Peter Watts - Starfish

What she 's talking about.

" Gerry—"

It knows that sound too.

"— please— "

That sound comes from a long time ago.

"— trust me — is there any of you left in there? Anything at all?"

Back when the reptile was part of something larger, not an it at all, then, but—

— he .

Clusters of neurons, long dormant, sparkle in the darkness. Old, forgotten subsystems stutter and reboot.

I—

"Gerry?"

My name. That's my name . He can barely think over the sudden murmuring in his head. There are parts of him still asleep, parts that won't talk, still other parts completely washed away. He shakes his head, trying to clear it. The new parts — no, the old parts, the very old parts that went away and now they've come back and won't shut the fuck up — are all clamoring for attention.

Everywhere is so bright . Everywhere hurts. Everywhere…

Words scroll through his mind: The lights are on. Nobody's home.

The lights come on, flickering.

He can catch glimpses of sick, rotten things squirming in his head. Old memories grind screeching against thick layers of corrosion. Something lurches into sudden focus: a fist. The feel of bones, breaking in his face. The ocean in his mouth, warm and somehow brackish. A boy with a shockprod. A girl covered in bruises.

Other boys.

Other girls.

Other fists.

Everything hurts, everywhere.

Something's trying to pry his fingers free. Something's trying to drag him inside. Something wants to bring all this back. Something wants to take him home.

Words come to him, and he lets them out: "don't you fucking TOUCH ME!"

He pushes his tormentor away, makes a desperate grab for empty water. The darkness is too far away; he can see his shadow stretching along the bottom, black and solid and squirming against the light. He kicks as hard as he can. Nothing grabs him. After a while the light fades away.

But the voices shout as loud as ever.

Beebe yawns like a black pit between his feet. Something rustles down there; he catches hints of movement, darkness shifting against darkness. Suddenly something glints up at him; two ivory smudges of reflected light, all but lost against that black background. They hover there a moment, then begin to rise. A pale face resolves around them.

She climbs out of Beebe, dripping, and seems to bring some of the darkness with her. It follows her to the corner of the passenger compartment and hangs around her like a blanket. She doesn't say anything.

Joel glances into the pit, back at the rifter. "Is anyone else, er…"

She shakes her head, a gesture so subtle he nearly misses it.

"There was— I mean, the other one…" This has to be the rifter who was hanging off his viewport a few minutes ago: Clarke , her shoulder patch says. But the other one, the one that shot off like a refugee on the wrong side of the fence— that one's still close by, according to sonar. Hugging the bottom, thirty meters beyond the light. Just sitting there.

"There's no one else coming," she says. Her voice sounds small and dead.

"No one?" Two accounted for, out of a max complement of six? He cranks up the range on his display; nobody further out, either. Unless they're all hiding behind rocks or something.

He looks back down Beebe's throat. Or they could all be hiding right down there, like trolls, waiting…

He abruptly drops the hatch, spins it tight. "Clarke, right? What's going on down here?"

She blinks at him. "You think I know?" She seems almost surprised. "I thought you'd be able to tell me."

"All I know is, the GA's paying me a shitload to do graveyard on short notice." Joel climbs forward, drops into the pilot's couch. Checks sonar. That weird fucker is still out there.

"I don't think I'm supposed to leave anyone behind," he says.

"You won't be," Clarke says.

"Will too. Got him right there in my sights."

She doesn't answer. He turns around and looks at her.

"Fine," she says at last. " You go out and get him."

Joel stares at her for a few seconds. I don't really want to know , he decides at last.

He turns without another word and blows the tanks. The 'scaphe, suddenly buoyant, strains against the docking clamps. Joel frees it with a tap on his panel. The 'scaphe leaps away from Beebe like something living, wobbles against viscous resistance, and begins climbing.

"You…" From behind him.

Joel turns.

"You really don't know what's going on?" Clarke asks.

"They called me about twelve hours ago. Midnight run to Beebe, they said. When I got to Astoria they told me to evacuate everyone. They said you'd all be ready and waiting."

Her lips curve up a bit. Not exactly a smile, but probably as close as these psychos ever come. It looks good on her, in a cold distant sort of way. Get rid of the eyecaps and he could easily see himself putting her into his VR program.

"What happened to everyone else?" he risks.

"Nothing," she said. "We just got— a bit paranoid."

Joel grunts. "Don't blame you. Put me down there for a year, paranoia'd be the least of my problems."

That brief, ghostly smile again.

"But really," he says, pushing it. "Why's everyone staying behind? This some kind of a labor action? One of those—" — what did they used to call them— "strike thingies?"

"Something like that." Clarke looks up at the overhead bulkhead. "How long to the surface?"

"A good twenty minutes, I'm afraid. These GA 'scaphes are fucking dirigibles. Everyone else is out there racing with dolphins, and the most I can manage with this thing is a fast wallow. Still—" he tries a disarming grin— "there's an up side. They're paying me by the hour."

"Hooray for you," she says.

It's almost silent again.

Little by little, the voices have stopped screaming. Now they converse among themselves in whispers, discussing things that mean nothing to him. It's okay, though. He's used to being ignored. He's glad to be ignored.

You're safe, Gerry. They can't hurt you.

What— who—

They've all gone. It's just us now.

You—

It's me, Gerry. Shadow. I was wondering when you'd come back.

He shakes his head. The faintest light still leaks over his shoulder. He turns, not so much toward light as toward a subtle lessening of darkness.

She was trying to help you, Gerry. She was only trying to help.

She—

Lenie. You're her guardian angel. Remember?

I'm not sure. I think—

But you left her back there. You ran away.

She wanted— I— not inside…

He feels his legs moving. Water pushes against his face. He moves forward. A soft hole open in the darkness ahead. He can see shapes inside it.

That's where she lives, Shadow says. Remember?

He creeps back into the light. There were noises before, loud and painful. There was something big and dark, that moved. Now there is only this great ball hanging overhead, like, like,

— like a fist —

He stops, frightened. But everything's quiet, so quiet he can hear faint cries drifting across the seabed. He remembers: there's a hole in the ocean, a little ways from here, that talks to him sometimes. He's never understood what it says.

Go on , Shadow urges. She went inside.

She's gone—

You can't tell from out here. You have to get in close.

The underside of the sphere is a cool shadowy refuge; the equatorial lights can't reach all the way around its convex surface. In the overlapping shadows on the south pole, something shimmers enticingly.