Starfish (52 page)

"Something like that." Clarke looks up at the overhead bulkhead. "How long to the surface?"

"A good twenty minutes, I'm afraid. These GA 'scaphes are fucking dirigibles. Everyone else is out there racing with dolphins, and the most I can manage with this thing is a fast wallow. Still—" he tries a disarming grin— "there's an up side. They're paying me by the hour."

"Hooray for you," she says.

It's almost silent again.

Little by little, the voices have stopped screaming. Now they converse among themselves in whispers, discussing things that mean nothing to him. It's okay, though. He's used to being ignored. He's
glad
to be ignored.

You're safe, Gerry. They can't hurt you.

What— who—

They've all gone. It's just us now.

You—

It's me, Gerry. Shadow. I was wondering when you'd come back.

He shakes his head. The faintest light still leaks over his shoulder. He turns, not so much toward light as toward a subtle lessening of darkness.

She was trying to help you, Gerry. She was only trying to help.

She—

Lenie. You're her guardian angel. Remember?

I'm not sure. I think—

But you left her back there. You ran away.

She wanted— I— not
inside...

He feels his legs moving. Water pushes against his face. He moves forward. A soft hole open in the darkness ahead. He can see shapes inside it.

That's where she lives, Shadow says. Remember?

He creeps back into the light. There were noises before, loud and painful. There was something big and dark, that moved. Now there is only this great ball hanging overhead, like, like,

—
like a fist
—

He stops, frightened. But everything's quiet, so quiet he can hear faint cries drifting across the seabed. He remembers: there's a hole in the ocean, a little ways from here, that talks to him sometimes. He's never understood what it says.

Go
on
, Shadow urges. She went inside.

She's gone—

You can't tell from out here. You have to get in close.

The underside of the sphere is a cool shadowy refuge; the equatorial lights can't reach all the way around its convex surface. In the overlapping shadows on the south pole, something shimmers enticingly.

Go
on
.

He pushes off the bottom, glides into the cone of shadow beneath the object. A bright shiny disk a meter across, facing down, wriggles inside a circular rim. He looks up into it.

Something looks back.

Startled, he twists down and away. The disk writhes in the sudden turbulence. He stops, turns back.

A bubble. That's all it is. A pocket of gas, trapped underneath the

—
the airlock.

That's nothing to be scared of, Shadow tells him. That's how you get in.

Still nervous, he swims back underneath the sphere. The air pocket shines silver in the reflected light. A black wraith moves into view within it, almost featureless except for two empty white spaces where eyes should be. It reaches out to meet his outstretched hand. Two sets of fingertips touch, fuse, disappear. One arm is grafted onto its own reflection at the wrist. Fingers, on the other side of the looking glass, touch metal.

He pulls back his hand, fascinated. The wraith floats overhead, empty and untroubled.

He draws one hand to his face, runs an index finger from one ear to the tip of the jaw. A very long molecule, folded against itself, unzips.

The wraith's smooth black face splits open a few centimeters; what's underneath shows pale gray in the filtered light. He feels the familiar dimpling of his cheek in sudden cold.

He continues the motion, slashing his face from ear to ear. A great smiling gash opens below the wraith's eyespots. Unzipped, a flap of black membrane floats under its chin, anchored at the throat.

There's a pucker in the center of the skinned area. He moves his jaw; the pucker opens.

By now most of his teeth are gone. He's swallowed some, spat others out if they came loose when his face was unsealed. No matter. Most of the things he eats these days are even softer than he is. When the occasional mollusk or echinoderm proves too tough or too large to swallow whole, there are always hands. Thumbs still oppose.

But this is the first time he's actually seen that gaping, toothless ruin where a mouth used to be. He knows this isn't right, somehow.

What happened to me? What am I?

You're Gerry, Shadow says. You're my best friend. You killed me. Remember?

She's gone
, Gerry realizes.

It's okay.

I know it is. I know.

You helped her, Gerry. She's safe now. You saved her.

I know
. And he remembers something, small and vital, it that last instant before everything turns white as the sun:

—
This is what you do when you really—

The lifter was still reeling CSS
Forcipiger
up into its belly when the news appeared on the main display. Joel checked it over, frowning, then deliberately looked outside. Gray predawn light was starting to wash out the eastern horizon.

When he looked back again, the information hadn't changed. "Shit. This doesn't make any sense at all."

"What?" Clarke said.

"We're not going back to Astoria. Or I am, but you're getting dropped off over the conshelf somewhere."

"
What?
" Clarke came forward, stopped just short of the cockpit.

"Says right here. We follow the usual course, but we dip down to zero altitude fifteen klicks offshore. You debark. Then I go on to Astoria."

"What's offshore?"

He checked. "Nothing. Water."

"Maybe a boat? A submarine?" Her voice went oddly dull on the last word.

"Maybe. No mention of it here, though." He grunted. "Maybe you're supposed to swim the rest of the way."

The lifter locked them tight. Tame thunderbolts exploded aft, superheating bladders of gas. The ocean began to fall away.

"So you're just going to dump me in the middle of the ocean," Clarke said coldly.

"It's not my decision."

"Of course not. You're just following orders."

Joel turned around. Her eyes stared back at him like twin snowscapes.

"You don't understand," he told her. "These aren't
orders
. I don't fly the lifter."

"Then what—"

"The pilot's a gel. It's not telling
me
to do anything. It's just bringing us up to speed on what
it's
doing, all on its own."

She didn't say anything for a moment. Then, "Is that the way it's done now? We take orders from machines?"

"Someone must have given the original order. The gel's following it. They haven't taken over yet. And besides," he added, "they're not exactly machines."

"Oh," she said softly. "I feel much better now."

Uncomfortably, Joel turned back to the console. "It is kind of odd, though."

"Really." Clarke didn't seem especially interested.

"Getting this from the gel, I mean. We've got a radio link. Why didn't someone just
tell
us?"

"Because your radio's out," Clarke said distantly.

Surprised, he checked the diagnostics. "No, it's working fine. In fact, I think I'll call in right now and ask what the fuck this is all about..."

Thirty seconds later he turned back to her. "How did you know?"

"Lucky guess." She didn't smile.

"Well the board's green, but I can't raise anyone. We're flying deaf." A doubt tickled the back of his mind. "Unless the gel's got access we don't, for some reason." He linked into the lifter's interface and called up that vehicle's afferent array. "Huh. What was that you said about machines giving the orders?"

That got her attention. "What is it?"

"The lifter got its orders through the Net."

"Isn't that risky? Why doesn't the GA just talk to it direct?"

"Dunno. It's as cut off as we are right now, but the last message came from this node here. Shit; that's another gel."

Clarke leaned forward, managing somehow not to touch him in the crowded space. "How can you tell?"

"The node address. BCC stands for biochemical cognition."

The display beeped twice, loudly.

"What's that?" Clarke said.

Sunlight flooded up from the ocean. It shone deep and violent blue.

"What the
fuck—
"

The cabin filled with computer screams. The altimeter readout flashed crimson and plummeted.
We're falling
, Joel thought, and then,
no, we can't be. No acceleration.

The ocean's
rising...

The display was a blizzard of data, swirling by too fast for human eyes. Somewhere overhead the gel was furiously processing options that might keep them alive. A sudden lurch: Joel grabbed useless submarine controls and hung on for dear life. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Clarke flying back towards the rear bulkhead.

The lifter clawed itself into the sky, lightning crackling along its length. The ocean raced after it, an enormous glowing bulge swelling towards the ventral port. Its murky light brightened as Joel watched; blue intensifying to green, to yellow.

To white.

A hole opened in the Pacific. The sun rose in its center. Joel flung his hands in front of his eyes, saw the bones there silhouetted in orange flesh. The lifter spun like a kicked toy, rammed deep into the sky on a pillar of steam. Outside, the air screamed. The lifter screamed back, skidding.

But it didn't break.

Somehow, after endless seconds, the keel steadied. The readouts were still online;
atmospheric disturbance
, they said, almost eight kilometers away now, bearing one-twenty. Joel looked out the starboard port. Off in the distance, the glowing ocean was ponderously collapsing upon itself. Ring-shaped waves expanded past beneath his feet, racing to the horizon.

Back where they had started, cumulus grew into the sky like a soft gray beanstalk. From here, against the darkness, it looked almost peaceful.

"Clarke," he said, "we made it."

He turned in his chair. The rifter was curled into a fetal position against the bulkhead. She didn't move.

"Clarke?"