Starfish by Peter Watts Page A

for the ladder. "None of my business anyway."
    Lenie, please...
    Brander turns back to Fischer as she climbs out of sight. Fischer stares back. Endless seconds go by. Brander's fist hovers in mid-air.
    It lashes out almost too fast to see. Fischer reels, catches himself on a conduit. Lights swarm across his left eye. He blinks them away, hanging onto the bulkhead. Everything hurts.
    Brander unclenches his fist. "Lenie's way too nice," he remarks, flexing his fingers. "Personally, I don't care whether you meant any harm or not."

Doppelgänger

    Beebe's almost as soundproof as the inside of an echo chamber.
    Lenie Clarke sits on her bunk and listens to the walls. She can't hear any actual words, but a sudden impact of flesh against metal was clear enough a few minutes ago. Now, low voices converse out in the lounge. Water gurgles through a pipe somewhere.
    She thinks she hears something moving downstairs.
    She lays her ear against a random pipe. Nothing. Another; a hiss of compressed gas. A third; the faint, tinny echo of slow footsteps, scraping across the lower deck. After a moment a muted hum vibrates through the plumbing.
    The medical scanner.
    It's none of my business. It's between them. Brander's got his reasons, and Fischer—
    He didn't mean any harm.
    Fischer's nothing. He's a pathetic, twisted asshole, nobody's problem but his own. It's too bad he gets under Brander's skin like that, but life's not guaranteed to be fair. No one knows that better than Lenie Clarke. She knows what it's like. She remembers the fists out of nowhere, the million little things you didn't even know you'd done wrong until it was too late. Nobody helped her . She'd managed, though. Sex worked, sometimes, as a diversionary tactic. Other times you just had to run.
    He didn't mean any harm.
    She shakes her head.
    Well I fucking didn't either!
    The sound sinks in before the pain does. A dull, solid thud, like a fish hitting a floodlight. Blood oozes from the torn skin of her knuckles, the droplets almost black to her filtered vision. The stinging that follows is a welcome distraction.
    The bulkhead, of course, is completely unmarked.
    Out in the lounge, the conversation has stopped. Clarke sits rigid on the pallet, sucking her hand. Eventually, the voices start up again.
    Almost time to go on shift with Nakata and Brander. Clarke looks around her cubby, hesitating. There's something she has to do before she opens the hatch, something important, and she can't quite remember what it is. Her eyes keep coming back to the same wall, looking for something that isn't—
    The mirror. For some reason, she wants to see what she looks like. That's odd. She can't remember feeling that way for — well, for a long time. But it's no big deal. She'll just sit here until the feeling goes away. She doesn't have to step outside, she doesn't even have to stand up, until she feels normal again.
    When in doubt, stay out of sight.

    * * *

    "Alice?"
    The hatch is closed. There's no answer.
    "She's in there." Brander stands at the end of the corridor, the lounge behind him. "She didn't go in more than ten minutes ago."
    Clarke knocks again, harder. "Alice? It's almost time."
    Brander turns on his heel — "I'll go get our stuff together." — and steps out of sight.
    Beebe's hatches do not lock, for safety reasons. Still, Clarke hesitates. She knows how she'd feel if someone just walked into her private space without being invited.
    But she said she was up for another shift. And I did knock...
    She spins the wheel in the center of the hatch. The mimetic seal around the rim softens and retracts. Clarke pulls the hatch open, peers inside.
    Alice Nakata lies twitching on her bunk, eyes closed, 'skin partially peeled. Leads trail from insertion points on her face and wrists, drape away to a lucid dreamer on the bedside shelf.
    She goes to sleep ten minutes before her shift starts? It doesn't make sense. Besides, Nakata was just downstairs with the rest of them. With