Starfish

Caraco pushes off the hull and flies back up into the water. Her silhouette vanishes into the murk, but her headlamp comes to rest and starts dipping around just behind Brander's. Clarke looks over at Nakata, still plastered against the hull. Nakata's feeling a little sick now, and even more worried about something…

"It is not happy!" Nakata shouts.

"Hey; come on, groundhogs!" Caraco's voice buzzes faintly. "Fly!"

Discontent. Something not expected.

Who is that? Clark wonders.

"Come on!" Caraco calls again.

What the hell. Can't hang on much longer anyway. Clarke lets go, pushes off; the top of the muckraker races on beneath. Heavy water drags the momentum from her. She kicks for altitude, feels sudden expectation from behind — and in the next second something slams against her back, pushing her forward again. Implants lurch against her ribcage.

"Jesus Christ!" Brander buzzes in her ear. "Get a grip, Lenie!"

He's caught her on his way past. Clarke reaches out and grabs the line that he and Caraco are attached to. It's only as thick as her finger, and too slippery to hang on to. She looks back and sees that the other two have looped it around their chests and under their arms, leaving their hands more or less free. She tries the same trick, drag arching her back, while Caraco calls out to Nakata.

Nakata is not eager to let go. They can feel that, even though they can't see her. Brander angles back and forth, tacking his body like a rudder; the three of them swing in a grand, barely controlled arc, knotted into the middle of their tether. "Come on, Alice! Join the human kite! We'll catch you!"

And Nakata's coming, she's coming, but she's doing it her own way. She's climbed sideways against the current, hand over hand, until she found the place where the line joins the deck. Now she's letting drag push her back along the filament to them.

Clarke has finally secured herself in a loop. Speed digs the line into her flesh; it's already starting to hurt. She doesn't feel much like a human kite. Bait on a hook is more like it. She twists around to Brander, points at the line: "What is this, anyway?"

"VLF antennae. Unspooled when we scared it. Probably crying for help."

"It won't get any, will it?"

"Not on this side of the ocean. It's probably just making a last call so its owners'll know what happened. Sort of a suicide note."

Caraco, entangled a bit further back, twists around at that. "Suicide? You don't suppose these things self-destruct?"

Sudden concern settles over the human kite. Alice Nakata tumbles into them.

"Maybe we ought to let it go," Clarke says.

Nakata nods emphatically. "It is not happy." Her disquiet radiates through the others like a warning light.

It takes a few moments to disentangle themselves from the antennae. It whips past and away, trailing a small float like a traffic cone. Clarke tumbles, lets the water brake her. Machine roars recede into grumbles, into mere tremors.

The rifters hang in empty midwater, silence on all sides.

Caraco points a sonar pistol straight down, fires. "Jeez. We're almost thirty meters off the bottom."

"We lose the squids?" Brander says. "That thing was really moving."

Caraco raises her pistol, takes a few more readings. "Got 'em. They're not all that far off, actually, I — hey."

"What?"

"There's five of them. Closing fast."

"Ken?"

"Uh huh."

"Well. He's saving us a swim, anyway," Brander says.

"Did anyone —»

They turn. Alice Nakata starts again: "Did anyone else feel it?"

"Feel what?" Brander begins, but Clarke is nodding.

"Judy?" Nakata says.

Caraco radiates reluctance. "I — there was something, maybe. Didn't get a good fix on it. I assumed it was one of you guys."

"What," Brander says. "The muckraker? I thought —»

A black cipher rises in their midst. His squid cruises straight up from underneath like a slow missile. It hovers overhead when he releases it. A couple of meters below, four other squids bob restlessly at station-keeping, noses up.

"You lost these," Lubin buzzes.

"Thanks," Brander replies.

Clarke concentrates, tries to tune Lubin in. She's only going through the motions, of course. He's dark to them. He's always been dark, fine-tuning didn't change him a bit. Nobody knows why.

"So what's going on?" he asks. "Your note said something about a muckraker."

"It got away from us," Caraco says.

"It was not happy," Nakata repeats.

"Yeah?"

"Alice got some sort of feeling off of it," Caraco says. "Lenie and me too, sort of."

"Muckrakers are unmanned," Lubin remarks.

"Not a man," Nakata says. "Not a person. But — " She trails off.

"I felt it," Clarke says. "It was alive."

* * *

Lenie Clarke lies on her bunk, alone again. Really alone. She can remember a time, not so long ago, when she reveled in this kind of isolation. Who would have thought that she'd miss feelings?

Even if they are someone else's.