Year's Best SF 17

Thick Water KAREN HEULER

The sunset was orange again, strange, beautiful, and serene. It had a saffron edge, then it blended down to yellows, getting milder and milder the farther it spread along the horizon. It hung there slowly, spilling its colors gently across the sky, with a thin dash of red or rose blending then fading.

The ocean was almond-colored, and slow. The biggest problem, Jenks said, was that she couldn’t swim in it.

“Like swimming in a pillow,” Brute snorted. “No, the biggest problem is we can’t drink it. Tired of water rations. I mean, I’m okay with water rations unless I have to look at a whole lot of water all day.”

“See, the real problem is, you insist on calling it water. If you stopped calling it water, you’d feel right as rain.” This came from Squirrel, who always thought he had the essential point.

“Rain,” Brute sighed, and they all stared out at the ocean, observing it. Was it water? It spread out wide against the horizon, as oceans did. But the water was thick and rolled; it was theoretically possible to walk on it, if you shifted your weight in the pockets the water formed and if you didn’t go too quickly, which would cause a widespread line of waves, or worse, one of those sinkholes that never even glugged before it covered over.

They hadn’t touched it; they still wore suits. But they had a piece of it in a tube in the lab room, and Sibbetts was writing lots of meticulous things about it in her reports. Good for Sibbetts. Brute didn’t think they needed the suits any more; the air could be handled with just one of the simpler filters, a light mask over the nose and mouth. But Sibbetts was cautious; Sibbetts said wait.

The trolley wasn’t due back for another year. The crew—two men, three women—had a habit of nicknaming everything, and the trolley was their name for the long-range transport.

Jenks, who was head of the exploratory team, said, “Maybe we’re in at the beginning—you know, before life evolves.”

“There’s some kind of seaweed on the rocks,” Darcy pointed out. He was polite and gorgeous and well bred, and Jenks—the reader in the group—had named him Darcy.

Their colony of two and a half domes was on the first shelf of a kind of stepped ascent from the beach. Discarded containers and broken equipment were left in the open next to it. There was no wind so they weren’t careful about securing it.

They spent half the day outside, just poking around and observing, except for Sibbetts who worked on her own inside. One day they gave themselves the task of examining the smooth, cigar-shaped stones that sat around on the lip of the beach.

It was natural, after handling the stones, to want to wash the dust off their gloves. They went to the sea and cupped their hands and pulled out gobs of thick water. It amused them to carry the water around, and eventually they took some of it back to their collection of rocks. Darcy leaned over too far with his hands full, and he made it into a fake fall and rolled onto his back.

“Now look at that sunset,” he said, pointing. His hand, blunted in its dirty tan glove, rose to the horizon.

The sunset was a long line of shadow, a pale hue up in the sky that drove along the surface in a line. It started from one direction and then—unlike an earthly sunset which went down—it shifted around in a 180-degree arc. The light reflected off a series of moons, so it was handed across the horizon from left to right. It took hours. The sunrises were quieter, like pale ribbons. Midday was cream-colored, with hints of salmon along the edges.

“Go get Sibbetts,” Jenks said. Squirrel ran inside, but Sibbetts wouldn’t come out.

“She said she can see it from inside,” Squirrel reported.

Strike one against Sibbetts, Jenks thought.

The rocks seemed smooth, but they must have had an abrasive component to them. Darcy found, one night, a tear in two places on his right glove. He got alcohol and cleaned his hands. Of course, he should report it. He didn’t.

Jenks found a tear in her suit, around her knee. She put it in the daily report. They were out of range, now; there was no one to check with, to discuss it with. She didn’t want to alarm her junior officers.

Darcy got a new glove and saw within a day that it had shredded along the wrist. Nothing had happened to him after the first hole, so when Brute said, “Damn, my suit’s ripped!” he said, “It doesn’t matter. Mine ripped a week ago. I’m fine.”

They were coming inside. Jenks heard them both. She didn’t say anything; she kept thinking about it at dinner. “My suit was torn too,” she said finally. “No signs of anything.”

“You can’t be sure,” Sibbetts said. “An alien bacteria, a disease—who says you would know by now? Take some antibiotics, get some new suits.”

“We’re pretty much already done for, if we’re done for,” Darcy said.

Sibbetts, always in her lab, could be seen as a figure bending over or lifting things, tapping at her computer or putting something in a jar. They could see her through the plexi window; she never seemed to look for them.

“She’s so stuck,” Darcy said. “Never tries anything. Never takes a risk. And she calls herself an explorer.”

“She calls herself a scientist,” Brute said.

“I’m the explorer,” Squirrel said. The face window on his suit showed a big grin. He lifted his hands and took off the hood.

“Put that back on,” Jenks said.

“Look at my hands.” Squirrel lifted them up and showed the holes. “The air’s been getting in for two weeks, at least. Let me tell you,” he said, breathing in deep, his nostrils working, “it’s got a strange smell.” He sucked in air so hard his chest rose up. “Spicy.” His chest relaxed. “Good.”

“Oh hell,” Brute said, taking off her hood as well. “It’s not like I haven’t done it already. I’ve been out sniffing it when no one’s looking. I swear, sir, it’s harmless.” She looked at Jenks and saluted.

Darcy already had his off. “Sir,” he said, “the smell gets better at sunset. It has something to do with the colors, I think.”

They looked at Jenks, waiting. She considered the facts: they were all exposed anyway. So she took her hood off. The air was moist, which was surprising; the sea never evaporated, it just rolled around. There was never moisture on their suits. But the smell was good, indeed.

“The colors are brighter,” Brute said, looking at the sea. Even though it wasn’t evening yet, the colors wove into the sky: yellow, saffron, salmon, butter, carnelian, ruby, blood.

They shed their hoods and then they shed their suits. The weather was perfect. There seemed no variation in temperature as they felt it. They did keep on shoes, because the arches of their feet were always tender, but they stripped down to their underwear.

And then they began touching the water.

It was irresistible. “Did you notice the variations?” Brute asked. “The variations of shade. How it runs from almond to cream? How you can watch the colors move?”

“To think I didn’t notice it before,” Darcy said. “What do you think caused that? The hoods? Maybe it was too subtle to make it through that plastic window of ours.”

“Plastic window,” Jenks laughed. “I think so. Look at Sibbetts, now, she doesn’t notice anything.” They turned and looked at Sibbetts, who straightened up and looked out at them, then turned away again.

“See that color there,” Squirrel said, pointing. “The way it laps.” They came up next to each other, forming a line. They stood very close. They were naked along their arms and legs, and they pulled in close to each other, so their skin touched. “I would hate to leave this place.”

“True, it’s getting to be more and more like home.” This was from Brute, who stepped forward and bent down, scooping up a ball of water. “All the comforts.” Her face got a sudden illumination and her eyes narrowed a little and she got a wicked grin. She looked at the ball of water in her hand, said, “Here goes, kids,” and neatly split it in two, dropping half and popping the other half in her mouth.

Jenks wasn’t fast enough to stop her, and it would have been half-hearted anyway. They understood each other better, so they all knew that they agreed with Brute: test the water. The air had proved to be all right, the temperature was perfect. They had never felt better, never been happier. Sibbetts in her little window looked ridiculous; out here, in the creamy sunlight, near the iridescent sea—out here was a higher order of perfection.

Still, they watched as Brute swallowed and her eyes went internal, tracking the feel of the water going down.

“Brute? What’s it like?” Jenks took a step closer.

Brute sighed. “It’s good.” She looked around, to the sea, the horizon, the rock shelf behind them. “It’s very satisfying. I can feel it.”

Brute was fine that day and the next and the next. Jenks caught Darcy and Squirrel pulling small rolls of water from the edge, pushing it around in their palms, eating it. She watched in silence.

“Everything’s sharper,” they said. “Not at the edges, no, in the center. It’s hard to describe, but it’s great. Don’t be afraid.”

That was from Darcy, who whispered to her. Jenks was already considering it. She bent down and pulled a bead of water out. It had soft edges, reforming slowly. She took it in her mouth, rolled it on her tongue, and swallowed.

“Well,” Darcy said. “Welcome to the club.”

The thick water was all they needed—that and the gray seaweed that formed like a frost along certain rocks; slightly crisp, a small taste that lingered. “You guys are nuts,” Sibbetts said tightly when they showed dutifully up for meals. “You don’t know what’s going to happen, the effects, the long-term significance. You’ve left me all alone here now. If something happens, I’m the only one who can take care of you.”

“You could join us,” Brute said, shrugging. “We’re not so bad. And you’ll have more fun.”

“I have work to do,” Sibbetts answered, lowering her eyes. She ate her food industriously, chewing vigorously and swallowing carefully. They all watched her.

“Why are you watching me?” she said finally.

“You don’t look comfortable with us,” Squirrel said.

Sibbetts put down her fork. “You’re not wearing clothes. You don’t eat. You stare at me when you come in. You eat the water. None of you is acting normal.” She looked around the room. They looked at her, all of them, and they were all smiling. One by one, they held their hands out to her. “You should come with us,” one of them said. She couldn’t tell which one.

The next day Brute came up to the plexi window. Sibbetts didn’t see her at first; she was waiting for the centrifuge to stop spinning. She had no hope that anything new would be discovered, but she was thorough. If she did a test once, she did a test twice.

She looked up to relieve her eyes from the fine work. She looked out the plexi window.

And there was Brute, grinning at her through the window, staring and grinning, her lips pulling back more and more from her teeth. Brute’s eyelids rose even higher and she moved back as if confounded, then she pushed her head fast against the plexi. Sibbetts could even see the plexi move a little, and she was annoyed.

What if she broke it? Sibbetts stood up, raised her hand, about to yell, when her hand dropped and her mouth opened.

Brute’s face was smack against the plexi, yes, and it was entirely flat. Like a balloon against the plexi. Sibbetts stared, her mind slowing down, trying to make it into some trick, when Brute slowly peeled her flat face off the plexi, and Sibbetts watched as the face reshaped itself, back to Brute’s face. Even then, she stood frozen, waiting for some explanation to occur to her, something sensible. Brute stared at her, winked at her!

Sibbetts stood there, trying to think, watching Brute wave at the others, who were standing together and watching. They all met together, waving arms gently, bobbing in and out. She could almost feel how much they gravitated together. In the old days, they wouldn’t have tolerated that. Everyone had been conscious of personal space.

She spent the afternoon wondering if she had caught some kind of dementia; if she were seeing things. She checked herself and doubted herself and shivered a little, and took some antibiotics.

They ate less and less, yet they seemed healthy. They came to dinner most of the time, arriving together and staying for a while, then drifting away. Drifting. Well, it was hardly drifting with all that laughter. They giggled together, they cast glances together, they squealed with joy when Sibbetts asked if they had done their reports, if they had checked any of the equipment, if they had brought more samples.

“Samples?” Darcy asked. “Samples?” And with that he pulled a hair out of his head. He held it out dramatically and then dropped it into the soup. His cohorts laughed again. Sibbetts could feel herself tense; laughter laughter laughter. They were monsters.

“I don’t like that,” she said. “That’s food. Who knows what contamination—”

“Absolutely none,” Jenks said. “You can write that down somewhere.”

Sibbetts looked at the captain cautiously. She had gotten thinner, tauter, quicker, but there was a little blurring around the edges. Her chin wasn’t exactly the same shape? Could that be possible?

The rest of them all looked at Sibbetts eagerly, as if she might perform. Then they laughed again, their bodies bouncing around. They each rested their right hand on their stomachs, as if the laughing hurt.

Sibbetts lowered her head and ate her soup. When she was finished, she looked around. None of them had eaten and they were all still looking at her, expectantly.

“What?” she said.

“We can see that soup move down your esophagus,” Squirrel said. “Like going down a drain.”

“No you can’t,” Sibbetts said.

“We have x-ray vision,” Brute said. And she winked.

Sibbetts’ heart was racing. “If you guys don’t eat, then I’m going to stop cooking for you. We shouldn’t waste food. But you have to eat?” She had changed her tone halfway through, careful not to be out of line. The captain was her superior, after all.

“We eat the urden,” Jenks said.

“Urden?”

“The seaweed thing. It’s delicious. And it takes care of your appetite for hours, maybe days. You don’t need much and your whole body feels light and clear.”

“You shouldn’t eat it!” Sibbetts burst out. “How do you know what it will do to you?”

“We do know what it will do to us,” Brute said, standing up. “Because we’ve eaten it.”

And they stood up smoothly, all together, and faced her. All their faces looked the same, and Sibbetts couldn’t be sure if she was looking at Brute or Jenks or Darcy or Squirrel. How could all their faces look the same? She wanted to weep, but she never did that. It was just this sense of total frustration, this sense that it had gotten away from her. Could this be some kind of hallucination?

“I think I’m sick,” she said finally. “I keep seeing things that can’t be.”

“Oh really,” the person most on her left said. “Like what?”

“You keep changing. Physically.” She lifted her head. “Right now, I can’t tell any of you apart.”

“You’re all cooped up,” Brute said (if it was Brute). “That’s the problem.”

“Come out and play!” Squirrel hooted.

“I’m a scientist,” Sibbetts said feebly. “I don’t think what you’re doing is right. It’s untested. We don’t know what will happen.”

“It’s funny. You said ‘we.’ We’re the we, now. You’re just an I.”

Who said that, Sibbetts wondered, squinting a little. Was it Darcy? Or Squirrel?

“Awfully lonely,” Jenks said. “Isn’t it?”

And with that, they left, like a bunch of puppets. Thank God they slept outside. She cleaned up, wiping down the chairs and the table with antibacterials. They were “off,” she was sure of it. They had abandoned their duties, such as they were. They had, really, abandoned her. And she thought, again and again, this is unforgivable. It gave her a small sense of triumph, that she could define their behavior that way. But the sense of anger faded—what good did it do, after all, to blame them for their actions? They had bonded. They had excluded her. Against all the rules. Against advice. How could they do it, do something so fundamentally wrong? Her anger was rising again. Leaving her to face it all alone!

She felt it strongly. She was the one now who had to maintain civilization on this planet. Was that it—had they gone native? What could that mean in a place with no natives? She stared out the plexi, scanning the beach for them. There they were now, knee deep in that thick water. One of them bent down, snaking her arm into the water. From this distance, it looked like the arm became part of the water.

She turned her back on them. It was up to her to do all the work, then. She went back to her office. She would stop preparing food for them. Until they changed their behavior, it was nothing more than an ordeal for her, and a farce if they didn’t eat. It would keep them from slipping something in the food, too; that had to be a consideration. If they could drop a contaminated hair in, who knew what else. … What if they snuck some of that water in, behind her back?

She would lock them out during mealtimes because, really, they were no longer members of her team. That was true, wasn’t it? She stopped and looked out the window. They weren’t there, so she moved into the next dome and looked through that window.

There they were, she realized with a jolt, standing lined up, all facing her. Just standing. And then they all waved at her and walked away.

A feeling of exhaustion overcame her, and a longing for someone to talk to about it. Then she saw them walking into the water, sinking down, and disappearing. No bubbles, no outstretched hand (just as well: what would she do in that case?).

And then they slowly rose again. It was very graceful, but she found herself straining for air long before she could see the tops of their heads slowly begin to surface.

It did look beautiful. They did look happy. She wasn’t happy, that much was certain. But she had no inclination to join them, whatever they were doing. If, in some future time, they proved themselves to be right, proved her to be wrong—fine.

The next day, she didn’t open the door to let them in for meals. She could hear their voices, now, very dimly, all of them sounding exactly the same. Sometimes they were right outside her window, saying things, as if speaking to her. But the words sounded made-up. She wouldn’t put that past them, that they were speaking some language not their own. Or, well, not hers. Too infuriating, really. Like pig-Latin, meant to point out how she didn’t fit in.

Each morning she got up and wrote her report and transmitted it although it went nowhere—the planets blocked her words from reaching anyone. It was comforting all the same. In less than a year, some morning not unlike this one, she would hear a blip, a beep, some startled movement on the line. It would be a warm voice, a human voice, a relief after all this weirdness—and maybe this wasn’t even the end of it, maybe they would become sand or rock or pellets of water themselves (she couldn’t know)—there would be a voice over the line, telling her, You made it. You were right, to seal that door. You are the one who is valuable. You are the one who saved the mission, and we adore you.

And she liked the sound of that so much—the love that was in that voice—that she began to fear that Jenks or Brute or Squirrel or Darcy would knock on the door someday and ask to come in. And she would be uncertain. She would want to open the door because for once they would sound normal. And they would complain they were hungry. How would she be able to withstand that? If they did that? Or if they bumped their foreheads against the plexi, crying, “Sibbetts, Sibbetts, we’re sorry, let us in!”

That would be unfair. To endure for almost all the way, and then have them trick her like that at the end. She would have to set up some rules. She would be clear about what they could and could not do. If they wanted food, she would leave it outside. That was reasonable. If they wanted anything else, they could leave her a note.

She found a notebook and pen to give them and suited up. Just because they had survived without a suit didn’t mean she would change procedure. Who knew what was growing inside their brains or in their blood vessels, biding its time?

She waited for the air lock to empty, then she stepped outside. Where were they now? They’d been in sight before she suited up. She turned around and bam! something hit her. She dropped the notebook, staggering a little. She still held on to the pen.

Then another strike. Her mind was trying to figure it out. She looked down at her arm and saw something moving down it. Like oil.

It was the thick water, of course. She turned to the left, and another one hit her.

“Can Sibbetts come out and play?” Squirrel called, his voice high and squeaky. He had his own face today, Sibbetts saw.

“Stop it,” Sibbetts said. “It isn’t funny.”

Someone put on a hand on her, from behind. She twisted as best she could in the suit. It was Jenks. “We miss you, Sibbetts. It’s hard to command someone who stays inside all day. Don’t you feel like you’re in prison?”

“I’m not sure who’s in prison,” Sibbetts answered. “I’m happier inside.”

“But I want you out here,” Jenks said. “I order you.”

“Yes, sir,” Sibbetts said, backing up. “Just let me stow my gear and I’ll be right back.”

Someone laughed. “Fat chance.” That was Brute. “Just get her helmet off.”

She was close to the door, close enough to get in and slam it.

That was that, then. Her heart was pounding. She went to the clean room. She stood under the spray. When she was done, she took off her suit. One of the clasps for the helmet had been undone. Luckily, they hadn’t gotten farther than that.

There really was no reason to go outside anymore. But they knew everything about the domes—could she really keep them from coming in?

If she wanted to survive, she would have to get rid of them. Her hands got very still, she clasped them together in her lap. The idea was horrific. Could she really kill them? No, it was too much. She could never be driven that far. If she stayed inside, and they stayed outside, then there was no reason for it. They would just keep to their own sides of the door.

Late one night, just as she was drifting off, she heard a scratching sound. Something small and rough. Was she imagining it? She took a flashlight and inched her way towards the sound. It was coming from the next dome, but it stopped as she neared it. Of course: she had passed a plexi window; they had seen the light.

They moved around, like mice, nibbling here and there. Were they using their fingernails? Did they still have fingernails? They could be using the rocks to scrape away at the dome, making the walls here and there thinner and thinner, so that one night they might poke their hands through and pull her out.

Maybe she couldn’t just sit and wait for rescue; that was too far off. What were they thinking about? What were they planning?

She was a scientist; she could fight them. She thought about how to kill them, now. She reminded herself that they were aliens, they were after her. Sometimes they stood, one at each plexi, just to frighten her, to say she couldn’t escape them. Well, she could. She could escape them if they were dead.

She hated having to think this way—and who was responsible for that? Who was forcing her to think of that?

It would have to be something that got them all together, all at once. That meant an explosion. Yes, blow them up entirely, leave no trace. They were fond of standing together like forks, good.

There was a set of explosives and a remote fuse, two in fact. She took them to the kitchen table and read the instructions. It was easy. She took off the wrappings and stopped.

She sat at the table, her hands shaking.

She began to keep records about their movements. When she rose, she checked all the windows, recording where they were. They were almost always together. Sometimes one or two broke off and went up the rocky inclines. Did they still eliminate, then, and have the need for privacy? Were they mating?

She heard scraping again. In the daytime. So now she had two reasons to go out: to see if they really were trying to scratch through the walls, and to set up the explosives, just in case. She didn’t have to use them; it was merely a precaution.

So. Where should she place the explosives? She went back to her log. They liked to appear in her windows, but usually one by one for that. They liked to go as a group to the thick water, but that was too far away, and the water would probably shield them. Occasionally they picked through the rubble of the trash heap and took a scrap of something.

She decided to take out some small objects, to put them along with the explosives, in the trash heap. She decided on a toothbrush, a cup, a candy bar. The candy bar would make it seem like she was trying to see if they still ate; that would satisfy their curiosity.

She watched from the plexi. The first day they didn’t go in the water; they merely stood about. The second day only two of them went in. The scratchings continued overnight, like animals pawing at the door to get in. On the third day, she was rewarded.

They all went in the thick water, sliding through it and then sliding down, until their feet vanished, their hips vanished, their heads vanished. Sibbetts suited up, unbolted the door and walked out. She walked around the domes. Yes, there were scratches; there were areas that had been peeled away. She thought maybe it had proved too hard for them, until she circled around to the back, where her lab was. There was a bigger spot here, a more delicate spot. She tapped her foot against it, and it gave slightly. Her heart pounded. They were distracting her, she thought, with scratching at other places so she wouldn’t concentrate on this spot.

Her mouth was dry. She looked at the beach and saw that someone’s head was showing through the line of the water. She moved quickly to the trash heap and put out the items, hiding the explosives under a bit of trash. She saw that three of them were kicking their way out of the water, pushing themselves to shore. She waved (sarcastically), and went inside.

Let them think what they would.

There was no doubt in her mind that they were about to break in. She went to the lab room, got down on her knees, pressing against the wall until she found the soft spot. It wouldn’t take them long. She placed a plastic sheet over it and taped around it. This would protect her against a breach, temporarily at least.

If they stopped scratching at the walls, she would leave them alone. She would give them that chance, one last chance. It was not her decision; it was theirs.

She folded herself into her bed that night, hoping there would be nothing but silence around her. But the scratching started, the little nibblings at the wall; that night, they seemed to be at all the walls from all sides. Had she missed other spots that were just as well worn as the one in the lab?

She bolted upright. She turned the lights on, crouching and running through the domes, listening. The sounds stopped as she drew near, then they started up somewhere else, as if they were tracking her, aware of her every move.

She ran around, and wherever she thought a sound had come from, she pounded her fist just above it (she would not push her hand through a weakened spot, no, she wouldn’t be pushed to that kind of error); to the top at first and then over to the right or to the left, she varied it because she didn’t want them to work out how she would act.

She did it for hours, skittering around, hating them, for the sounds, for their concentration, for their harmony—they were working in concert against her; if one of them weakened, there was another and she only had her wits and her sense and her logic and her hard, hard determination.

In the afternoon, she blew them up. They finally came to see what she had laid out in the trash heap, picking up the toothbrush, holding up the cup. They came as they usually did, and she pulled the switch and there was a muffled boom! And they were shattered, just like that.

She didn’t have the nerve to go out and look, not right away. She waited until she stopped shaking, and then she wrote down, again, her reasons: How they didn’t eat, how they drank the water. The way they were breaking in. That they wanted to infect her.

She added to her notes: they would bring the pollution back to earth.

She stayed inside for two days. She was used to being inside, but there was something in her heart, in her mind, somewhere, that wanted her to go outside. To see. Just to check. Something.

Finally she suited up, quite slowly, took the laser guns, and let herself out. She turned around carefully, surveying the area before moving to the blast site. The hole the explosion had made was deeper than she’d thought it would be. There was a glittering along the walls. Metallic ash? She surveyed it warily, some ten yards away. Most of the debris would be plastics, with some metal. There shouldn’t be much dust. She moved closer, squinting through the window of her helmet. She was afraid there would be blood, but she couldn’t see any blood.

She spun around. For a moment she’d felt that someone was watching her. But there was no one. Of course there was no one.

She was close now, standing at the edge of the blackest part, just looking slowly around, along the ground, checking the bits and pieces of things. She glanced quickly, not knowing what there was she could be afraid of.

A movement. She scanned along the outside wall of the dome. Something, yes, something small. A piece that had stuck to the wall was now, slowly, falling down.

And another. Yes, very small. That’s why it was so hard to see, there were drops of things moving down the wall. Her heart lurched but she thought she had to verify it, she would imagine things if she didn’t.

She walked up to the wall and bent over slightly, peering at it.

A piece of flesh down at the bottom of the wall, on the ground. How had it survived? She stared at it. Something else slid down the wall. So small, like a drop, and while she watched it fell at the edge of the skin and joined it.

She straightened up suddenly. That glittering—the wall seemed to have a sheen; it wavered a little. She told herself to stop thinking, to stop anticipating. She forced her body to still itself, she made herself stare, unblinking, at the steady, slow accretion of the sheen, so that the thin wet slick of it gathered, getting thicker, until it pooled to a heavy drop. There were drops here and there, small ones that gathered weight from another small one nearby; others that never moved and seemed to be waiting.

Some of them shivered, impatiently. They hovered against the wall until the weight shifted them down to a drop below them, or slightly to the side.

As she watched, she could see the largest one fall down minutely, shifting to the left, heading for the skin on the ground. Then it joined it. Of course it was still small, it was skin, yes, but just a bit of skin.

Sibbetts leaned over it. She bent closer. Another drop found it and it moved, just a little. The tip of a finger. She waited again, without moving, until the silvery, sheeny stuff—thick water, she knew it—formed another drop, and reached it. She could see where the top sliver of the fingernail was just starting to be visible. It was being built in front of her.

Sibbetts sucked in the air inside her helmet. Was there no relief from this kind of horror? They would assemble themselves every day, bit by bit, until she would wake one morning and find a balloon-face pressed against the plexi, or all four of them, touching at the shoulder, just standing together and pointing at her. It was unbearable—the thought that they would be there again, knowing what she’d done—she could feel her eyes rolling back in her head. She could hear herself whimper.

And the scratchings would begin again. Her shoulders tightened. She would be inside, listening to them claw their way to her, grinning, nodding, blending, aiming themselves at her. She could see, indeed, that they had turned into a joint organism; organism, yes, not people, and she should dispel any lingering trace of regret or guilt.

She went back to her lab for comfort. She stood and looked around, at the shelves of specimens—mostly the thick water. There were plastic jars and glass jars. They were all sizes, and there was a whole container of more jars in the clean room.

She thought her way through it, and then she assembled her materials the next day—jars, lids, pipettes, scoops, tweezers—and put on her suit. She carried the things carefully to the ruined dome. The wall still glistened faintly, but on the ground there were small staggered movements as globules combined. She took her first plastic cup and ticked her eyes along the ground, evaluating. That finger she had seen the day before was now assembled to the tip of the cuticle. But there was a piece of the top of the head complete with hair, far to the right. Next to that a bone with a scrap of sinew. A piece of beige skin inched towards it. She began to index, in her head, any recognizable thing. An elbow, a rib, a foot nearly complete and flexing hopefully. She bent over, watching. The things moved; they had purpose. “Probably dying to get together again,” she thought, and smiled. She could stop that.

She opened jars and took the larger parts, and the moveable parts—she would have none of them wandering away, gathering behind a rock or in the sea, repairing.

Every other day she went out, gathering with her jars and vats, picking out the hearts, the tongues, the scar on Jenks’ thigh, two tattoos (was that Squirrel or Darcy?).

The hearts and lungs and guts could wait; they were going nowhere. Feet and hands had to come first, but the heads—no, they would be gathered in pieces. It was too disturbing, even for her analytic bent, her Euclidean eye. It was enough that she would reassemble them in her mind, put the puzzle together, intellectually. Let it remain intellectual—let her surmise that the jar on the top shelf belonged with the jar on the bottom shelf, cheek-by-jowl, brow to chin. They were like lovers who were no good for each other and should be kept apart.

Or, at least, no good for her.

She gathered them, plucking them and sorting them. Would they only truly recognize their own or would they pollinate—making a Brute-Darcy, a Squirrel-Jenks, a Squirrel-Darcy? They had ballooned into each other; they might have the desire to form one interconnected being: eight legs, eight arms, four hearts, one mind.

One brain bloomed and she bottled it, not waiting for the brainpan to find its home. Four brains, each on a shelf. They might have achieved telepathy; she would see.

So, at the end, over the course of two weeks, she spooned them up, in segments or in parts, and jarred them. At first she kept them dry, then she thought—mercifully thought, scientifically thought; or heroically thought: they want the water.

She went down to the sea, and carved out a piece in her bucket, and brought it back, weighted with virtue. And she cut off pieces into each jar, tightening the lids—no hokum from them, delighting in the water—and sealed them tight.

In six months, in five months, in four months, in three—soon, soon, there would be a beep on her screen, the first text from home.

“How are you?” it would ask, and she would sit down, a smile on her face, her hands slightly shaking. The eyes behind her, blinking, the hearts beating, the lungs insisting on their own thick-water breathing—all of them watching, and she would type:

We are well.