Rifters 1 - Starfish

by Peter Watts

  Overhead, the docking hatch swings shut. From behind it a postcoital tattoo, metal on metal, heralds the shuttle's escape to the surface. They wait there for a few moments: Rifters, newcomer, five new gadgets to dilute their humanity a little further. Finally, Clarke reaches out to touch one. "What do they do?" she says, her voice neutral.

  Acton snaps his fingers shut, stares about the lounge with eyeless intensity. "Why, Ms. Clarke," he replies, "They tell us when we're dead."

  * * *

  In Communications, Acton spills his trinkets onto a control console. Clarke stands behind him, filling the cubby. Caraco and Brander look in through the hatchway.

  Lubin has disappeared.

  "The program's only four months old," Acton says, "and it's lost two people at Piccard, one each at Cousteau and Link, and Fischer makes five. Not the kind of record you want to trumpet to the world, eh?"

  Nobody says anything. Clarke and Brander stand impassive; Caraco shifts on her feet. Acton sweeps his blank shiny eyes over them all. "Christ but you're a lively lot. You sure Fischer's the only one down here who cashed in?"

  "These things are supposed to save our lives?" Clarke asks.

  "Nah. They don't care that much about us. These just help you find the bodies."

  He turns to the console, plays it with practiced fingers. The topographic display flashes to life on the main screen. "Mmmm." Acton traces along the luminous contours with one finger. "So this is Beebe here in the center, and this must be the rift proper—Jesus, there's a lot of geography out here." He points at a cluster of hard green rectangles halfway to the edge of the screen. "These are the generators?"

  Clarke nods.

  Acton picks up one of the little cylinders. "They say they've already sent down the software for these things." Silence. "Well, I guess we'll find out, won't we?" He fingers the object in his hand, presses one end of it.

  Beebe Station screams aloud.

  Clarke jerks back at the sound; her head cracks painfully against an overhead pipe. The station continues to howl, wordless and despairing.

  Acton touches a control; the scream stops as if guillotined.

  Clarke glances at the others, shaken. They appear unmoved. Of course. For the first time she wonders what their eyes would show, naked.

  "Well," Acton says, "we know the audio alarm works. But you get a visual signal too." He points at the screen: dead center, within the phosphor icon that is Beebe, a crimson dot pulses like a heart under glass.

  "It keys on myoelectricity in the chest," he explains. "Goes off automatically if your heart stops."

  Behind her, Clarke feels Brander turning for the hatchway.

  "Maybe my etiquette is out of date—" Acton says.

  His voice is suddenly very quiet. Nobody else seems to notice.

  "—but I've always thought it was—rude—to walk away when someone's talking to you."

  There's no obvious threat in the words. Acton's tone seems pleasant enough. It doesn't matter. In an instant Clarke sees all the signs again; the reasoned words, the deadened voice, the sudden slight tension of a body rising to critical mass. Something familiar is growing behind Acton's eyecaps.

  "Brander," she says quietly, "why don't you hang around and hear the man out?"

  Behind her, the sounds of motion stop.

  Before her, Acton relaxes ever so slightly.

  Within her, something deeper than the Rift stirs in its sleep.

  "They're a snap to install," Acton says. "It takes about five minutes. GA says deadman switches are standard issue from now on."

  I know you, she thinks. I don't remember but I'm sure I've seen you before somewhere...

  A tiny knot forms in her stomach. Acton smiles at her, as though sending some secret greeting.

  * * *

  Acton is about to be baptized. Clarke is looking forward to it.

  They stand together in the airlock, their diveskins clinging like shadows. The deadman switch, newly installed, itches in Clarke's chest. She remembers the first time she dropped into the ocean this way, remembers the person who held her hand through that drowning ordeal.

  That person is gone now. The deep sea broke her and spat her out. Clarke wonders if it will do the same to Acton.

  She floods the airlock.

  By now the feeling is almost sensual; her insides folding flat, the ocean rushing into her, cold and unstoppable like a lover. At 4°C the Pacific slides through the plumbing in her chest, anesthetizing the parts of her that can still feel. The water rises over her head; her eyecaps show her the submerged walls of the lock with crystal precision.

  It's not like that with Acton. He's trying to fall in on himself; he only falls into Clarke. She senses his panic, watches him convulse, sees his knees buckle in a space far too narrow to permit collapse.

  He needs more room, she thinks, smiling to herself, and opens the outer hatch. They drop.

  She glides down and out, arcing away from under Beebe's oppressive bulk. She leaves the floodlit circle behind, skims into the welcoming darkness with her headlight doused. She feels the presence of the seabed a couple of meters beneath her. She's free again.

  After a few moments she remembers Acton. She turns back the way she came. Beebe's floodlamps stain the darkness with dirty light; the station, bloated and angular, pulls against the cables holding it down. Light pours from its lower surface like feeble rocket exhaust. Pinned face-down in that glare, Acton lies unmoving on the bottom.

  Reluctantly, she swims closer. "Acton?"

  He doesn't move.

  "Acton?" She's back in the light now. Her shadow cuts him in half.

  At last he looks up. "It'ssss—"

  He seems surprised by the sound of his own transmuted voice.

  He puts his hand to his throat. "I'm not—breathing—" he buzzes.

  She doesn't answer.

  He looks back down. There's something on the bottom, a few centimeters from his face. Clarke drifts closer; a tiny shrimplike creature trembles on the substrate.

  "What is it?" Acton asks.

  "Something from the surface. It must have come down on the 'scaphe."

  "But it's—dancing—"

  She sees. The jointed legs flex and snap, the carapace arches to some insane inner rhythm. It seems so brittle a life; perhaps the next spasm, or the next, will shatter it.

  "It's a seizure," she says after a while. "It doesn't belong here. The pressure makes the nerves fire too fast, or something."

  "Why doesn't that happen to us?"

  Maybe it does. "Our implants. They pump us full of neuroinhibitors whenever we go outside."

  "Oh. Right," Acton buzzes softly. Gently, he reaches out to the creature. Takes it in the palm of his hand.

  Crushes it.

  Clarke hits him from behind. Acton bounces off the seabed, his hand flying open; fragments of shell, of watery flesh swirl in the water. He kicks, rights himself, stares at Clarke without speaking. His eyecaps shine almost yellow in the light.

  "You asshole," Clarke says very quietly.

  "It didn't belong here," Acton buzzes.

  "Neither do we."

  "It was suffering. You said so yourself."

  "I said the nerves fired too fast, Acton. Nerves carry pleasure as well as pain. How do you know it wasn't dancing for fucking joy?"

  She pushes off the bottom and kicks furiously into the abyss. She wants to reach into Acton's body and tear everything out, sacrifice that gory tangle of viscera and machinery to the monsters at the rift. She can't remember ever being so angry. She tells herself she doesn't know why.

  * * *

  Gurgles and clanks from below. Clarke looks down through the lounge hatch in time to see the airlock spill open. Brander backs out, supporting Acton.

  Acton's 'skin is laid open at the thigh.

  He bends over, removing his flippers. Brander's are already off; he turns to Clarke as she climbs down the ladder. "He met his first monster. Gulper eel."

  "I met my fucki
ng monster all right," Acton says in a low voice. And Clarke sees it coming a fraction of a second before—

  —Acton is on Brander, left fist swinging like a bolo on the end of his arm, once twice three times and Brander is on the floor, bleeding. Acton's bringing his foot back when Lenie gets in front of him, her hands raised to protect herself, crying "Stop it stop it's not his fault!" but somehow it's not Acton she's pleading with it's something inside of him coming out, and she'd do anything if it would only please God go back where it came from—

  It stares through Acton's milky eyes and snarls, "The fucker saw it coming at me! He let that thing tear my leg open!"

  Lenie shakes her head. "Maybe not. You know how dark it is out there, I've been down here longer than anyone and they sneak up on me all the time, Acton. Why would Brander want to hurt you?"

  She hears Brander coming to his feet behind her. His voice carries over her shoulder: "Brander sure as shit wants to hurt him n—"

  She cuts him off. "Look, I can handle this." Her words are for Brander; her eyes remain locked with Acton's. "Maybe you should go to Medical, make sure you're okay."

  Acton leans forward, tensed. The thing inside waits and watches.

  "This asshole—" Brander begins.

  "Please, Mike." It's the first time she has ever used his first name.

  There's a moment of silence.

  "Since when did you ever get involved?" he says behind her.

  It's a good question. Brander's footsteps shuffle away before she can think of an answer.

  Something in Acton goes back to sleep.

  "You'd better go there too," Clarke says to him. "Later."

  "Nah. It wasn't that tough. I was surprised how feeble it was, after I got over the size of the fucking thing."

  "It ripped your diveskin. If it could do that, it wasn't as weak as you think. At least check it out; your leg might be lacerated."

  "If you say so. Although I'll bet Brander needs Medical more than I do." He flashes a predatory grin, and moves to pass her.

  "You might also consider reining in your temper," she says as he brushes past.

  Acton stops. "Yeah. I was kind of hard on him, wasn't I?"

  "He won't be as eager to help you out the next time you get caught in a smoker."

  "Yeah," he says again. Then: "I don't know, I've always been sort of—you know—"

  She remembers a word someone else used, after the fact. "Impulsive?"

  "Right. But really I'm not that bad. You just have to get used to me."

  Clarke doesn't answer.

  "Anyhow," he says, "I guess I owe your friend an apology."

  My friend. And by the time she gets over that jarring idea, she's alone again.

  * * *

  Five hours later Acton's in Medical. Clarke passes the open hatchway and glances in; he sits on an examination table, his 'skin undone to the waist. There's something wrong with the image. She stops and leans through the hatch.

  Acton has opened himself up. She can see the flesh peeled back around the water intake, the places where meat turns to plastic, the tubes that carry blood and the ones that carry antifreeze. He holds a tool in one hand; it disappears into the cavity, the spinning thing on its tip whirring quietly.

  Acton hits a nerve somewhere, and jumps as if shocked.

  "Are you damaged?" Clarke asks.

  He looks up. "Oh. Hi."

  She points at his dissected thorax. "Did the gulper—"

  He shakes his head. "No. No, it just bruised my leg a bit. I'm just making some adjustments."

  "Adjustments?"

  "Fine-tuning." He smiles. "Settling-in stuff."

  It doesn't work. The smile is hollow, somehow. Muscles stretch lips in the usual way, but the gesture's imprisoned in the lower half of his face. Above it, his capped eyes stare cold as drifted snow, innocent of any topography. She wonders why it has never bothered her before, and realizes that this is the first time she's ever seen a Rifter smile.

  "That's not supposed to be necessary," she says.

  "What's not?" Acton's smile is beginning to wear on her.

  "Fine-tuning. We're supposed to be self-adjusting."

  "Exactly. I'm adjusting myself."

  "I mean—"

  "I know what you mean," Acton says. "I'm—customizing the job." His hand moves around inside his rib cage as if autonomous, tinkering. "I figure I can get better performance if I nudge the settings just a bit outside the approved specs."

  Clarke hears a brief, Lilliputian screech of metal against metal.

  "How?" she asks.

  Acton withdraws his hand, folds flesh back over the hole. "Not exactly sure yet." He runs another tool along the seam in his chest, sealing himself. He shrugs back into his 'skin, seals that as well. Now he's as whole as any rifter.

  "I'll let you know next time I go outside," he says, laying a casual hand on Clarke's shoulder as he squeezes past.

  She almost doesn't flinch.

  Acton stops. He seems to look right around her.

  "You're nervous," he says, slowly.

  "Am I."

  "You don't like being touched." His hand rests on her collarbone like an insult.

  She remembers: she has the same armor that he does. She relaxes fractionally. "It's not a general thing," she lies. "Just some people."

  Acton seems to weigh the jibe, decide whether it's worthy of a response. His hand withdraws.

  "Kind of an unfortunate quirk in a place as small as this," he says, turning away.

  Small? I've got the whole goddamn ocean! But Acton's already climbing upstairs.

  * * *

  The new smoker is erupting again. Water shoots scalding from the chimney at the north end of the Throat, curdles and mixes with deep icy saline; microbes caught in the turbulence luminesce madly. The water fills with the hiss of unformed steam, aborted by the weight of three hundred atmospheres.

  Acton is ten meters above the seabed, awash in rippling blue light.

  She glides up from underneath. "Nakata said you were still out here," she buzzes at him. "She said you were waiting for this thing to go off."

  He doesn't even look at her. "Right."

  "You're lucky it did. You could have been waiting out here for days." Clarke turns away, aims herself at the generators.

  "And I think," Acton says, "it'll stop in a minute or two."

  She twists around and faces him. "Look, all these eruptions are..." she rummages for the word, "chaotic."

  "Uh huh."

  "You can't predict them."

  "Hey, the Pompeii worms can predict them. The clams and brachyurans can predict them. Why not me?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  "They can tell when something's going to blow. Take a look around sometime, you'll see for yourself. They react before it even happens."

  She looks around. The clams are acting just like clams. The worms are acting just like worms. The brachyurans scurry around the bottom the way brachyurans always do. "React how?"

  "Makes sense, after all. These vents can feed them or parboil them. After a few million years they've learned to read the signs, right?"

  The smoker hiccoughs. The plume wavers, light dimming at its edges.

  Acton looks at his wrist. "Not bad."

  "Lucky guess," Clarke says, her vocoder hiding uncertainty.

  The smoker manages a couple of feeble bursts and subsides completely.

  Acton drifts closer. "You know, when they first sent me down here I thought this place would be a real shithole. I figured I'd just knuckle down and do my time and get out. But it's not like that. You know what I mean, Lenie?"

  I know. But she doesn't answer.

  "I thought so," he says, as though she has. "It's really kind of...well, beautiful, in a way. Even the monsters, once you get to know 'em. We're all beautiful."

  He seems almost gentle.

  Clarke dredges her memory for some sort of defense. "You couldn't have known," she says. "Way too many vari
ables. It's not computable. Nothing down here's computable."

  An alien creature looks down at her and shrugs. "Computable? Probably not. But knowable..."

  There's no time for this, Clarke tells herself. I've got to get to work.

  "...that's something else again," Acton says.

  * * *

  She never figured him for a bookworm. Still, there he is again, plugged into the library. Stray light from the eyephones leaks across his cheeks.

  He seems to be spending a lot of time in there these days. Almost as much time as he spends outside.

  Clarke glances down at the flatscreen as she wanders past. It's dark.

  "Chemistry," Brander says from across the lounge.

  She looks at him.

  Brander jerks his thumb at the oblivious Acton. "That's what he's into. Weird shit. Boring as hell."

  That's what Ballard was into, just before... Clarke fingers a spare headset from the next terminal.

  "Ooh, you're walking a fine line there," Brander remarks. "Mr. Acton doesn't like people reading over his shoulder."

  Then Mr. Acton will be in privacy mode and I won't be able to. She sits down and slips the headset on. Acton has not invoked privacy; Clarke taps into his line without any trouble. The eyephone lasers etch text and formulae across her retinas. Serotonin. Acetylcholine. Neuropeptide moderation. Brander's right: it's really boring.

  Someone's touching her.

  She does not yank the headset off. She removes it calmly. She doesn't even flinch, this time. She will not give him the satisfaction.

  Acton has turned in his chair to face her, headset dangling around his neck. His hand is on her knee.

  "Glad to see we have common interests," he says quietly. "Not that surprising, though. We do share a certain ... chemistry..."

  "That's true." She stares back, safe behind her eyecaps. "Too bad I'm allergic to shitheads."

  He smiles. "Of course, it would never work. The ages are all wrong." He stands up, returns the headset to its hook.

  "I'm not nearly old enough to be your father."

  He crosses the lounge and climbs downstairs.