Starfish

Locked up in here for three fucking weeks and all she gives me is a ten-minute courtesy call. Ten lousy minutes of my-experts-say-you're-wrong and it's-such-a-basic-point-I-can't-believe-you-missed-it and then she just walks away. She just fucking smiles and walks away.

"Know what I should have done," he growled at the teleop. It was the middle of the day but he didn't care any more. Nobody was listening, they'd deserted him in here. They'd probably forgotten all about him. "What I should have done is rip a hole in that fucking membrane when she was here. Let a little of whatever's in here out to mix with the air in her lungs. Bet that'd inspire her to look for some answers!"

He knew it was fantasy. The membrane was almost infinitely flexible, and just as tough. Even if he succeeded in cutting it, it would repair itself before any mere gas molecules could jump through. Still, it was satisfying to think about.

Not satisfying enough. Scanlon picked up a chair and hurled it at the window. The membrane caught it like a form-fitting glove, enfolded it, let it fall almost to the floor on the other side. Then, slowly, the window tightened down to two dimensions. The chair toppled back into Scanlon's cell, completely undamaged.

And to think she'd had the fucking temerity to lecture him with that inane little homily about house arrest! As though she'd caught him in some sort of lie, when he'd suggested the vampires might stay put. As though she thought he was covering for them.

Sure, he knew more about vampires than anyone. That didn't mean he was one. That didn't mean —

We could have treated you better, Lubin had said, there at the last. We. As though he'd been speaking for all of them. As though, finally, they were accepting him. As though —

But vampires were damaged goods, always had been. That was the whole point. How could Yves Scanlon qualify for membership in a club like that?

He knew one thing, though. He'd rather be a vampire than one of these assholes up here. That was obvious now. Now that the pretenses were dropping away and they didn't even bother talking to him any more. They exploited him and then they shunned him, they used him just like they used the vampires. He'd always known that deep down, of course. But he'd tried to deny it, kept it stifled under years of accommodation and good intentions and misguided efforts to fit in.

These people were the enemy. They'd always been the enemy.

And they had him by the balls.

He spun around and slammed his fist into the examination table. It didn't even hurt. He continued until it did. Panting, knuckles raw and stinging, he looked around for something else to smash.

The teleop woke up enough to hiss and spark when the chair bounced off its central trunk. One of the arms wiggled spastically for a moment. A faint smell of burnt insulation. Then nothing. Only slightly dented, the teleop slept on above a litter of broken paradigms.

"Tip for the day," Scanlon snarled at it. "Never trust a dryback."

Head Cheese

Theme and Variation

A tremor shivers through bedrock. The emerald grid fractures into a jagged spiderweb. Strands of laser light bounce haphazardly into the abyss.

From somewhere within the carousel, a subtle discontent. Intensified cogitation. The displaced beams waver, begin realigning themselves.

Lenie Clarke has seen and felt all of this before. This time she watches the prisms on the seabed, rotating and adjusting themselves like tiny radio-telescopes. One by one the disturbed beams lie back down, parallel, perpendicular, planar. Within seconds the grid is completely restored.

Emotionless satisfaction. Cold alien thoughts nearby, reverting.

And further away, something else coming closer. Thin and hungry, like a faint reedy howl in Clarke's mind…

"Ah, shit," Brander buzzes, diving for the bottom.

It streaks down from the darkness overhead, mindlessly singleminded, big as Clarke and Brander put together. Its eyes reflect the glow from the seabed. It slams into the top of the carousel, mouth open, bounces away with half its teeth broken.

It has no thoughts, but Lenie Clarke can feel its emotions. They don't change. Injury never seems to faze these monsters. Its next attack targets one of the lasers. It skids around the roof of the carousel and comes up from underneath, swallowing one of the beams. It rams the emitter, and thrashes.

A sudden vicarious tingle shoots along Clarke's spine. The creature sinks, twitching. Clarke feels it die before it touches bottom.

"Jesus," she says. "You sure the laser didn't do that?"

"No. Way too weak," Brander tells her. "Didn't you feel it? An electric shock?"

She nods.