Starfish (29 page)

"'So, you were repeatedly buggered by a trained Dobermans while your mom charged admission'," Brander recites in a fair imitation of Scanlon's voice. "'And how did that make you
feel
, exactly?'"

"'Actually I'm more of a
mechanic
,'" Caraco chimes in. "Did he give you that line?"

"He seemed nice enough to me," Nakata says hesitantly.

"Well, that's his job: to seem nice." Caraco grimaces. "he's just no fucking
good
at it." She looks over at Clarke. "So what do you think, Len?"

"I think he overplayed the empathy card," Clarke says after a moment.

"No, I mean how do we handle this?"

Clarke shrugs, vaguely irritated. "Why ask me?"

"He better not get in my way. Dumpy little turd." Brander spares a blank look at the ceiling. "Now why can't they design a smart gel to replace
him
?"

TRAN/OFFI/210850:2132

This is my second night in Beebe. I've asked the participants not to alter their behavior in my presence, since I'm here to observe routine station operations. I'm pleased to report that my request is being honored by everyone involved. This is gratifying insofar as it minimizes "observer effects", but it may present problems given that the rifters do not keep reliable schedules. This makes it difficult to plan one's time with them, and in fact there's one employee — Ken Lubin — whom I haven't seen since I arrived. Still. I have plenty of time.

The rifters tend to be withdrawn and uncommunicative — a layperson might call them
sullen
— but this is entirely in keeping with the profile. The Station itself seems to be well-maintained and is operating smoothly, despite a certain disregard for standard protocols.

* * *

When the lights go out in Beebe Station, you can't hear anything at all.

Yves Scanlon lies on his bunk, not listening. He does not hear any strange sounds filtering in through the hull. There is no reedy, spectral keening from the seabed, no faint sound of howling wind because he knows that, down here, no wind is possible. Imagination, perhaps. A trick of the brain stem, an auditory hallucination. He's not the slightest bit superstitious; he's a scientist. He does not hear the ghost of Karl Acton moaning on the seabed.

And now, concentrating, he's quite certain he hears nothing at all.

It really doesn't bother him, being stuck in a dead man's quarters. After all, where else
is
there? It's not as though he's going to move in with one of the vampires. And besides, Acton's been gone for months now.

Scanlon remembers the first time he heard the recording. Four lousy words: "We lost Acton. Sorry." Then she hung up. Cold bitch, Clarke. Scanlon once thought something might happen between her and Acton, it was a jigsaw match from the profiles, but you wouldn't know it from that phone call.

Maybe it's her,
he muses.
Maybe it's not Lubin after all, maybe it's Clarke.

"We lost Acton." So much for eulogy. And Fischer before Acton, and Everitt over at Linke. And Singh before Everitt. And—

And now Yves Scanlon is here, in their place. Sleeping on their bunk, breathing their air. Counting the seconds, in darkness and quiet. In dark—

Jesus Christ, what
is—

And quiet. Everything's quiet. Nothing's moaning out there.

Nothing at all.

* * *

TRANS/OFFI/220850:0945

We're all mammals, of course. We therefore have a Circadian rhythm which calibrates itself to ambient photoperiod. It's been known for some time that when people are denied photoperiodic cues their rhythms tend to lengthen, usually stabilizing between twenty-seven and thirty-six hours. Adherence to a regular twenty-four hour work schedule is usually sufficient to keep this from happening, so we didn't expect a problem in the deep stations. As an added measure I recommended that a normal photoperiod be built into Beebe's lighting systems; the lights are programmed to dim slightly between twenty-two hundred and oh seven hundred every day.

The participants have apparently chosen to ignore these cues. Even during 'daytime' they keep ambient lighting dimmer than my suggested 'nocturnal' levels. (They also prefer to leave their eyecaps in at all times, for obvious reasons; although I had not predicted this behavior, it is consistent with the profile.) Work schedules are somewhat — flexible, but this is to be expected given that their sleep cycles are always shifting in relation to each other. Rifters do not wake up in time to perform their duties; they perform their duties whenever two or more of them happen to be awake. I suspect that they also work alone sometimes, a safety violation, but I have yet to confirm this.

For the moment, these unorthodox behaviors do not appear to be serious. Necessary work seems to get done on time, even though the station is currently understaffed. However, I believe the situation is potentially problematic. Efficiency could probably be improved by stricter adherence to a twenty-four hour diel cycle. Should the GA wish to ensure such adherence, I would recommend proteoglycan therapy for the participants. Hypothalamic rewiring is another possibility; it is more invasive, but would be virtually impossible to subvert.

* * *

Vampires. That's a good metaphor. They avoid the light, and they've taken out all the mirrors. That could be part of the problem right there. Scanlon had very sound reasons for recommending mirrors in the first place.

Most of Beebe— all of it, except for his cubby— is too dark for uncapped vision. Maybe the vampires are trying to conserve energy. A high priority, sitting here next to eleven thousand megawatts' worth of generating equipment. Still, these people are all under forty; they probably can't imagine a world without rationed power.

Bullshit. There's logic, and there's vampire logic. Don't confuse the two.

For the past two days, leaving his cubby has been like creeping out into some dark alleyway. He's finally given in and capped his eyes like the rest of them. Now Beebe's bright enough, but so pale. Hardly any color at all. As though the cones have been sucked right out of his eyes.

Clarke and Caraco lean against the ready room bulkhead, watching with their white, white eyes as he checks out his diving armor. No vampire vivisection for Yves Scanlon, no sirree. Not for this short a tour. Preshmesh and acrylic all the way.

He fingers a gauntlet; chain mail, with links the size of pinheads. He smiles. "Looks okay."

The vampires just watch and wait.

Come on, Scanlon, you're the mechanic. They're machines like everyone else; they just need more of a tune-up. You can handle them.

"Very nice tech," he remarks, setting the armor back down. "Of course, it's not much next to the hardware
you
folks are packing. What's it like to be able to turn into a fish at will?"

"Wet," Caraco says, and a moment later looks at Clarke. Checking for approval, maybe.

Clarke just keeps staring at him. At least, he thinks she's staring. It's so damn hard to tell.

Relax. She's only trying to psyche you out. The usual stupid dominance games.

But he knows it's more than that. Deep down, the rifters just don't like him.

I know what they are. That's why.

Take a dozen children, any children. Beat and mix thoroughly until some lumps remain. Simmer for two to three decades; bring to a slow, rolling boil. Skim off the full-blown psychotics, the schizoaffectives, the multiple personalities, and discard. (There were doubts about Fischer, actually; but then, who
doesn't
have an imaginary friend at some point?)

Let cool. Serve with dopamine garnish.

What do you get? Something bent, not broken. Something that fits into cracks too twisted for the rest of us.

Vampires.

"Well," Scanlon says into the silence. "Everything checks out. Can't wait to try it on." Without waiting for a reply— without exposing himself to the lack of one— he climbs upstairs. At the edge of his vision, Clarke and Caraco exchange looks. Scanlon glances back, rigorously casual, but any smiles have disappeared by the time he scans their faces.

Go ahead, ladies. Indulge yourselves while you can.
The lounge is empty. Scanlon passes through it and into the corridor.
You've got maybe five years before you're obsolete.
His cubby— Acton's cubby— is third on the left.
Five years before all this can run itself without your help.
He opens the hatch; brilliant light spills out, blinding him for a moment while his eyecaps compensate. Scanlon steps inside, swings the hatch shut. Sags against it.

Shit. No locks.

After a while he lies back on his bunk, stares up at a congested ceiling.

Maybe we should have waited after all. Not let them rush us. If we'd just taken the time to do it right from the start...

But they hadn't had the time. Total automation at start-up would have delayed the whole program longer than civilized appetites were willing to wait. And the vampires were already there, after all. They'd be so much use in the short run, and then they'd be sent home, and they'd be glad to leave this place. Who wouldn't be?

The possibility of addiction never even came up.

It seems insane on the face of it. How could anyone get addicted to a place like this? What kind of paranoia has seized the GA, that they'd worry about people refusing to
leave
? But Yves Scanlon is no mere layperson, he's not fooled by the merely apparent. He's beyond anthropomorphism. He's looked into all those undead eyes, up there in his world, down here in theirs, and he knows: vampires live by different rules.

Maybe they
are
too happy here. It's one of two questions Yves Scanlon has set out to answer. Hopefully they won't figure that out while he's still down here. They dislike him enough as it is.

It's not their fault, of course. It's just the way they're programmed. They can't help hating him, any more than he can help the reverse.

* * *

Preshmesh is better than surgery. That's about the most he can say for it.

The pressure jams all those tiny interlocking plates together, and they don't seem to stop clenching until they're a micron away from grinding his body to pulp. There's a stiffness in the joints. It's perfectly safe, of course. Perfectly. And Scanlon can breathe unpressurised air when he goes outside, and nobody's had to carve out half his chest in the meantime.

He's been out now for about fifteen minutes. Beebe's just a few meters away. Clarke and Brander escort him on his maiden voyage, keeping their distance. Scanlon kicks, rises clumsily from the bottom; the mesh lets him swim like a man with splinted limbs. Vampires skim the edge of his vision like effortless shadows.

His helmet seems like the center of the universe. Wherever he looks, an infinite weight of black ocean presses in against the acrylic. A tiny flaw down by the neck seal catches his eye; he stares, horrified, as a hairline crack grows across his field of vision.

"
Help! Get me in!
" He kicks furiously towards Beebe.

Nobody answers.

"
My helmet! My hel—
" The crack isn't just growing now: it's
squirming
, twitching laterally across the corner of the helmet bubble like— like—

Yellow featureless eyes staring in from the ocean. A black hand, silhouetted in Beebe's halo, reaching for his face—

"
Ahhh—"

A thumb grinds down on the crack in Scanlon's helmet. The crack smears,
bursts
; fine gory filaments smudge against the acrylic. The back half of the hairline peels off and writhes loose into the water, coiling, uncoiling—