Starfish

by Peter Watts

  They lead her through a passageway to a table in a compact Med cubby. The redhead places a membrane-sheathed hand on Caraco’s arm, her touch just slightly sticky; Caraco shrugs it off. There’s only room for two others in here besides Caraco. Three squeeze in: the redhead, the prodmaster, and a shorter male, a bit chubby. Caraco looks at his face, but she can’t see details under the condom.

  “I hope you can see out of that thing better than I can see in,” she says.

  A soft background humming, too monotonous to register until now, rises subtly in pitch. There’s a sense of sudden acceleration; Caraco staggers a bit, catches herself on the table.

  “If you could just lie back, Ms. Caraco—”

  They stretch her out on the table. The chubby male pastes a few leads at strategic points along her body and proceeds to take very small pieces out of her. “No, this isn’t good. Not at all.” Cantonese accent. “Poor epithelial turgor, you know diveskin’s only an expression, you weren’t supposed to live in it.” The touch of his fingers on her skin: like the redhead’s, thin sticky rubber. “Now look at you,” he says. “Half your sebaceous glands are shut down, your vit K’s low, you haven’t been taking your UV, either, have you?”

  Caraco doesn’t answer. Mr. Canton continues to draw samples on her left. At the other side of the table, the redhead offers what she probably thinks is a reassuring smile, mostly hidden behind the oval mouthpiece.

  Down at Caraco’s feet, just in front of the hatchway, Prodmaster stands motionless.

  “Yes, too much time sealed up in that diveskin,” says Mr. Canton. “Did you ever take it off? Even outside?”

  The redhead leans forward confidentially. “It’s important, Judy. There could be health complications. We really should know if you ever opened up outside. For an emergency of some kind, maybe.”

  “If your ’skin was—punctured, for example.” Mr. Canton affixes some kind of ocular device onto the membrane over his left eye, peers into Caraco’s ear. “That scar on your leg, for instance. Quite large.”

  The redhead runs a finger along the crease in Caraco’s calf. “Yeah. One of those big fish, I guess?”

  Caraco stares up at her. “You guess.”

  “That must have been a deep wound.” Mr. Canton again. “Is it?”

  “Is it what?”

  “A souvenir from one of those famous monsters?”

  “You don’t have my medical records?”

  “It would be easier if you’d save us the trouble of looking them up,” the redhead explains.

  “You in a hurry?”

  Prodmaster takes a step forward. “Not really. We can wait. But in the meantime, maybe we should get those eyecaps out.”

  “No.” The thought scares her to the core. She’s not sure why.

  “You don’t need them anymore, Ms. Caraco.” A smile, a civilized baring of teeth. “You can relax. You’re on your way home.”

  “Fuck that. They stay in.” She sits up, feels the leads tearing off her flesh.

  Suddenly her arms are pinned. Mr. Canton on one side, the redhead on the other.

  “Fuck you.” She lashes out with one foot. It goes low, catches Prodmasters’ shock stick and flips it right out of the holster and onto the deck. Prodmaster jumps back out of the cubby, leaving his weapon behind. Suddenly Caraco’s arms are free. Mr. Canton and the redhead are backing right off, squeezing along the walls of the compartment as though desperate to avoid physical contact—

  As well you might be, she thinks, grinning. Don’t try your cute little power games with me, assholes—

  The Oriental shakes his head, a mixture of sadness and disapproval. Judy Caraco’s body hums, right down in the bones, and goes completely limp.

  She falls back onto the neoprene padding, nerves singing in the table’s neuroinduction field. She tries to move but all her motor synapses are shorted out. The machines in her chest twitch and stutter, listening for orders, interpreting static.

  Her lung sighs flat under its own weight. She can’t summon the strength to fill it up again.

  They’re tying her down. Wrists, ankles, chest, all strapped and cinched back against the table. She can’t even blink.

  The humming stops. Air rushes down her throat and fills her chest. It feels good to gasp again. “How’s her heart?” Prodmaster.

  “Good. Bit of defib at first, but okay now.”

  Mr. Canton bends over from the head of the table: maggot skin stretched across a human face. “It’s okay, Ms. Caraco. We’re just here to help you. Can you understand?”

  She tries to talk. It’s an effort. “g-g-g-g-G—A—”

  “What?”

  “Th-this is Scanlon’s work. Right? S-Scanlon’s fucking revenge.”

  Mr. Canton looks up at someone beyond Caraco’s field of view.

  “Industrial psych.” The redhead’s voice. “No one important.”

  He looks back down. “Ms. Caraco, I don’t know what you’re talking about. We’re going to take your eyecaps out now. It won’t do you any good to struggle. Just relax.”

  Hands hold her head in position. Caraco clamps her eyes shut; they pry the left one open. She stares into something like a big hypo with a disk on the end. It settles on her eyecap, bonds with a faint sucking sound.

  It pulls away. Light floods in like acid.

  She wrenches her head to one side and shuts her eye against the stinging. Even filtered through her closed eyelid the light burns, an orange fire bringing tears. Then they have her again, twisting her head forward, fumbling at her face—

  “Turn the lights down, you idiot! She’s photosensitive!”

  The redhead?

  “—Sorry. We kept them at half, I thought—”

  The light dims. Her eyelids go black.

  “Her irises haven’t had to work for almost a year,” the redhead snaps. “Give her a chance to adjust, for Christ’s sake.”

  She’s in charge here?

  Footsteps. A rattle of instruments.

  “Sorry about that, Ms. Caraco. We’ve lowered the lights now, is that better?”

  Go away. Leave me alone.

  “Ms. Caraco, I’m sorry, but we still have to remove your other cap.”

  She keeps her eyes squeezed shut. They pull the cap out of her face anyway. The straps loosen around her body, drop off. She hears them backing away.

  “Ms. Caraco, we’ve turned the lights down. You can open your eyes.”

  The lights. I don’t care about the fucking lights. She curls up on the table and buries her face in her hands.

  “She doesn’t look so tough now, does she?”

  “Shut up, Burton. You can be a real asshole sometimes, you know that?”

  The sound of an airtight hatch hissing shut. A dense, close silence settles on Caraco’s eardrums.

  An electrical hum. “Judy.” The redhead’s voice: not in person this time. From a speaker somewhere. “We don’t want this to be any worse than it has to be.”

  Caraco holds her knees tightly against her chest. She can feel the scars there, a raised web of old tissue from the time they cut her open. Eyes still shut, she runs her fingers along the ridges.

  I want my eyes back.

  But all she has now are these naked, fleshy things that anyone can see. She opens them the merest crack, peeks between her fingers. She’s alone.

  “We have to know some things, Judy. For your own good. We need to know how you found out.”

  “Found out what?” she cries, her face in hands. “I was just … exercising.…”

  “It’s okay, Judy. There’s no hurry. You can rest now, if you want. Oh, and there are clothes in the drawer on your right.”

  She shakes her head. She doesn’t care about clothes, she’s been naked in front of worse monsters than these. It’s only skin.

  I want my eyes.

  Alibis

  Dead air from the speaker.

  “Did you copy that?” Brander says after five seconds have passed.

 
“Yes. Yes, of course.” The line hums for a second. “It just comes as a bit of a shock, that’s all. It’s just—very bad news.”

  Clarke frowns, and says nothing.

  “Maybe she got detoured by a current at the thermocline,” the speaker suggests. “Or caught up in a Langmuir cell. Are you sure she isn’t still above the scattering layer somewhere?”

  “Of course we’re su—” Nakata bursts out, and stops. Ken Lubin has just laid a cautionary hand on her shoulder.

  There’s a moment’s silence.

  “It is night up there,” Brander says finally. The deep scattering layer rises with darkness, spreads thin near the surface until daylight chases it back down. “And we’d be able to get her voice channel even if sonar couldn’t get through. But maybe we should go up there ourselves and look around.”

  “No. That won’t be necessary,” says the speaker. “In fact, it might be dangerous, until we know more about what happened to Caraco.”

  “So we don’t even look for her?” Nakata looks at the others, outrage and astonishment mingling on her face. “She could be hurt, she could be—”

  “Excuse me, Ms.—”

  “Nakata! Alice Nakata. I cannot believe—”

  “Ms. Nakata, we are looking for her. We’ve already scrambled a search team to scour the surface. But you’re in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. You simply don’t have the resources to cover the necessary volume.” A deep breath, carried flawlessly down four hundred kilometers of fiberop. “On the other hand, if Ms. Caraco is at all mobile, she’ll most likely try and make it back to Beebe. If you want to search, your best odds are to look close to home.”

  Nakata looks helplessly around the room. Lubin stands expressionless; after a moment he puts one finger to his lips. Brander glances back and forth between them.

  Lenie Clarke looks away.

  “And you don’t have any idea what might have happened to her?” the GA asks.

  Brander grits his teeth. “I said, some kind of sonar spike. No detail. We thought you might be able to tell us something.”

  “I’m sorry. We don’t know. It’s just unfortunate that she wandered so far from Beebe. The ocean, it’s—well, not always safe. It’s even possible a squid got her. She was at the right depth.”

  Nakata’s head is shaking. “No,” she whispers.

  “Be sure and call if anything turns up,” the speaker says. “We’re setting up the search plan now, so if there’s nothing else—”

  “There is,” Lubin says.

  “Oh?”

  “There’s an unmanned installation a few klicks northwest of us. Recently installed.”

  “Really?”

  “You don’t know about it?”

  “Hang on, I’m punching it up.” The speaker falls briefly silent. “Got it. My God, that’s way out of your backyard. I’m surprised you even picked it up.”

  “What is it?” Lubin says. Clarke watches him, the hairs on her neck stirring.

  “Seismology rig, it says here. OSU put it down there for some study on natural radioactives and tectonics. You should really keep away from it, it’s a bit hot. Carrying some calibration isotopes.”

  “Unshielded?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Doesn’t that scramble the onboard?” Lubin wants to know.

  Nakata stares at him, openmouthed and angry. “Who cares! Judy’s missing!”

  She’s got a point. Lubin barely even talks to the other rifters; coming from him, this interchange with the drybacks almost qualifies as babbling.

  “Says here it’s an optical processor,” the speaker says after a brief pause. “Radiation doesn’t bother it. But I think Al—Ms. Nakata is right; your first priority—”

  Lubin reaches past Brander and kills the connection.

  “Hey,” Brander says sharply.

  Nakata gives Lubin a blank angry stare and disappears from the hatchway. Clarke hears her retreat into her cubby and dog the hatch. Brander looks up at Lubin. “Maybe it hasn’t dawned on you, Ken, but Judy just might be dead. We’re kind of upset about that. Alice especially.”

  Lubin nods, expressionless.

  “So I’ve got to wonder why you chose this moment to grill the GA about the technical specs on a fucking seismic rig.”

  “That’s not what it is,” Lubin says.

  “Yeah?” Brander rises, twisting up out of the console chair. “And just what—”

  “Mike,” says Clarke.

  “What?”

  She shakes her head. “They said an optical CPU.”

  “So the fuck wh—” Brander stops in midepithet. Anger drains from his face.

  “Not a gel,” Clarke says. “A chip. That’s what they’re saying.”

  “But why lie to us?” Brander asks. “When we can just go out there and feel—”

  “They don’t know we can do that, remember?” She lets out a little smile, like a secret shared between friends. “They don’t know anything about us. All they’ve got is their files.”

  “Not anymore,” Brander reminds her. “Now they’ve got Judy.”

  “They’ve got us too,” Lubin adds. “Quarantined.”

  * * *

  “Alice. It’s me.”

  A soft voice through hard metal: “Come—”

  Clarke pulls the hatch open, steps through.

  Alice Nakata looks up from her pallet as the hatch sighs shut. Almond eyes, dark and startling, reflect in the dimmed light. One hand goes to her face: “Oh. Excuse me, I’ll…” She fumbles at the bedhead compartment, where her eyecaps float in plastic vials.

  “Hey. No problem.” Clarke reaches out, stops just short of touching Nakata’s arm. “I like your eyes, I’ve always—well…”

  “I should not be sulking in here anyway,” Nakata says, rising. “I’m going outside.”

  “Alice—”

  “I am not going to just let her disappear out there. Are you coming?”

  Clarke sighs. “Alice, the GA’s right. There’s just too much volume. If she’s still out there, she knows where we are.”

  “‘If’? Where else would she be?”

  Clarke looks at the deck, reviewing possibilities.

  “I—I think the drybacks took her,” she says at last. “I think they’ll take us, too, if we go after her.”

  Nakata stares at Clarke with disquieting human eyes. “Why? Why would they do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Nakata sags back on the pallet. Clarke sits down beside her.

  Neither woman speaks for a while.

  “I’m sorry,” Clarke says at last. She doesn’t know what else to say. “We all are.”

  Alice Nakata stares at the floor. Her eyes are bright, but not overflowing. “Not all,” she whispers. “Ken seemed more interested in—”

  “Ken had his reasons. They’re lying to us, Alice.”

  “They always lied to us,” Nakata says softly, not looking up. And then: “I should have been there.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. If there’d been two of us, maybe…”

  “Then we’d have lost both of you.”

  “You don’t know that. Maybe it wasn’t the drybacks at all, maybe she just ran into something … living.”

  Clarke doesn’t speak. She’s heard the same stories Nakata has. Confirmed reports of people getting eaten by Archie date back over a hundred years. Not many, of course; humans and giant squid don’t run into each that often. Even rifters swim too deep for such encounters.

  As a general rule.

  “That’s why I stopped going up with her, did you know that?” Nakata shakes her head, remembering. “We ran into something alive, up midwater. It was horrible. Some kind of jellyfish, I think. It pulsed, and it had these thin watery tentacles that stretched out of sight, just hanging there in the water. And it had all these—these stomachs. Like fat squirming slugs. And each one had its own mouth, and they were all opening and closing.…”

  Clarke screws up he
r face. “Sounds lovely.”

  “I didn’t even see it. It was quite translucent, and I was not looking and I bumped into it and it started ejecting pieces of itself. The main body just went completely dark and pulled into itself and pulsed away and all these shed stomachs and mouths and tentacles were left behind, they were all glowing and writhing as though they were in pain.…”

  “I think I’d stop going up there, too, after that.”

  “The strange thing was, I envied it in a way.” Nakata’s eyes brim, spill over, but her voice doesn’t change. “It must be nice to just be able to—to cut yourself off from the parts that give you away.”

  Clarke smiles, imagining. “Yes.” She realizes, suddenly, that only a few centimeters separate her from Alice Nakata. They’re almost touching.

  How long have I been sitting here? she wonders. She shifts on the pallet, pulls away out of habit.

  “Judy didn’t see it that way,” Nakata’s saying. “She felt sorry for the pieces. I think she was almost angry with the main body, do you believe it? She said it was this blind stupid blob, she said—what did she say?—‘fucking typical bureaucracy, first sign of trouble it sacrifices the very parts that keep it fed.’ That’s what she said.”

  Clarke smiles. “That sounds like Judy.”

  “She never takes shit from anyone,” Nakata says. “She always fights back. I like that about her, I could never do that. When things get bad I just…” She glances at the little black device stuck on the wall beside her pillow. “I dream.”

  Clarke nods and says nothing. She can’t remember Alice Nakata ever being so talkative.

  “It’s so much better than VR, you have much more control. In VR you are stuck with someone else’s dreams.”

  “So I hear.”

  “You have never tried it?” Nakata asks.

  “Lucid dreaming? A couple of times. I never got into it.”

  “No?”

  Clarke shrugs. “My dreams don’t have much … detail.” Or too much, sometimes. She nods at Nakata’s machine. “Those things wake me up just enough to notice how vague everything is. Or sometimes, when there is any detail, it’s something really stupid. Worms crawling through your skin or something.”

  “But you can control that. That is the whole point. You can change it.”