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.