"Then I go back," Lubin tells her.
"What, to the Lake?"
Lubin smiles faintly. "Back to N'Am."
Hopkinson whistles in tuneless surprise. "Well, I guess if anyone can take them on…"
Take on who, exactly? Clarke wonders. No one asks aloud. Who is everyone left behind. Them. They are dedicated to our destruction They sniff along the Mid Atlantic Ridge, obsessed in their endless myopic search for that one set of coordinates to feed into their torpedoes.
No one asks why, either. There is no why behind the hunt: it's just what they do. Don't go rooting around for reasons. Asking why accomplishes nothing: there are too many reasons to count, none of the living lack for motive. This fractured, bipolar microcosm stagnates and festers on the ocean floor, every reason for its existence reduced to an axiom: just because.
And yet, how many of the people here—how many of the rifters, how many, even of the drybacks— really brought the curtain down? For every corpse with blood on her hands, how many others—family, friends, drones who maintain plumbing and machinery and flesh—are guilty of nothing but association?
And if Lenie Clarke hadn't been so furiously intent on revenge that she could write off an entire world as an incidental expense, would any of it have come to this?
Alyx, Rowan said.
"No you don't." Clarke shakes her head.
Lubin speaks to the screen. "The most we can do down here is buy time. We have to use that time."
"Yes, but—"
"We're blind and deaf and under attack. The ruse has failed, Lenie. We need to know what we're facing, which means we have to face it. Hoping for the best is no longer a viable option."
"Not you," Clarke says.
Lubin turns to face her, one eyebrow raised in silent commentary.
She looks back, completely unfazed. "We."
He refuses three times before they even get outside.
"Someone needs to take charge here," he insists as the airlock floods. "You're the obvious choice. No one will give you any trouble now that Grace has been sidelined."
Clarke feels a chill in her gut. "Is that what that was? She'd served her purpose and you wanted me back in play so you just—broke her in half?"
"I'd wager it's no worse than what you had in mind for her."
I'm going to fucking kill you, Grace. I'm going to gut you like a fish.
"I'm going." she says. The hatch drops away beneath them.
"Do you honestly think you can force me to take you?" He brakes, turns, kicks out from under the light.
She follows. "Do you think you can afford to do this without any backup at all?"
"More than I can afford an untrained sidekick who's signed up for all the wrong reasons."
"You don't know shit about my reasons."
"You'll hold me back," Lubin buzzes. "I stand much better odds if I don't have to keep watching out for you. If you get in trouble—"
"Then you'll ditch me," she says. "In a second. I know what your battlefield priorities are. Shit, Ken, I know you."
"Recent events would suggest otherwise."
She stares at him, adamant. He scissors rhythmically on into darkness.
Where's he going? she wonders.There's nothing on this bearing…
"You can't deny that you're not equipped for this kind of op," he points out. "You don't have the training."
"Which must make it pretty embarrassing for you, given that I got all the way across N'Am before you and your army and all your ballyhooed training could even catch up with me." She smiles under her mask, not kindly; he can't see it but maybe he can tune in the sentiment. "I beat you, Ken. Maybe I wasn't nearly as smart, or as well-trained, and maybe I didn't have all of N'Am's muscle backing me up, but I stayed ahead of you for months and you know it."
"You had quite a lot of help," he points out.
"Maybe I still do."
His rhythm falters. Perhaps he hasn't thought of that.
She takes the opening. "Think about it, Ken. All those virtual viruses getting together, muddying my tracks, running interference, turning me into a fucking myth…"
"Anemone wasn't working for you," he buzzes. "It was using you. You were just—"
"A tool. A meme in a plan for Global Apocalypse. Give me a break, Ken, it's not like I could forget that shit even if I tried. But so what? I was still the vector. It was looking out for me. It liked me enough to keep you lot off my back, anyway. Who's to say it isn't still out there? Where else do those software demons come from? You think it's a coincidence they name themselves after me?"
Barely discernible, his silhouette extends an arm. Click trains spray the water. He starts off again, his bearing slightly altered.
"Are you suggesting," he buzzes, "that if you go back and announce yourself to Anemone—whatever's become of it—that it's going to throw some sort of magic shield around you?"
"Maybe n—"
"It's changed. It was always changing, from moment to moment. It couldn't possibly have survived the way we remember it, and if the things we've encountered recently are any indication of what it's turned into, you don't want to renew the acquaintance."
"Maybe," Clarke admits. "But maybe some part of its basic agenda hasn't changed. It's alive, right? That's what everyone keeps saying. Doesn't matter that it was built out of electrons instead of carbon, Life's just self-replicating information shaped by natural selection so it's in the club. And we've got genes in us that haven't changed in a million generations. Why should this thing be any different? How do you know there isn't some protect-Lenie subroutine snoozing in the code somewhere? And by the way, where the fuck are we going?"
Lubin's headlamp spikes to full intensity, lays a bright jiggling oval on the substrate ahead. "There."
It's a patch of bone-gray mud like any other. She can't see so much as a pebble to distinguish it.
Maybe it's a burial plot, she thinks, suddenly giddy. Maybe this is where he's been feeding his habit all these years, on devolved natives and MIAs and now on the stupid little girl who wouldn't take no for an answer…
Lubin thrusts one arm into the ooze. The mud shudders around his shoulder, as if something beneath were pushing back. Which is exactly what's happening; Ken's awakened something under the surface. He pulls his arm back up and the thing follows, heaving into view. Clumps and chalky clouds cascade from its sides as it clears the substrate.
It's a swollen torus about a meter and a half wide. A dotted line of hydraulic nozzles ring its equator. Two layers of flexible webbing stretch across the hole in its center, one on top, one on the bottom; a duffle bag, haphazardly stuffed with lumpy objects, occupies the space between. Through the billowing murk and behind clumps of mud still adhering to its surface, it shines slick as a diveskin.
"I packed a few things away for a return trip," Lubin buzzes. "As a precaution."
He sculls backward a few meters. The mechanical bellhop spins a quarter-turn, spits muddy water from its thrusters, and heels.
They start back.
"So that's your plan," Lubin buzzes after a while. "Find something that evolved to help you destroy the world, hope that it's got a better nature you can appeal to, and—"
"And wake the fucker with a kiss," Clarke finishes. "Who's to say I can't?"
He swims on, towards the glow that's just starting to brighten the way ahead. His eyes reflect crescents of dim light.