Peter Watts: Starfish

"Wait a second," the pilot says.

Clarke pushes the hatch back against the bulkhead.

"You know those controls?" the pilot asks.

"I know the standard layout."

"Anything still working down there? Comm? Propulsion?"

She kneels down and ducks her head underwater. A couple of readouts that were alive before have gone out. She scans what's left.

"Waldos. Exterior floods. Sonobuoy," she reports when she comes back up. "Everything else is dead."

"Shit." His voice is shaking. "Well, we can send up the buoy, anyway. Not that they're about to launch a rescue."

She reaches through the rising water and trips the control. Something thuds softly on the outside of the hull. "Why wouldn't they? They sent you to pick us up. If we'd just gotten away before the thing went off…"

"We did," the pilot says.

Clarke looks around the compartment. "Uh—"

The pilot snorts. "Look, I don't know what the fuck you guys were doing with a nuke down there, or why you couldn't wait a bit longer to set it off, but we got away from it okay. Something shot us down afterwards."

Clarke straightens. "Shot us?"

"A missile. Air-to-air. Came right out of the stratosphere." His voice is shaking with the cold. "I don't think it actually hit the 'scaphe. Blew the shit out of the lifter, though. I barely managed to get us down to a safe level before—"

"But that doesn't— why rescue us, then shoot us down?"

He doesn't say anything. His breathing is fast and loud.

Clarke pulls again at the cockpit hatch. It swings down against the opening with a slight creak.

"That doesn't sound good," the pilot remarks.

"Hang on a sec." Clarke spins the wheel; the hatch sinks down against the mimetic seal with a sigh. "I think I've got it." She climbs back up to the rear bulkhead.

" Christ I'm cold." The pilot says. He looks at her. "Oh, shit. How far down are we?"

Clarke looks through one of the compartment's tiny portholes. Green is fading. Blue is in ascension.

"Hundred fifty meters. Maybe two."

"I should be narked."

"I switched the mix. We're on hydrox."

The pilot shudders, violently. "Look, Clarke, I'm freezing. One of those lockers has got survival suits."

She finds them, unrolls one. The pilot is trying to unhook himself from the seat, without success. She tries to help.

" Ow! "

"Your other leg's injured too. Maybe just a sprain."

" Shit! I'm coming apart and you just stuffed me up here? Didn't the GA even get you medtech training, for Christ's sake?"

She backs away: one awkward step to the back of the next passenger seat. It doesn't seem like a good time to admit that she was narked when she put him there.

"Look, I'm sorry," he says after a moment. "It's just— this is not a great situation, you know? Could you just unzip that suit, and spread it over me?"

She does.

"That's better." He's still shivering, though. "I'm Joel."

"I'm Cl— Lenie," she replies.

"So, Lenie. We're on our own, our systems are all out, and we're headed for the bottom. Any suggestions?"

She can't think of any.

"Okay. Okay." Joel takes a few deep breaths. "How much hydrox do we have?"

She climbs down and checks the gauge on the cascade. "Sixteen thousand. What's our volume?"

"Not much." He frowns, acting as though he's only trying to concentrate. "You said two hundred meters, that puts us at, lessee, twenty atmospheres when you sealed the hatch. Should keep us going for a hundred minutes or so." He tries a laugh; it doesn't come off. "If they are sending a rescue, they'd better do it pretty fucking fast."

She plays along. "It could be worse. How long would it last if we hadn't sealed the hatch until, say, a thousand meters?"

Shaking. "Ooh. Twenty minutes. And the bottom's close to four thousand around here, and that far down it'd last, say it'd last, five minutes, tops." He gulps air. "Hundred and eight minutes isn't so bad. A lot can happen in a hundred and eight minutes…"

"I wonder if they got away," Clarke whispers.

"What did you say?"

"There were others. My—friends." She shakes her head. "They were going to swim back."

"To the mainland? That's insane!"

"No. It could work, if only they got far enough before—"

"When did they leave?" Joel asks.

"About eight hours before you came."

Joel says nothing.

"They could have made it," Lenie insists, hating him for his silence.

"Lenie, at that range—I don't think so."

"It's possible . You can't just—oh, no …"

"What?" Joel twists in his harness, tries to see what she's looking at. " What? "

A meter and a half below Lenie Clarke's feet, a needle of seawater shoots up from the edge of the cockpit hatch. Two more erupt as she watches.

Beyond the porthole, the sea has turned deep blue.

The ocean squeezes into Forcipiger , bullies the atmosphere into tighter and tighter corners. It never lets up.

Blue is fading. Soon, black will be all that's left.

Lenie Clarke can see Joel's eye on the hatch. Not the leaky traitor that let the enemy in past the cockpit; that's under almost two meters of icewater now. No, Joel's watching the ventral docking hatch that once opened and closed on Beebe Station. It sits embedded in the deck-turned-wall, integrity uncompromised, the water just beginning to lap at its lower edge. And Lenie Clarke knows exactly what Joel is thinking, because she's thinking it too.

"Lenie," he says.

"Right here."

"You ever try to kill yourself?"

She smiles. "Sure. Hasn't everyone?"

"Didn't work, though."

"Apparently not," Clarke concurs.

"What happened?" Joel asks. He's shivering again, the water's almost up to him, but other than that his voice seems calm.

"Not much. I was eleven. Plastered a bunch of derms all over my body. Passed out. Woke up in an MA ward."

"Shit. One step up from refmed."

"Yeah, well, we can't all be rich. Besides, it wasn't that bad. They even had counsellors on staff. I saw one myself."

"Yeah?" His voice is starting to shake again. "What'd she say?"

"He. He told me the world was full of people who needed him a lot more than I did, and next time I wanted attention maybe I could do it in some way that didn't cost the taxpayer."

"S-shit. What an as—asshole." Joel's got the shakes again.

"Not really. He was right. And I never tried it again, so it must've worked." Clarke slips into the water. "I'm going to change the mix. You look like you're starting to spazz again."

"Len—"

But she's gone before he can finish.

She slips down to the bottom of the compartment, tweaks the valves she finds there. High pressure turns oxygen to poison; the deeper they go, the less of it that air-breathers can tolerate without going into convulsions. This is the second time she's had to lean out the mixture. By now, she and Joel are only breathing one percent O 2.

If he lives long enough, though, there'll be other things she can't control. Joel isn't equipped with rifter neuroinhibitors.

She has to go up and face him again. She's holding her breath, there's no point in switching on her electrolyser for a measly twenty or thirty seconds. She's tempted to do it anyway, tempted to just stay down here. He can't ask her as long as she stays down here. She's safe.

But of all the things she's been in her life, she's never had to admit to being a coward.

She surfaces. Joel's still staring at the hatch. He opens his mouth to speak.

"Hey, Joel," she says quickly, "you sure you don't want me to switch over? It really doesn't make sense for me to use your air when I don't have to."

He shakes his head. "I don't want to spend my last few minutes alive listening to a machine voice, Lenie. Please. Just— stay with me."