Rifters 2 - Maelstrom by Peter Watts Read Free Book Online

from the perpetual glare of the feeding stations. At first she'd kept her billy in hand, to ward off anyone who got in her way. No one did. Perhaps that wasn't surprising, all thing considered. She could only imagine what the refugees saw when they looked in her eyes. A miracle of photoamplification technology, perhaps? A logical prerequisite for life on the ocean floor?
    More likely they saw a monster, a woman whose eyes had been scooped from their sockets and replaced with spheres of solid ice. For whatever reason, they kept their distance.
    By the second day she was keeping down most of what she ate. On the third she realized she wasn't hungry any more. She lay on the bottom and stared up into diffuse green brightness, feeling new strength trickling into her limbs.
    That night she rose from the ocean before the sun had fully set. She left the gas billy sheathed on her leg, but nobody challenged her as she ascended the shore. If anything, they gave her an even wider berth than they had before; the babel of Cantonese and Punjabi seemed more tightly strung.
    Amitav was waiting for her at the cycler. "They said you would return," he said. "They did not mention an escort."
    Escort ? He was looking past her shoulder, down the beach. Clarke followed his gaze; the setting sun was a diffuse fiery smear bleeding into the—
    Oh Jesus .
    Crescent dorsal fins sliced through the near-shore surf. A gray snout poked briefly into view, like a minisub with teeth.
    "They were almost extinct once, did you know?" Amitav said. "But they have come back. Here at least."
    She took a shaky breath; adrenaline shocked the body, too late for anything but weak-kneed hindsight. How close did they come? How many times have I—
    "Such friends you have," the refugee remarked.
    "I didn't—" but of course Amitav knew that she hadn't known. She turned to the cycler, putting her back to him.
    "I had heard you were still here," Amitav said behind her. "I did not believe it."
    She slapped a tab on the top of the cycler. A protein brick dropped into the dispensing trough. She started to reach for it, clenched her hand to stop it from shaking.
    "Is it the food? Many here like the food. More than they should, considering."
    Her hand steadied. She took the brick.
    "You are afraid," Amitav said.
    Clarke looked down at the ocean. The sharks had vanished.
    "Not of them," Amitav said. "Of us."
    She stared back at him. "Really."
    A smile flickered across his face. "You are safe, Ms. Clarke. They will not hurt you." He swept his skeletal arm in a gesture that took in his fellows. "If they wanted to, would they have not done so when you were unconscious? Would they not at least have taken that weapon from your leg?"
    She touched the sheath on her calf. "It's not a weapon."
    He didn't argue the point. He looked around with a gaunt smile. "Are they starving? Do you think they will rip you apart for the meat on your bones?"
    Clarke chewed, swallowed, looked around. All those faces. Some curious, some almost—awed. Behold, the zombie woman who swims with sharks.
    No visible hatred.
    It doesn't make sense. They have nothing. How can they not hate?
    "You see," Amitav said. "They are not like you. They are contented. Docile." He spat.
    She studied his bony face, his sunken eyes. Noticed the embers that smoldered there, deep in the sockets, almost hidden. She saw the sneer behind the smile.
    This was the face her dreams had multiplied a thousand times over.
    "They're not like you either," she said at last.
    Amitav conceded the point with a slight bow. "More's the pity."
    And a bright hole opened in his face.
     
    * * *
     
    Clarke stepped backward, startled.
    The hole grew across the shoreline, bleeding light. She turned her head; it moved with her, fixed to the exact center of her visual field.
    "Ms. Clarke—"
    She turned to his voice; Amitav's disembodied arm was just visible in the halo of her dementia. She grabbed, caught it, dragged him close.
    "What is it?" she hissed