Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 166

by Neil Clarke

  He needed the drop, and that meant he had to charge the Eel, which meant he had to fix the charging dock.

  He was going to have to go out there.

  Someone should know where he was going, just in case. Though if he drifted off into that vibrating darkness, who would drag him back?

  Hey, Mo. I’m going outside to fix the port.

  Really what he wanted was for Mohammed to tell him not to do it.

  OK, Mohammed said. Be careful.

  The smooth cold stone of anxiety slid lower in his gut. Be careful, as if he needed warning. He stared at the words, shifting his weight, ready to go but not ready.

  “Fuck,” he said, and made himself go.

  On the lower level, near the hamster wheel and weight machine, shower and storage lockers, there was a hatch. Jens called it the Hellhole. It throbbed with malignant energy.

  He was so tense the arches of his feet ached. He bent over to tug the wheel that opened the hatch and blood rushed into his head. It would’ve been more comforting if he had to put some effort into opening it, but it slid smoothly unlocked and hydraulics popped the port open an inch. He pulled it up. Cold air rose in a mass he imagined as visible.

  The Hellhole was brightly lit, brilliantly white, but it smelled like dank metal and salt. Jens swallowed the impulse to vomit.

  His feet on the ladder rungs were silent, but the grates at the bottom clanged as he stepped down. The room was a cylinder, with the descender’s empty docking hatch on the far side from the ladder. In the center of the room there was a black aperture in the floor. Light blinked off its liquid surface. Another ladder led down into that darkness, like a tiny, loathsome swimming pool.

  A touch panel opened the pressure suit storage. Jens took one down and zipped it over his clothes. This was all going too easily.

  One more thing, Mohammed messaged, apropos of nothing. At least he hadn’t forgotten Jens was there. I am sorry to bring the bad news that Silxen is moving away from the silica mining format and will be recalling vent teams while we restructure, including U of course. As per the terms of Silxen’s lease on the station we cannot leave behind biomaterials.

  At first Jens thought that Mohammed meant him, that Jens was the biomaterial that couldn’t be left behind.

  I am sending U a program that will terminate the Worm and concentrate its biomass in the silica hoppers for easier disposal. More details are in the program. We need U to do this ASAP please.

  Jens pulled on the helmet. The suit whispered closed around him. He was going to go out there into the dark, fix the Eel, and then come back here and murder the Worm. At least it was something to do.

  He turned around, put his hands on the ladder rails, and stepped into the sea.

  His legs felt weak against the resistance of the water, and he had to slog to move them down the ladder. He kept his eyes squeezed shut. The ball of his foot touched down, and he was standing on the Europan seafloor.

  Now it felt like a liability to have his eyes closed. The ladder glinted in hard light. He’d turned on all the outside lights; if he had to be out here, he wasn’t doing it in the dark.

  He spun around, putting the ladder to his back. Particulate swam in front of his helmet.

  There was a buzzing in his head that at first worried him, until he realized that he still had the tranquility freq playing and it was interfering with the helmet’s biometrics. Cochlears weren’t common vamps, it was just sound hounds and musicians really, so they weren’t tested with a lot of gear. Jens turned the freq off and silence rushed close around him.

  He stood in an island of light with his back to the ladder, following the breath bubble that had popped up in his inviz. His eyes were drawn to the illumination’s edge, fading from platinum to pewter to iron and then quivering blackness. Fifteen yards between him and the Worm. It was right there, straight out in that blackness; if he walked forward he would reach it in a minute. He watched the trembling dark, eyes hungry and horrified. The light didn’t reach that far; he couldn’t see it, but he felt like he could, pale tendrils rippling like seaweed in the hot current spewing from Mug Ruith. Each tentacle an individual, each inch of each tentacle an interdependent self. Undulating, feeding the silica-hungry bacteria in its bristles, the long slow coil of an arm curling back to scratch against the hard comblike ridge along its central spine that channeled the silica into a modified digestive tract that shat out into the hoppers. No face, no front or back, one thing made out of a thousand cloned children, modified and improved with assimilated DNA from whatever the Worm found in the void of Europa’s vast ocean.

  Jens’ ears were buzzing with the density of the silence crowding around him as he stared into the curtain of darkness hung around the pool of light. The curtain was moving in on him, coming closer, except then he realized that he was walking toward it and the billowing shape of the Worm’s many arms. His boots waded through pewter muck, edging toward charcoal, the black curtain closer, and the Worm looming huge in the darkness. Sound filled his head.

  A breath bubble popped up in his inviz and Jens glanced at it, glanced back into the darkness, saw all that nothing. “Fuck!” Like it’d sneaked up on him. He staggered back, arms waving to catch himself.

  Get done, get out. Sound still filled his ears. “Fuck,” he said again, backing into the light, and his own voice broke the stupefying spell. “Fuck,” he repeated, staggering toward the fusion charging dock. He glanced over his shoulder, didn’t see the anemone tendrils of the Worm he’d been certain he could see in all that blackness.

  The dock was set into the station’s hull on the far side from the Worm. Oatmeal-mush sediment powdered up around the soles of his boots. He looked at his feet, looked at his destination. He didn’t look over his shoulder again.

  Beneath the dock, he had to stand on his toes. The Worm’s tentacle was wedged in there, frayed, with stringy bits of meat from its torn end waving around in the currents. Jens reached a gloved finger behind the mass to unwedge it. There was an unexpected eggshell crunch, and then the appendage floated free. It drifted down onto the mushy ocean floor, where its bristle-mottled surface made a weird outline in the silt.

  Immediately Jens saw another, matching shape. He shuffled to it, crouched, brushed the porridge off it until another torn-off tentacle rocked beneath his glove.

  Then he saw another lump, then two more, scattered in a rough line into the darkness.

  “Fuck,” he said. The word reverberated in the fishbowl of his helmet.

  He had to get out of this place.

  Seriously Mo there’s something going on down here, the Worm is, like, trying to get the Eel, or maybe trying to get to the station? Mo?

  Mohammed was inactive, which rarely happened. He wasn’t doing something else, he was offline. Jens stared at the grayed-out name, foot jiggling. He had to move or his thoughts pinned him, but you couldn’t pace satisfactorily in low-G. He glided from lab bench to bunk cubbies to galley and back, touching surfaces as he went to guide his trajectory.

  Mo, are you there?

  He should’ve been alerted if the Worm’s biometrics changed, but there was nothing in the log. How could the Worm release an arm without the sensors going nuts? Could it do that on purpose, hide its behavior? The implication put hot hands around Jens’ throat. Silxen claimed the Worm was too dumb to know the station was even there. Research into the animals’ intelligence correlated that. But the worms they’d done the research on were dozens of times the size of Silxen’s manufactured worm, colonies of millions of clones, with genes stolen from billions of bacteria. Maybe isolation made this worm different. Maybe Silxen had done something to it. But it definitely wouldn’t send rogue tentacles off to molest something it didn’t know was there.

  The breath bubble was back in Jens’ inviz, and it was getting in the way of all the tiles Jens was trying to use at once: a half dozen different tools open to shout for help from anyone on Sozert; the Worm’s biolog; the station’s sensor log; fuck, recent curren
t patterns; the Worm’s profile. Nobody was answering. Where was everyone?

  Maybe Sozertsaniye Orbital had catastrophically decompressed and Jens was really, actually alone. With the Worm.

  Fucking breath bubble. He couldn’t help it, he breathed along.

  The program to terminate the Worm still hung in a corner of his inviz. Jens scanned through it. He could get the Worm before the Worm got him. He imagined it tentacling its way off Mug Ruith’s slaggy spires, reaching toward the squat can of the station, bristly arms slithering to embrace its hull, a pale toothy mouth reaching for the porthole even though the Worm had no mouth or teeth.

  It was too cold for the Worm to survive away from the vent. According to Silxen, at least. But if that was true then how’d worms get to more than one vent in the first place?

  Jens could hear his skin and boot soles touching surfaces as he circled, circled, circled. Too fucking quiet.

  Of course the Worm had a sort of self-destruct built into it. He’d never thought about it—imagination, again—but it made sense. Intraspace wouldn’t want a fiddled-with animal loose in the ocean; there were impact rules, things that were supposed to protect Europa from getting used up the way Earth’s seafloor had been. It wouldn’t even be hard to kill. All Jens had to do was enter some commands and the Worm would curl up and die, but not before it galumphed toward the silica hoppers for easier disposal. Jens hoped he wouldn’t have to go out there and shovel Worm into the hopper.

  He opened the Worm’s control console. Windows with biometrics, silica output, energy levels, nutrient balance. One showing ionic currents sparking between all those connected neural pathways.

  “It’s just a fucking bug,” Jens said into the station’s dull ambient vibration. He swiped the program free of its delivery folder.

  Think of what it must be like, Elena said in his mind, and Jens again saw those pale dancing tendrils in the darkness, in the void. What it must be like to be a thousand separate tiny selves that were also one enormous self. What must it be like to be a part of something like that? Even if it was just a bug.

  Inexplicably—at least Jens couldn’t explain it—that thought hit him like the memory of Elena, grief and panic and anger and a thrill of something that wasn’t quite joy, was too deeply sad to be joy, but might have been in some other context. Or might turn into. Some thrill of possibility.

  He dropped the program back into its folder and stood staring into the middle distance, not thinking really, remembering that sound that had thrummed through him as he watched the arms of the oscillating thing he couldn’t see in the dark.

  What do you want, Jens thought.

  A message popped up, and Jens caught his breath. But of course it wasn’t the Worm—where had that thought come from? It was Morgan responding to one of his many desperate shouts into the void.

  Hey I might get locked out, gonna write fast. The chat pulsed thoughtfully as Morgan composed their message. Silxen is done, kaput, everyone on Sozert is laid off or about to be. They’re doing a shitty job of it, like my mom sent me a link to a press release from HQ before anyone from Silxen actually told me that I was laid off, real classy. Thought you should know. You doing okay?

  Jens skipped that question; he wasn’t sure if he was okay. Morgan didn’t know if Mohammed was laid off yet, but they hadn’t seen him. Hadn’t heard any plans about retrieving Jens from Mug Ruith station; hadn’t heard much at all, really.

  You were top of the newsfeed though, they said. Well Elena was, and it mentioned you. I’m sure they won’t leave you down there, it would make Silxen look terrible.

  Jens told Morgan everything. The Eel, the Worm, sabotage, invasion. The murder program, still open behind their chat tile. Jens couldn’t help it, the words just came out of him. He needed to tell someone, and the experience of being heard, another voice responding to his, was calming him down far more than the breath bubbles did.

  I’m not disagreeing with you J, it just doesn’t make sense. Behaviorally. What would it want the Eel for? Or the station?

  A bug in its system? Jens asked.

  It’s still an animal, animals do things to fulfill a need. What does it need you for?

  And then Morgan’s name grayed out. Then words disappeared from the chat, and the tile closed on its own. So someone in auditing was still getting paid, or at least hadn’t yet realized they were out of a job.

  With Morgan gone the station echoed with emptiness. Jens watched the sparks along the Worm’s brain and imagined entering the kill command. He’d really be alone, then.

  He put his tranquility freq on, turned it way up, and closed his eyes. You weren’t supposed to turn the volume too high on a cochlear, but it did help, tremored him calm. Sometimes he felt the freq leaking into his skin, numbing patches on his upper arms, his cheeks, the backs of his thumbs. Now it rumbled the pit of his stomach, snaking deeper. A longing, almost like hunger. It wrapped around his diaphragm, beckoning him toward calm. Satisfying, something Jens couldn’t place, like when he listened to a piece of music and could see himself in it, making a song like that; contentment, of being a part of something, but also desire, intense. He thought of the Worm moving in the darkness and his eyes snapped open because the thing he was hearing in his freq was what had messed up the helmet when he was out on the surface, when he’d imagined the Worm out there and scared the shit out of himself.

  A chat made him jump.

  Hello, Jens. I am Any and I am your Silxen Human Resources Liaison. How are you today?

  He felt guilty, like he’d been caught out. The humming was still there, below the tranquility freq, but he was losing it. He couldn’t ignore the chat, or shouldn’t. Maybe someone was going to come get him finally.

  I’m okay. I’m trapped here.

  Yes, we are very concerned about your situation, Jens. Retrieving you is a top priority to Silxen. I do ask that you not share information regarding Silxen assets with ex-employees, as per the security and noncompete clauses in your contract.

  Jens hadn’t even thought of that. Hadn’t thought of Morgan as an ex-employee. Did that mean Jens was still employed? Did that matter, at this point? He apologized as though it did.

  You’re not in trouble, Jens. I understand you’re under a great deal of strain.

  He snorted at that. People who weren’t in trouble didn’t get unsolicited messages from Human Resources Liaisons. The hum built up again in his cochlear, crested, went away.

  Have you run the shutdown protocol on the silica extraction unit?

  The Worm? Where’s Mohammed, is he there?

  He is busy at the moment. I am your Liaison instead. Have you run the shutdown protocol?

  Not yet . . .

  Jens that’s a top priority right now, please do it and inform me when it’s complete okay?

  The way the liaison repeated Jens’ name made it feel like talking to a bot. He leaned back, stretched a little. Thought of ghostly tentacles in the dark.

  I have a potential solution for you and something I’d like you to consider. Please understand that Silxen does not want to pressure you into this decision. Please take your time, Jens.

  Jens, taking his time, didn’t respond. The conversation wasn’t really going anywhere he wanted to follow.

  We have received provisional approval to perform an emergency personality transfer. The pros of this are that there is less risk of retrieving you as data than as a physical form, and you would not have to wait for your retrieval. We could even do it immediately by transferring your data into the Eel for retrieval. Your medical insurance coverage through Silxen will provide a host for your personality and monitoring and maintenance for three years. The necessary equipment for this procedure is available to you in the station already, supply storage LQ-306.

  “The fuck?” Jens whispered.

  Something clanked outside.

  His head snapped toward the sound. He’d never heard anything clank out there, not even when Elena’s ill-fated descender disconnected
from the dock.

  His outrage and anxiety bubbled together into adrenaline. He switched on the under-station camera and snaked its neck around, searching. Nothing, nothing, but then the Eel came into view, hooked into the fusion port and rocking a little against its moorings. Twined around its propulsion system was a fragment of Worm. As Jens watched, its grip slid loose and the tentacle slow-motion plummeted into the mealy dirt. It wriggled a little on landing, but didn’t rise again. Dead.

  “Fuck,” Jens said, one more time.

  You’re going to leave me here aren’t you, you’re abandoning me with a tentacle monster at the bottom of the ocean on another planet after killing my friend in front of me you fucking shit fuck fuck fuck.

  Jens did not hit send, just let the message sit there for a while making him feel a little better. His throat constricted with his pulse. When the breath bubble popped up he swatted it off his inviz. If Silxen didn’t like his biometrics they could come and get him.

  But they wouldn’t. They weren’t going to come and get him. That’s what it meant, the upload: Silxen wouldn’t have gotten authorization unless he was well and truly fucked. It wouldn’t be on the table at all if there was a way to get Jens back whole. He was in the palm of an enormous fist. Ever since Elena died that’s how he’d felt, and it was squeezing harder and harder and if one more thing happened he might implode.

  He got in the hamster wheel. Didn’t know what else to do with himself. He was stuck, deserted, fingers tightening around him. He didn’t want to live the rest of his life in someone else’s corpse. He was going to die down here, starve or suffocate or something. A warning popped up in his inviz, and then he was breathing in wheezy gasps and he sank to the floor and put his head between his knees.

  He sat on the floor for a while. Imagined Elena shouting you’re freqing out, Jens!

  That was something. That feeling he’d gotten from his cochlear, right before the HR person chatted him. It had faded during his chat with HR Any, but he could almost feel it now, still.