Peter Watts - Starfish

Rowan checked her watch; only an hour since the decision. Only an hour since their hand had been forced. Somehow, it seemed a lot longer.

"Tactical feed from seismic 31," she said. "Descramble."

Her eyes filled with information. A false-color map snapped into focus in the air before her, a scarred ocean floor laid bare and stretched vertically. One of those scars was shuddering.

Beyond the virtual display, beyond the window, a section of cityscape flickered weakly alight. Further north, another sector began to shine. Rowan's minions were frantically rerouting power from Gorda and Mendocino, from equatorial sunfarms, from a thousand small dams scattered throughout the Cordillera. It would take time, though. More than they had.

Perhaps we should have warned them. Even an hour's advance notice would have been something. Not enough time for evac, of course, but maybe enough time to take the china off the shelves. Enough time to line up some extra backups, for all the good they'd do. Lots of time for the entire coast to panic if the word got out. Which was why not even her own family had any idea of the reason behind their sudden surprise trip to the east coast.

The sea floor rippled in Rowan's eyes, as though made of rubber. Floating just above it, a translucent plane representing the ocean's surface was shedding rings. The two shockwaves raced each other across the display, the seabed tremor in the lead. It bore down on the Cascadia Subduction Zone, crashed into it, sent weaker tremors shivering off along the fault at right angles. It seemed to hesitate there for a moment, and Rowan almost dared to hope that the Zone had firewalled it.

But now the Zone itself began to slide, slow, ponderous, almost indiscernible at first. Way down in the moho, five hundred-year-old fingernails began tearing painfully free. Five centuries of pent-up tension, slumping.

Next stop, Vancouver Island.

Something unthinkable was rebounding along the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Kelp harvesters and supertankers would be sensing impossible changes in the depth of the water column below them. If there were humans on board, they'd have a few moments to reflect on how utterly useless a ninety second warning can be.

It was more than the Strip got.

The tactical display didn't show any of the details, of course. It showed a brown ripple sweeping across coastal bedrock and moving inland. It showed a white arc gliding in behind, at sea level. It didn't show the ocean rearing up offshore like a range of foothills. It didn't show sea level turning on edge. It didn't show a thirty-meter wall of ocean smashing five million refugees into jelly.

Rowan saw it all anyway.

She blinked three times, eyes stinging: the display vanished. In the distance the red pinpoints of ambulance and police lights were flashing here and there across the comatose grid; whether in response to alarms already sounded or merely pending, she didn't know. Distance and soundproofing blocked any siren song.

Very gently, the floor began to rock.

It was almost a lullaby at first, back and forth, building gradually to a swaying crescendo that nearly threw her off her feet. The structure complained on all sides, concrete growling against girder, more felt that heard. She spread her arms, balancing, embracing space. She couldn't bring herself to cry.

The great window burst outward in a million tinkling fragments and showered itself into the night. The air filled with glass spores and the sound of windchimes.

There was no glass on the carpet.

Oh Christ , she realized dully. The contractors fucked up. All that money spent on imploding anti-earthquake glass, and they put it in backwards…

Off to the southwest, a small orange sun was rising. Patricia Rowan sagged to her knees on the pristine carpet. Suddenly, at last, her eyes were stinging. She let the tears come, profoundly grateful; still human , she told herself. I'm still human.

The wind washed over her. It carried the faint sounds of people and machinery, screaming.

The ocean is green. Lenie Clarke doesn't know how long she's been unconscious, but they can't have sunk more than a hundred meters. The ocean is still green.

Forcipiger falls slowly through the water, nose-down, its atmosphere bleeding away through a dozen small wounds. A crack the shape of a lightning bolt runs across the forward viewport; Clarke can barely see it through the water rising in the cockpit. The forward end of the 'scaphe has become the bottom of a well. Clarke braces her feet against the back of a passenger seat and leans against a vertical deck. The ceiling lightstrip flickers in front of her. She's managed to get the pilot up out of the water and strapped into another seat. At least one of his legs is definitely broken. He hangs there like a soaked marionette, still unconscious. He continues to breathe. She doesn't know whether he'll actually wake up again.

Maybe better if he doesn't , she reflects, and giggles.

That wasn't very funny, she tells herself, and giggles again.

Oh shit. I'm looped.

She tries to concentrate. She can focus on isolated things: a single rivet in front of her. The sound of metal, creaking. But they take up all her attention, somehow. Whatever she happens to be looking at swells up and fills her world. She can barely think of anything else.

Hundred meters , she manages at last. Hull breach. Pressure— up—

Nitrogen—

— narcosis—

She bends down to check the atmosphere controls on the wall. They're sideways. She finds this vaguely amusing, but she doesn't know why. Anyhow, they don't seem to work.

She bends down to an access panel, slips, bounces painfully down into the cockpit with a splash. Occasional readouts twinkle on the submerged panels. They're pretty, but the longer she looks at them the more her chest hurts. Eventually she makes the connection, pulls her head back up into atmosphere.

The access panel is right in front of her. She fumbles at it a couple of times, gets it open. Hydrox tanks lie side-by-side in military formation, linked together into some sort of cascade system. There's a big yellow handle at one end. She pulls at it. It gives, unexpectedly. Clarke loses her balance and slides back underwater.

There's a ventilator duct right in front of her face. She's not sure, but she thinks the last time she was down here it didn't have all these bubbles coming out of it. She thinks that's a good sign. She decides to stay here for a while, and watch the bubbles. Something's bothering her, though. Something in her chest.

Oh, that's right. She keeps forgetting. She can't breathe.

Somehow she gets her face seal zipped up. The last thing she remembers is her lung shriveling away, and water rushing through her chest.

The next time she comes up, two thirds of the cockpit is flooded. She rises into the aft compartment, peels the 'skin off her face. Water drains from the left side of her chest; atmosphere fills the right.

Overhead, the pilot is moaning.

She climbs up to him, swings his seat around so that he's lying on his back, facing the rear bulkhead. She locks it into position, tries to keep his broken leg reasonably straight.

" Ow ," he cries.

"Sorry. Try not to move. Your leg's broken."

"No shit. Oww. " He shivers. "Christ I'm cold." Clarke sees it sink in. "Oh Christ. We're breached." He tries to move, manages to twist his head around before some other injury twists back. He relaxes, wincing.

"The cockpit's flooding," she tells him. "Slowly, so far. Hang on a second." She climbs back down and pulls at the edge of the cockpit hatch. It sticks. Clarke keeps pulling. The hatch comes loose, starts to swing down.