Take a dozen children, any children. Beat and mix thoroughly until some lumps remain. Simmer for two to three decades; bring to a slow, rolling boil. Skim off the full-blown psychotics, the schizoaffectives, the multiple personalities, and discard. (There were doubts about Fischer, actually; but then, who doesn't have an imaginary friend at some point?)

Let cool. Serve with dopamine garnish.

What do you get? Something bent, not broken. Something that fits into cracks too twisted for the rest of us.

Vampires.

"Well," Scanlon says into the silence. "Everything checks out. Can't wait to try it on." Without waiting for a reply— without exposing himself to the lack of one— he climbs upstairs. At the edge of his vision, Clarke and Caraco exchange looks. Scanlon glances back, rigorously casual, but any smiles have disappeared by the time he scans their faces.

Go ahead, ladies. Indulge yourselves while you can. The lounge is empty. Scanlon passes through it and into the corridor. You've got maybe five years before you're obsolete. His cubby— Acton's cubby— is third on the left. Five years before all this can run itself without your help. He opens the hatch; brilliant light spills out, blinding him for a moment while his eyecaps compensate. Scanlon steps inside, swings the hatch shut. Sags against it.

Shit. No locks.

After a while he lies back on his bunk, stares up at a congested ceiling.

Maybe we should have waited after all. Not let them rush us. If we'd just taken the time to do it right from the start…

But they hadn't had the time. Total automation at start-up would have delayed the whole program longer than civilized appetites were willing to wait. And the vampires were already there, after all. They'd be so much use in the short run, and then they'd be sent home, and they'd be glad to leave this place. Who wouldn't be?

The possibility of addiction never even came up.

It seems insane on the face of it. How could anyone get addicted to a place like this? What kind of paranoia has seized the GA, that they'd worry about people refusing to leave? But Yves Scanlon is no mere layperson, he's not fooled by the merely apparent. He's beyond anthropomorphism. He's looked into all those undead eyes, up there in his world, down here in theirs, and he knows: vampires live by different rules.

Maybe they are too happy here. It's one of two questions Yves Scanlon has set out to answer. Hopefully they won't figure that out while he's still down here. They dislike him enough as it is.

It's not their fault, of course. It's just the way they're programmed. They can't help hating him, any more than he can help the reverse.

Preshmesh is better than surgery. That's about the most he can say for it.

The pressure jams all those tiny interlocking plates together, and they don't seem to stop clenching until they're a micron away from grinding his body to pulp. There's a stiffness in the joints. It's perfectly safe, of course. Perfectly. And Scanlon can breathe unpressurised air when he goes outside, and nobody's had to carve out half his chest in the meantime.

He's been out now for about fifteen minutes. Beebe's just a few meters away. Clarke and Brander escort him on his maiden voyage, keeping their distance. Scanlon kicks, rises clumsily from the bottom; the mesh lets him swim like a man with splinted limbs. Vampires skim the edge of his vision like effortless shadows.

His helmet seems like the center of the universe. Wherever he looks, an infinite weight of black ocean presses in against the acrylic. A tiny flaw down by the neck seal catches his eye; he stares, horrified, as a hairline crack grows across his field of vision.

"Help! Get me in!" He kicks furiously towards Beebe.

Nobody answers.

"My helmet! My hel—" The crack isn't just growing now: it's squirming, twitching laterally across the corner of the helmet bubble like— like—

Yellow featureless eyes staring in from the ocean. A black hand, silhouetted in Beebe's halo, reaching for his face—

"Ahhh—"

A thumb grinds down on the crack in Scanlon's helmet. The crack smears, bursts; fine gory filaments smudge against the acrylic. The back half of the hairline peels off and writhes loose into the water, coiling, uncoiling—

Dying. Scanlon pants with relief. A worm. Some stupid fucking roundworm on my faceplate and I thought I was going to die, I thought—

Oh Christ. I've made a complete fool of myself.

He looks around. Brander, hanging off his right shoulder, points to the gory remnants sticking to the helmet. "If it ever really cracked you wouldn't have time to complain. You'd look just like that."

Scanlon clears his throat. "Thanks. Sorry, I— well, you know I'm new here. Thanks."

"By the way."

Clarke's voice. Or what's left of it, after the machinery does its job. Scanlon flails around until she comes into view overhead.

"How long are you going to be checking up on us?" she asks

Neutral question. Perfectly reasonable.

In fact, you've got to wonder why nobody asked it before…

"A week at least." His heart is slowing down again. "Maybe two. As long as it takes to make sure things are running smoothly."

She's silent for a second. Then: "You're lying." It doesn't sound like an accusation, somehow; just a simple observation. Maybe it's the vocoder.

"Why do you say that?"

She doesn't answer. Something else does; not quite a moan, not quite a voice. Not quite faint enough to ignore.

Scanlon feels the abyss trickling down his back. "Did you hear that?"

Clarke slips down past him to the seabed, rotating to keep him in view. "Hear? What?"

"It was— " Scanlon listens. A faint tectonic rumble. That's all. "Nothing."

She pushes off the bottom at an angle, slides up through the water to Brander. "We're on shift," she buzzes at Scanlon. "You know how the 'lock works."

The vampires vanish into the night.

Beebe shines invitingly. Alone and suddenly nervous, Scanlon retreats to the airlock.

But I wasn't lying. I wasn't. He hasn't had to, yet. Nobody's asked the right questions.

Still. It seems odd that he has to remind himself.

TRANS/OFFI/230850:0830

I'm about to embark on my first extended dive. Apparently, the participants have been asked to catch a fish for one of the Pharm consortiums. Washington/Rand, I believe. I find this a bit puzzling— usually Pharms are only interested in bacteria, and they use their own people for collecting— but it provides the participants with a change from the usual routine, and it provides me an opportunity to watch them in action. I expect to learn a great deal.

Brander is slouched at the library when Scanlon comes through the lounge. His fingers rest unmoving on the keypad. Eyephones hang unused in their hooks. Brander's empty eyes point at the flatscreen. The screen is dark.

Scanlon hesitates. "I'm heading out now. With Clarke and Caraco."

Brander's shoulders rise and fall, almost indiscernibly. A sigh, perhaps. A shrug.

"The others are at the Throat. You'll be the only— I mean, will you be running tender from Comm?"

"You told us not to change the routine," Brander says, not looking up.

"That's true, Michael. But—"

Brander stands. "So make up your mind." He disappears down the corridor. Scanlon watches him go. Naturally this has to go into my report. Not that you care.

You might, though. Soon enough.

Scanlon drops into the wet room and finds it empty. He struggles into his armor single-handed, taking an extra few moments to ensure that the helmet bubble is spotless. He catches up with Clarke and Caraco just outside; Clarke is checking out a quartet of squids hovering over the seabed. One of them is tethered to a specimen canister resting on the bottom, a pressure-proof coffin over two meters long. Caraco sets it for neutral buoyancy; it rises a few centimeters.