Starfish (42 page)

"No reason you should. It's been out of fashion for three and a half billion years."

"No shit."

"Don't you wish." The probe withdrew. "It was all the rage in primordial times, until—"

"Excuse me," said Patricia Rowan's voice.

Scanlon glanced automatically over to the workstation. She wasn't there. The voice was coming from behind the curtain.

"Ah. Company. I've got what I came for, anyway." The arm swung around and neatly inserted the soiled probe into a dumbwaiter. By the time Scanlon had his pants back up the teleop had folded into neutral.

"See you tomorrow," said the poltergeist, and fled. The teleop's lights went out.

She was here.

Right in the next room.

Vindication was at hand.

Scanlon took a breath and pulled back the curtain.

* * *

Patricia Rowan stood in shadow on the other side. Her eyes glittered with faint mercury: almost vampire eyes, but diluted. Translucent, not opaque.

Her contacts, of course. Scanlon had tried a similar pair once. They linked into a weak RF signal from your watch, scrolled images across your field of view at a virtual range of forty centimeters. Patricia Rowan saw Scanlon and smiled. Whatever else she saw through those magical lenses, he could only guess.

"Dr. Scanlon," she said. "It's good to see you again."

He smiled back. "I'm glad you came by. We have a lot to talk about—"

Rowan nodded, opened her mouth.

"—and although your döpplegangers are perfectly adequate for normal conversation, they tend to lose a lot of the nuances—"

Closed it again.

"—especially given the kind of information you seem to be interested in."

Rowan hesitated a moment. "Yes. Of course. We, um, we need your insights, Dr. Scanlon." Yes. Good. Of course. "Your report on Beebe was quite, well, interesting, but things have changed somewhat since you filed it."

He nodded thoughtfully. "In what way?"

"Lubin's gone, for one thing."

"Gone?"

"Disappeared. Dead, perhaps, although apparently there's no signal from his deadman. Or possibly just— regressed, like Fischer."

"I see. And have you learned whether anyone at the other stations has gone over?" It was one of the predictions he'd made in his report.

Her eyes, rippling silver, seemed to stare at a point just beside his left shoulder. "We can't really say. Certainly we've had some losses, but rifters tend not to be very forthcoming with details. As we expected, of course."

"Yes, of course." Scanlon tried on a contemplative look. "So Lubin's gone. Not surprising. He was definitely closest to the edge. In fact, if I remember I predicted—"

"Probably just as well," Rowan murmured.

"Excuse me?"

She shook her head, as if clearing it of some distraction. "Nothing. Sorry."

"Ah." Scanlon nodded again. No need to harp on Lubin if Rowan didn't want to. He'd made lots of other predictions. "There's also the matter of the Ganzfeld effect I noted. The remaining crew—"

"Yes, we've spoken with a couple of— other experts about that."

"And?"

"They don't think the rift environment is,
sufficiently impoverished
is the way they put it. Not sufficiently impoverished to function as a Ganzfeld."

"I see," Scanlon felt part of his old self bristling. He smiled, ignoring it. "How do they explain my observations?"

"Actually—" Rowan coughed. "They're not completely convinced you
did
observe anything significant. Apparently there was some evidence that your report was dictated under conditions of— well, personal stress."

Scanlon carefully froze his smile into place. "Well. Everyone's entitled to their opinion."

Rowan said nothing.

"Although the fact that the rift is a stressful environment shouldn't come as news to any real
expert
," Scanlon continued. "That was the whole point of the program, after all."

Rowan nodded. "I don't disbelieve you, Doctor. I'm not really qualified to judge one way or the other."

True
, he didn't say.

"And in any event," Rowan added, "You were there. They weren't."

Scanlon relaxed. Of course she'd put his opinion ahead of those other
experts
, whoever they were. He was the one she'd chosen to go down there, after all.

"It's not really important," she said now, dismissing the subject. "Our immediate concern is the quarantine."

Mine as well as theirs.
But of course he didn't let that on. It wouldn't be— professional— to seem too concerned about his own welfare right now. Besides, they were treating him fine in here. At least he knew what was going on.

"—yet," Rowan finished.

Scanlon blinked. "What? Excuse me?"

"I said, for obvious reasons we've decided not to recall the crew from Beebe just yet."

"I see. Well, you're in luck. They don't want to leave."

Rowan stepped closer to the membrane. Her eyes faded in the light. "You're sure of this."

"Yes. The rift is their home, Ms. Rowan, in a way a layperson probably couldn't understand. They're more alive down there than they ever were on shore." He shrugged. "Besides, even if they wanted to leave, what could they do? They're hardly going to swim all the way back to the mainland."

"They might, actually."

"What?"

"It's possible," Rowan admitted. "Theoretically. And we— we caught one of them, leaving."

"
What
?"

"Up in the euphotic zone. We had a sub stationed up there, just to— keep an eye on things. One of the rifters— Cracker, or—" a glowing thread wriggled across each eye— "Caraco, that's it. Judy Caraco. She was heading straight for the surface. They figured she was making a break for it."

Scanlon shook his head. "Caraco does laps, Ms. Rowan. It was in my report."

"I know. Perhaps your report should have been more widely distributed. Although, her
laps
never took her that close to the surface before. I can see why they—" Rowan shook her head. "At any rate, they took her. A mistake, perhaps." A faint smile. "Those happen, sometimes."

"I see," Scanlon said.

"So now we're in something of a situation," Rowan went on. "Maybe the Beebe crew thinks that Caraco was just another accidental casualty. Or maybe they're getting suspicious. So do we let it lie, hope things blow over? Will they make a break if they think we're covering something up? Will some go and some stay? Are they a group, or a collection of individuals?"

She fell silent.

"A lot of questions," Scanlon said after a while.

"Okay, then. Here's just one. Would they obey a direct order to stay on the rift?"

"They might stay on the rift," Scanlon said. "But not because you ordered them to."

"We were thinking, maybe Lenie Clarke," Rowan said. "According to your report she's more or less the leader. And Lubin's— Lubin
was
— the wild card. Now he's out of the picture, perhaps Clarke could keep the others in line. If we can reach Clarke."

Scanlon shook his head. "Clarke's not any sort of leader, not in the conventional sense. She adopts her own behaviors independently, and the others just— follow her lead. It's not the usual authority-based system as you'd understand it."

"But if they follow her lead, as you say..."

"I suppose," Scanlon said slowly, "she's the most likely to obey an order to stay on site, no matter how hellish the situation. She's hooked on abusive relationships, after all." He stopped.

"You could always try telling them the truth," he suggested.

She nodded. "It's a possibility, certainly. And how do you think they'd react?"

Scanlon said nothing.

"Would they trust us?" Rowan asked.

Scanlon smiled. "Do they have any reason to?"

"Perhaps not." Rowan sighed. "But no matter what we tell, them, the issue's the same. What will they do when they learn they're stuck down there?"

"Probably nothing. That's where they want to be."

Rowan glanced at him curiously. "I'm surprised you'd say that, Doctor."

"Why?"

"There's no place I'd rather be than my own apartment. But the moment anyone put me under house arrest I'd want very much to leave it, and I'm not even slightly dysfunctional."

Scanlon let the last part slide. "That's a point," he admitted.

"A very basic one," she said. "I'm surprised someone with your background would miss it."

"I didn't
miss
it. I just think other factors
outweigh
it." On the outside, Scanlon smiled. "As you say, you're not at all dysfunctional."

"No. Not yet, anyway." Rowan's eyes clouded with a sudden flurry of data. She stared into space for a moment or two, assessing. "Excuse me. Bit of trouble on another front." She focused again on Scanlon. "Do you ever fell guilty, Yves?"

He laughed, cut himself off. "Guilty? Why?"

"About the project. About— what we did to them."

"They're happier down there. Believe me. I know."

"Do you."

"Better than anyone, Ms. Rowan. You know that. That's why you came to me today."

She didn't speak.

"Besides," Scanlon said, "Nobody drafted them. It was their own free choice."

"Yes," Rowan agreed softly. "Was."

And extended her arm through the window.

The isolation membrane coated her hand like liquid glass. It fit the contours of her fingers without a wrinkle, painted palm and wrist and forearm in a transparent sheath, pulled away just short of her elbow and stretched back to the windowpane.

"Thanks for your time, Yves," Rowan said.

After a moment Scanlon shook the proffered hand. It felt like a condom, slightly lubricated. "You're welcome," he said. Rowan retracted her arm, turned away. The membrane smoothed behind her like a soap bubble.

"But—" Scanlon said.

She turned back. "Yes?"

"Was that all you wanted?" he said.

"For now."

"Ms. Rowan, if I may. There's a lot about the people down there you don't know. A lot. I'm the only one who can give it to you."

"I appreciate that, Y—"

"The whole geothermal program hinges on them. I'm sure you see that."

She stepped back towards the membrane. "I do, Dr. Scanlon. Believe me. But I have a number of priorities right now. And in the meantime, I know where to find you." Once more she turned away.