A huge international corporation has developed a facility along the Juan de Fuca Ridge at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to exploit geothermal power. They send a bio-engineered crew--people who have been altered to withstand the pressure and breathe the seawater--down to live and work in this weird, fertile undersea darkness.
Unfortunately the only people suitable for long-term employment in these experimental power stations are crazy, some of them in unpleasant ways. How many of them can survive, or will be allowed to survive, while worldwide disaster approaches from below?
We've got language and speech centers hardwired into our brains. That gives us a common starting point. Gels don't have anything like that. Speech might just be one giant conditioned reflex to them."
a few months ago it would have driven him crazy. But Yves Scanlon was finally starting to see his place in the universe, and was discovering that he could afford to be tolerant. Other people's pettiness didn't bother him nearly as much as it used to. He was above it.