Rifters 1 - Starfish

by Peter Watts

  Now he hits the call stud without a moment’s hesitation. “This is Scanlon, Human Resources. I’ve got a bit of a—”

  The line stays dark.

  He tries again. Dead.

  Shit shit shit. Somehow, though, he isn’t surprised.

  I could call the vampires. I could order them to come back in. I have the authority. It’s an amusing thought for a few moments.

  At least the Voice seems to have faded. He thinks he can hear it, if he concentrates, but it’s so faint it could even be his imagination.

  Beebe squeezes down on him. He looks back at the tactical display, hopefully. One, two, three, f—

  Oh shit.

  * * *

  He doesn’t remember going outside. He remembers struggling into his preshmesh, and picking up a sonar pistol, and now he’s on the seabed, under Beebe. He takes a bearing, checks it, checks it again. It doesn’t change.

  He creeps away from the light, towards the Throat. He fights with himself for endless moments, wins; his headlamp stays doused. No sense in broadcasting his presence.

  He swims blind, hugging the bottom. Every now and then he takes a bearing, resets his course. Scanlon zigzags across the sea floor. Eventually the abyss begins to lighten before him.

  Something moans, directly ahead.

  It doesn’t sound lonely any more. It sounds cold and hungry and utterly inhuman. Scanlon freezes like a night creature caught in headlights.

  After a while the sound goes away.

  The Throat glimmers half-resolved, maybe twenty meters ahead. It looks like a spectral collection of buildings and derricks set down on the moon. Murky copper lights spills down from floods set half-way up the generators. Scanlon circles, just beyond the light.

  Something moves, off to the left.

  An alien sigh.

  He flattens down onto the bottom, eyes closed. Grow up, Scanlon. Whatever it is, it can’t hurt you. Nothing can bite through preshmesh.

  Nothing flesh and blood...

  He refuses to finish the thought. He opens his eyes.

  When it moves again, Scanlon is staring right at it.

  A black plume, jetting from a chimney of rock on the seabed. And this time it doesn’t just sigh; it moans.

  A smoker. That’s all it is. Acton went down one of those.

  Maybe this one—

  The eruption peters out. The sound whispers away.

  Smokers aren’t supposed to make sounds. Not like that, anyway.

  Scanlon edges up to the lip of the chimney. 501C. Inside, anchored about two meters down, is some sort of machine. It’s been built out of things that were never meant to fit together; rotary blades spinning in the vestigial current, perforated tubes, pipes anchored at haphazard angles. The smoker is crammed with junk.

  And somehow, the water jets through it and comes out singing. Not a ghost. Not an alien predator, after all. Just— windchimes. Relief sweeps through Scanlon’s body in a chemical wave. He relaxes, soaking in the sensation, until he remembers:

  Six contacts. Six.

  And here he is, floodlit, in full view.

  Scanlon retreats back into darkness. The machinery behind his nightmares, exposed and almost pedestrian, has bolstered his confidence. He resumes his patrol. The Throat rotates slowly to his right, a murky monochrome graphic.

  Something fades into view ahead, floating above an outcropping of featherworms. Scanlon slips closer, hides behind a convenient piece of rock

  Vampires. Two of them.

  They don't look the same.

  Vampires usually look alike out here, it's almost impossible to tell them apart. But Scanlon’s sure he’s never seen one of these two before. It’s facing away from him, but there’s still something— it’s too tall and thin, somehow. It moves in furtive starts and twitches, almost birdlike. Reptilian. It carries something under one arm.

  Scanlon can’t tell what sex it is. The other vampire, though, looks female. The two of them hang in the water a few meters apart, facing each other. Every now and then the female gestures with her hands; sometimes she moves too suddenly and the other one jumps a little, as if startled.

  He clicks through the voice channels. Nothing. After a while the female reaches out, almost tentatively, and touches the reptile. There’s something almost gentle— in an alien way— about the way she does that. Then she turns and swims off into the darkness. The reptile stays behind, drifting slowly on its axis. Its face comes into view.

  Its hood seal is open. Its face is so pale that Scanlon can barely tell where skin ends and eyecaps begin; it almost looks as if this creature has no eyes.

  The thing under its arm is the shredded remains of one of Channer’s monster fish. As Scanlon watches, the reptile brings it up to its mouth and tears off a chunk. Swallows.

  The voice in the Throat moans in the distance, but the reptile doesn’t seem to notice.

  Its uniform has the usual GA logo stamped onto the shoulders. The usual name tag underneath.

  Who—?

  Its blank empty face sweeps right past Scanlon’s hiding place without pausing. A moment later it’s facing away again.

  It’s all alone out there. It doesn’t look dangerous.

  Scanlon braces against his rock, pushes off. Water pushes back, slowing him instantly. The reptile doesn’t see him. Scanlon kicks. He’s only a few meters away when he remembers.

  Ganzfeld Effect. What if there’s some Ganzfeld Effect down h—

  The reptile spins suddenly, staring directly at him.

  Scanlon lunges. Another split-second and he wouldn’t even have come close, but fortune smiles; he catches onto one of the creature’s fins as it dives away. Its other foot lashes back, bounces off the helmet. Again, lower down; Scanlon’s sonar pistol spins away from his belt.

  He hangs on. The reptile comes at him with both fists, utterly silent. Scanlon barely feels the blows through his preshmesh. He hits back with the familiar desperation of a childhood punching bag, cornered again, feeble self-defense his only option.

  Until it dawns on him that this time, somehow, it’s working.

  He’s not facing the neighborhood bully here. He’s not paying the price for careless eye contact with some australopithecine at the local drink’n’drug. He fighting a spindly little freak that’s trying to get away. From him. This guy is downright feeble.

  For the first time in his life, Yves Scanlon is winning a fight.

  His fist connects, a chain-mail mace. The enemy jerks and struggles. Scanlon grabs, twists, wrestles his quarry into an armlock. His victim flails around, utterly helpless.

  “You’re not going anywhere, friend.” Finally, a chance to try out that tone of easy contempt he’s been practicing since the age of seven. It sounds good. It sounds confident, in control. “Not until I find out just what the fuck is—”

  The lights go out.

  The whole Throat goes dark, suddenly and without fuss. It takes a few seconds to blink away the afterimages; finally, in the extreme distance, Scanlon makes out a very faint gray glow. Beebe.

  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 any more? 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, and 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 any more. 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 goodbye," 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 about 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 star
fish. 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?