Dead Space: Catalyst

by Evenson, Brian

  He took to sitting in his cell, on the edge of his bed, his feet flat on the floor, his hands on his knees, just listening. It reminded him of sitting on the edge of his bed late at night when he was a boy and practicing blanking the world out. There were the general noises he could hear around him—the sound of footsteps, the voices of the other inmates, a rustle or creak here or there—but these he tried to learn to unlisten to, to tune out completely, and, in a certain manner and after a few days, he succeeded. Then there was the sound of his heartbeat, the noise of his own breathing, the noises coming from his body and stomach. These, too, he learned to unlisten to, first dulling them and then reducing them to nothing at all. It came slowly, and had to be redone every time he sat down again, but it could be done. And then, once in that space of silence, he had to sharpen his ears still further, had to not only make them listen to the rumble of whispering voices beneath everything but to home in on just one of them, to pick it out, to start to hear its words.

  It took six days, days in which he hardly ate, hardly even moved. At first his fellow prisoners were worried about him and clustered around him, but after he ignored them for a few hours, they gave up, left him alone. Occasionally one of them would come back, Waldron mostly, but wouldn’t stay long, and though he found it an irritation to have someone shaking him, someone trying to talk to him, he quickly learned to ignore this as well.

  And then, late in the sixth day, his ears caught hold of the tail of a voice and reeled it closer until he could hear it. It was incomplete and partial, but it was a real voice, speaking its own words, starting to say something. He massaged it, caressed it, until it grew a little, became a little louder, and he could hear that it was addressing him. Istvan, it was saying, why won’t you talk to me?

  But I don’t even know who you are, he said. His lips were moving, he knew, whispering the words, but he could feel the words being uttered in his head as well.

  Ah, there you are, said the voice. Now you hear me.

  I’ve been trying to talk to you all along, Istvan said.

  And I’ve been trying to talk to you. It just took us a while to find the right tongues.

  Indeed, as they spoke the voice became stronger, more confident. It stretched and scratched against the sides of his mind like an animal and slowly grew larger, and he knew that now he’d be able to find it again, hear it again, whenever he went searching for it. And late on the seventh day, when the burst came again, he felt less pain this time. It was as if his head had been filled with living, thinking fire. The veil fell over things, tattered at first and then becoming blazing with light, as it always did, and then even more quickly resolving into another colorful world. There was the face of Conn, his lips almost blue, his neck bloody. He hovered there just in front of him, staring.

  “Hello, Conn,” Istvan said.

  And this time instead of letting the face take his words and use them as his own, Istvan imagined the voice that he had been hearing drifting up from where, despite its growing size and power, it huddled and crouched in the background, and threading itself into the dead man’s throat until Conn opened his mouth and spoke with it.

  “Hello,” Conn said. The voice was strange, not quite properly synched with his lips, and he spoke with a wet burble as if his throat was still partly filled with blood. Air, too, hissed softly out from the holes in his windpipe.

  There, thought Istvan. Now we’re getting somewhere.

  25

  “You’ll want to see this,” said Dr. Callie Dexter.

  Briden turned away from his computer and looked at her. “All right,” he said. “You have something you want to show me, go ahead and show me.”

  “Vectors,” she said again.

  “You’ve already told me about the vectors. You did that a few days ago.”

  Dr. Dexter nodded. “I have more data now,” she said. She tugged on his chair until it rolled closer to her monitor. “I’ve charted every surge since the vector of our Marker shifted. And I’ve also correlated it with the way it continues to broadcast even when not engaged in a surge. Before, when a surge came, it would send a wide-range blast of energy up into space, always a different vector as if it was looking for something. But then something changed.”

  “It’s no longer broadcasting into space,” said Briden.

  “No,” said Dr. Dexter. “Now it’s a more focused blast, like a burst of energy being propelled out of a gun. It still spreads and widens a little, but much more slowly. And now it’s always oriented in roughly the same direction.”

  “All right,” said Briden. “It’s changed. So what?”

  Dr. Dexter smiled. “Here’s the vector for the Marker from Aegis VII,” she said, “which, incidentally, has been firing its pulse simultaneously with the Marker here. It’s millions of miles away, so the system is quite wide by the time it reaches this far. But even so, if you calculate the center point of the wave you find that it seems to pass exactly through our planet.”

  Intrigued now, Briden simply nodded.

  “Here’s the last one from the project we’re not supposed to know about, the one on Kreemar. The reason we know about it is because its signal is also oriented toward the planet we’re on, and seems also to be coordinated with the other two.”

  She pulled up a topographical map.

  “The planet’s surface,” she said. “Satellite photos. You don’t know how hard it was for me to get this—had to speak directly to Commander Grottor himself.”

  “You should have gone through me,” said Briden.

  “I told him I was going through you,” said Dr. Dexter. “Otherwise, he wouldn’t have given me anything.”

  “You have no right—” started Briden.

  Callie turned away from her screen and smirked. “Oh, relax,” she said. “We’re all on the same team. You’ll get the credit if things work out well, and if they don’t, you can tell them you had nothing to do with it. If you’re nervous about it, link with him right now. I’m sure they won’t hesitate to yank it away.”

  When Briden, fuming, didn’t say anything, she turned back to her monitor. “Here we are,” she said, touching the screen with one finger. Briden could see the specific shape of the compound perhaps two inches across, a gray blot on the yellow-red surface that was the rest of the map. “Marker is approximately right here.” She moved her finger slightly. “The vector carries us forward along this path,” she said, dragging her finger, “which brings us right through here.”

  She stopped on another gray blot. The penal colony. He knew it was there, saw it sometimes looming dimly on the horizon if he looked out the right window. But he had never been to it, let alone inside of it. It had nothing to do with their purpose for being on the planet.

  “You think it’s broadcasting to the prison compound?” he asked.

  “I didn’t say that,” she said. “And it’s not a broadcast exactly. It may be pulsing to something beyond that, on the other side of it, maybe even something miles away. But I’ve had the computer calculate the center point of each vector exactly and when we do that it looks like this.” She touched the screen and three sets of lines appeared on the map. They intersected there, right at the prison compound.

  “Oh my God,” said Briden.

  “Nifty, right?” said Callie.

  “That’s not exactly the word I would have used,” said Briden. “What do you think it sees there?”

  “There you go, treating it like a person again. It doesn’t see anything. It doesn’t want anything. The Marker is a mechanical device, you know that as well as I do. It’s been programmed to look for something.”

  No, thought Briden, she’s wrong. It’s much more than that. But to Callie he only said, “What’s your best guess?”

  “My best guess? That’s not very scientific, Briden.” But when Briden didn’t rise to take the bait, she raised her eyes upward and seemed to examine the ceiling. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe there’s something significant about the locatio
n. A certain kind of current or force there, a magnetic flux, perhaps even something we don’t quite have the instrumentation to detect.”

  “It could be anything,” said Briden.

  “Not quite anything,” Dr. Dexter corrected. “But it could be a lot of things.”

  He sighed. She always had to be right. “So what do we do?”

  “Do? What else can we do but go look for it?”

  “Somewhere in the middle of a penal colony,” he said.

  “We go where our data takes us,” said Dr. Dexter. “We’re scientists.”

  Briden hesitated, then nodded. “I’ll speak with the commander,” he said. “We’ll see what we can arrange.”

  26

  “Help? You need help?” asked Istvan.

  “I don’t need help,” said Bill, mumbling it.

  “Who are you talking to, Istvan?” asked Waldron.

  He ignored them. They were in the world that wasn’t important. They weren’t part of the world that really mattered.

  Yes, said dead Conn. Help me.

  “But how can I?”

  “Istvan, are you all right?” asked Waldron, placing his hand on his shoulder.

  He shook him off.

  We need you, said dead Conn, and as he spoke his face slowly changed, becoming smooth. The wound in his throat slowly closed, and the throat changed, too, losing its Adam’s apple. A moment later it was clear that his face was no longer a man’s face but a woman’s. A moment more and Istvan recognized his mother. I need you, she claimed.

  Nice trick, thought Istvan.

  “What do you need me to do?” he asked.

  Come be with me.

  “What do you mean come be with you? You’re right here.”

  His mother shook his head. Find me, she said. Come unto me.

  “I’m trapped here,” said Istvan. “I’m a prisoner, I can’t leave.”

  “We all are,” said Waldron next to him. “You’re no different from anyone else.” But his mother just looked at Istvan as if she hadn’t understood what he had said. Then she smiled. It is you, she told him, who will help change things.

  But now she was speaking in riddles. How was he to help her if he didn’t understand what she was saying? And thinking that introduced a little seed of doubt into him. He hadn’t liked his mother much when she was alive; why should he listen to her when she was dead? Well, it wasn’t his mother exactly, a part of him reminded himself, but someone or something else. Then what was it? the rest of him wanted to know. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Because he simply did not know. Maybe it wasn’t even real: for many years, ever since he was a kid, he’d had a hard time telling what was real from what was not, even he knew that. And yet it felt real, didn’t it? And he wanted to listen to what was said. So why should he be afraid?

  And yet he was a little afraid. Maybe it was too much for just one man, especially if he was that man. And he was trapped here: whatever it wanted him to do, how was he going to get out to do it? And how was he to know how to do it even once he was out?

  “Why me?” he asked.

  Because you can hear us best, said his mother. You can teach us. You are teaching us to understand the others through you.

  Us? he wondered. But there was only his mother, and another seed of doubt was introduced.

  And then the burst came—a strong one this time. He heard Bill scream somewhere near him, the sound penetrating even into this other world. He felt a finger within his brain, touching it, prodding it, and then it felt like his head had caught fire and melted into slag. The world went strange and he could see, suddenly, both worlds equally, but one through his left eye and one through his right, overlaid on one another, but both still fully present. And then he found himself lying on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, both worlds in full carnival around him, as his fellow prisoners shouted or sweated or yelled or simply stood there, slowly banging their heads against the wall.

  27

  “You want us to what?” asked Henry.

  On the vidscreen the commander’s eyes shifted slightly to one side, the only sign Henry could see that he was at least a little uncomfortable with the request as well. “Mr. Jenkins, I know it’s an unusual request,” he said. “But it’s very important. In fact, a great deal more important than the safety of the prisoners, or even, frankly, I regret to say, of you and the other personnel.”

  “And you can’t tell me anything more about it?”

  “I’m sorry, it’s classified,” said the commander.

  Henry tried again. “This is probably not the best time,” he said. “The prisoners are acting strangely. Everyone is on edge and some of them even seem to be teetering on the brink of something. Whatever is happening is affecting some of our people as well. Tempers are short. I keep on getting the feeling that something’s about to erupt.”

  “Whether it’s the best time or not doesn’t matter,” said the commander. “You will do this, Wandrei.” And Henry realized that there was no debating the point; the commander was serious enough that he’d neglected to humiliate him by calling him by the wrong name.

  He nodded. “How long will they be here?”

  “I don’t know,” said the commander. “Perhaps a day. Perhaps a month. As long as it takes.”

  “How many of them will there be?”

  “They can bring as many of their people as they feel they need. There’ll be at least one—Briden: he’s the leader.”

  “And these are scientists? They’re the ones working not far from us?”

  “That’s right,” said the commander. “I don’t suppose it will hurt to admit to that, if it makes you feel any better. You’re to give them any and every assistance, no matter how you feel about whatever they request. If they ask you to tear down a wall, you tear down a wall. If they ask you to cut off a prisoner’s hand, you cut off the hand. You’re to follow all their orders as if they were my own.”

  “Can I ask what they’re likely to request?” asked Henry.

  “You can ask, Jenkins,” said the commander, “but I can’t tell you.”

  “Classified?”

  The commander shook his head. “I simply don’t know,” he said. “Nor do I know how this request ties in to their project exactly. But I do know that they must be given every leeway.”

  “What if they want to kill a prisoner?”

  “Then let them kill the prisoner,” said the commander without hesitation. “The men you have there lost their rights a long time ago. They’re no longer really people as far as the state’s concerned.”

  “What if they want to release a prisoner?”

  The commander hesitated more at this. “You release him into their custody,” he finally said. “But you get in touch with me immediately as well. You understand?”

  When Henry nodded, the commander broke the link. Henry sighed. The job that was supposed to be temporary, a way of earning a little money so he could start some sort of business of his own back on Vindauga, was becoming more and more complicated. And there was something wrong with the atmosphere here: his head hurt almost all the time, seriously throbbed. In addition to the brief piercing headaches, he was having something like aura migraines now as well. Strobing, throbbing headaches that moved like a psychedelic veil across his vision, obscuring sight in first one eye and then the other. Maybe it was just the stresses of the job that caused it, or he wasn’t eating properly, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was tied to this place, that he’d be okay if only he could just leave.

  Nor could he shake, now that he was thinking about it, the feeling that the commander was out to get him. Was this all a trap? Or was he being paranoid, just feeling trapped because he was living in the outer circle of a penal colony? Even though he wasn’t a prisoner, he felt like one. And perhaps if he handled this situation wrong, even without meaning to, it would be a simple matter for the commander to order him to be moved from the technician’s desk where he now sat and put into a cell on the other sid
e of the wall. There were so many empty cells. Any of them could be waiting for him.

  He shook his head. What was wrong with him? Why was he so worried? He tried to laugh, but it sounded wrong, more like someone choking.

  * * *

  He called the six guards and the other technician in, explained to them what was to happen. He watched the anger and suspicion and paranoia manifest itself on their faces, only slowly subsiding. Henry regarded them each attentively with part of his mind, wondering Which of these men is going to crack first? If he knew for certain, he could have the man put in a jail cell, just for their own protection. But how could he know for certain? He’d have to put all of them in jail cells just to be safe, and even he knew that if he started putting men in cells, then the remaining men would quickly put him in a cell. Before they knew it, everyone would be in a cell, and then they would all slowly starve to death.

  He shook his head. What was he thinking? This wasn’t how he usually thought about things. No, he had to keep his head clear, especially now, especially in this time of stress, when he might need all his resources. He had to remember to be himself.

  28

  Jensi waited until they were a few hours in to the flight before asking Swanson where they were going. The big Swede just shrugged. “Probably the same trip as we’ve done before,” he said, “but the captain’s always closemouthed about where we’re going. Has to be, I guess.”

  For most of the day they passed through the solar system, the captain letting the Eibon move slowly along. Jensi overheard one of the crew saying they were heading to the nearest shockpoint and when he asked Swanson about it an hour later as they did the rounds of the cargo hold, the man nodded and said yes, that was no secret. They would go there and then from there they would go to the Venus shockpoint and then they would go elsewhere, to a place that was secret.

  “There are only a few shockpoint nodes reachable from the Venus node,” said Jensi. “It’s got to be one of those.”

  Swanson smiled. “I thought so, too, first time we went,” he said. “But there’s at least one more node than people know.”