“Benjamin shrugged, looked nonplussed. ‘Well, if that’s the best we can do . . .’ he said.
“I asked him if he’d had any experience working on terraformers. He shrugged. ‘How hard can it be?’ he asked. ‘I’m sure I’ll be up to speed in a few days.’
“‘You’re a mechanic or an engineer?’ I asked him.
“‘A mechanic,’ he said firmly.
“‘But they delivered you here as an engineer.’
“He shrugged again. ‘They changed my ranking on the flight in,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why.’
“Something just isn’t right. Why would they yank someone with at least some skill and experience off the project and replace him with a new, inexperienced employee? It doesn’t even seem plausible.
“Later, while Benjamin was speaking with Crocker, the LaFargue synth watching them from across the room while pretending to read, I took the liberty of stepping into Benjamin’s new room. Standish’s toolboxes were still there, still locked, but the electronic key was on the desk, waiting for me. I took the key, rummaging through each of the compartments in turn. There were no additional lugs. The schematics of the black box itself were missing as well. In the end I pilfered a drill and a series of diamond-tipped bits. In a few hours, I’ll find out what’s inside the box.”
* * *
“It’s the same with us,” Kramm says, “something clearly not right, but impossible to pin down exactly what’s going on. I’ve only had a day or two of it and it makes me nervous as hell. I can’t imagine what it must be like for him.”
“Shh,” she says. “It’s starting again.”
But it is too dark, the tiny screen too small for them to make out anything clearly. All Kramm can see is nothing, and all he can hear is the sound of Marshall’s slow, careful breathing.
“Plug into the ship,” Kramm says. “Take it back to the beginning of the segment and let’s watch it in the dark on the ship’s big screen.”
“Like a home theater,” she says.
“Like a home theater,” he assents, though he is not sure what this means. “Maybe then we’ll be able to see something.”
And indeed they do see a little more. Not much, only vague shapes, but enough to gather that Marshall is outside the compound, heading into the fields. After a while there is a brief glint of light and he stops, holds still. The light comes closer, a vague silhouette of a man holding it, and then passes by. Once it has passed, Marshall creeps forward and a moment later he has reached the lesser dark of the terraformer’s carapace. He illuminates it ever so briefly to figure out the best way of slipping under the lip, and then he’s inside, flashlight lit, playing the light around in the machine’s innards until the flashbeam touches the black box.
Kramm can tell, from the brief flurry of arms that he sees, the way the camera rolls down and then rolls back up again, that Marshall is now lying down on the ground. Above the camera now, in the flashlight’s beam, is the bottom of the box, the six uni-directional lugs, the two strats holding it in place.
There follow the brief, precise sounds of metal clanking against metal, and then these stop. Within the vid’s frame Marshall’s hands appear, holding the stolen drill. He lines the bit up against the bottom of the black box and depresses the trigger. The drill whirs, the bit slowly cutting its way through the surface of the box.
It is strange for Kramm to watch. Perhaps it is because of the larger screen, perhaps it is the action itself, but for the first time he feels as if he’s the one behind the camera, as if the camera is in his eye, as if the hands he is watching are his own. He wonders if Frances feels the same way.
The whine of the drill grows deeper, the drill slowing as Marshall, grunting, pushes it more firmly against the box, and then finally and suddenly it punches through. Marshall pulls it free and presses his eyes close to the box but it is too dark to see in. He pulls his head back a little, tries to angle the light up and in, giving a little gasp of exasperation when it is still too dark to see.
He curses softly.
“A hole to see by and a hole for the light,” he finally says. Lifting the drill, he begins to drill the second hole, fifteen or twenty centimeters away from the first. It takes longer than the first, the drill bit duller now, but finally the metal starts to scrape free in tight spirals and then the drill cuts through.
The camera moves up near the new hole, but instead of looking into it, stops just a hair away from the metal, seeing nothing.
“Why isn’t he looking?” Frances asks.
At first Kramm can’t figure it out either. But then suddenly it dawns on him.
“He’s looking with his real eye,” he tells her. “Not with the camera. His camera eye is blind.”
The light brightens and halos in the camera’s eye. Kramm guesses that he’s brought the flashlight in close, shining it into the second hole.
For a moment there is nothing but the dim black metal in front of the camera’s eye. And then Marshall gives an unearthly shriek and the camera feed goes dead.
* * *
Kramm finds his heart beating fast, his mouth dry. He glances over at Frances whose face, he is not surprised to find, has blanched.
“Is he dead?” she asks.
He opens his mouth to answer her, and the screen flickers, the vid starting up again.
* * *
On the large screen, in front of both of them, a man staring at himself in the mirror, the scene again stained red as if dipped in a wash of water and blood.
“A close one,” he says. “I shouldn’t have cried out, should have stopped myself, but I couldn’t help it. What a terrible thing, a terrible, terrible thing.”
“What was it?” Frances asks Kramm. “What could it possibly be?” On the screen Marshall is running his hands over his face and up into his hair.
“I don’t know,” says Kramm. What could possibly be in there? What sort of machine or circuitry could possibly provoke such a reaction?
“I’m okay now,” says Marshall. “Or will at least be okay eventually. I should have realized . . .”
Unless it wasn’t circuitry at all, thinks Kramm. Unless it was something else.
“I had to slip out quickly, running hunched over until I reached the irrigation trench and then going on hands and knees to the trench’s end. A flashlight flicking back and forth as someone came running toward the terraformer. Standish, probably. No, wait, Standish is gone. Roth, probably. Or Crocker. Then, not long after, a second flashlight. I slipped back into the station without being seen.”
It is Frances, not Kramm, who is the first to hit on the answer. “I know what he saw,” she says.
“What?” asks Kramm.
“At least I don’t think I was seen,” says the reflection on the vid. “Sometimes you know when you’re seen but other times it’s impossible to be sure.”
“Nothing,” says Frances. “He didn’t see anything. What could be more terrible than to find that the mysterious box that you’ve been sent to investigate is utterly, absolutely empty?”
* * *
Morning again, a little light through the window revealing, when he turns his head, more of the bathroom than just the mirror that captures his reflection. He looks less troubled now, his façade more or less back in place, though from time to time his eyes start to dart.
“Status report,” he says. “Murky. Why am I here? What is the real reason I am here? I don’t know.”
“This isn’t going to end happily,” says Frances.
“We already know that,” says Kramm. “We’ve touched his corpse.”
“What do I know?” Marshall continues. “One, that I must wash my hands of the box. Two, that something is going on which I can’t even begin to understand.
“This morning,” he says, “very early, another flitter landed. Inside, the company men, the same two that took Standish away. They came in, offered Crocker a communiqué. He read over it carefully and then stared at them a long time. Then he called over Mic
haels, Ghahwagi, and Roth.
“‘What is it?’ Michaels asked.
“‘You’ve all three been reassigned,’ said Crocker. ‘Get your stuff.’
“‘No need for that,’ said one of the guards. ‘Your things will be sent.’
We all shook hands briefly and then they were hustled out the door and were gone.
“‘Can you explain to me what’s going on?’ I asked Crocker.
“‘Standard transfer,’ he said. ‘Needed elsewhere.’
“‘There’s nothing standard about it,’ I said. ‘You know that as well as I do.’
“‘I only know what they tell me,’ he said, shaking the communiqué in my face. ‘Which is: standard transfer.’
“I spent the day testing the alkalinity of soil samples, something I can do almost without thinking, something that had been Roth’s job previously. I tried to get Crocker to speak about what had happened but he’d clammed up. He spent more time than usual over his meal and took the late afternoon watch himself. He would not be drawn out.
“Near dark another flitter, two more guards, three new men. They were introduced briefly and then moved into the small rooms that Michaels and Ghahwagi and Roth had left behind. A little innocent questioning led me to discover that neither of them has any technical expertise whatsoever. One, Thomas Hora, was a newly hired employee who had worked briefly for one of the Company planet farms several systems distant. Another, Bultmann, was hired just a few days ago. He has the most enormous hands I’ve ever seen. The third was a homesteader on a Weyland-Yutani planet, an early colonizer, and claimed to have put together a nice little spread before a series of dust storms blew it all away. His plan, he said, was to work until he was eligible for another homestead placement and then try his luck again.
“So, half of us are gone. The replacements have none of the skills possessed by those they replaced. Perhaps the project is being suspended. But if this is the case, why bring in anyone new at all?
“I don’t know what is happening, but it makes me increasingly nervous.”
* * *
“Have to make this quick,” Marshall whispers. “Another flitter, landing early this morning, maybe two hours ago. Two more guards, mirror images of all the others, came in, presented Crocker with another communiqué. He seemed to take it with the utmost reluctance as we all watched.
“‘There must be some mistake,’ he said.
“‘No mistake,’ the taller guard said.
“‘What about them?’ he asked, and gestured first to me and then to the LaFargue synth.
“‘We don’t have a directive concerning them at present,’ said the other guard.
“‘Isn’t there someone I can talk to?’ asked Crocker.
“‘If you want to establish a secure com-link for verification purposes, we’re willing to wait.’
“Crocker went into his room, shutting the door behind him. The guards stood there silent, unmoving. I edged a little closer to the wall, near his door, and leaned against the wall, staring at my shoes.
“After a while I heard shouting, then the dull rumble of Crocker’s voice, still loud but growing quieter. And then nothing. A moment later the door opened and he came out, face red and lips tight, his duffle slung across his back.
“‘Men,’ he said. ‘It’s been a pleasure serving with you.’ He shook each of our hands in turn and then turned to the door.
“‘You’re leaving?’ I asked.
“‘Apparently so,’ he said, and stopped. ‘Standard transfer.’
“‘Standard transfer?’ I asked.
“‘Standard transfer,’ he said again and this time continued all the way out the door.
“Near evening another flitter, a new man come to take Crocker’s place. A third-generation homesteader named William Judge, all but illiterate as far as I can tell from a few moments of conversation. He, like Benjamin and the others, has no idea what he’s doing here.”
Marshall leans forward, bracing himself against the counter.
“Of the original seven, all that remain are myself and the LaFargue synth. Perhaps tomorrow we will be taken away as well. Or perhaps we’ll be left here, hemmed in among this new motley group. Has my cover been blown? Is the LaFargue synth here only to observe me? Are they simply planning on keeping me contained here while research and development for an actual new terraformer goes on elsewhere, far away from my prying eyes?”
He starts to turn away from the mirror, but then hesitates, turns fully back. “Can eyes pry? Is there something wrong with my speech as well? Am I in the process of losing my mind? And how will I know when it’s time to go?” he asks himself. “How will I know when it’s time to simply set off running across the newly terraformed fields and hope I can reach safety before it’s too late?”
* * *
“He didn’t know when it was time,” says Kramm to Frances, as the screen goes dead.
“No, he didn’t,” Frances responds. “Which raises an interesting question: will we know?”
No, Kramm thinks, we won’t. But to Frances he says, “Maybe it won’t come to that.”
* * *
“A little after midnight,” Marshall says. “The LaFargue synth has been watching me all day, always lurking. He made a point of switching his seat to be next to me at dinner, which he himself prepared now that we’ve lost Roth. At one point, he nudged me.
“‘You and I,’ he said. ‘We’re a lot alike.’
“‘We’re nothing alike,’ I said.
“‘Don’t be too sure,’ he said. ‘After all, we’re the only two left.’
“He said nothing further, but of course my mind started to spin. Why just he and I? Had I misjudged him? Was there really something that we shared or did LaFargue simply want me to believe this?
“A few minutes ago, I awoke to find him in my room, beside my bed. He was sitting in the chair, watching me as I slept. It was not a pleasant way to wake up. I started and had even begun to cry out when he put his finger to his lips and stopped me.
“‘No need to be afraid,’ he whispered. ‘I just want to talk.’
“‘What is it?’ I asked, wondering at the same time if I was in any danger from him.
“He looked at me for a long moment. ‘I don’t know the best way to say this,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to forgive me for being blunt. I know you don’t like me.’
“‘What makes you think that?’ I said.
“‘I can tell,’ he said. ‘I can measure your physiological reactions. Perhaps you don’t like synths in general? Humans can’t dissimulate effectively in front of an artificial person. They’re not good at it.’
“I didn’t say anything.
“‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘I’m designed not to worry about such things. What matters is what is going to happen to both of us.’
“‘And what’s that?’ I asked.
“He looked down at his hands. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been able to figure out any clear logic to events. But any way I think through the information, I know it can’t be good.’ He looked up at me again, with that odd, dazed look that synths often seem to have. ‘Why are you here?’ he asked.
“‘Why?’ I said. ‘Same as you. I’m part of the research team.’
“‘No,’ he said. ‘Why are you really here?’
“When I didn’t say anything, he said, ‘I think we may be here for the same reasons.’
“‘And what reasons are those?’
“‘Cautious, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘I don’t blame you. Let’s just say I know what you’ve been doing because I’ve been doing it too.’
“‘And what have I been doing?’ I said, trying to keep my voice level. My mouth had grown dry.
“‘I’ve seen the holes drilled in the device within the terraformer,’ he said. ‘I believe it must be you who made them.’
“‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said.
“‘I know you’re gathering secrets,’ he
said. ‘I’m gathering them too.’
“I didn’t say anything.
“‘I work for Planetus,’ he said. ‘Unless I’m very wrong, you must be working for them too.’
“I stayed looking at him a long moment, thinking. Could it be possible that both of us worked on the same side? But if that was the case, why hadn’t I been informed about him, and why hadn’t he been informed about me? Why hadn’t we been given some code or system to test the veracity of the other’s claims? It didn’t feel right.
“‘All I’m asking,’ he said, ‘is that we compare notes, share information. The only way we’ll be able to figure out what’s going on is if we work together.’
“Yes, I thought. Maybe he knows something that I don’t, maybe working together we could begin to sort out what’s happening. But wouldn’t this be exactly what a mole would say as well? How could I know I could trust him?
“There were more thoughts, desperate, racing. ‘I need time to think,’ I finally said. ‘We’ll talk about this in the morning.’
“‘But—’ he said.
“‘I have to think about what you’re saying,’ I said.
“‘But the morning may be too late.’
“In the end, though, he demurred and left.
“I have been thinking it through and thinking it through and finally I have come in here. I can’t help but still think that LaFargue is someone employed by the Company to ferret out people like me. He obviously knows something about what I’ve been doing and perhaps hopes by pretending to be a spy himself that he can get me to reveal more. The real project has clearly been moved elsewhere, the real personnel replaced in such a way as to push me into confiding in the LaFargue synth. It’s a trap. I would be a fool to fall into it. Tomorrow I’ll set about planning my escape.”
The vid fades to black. Frances reaches out, freezing it between vid segments. “He was wrong,” she says. “LaFargue was ours.”
“Probably a fatal mistake,” says Kramm.
“You have to trust someone,” she says, and fell silent. After a moment she says, “Still no Aliens.”
“No,” he says.
“Maybe they’re still coming,” she says.
The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 29