Clarke leans forward. Not just tails, she sees now; some of them have those extra fins along the side and back. Some of them have gills. A couple of them even have eyes. It's as though a whole school of tiny anglers are boring into this big one. Some are in only as far as their jaws, but others are buried right down to the tail.
Another thought strikes her, even more revolting; the big fish doesn't need its mouth any more. It's just engulfing the little ones across its body wall, like some giant devolving microbe.
"Group sex on the rift," says Acton. "All the big ones we've been seeing, they're female. The males are these little finger-sized fuckers here. Not many dating opportunities this far down, so they just latch on to the first female they can find, and they sort of fuse — their heads get absorbed, their bloodstreams link together. They're parasites, get it? They worm into her side and they spend their whole lives feeding off her. And there's a fuck of a lot of them, but she's bigger than they are, she's stronger, she could eat them alive if she just—"
"He's been in the library again," Caraco remarks.
Acton looks at her for a moment. Deliberately, he points at the bloated carcass on the deck. "That's us." He grabs one of the parasitic males, rips it free. "This is everyone else. Get it?"
"Ah," Lubin says. "A metaphor. Clever."
Acton takes a single step towards the other man. "Lubin, I am getting awfully fucking tired of you."
"Really." Lubin doesn't seem the least bit threatened.
Clarke moves; not directly between them, just off to one side, forming the apex of a human triangle. She has absolutely no idea what to do if this comes to blows. She has no idea what to say to stop that from happening.
Suddenly, she's not even sure that she wants to.
"Come on, you guys." Caraco leans back against the drying rack. "Can't you settle this some other way? Maybe you could just whip out a ruler and compare your dicks or something."
They stare at her.
"Watch it, Judy. You're getting pretty cocky there."
Now they're staring at Clarke.
Did I say that?
For a long, long moment nothing happens. Then Lubin grunts and goes back to the workshop. Acton watches him go; then, deprived of an immediate threat, he steps back into the airlock.
The dead angler shivers on the deck, bristling with infestation.
"Lenie, he's really getting weird," Caraco says as the 'lock floods. "Maybe you should just let him go."
Clarke just shakes her head. "Go where?"
She even manages a smile.
She was looking for Karl Acton, but somehow she's found Gerry Fischer instead. He looks sadly down at her through the length of a long tunnel. He seems to be a whole ocean away. He doesn't speak but she senses sadness, disappointment. You lied to me, that feeling says. You said you'd come and see me and you lied. You've forgotten all about me.
He's wrong. She hasn't forgotten him at all. She's only tried to.
She doesn't say it aloud, of course, but somehow he reacts to it anyway. His feelings change; sadness fades, something colder seeps up in its place, something so deep and so old that she can't think of words to describe it.
Something pure.
From behind, a touch on her shoulder. She spins, instantly alert, hand closing around her billy.
"Hey, calm down. It's me." Acton's silhouette hangs against a faint wash of light from the direction of the Throat. Clarke relaxes, pushes gently at his chest. Says nothing.
"Welcome back," Acton says. "Haven't seen you out here for a while."
"I was— I was looking for you," she says.
"In the mud?"
"What?"
"You were just floating there, face down."
"I was—" She feels a vestige of disquiet, but she can't remember what to attach it to. "I must have drifted off. I was dreaming. It's been so long since I slept out here, I—"
"Four days, I think. I missed you."
"Well, you could have come inside."
Acton nods. "I tried. But I could never get all of me through the airlock, and the part that I could— well, it was sort of a poor substitute. If you'll remember."
"I don't know, Karl. You know how I feel—"
"Right. And I know you like it out here as much as I do. Sometimes I feel like I could just stay out here forever." He pauses for a moment, as if weighing alternatives. "Fischer's got it right."
Something goes cold. "Fischer?"
"He's still out here, Len. You know that."
"You've seen him?"
"Not often. He's pretty skittish."
"When do…I mean—"
"Only when I'm alone. And pretty far from Beebe."
She looks around, inexplicably frightened. Of course you can't see him. He isn't here. And even if he was, it's still too dark to…
She forces herself to leave her headlamp doused.
"He's…I think he's really hooked in to you, Len. But I guess you know that too."
No. No, I didn't. I don't. "He talks to you?" She doesn't know why she'd resent that.
"No."
"Then how?"
Acton doesn't answer for a moment. "I don't know. I just got that impression. But he doesn't talk. It's…I don't know, Len. He just hangs around out there and watches us. I don't know if he's what we'd consider… sane, I guess—"
"He watches us," she says, buzzing low and level.
"He knows we're together. I think…I think he figures that connects me and him somehow." Acton is silent for a bit. "You cared about him, didn't you?"
Oh yes. It always starts off so innocently. You cared about him, that's nice, and then it's did you find him attractive and then well you must have done something or he wouldn't keep hitting on you and then you fucking slut I'll—
"Lenie," Acton says. "I'm not trying to start anything."
She waits and watches.
"I know there was nothing going on. And even if there was, I know it's no threat."
She's heard this part before, too.
"Now that I think about it, that's always been my problem," Acton muses. "I always had to go on what other people told me, and people— people lie all the time, Len, you know that. So no matter how many times she swears she's not fucking around on you, or even that she doesn't want to fuck around on you, how can you ever really know? You can't. So the default assumption is, she's lying. And being lied to all the time, that's a damn good reason for — well, for doing what I do sometimes."
"Karl — you know—"
"I know you don't lie to me. You don't even hate me. That's kind of a change."
She reaches out to touch the side of his face. "I'd say that's a good call. I'm glad you trust me."
"Actually, Len, I don't have to trust you. I just know."
"What do you mean? How?"
"I'm not sure," he says. "It's something to do with the changes."
He waits for her to respond.
"What are you saying, Karl?" she says at last. "Are you saying you can read my mind?"
"No. Nothing like that. I just, well, I identify with you more. I can— it's kind of hard to explain—"
She remembers him levitating beside a luminous smoker: the Pompeii worms can predict them. The clams and brachyurans can predict them. Why not me?
He's tuned in, she realizes. To everything. He's even tuned into the bloody worms, that's what he—
He's tuned in to Fischer—
She tongues the light switch. A bright cone stabs into the abyss. She sweeps the water around them. Nothing.