Starfish

"Can't we just be friends?" She rubs up against him. "I can do this whenever you want —»

"Go away. You can’t stay here."

"I can, maybe. If it works out, they said. But we have to like each other or they could send me back — ”

"Good."

She's crying now, she's rubbing against him so hard the bed shakes, "Please can't you like me please I'll do anything I'll even — "

But he never finds out what she'll even do because that's when the door slams open and whatever happens after that, Gerry Fischer can't remember.

Shadow, I'm so sorry…

But she's back with him now, in the cold and the dark where it's safe. Somehow. Beebe's a dim gray glow in the distance. She floats against that backdrop like a black cardboard cutout.

"Shadow…" Not his voice.

"No." Not hers. "Lenie."

"Lenie…"

Twin crescents, thin as fingernails, reflect from her eyes. Even in two dimensions she's beautiful.

Mangled words buzz from her throat: "You know who I am? You can understand me?"

He nods, then wonders if she can see it. "Yeah."

"You don't — lately you're sort of gone, Fischer. Like you've forgotten how to be human."

He tries to laugh, but the vocoder can't handle it. "It comes and goes, I think. I'm…lucid now, anyway. That's the word, isn't it?"

"You shouldn't have come back inside." Machinery strips any feeling from her words. "He says he'll kill you. Maybe you should just stay out of his way."

"Okay," he says, and thinks it actually might be.

"I can bring food out, I guess. They don't care about that."

"That's okay. I can — go fishing."

"I'll call for a 'scaphe. It can pick you up out here."

"No. I can swim back up myself if I want to. Not far."

"Then I'll tell them to send someone."

"No."

A pause. "You can't swim all the way back to the mainland."

"I'll stay down here…a while…"

A tremor growls softly along the seabed.

"You sure?" Lenie says.

"Yeah." His arm hurts. He doesn't know why.

She turns slightly. The dim reflections vanish from her eyes for a long moment.

"I'm sorry, Gerry."

"Okay."

Lenie's silhouette twists around and faces back towards Beebe. "I should get going."

She doesn't leave. She doesn't say anything for almost a minute.

Then: "Who's Shadow?"

More silence.

"She's a…friend. When I was young."

"She means a lot to you." Not a question. "Do you want me to send her a message?"

"She's dead," Fischer says, marveling that he's really known it all along.

"Oh."

"Didn't mean to," he says. "But she had her own mom and dad, you know, why did she need mine? She went back where she belonged. That's all."

"Where she belonged," Lenie buzzes, almost too softly to hear.

"Not my fault," he says. It's hard to talk. It didn't used to be this hard.

Someone's touching him. Lenie. Her hand is on his arm, and he knows it's impossible but he can feel the warmth of her body through his 'skin.

"Gerry."

"Yes?"

"Why wasn't she with her own family?"

"She said they hurt her. She always said that. That's how she got in. She used it, it always worked…"

Not always, Shadow reminds him.

"And then she went back," Lenie murmurs.

"I didn't mean to."

A sound comes out of Lenie's vocoder, and he has no idea what it is. "Brander's right, isn't he. About you and kids."

Somehow, he knows she's not accusing him. She's just checking.

"That's what you — do," he tells her. "When you really love someone."

"Oh, Gerry. You're so completely fucked up."

A string of clicks taps faintly on the machinery in his chest.

"They're looking for me," she says.

"Okay."

"Be careful, okay?"

"You could stay. Here."

Her silence answers him.

"Maybe I'll come out and visit sometimes," she buzzes at last. She rises up into the water, turns away.

"Bye," Shadow says. It's the first time she's spoken aloud since she came inside, but Fischer doesn't think Lenie notices the difference.

And then she's gone, for now.

But she comes out here all the time. Alone, sometimes. He knows it isn't over. And when she goes back and forth with the others, doing all the things he used to do, he'll be there, off where no one can see. Checking up. Making sure she's okay.

Like her own guardian angel. Right, Shadow?

A couple of fish flicker dimly in the distance.

Shadow…?

Ballet

Dancer

A week later Fischer's replacement comes down on the 'scaphe. Nobody stands watch in Communications any more; machines don't care if they have an audience. Sudden clanking reverberates through Beebe Station and Clarke stands alone in the lounge, waiting for the ceiling to open up. Compressed nitrox hisses overhead, blowing seawater back to the abyss.