Starfish

by Peter Watts

  It dies as he watches. The creature in his arms has grown very still.

  “Let him go, Scanlon.”

  “Clarke?” It might be Clarke. The vocoders don’t mask everything, there are subtle differences that Scanlon’s just beginning to recognize. “Is that you?” He gets his headlamp on, but no matter where he points it there’s nothing to see.

  “You’ll break his arms,” the voice says. Clarke. Got to be.

  “I’m not that—”strong—“clumsy,” Scanlon says to the abyss.

  “You don’t have to be. His bones have decalcified.” A momentary silence. “He’s fragile.”

  Scanlon loosens his grip a bit. He twists back and forth, trying to catch sight of something. Anything. All that comes into view is his prisoner’s shoulder patch.

  Fischer.

  But he went missing—Scanlon counts back—seven months ago!

  “Let him go, cocksucker.” A different voice, this time. Brander’s.

  “Now,” it buzzes. “Or I’ll fucking kill you.”

  Brander? Brander actually defending a pedophile? How the hell did that happen?

  It doesn’t matter now. There are other things to worry about.

  “Where are you?” Scanlon calls out. “What are you so afraid of?” He doesn’t expect such an obvious goad to work. He’s just buying time, trying to delay the inevitable. He can’t just let Fischer go; he’s out of options the moment that happens.

  Something moves, just to the left. Scanlon spins; a flurry of motion out there, maybe a hint of limbs caught in the beam. Too many for one person. Then nothing.

  He tried to do it, Scanlon realizes. Brander just tried to kill me, and they held him back.

  For now.

  “Last chance, Scanlon.” Clarke again, close and invisible, as though she’s humming in his ear. “We don’t have to lay a hand on you, you know? We can just leave you here. You don’t let him go in ten seconds and I swear you’ll never find your way back. One.”

  “And even if you did,” adds another voice—Scanlon doesn’t know who—“We’d be waiting for you there.”

  “Two.”

  He checks the helmet dashboard laid out around his chin. The vampires have shut off Beebe’s homing beacon.

  “Three.”

  He checks his compass. The readout won’t settle. No surprise there; magnetic navigation is a joke on the rift.

  “Four.”

  “Fine,” Scanlon tries. “Leave me here. I don’t care. I’ll—”

  “Five.”

  “—just head for the surface. I can last for days in this suit.” Sure. As if they’ll just let you float away with their— What is Fischer to them, anyway? Pet? Mascot?

  “Six.”

  Role model?

  “Seven.”

  Oh God. Oh God.

  “Eight.”

  “Please,” he whispers.

  “Nine.”

  He opens his arms. Fischer dives away into the dark.

  Stops.

  Turns back and hangs there in the water, five meters away.

  “Fischer?” Scanlon looks around. For all he can tell, they are the only two particles in the universe. “Can you understand me?”

  He extends his arm. Fischer starts, like a nervous fish, but doesn’t bolt.

  Scanlon scans the abyss. “Is this how you want to end up?” he calls out.

  Nobody answers.

  “You have any idea what seven months of sensory deprivation does to your mind? You think he’s even close to being human anymore? Are you going to spend the rest of your lives rooting around here in the mud, eating worms? Is that what you want?”

  “What we want,” something buzzes from the darkness, “is to be left alone.”

  “That’s not going to happen. No matter what you do to me. You can’t stay down here forever.”

  Nobody bothers to disagree. Fischer continues to float before him, his head cocked to one side.

  “Listen, C—Lenie. Mike. All of you.” The headlight beam sweeps back and forth, empty. “It’s just a job. It’s not a lifestyle.” But Scanlon knows that’s a lie. All these people were rifters long before the job existed.

  “They’ll come for you,” he says softly, and he doesn’t know whether it’s a threat or a warning.

  “Maybe we won’t be here,” the abyss replies at last.

  Oh God. “Look, I don’t know what’s happening down here, but you can’t want to stay here, nobody in their— I mean— Jesus, where are you?”

  No answer. Only Fischer.

  “This wasn’t how it was supposed to go,” Scanlon says, pleading.

  And then, “I never meant for— I mean, I didn’t—”

  And then only “I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”

  And then nothing at all, except the darkness.

  * * *

  Eventually the lights come back on. Beebe beeps reassuringly on its designated channel. Gerry Fischer is gone by then; Scanlon isn’t sure when he left.

  He’s not sure the others were ever there. He swims back to Beebe, alone.

  They probably didn’t even hear me. Not really. Which is a shame, because there at the end he was actually telling the truth.

  He wishes he could pity them. It should be easy; they hide in the dark, they hide behind their eyecaps as though photocollagen is some sort of general anesthetic. They warrant the pity of real people. But how can you pity someone who’s somehow better off than you are? How can you pity someone who, in some sick way, seems to be happy?

  How can you pity someone who scares you to death?

  And besides, they walked all over me. I couldn’t control them at all. Have I made a single real choice since I came down?

  Sure. I gave them Fischer, and they let me live.

  Yves Scanlon wonders, briefly, how to put that into the official record without making himself look like a complete screwup.

  In the end, he doesn’t really care.

  TRANS/OFFI/300850:1043

  I have recently encountered evidence of.… that is, I believe …

  The behavior of Beebe Station personnel is distinctively …

  I have recently participated in a telling exchange with station personnel. I managed to avoid outright confrontation, although …

  Ah, fuck it.

  T minus twenty minutes, and except for Yves Scanlon, Beebe is deserted.

  It’s been like this for the past couple of days. The vampires just don’t come inside much anymore. Maybe they’re deliberately excluding him. Maybe they’re just reverting to their natural state. He can’t tell.

  It’s just as well. By now, the two sides have very little left to say to each other.

  The shuttle should be almost here. Scanlon summons his resolve: When they come, they’re not going to find him hiding in his cubby. He’s going to be in the lounge, in plain view.

  He takes a breath, holds it, listens. Beebe creaks and drips around him. No other sounds of life.

  He gets off the pallet and presses an ear against the bulkhead. Nothing. He undogs the cubby hatch, opens it a few centimeters, peers out.

  Nothing.

  His suitcase has been packed for hours. He grabs it off the deck, swings the hatch all the way open, and strides purposefully down the corridor.

  He sees the shadow just before he enters the lounge, a dim silhouette against the bulkhead. A part of him wants to turn and run back to his cubby, but it’s a much smaller part than it used to be. Most of him is just tired. He steps forward.

  Lubin is waiting there, standing motionless beside the ladder. He stares through Scanlon with eyes of solid ivory.

  “I wanted to say good-bye,” he says.

  Scanlon laughs. He can’t help it.

  Lubin watches impassively.

  “I’m sorry,” Scanlon says. He doesn’t feel even slightly amused. “It’s just— You never even said hello, you know?”

  “Yes,” Lubin says. “Well.”

  Somehow, there’s no sense of threat ab
out him this time. Scanlon can’t quite understand why; Lubin’s background file is still full of holes, the rumors are still festering over Galápagos; even the other vampires keep their distance from this one. But none of that shows through right now. Lubin just stands there, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He looks almost vulnerable.

  “So they’re going to be bringing us back early,” he says.

  “I honestly don’t know. It’s not my decision.”

  “But they sent you down to—prepare the way. Like John the Baptist.”

  It’s a very strange analogy, coming from Lubin. Scanlon says nothing.

  “Did you— Didn’t they know we wouldn’t want to come back? Didn’t they count on it?”

  “It wasn’t like that.” But he wonders, more than ever, what the GA knew.

  Lubin clears his throat. He seems very much to want to say something, but doesn’t.

  “I found the windchimes,” Scanlon says at last.

  “Yes.”

  “They scared the hell out of me.”

  Lubin shakes his head. “That’s not what they were for.”

  “What were they for?”

  “Just—a hobby, really. We’ve all got hobbies here. Lenie does her starfish. Alice—dreams. This place has a way of taking ugly things and lighting them in a certain way, so they almost look beautiful.” A shrug. “I build memorials.”

  “Memorials.”

  Lubin nods. “The windchimes were for Acton.”

  “I see.”

  Something drops onto Beebe with a clank. Scanlon jumps.

  Lubin doesn’t react. “I’m thinking of building another set,” he says. “For Fischer, maybe.”

  “Memorials are for dead people. Fischer’s still alive.” Technically, anyway.

  “Okay, then. I’ll make them for you.”

  The overhead hatch drops open. Scanlon grips his suitcase and starts to climb, one-handed.

  “Sir—”

  Scanlon looks down, surprised.

  “I—” Lubin stops himself. “We could have treated you better,” he says at last.

  Scanlon knows, somehow, that this is not what Lubin intended to say. He waits. But Lubin offers nothing more.

  “Thanks,” Scanlon says, and climbs out of Beebe forever.

  The chamber he rises into is wrong. He looks around, disoriented; this isn’t the usual shuttle. The passenger compartment is too small, the walls studded with an array of nozzles. Forward, the cockpit hatch is sealed. A strange face looks back through the porthole as the ventral hatch swings shut.

  “Hey…”

  The face disappears. The compartment resonates with the sound of metal mouths disengaging. A slight lurch and the ’scaphe is rising free.

  A fine aerosol mist hisses from the nozzles. It stings Scanlon’s eyes. An unfamiliar voice reassures him from the cabin speaker. Nothing to worry about, it says. Just a routine precaution.

  Everything’s just fine.

  SEINE

  ENTROPY

  MAYBE things are getting out of hand, Lenie Clarke wonders.

  The others don’t seem to care. She hears Lubin and Caraco talking up in the lounge, hears Brander trying to sing in the shower—as if we didn’t all get enough abuse during our childhoods—and envies their unconcern. Everyone hated Scanlon—well, not hate, exactly, that’s a bit strong—but there was at least a sort of—

  Contempt—

  That’s the word. Contempt. Back on the surface, Scanlon ticked everyone. No matter what you said to him, he’d nod, make little encouraging noises, do everything to convince you that he was on your side. Except actually agree with you, of course. You didn’t need fine-tuning to see through that shit; everyone down here already had too many Scanlons in their past, the official sympathizers, the instant friends who gently encouraged you to go back home, drop the charges, carefully pretending it was your interests being served. Back then Scanlon was just another patronizing bastard with a shaved deck, and if fortune put him down here on rifter turf for a while, who could be blamed for having a little fun with him?

  But we could have killed him.

  He started it. He attacked Gerry. He was holding him hostage.

  As if the GA’s going to make any sort of allowance for that …

  So far, Clarke’s kept her doubts to herself. It’s not that she fears no one will listen to her. She fears the exact opposite. She doesn’t want to change anybody’s mind. She’s not out to rally the troops. Initiative is a prerogative of leaders; she doesn’t want the responsibility. The last thing she wants to be is

  Leader of the pack, Len. Head wolf. A-fucking-kayla.

  Acton’s been dead for months and he’s still laughing at her.

  Okay. Scanlon was a nuisance at worst. At best he was an amusing diversion. “Shit,” Brander said once. “You tune him in out there? I bet the GA doesn’t even take him seriously.” The Grid needs them, and it’s not going to pull the plug just because a few rifters had some fun with an asshole like Scanlon. Makes sense.

  Still, Clarke can’t help thinking about consequences. She’s never been able to avoid them in the past.

  Brander’s finally out of the shower; his voice drifts down from the lounge. Showers are an indulgence down here, hardly necessary when you live inside a self-flushing semipermeable diveskin but a sheer hot hedonistic pleasure just the same. Clarke grabs a towel off the rack and heads up the ladder before anyone else can cut in.

  “Hey, Len.” Caraco, seated at the table with Brander, waves her over. “Check out the new look.”

  Brander’s in real shirtsleeves. He doesn’t even have his caps in.

  His eyes are brown.

  “Wow.” Clarke doesn’t know what else to say. Those eyes look really strange. She looks around, vaguely uncomfortable. Lubin’s over on the sofa, watching. “What do you think, Ken?”

  Lubin shakes his head. “Why do you want to look like a dryback?”

  Brander shrugs. “Don’t know. I just felt like giving my eyes a rest for a couple of hours. I guess seeing Scanlon down here in shirtsleeves all the time.” Not that anyone would even think of popping their caps in front of Scanlon.

  Caraco affects an exaggerated shudder. “Please. Tell me he’s not your new role model.”

  “He wasn’t even my old one,” Brander says.

  Clarke can’t get used to it. “Doesn’t it bother you?” —Walking around naked like that?

  “Actually, the only thing that bothers me is I can’t see squat. Unless someone wants to turn up the lights…”

  “So anyway.” Caraco picks up the thread of some previous conversation. “You came down here why?”

  “It’s safe,” Brander says, blinking against his own personal darkness.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Safer, anyway. You were up there not so long ago. Didn’t you see it?”

  “I think what I saw up there was sort of skewed. That’s why I’m down here.”

  “You never thought that things were getting, well, top-heavy?”

  Caraco shrugs. Clarke, imagining steamy needles of water, takes a step toward the corridor.

  “I mean, look how fast the Net changed,” Brander says. “It wasn’t that long ago you could just sit in your living room and go all over the world, remember? Anywhere could link up with anywhere else, for as long as they liked.”

  Clarke turns back. She remembers those days. Vaguely.

  “What about the bugs?” she asks.

  “There weren’t any. Or there were, but they were really simple. Couldn’t rewrite themselves, couldn’t handle different operating systems. Just a minor inconvenience at first, really.”

  “But there were these laws they taught us in school,” Caraco says.

  Lenie remembers: “Explosive speciation. Brookes’ Laws.”

  Brander holds up a finger. “‘Self-replicating information strings evolve as a sigmoid-difference function of replication error rate and generation time’” Two fingers. “‘Evolvin
g information strings are vulnerable to parasitism by competing strings with sigmoid-difference functions of lesser wavelength’.” Three. “‘Strings under pressure from parasites develop random substring-exchange protocols as a function of the wavelength ratio of the host and parasite sigmoid functions.’ Or something like that.”

  Caraco looks at Clarke, then back at Brander. “What?”

  “Life evolves. Parasites evolve. Sex evolves to counter the parasites. Shuffles the genes so the parasites have to shoot for a moving target. Everything else—species diversity, density-dependence, everything—it all follows from those three laws. You get a self-replicating string past a certain threshold, it’s like a nuclear reaction.”

  “Life explodes,” Clarke murmurs.

  “Actually, information explodes. Organic life’s just a really slow example. Happened a lot faster in the Net.”

  Caraco shakes her head. “So what? You’re saying you came down here to get away from bugs in the Internet?”

  “I came down here to get away from entropy.”

  “I think,” Clarke remarks, “you’ve got one of those language disorders. Dyslexia or something.”

  But Brander’s going full tilt now. “You’ve heard the phrase ‘entropy increases’? Everything falls apart eventually. You can postpone it for a while, but that takes energy. The more complicated the system, the more energy it needs to stay in one piece. Back before us everything was sun-powered, all the plants were like these little solar batteries that everything else could build on. Only now we’ve got this society that’s on an exponential complexity curve, and the Net’s on the same curve, only a lot steeper, right? So we’re all balled up in this runaway machine, it’s got so complicated it’s always on the verge of flying apart, and the only thing that prevents that is all the energy we feed it.”

  “Bad news,” Caraco says. Clarke doesn’t think she’s really getting the point, though.

  “Good news, actually. They’ll always need more energy, so they’ll always need us. Even if they ever do get fusion figured out.”

  “Yeah, but—” Caraco’s frowning all of a sudden. “If you say it’s exponential, then it hits a wall eventually, right? The curve goes straight up and down.”

  Brander nods. “Yup.”

  “But that’s infinity. There’s no way you could keep things from falling apart, no matter how much power we pump out. It’d never be enough. Sooner or later—”