Joel nods, distracted by Jarvis' digression. But then his mind returns to dead tube worms, and undeclared no-dive zones, and an anonymous canister drenched with enough poison to kill a fucking city.

I've got to wonder what all of us are.

Ghosts

It's hideous.

Nearly a meter across. Probably smaller when Clarke started working on it, but it's a real monster now. Scanlon thinks back to his v-school days, and remembers: starfish are supposed to be all in one plane. Flat disks with arms. Not this one. Clarke has grafted bits and pieces together at all angles and produced a crawling Gordian knot, some pieces red, some purple, some white. Scanlon thinks the original body may have been orange, before.

"They regenerate," she buzzes at his shoulder. "And they've got really primitive immune systems, so there's no tissue rejection problems to speak of. It makes them easier to fix if something goes wrong with them."

Fix. As if this is actually some sort of improvement. "So, it was broken?" Scanlon asks. "What was wrong with it, exactly?"

"It was scratched. It had this cut on its back. And there was another starfish nearby, all torn up. Way too far gone for even me to help, but I figured I could use some of the pieces to patch this little guy together."

This little guy. This little guy drags itself around between them in slow pathetic circles, leaving tangled tracks in the mud. Filaments of parasitic fungus trail from ragged seams, not quite healed. Extra limbs, asymmetrically grafted, catch on rocks; the body lurches, perpetually unstable.

Lenie Clarke doesn't seem to notice.

"How long ago— I mean, how long have you been doing this?"

Scanlon's voice is admirably level; he's certain it conveys nothing but friendly interest. But somehow she knows. She’s silent for a second, and then she points her undead eyes at him and she says, “Of course. It makes you sick.”

“No, I’m just— well, fascinated, I—”

"You're disgusted," she buzzes. "You shouldn't be. Isn't this exactly the sort of thing you'd expect from a rifter? Isn't that why you sent us down here in the first place?"

“I know what you think, Lenie,” Scanlon tries, going for the light touch. "You think we get up every morning and ask ourselves, How can we best fuck over our employees today?"

She looks down at the starfish. "We?"

"The GA.”

She floats there while her pet monster squirms in slow motion, trying to right itself.

"We're not evil, Lenie," Scanlon says after a while. If only she’d look at him, see the earnest expression on his helmeted face. He’s practiced it for years.

But when she does look up, finally, she doesn’t even seem to notice. "Don't flatter yourself, Scanlon,” she says. “You don't have the slightest control over what you are."

* * *

TRANS/OFFI/280850:1043