by Peter Watts
"They were on a very strict schedule," Nakata suggests. "It was important to get everything online as quickly as possible. Perhaps they just didn't have time to make everything as cushy as they could have."
Acton snorts. "Come on, Alice. How much extra time would it take to program the blueprints for decent headroom?"
"I feel a conspiracy theory coming on," Brander remarks. "So go on, Karl. Why's the GA going out of its way to make us bump our heads all the time? They breeding us for short height, maybe? So we'll eat less?"
Lenie Clarke feels Acton tensing; it's like a small shockwave pushed out by his clenching muscles, a pulse of tension that ripples through the air and breaks against her 'skin. She rests one calming hand casually on his thigh, under the table. It's a calculated risk, of course. It would piss him off even more if Acton thought he was being patronized.
This time he relaxes a little. "I think they're trying to keep us off balance. I think they deliberately designed Beebe to stress us out."
"Why?" Caraco again, tense but civil.
"Because it gives them an advantage. The more time we spend being on edge, the less time we have to think about what we could do to them if we really wanted to."
"And what's that?"
"Use your head, Judy. We could black out the grid from the Charlottes down to Portland."
"They'd just switch feeds," Brander says. "There are other deep stations."
"Yeah. And they're all staffed by people just like us." Acton slaps the table with one hand. "Come on, you guys. They don't want us down here. They hate us, we're sickos that beat up our wives and eat our babies for breakfast. If it weren't for the fact that anyone else would flip out down here—"
Clarke shakes her head. "But they could get us out of the loop completely if they wanted. Just automate everything."
"Hallelujah." Acton brings his hands together in sarcastic applause. "The woman's got it at last."
Brander leans back in his chair. "Give it a rest, Acton. Haven't you ever worked for the GA before? You ever work for any sort of bureaucracy?"
Acton's gaze swivels, locks on to the other man. "What's your point?"
Brander looks back with a hint of a sneer on his face. "My point, Karl, is that you're reading way too much into this. So they made the ceilings too low. So their interior decorator's not worth shit. So what else is new? The GA just isn't that scared of you." He takes in Beebe with a wave of his arm. "This isn't some subtle psychological war. Beebe was just designed by incompetent bozos." Brander stands up, takes his plate to the galley. "If you don't like the headroom, stay outside."
Acton looks at Lenie Clarke, his face utterly devoid of expression. "Oh, I'd like to. Believe me."
* * *
He's hunched over the library terminal, 'phones on his ears, 'phones on his eyes, the flatscreen blanked as usual to hide his litsearch from view. As if anything in the database could really be personal. As if the GA would ever ration out any fact worth hiding.
She's learned not to bother him when he's like this. He's hunting in there, he resents any distraction as though the files he's after might somehow escape if he looks the other way. She doesn't touch him. She doesn't run a gentle finger along his arm or try to work the knots from his shoulders. Not any more. There are some mistakes that Lenie Clarke can learn from.
He's actually helpless in a strange way; cut off from the rest of Beebe, deaf and blind to the presence of people who are by no means friends. Brander could come up behind him right now and plant a knife in his back. And yet everyone leaves him alone. It's as though his sensory exile, this self-imposed vulnerability is some sort of brazen dare that no one has the guts to take him up on. So Acton sits at the keyboard— tapping at first, now stabbing— in his own private datasphere, and his deaf blind presence somehow dominates the lounge out of all proportion to his physical size.
"FUCK!"
He tears the 'phones from his face and slams his fist down on the console. Nothing even cracks. He glares around the lounge, white eyes blazing, and settles on Nakata over in the galley. Lenie Clarke, wisely, has avoided eye contact.
"This database is fucking ancient! They stick us down this fucking black anus for months at a time and they don't even give us a link to the net!"
Nakata spreads her hands. "The net's infected," she says, nervously. "They send us scrubbed downloads every month or s—"
"I fucking know that." Acton's voice is suddenly, ominously calm. Nakata takes the hint and falls silent.
He stands up. The whole room seems to shrink down around him. "I've got to get out of here," he says at last. He takes a step towards the ladder, glances at Clarke. "Coming?"
She shakes her head.
"Suit yourself."
* * *
Caraco, maybe. She's made overtures in the past.
Not that Clarke ever took them. But things are changing. There aren't just two Karl Actons any more. There used to be; all of her partners have been twosomes, in fact. There's always been a host, some magnetic chassis whose face and name never mattered because it would change without warning. And providing continuity, riding along behind each twinkling pair of eyes, there's always been the thing inside, and it never changes. Nor, to be honest, would Lenie Clarke know what to do if it did.
Now there's something new: the thing outside. So far at least, it has shown no trace of violence. It does seem to have x-ray vision, which could be even worse.
Lenie Clarke has always slept with the thing inside. Until now, she'd always just assumed it was for want of an alternative.
She taps lightly on Caraco's hatch. "Judy? You there?" She should be; she's nowhere else in Beebe, and sonar can't find any trace of her outside.
No answer.
It can wait.
No. It's waited long enough.
How would I feel if—
She isn't me.
The hatch is closed but not dogged. Clarke pulls it open a few centimeters and peers inside.
Somehow they've managed to pull it off. Alice Nakata and Judy Caraco spoon around each other on that tiny bunk. Their eyes dart restlessly beneath closed lids. Nakata's dreamer stands guard beside them, its tendrils pasted to their bodies.
Clarke lets the hatch hiss shut again.
It was a stupid idea, anyhow. What would she know?
She wonders how long they've been together, though. She never even saw that coming.
* * *
"Your boyfriend isn't here," Lubin calls in. "We were supposed to top up the coolant on number seven."
Clarke calls up the topographic display. "How long ago?"
"Oh four hundred."
"Okay." Acton's half an hour late. That's unusual; he's been going out of his way to be punctual these days, a grudging concession to Clarke in the name of group relations. "I can't find him on sonar," she reports. "Unless he's hugging the bottom. Hang on."
She leans out of the comm cubby. "Hey. Anybody see Karl?"
"He left a while ago," Brander calls from the wet room. "Maintenance on seven, I think."
Clarke punches back into Lubin's channel. "He's not here. Brander says he left already. I'll keep looking."
"Okay. At least his deadman switch hasn't gone off." Clarke can't tell whether Lubin thinks that's good or bad.
Movement at the corner of her eye. She looks up; Nakata's standing in the hatchway.
"Have you found him?" she asks.
Clarke shakes her head.
"He was in Medical, just before he left," Nakata says. "He was open. He said he was making some adjustments—"
Oh God.
"He said they improved performance outside, but he didn't explain. He said he would show me later. Maybe something went wrong."
External camera display, ventral view. The image flickers for a moment, then clears; on the screen, a scalloped circle of light lies across a flat muddy plain, transected by the knife-edge shadows of anchor cables. Near the edge of that circle is a black human figure, face down, its h
ands held to either side of its head.
She wakes up the close acoustics. "Karl! Karl, can you hear me?"
He reacts. His head twists around, faces up into the floods; his eyecaps reflect featureless white glare into the camera. He's shaking.
"His vocoder," Nakata says. There's sound coming from the speaker, soft, repetitive, mechanical. "It's— stuttering—"
Clarke's already in the wet room. She knows what Acton's vocoder is saying. She knows, because the same word is repeating over and over in her own head.
No. No. No. No. No.
* * *
No obvious motor impairment. He's able to make it back inside on his own; stiffens, in fact, when Clarke tries to help him. He strips his gear and follows her into Medical without a word.
Nakata, diplomatically, closes the hatch behind them
Now he sits on the examination table, stonefaced. Clarke knows the routine; get his 'skin off, his eyecaps out. Check autonomic pupil response and reflex arcs. Stab him, draw off the usual samples: blood gases, acetylcholine, GABA, lactic acid.
She sits down beside him. She doesn't want his eyecaps out. She doesn't want to see behind them.
"Your inhibitors," she says at last. "How far down are they?"
"Twenty percent."
"Well." She tries for a light touch. "At least we know your limit now. Just nudge them back up to normal."
Almost imperceptibly, he shakes his head.
"Why not?"
"Too late. I went over some sort of threshold. I don't think — it doesn't feel reversible."
"I see." She puts one tentative hand on his arm. He doesn't react. "How do you feel?"
"Blind. Deaf."
"You're not, though."
"You asked how I felt," he says, still expressionless.
"Here." She takes the NMR helmet down from its hook. Acton lets her strap it across his skull. "If there's anything wrong, this should—"
"There's something wrong, Len."
"Well." The helmet writes its impressions across the diagnostic display. Clarke's got the same medical expertise they all have, stuffed into her mind by machines that hijacked her dreams. Still, the raw data mean nothing to her. It's almost a minute before the display prints out an executive summary.
"Your synaptic calcium's way down." She's careful not to show her relief. "Makes sense, I guess. Your neurons fire too often, eventually they run out of something."
He looks at the screen, saying nothing.
"Karl, it's okay." She leans toward his ear, one hand on his shoulder. "It'll fix itself. Just put your inhibitors back up to normal; demand goes down, supply keeps up. No harm done."
He shakes his head again. "Won't work."
"Karl, look at the readout. You're going to be fine."
"Please don't touch me," he says, not moving at all.
Critical Mass
She catches a glimpse of fist before it hits her eye. She staggers back against the bulkhead, feels some protruding rivet or valve catch the back of her head. The world drowns in explosions of afterlight.
He's lost control, she thinks dully. I win. Her knees collapse under her; she slides down the wall, sits with a heavy thud on the deck. She considers it a matter of some pride that she's kept utterly silent through all this.
I wonder what I did to set him off. She can't remember. Acton's fist seems to have knocked the past few minutes out of her head. Doesn't matter anyway. Same old dance.
But this time there seems to be someone on her side. She can hear shouts, sounds of a scuffle. She hears the sick jarring thud of flesh against bone against metal, and for once, none of it seems to be hers.
"You cocksucker! I'll rip your fucking balls off!"
Brander's voice. Brander is sticking up for her. He always was the gallant one. Clarke smiles, tastes salt. Of course, he never quite forgave Acton for that tiff over the gulper, either...
Her vision is starting to clear, in one eye at least. There's a leg right in front of her, another to one side. She looks up; the legs meet at Caraco's crotch. Acton and Brander are in her cubby too; Clarke's amazed that they can all fit.
Acton, his mouth bloody, is under siege. Brander's hand is at his throat. Acton has the wrist of that hand caught in a grip of his own; while Clarke watches, his other arm lashes out and glances off Brander's jaw.
"Stop it," she mumbles.
Caraco hits Acton's temple twice in rapid succession. Acton's head snaps sideways, snarls, but he doesn't release his grip on Brander.
"I said stop it!"
This time they hear her. The struggle slows, pauses; fists remain poised, no holds break, but they're all looking at her now.
Even Acton. Clarke looks up into his eyes, looks behind them. She can see nothing staring back but Acton himself. You were there before, she remembers. I'm almost sure of it. Count on you to get Acton into a losing fight and then bugger off...
She braces herself against the bulkhead and pushes slowly erect. Caraco moves aside, helps her up.
"I'm flattered by all the attention, folks," Clarke says, "and I want to thank you for stopping by, but I think we can handle this on our own from here on in."
Caraco puts a protective hand on her shoulder. "You don't have to put up with this shit." Her eyes, somehow venomous through the shielding, are still locked on Acton. "None of us do."
One corner of Acton's mouth pulls back in a small, bloody sneer.
Clarke endures Caraco's touch without flinching. "I know that. And thanks for stepping in. But please, just leave us alone for a while."
Brander doesn't loosen his grip on Acton's throat. "I don't think that a very good—"
"Will you get your fucking hands off him and leave us alone!"
They back off. Clarke glares after them, dogs the hatch to keep them out. "Goddamned nosy neighbors," she grumbles, turning back to Acton.
His body sags in the sudden privacy, all the anger and bravado evaporating as she watches.
"Want to tell me why you're being such an asshole?" she says.
Acton collapses on her pallet. He stares at the deck, avoiding her eyes. "Don't you know when you're being fucked over?"
Clarke sits down beside him. "Sure. Getting punched out is pretty much a giveaway."
"I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to help all of you." He turns and hugs her, body shaking, cheek pressed against hers, face aimed at the bulkhead behind her shoulder. "Oh God Lenie I'm so sorry you're the last person in the whole fucking world I want to hurt—"
She strokes him without speaking. She knows he means it. They always do. She still can't bring herself to blame any of them.
He thinks he's alone in there. He thinks it's all his own doing.
Briefly, an impossible thought: Maybe it is...
"I can't go on with this," he says. "Staying inside."
"It'll get better, Karl. It's always hard at first."
"Oh God, Len. You don't have a clue. You still think I'm some sort of junkie."
"Karl—"
"You think I don't know what addiction is? You think I can't tell the difference?"
She doesn't answer.
He manages a small, sad laugh. "I'm losing it, Len. You're forcing me to lose it. Why in God's name do you want me this way?"
"Because this is who you are, Karl. Outside isn't you. Outside's a distortion."
"Outside I'm not an asshole. Outside I don't make everyone hate me."
"No." She hugs him. "If controlling your temper means seeing you turn into something else, seeing you doped up all the time, then I'll take my chances with the original."
Acton looks at her. "I hate this. Jesus Christ, Len. Won't you ever get tired of people who kick the shit out of you?"
"That's a really nasty thing to say," she remarks quietly.
"I don't think so. I can remember some things I saw out there, Len. It's like you need —I mean God, Lenie, there's so much hate in all of you..."
She's never heard him speak like this. Not eve
n outside. "You've got a bit of that in you too, you know."
"Yeah. I thought it made me different. I thought it gave me...an edge, you know?"
"It does."
He shakes his head. "Oh, no. Not next to you."
"Don't underrate yourself. You don't see me trying to take on the whole station."
"That's just it, Len. I blow it off all the time, I waste it on stupid shit like this. But you— you hoard it." His expression changes, she's not exactly sure what to. Concern, maybe. Worry. "Sometimes you scare me more than Lubin does. You never lash out, or beat on anybody — Christ, it's a major event when you even raise your voice — so it just builds up. It's got its up side, I guess." He manages a soft laugh. "Hatred's a great fuel source. If anything ever—activated you, you'd be unstoppable. But now, you're just—toxic. I don't think you really know how much hate you've got in you."
Pity?
Something inside her goes suddenly cool. "Don't play therapist with me, Karl. Just because your nerves fire too fast doesn't mean you've got second sight. You don't know me that well."
Of course not. Or you wouldn't be with me.
"Not in here." He smiles, but that strange sick expression keeps showing through behind. "Outside, at least, I can see things. In here I'm blind."
"You're in the land of the blind." She says curtly. "It's not a drawback."
"Really? Would you stay here if it meant getting your eyes cut out? Would you stay some place that rotted your brain out piece by piece, turned you from a human being into a fucking monkey?"
Clarke considers. "If I was a monkey to begin with, maybe."
Uh oh. Sounded too flippant by half, didn't I?
Acton looks at her for a moment. Something else does too, drowsily, with one eye open.
"At least I don't get my endorphins by playing victim," he says, slowly. "You should really be a bit more careful who you choose to look down on."
"And you," Clarke replies, "should save the pious lectures for those rare occasions when you actually know what you're talking about."
He rises off the bed and glares at her, fists carefully unclenched.
Clarke does not move. She feels her whole body hardening from the inside out. She deliberately lifts her head until she's looking straight into Acton's hooded eyes.