"Oh, but I said—"
"Not to change the routine," Clarke cuts in. She seems tired. "Do you always expect everyone to do everything you say?"
"Is that what you think I meant?"
She snorts softly, still not looking back.
"Look," Scanlon says, "Are you sure you didn't hear something, like— like—" like a ghost, Clarke? A sound like poor dead Acton might make, watching his own remains rotting out there on the rift?
"Don't worry about it," she says.
Aha. "So you did hear something." She knows what it is, too. They all do.
"What I hear," she says, "is my own concern."
Take a hint, Scanlon. But there's nowhere else to go, except back to his cubby. And the prospect of being alone, right now— somehow, even the company of a vampire seems preferable.
She turns around to face him again. "Something else?"
"Not really. Just can't seem to sleep." Scanlon dons a disarming smile. "Just not used to the pressure, I guess." That's right. Put her at ease. Acknowledge her superiority.
She just stares at him
"I don't know how you take it, month after month," he adds.
"Yes you do. You're a psychiatrist. You chose us."
"Actually, I'm more of a mechanic."
"Of course," she says, expressionless. "It's your job to keep things broken."
Scanlon looks away.
She stands up and takes a step towards the hatchway, her tending duties apparently forgotten. Scanlon stands aside. She brushes past, somehow avoiding physical contact in the cramped space.
"Look," he blurts out, "how about a quick review of the tending procedure? I'm not all that familiar with this equipment."
It's too obvious. He knows she sees through it before the words are even out of his mouth. But it's also a perfectly reasonable request from someone in his role. Routine evaluation, after all.
She watches him for a moment, her head cocked a bit to one side. Her face, expressionless as usual, somehow conveys the impression of a slight smile. Finally she sits down again.
She taps on a menu. "This is the Throat." A cluster of luminous rectangles nested in a background of contour lines. "Thermal readout." The image erupts into psychedelic false color, red and yellow hot spots pulsing at irregular intervals along the main fissure. "You don't usually bother with thermal when you're tending," Clarke explains. "When you're out there you find that stuff out sooner first-hand anyway." The psychedelia fades back to green and gray.
And what happens if someone gets taken by surprise out there and you don't have the readings in here to know they're in trouble? Scanlon doesn't ask aloud. Just another cut corner.
Clarke pans, finds a pair of alphanumeric icons. "Alice and Ken." Another red hot-spot slides into view in the upper left corner of the display.
No, wait a minute; she turned thermal off…
"Hey," Scanlon says, "that's a deadman switch—"
No audio alarm. Why isn't there an alarm— His eyes dart across the half-familiar console. Where is it, where—shit—
The alarm's been disabled.
"Look!" Scanlon points at the display. "Can't you—"
Clarke looks up at him, almost lazily. She doesn't seem to understand.
He jabs his thumb down. "Somebody just died out there!"
She looks at the screen, slowly shakes her head. "No—"
"You stupid bitch, you cut off the alarm!"
He hits a control icon. The station starts howling. Scanlon jumps back, startled, bumps the bulkhead. Clarke watches him, frowning slightly.
"What's wrong with you?" He reaches out and grabs her by the shoulders. "Do something! Call Lubin, call—" The alarm is deafening. He shakes her, hard, pulls her up out of the chair—
And remembers, too late: you don't touch Lenie Clarke.
Something happens in her face. It almost crumples, right there in front of him. Lenie Clarke the ice queen is suddenly nowhere to be seen. In her place there's only a beaten, blind little kid, body shaking, mouth moving in the same pattern over and over, he can't hear over the alarm but her lips shape the words, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry—
All in the few scant seconds before she crystallizes.
She seems to harden against the sound, against Scanlon's assault. Her face goes completely blank. She rises out of the chair, centimeters taller than she should be. One hand comes up, grabs Yves Scanlon by the throat. Pushes.
He staggers backwards into the lounge, flailing. The table appears to one side; he reaches out, steadies himself.
Suddenly, Beebe falls silent again.
Scanlon takes a deep breath. Another vampire has appeared in his peripheral vision, standing impassively at the mouth of the corridor; he ignores it. Directly ahead, Lenie Clarke is sitting down again in Communications, her back turned. Scanlon steps forward.
"It's Karl," she says before he can speak.
It takes a moment to register: Acton.
"But— that was months ago," Scanlon says. "You lost him."
"We lost him." She breathes, slowly. "He went down a smoker. It erupted."
"I'm sorry," Scanlon says. "I— didn't know."
"Yeah." Her voice is tight with controlled indifference. "He's too far down to— we can't get him back. Too dangerous." She turns to face him, impossibly calm. "Deadman switch still works, though. It'll keep screaming until the battery runs down." She shrugs. "So we keep the alarm off."
"I don't blame you," Scanlon says softly.
"Imagine," Clarke tells him, "how much your approval comforts me."
He turns to leave.
"Wait," she says. "I can zoom in for you. I can show you exactly where he died, maximum res."
"That's not necessary."
She stabs controls. "No problem. Naturally you're interested. What kind of mechanic wouldn't want to know the performance specs on his own creation?" She reshapes the display like a sculptor, hones it down and down until there's nothing left but a tangle of faint green lines and a red pulsing dot.
"He got wedged into an ancillary crevice," she says. "Looks like a tight fit even now, when all the flesh has been boiled away. Don't know how he managed to get down there when he was all in one piece." There's no stress in her voice at all. She could be talking about a friend's vacation.
Scanlon can feel her eyes on him; he keeps his on the screen.
"Fischer," he says. "What happened to him?"
From the corner of his eye: she starts to tense, turns it into a shrug. "Who knows? Maybe Archie got him."
"Archie?"
"Archie Toothis." Scanlon doesn't recognize the name; it's not in any of his files, as far as he knows. He considers, decides not to push it.
"Did Fischer's deadman go off, at least?"
"He didn't have one." She shrugs. "The abyss can kill you any number of ways, Scanlon. It doesn't always leave traces."
"I'm— I'm sorry if I upset you, Lenie."
One corner of her mouth barely twitches.
And he is sorry. Even though it's not his fault. I didn't make you what you are, he wants to say. I didn't smash you into junk, that was someone else. I just came along afterwards and found a use for you. I gave you a purpose, more of a purpose than you ever had back there.
Is that really so bad?