Starfish

  Got to know me?

  “—and do you know what thrill-seekers have in common? They all say that you haven’t lived until you’ve nearly died. They need the danger. It gives them a rush.”

  You don’t know me at all—

  “Some of them are combat veterans, some were hostages for long periods, some just spent a lot of time in dead zones for one reason or another. And a lot of the really compulsive ones—”

  Nobody knows me.

  “—the ones who can’t be happy unless they’re on the edge, all the time—a lot of them got started early, Lenie. When they were just children. And you, I bet … you don’t even like being touched—”

  Go away. Go away.

  Ballard puts her hand on Clarke’s shoulder. “How long were you abused, Lenie?” she asks gently. “How many years?”

  Clarke shrugs off the hand and does not answer. He didn’t mean any harm. She shifts on the bunk, turning away slightly.

  “That’s it, isn’t it? You don’t just have a tolerance to trauma, Lenie. You’ve got an addiction to it. Don’t you?”

  It only takes Clarke a moment to recover. The ’skin, the eyecaps make it easier. She turns calmly back to Ballard. She even smiles a little.

  “‘Abused,’” she says. “Now there’s a quaint term. Thought it died out after the Florida witch-hunts. You some sort of history buff, Jeanette?”

  “There’s a mechanism,” Ballard tells her. “I’ve been reading about it. Do you know how the brain handles stress, Lenie? It dumps all sorts of addictive stimulants into the bloodstream. Beta-endorphins, opioids. If it happens often enough, for long enough, you get hooked. You can’t help it.”

  Clarke feels a sound in her throat, a jagged coughing noise a bit like tearing metal. After a moment, she recognizes it as laughter.

  “I’m not making it up!” Ballard insists. “You can look it up yourself if you don’t believe me! Don’t you know how many abused children spend their whole lives hooked on wife-beaters or self-mutilation or free-fall—”

  “And it makes them happy, is that it?” Clarke says, still smiling. “They enjoy getting raped, or punched out, or—”

  “No, of course you’re not happy! But what you feel, that’s probably the closest you’ve ever come. So you confuse the two, you look for stress anywhere you can find it. It’s physiological addiction, Lenie. You ask for it. You always asked for it.”

  I ask for it. Ballard’s been reading, and Ballard knows: Life is pure electrochemistry. No use explaining how it feels. No use explaining that there are far worse things than being beaten up. There are even worse things than being held down and raped by your own father. There are the times between, when nothing happens at all. When he leaves you alone, and you don’t know for how long. You sit across the table from him, forcing yourself to eat while your bruised insides try to knit themselves back together; and he pats you on the head and smiles at you, and you know the reprieve’s already lasted too long, he’s going to come for you tonight, or tomorrow, or maybe the next day.

  Of course I asked for it. How else could I get it over with?

  “Listen.” Clarke shakes her head. “I—” But it’s hard to talk, suddenly. She knows what she wants to say; Ballard’s not the only one who reads. Ballard can’t see it through a lifetime of fulfilled expectations, but there’s nothing special about what happened to Lenie Clarke. Baboons and lions kill their own young. Male sticklebacks beat up their mates. Even insects rape. It’s not abuse, really, it’s just—biology.

  But she can’t say it aloud, for some reason. She tries, and she tries, but in the end all that comes out is a challenge that sounds almost childish:

  “Don’t you know anything?”

  “Sure I do, Lenie. I know you’re hooked on your own pain, and so you go out there and keep daring the rift to kill you, and eventually it will, don’t you see? That’s why you shouldn’t be here. That’s why we have to get you back.”

  Clarke stands up. “I’m not going back.” She turns to the hatch.

  Ballard reaches out toward her. “Listen, you’ve got to stay and hear me out. There’s more.”

  Clarke looks down at her with complete indifference. “Thanks for your concern. But I don’t have to stay. I can leave anytime I want to.”

  “You go out there now and you’ll give everything away—they’re watching us! Haven’t you figured it out yet?” Ballard’s voice is rising. “Listen, they knew about you! They were looking for someone like you! They’ve been testing us, they don’t know yet what kind of person works out better down here, so they’re watching and waiting to see who cracks first! This whole program is still experimental, can’t you see that? Everyone they’ve sent down—you, me, Ken Lubin, and Lana Cheung, it’s all part of some cold-blooded test—”

  “And you’re failing it,” Clarke says softly. “I see.”

  “They’re using us, Lenie—don’t go out there!”

  Ballard’s fingers grasp at Clarke like the suckers of an octopus. Clarke pushes them away. She undogs the hatch and pushes it open. She hears Ballard rising behind her.

  “You’re sick!” Ballard screams. Something smashes into the back of Clarke’s head. She goes sprawling out into the corridor. One arm smacks painfully against a cluster of pipes as she falls.

  She rolls to one side and raises her arms to protect herself. But Ballard just steps over her and stalks into the lounge.

  I’m not afraid, Clarke notes, getting to her feet. She hit me, and I’m not afraid. Isn’t that odd—

  From somewhere nearby, the sound of shattering glass.

  Ballard’s shouting in the lounge. “The experiment’s over! Come on out, you fucking ghouls!”

  Clarke follows the corridor, steps out of it. Pieces of the lounge mirror hang like great jagged stalactites in their frame. Splashes of glass litter the floor.

  On the wall, behind the broken mirror, a fisheye lens takes in every corner of the room.

  Ballard is staring into it. “Did you hear me? I’m not playing your stupid games anymore! I’m through performing!”

  The quartzite lens stares back impassively.

  So you were right, Clarke muses. She remembers the sheet in Ballard’s cubby. You figured it out, you found the pickups in your own cubby, and Ballard, my dear friend, you didn’t tell me.

  How long have you known?

  Ballard looks around, sees Clarke. “You’ve got her fooled, all right,” she snarls at the fisheye, “but she’s a goddamned basket case! She’s not even sane! Your little tests don’t impress me one fucking bit!”

  Clarke steps toward her.

  “Don’t call me a basket case,” she says, her voice absolutely level.

  “That’s what you are!” Ballard shouts. “You’re sick! That’s why you’re down here! They need you sick, they depend on it, and you’re so far gone you can’t see it! You hide everything behind that—that mask of yours, and you sit there like some masochistic jellyfish and just take anything anyone dishes out—you ask for it—”

  That used to be true, Clarke realizes as her hands ball into fists. That’s the strange thing. Ballard begins to back away; Clarke advances, step by step. It wasn’t until I came down here that I learned that I could fight back. That I could win. The rift taught me that, and now Ballard has, too—

  “Thank you,” Clarke whispers, and hits Ballard hard in the face.

  Ballard goes over backward, collides with a table. Clarke calmly steps forward. She catches a glimpse of herself in a glass icicle; her capped eyes seem almost luminous.

  “Oh Jesus,” Ballard whimpers. “Lenie, I’m sorry.”

  Clarke stands over her. “Don’t be,” she says. She sees herself as some sort of exploding schematic, each piece neatly labeled. So much anger in here, she thinks. So much hate. So much to take out on someone.

  She looks at Ballard, cowering on the floor.

  “I think,” Clarke says, “I’ll start with you.”

  But her therapy ends be
fore she can even get properly warmed up. A sudden noise fills the lounge—shrill, periodic, vaguely familiar. It takes a moment for Clarke to remember what it is. She lowers her foot.

  Over in the Communications cubby, the telephone is ringing.

  * * *

  Jeanette Ballard is going home today.

  For half an hour the ’scaphe has been dropping deeper into midnight. Now the Comm monitor shows it settling like a great bloated tadpole onto Beebe’s docking assembly. Sounds of mechanical copulation reverberate and die. The overhead hatch drops open.

  Ballard’s replacement climbs down, already mostly ’skinned, staring impenetrably from eyes without pupils. His gloves are off; his ’skin is open up to the forearms. Clarke sees the faint scars running along his wrists, and smiles a bit inside.

  Was there another Ballard up there, waiting, she wonders, in case I had been the one who didn’t work out?

  Out of sight down the corridor, a hatch hisses open. Ballard appears in shirtsleeves, one eye swollen shut, carrying a single suitcase. She seems about to say something, but stops when she sees the newcomer. She looks at him for a moment. She nods briefly. She climbs into the belly of the ’scaphe without a word.

  Nobody calls down to them. There are no salutations, no morale-boosting small talk. Perhaps the crew has been briefed. Perhaps they’ve figured it out on their own. The docking hatch swings shut. With a final clank, the ’scaphe disengages.

  Clarke walks across the lounge and looks into the camera. She reaches between mirror fragments and rips its power line from the wall.

  We don’t need this anymore, she thinks, and she knows that somewhere far away, someone agrees.

  She and the newcomer appraise each other with dead white eyes.

  “I’m Lubin,” he says at last.

  Housecleaning

  So. They say you’re a beater.

  Lubin stands in front of her, his duffel bag at his feet. Slavic; dark hair, pale skin, a face planed out by an underskilled woodworker. One thick eyebrow shading both eyes. Not tall—a hundred and eighty centimeters, maybe—but solid.

  You look like a beater.

  Scars. Not just on the wrists, on the face, too. Very faint, a webwork echo of old injuries. Too subtle for deliberate decoration, even if Lubin’s tastes run to that, but too obvious for reconstructive work; medical technology learned how to erase such telltales decades ago. Unless—Unless the injuries were really bad.

  Is that it? Did something chew your face down to the bone, a long time ago?

  Lubin reaches down, picks up his bag. His covered eyes betray nothing.

  I’ve known beaters in my day. You fit. Sort of.

  “Any preference which cubby I take?” he asks. It’s strange, hearing that voice coming out of a face like his. It sounds almost pleasant.

  Clarke shakes her head. “I’m second on the right. Take any of the others.”

  He steps past her. Daggers of reflective glass protrude from the edges of the far wall; within them, Lubin’s fractured image disappears into the corridor at Clarke’s back. She moves across the lounge to that jagged wall. I should really clean this up one of these days.…

  She used to like the way the mirrors worked since Ballard’s adjustments. The jigsaw reflections seem more creative, somehow. More impressionistic. Now, though, they’re beginning to wear on her. Maybe it’s time for another change.

  A piece of Ken Lubin stares at her from the wall. Without thinking, she drives her fist into the glass. A shower of fragments tinkles to the floor.

  You could be a beater. Just try it. Just fucking try it.

  “Oh,” Lubin says, behind her. “I—”

  There’s still enough mirror left to check; her face is free of any expression. She turns to face him.

  “I’m sorry if I startled you,” Lubin says quietly, and withdraws.

  He does seem sorry, at that.

  So. You’re not a beater. Clarke leans against the bulkhead. At least, not my kind of beater. She’s not exactly sure how she knows. There’s some vital chemistry missing between them. Lubin, she thinks, is a very dangerous man. Just not to her.

  She smiles to herself. Beating means never having to say you’re sorry.

  Until it’s too late, of course.

  * * *

  She’s tired enough of sharing the cubby with herself. Sharing it with someone else is something she likes even less.

  Lenie Clarke lies on her bunk and scans the length of her own body. Past her toes, another Lenie Clarke stares coolly back. The jumbled topography of the forward bulkhead frames her reflected face like a tabletop junkyard turned on edge.

  The camera behind that mirror must see the same thing she does, but distorted around the edges. Clarke figures on a wide-angle lens; the GA wouldn’t want to leave the corners out of range. What’s the point of running an experiment if you can’t keep tabs on your subject animals?

  She wonders if anyone’s watching her now. Probably not; at least, nobody human. They’ll have some machine, tireless and dispassionate, something that watches with relentless attention as she works or shits or gets herself off. It will be programmed to call flesh and blood if she does anything interesting.

  Interesting. Who defines that parameter? Is it strictly in keeping with the nature of the experiment, or has someone programmed more personal tastes on the side? Does anyone else get off when Lenie Clarke does?

  She twists on the bed and faces the headboard bulkhead. A spaghetti bundle of optical filaments erupts from the floor beside her pallet and crawls up the middle of the wall, disappearing into the ceiling; the seismic feeds, on their way to the Communications cubby. The air-conditioning inlet sighs across her cheek, just to one side. Behind it, a metal iris catches strips of light sectioned by the grating, ready to sphincter shut the moment delta-p exceeds some critical number of millibars per second. Beebe is a mansion with many rooms, each potentially self-isolating in case of emergency.

  Clarke lies back on the bunk and lets her fingers drop to the deck. The telemetry cartridge on the floor is almost dry now, fine runnels of salt crusting its surface as the seawater evaporates. It’s a basic broad-spectrum model, studded with half a dozen senses: seismic, temperature, flow, the usual sulfates and organics. Sensor heads disfigure its housing like the spikes on a mace.

  Which is why it’s here, now.

  She closes her fingers around the carrying handle, lifts the cartridge off the deck. Heavy. Neutrally buoyant in seawater, of course, but 9.5 kilos in atmosphere, according to the specs. Mostly pressure casing, very tough. An active smoker at five hundred atmospheres wouldn’t touch it.

  Maybe it’s a bit of overkill, sending it up against one lousy mirror. Ballard started the job with her bare hands, after all.

  Odd that they didn’t make them shatterproof.

  But convenient.

  Clarke sits up, hefting the cartridge. Her reflection looks back at her; its eyes, blank but not empty, seem somehow amused.

  * * *

  “Ms. Clarke? You okay?” It’s Lubin. “I heard—”

  “I’m fine,” she says to the sealed hatch. There’s glass all over the cubby. One stubborn shard, half a meter long, hangs in its frame like a loose tooth. She reaches out (mirror fragments tumble off her thighs) and taps it with one hand. It crashes to the deck and shatters.

  “Just housecleaning,” she calls.

  Lubin says nothing. She hears him move away up the corridor.

  He’s going to work out fine. It’s been a few days now and he’s been scrupulous about keeping his distance. There’s no sexual chemistry at all, nothing to set them at each other’s throats. Whatever Ken Lubin did to Lana Cheung—whatever those two did to each other—won’t be an issue here. Lubin’s tastes are too specific.

  For that matter, so are Clarke’s.

  She stands up, head bent to avoid the metal encrustations on the ceiling. Glass crunches under her feet. The bulkhead behind the mirror, freshly exposed, looks oily in the flu
orescent light; a ribbed gray face with only two distinguishing features. The first is a spherical lens, smaller than a fingernail, tucked up in one corner. Clarke pulls it from its socket, holds it between thumb and forefinger for a second. A tiny glass eyeball. She drops it to the glittering deck.

  There’s also a name, stamped into one of the alloy ribs: HANSEN FABRICATION.

  It’s the first time she’s seen see a brand name since she arrived here, except for the GA logos pressed into the shoulders of their diveskins. That seems odd somehow. She checks the lightstrip running the length of the ceiling: white and featureless. An emergency hydrox tank next to the hatch: DOT test date, pressure specs, but no manufacturer.

  She doesn’t know if she should attach any significance to this.

  Alone, now. Hatch sealed, surveillance ended—even her own reflection shattered beyond repair. For the first time, Lenie Clarke feels a sense of real safety here in the station’s belly. She doesn’t quite know what to do with it.

  Maybe I could let my guard down a bit. Her hands go to her face.

  At first she thinks she’s gone blind; the cubby seems so dark to her uncapped eyes, walls and furniture receding into mere suggestions of shadow. She remembers turning the lights down in increments in the days since Ballard’s departure, darkening this room, darkening every other corner of Beebe Station. Lubin’s been doing it too, although they never talk about it.

  For the first time she wonders at their actions. It doesn’t make sense; eyecaps compensate automatically for changes in ambient light, always serve up the same optimum intensity to the retina. Why choose to live in a darkness you don’t even perceive?

  She nudges the lights up a bit; the cubby brightens. Bright colors jar the eye against a background of gray on gray. The hydrox tank reflects fluorescent orange; readouts wink red and blue and green; the handle on the bulkhead locker is a small exclamation of yellow. She can’t remember the last time she noticed color; eyecaps draw the faintest images from darkness, but most of the spectrum gets lost in the process. Only now, when the lights are up, can color reassert itself.