Starfish (24 page)

She wakes up the close acoustics. "Karl! Karl, can you hear me?"

He reacts. His head twists around, faces up into the floods; his eyecaps reflect featureless white glare into the camera. He's shaking.

"His vocoder," Nakata says. There's sound coming from the speaker, soft, repetitive, mechanical. "It's— stuttering—"

Clarke's already in the wet room. She knows what Acton's vocoder is saying. She knows, because the same word is repeating over and over in her own head.

No. No. No. No. No.

* * *

No obvious motor impairment. He's able to make it back inside on his own; stiffens, in fact, when Clarke tries to help him. He strips his gear and follows her into Medical without a word.

Nakata, diplomatically, closes the hatch behind them

Now he sits on the examination table, stonefaced. Clarke knows the routine; get his 'skin off, his eyecaps out. Check autonomic pupil response and reflex arcs. Stab him, draw off the usual samples: blood gases, acetylcholine, GABA, lactic acid.

She sits down beside him. She doesn't want his eyecaps out. She doesn't want to see behind them.

"Your inhibitors," she says at last. "How far down are they?"

"Twenty percent."

"Well." She tries for a light touch. "At least we know your limit now. Just nudge them back up to normal."

Almost imperceptibly, he shakes his head.

"Why not?"

"Too late. I went over some sort of threshold. I don't think — it doesn't feel reversible."

"I see." She puts one tentative hand on his arm. He doesn't react. "How
do
you feel?"

"Blind. Deaf."

"You're not, though."

"You asked how I
felt
," he says, still expressionless.

"Here." She takes the NMR helmet down from its hook. Acton lets her strap it across his skull. "If there's anything wrong, this should—"

"There's something wrong, Len."

"Well." The helmet writes its impressions across the diagnostic display. Clarke's got the same medical expertise they all have, stuffed into her mind by machines that hijacked her dreams. Still, the raw data mean nothing to her. It's almost a minute before the display prints out an executive summary.

"Your synaptic calcium's way down." She's careful not to show her relief. "Makes sense, I guess. Your neurons fire too often, eventually they run out of something."

He looks at the screen, saying nothing.

"Karl, it's okay." She leans toward his ear, one hand on his shoulder. "It'll fix itself. Just put your inhibitors back up to normal; demand goes down, supply keeps up. No harm done."

He shakes his head again. "Won't work."

"Karl, look at the readout. You're going to be fine."

"Please don't touch me," he says, not moving at all.

She catches a glimpse of fist before it hits her eye. She staggers back against the bulkhead, feels some protruding rivet or valve catch the back of her head. The world drowns in explosions of afterlight.

He's lost control
, she thinks dully.
I win.
Her knees collapse under her; she slides down the wall, sits with a heavy thud on the deck. She considers it a matter of some pride that she's kept utterly silent through all this.

I wonder what I did to set him off.
She can't remember. Acton's fist seems to have knocked the past few minutes out of her head.
Doesn't matter anyway. Same old dance.

But this time there seems to be someone on her side. She can hear shouts, sounds of a scuffle. She hears the sick jarring thud of flesh against bone against metal, and for once, none of it seems to be hers.

"You
cocksucker!
I'll rip your fucking balls off!"

Brander's voice. Brander is sticking up for her. He always was the gallant one. Clarke smiles, tastes salt.
Of course, he never quite forgave Acton for that tiff over the gulper, either...

Her vision is starting to clear, in one eye at least. There's a leg right in front of her, another to one side. She looks up; the legs meet at Caraco's crotch. Acton and Brander are in her cubby too; Clarke's amazed that they can all fit.

Acton, his mouth bloody, is under siege. Brander's hand is at his throat. Acton has the wrist of that hand caught in a grip of his own; while Clarke watches, his other arm lashes out and glances off Brander's jaw.

"Stop it," she mumbles.

Caraco hits Acton's temple twice in rapid succession. Acton's head snaps sideways, snarls, but he doesn't release his grip on Brander.

"I said
stop it!
"

This time they hear her. The struggle slows, pauses; fists remain poised, no holds break, but they're all looking at her now.

Even Acton. Clarke looks up into his eyes, looks behind them. She can see nothing staring back but Acton himself.
You were there before,
she remembers.
I'm almost sure of it. Count on you to get Acton into a losing fight and then bugger off...

She braces herself against the bulkhead and pushes slowly erect. Caraco moves aside, helps her up.

"I'm flattered by all the attention, folks," Clarke says, "and I want to thank you for stopping by, but I think we can handle this on our own from here on in."

Caraco puts a protective hand on her shoulder. "You don't have to put up with this shit." Her eyes, somehow venomous through the shielding, are still locked on Acton. "None of us do."

One corner of Acton's mouth pulls back in a small, bloody sneer.

Clarke endures Caraco's touch without flinching. "I know that. And thanks for stepping in. But please, just leave us alone for a while."

Brander doesn't loosen his grip on Acton's throat. "I don't think that a very good—"

"
Will you get your fucking hands off him and leave us alone!
"

They back off. Clarke glares after them, dogs the hatch to keep them out. "Goddamned nosy neighbors," she grumbles, turning back to Acton.

His body sags in the sudden privacy, all the anger and bravado evaporating as she watches.

"Want to tell me why you're being such an asshole?" she says.

Acton collapses on her pallet. He stares at the deck, avoiding her eyes. "Don't you know when you're being fucked over?"

Clarke sits down beside him. "Sure. Getting punched out is pretty much a giveaway."

"I'm trying to
help
you. I'm trying to help
all
of you." He turns and hugs her, body shaking, cheek pressed against hers, face aimed at the bulkhead behind her shoulder. "Oh God Lenie I'm so sorry you're the last person in the whole fucking world I want to hurt—"

She strokes him without speaking. She knows he means it. They always do. She still can't bring herself to blame any of them.

He thinks he's alone in there. He thinks it's all his own doing.

Briefly, an impossible thought:
Maybe it is...

"I can't go on with this," he says. "Staying inside."

"It'll get better, Karl. It's always hard at first."

"Oh God, Len. You don't have a clue. You still think I'm some sort of junkie."

"Karl—"

"You think I don't know what addiction is? You think I can't tell the difference?"

She doesn't answer.

He manages a small, sad laugh. "I'm losing it, Len. You're forcing me to lose it. Why in God's name do you want me this way?"

"Because this is who you are, Karl. Outside isn't you. Outside's a distortion."

"Outside I'm not an asshole. Outside I don't make everyone hate me."

"No." She hugs him. "If controlling your temper means seeing you turn into something else, seeing you doped up all the time, then I'll take my chances with the original."

Acton looks at her. "I hate this. Jesus Christ, Len. Won't you ever get tired of people who kick the shit out of you?"

"That's a really nasty thing to say," she remarks quietly.

"I don't think so. I can remember some things I saw out there, Len. It's like you need —I mean God, Lenie, there's so much
hate
in all of you..."

She's never heard him speak like this. Not even outside. "You've got a bit of that in you too, you know."

"Yeah. I thought it made me different. I thought it gave me...an edge, you know?"

"It does."

He shakes his head. "Oh, no. Not next to you."

"Don't underrate yourself. You don't see me trying to take on the whole station."

"That's just it, Len. I blow it off all the time, I waste it on stupid shit like this. But you— you hoard it." His expression changes, she's not exactly sure what to. Concern, maybe. Worry. "Sometimes you scare me more than Lubin does. You never lash out, or beat on anybody — Christ, it's a major event when you even raise your voice — so it just builds up. It's got its up side, I guess." He manages a soft laugh. "Hatred's a great fuel source. If anything ever—activated you, you'd be unstoppable. But now, you're just—toxic. I don't think you really know how much hate you've got in you."

Pity?

Something inside her goes suddenly cool. "Don't play therapist with me, Karl. Just because your nerves fire too fast doesn't mean you've got second sight. You don't know me that well."

Of course not. Or you wouldn't be with me.

"Not in here." He smiles, but that strange sick expression keeps showing through behind. "Outside, at least, I can see things. In here I'm blind."

"You're in the land of the blind." She says curtly. "It's not a drawback."

"Really? Would
you
stay here if it meant getting your eyes cut out? Would you stay some place that rotted your brain out piece by piece, turned you from a human being into a fucking monkey?"

Clarke considers. "If I was a monkey to begin with, maybe."

Uh oh. Sounded too flippant by half, didn't I?

Acton looks at her for a moment. Something else does too, drowsily, with one eye open.

"At least
I
don't get my endorphins by playing victim," he says, slowly. "You should really be a bit more careful who you choose to look down on."

"And you," Clarke replies, "should save the pious lectures for those rare occasions when you actually know what you're talking about."

He rises off the bed and glares at her, fists carefully unclenched.

Clarke does not move. She feels her whole body hardening from the inside out. She deliberately lifts her head until she's looking straight into Acton's hooded eyes.

It's in there now, fully awake. She can't see Acton at all any more. Everything's back to normal.

"Don't even try," she says. "I gave you a couple of shots for old times' sake, but if you lay a hand on me again I swear I'll fucking kill you."