And indeed it wasn’t much longer before first one device and then the second beeped. The small screen flashed and the static and snow were replaced by image and sound. They both leaned forward, and squinted, and waited. As they watched, the action slowly began.
PART THREE
DEAD MAN TALKING
0
The image is grainy, at times all but impossible to make out. It has an orange-red quality to it as well, as though the camera lens has been dipped in a wash of water and blood. The sound too seems as though it has been recorded inside a metal can, echoic and at times very difficult to hear. Kramm asks if there’s any way to fix it, but Frances shakes her head; the playback device is already doing its best to process and mediate the image, sharpening both it and the sound. The unprocessed image must be much, much worse, she tells him.
They watch an image of a man staring at himself in a mirror. The camera is somewhere on his face, Kramm realizes, and then when, after five or six or seven seconds the image flickers, disappearing for a split-second, he realizes that this is because the man has blinked: the recording camera must be implanted in his eye.
“So, he has an artificial eye?” he asks Frances, who reaches out and freezes the image.
Frances shakes her head. “Not likely,” she says. “They would have noticed and destroyed it. And you didn’t notice anything when you were examining the body, did you?”
Kramm shakes his head.
“No,” says Frances. “They must have implanted the pickup directly into his actual flesh-and-blood eye.”
“Can they do that?”
“It looks like they can. Though they probably had to blind the eye to do so.”
“Who’s they? Planetus? I thought Planetus wasn’t like Weyland-Yutani.”
“I don’t know,” she says.
“You don’t even know?”
For the first time since he’s met her, Kramm notices that Frances looks unsure of herself, slightly worried.
“He must have agreed to it,” she says, but the worry still remains, lurking in her own eyes. She blinks. “Or maybe he was already blind in that eye,” she says and seems to recover her confidence a little.
They turn back to the tiny screen, both of them hunching close to it. Frances unfreezes the image and starts the vid running forward again. Kramm is imagining a series of lasers and scalpels as they cut into an immobilized eye, coring out the pupil, the jelly oozing out. A pair of tiny tweezers replaces the eye’s lens with another slightly thicker lenslike device riddled with microcircuits. Then the eye is carefully sealed shut, a new fluid is injected into it, and then a lid begins to blink over it. Just like the lid that blinks over the camera from time to time on the screen. He shivers, shakes his head to clear the image from it, and in doing so becomes suddenly aware of how close he is to Frances. He can feel her warmth, hear her breathing, smell her skin.
On the five-centimeter screen, nearly touching, they watch a blurred image of a man speaking to himself in the mirror. He is thin, but not gaunt, tall. His hair is cropped short, his eyes dark brown, skin fairly dark. He has a strong jaw with a five o’clock shadow spreading along it.
“This is Tobin A. Marshall,” he says, or at least that’s the name that Kramm thinks he hears. It may be something slightly different. “Entry was successful, no difficulties to speak of. Only one man regarded me oddly, and then it turned out he wasn’t a man at all but a synth. Have not seen the prototype yet, but have engaged in discussion with Victor Standish, the engineer responsible for the maintenance and adjustment of the prototype terraformer design, and Sven Crocker, site manager. Both evasive. There is also Stewart Michaels, whose specialty seems to be tied to genetic manipulation, focusing on the botanical side of things; Gershom Roth, who specializes in geology but seems also to double as head of security and as the cook; and Karim Ghahwagi, who specializes in atmosphere and difficulties related to the terraformer’s exhalator. Finally, LaFargue, a synth but not a standard model, not one of Mechtech’s ‘friendly faces’ series. He seems to have a hand in everything and is eager to be at everyone’s beck and call. None of them, as far as I can tell so far, seem to have much more information about the situation than I. Marshall, signing out.”
There is a brief flicker on the screen and then Marshall is back again, wearing different clothing, his hair perhaps just a little longer. A new day, hard to say how far forward from the first image.
“Certain problems with the prototype unit,” he says, after his introduction. “Neither Standish nor Crocker nor any of the others seem to be able to get anywhere with it. Is it being tested prematurely? If the terraformer will actually do what they claim it has been designed to do then it will represent a significant though not startling advance. But so far the results suggested by the measurements we are taking seem to be no better than our current terraformers. There is a strange exhaust from the exhalator according to Ghahwagi—unusual but neither terribly beneficial nor harmful. Nothing to be overly concerned about yet. If I had more training, Standish might confide in me, and I might be able to be more specific about the difficulties they are facing. As it is, however, all I can hope to do is record the pertinent data, deftly lifted from Standish’s room, and pass it along at the earliest possible moment.”
There is a rustling and the gaze at the mirror slips down to focus on a piece of paper the hand is holding. It is a long list of specifications, rows of numbers. He folds that page back to reveal another page of numbers, and then another, and then a sheaf of schematic drawings.
“I was lucky,” he says. “Standish left his toolbox unlocked for once. Hopefully it will still be unlocked when I try to sneak these back in.
“At the moment, the terraformer can be found at latitude 41.823 N and longitude -71.413 W. Probably this information is only of use if you archive daily satellite photographs and can make something from the comparison. Will attempt to get a good view underneath the casing itself when Standish is making his adjustments, trying to get the device to run according to specifications.”
Again the screen goes dead, then flickers back on again. This time they see not a man in a mirror but the inside of some sort of machine, as revealed by a flashlight’s beam. Kramm recognizes a fission coil, a row of air processors. There is something else there that Marshall says in a whisper that he doesn’t recognize: a black box, metal and featureless, shiny. Hard to say for certain how big it is. It is attached to two strats with six uni-directional lugs.
“This is what the fuss must be about,” whispers Marshall’s voice. The flashbeam turns slightly and Kramm catches the ghost of a face reflected in the box’s surface. “Otherwise, as far as I can tell, this is roughly identical to any other contemporary model terraformer, though smaller in scale, a test model. It certainly performs that way. This device,” the voice says, and a hand reaches out to caress the black box, “makes all the difference. Only it hasn’t made any difference at all yet. Right now, there’s a power flow problem of some kind according to Standish, which means that the machine doesn’t realize it’s there. Standish and one of the others, Michaels, claim to be working on the problem, so far without success. Standish’s past experience, curiously enough, seems largely connected to other sorts of projects. The project manager, Crocker, strangely enough, though he is certainly good at his job, seems to have served as a supervisor only for agriculture installations heretofore. He seems to realize this is odd, but is somewhat philosophical about it. ‘You’ve got to start somewhere,’ he always says. But if the project is really as important as we’ve been led to believe, why wouldn’t they have chosen men specifically trained for projects such as these?”
There is a brief clattering and the flashlight is quickly turned off. A moment later the video feed clicks off as well.
When it returns, Marshall is in front of the mirror again. Same red glow.
“A close one,” he says. “Almost caught that time by Roth, who I hope has stronger geology skills than he does skills at keepi
ng watch or in assembling a consistently mediocre dinner. Why him? Why was he chosen as part of the crew? Either I don’t understand how Weyland-Yutani operates or there’s something wrong here. Could it be they suspect they’ve been infiltrated and that the real prototype terraformer is operating somewhere else, that this is all a hoax to keep the spy busy?
“Got far enough away, crawling, that by the time I stood up and he saw me I don’t think he realized I’d been inside the machine. He didn’t seem suspicious, only a little curious about what I was doing outside. The LaFargue synth, though, questioned me when I came in, in a somewhat casual way, pointedly asking about the dirt stains on my suit’s knees and elbows. I made some feeble excuse and left for the relative safety of my room as quickly as possible, only coming here later, once I was sure they were all asleep.
“Probably not safe to talk more tonight. Will be a few days before I can do much more.”
“Freeze it,” says Kramm.
Frances reaches out, immobilizes the vid between segments. “What is it?” she asks.
“I have too many questions,” says Kramm. “It just seems off. Almost as off as those so-called ‘Alien’ killings.”
“Marshall certainly thinks so,” Frances says. “My question is why would the Company kill anyone? Why not simply fire the spy or imprison him? It’s clear that he’s learning next to nothing in any case.”
“I don’t know,” admits Kramm. In fact, he has no idea at all, he realizes.
“Maybe it was Aliens after all,” says Frances.
“No,” says Kramm. “That was wrong too. Staged. They staged it.”
“But why stage something like that?”
“I don’t know,” says Kramm.
“And if they staged that, why kill everyone in that case? Why not simply murder the spy? Why not simply manufacture an accident in which only the spy dies?”
“I don’t know,” says Kramm again.
“I thought you were supposed to be the expert,” says Frances.
“This is a little beyond my field of expertise,” says Kramm. “It’s not Aliens we’re talking about but humans. Aliens always operate in roughly predictable ways. Humans rarely do.”
“Why go to such lengths to make it look like an Alien infestation?”
“Maybe as a way to cover up something else,” says Kramm.
“Like what? What possibly could be so serious as to call for that sort of cover-up?”
“I don’t know,” says Kramm. “An accident, maybe. Something gone desperately wrong.”
“Like what? Something with the terraformer?”
Kramm gestures to the small screen. “It may be right there waiting for us,” he says. “Only one way to find out.”
* * *
Tobin Marshall is speaking to himself in the mirror again. Neither Crocker nor Roth seems to be suspicious, he tells his reflection, but the synth has been watching him closely. The synth, ostensibly here to calibrate the quality of the vegetal matter being produced by the terraformer, is, Marshall worries, more than he seems.
“His name is LaFargue,” says Marshall, “named after the non-synthetic whose face served as the pattern for his series. His model number is M/83b.03. He has, like myself, been with the Company for nearly a year, or so he claims. And yet something is strange about him. There is something he’s not telling me, something he’s holding back.”
* * *
“Enough time has elapsed now,” says Marshall, “that it should be safe to make a try for the black box again, try to get a better look at it, maybe even try to open it up. Crocker is on watch tonight, but he’s grown relaxed enough that it shouldn’t be much trouble to sneak past him. Must watch out for LaFargue, however. It seems that every time I turn around I feel the man’s eyes on me, staring. Am I simply growing paranoid from the pressures of living this double life? Or am I really being observed?”
* * *
On the five-centimeter screen, Frances and Kramm again see the flickering glow of the flashlight, Marshall once again inside the casing of the terraformer. Kramm recognizes again the fission coil, the row of air processors, then a large bell-like device that must be the matrix for the formation of vegetal material. There, lower down, a compound tube leading to several mills, perhaps the means to draw organic and other existing matter from the planet’s surface for processing and conversion. And there, just to one side, the black box. It is seamless, Kramm notices this time as Marshall carefully plays the light up and over it, no apparent way in. Marshall threads his way underneath it, shining the flashlight up at the thick, uni-directional lugs.
“Perhaps, first, an ultrasound,” he whispers. Kramm watches Marshall’s hand extend and pass a wandlike device across the bottom of the box. From time to time his eye, the camera in it, flicks down to regard the screen attached to the ultrasound’s wand. It remains blank, empty.
“Which raises the question,” whispers Marshall, “of what exactly this box is made of.”
He tries running an ordinary sensor over the surface of the box, the same sort of device that Frances has used to detect the bugs on Kramm’s ship, but can’t get a clear reading. He taps on the box. Metal of some sort, Kramm thinks, from the sound. But what? Sighing, Marshall begins to try to break the lugs free, but then suddenly curses softly and the light switches off. The vid feed, for the moment, goes dead.
* * *
He is standing in front of the mirror again, staring at himself. His face seems more gaunt, his eye movements more rapid, harried. Marshall is, Kramm realizes, going a little mad. Maybe even more than a little mad.
“The problem is this,” he is saying. “The black box has no seams. There is no way to pry it apart. The two engineers who claim to have been working on the terraformer, Standish and Michaels, seem to have done nothing at all with the black box, have only worked on the terraformer around it and on the connection to the black box. At least I see no sign of the box having been opened or tampered with. The lugs also seem the same as they have always been. I’ve tried to check Standish’s tool box to see if he has replacement bolts, but he’s become better about keeping it locked. But since, being uni-directional, they must be broken to be removed, I am certain they have not been tampered with. The contents of the box refuse to reveal themselves to me; all scans have failed.
“What remains? I can perhaps break the lugs myself and remove the box. If I do so, they will know someone has been in the box, and any suspicions they may already have of a stranger being in their midst will in fact become more focused. The project will be shut down. I, if caught, will be punished, perhaps jailed, perhaps sent off-world.
“All this matters to me. I have no desire to blow my cover.” Marshall is saying this in an odd voice, reluctantly, as if trying to convince his reflection that it is in fact true. At what point, wonders Kramm, did he begin to think of his reflection as an entity separate from himself? “I have no desire to find myself under threat or in danger or in prison. And yet I increasingly feel I must know what is in the box, no matter the cost. What is it? What is inside the box? What lies inside the box?”
He rants on and on. It is hard, Kramm tells himself, to watch someone going mad. Kramm can sense where it is all likely to lead, and dread begins rising within him as the pitch of Marshall’s voice rises, as Marshall slowly convinces himself that, no matter what, no matter what the penalty or cost, he can’t manage to go on living much longer without seeing what is inside the box.
* * *
“Standish gone today,” Marshall reports to his reflection. “Two company men, large blunt fellows, arrived near dawn in a short-range flitter and handed Crocker a communiqué as the latter rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He read it over carefully and then nodded slightly, then pointed to Standish’s room. They immediately entered it. A moment later, Standish came out between them, wearing nothing but the clothes on his back, looking half asleep and vaguely frightened. They took him out the door of the station, marched him to the flitter, and flew away
with him.
“‘What is it?’ I asked Crocker. ‘What has he done?’
“Crocker just shook his head. ‘He hasn’t done anything,’ he said. ‘Standard transfer. He’s needed elsewhere.’
“Can it possibly be standard procedure to transfer a man engaged as the chief engineer for a developmental project? And to take him away without allowing him to gather his things? Surely not. Does Weyland-Yutani suspect they have a spy? Do they think Standish in fact might be it? What exactly is going on?
“Late in the day a low humming came from the horizon and a second flitter arrived. Two new guards, nearly identical to the first set, and between them one Matthew Benjamin, Standish’s replacement. He came in, was introduced to Crocker, who introduced him in turn to the rest of us, and was given Standish’s room. After having Crocker sign a bill of lading for Receipt of goods delivered (Engineer, quantity: 1), the guards left and flew away.
“We talked a little just after dinner. Benjamin seems just as puzzled by his transfer here as the rest of us. He is, he claims, normally a flitter mechanic. He has been working for the company for a little over four months just a few planets distant. Four days ago two guards showed up with a communiqué reassigning him to our operation. He was hustled quickly onto their ship, leaving almost immediately. Was there some way, he wanted to know, for him to get a vid relayed to his friends and former coworkers so that they’d know what had happened to him?
“No, Crocker told him. He explained that this was a confidential project; we were under a com-link blackout—no direct contact with the outside world. But if he wanted, Crocker said, he could record something which Crocker could attach to his weekly report, with a request that it be forwarded to Benjamin’s coworkers. A representative from the Company would then review it to make sure it contained no confidential information and then would forward it along.
The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 28