Грег Иган - The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 1

She went through her contact list again and again. Finally, on an inkling, she called Elsa. They had never been very close, but Elsa worked on climate change or pollution or something, and maybe she would understand.

When she thought about that call later, Natalia could never remember exactly what she said, how she explained this complex situation. She remembered the physical sensation of the words falling out of her mouth like a landslide and Elsa saying “Okay. Okay. It’s okay,” over and over. She remembered that when she had calmed down a little, Elsa made the tentative, requisite suggestion that she “talk to someone” and Natalia responded, almost hysterically, “Here?” Elsa might not have understood what she meant, but Natalia was a transplant in Australia. The language still reached her in translation, interactions still happened through a membrane of foreignness. She couldn’t imagine trying to lay bare her feelings in this way.

“You should talk to a professional.” Elsa repeated it more firmly. “I am not a professional. I don’t know the right things to say.” She sighed then. “All I can tell you is my own experience. And…” It was a long pause, long enough to draw Natalia out far enough from the cotton batting of her own pain to wonder if Elsa was okay. “There’s despair, almost all the time. And fury. And sometimes I don’t know what to do. But usually, most of the time… if I keep showing up, and if I focus on… on the immediate, on what’s in front of me… there’s some solace in that. I’m never sure it’s enough.”

“Ayayay,” Natalia said. “I hope I haven’t pulled you down into this dark place with me.”

And Elsa laughed. “I live in that dark place. I have sturdy ladders and lanterns.”

If it hadn’t been for that conversation, Natalia might not have taken the call from Gilcrest. Also the fact that she felt guilty about the way she had left the project, without explanation, after that day on the skeleton of the reef. Felt guilty and unprofessional and also kept wondering about Vainilla and what had happened to the octopus since then. Sometimes she wondered if Vainilla, in that medium-sized tank, was exhibiting the same symptoms of lassitude and disinterest that Natalia felt, and whether anyone noticed.

“Hey there.” Gilcrest sounded different; not the cautious egg-stepping she had dreaded, but a softening of formality. “Wanted to check in and see how you’ve been.”

Natalia tried to clear her throat of its obstructions without that being audible over the phone. “I’m all right.” The best she could manage. “I’m sorry about, about…” She couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Nothing to be sorry about.” Gilcrest cleared his throat without seeming to feel any compunction about it. “In fact, I’m sorry. Someone like you should have been an integral part of the project from the start, full-time staff with more training and preparation. It didn’t occur to us…”

How awful it would be, how completely horrifying, Natalia finished for him in her head. “If you had hired someone full-time from the start,” she said, intending to sound reasonable and comforting, “then I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to—”

Then she stopped, because until that moment she hadn’t realized that she was glad she had been involved in the project.

“Anyway.” Gilcrest cleared his throat again. “Ringo’s been asking for you, and we were wondering if you might want to come back for a little celebration we’re having to mark the success of the first coral installation.”

“Who’s Ringo?” Natalia asked.

Gilcrest chuckled. “How quickly they forget. Ringo.” An awkward pause while Natalia went through every staff member she could remember from the project, and found she could put names to precious few of them. “Your favorite octopus? Ringo?”

“Ringo??”

“Of course, Ringo.”

“You named an octopus Ringo ?”

“You know. For the suckers?” At least he sounded sheepish about it.

“I’d be happy to visit with… Ringo.” Was it, at the end of the day, any sillier than Vainilla ? All these silly humans with their silly human names for a beast that had no use for them. Or— “Did you say the octopus asked for me?”

“Exactly right. Took us a while to figure out what it was on about, to be honest. The new interpreter, of course, had never seen you…”

“Interpreter?” Everything has gotten new names while she’s been away.

“Well… yes. It turns out that the gadget can be used for communication. In fact, that was one of its early uses, for patients in what was thought to be a vegetative state. It didn’t occur to us that it could work the same way with a cephalopod.” He laughed uncomfortably. “Of course it should have.”

“Yes,” agreed Natalia. It hadn’t occurred to her either.

The celebration wasn’t at the bay. Of course not. It was at the site of the new coral installation. Which was on the site of the dead reef, ghost-ridden with memories.

The reef in process of reanimation, Natalia thought, trying to dispel the dread in her chest. The Lazarus reef. The Frankenstein’s monster of a reef. The zombie reef. This wasn’t helping.

At least they were going out on a ship—a large, fast, comfortable ship. “Ringo didn’t like the helicopter,” Gilcrest told her ruefully when she found him on deck. “I felt terrible when we figured that out.”

“Yeah,” Natalia agreed, wondering.

“Look!” Gilcrest pointed. “Dolphins.” They watched in silence for a few moments, wondering between each leap whether there would be another. “Maybe we’ll try with them next.”

Natalia wasn’t sure if she found that appealing or disturbing. “How are you using the octopus’s memory to rebuild the reefs?”

“We have no real maps of the reef,” Gilcrest said. “Some large-scale maps of where it was, and isolated videos that divers took of different small sections, but no solid documentation of what it looked like. Ringo has given us a much more detailed record.” He leaned his forearms on the railing, settling into the subject. “Of course, we’re not trying to recreate exactly what Ringo remembers. That wouldn’t be practical or possible. But the memories are giving us valuable clues to species proportions, and the usual depth of different types of corals, and so on.”

“An octopus consultant,” Natalia said, glancing around as if Vainilla could hear her. She had been avoiding Vainilla’s tank, not wanting to meet the octopus that way, but now she wondered if she should go say hi. Casually.

Gilcrest laughed. “Yes, maybe even more than you think. We’re trying to figure out ways to use the interpretation to go beyond Ringo’s memories, and see if we can get opinions and ideas about how to go forward.”

“Really? That sounds amazing.” For the first time, Natalia thought she might want to rejoin the project, but before she could figure out a way to bring it up, the tone of the engine changed. They had arrived, and it was time to gear up.

Natalia still felt nervous about seeing Vainilla again, but when she got into the water it was practically crowded. The interpreter was there, and a bunch of the bosses, including Kirk, had been outfitted with a wetsuit and regulator for the occasion. But the interpreter, a tall Australian woman, corralled that group at the surface with explanations and some equipment fiddling, almost as if she were running interference, and Natalia was left underwater with Vainilla and the disturbing headset.

She couldn’t make herself turn it on. She couldn’t. But the cephalopod was swirling around her, welcoming her, reaching out tentacle after tentacle but never quite touching her. Like when I was being careful with Vainilla, Natalia thought, and gave the signal.