Starfish

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 —

Sunrise

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."