by Peter Watts
"Did you check sonar?" Lubin wants to know.
"Yes! Yes of course I checked the sonar!" Nakata's words are increasingly clear. "As soon as she was cut off I checked but I saw nothing for sure. There was something, maybe, but the scattering layer is very thick today, I could not be sure. And it's been fifteen minutes now and she still hasn't come back..."
"Sonar wouldn't pick her up anyway," Brander says softly. "Not through the DSL."
Lubin ignores him. "Listen, Alice. Did she say what she saw?"
"No. Just something, she said, and then I heard nothing more."
"Your sonar contact. How big?"
"I don't know! It was just there for a second, and the layer—"
"Could it have been a sub? Alice?"
"I don't know!" the voice cries, disembodied and anguished. "Why would it? Why would anyone?"
Nobody answers. The squids race on.
Ecdysis
They dump her out of the airlock, still caught in the tangleweb. She knows better than to fight under these conditions, but the situation's got to change pretty soon. She thinks they may have tried gassing her in the 'lock. Why else would they leave their headsets on after the lock had drained? What about that faint hiss that lasted a few seconds too long after blowdown? It's a pretty subtle cue, but you don't spend most of a year on the rift without learning what an airlock sounds like. There was something a bit off about that one.
No matter. You'd be surprised how much O2 can be electrolyzed from just the little bit of water left sloshing around in the ol' thoracic plumbing. Judy Caraco can hold her breath until the cows come home, whatever the fuck that means. And now, maybe they think their gas-chamber-that-blows-like-an-airlock has got her doped or unconscious or just very laid back. Maybe now they'll take her out of this fucking net.
She waits, limp. Sure enough there's a soft electrical cackle and the web falls away, all those sticky molecular tails polarizing flat like Velcro slicking down to cat fur. She stares out through glassy unblinking eyecaps— no cues they can read there— and counts three, with maybe more behind her.
They're zombies, or something.
Their skin looks rotten with jaundice. Fingernails are barely distinguishable from fingers. Faces are slightly distorted, blurred behind stretched, yellowish membrane. Waxy, dark ovals protrude through the film where their mouths should be.
Body condoms, Caraco realizes after a moment. What is this? Do they think I'm contagious?
And a moment later: Am I?
One of them reaches towards her holding something like a handgun.
She lashes out with one arm. She'd rather have kicked— more strength in the legs— but the refsuckers that brought her in didn't bother taking off her flippers. She connects: a nose, it feels like. A nose under latex. A satisfying crunch. Someone's found sudden cause to regret their own presumption.
There's a moment's shocked silence. Caraco uses it, flips onto her side and swings one flippered foot backwards, heel first, into the back of someone's knee. A woman cries out, a startled face topples past, a smear of red hair plastered against its cheek, and Judy Caraco is reaching down to get those big clown-foot flippers off in time to—
The tip of a shockprod hovers ten centimeters from her nose. It doesn't waver a millimeter. After a moment's indecision— how far can I push this, anyway?— Caraco stops moving.
"Get up," says the man with the prod. She can barely see, through the condom, shadows where his eyes should be.
Slowly, she takes off her fins and stands. She never had a chance, of course. She knew that all along. But they obviously want her alive for something, or they would never have bothered bringing her on board. And she, in turn, wants to make it clear that these fuckers are not going to intimidate her, no matter how many of them there are.
There's catharsis to be had in even a losing fight.
"Calm down," the man says— one of four, she sees now, including the one backing out of the compartment with a red stain spreading under his caul. "We're not trying to hurt you. But you know you shouldn't have tried to leave."
"Leave?" His clothes— all of their clothes— are uniform but not uniforms: loose-fitting white jumpsuits with an unmistakable look of disposability. No insignia. No name tags. Caraco turns her attention to the sub itself.
"Now we're going to get you out of that diveskin," the prodmaster continues. "And we're going to give you a quick medical workup. Nothing too intrusive, I assure you."
Not a large craft, judging from the curvature of the bulkhead. But fast. Caraco knew that from the moment it resolved out of the murk above her. She didn't see much, then, but she saw enough. This boat has wings. It could lap an orca on steroids.
"Who are you guys?" she asks.
"Your cooperation would make us all very grateful," Prodmaster says, as if she hasn't spoken, "And then maybe you can tell us exactly what you're trying to escape from out here in the middle of the Pacific."
"Escape?" Caraco snorts. "I was doing laps, you idiot."
"Uh huh." He returns his shockprod to a holster on his belt, leaves one hand resting lightly on the handle.
The gun is back, in different hands. It looks like a cross between a staple gun and a circuit-tester. The redhead pushes it firmly onto Caraco's shoulder. Caraco controls the urge to push back. A faint electrical tingle and her diveskin drops away in pieces. There go her arms. There go her legs. Her torso splits like a molting insect and drops away, short-circuited. She stands utterly 'skinned, surrounded by strangers. A naked mulatto woman looks back at her from a mirror on the bulkhead. Somehow, even stripped, she looks strong. Her eyes, brilliant white in that dark face, are cold and invulnerable. She smiles.
"That wasn't too bad, was it." There's a trained kindness to the other woman's voice. Almost like I didn't just dump her on the deck.
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 d
eep 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 explained.
"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 any more, 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—O—."
"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 s—" 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 can not 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 unman
ned 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 back yard. 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, open-mouthed 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 mid-epithet. 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."