"Why? What's so great about it? What do they do out there?"

She didn't mention the hallucinations. "There's a kind of—freedom, I guess. You feel connected to things. It's hard to explain."

Alyx snorted. "You don't even know."

It's partly true. Certainly Clarke feels the pull of the deep sea. Maybe it's an escape, maybe the abyss is just the ultimate place to hide from the living hell that was life among the drybacks. Or maybe it's even simpler. Maybe it's just a dark, weightless evocation of the womb, a long-forgotten sense of being nourished and protected and secure, back before the contractions started and everything turned to shit.

Every rifter feels as much. Not every rifter goes native, though, at least not yet. Some just have a kind of—special vulnerability, really. The addictive rifters, as opposed to the merely social ones. Maybe the natives have too much serotonin in their temporal lobes or something. It usually comes down to something like that.

None of which would really fly with Alyx, of course.

"You should take down their feeding stations," Alyx said. "Then they'd have to come inside to eat at least."

"They'd either starve, or make do with clams and worms." Which was basically starvation on the installment plan, if it didn't poison them outright. "And why force them to come inside if they don't want to?"

"Because it's suicide, that's why!" Alyx cried. "Jeez, I can't believe I have to explain it to you! Wouldn't you stop me from trying to kill myself?"

"That depends."

"Depends?"

"On if you really wanted to, or you were just trying to win an argument."

"I'm serious."

"Yeah. I can see that." Clarke sighed. "If you really wanted to kill yourself, I'd be sad and pissed off and I'd miss you like hell. But I wouldn't stop you."

Alyx was appalled. "Why not?"

"Because it's your life. Not mine."

Alyx didn't seem to have been expecting that. She glared back, obviously unconvinced, obviously unequipped to respond.

"Have you ever wanted to die?" Clarke asked her. "Seriously?"

"No, but—"

"I have."

Alyx fell silent.

"And believe me," Clarke continued, "it's no fun listening to a bunch of professional head lice telling you how much there is to live for and how things aren't really so bad and how five years from now you'll look back and wonder how you ever could have even imagined offing yourself. I mean, they don't know shit about my life. If there's one thing I'm the world's greatest expert on, it's how it feels to be me. And as far as I'm concerned it's the height of fucking arrogance to tell another human being whether their life is worth living."

"But you don't have to feel that way," Alyx said unhappily. "Nobody does! You just slap a derm on your arm and—"