Starfish

"Didn't work, though."

"Apparently not," Clarke concurs.

"What happened?" Joel asks. He's shivering again, the water's almost up to him, but other than that his voice seems calm.

"Not much. I was eleven. Plastered a bunch of derms all over my body. Passed out. Woke up in an MA ward."

"Shit. One step up from refmed."

"Yeah, well, we can't all be rich. Besides, it wasn't that bad. They even had counsellors on staff. I saw one myself."

"Yeah?" His voice is starting to shake again. "What'd she say?"

"He. He told me the world was full of people who needed him a lot more than I did, and next time I wanted attention maybe I could do it in some way that didn't cost the taxpayer."

"S-shit. What an as — asshole." Joel's got the shakes again.

"Not really. He was right. And I never tried it again, so it must've worked." Clarke slips into the water. "I'm going to change the mix. You look like you're starting to spazz again."

"Len —»

But she's gone before he can finish.

She slips down to the bottom of the compartment, tweaks the valves she finds there. High pressure turns oxygen to poison; the deeper they go, the less of it that air-breathers can tolerate without going into convulsions. This is the second time she's had to lean out the mixture. By now, she and Joel are only breathing one percent O₂.

If he lives long enough, though, there'll be other things she can't control. Joel isn't equipped with rifter neuroinhibitors.

She has to go up and face him again. She's holding her breath, there's no point in switching on her electrolyser for a measly twenty or thirty seconds. She's tempted to do it anyway, tempted to just stay down here. He can't ask her as long as she stays down here. She's safe.

But of all the things she's been in her life, she's never had to admit to being a coward.

She surfaces. Joel's still staring at the hatch. He opens his mouth to speak.

"Hey, Joel," she says quickly, "you sure you don't want me to switch over? It really doesn't make sense for me to use your air when I don't have to."

He shakes his head. "I don't want to spend my last few minutes alive listening to a machine voice, Lenie. Please. Just — stay with me."

She looks away from him, and nods.

"Fuck, Lenie," he says. "I'm so scared."

"I know," she says softly.

"This waiting, it's just — God, Lenie, you wouldn't put a dog through this. Please."

She closes her eyes, waiting.

"Pop the hatch, Lenie."

She shakes her head. "Joe, I couldn't even kill myself. Not when I was eleven. Not — not even last night. How can I —»

"My legs are wrecked, Len. I can't feel anything else any more. I c-can barely even talk. Please."

"Why did they do this to us, Joel? What's going on?"

He doesn't answer.

"What has them so scared? Why are they so —»

He moves.

He lurches up, falls sideways. His arms reach out; one hand catches the edge of the hatch. The other catches the wheel in its center.

His legs twist grotesquely underneath him. He doesn't seem to notice.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I couldn't —»

He fumbles, get both hands on the wheel. "No problem."

"Oh God. Joel —»

He stares at the hatch. His fingers clench the wheel.

"You know something, Lenie Clarke?" There's cold in his voice, and fear, but there's a sudden hard determination there too.

She shakes her head. I don't know anything.

"I would have really liked to fuck you," he says.

She doesn't know what to say to that.

He spins the hatch. Pulls the lever.

The hatch falls into Forcipiger. The ocean falls after it. Somehow, Lenie Clarke's body has prepared itself when she wasn't looking.

His body jams back into hers. He might be struggling. Or it could just be the rush of the Pacific, playing with him. She doesn't know if he's alive or dead. But she holds onto him, blindly, the ocean spinning them around, until there isn't any doubt.

Its atmosphere gone, Forcipiger is accelerating. Lenie Clarke takes Joel's body by the hands, and draws it out through the hatch. It follows her into viscous space. The 'scaphe spins away below them, fading in moments.

With a gentle push, she sets the body free. It begins to drift slowly towards the surface. She watches it go.

Something touches her from behind. She can barely feel it through her 'skin.

She turns.

A slender, translucent tentacle wraps softly around her wrist. It fades away into a distance utterly black to most, slate gray to Lenie Clarke. She brings it to her. Its swollen tip fires sticky threads at her fingers.

She brushes it aside, follows the tentacle back through the water. She encounters other tentacles on the way, feeble, attenuate things, barely twitching against the currents. They all lead back to something long, and thick, and shadowy. She circles in.

A great column of writhing, wormlike stomachs, pulsing with faint bioluminescence.