Starfish

"I don't." He grins, showing teeth as sharp and white as eyecaps. "But even if they did trust me, they wouldn't do anything unless you thought it was okay."

She looks at him. "Why not?"

"You're in charge here, Len."

"Bullshit. They never told you that."

"They didn't have to. It's obvious."

"I've been down here longer than them. So's Lubin. That doesn't matter to anyone."

Acton frowns briefly. "No, I don't think it does. But you're still leader of the pack, Len. Head wolf. A-fucking-kayla."

Clarke shakes her head. She searches her memory for something, anything, that would contradict Acton's absurd claim. She comes up empty.

She feels a little sick inside.

He gives her a little squeeze. "Tough luck, lover. I guess the clothes don't fit so well after being a career victim your whole life, eh?"

Clarke stares at the deck.

"Think about it, anyway," Acton whispers in her ear. "I guarantee you'll feel twice as alive as you do now."

"That happens anyway," Clarke reminds him. "Whenever I go outside. I don't need to screw up my internals for that." Not those internals, anyway.

"This is different," he insists.

She looks at him and smiles, and hopes he doesn't push it. How can he expect me to let him cut me open like that? she wonders, and then wonders if maybe someday she will, if the fear of losing him might somehow grow large enough to force her other fears into submission. It wouldn't be the first time.

Twice as alive, Acton says. Hiding behind her smile, Clarke considers: twice as much of her life. Not a great prospect, so far.

* * *

There's a light from behind; it chases her shadow out along the seabed. She can't remember how long it's been there. She feels a momentary chill —

— Fischer? —

— before common sense sets in. Gerry Fischer wouldn't use a headlamp.

"Lenie?"

She revolves on her own axis, sees a silhouette hovering a few meters away. Cyclopean light glares from its forehead. Clarke hears a subvocal buzz, the corrupted equivalent of Brander clearing his throat. "Judy said you were out here," he explains.

"Judy." She means it as a question, but her vocoder loses the intonation.

"Yeah. She sort of, keeps tabs on you sometimes."

Clarke considers that a moment. "Tell her I'm harmless."

"It's not like that," he buzzes. "I think she just… worries…"

Clarke feels muscles twitching at the corners of her mouth. She thinks she might be smiling.

"So I guess we're on shift," she says, after a moment.

The headlight bobs up and down. "Right. A bunch of clams need their asses scraped. More skilled labor."

She stretches, weightless. "Okay. Let's go."

"Lenie…"

She looks up at him.

"Why do you come — I mean, why here?" Brander's headlight sweeps the bottom, comes to rest on an outcropping of bone and rotted flesh. A skeletal smile stitches its way across the lit circle. "Did you kill it, or something?"

"Yeah, I — " She falls silent, realizing: He means the whale.

"Nah," she says instead. "It just died on its own."

* * *

Of course she wakes up alone. They still try to sleep together sometimes, after sex has made them too lazy to go outside. But the bunk is too small. The most they can manage is a sort of diagonal slouch: feet on the floor, necks bent up against the bulkhead, Acton cradling her like a living hammock. If they're unlucky they really do fall asleep like that. It takes hours to get the kinks out afterwards. Way more trouble than it's worth.

So she wakes up alone. But she misses him anyway.

It's early. The schedules handed down from the GA are increasingly irrelevant — circadian rhythms lose their way in the incessant darkness, fall slowly out of phase — but the rubbery timetable that remains leaves hours before her shift starts. Lenie Clarke is awake in the middle of the night. It seems like a stupid and obvious thing to say, months from the nearest sunrise, but right now it seems especially true.

In the corridor she turns for a moment in the direction of his cubby before she remembers. He's never in there any more. He's never even inside, unless he's eating or working or being with her. He hasn't slept in his quarters almost since they got involved. He's getting almost as bad as Lubin.

Caraco is sitting silently in the lounge, unmoving, obeying her own inner clock. She looks up as Clarke crosses to Comm.

"He went out about an hour ago," she says softly.

Sonar picks him up fifty meters southeast, barely echoing above the bottom clutter. Clarke heads for the ladder.

"He showed us something the other day," Caraco says after her. "Ken and me."

Clarke looks back.

"A smoker, way off in one corner of the Throat. It had this weird fluted vent, and it made singing sounds, almost…"

"Mmm."

"He really wanted us to know about it, for some reason. He was really excited. He's — he's kind of strange out there, Lenie…"

"Judy," Clarke says neutrally, "Why are you telling me this?"

Caraco looks away. "Sorry. I didn't mean anything."

Clarke starts down the ladder.