Starfish

The chamber he rises into is wrong. He looks around, disoriented; this isn't the usual shuttle. The passenger compartment is too small, the walls studded with an array of nozzles. Forward, the cockpit hatch is sealed. A strange face looks back through the porthole as the ventral hatch swings shut.

"Hey…"

The face disappears. The compartment resonates with the sound of metal mouths disengaging. A slight lurch and the 'scaphe is rising free.

A fine aerosol mist hisses from the nozzles. It stings Scanlon's eyes. An unfamiliar voice reassures him from the cabin speaker. Nothing to worry about, it says. Just a routine precaution.

Everything's just fine.

Seine

Entropy

Maybe things are getting out of hand, Lenie Clarke wonders.

The others don't seem to care. She hears Lubin and Caraco talking up in the lounge, hears Brander trying to sing in the shower — as if we didn't all get enough abuse during our childhoods — and envies their unconcern. Everyone hated Scanlon — well, not hate, exactly, that's a bit strong — but there was at least a sort of —

Contempt —

That's the word. Contempt. Back on the surface, Scanlon ticked everyone. No matter what you said to him he'd nod, make little encouraging noises, do everything to convince you that he was on your side. Except actually agree with you, of course. You didn't need fine-tuning to see through that shit; everyone down here already had too many Scanlons in their past, the official sympathizers, the instant friends who gently encouraged you to go back home, drop the charges, carefully pretending it was your interests being served. Back then Scanlon was just another patronizing bastard with a shaved deck, and if fortune put him down here on rifter turf for a while, who could be blamed for having a little fun with him?

But we could have killed him.

He started it. He attacked Gerry. He was holding him hostage.

As if the GA's going to make any sort of allowance for that…

So far, Clarke's kept her doubts to herself. It's not that she fears no one will listen to her. She fears the exact opposite. She doesn't want to change anybody's mind. She's not out to rally the troops. Initiative is a prerogative of leaders; she doesn't want the responsibility. The last thing she wants to be is

Leader of the pack, Len. Head wolf. A-fucking-kayla.

Acton's been dead for months and he's still laughing at her.

Okay. Scanlon was a nuisance at worst. At best he was an amusing diversion. "Shit," Brander said once, "You tune him in out there? I bet the GA doesn't even take him seriously." The Grid needs them, and it's not going to pull the plug just because a few rifters had some fun with an asshole like Scanlon. Makes sense.

Still, Clarke can't help thinking about consequences. She's never been able to avoid them in the past.

Brander's finally out of the shower; his voice drifts down from the lounge. Showers are an indulgence down here, hardly necessary when you live inside a self-flushing semipermeable diveskin but a sheer hot hedonistic pleasure just the same. Clarke grabs a towel off the rack and heads up the ladder before anyone else can cut in.

"Hey, Len." Caraco, seated at the table with Brander, waves her over. "Check out the new look."

Brander's in real shirtsleeves. He doesn't even have his caps in.

His eyes are brown.

"Wow." Clarke doesn't know what else to say. Those eyes look really strange. She looks around, vaguely uncomfortable. Lubin's over on the sofa, watching. "What do you think, Ken?"

Lubin shakes his head. "Why do you want to look like a dryback?"

Brander shrugs. "Don't know. I just felt like giving my eyes a rest for a couple of hours. I guess seeing Scanlon down here in shirtsleeves all the time." Not that anyone would even think of popping their caps in front of Scanlon.

Caraco affects an exaggerated shudder. "Please. Tell me he's not your new role model."

"He wasn't even my old one," Brander says.

Clarke can't get used to it. "Doesn't it bother you?" — Walking around naked like that?

"Actually, the only thing that bothers me is I can't see squat. Unless someone wants to turn up the lights…"

"So anyway." Caraco picks up the thread of some previous conversation. "You came down here why?"

"It's safe," Brander says, blinking against his own personal darkness.

"Uh huh."

"Safer, anyway. You were up there not so long ago. Didn't you see it?"

"I think what I saw up there was sort of skewed. That's why I'm down here."

"You never thought that things were getting, well, top-heavy?"

Caraco shrugs. Clarke, imagining steamy needles of water, takes a step towards the corridor.