It turned green as he watched.

The hatch swung open. Two men in body condoms stepped through, light from behind throwing their shadows along the length of the dark room. They looked around, not seeing him at first.

One of them turned up the lights.

Scanlon squinted up from the corner. The men were wearing sidearms. They looked down at him for a few moments, folds of isolation membrane draped around their faces like leprous skin.

Scanlon sighed and pulled himself to his feet. Fragments of bruised technology tinkled to the floor. The guards stood aside to let him pass. Without a word they followed him back outside.

Another room. A strip of light divided it into two dark halves. It speared down from a recessed groove in the ceiling, bisecting the wine draperies and the carpet, laying a bright band across the conference table. Tiny bright hyphens reflected from perspex workpads set into the mahogany.

A line in the sand. Patricia Rowan stood well back on the other side, her face half-lit in profile.

"Nice room," Scanlon remarked. "Does this mean I'm out of quarantine?"

Rowan didn't face him. "I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to stay on your side of the light. For your own safety."

"Not yours?"

Rowan gestured at the light without looking. "Microwave. UV too, I think. You'd fry if you crossed it."

"Ah. Well, maybe you've been right all along." Scanlon pulled a chair out from the conference table and sat down. "I developed a real symptom the other day. My stools seem a bit off. Intestinal flora not working properly, I guess."

"I'm sorry to hear it."

"I thought you'd be pleased. It's the closest thing to vindication you've got to date."

Neither person spoke for nearly a minute.

"I… I wanted to talk," Rowan said at last.

"So did I. A couple of weeks ago." And then, when she didn't respond: "Why now?"

"You're a therapist, aren't you?"

"Neurocognitist. And we haven't talked , as you put it, for decades. We prescribe."

She lowered her face.

"You see, I have," she began.

"Blood on my hands," she said a moment later.

I bet I know whose, too. "Then you really don't want me. You want a priest."

"They don't talk either. At least, they don't say much."

The curtain of light hummed softly, like a bug zapper.

"Pyranosal RNA," Scanlon said after a moment. "Five-sided ribose ring. A precursor to modern nucleic acids, pretty widespread about three and a half billion years ago. The library says it would've made a perfectly acceptable genetic template on its own; faster replication than DNA, fewer replication errors. Never caught on, though."

Rowan said nothing. She may have nodded, but it was hard to tell.

"So much for your story about an agricultural hazard . So are you finally going to tell me what's going on, or are you still into role-playing games?"

Rowan shook herself, as though coming back from somewhere. For the first time, she looked directly at Scanlon. The sterilight reflected off her forehead, buried her eyes in black pools of shadow. Her contacts shimmered like back-lit platinum.

She didn't seem to notice his condition.