Starfish

"Humans have to trust, Karl. There's no big deal about putting your faith in something you know for certain. I want you to trust me."

"Not know you."

She tries to hear sadness on that synthetic voice. In Beebe, maybe, it would have come through. But in Beebe he would never had said that.

"Karl —»

"I can't come back."

"You're not yourself out here." She pushes away, spins around; she can just barely distinguish his silhouette.

"You want me to be — " She hears confusion in the words, even through the vocoder, but she knows it's not a question. " — hateful."

"Don't be an idiot. I've had more than my fill of assholes, believe me. But Karl, this is just some kind of cheap trick. Step out of the magic booth, you're Mr. Nice Guy. Step back in, you're the SeaTac Strangler. It's not real."

"How do you know?"

She keeps her distance, suddenly knowing the answer. It's only real if it hurts. It's only real if it happens slowly, painfully, each step carved in shouts and threats and thrown punches.

It's only real if Lenie Clarke is the one to make him change.

She doesn't tell him any of this, of course. But she's afraid, as she turns and leaves him there, that she doesn't have to.

* * *

She comes instantly out of sleep, tense and completely alert. There's darkness — the lights are off, she's even blanked the readouts on the wall — but it's the close, familiar darkness of her own cubby. Something is tapping on the hull, regular and insistent.

From outside.

Out in the corridor there's light enough for rifter eyes. Nakata and Caraco stand motionless in the lounge. Brander sits at the library; the screens are dark, the headsets all hanging on their pegs.

The sound ticks through the lounge, fainter than before but easily audible.

"Where's Lubin?" Clarke asks softly. Nakata tilts her head towards the hull: outside somewhere.

Clarke climbs downstairs and into the airlock.

* * *

"We thought you'd gone over," she says. "Like Fischer."

They float between Beebe and the sea floor. Clarke reaches out to him. Acton reaches back.

"How long has it been?" The words come out as faint, metallic sighs.

"Six days. Maybe seven. I've been putting off — calling up for a replacement —»

He doesn't react.

"We saw you on sonar sometimes," she adds. "For a while. Then you disappeared."

Silence.

"Did you get lost?" she asks after a while.

"Yeah."

"But you're back now."

"No."

"Karl —»

"I need you to promise me something, Lenie."

"What?"

"Promise me you'll do what I did. The others too. They'll listen to you."

"You know I can't —»

"Five percent, Lenie. Maybe ten. If you keep it that low you'll do okay. Promise."

"Why, Karl?"

"Because I wasn't wrong about everything. Because sooner or later they're going to have to get rid of you, and you need every edge you can get."

"Come inside. We can talk about it inside, everyone's there."

"There's strange things happening out there, Len. Out past sonar range, they're — I don't know what they're doing. They don't tell us…"

"Come inside, Karl."

He shakes his head. He seems almost unused to the gesture.

" — can't —»

"Then don't expect me —»

"I left a file in the library. It explains things. As much as I could, when I was in there. Promise me, Len."

"No. You promise. Come inside. Promise we'll work it out."

"It kills too much of me," he sighs. "I pushed it too far. Something burned out, I'm not even completely whole out here any more. But you'll be okay. Five or ten percent, no more."

"I need you," she buzzes, very quietly.

"No," he says. "You need Karl Acton."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You need what he did to you."

All the warmth goes out of her then. What's left is a slow, freezing boil.

"What is this, Karl? Some grand insight you got while spirit-walking around in the mud? You think you know me better than I do?"

"You know —»

"Because you don't, you know. You don't know shit about me, you never did. And you don't really have the balls to find out, so you run off into the dark and come back spouting all this pretentious bullshit." She's goading him, she knows she's goading him but he's just not reacting. Even one of his outbursts would be better than this.

"It's saved under Shadow," he says.

She stares at him without speaking.

"The file," he adds.

"What's wrong with you?" She's beating at him now, pounding as hard as she can but he's not hitting back, he's not even defending himself for Chrissakes why don't you fight back asshole why don't you just get it over with, just beat the shit out of me until the guilt covers us both and we'll promise never to do it again and —

But even anger deserts her now. The inertia of her attack pushes them away from each other. She catches herself on an anchor cable. A starfish, wrapped around the line, reaches blindly out to touch her with the tip of one arm.

Acton continues to drift.

"Stay," she says.