16 He gently disengaged his hand from his brother's and looked at his chronometer. Six thirty-eight, it read, but he could tell by the way the numbers flashed and then slowly faded that it had stopped. Why wasn't it working? He showed it to Shane, who just nodded. Nothing to worry about, brother, Shane said. It doesn't really matter. Shane was right, of course, it didn't really matter, but he still wanted to know what time it was. "What time is it?" he asked Dantec. "Leave me alone," said Dantec. "We're getting close. I have to watch this." Hennessy waited a moment and then asked again. Distractedly, Dantec looked at his wrist, then held his chronometer to his ear. "It's stopped," he said. "Mine, too," said Hennessy. Dantec turned and looked at him. He didn't seem to notice Shane, even though he was right there, right next to Hennessy. People see what they want to see, thought Hennessy. "Doesn't that seem weird to you?" Dantec asked. Hennessy shrugged. "Nothing to worry about," he said. "It doesn't really matter." Dantec narrowed his eyes. "And another thing," he said. "Why are you so fucking serene all of a sudden?" Hennessy cast his eyes toward Shane, then realized what he'd done and flicked them back quickly to look at Dantec. Dantec's eyes moved to the side, stared through Shane, then moved back. "It's just like that," said Hennessy. "I just feel better. I don't know why." Rolling his eyes, Dantec turned away. Just between you and me, Jim, should he really be doing this? asked Shane. "I don't know," said Hennessy, "should he?" Some things it's better not to mess with. Hennessy nodded. Shane was probably right, but if he told Dantec that, he wouldn't listen. What could he do about it? Maybe it was a bad idea, but even if it was, he didn't know how he could get Dantec to stop. After a few more minutes--or maybe it was longer, impossible to say--Dantec slowed the drill. He drilled forward slowly until they struck something and the drill made a whining sound. He reversed it, backed up a little, and then approached at a slightly different angle, shearing away the side of the tunnel wall. Hennessy just stayed smiling, glancing occasionally over at his brother, waiting. Are you sure it's a good idea? asked Shane again. Hennessy shrugged. Dantec backed up again, came in once more, then a fourth time. I think it's a mistake, Shane said. There was, Hennessy could see, a strange shape, still half enclosed in rock on one side. It was hard to see past the particles of rock and silt swirling through the water. Dantec pulled back a little, then turned off the drill. "What's out there?" asked Hennessy. "How the hell should I know?" said Dantec. "I've never seen anything like it before." It's the Black Marker, said Shane. The Black Marker, Hennessy thought. As the water settled, he began to see it more clearly. It looked like a monolith made of some sort of obsidian. It narrowed to a point at the top, the whole of it twisting slightly as it rose. It was horizontally striated and covered with thousands of symbols, symbols unlike anything he had seen before. Were they glowing, or did it only look like they were because of the way the light was catching them? He couldn't tell for sure. What he could see of it, of the part that was uncovered now, was probably three meters tall. "Oh my God," said Dantec, his voice filled with an uncustomary awe. "Who put this here? Or what?" That's the last question you want to ask, said Shane to Hennessy. Better not to know . He remembered suddenly the schematic that Tanner had shown them of the Marker. He pulled it up on his holoscreen. There were two horns at the top, pointing out in either direction, and he could see the Marker went on much deeper below them, probably another twenty meters or more. "How big is it?" Hennessy asked. Dantec, confused, said something, but Hennessy wasn't asking him. Big, said Shane. He moved Hennessy's hand to the porthole, pressed it against the glass. Together they stared out. You don't want to mess with this, Shane said. You're in danger. "I'm going to move us closer," said Dantec. "Are you sure?" asked Hennessy, still staring out. "Maybe we shouldn't mess with it." Beside him, just at the edge of his peripheral vision, Shane nodded. "Try calling Tanner," said Dantec. "See what he wants to do." Hennessy tried, got only bursts of static, little bits of Tanner's voice spliced into it like it had been torn apart. "I don't know," said Hennessy. "There's something seriously wrong here. Let's leave it alone." "We came all this way," said Dantec. "We've been in this coffin for hours. Now that we're here, we have to get a better look." Hennessy remained for a moment, staring at it, and finally nodded. "It wouldn't hurt to get closer, I guess," he said. "As long as we're careful." He looked over at his brother, who was shaking his head. It just might, he said. Dantec eased the ship forward, then cut the engines, let them drift. There they were, right up against it. The F/7 bumping softly against the Marker 's side. "It's marvelous," Dantec whispered. It's not marvelous, said Shane, his face stretched into a strange rictus. It's horrible. Dantec is becoming one of them, brother. I'm afraid we're going to have to get rid of him.
17 So far, so good, thought Dantec, or good enough anyway. He'd probably make it through. His head had been aching ever since he got into the goddamn sub. Or, if he was to be honest with himself, for weeks now. Pills didn't seem to help. Whatever he did, it was still there, not unbearable, just always throbbing quietly, keeping him from sleeping, destroying his concentration. He hadn't felt so strung out since the moon skirmishes. For that matter, he hadn't felt this confined--this trapped--since then. He hadn't realized how much being in a sub underwater was going to feel like being in a jettison pod in space. It brought all sorts of things flashing back at him from the moon skirmishes, that weird war that wasn't officially a war, where all it took was one little tear in the fabric of your suit for you to die and where, by the end, if you wanted to survive, you had to stab a knife in a buddy's back just so you could steal what was left of his oxygen. How many men had he had to kill to stay alive? All that had changed him, hardened him. He thought at first that it had lifted him above things, had made it so he wouldn't feel fear, wouldn't be subject to the same emotional weaknesses as others. But he was beginning to realize that that wasn't quite right. True, he'd managed to avoid those parts of himself for a long time, but they were still there. And now that they were forcing their way up to the surface, they were raw and red, more sensitive than an exposed nerve. And that bastard Hennessy. It didn't help being stuck with him. He was a real, genuine fucking chucklehead, that was for sure. First he had been like a kid in a toy shop, unable to contain his delight at the F/7, at his new toy. Then put him in the thing and he does a Jekyll/Hyde, becomes nothing but panic and nerves and slow collapse into madness. That was the last thing you wanted in a confined space like this. In the moon skirmishes, he'd killed men for less. Not like the thought didn't cross his mind. But Tanner didn't want him to do it. Tanner had been good to him over the years. Though if Tanner had understood what had really happened during the moon skirmishes, Dantec knew, he might treat him a lot differently. During the skirmishes, Tanner never realized that Dantec was not interested in saving him so much as stealing his air supply. Dantec had planned to kill him and take his oxygen tank, and he would have done it, too, except that, while looking for a safe place to kill Tanner, he'd stumbled onto a working transmitter, a technician's severed and frozen arm still stuck to it. So, instead of killing Tanner, he called the dropship to pick them up. Tanner never understood that the reason he blacked out and almost died before the ship arrived was because Dantec had turned the airflow on his tank down. Just in case the ship didn't come fast enough and he needed Tanner's air after all. But loyalty and guilt toward Tanner weren't the only reasons that Dantec hadn't killed Hennessy. He didn't like the idea of killing someone in such a confined space, where he couldn't dispose of the body. He just couldn't imagine sitting there, knowing the body was behind him, feeling its dead eyes on his back. Add to that the fact that over the last six or so hours, he'd actually become a little afraid of Hennessy. Panicking, then whispering to himself, speaking to the bulkhead to his left as if there was actually someone sitting beside him. The man was out of his mind, and Dantec didn't want to do anything to provoke him. He knew, from personal experience, that when people went out of their minds, they became unpredictable. They could do things you'd never expect and they'd do
them with a strength you'd never expect them to have. He just wanted to come through this alive. They'd made it halfway. They were here now, right beside the monolith, which, he had to admit, also scared the shit out of him. But it filled him with awe as well. It had been there more than fifty million years if the geological data was to be believed. Which meant it predated humankind. But it was clearly man-made--or made by some intelligent life. It was mind-boggling. Hennessy was staring out the porthole at it, lost in contemplation of the thing, looking like his brain had been switched off. Dantec had the core sampler primed. It was readied and partly extended. He'd tested the molecular cutters that would slice into the stone. Carefully he extended the arm until it was touching the monolith itself, and then he thrust it forward and started to cut. Almost immediately his head was filled with a piercing pain, so intense that he felt he was going to pass out. His vision first seemed as though it had been coated in blood and then it vanished entirely, being replaced by an empty white expanse. He gripped the control panel, struggling to breathe. Hennessy was screaming behind him. Very slowly, the pain began to ebb away. His vision crept back. Hennessy was moaning, all but passed out behind him. The core sampler had kept cutting--very slowly, but it was still cutting. All they needed was a little bit, just a little bit, and then he could turn the F/7 around and get the hell out of there.
18 One minute, Hennessy was sitting there, looking at his brother, everything fine, and the next there was a piercing noise and his head felt like it was going to burst. His brother began to shake all over. His head tilted to one side, his neck tearing open just where it did when Shane had been killed. He shook more and in a burst his body exploded, spattering everything with blood. Hennessy began to scream and suddenly couldn't breathe. A moment later the ship around him was spinning, and then darkness. When he came to, Shane was back, looking just as he had before he'd dissolved into a burst of blood, the same strange fixed expression on his face. He'd moved, though, and was now sitting next to Dantec, facing the other way, looking back at Hennessy. Or not next to Dantec exactly: he seemed to be sitting, so it seemed, partly on Dantec. But as Hennessy pulled himself up, he saw. Shane was partly in Dantec, their hips fused together, his legs somehow jutting through the back of the command chair. "You're all right?" asked Hennessy. "Yes," said Dantec. "Except for my head. And you?" He shouldn't be doing this, said Shane, his mouth moving soundlessly in the air, like a fish out of water. It's dangerous. Looking's bad enough, but touching is too much. Neither of you should be doing this. Jim, I thought you were better than that. "Doing what?" asked Hennessy. "I'm taking a core sample, of course," said Dantec. "What did you expect me to be doing?" This is not something to be examined, said Shane. This is not something to be understood. It needs to be left alone and untouched, where it's been lying undisturbed for millions of years. Do you think they would have buried it this deep if it was meant to be found? "What does it do?" Hennessy asked. Dantec still wasn't looking at him. "It's a molecular cutter with a titanium cylinder behind it," he said. "The circular cutter makes a round hole and pushes slowly in. Once the cylinder is far enough in, the cutters rotate to shear off the end of the sample. I thought you knew all that. Don't worry, not much longer, we're almost done." You don't want to know what it does, said Shane. You shouldn't try to destroy it. You shouldn't listen to it. You should just leave it alone. You must resist Convergence, Jim. "Convergence?" "What?" said Dantec, half turning around. "I guess that yes, the molecular beams converge, in a manner of speaking. But why are you so interested?" Not to mention the Convergence, said Shane. The last thing you want to do is get that started. He stretched uncomfortably in his chair. "Be careful how you move," said Hennessy to Dantec. "You don't want to tear Shane apart."
19 Oh, shit, thought Dantec. He turned fully around to face Hennessy, who immediately started screaming. "Shane!" Hennessy screamed, "Shane! The blood! The blood! He's all over everything! He's all over you!" Making gagging sounds, he started rubbing his hands up and down Dantec's chest, a terrible expression on his face. "We have to get him off!" he said, and cast Dantec a desperate look. "Can't you see it?" he asked. "Can't you see the blood?" Dantec slapped him hard enough to knock him down. "Just calm down," said Dantec. He was shaking. "Just relax." "Easy for you to say," Hennessy was muttering. "It isn't your brother who just burst." "Hennessy," said Dantec, "it wasn't your brother either. It's just you and me here." But Hennessy was shaking his head. "I saw him," he was saying, "I saw him." His voice was more and more hysterical. "He was here, I swear, right here, right there, where you're sitting, there." "But that's me," said Dantec, starting to get really frightened. "How could he be sitting here if I was here the whole time?" "He was," said Hennessy. "He was halfway inside you. You tore him, and then he burst." Oh, shit, thought Dantec again. "Try to get a hold of yourself, Hennessy," he said, keeping his voice level. "You're imagining things." "We have to stop," said Hennessy. "Shane told me--we have to leave it alone. We have to bury it and get the hell out of here. Stop the core sampler!" He was screaming now. "Put it back!" "It's okay," said Dantec, "I'll stop it," he said. "I'm stopping it now," he claimed. He reached out for the controls and then hesitated. It was nearly through, the sample nearly extracted. Just a few seconds more and they'd have it, and then they could get the hell out of there. "Stop it!" raved Hennessy. "Stop it!" "I'm stopping it," lied Dantec. "Don't shout, you're confusing me. It's almost done, I swear." And it was done, for at that moment the molecular cutters finished and the core sampler began to withdraw with its sample in the extraction cylinder. "There, you see?" said Dantec. "Everything's okay." He turned around, smiling, just in time to have his jaw broken by a metal bar. He raised his arm, felt the pain as the bar struck him there as well. He half slid, half fell out of the command chair. He saw the bar hit and crumple the armrest just above his head. It was a strut from the oxygen recirculator--he wondered how Hennessy had disassembled it so quickly. He kicked out, watched Hennessy lurch to one side and stumble against the bulkhead. Dantec started to scramble up, but his arm wouldn't support him. Blood was pouring out of his mouth and down his chest. He managed to heave himself to his feet, but Hennessy had already recovered and was coming at him, bringing the bar down. He raised the broken arm and Hennessy struck it again, the pain this time so intense that his vision faded to a dark blur. He slipped in his own blood and was down again. And then Hennessy struck him in the head. As he lay there, the life leaking out of him, he began to feel people crowding around him. It was impossible. Even though he was dying, he knew it wasn't possible, it was only he and Hennessy there, and even if it were possible, there were too many people to fit. But even though he was sure it couldn't be happening, it was unbearable that it was. Particularly when he recognized the faces. They were all men he had been with in the moon skirmishes, men who not only had died, but died by his hand, so that he could take their oxygen and survive. One by one, they came forward while Hennessy continued to batter him with the iron bar, kneeling beside him and then leaning over him to suck the breath out of his mouth. When the last one finally came, he died.
20 He dropped the iron bar, exhausted, and limped back to his chair. He wiped the blood off his face with his sleeve and closed his eyes. It was only after sitting there like that for a few moments, his breath gradually slowing, that he started to realize what he'd just done. He opened his eyes and saw the mess on the floor and retched. It was barely recognizable as a human form anymore, the limbs twisted and turned in the wrong directions, the head flattened out and split open on the top. It was much worse than when his brother had exploded. He looked away. Had he done that? How? Dantec was a skilled and seasoned fighter, much stronger than he was--when Dantec had grabbed his shoulder, he'd been paralyzed with pain. No, he couldn't have done this, he couldn't have gotten away with it. But if not him, then who? And where was his brother? Was this really happening or was it just what they wanted him to believe? "Shane?" he said. His comlink suddenly crackled. Tanner's voice, unless it was someone pretend
ing to be Tanner. "--eed me. Plea--spond. Hennes--" He went to the screen, which was now spattered with blood. "Tanner?" he said. "I've lost Shane." "--aa--" said Tanner. Hennessy saw his face for just a minute on the scanner, looking grim; then a startled expression crossed Tanner's face and he was drowned out in static. Hennessy turned away from the control panel to see, just behind him, his brother. "Shane," he said, and smiled. "You're all right after all." Of course I am, Jim, he said. You don't think a little thing like that could hurt me, do you? It must have been a trick, Hennessy told himself. His brother leaned against the control panel and stared down at him. I need to speak seriously with you, Jim, he said. "What is it, Shane?" asked Hennessy. "You know you can talk to me about anything." His dead brother looked straight at him, his face thoughtful, just as it had often been before, when they were younger. You did good, brother, you stopped him, said Shane. But this is a very dangerous time, you are too close. Too close to be able to hear clearly. The whispers, they may take you. You mustn't listen to them, Jim. Get free, stay clear, keep your mind to yourself. Or you may be no more. Tell all the others the same. "But . . . I don't . . ." Hennessey stuttered, groping for words. "I have to be honest, Shane. I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're talking about." Let them know said Shane. The Marker is the past, and the past must remain undisturbed if we are to continue as we are. You have already , awakened it. It calls out for you even now But you must not obey. You must not listen. Tell them that. . "Who am I supposed to tell?" asked Hennessy. Everybody, said Shane. Tell everybody. "But why don't you tell them, Shane?" he asked. "You know so much more about it than I do!" But Shane just shook his head. It's already begun, he said. He reached out and touched his thumb to Hennessy's forehead. His touch burned like ice. And then, as Hennessy watched, his brother slowly faded and was gone.
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