But she knows it isn't true. The rift is the real creative force here, a blunt hydraulic press forcing them all into shapes of its own choosing. If the others are anything like her it's because they're all being squeezed in the same mold.

And let's not forget the GA. If Ballard was right, they made sure we weren't too different to start with.

There are all the superficial differences, of course. A bit of racial diversity. Token beaters, token victims, males and females equally represented...

Clarke has to smile at that. Count on Management to jam a bunch of sexual dysfunctionals together and then make sure the gender ratio is balanced. Nice of them to try and see that nobody gets left out.

Except for Ballard, of course.

But at least they learn from their mistakes. Dozing at three thousand meters, Lenie Clarke wonders what their next one will be.

* * *

Sudden, stabbing pain in the eyes. She tries to scream; smart implants feel tongue and lips in motion, mistranslate:

"Nnnnaaaaah..."

She knows the feeling. She's had it once or twice before. She dives blindly on a random heading. The pain in her head leaps from intense to unbearable.

"Aaaaaa—"

She twists back in the opposite direction. A bit better. She trips her headlamp, kicking as hard as she can. The world turns from black to solid brown. Zero viz. Mud seething on all sides. Somewhere close by she hears rocks splitting open.

Her headlamp catches the outcropping looming up a split second before she hits it. The shock rocks her skull, runs down her spine like a small earthquake. There's a different flavor of pain up there now, mingling with the searing in her eyes. She gropes blindly around the obstacle, keeps going. Her body feels— warm—

It takes a lot of heat to get through a diveskin, especially a class four. Those things are built for thermal stress.

Eyecaps, on the other hand...

Black. The world is black again, and clear. Clarke's headlamp stabs out across open space, lays a jiggling footprint on the mud a good ten meters away.

The view's still rippling, though.

The pain seems to be fading. She can't be sure. So many nerves have been screaming for so long that even the echoes are torture. She clutches her head, still kicking; the movement twists her around to face the way she came.

Her secret hideaway has exploded into a wall of mud and sulfur compounds, boiling up from the seabed. Clarke checks her thermister; 45°C, and she's a good ten meters away. Boiled fish skeletons spin in the thermals. Geysers hiss further in, unseen.

The seep must have burst through the crust in an instant; any flesh caught in that eruption would have boiled off the bone before anything as elaborate as a flight reflex could cut in. A shudder shakes Clarke's body. Another one.

Just luck. Just stupid luck I was far enough away. I could be dead now. I could be dead I could be dead I could be dead—