Rifters 1 - Starfish

by Peter Watts

  Very gently, the floor began to rock.

  It was almost a lullaby at first, back and forth, building gradually to a swaying crescendo that nearly threw her off her feet. The structure complained on all sides, concrete growling against girder, more felt that heard. She spread her arms, balancing, embracing space. She couldn't bring herself to cry.

  The great window burst outward in a million tinkling fragments and showered itself into the night. The air filled with glass spores and the sound of windchimes.

  There was no glass on the carpet.

  Oh Christ, she realized dully. The contractors fucked up. All that money spent on imploding anti-earthquake glass, and they put it in backwards…

  Off to the southwest, a small orange sun was rising. Patricia Rowan sagged to her knees on the pristine carpet. Suddenly, at last, her eyes were stinging. She let the tears come, profoundly grateful; still human, she told herself. I'm still human.

  The wind washed over her. It carried the faint sounds of people and machinery, screaming.

  Detritus

  The ocean is green. Lenie Clarke doesn't know how long she's been unconscious, but they can't have sunk more than a hundred meters. The ocean is still green.

  Forcipiger falls slowly through the water, nose-down, its atmosphere bleeding away through a dozen small wounds. A crack the shape of a lightning bolt runs across the forward viewport; Clarke can barely see it through the water rising in the cockpit. The forward end of the 'scaphe has become the bottom of a well. Clarke braces her feet against the back of a passenger seat and leans against a vertical deck. The ceiling lightstrip flickers in front of her. She's managed to get the pilot up out of the water and strapped into another seat. At least one of his legs is definitely broken. He hangs there like a soaked marionette, still unconscious. He continues to breathe. She doesn't know whether he'll actually wake up again.

  Maybe better if he doesn't, she reflects, and giggles.

  That wasn't very funny, she tells herself, and giggles again.

  Oh shit. I'm looped.

  She tries to concentrate. She can focus on isolated things: a single rivet in front of her. The sound of metal, creaking. But they take up all her attention, somehow. Whatever she happens to be looking at swells up and fills her world. She can barely think of anything else.

  Hundred meters, she manages at last. Hull breach. Pressure— up—

  Nitrogen—

  —narcosis—

  She bends down to check the atmosphere controls on the wall. They're sideways. She finds this vaguely amusing, but she doesn't know why. Anyhow, they don't seem to work.

  She bends down to an access panel, slips, bounces painfully down into the cockpit with a splash. Occasional readouts twinkle on the submerged panels. They're pretty, but the longer she looks at them the more her chest hurts. Eventually she makes the connection, pulls her head back up into atmosphere.

  The access panel is right in front of her. She fumbles at it a couple of times, gets it open. Hydrox tanks lie side-by-side in military formation, linked together into some sort of cascade system. There's a big yellow handle at one end. She pulls at it. It gives, unexpectedly. Clarke loses her balance and slides back underwater.

  There's a ventilator duct right in front of her face. She's not sure, but she thinks the last time she was down here it didn't have all these bubbles coming out of it. She thinks that's a good sign. She decides to stay here for a while, and watch the bubbles. Something's bothering her, though. Something in her chest.

  Oh, that's right. She keeps forgetting. She can't breathe.

  Somehow she gets her face seal zipped up. The last thing she remembers is her lung shriveling away, and water rushing through her chest.

  * * *

  The next time she comes up, two thirds of the cockpit is flooded. She rises into the aft compartment, peels the 'skin off her face. Water drains from the left side of her chest; atmosphere fills the right.

  Overhead, the pilot is moaning.

  She climbs up to him, swings his seat around so that he's lying on his back, facing the rear bulkhead. She locks it into position, tries to keep his broken leg reasonably straight.

  "Ow," he cries.

  "Sorry. Try not to move. Your leg's broken."

  "No shit. Oww." He shivers. "Christ I'm cold." Clarke sees it sink in. "Oh Christ. We're breached." He tries to move, manages to twist his head around before some other injury twists back. He relaxes, wincing.

  "The cockpit's flooding," she tells him. "Slowly, so far. Hang on a second." She climbs back down and pulls at the edge of the cockpit hatch. It sticks. Clarke keeps pulling. The hatch comes loose, starts to swing down.

  "Wait a second," the pilot says.

  Clarke pushes the hatch back against the bulkhead.

  "You know those controls?" the pilot asks.

  "I know the standard layout."

  "Anything still working down there? Comm? Propulsion?"

  She kneels down and ducks her head underwater. A couple of readouts that were alive before have gone out. She scans what's left.

  "Waldos. Exterior floods. Sonobuoy," she reports when she comes back up. "Everything else is dead."

  "Shit." His voice is shaking. "Well, we can send up the buoy, anyway. Not that they're about to launch a rescue."

  She reaches through the rising water and trips the control. Something thuds softly on the outside of the hull. "Why wouldn't they? They sent you to pick us up. If we'd just gotten away before the thing went off..."

  "We did," the pilot says.

  Clarke looks around the compartment. "Uh—"

  The pilot snorts. "Look, I don't know what the fuck you guys were doing with a nuke down there, or why you couldn't wait a bit longer to set it off, but we got away from it okay. Something shot us down afterwards."

  Clarke straightens. "Shot us?"

  "A missile. Air-to-air. Came right out of the stratosphere." His voice is shaking with the cold. "I don't think it actually hit the 'scaphe. Blew the shit out of the lifter, though. I barely managed to get us down to a safe level before—"

  "But that doesn't— why rescue us, then shoot us down?"

  He doesn't say anything. His breathing is fast and loud.

  Clarke pulls again at the cockpit hatch. It swings down against the opening with a slight creak.

  "That doesn't sound good," the pilot remarks.

  "Hang on a sec." Clarke spins the wheel; the hatch sinks down against the mimetic seal with a sigh. "I think I've got it." She climbs back up to the rear bulkhead.

  "Christ I'm cold." The pilot says. He looks at her. "Oh, shit. How far down are we?"

  Clarke looks through one of the compartment's tiny portholes. Green is fading. Blue is in ascension.

  "Hundred fifty meters. Maybe two."

  "I should be narked."

  "I switched the mix. We're on hydrox."

  The pilot shudders, violently. "Look, Clarke, I'm freezing. One of those lockers has got survival suits."

  She finds them, unrolls one. The pilot is trying to unhook himself from the seat, without success. She tries to help.

  "Ow!"

  "Your other leg's injured too. Maybe just a sprain."

  "Shit! I'm coming apart and you just stuffed me up here? Didn't the GA even get you medtech training, for Christ's sake?"

  She backs away: one awkward step to the back of the next passenger seat. It doesn't seem like a good time to admit that she was narked when she put him there.

  "Look, I'm sorry," he says after a moment. "It's just— this is not a great situation, you know? Could you just unzip that suit, and spread it over me?"

  She does.

  "That's better." He's still shivering, though. "I'm Joel."

  "I'm Cl— Lenie," she replies.

  "So, Lenie. We're on our own, our systems are all out, and we're headed for the bottom. Any suggestions?"

  She can't think of any.

  "Okay. Okay." Joel takes a few deep breaths. "How much hydrox do
we have?"

  She climbs down and checks the gauge on the cascade. "Sixteen thousand. What's our volume?"

  "Not much." He frowns, acting as though he's only trying to concentrate. "You said two hundred meters, that puts us at, lessee, twenty atmospheres when you sealed the hatch. Should keep us going for a hundred minutes or so." He tries a laugh; it doesn't come off. "If they are sending a rescue, they'd better do it pretty fucking fast."

  She plays along. "It could be worse. How long would it last if we hadn't sealed the hatch until, say, a thousand meters?"

  Shaking. "Ooh. Twenty minutes. And the bottom's close to four thousand around here, and that far down it'd last, say it'd last, five minutes, tops." He gulps air. "Hundred and eight minutes isn't so bad. A lot can happen in a hundred and eight minutes..."

  "I wonder if they got away," Clarke whispers.

  "What did you say?"

  "There were others. My—friends." She shakes her head. "They were going to swim back."

  "To the mainland? That's insane!"

  "No. It could work, if only they got far enough before—"

  "When did they leave?" Joel asks.

  "About eight hours before you came."

  Joel says nothing.

  "They could have made it," Lenie insists, hating him for his silence.

  "Lenie, at that range—I don't think so."

  "It's possible. You can't just—oh, no…"

  "What?" Joel twists in his harness, tries to see what she's looking at. "What?"

  A meter and a half below Lenie Clarke's feet, a needle of seawater shoots up from the edge of the cockpit hatch. Two more erupt as she watches.

  Beyond the porthole, the sea has turned deep blue.

  * * *

  The ocean squeezes into Forcipiger, bullies the atmosphere into tighter and tighter corners. It never lets up.

  Blue is fading. Soon, black will be all that's left.

  Lenie Clarke can see Joel's eye on the hatch. Not the leaky traitor that let the enemy in past the cockpit; that's under almost two meters of icewater now. No, Joel's watching the ventral docking hatch that once opened and closed on Beebe Station. It sits embedded in the deck-turned-wall, integrity uncompromised, the water just beginning to lap at its lower edge. And Lenie Clarke knows exactly what Joel is thinking, because she's thinking it too.

  "Lenie," he says.

  "Right here."

  "You ever try to kill yourself?"

  She smiles. "Sure. Hasn't everyone?"

  "Didn't work, though."

  "Apparently not," Clarke concurs.

  "What happened?" Joel asks. He's shivering again, the water's almost up to him, but other than that his voice seems calm.

  "Not much. I was eleven. Plastered a bunch of derms all over my body. Passed out. Woke up in an MA ward."

  "Shit. One step up from refmed."

  "Yeah, well, we can't all be rich. Besides, it wasn't that bad. They even had counsellors on staff. I saw one myself."

  "Yeah?" His voice is starting to shake again. "What'd she say?"

  "He. He told me the world was full of people who needed him a lot more than I did, and next time I wanted attention maybe I could do it in some way that didn't cost the taxpayer."

  "S-shit. What an as—asshole." Joel's got the shakes again.

  "Not really. He was right. And I never tried it again, so it must've worked." Clarke slips into the water. "I'm going to change the mix. You look like you're starting to spazz again."

  "Len—"

  But she's gone before he can finish.

  She slips down to the bottom of the compartment, tweaks the valves she finds there. High pressure turns oxygen to poison; the deeper they go, the less of it that air-breathers can tolerate without going into convulsions. This is the second time she's had to lean out the mixture. By now, she and Joel are only breathing one percent O2.

  If he lives long enough, though, there'll be other things she can't control. Joel isn't equipped with rifter neuroinhibitors.

  She has to go up and face him again. She's holding her breath, there's no point in switching on her electrolyser for a measly twenty or thirty seconds. She's tempted to do it anyway, tempted to just stay down here. He can't ask her as long as she stays down here. She's safe.

  But of all the things she's been in her life, she's never had to admit to being a coward.

  She surfaces. Joel's still staring at the hatch. He opens his mouth to speak.

  "Hey, Joel," she says quickly, "you sure you don't want me to switch over? It really doesn't make sense for me to use your air when I don't have to."

  He shakes his head. "I don't want to spend my last few minutes alive listening to a machine voice, Lenie. Please. Just— stay with me."

  She looks away from him, and nods.

  "Fuck, Lenie," he says. "I'm so scared."

  "I know," she says softly.

  "This waiting, it's just— God, Lenie, you wouldn't put a dog through this. Please."

  She closes her eyes, waiting.

  "Pop the hatch, Lenie."

  She shakes her head. "Joe, I couldn't even kill myself. Not when I was eleven. Not— not even last night. How can I—"

  "My legs are wrecked, Len. I can't feel anything else any more. I c-can barely even talk. Please."

  "Why did they do this to us, Joel? What's going on?"

  He doesn't answer.

  "What has them so scared? Why are they so—"

  He moves.

  He lurches up, falls sideways. His arms reach out; one hand catches the edge of the hatch. The other catches the wheel in its center.

  His legs twist grotesquely underneath him. He doesn't seem to notice.

  "I'm sorry," she whispers. "I couldn't—"

  He fumbles, get both hands on the wheel. "No problem."

  "Oh God. Joel—"

  He stares at the hatch. His fingers clench the wheel.

  "You know something, Lenie Clarke?" There's cold in his voice, and fear, but there's a sudden hard determination there too.

  She shakes her head. I don't know anything.

  "I would have really liked to fuck you," he says.

  She doesn't know what to say to that.

  He spins the hatch. Pulls the lever.

  The hatch falls into Forcipiger. The ocean falls after it. Somehow, Lenie Clarke's body has prepared itself when she wasn't looking.

  His body jams back into hers. He might be struggling. Or it could just be the rush of the Pacific, playing with him. She doesn't know if he's alive or dead. But she holds onto him, blindly, the ocean spinning them around, until there isn't any doubt.

  Its atmosphere gone, Forcipiger is accelerating. Lenie Clarke takes Joel's body by the hands, and draws it out through the hatch. It follows her into viscous space. The 'scaphe spins away below them, fading in moments.

  With a gentle push, she sets the body free. It begins to drift slowly towards the surface. She watches it go.

  Something touches her from behind. She can barely feel it through her 'skin.

  She turns.

  A slender, translucent tentacle wraps softly around her wrist. It fades away into a distance utterly black to most, slate gray to Lenie Clarke. She brings it to her. Its swollen tip fires sticky threads at her fingers.

  She brushes it aside, follows the tentacle back through the water. She encounters other tentacles on the way, feeble, attenuate things, barely twitching against the currents. They all lead back to something long, and thick, and shadowy. She circles in.

  A great column of writhing, wormlike stomachs, pulsing with faint bioluminescence.

  Revolted, she smashes at it with one clenched fist. It reacts immediately, sheds squirming pieces of itself that flare and burn like fat fireflies. The central column goes instantly dark, pulling into itself. It pulses, descends in spurts, slinking away under cover of its own discarded flesh. Clarke ignores the sacrificial tidbits and pursues the main body. She hits it again. Again. The water fills with pulsing dismembered de
coys. She ignores them all, keeps tearing at the central column. She doesn't stop until there's nothing left but swirling fragments.

  Joel. Joel Kita. She realizes that she liked him. She barely knew him, but she liked him just the same.

  And they just killed him.

  They killed all of us, she thinks. Deliberately. They meant to. They didn't even tell us why.

  It's all their fault. All of it.

  Something ignites in Lenie Clarke. Everyone who's ever hit her, or raped her, or patted her on the head and said don't worry, everything will be fine comes to her in that moment. Everyone who ever pretended to be her friend. Everyone who pretended to be her lover. Everyone who ever used her, and stood on her back, and told each other they were so much better than she was. Everyone, feeding off her every time they so much as turned on the fucking lights.

  They're all waiting, back on shore. They're just asking for it.

  It was a little bit like this back when she beat the shit out of Jeanette Ballard. But that was nothing, that was just a taste of coming attractions. This time it's going to count. She's adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, three hundred kilometers from land. She's alone. She has nothing to eat. It doesn't matter. None of it matters. She's alive; that alone gives her the upper hand.

  Karl Acton's fear has come to pass. Lenie Clarke has been activated.

  She doesn't know why the GA is so terrified of her. She only knows that they've stopped at nothing to keep her from getting back to the mainland. With any luck, they think they've succeeded. With any luck, they're not worried any more.

  That'll change. Lenie Clarke swims down and east, towards her own resurrection.

  * * *

  References

  Actually, you might be surprised at how much of this stuff I didn't make up. If you're interested in finding out about background details, the following references will get you started. Starfish deliberately twists some of the facts, and I've probably made a hundred other errors through sheer ignorance, but that's something else this list is good for: it gives you the chance to check up on me.

  I'm betting most of you don't care that much.