Dead Space™

by B. K. Evenson

  This answer seemed to satisfy Hendricks. He nodded once and turned toward the ladder leading up to the hatch.

  As soon as his hands touched the ladder’s rails, Altman was on him. He hit him as hard as he could in the back of the head with the heel of each shoe in turn, employing the shoe like a blackjack. Hendricks swayed, started to turn. Altman struck him again, then again. He crumbled and collapsed into a heap.

  “Sorry about that,” said Altman to his unconscious friend. “I couldn’t think of any other way.”

  He quickly stripped off Hendricks’s shirt and undershirt. He tore them into strips, twisted them into ropes. These he used to tie Hendricks’s hands and arms behind his back and then hogtie his legs to his hands.

  He sat down and put his shoes back on, then examined the controls. Nothing had been hurt that he could see. They were floating just above and to one side of the hole the robotic units had dug out, probably carried there by some deepwater current.

  He was about to start back up again when something caught his eye. An odd fish, drifting awkwardly into his lights. It had a flayed, incomplete look. It was less like the prehistoric-looking fishes that he had seen so far on the dive than the corpse of a fish that had been dead and floating in the water a few days. And yet as he watched it, it moved under its own power.

  There was something else puzzling about it. Rather than a long slender body like a viperfish or a thick bulbous one like a lanternfish, it looked like a long fish that had been folded in half and then glued together. The head was surmounted by a wavy translucent curtain of flesh that resembled nothing so much as a tail. In the place of fins, it had what looked like little spurs of bone undulating from its sides. As he watched, a snaggletooth entered the lights and the first fish darted toward it. The first fish caught the snaggletooth on its spurs and, undulating, began to tear it apart until the other fish was dead and in pieces. Intrigued, Altman pressed a button and filmed the end of the fight and the fish as it passed in front of them and into the darkness.

  And then he saw something else even stranger. Here and there, floating through the water, were patches of what looked like flat, pale pink clouds. At first he thought it was a ray, but it wasn’t differentiated in the way a ray was. It was just a floating, billowing sheet of something. A strange jellyfish maybe? A fungus of some kind? He nudged the bathyscaphe in for a closer look. When the craft touched it, it draped over the hull then split apart, slowly reknitting after their passage. Some of it, though, adhered to the observation porthole and remained there, caught on the rivets.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” said Altman.

  Behind him, Hendricks groaned. He was tied up, but who knew how long his bonds would hold? They had to get to the surface as quickly as possible.

  He turned off the override for the pellet release valve and pressed a button. The bathyscaphe began to rise.

  37

  He started broadcasting a looped SOS at 2,500 meters, but got only static. Hendricks was starting to come around. By two thousand meters, he was back to his hysterical babbling. Altman tried to ignore it. Through his earpiece, Altman caught brief bits of something that he recognized as a human voice submerged in a wash of static. By 1,700 meters, it was less static than voice, but Hendricks was shouting now, straining at his bonds.

  “Michael Altman, please respond,” he finally heard the voice say. “Michael Altman, do you read?”

  He turned the loop off and went live. “This is Altman,” he said.

  The other voice started to answer and was suddenly interrupted. Markoff’s voice came on. “Altman?” he said. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “Hendricks flipped out,” Altman said. “I’ve got him tied up. That’s him screaming in the background.”

  “What happened?”

  “Just a minute,” said Altman. Hendricks had started to work his way loose. He took off his shoes again, slowly crept up next to him. Altman? Markoff’s voice was saying in his ear. Are you all right, Altman? He struck Hendricks hard in the back of the head, twice, and he stopped moving.

  “What was that sound?” asked Markoff.

  “That sound was the sound of me trying to stay alive,” said Altman. He undid the ligature and re-hogtied Hendricks. “I’ll tell you more when I get to the surface,” he said. “Oh, and it might be a good idea to have a few guards on hand in the submarine bay.”

  Markoff had started to speak again, but Altman turned the transmitter off. He began to think. It wasn’t likely that Hendricks would break free. As long as he didn’t forget about him, things would be okay. He looked out the observation porthole. The tatter of the pale pink substance was still there on the rivets, undulating slightly as the submarine rose. He knew if Markoff saw it, he’d take it away for testing by members of his inner circle and he, Altman, wouldn’t hear anything further about it. Same with the footage of the unusual fish.

  He removed his holopod from his pocket and connected it to the console, then copied the vid footage of the fish onto it. He’d have to leave it in the system as well. Markoff and his minions would no doubt be able to tell if something had been erased, but maybe they wouldn’t be able to tell it had been copied. He had to try to find some answers on his own.

  The pink swath was a little harder. But a plan began to form in his mind.

  He checked the pulse signal monitor. The signal had fallen off again. He checked back through the history. If the pattern continued, it should start to rise again.

  What he was planning to do was dangerous. No doubt Ada would tell him to leave well enough alone, that he was only likely to get himself killed. Which was why he would never tell her about it. Maybe she was right, but his desire to know was much too great.

  He slowed the bathyscaphe as he came up, trying to time it so that the signal would be strongest and Hendricks would be regaining consciousness just at the moment the craft moved into the submarine bay.

  Hendricks was groaning, his eyes fluttering, by the time they were fully in. Altman knelt down and undid the ligature that hogtied Hendricks, then undid the rope around his legs but left his hands tied. He unrolled one of the ropes and tore a square of fabric off it, which he tucked into his pocket. Then he helped Hendricks get to his knees.

  It was cruel, but he couldn’t think of another way.

  “Where’s your father, Hendricks?” he asked.

  The man’s eyes focused briefly then moved independently of each other, wandering about the sockets.

  “Hendricks,” he said again. He had to hurry. The bay was almost drained down to the catwalk. Soon enough water would be pumped out and the guards would be there. “Where’s your father?”

  Hendricks’s eyes focused again and this time stayed focused. “My father,” he said. “He was just right here.”

  “We left him down there,” suggested Altman. “We abandoned him. You abandoned him.”

  For a moment there was no response, and then, abruptly, Hendricks let out an ungodly howl of pain and slammed his head into Altman’s chest. It hurt like hell. Then he fell on top of Altman, slavering, trying to bite his face.

  Altman got his hands up against his shoulders and tried desperately to hold him away, watching the man bare his teeth and shake his head like a wild animal. But he was too heavy, was bearing down too hard, his teeth getting closer and closer to Altman’s face. He cried out and pushed out as hard as he could, genuinely terrified now, trying to roll him off but failing.

  Just when he thought he couldn’t hold him back any more, the bathyscaphe’s hatch hissed open and a guard dropped in and wrapped an arm around Hendricks’s neck. Altman scrambled back and away, dodging a second guard who had dropped down and scurrying up the ladder to the hatch. There was a group of guards around the hatch, pointing their weapons at him when he came out. He pushed past and, stumbling, rolled off the curve of the bathyscaphe not onto the catwalk but into the water.

  He had only a few seconds. Holding his breath, he floundered briefly to the observation porthol
e, tugging the square of cloth from his pocket and using it to gather up the pale pink swath. Through the porthole he caught a glimpse of Hendricks struggling with the two guards, who had forced him back to the floor. He balled up the sodden cloth and thrust it deep into his pocket and returned to the surface.

  He broke to shouts and cries. Hands were immediately there, pulling him onto the catwalk and out of the water. Somebody wrapped a blanket around him.

  “Don’t kill Hendricks!” he heard himself shouting. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing!” And then he was hustled out.

  38

  They let him stop off in his room to get a change of clothing. He managed to slip the rag out of his pocket and force it and the pink substance into an empty water bottle. He secured it in his drawer and then let the men lead him out.

  He stripped his clothes off and showered. When he stepped out, he saw that his clothing was gone. When he asked the guards about it, they didn’t answer.

  He got dressed as the guards impassively watched. When he was done, they opened the door and gestured him out.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “Debriefing,” one said.

  A few minutes later, he was on the command deck. As soon as he entered, the other people in the room started to clear out. In the end, only he and Markoff were left.

  “All right,” said Markoff. “Let’s hear it. Tell me everything.”

  He told him almost everything. He mentioned the strange fish, knowing that Markoff would see the vid recording anyway. He told him about the pink swaths but didn’t mention the sample he had retrieved. He told him about the problems with the MROVs, that they either weren’t receiving their commands or had failed in some other way. He described the progress that had been made. Markoff just nodded.

  “What happened with Hendricks?” he asked.

  “How’s he doing?”

  Markoff shrugged. “Delirious,” he said. “They’re shooting him full of something to calm him down. He keeps talking about his father.”

  “He was doing that down there,” Altman said. “He thought he saw his father outside the bathyscaphe. He wanted to let him in.” He gave a wry smile. “I, quite understandably, was opposed to this.”

  “I thought Stevens gave him a clean bill of health,” said Markoff.

  “He did,” said Altman. “No reason to think otherwise. I thought he was okay most of the way down. He was a friend. I’m sorry this happened to him.”

  “He was unstable.”

  “No,” said Altman. “I think there’s more to it than that.”

  He told Markoff the whole story, only glossing over the end, suggesting that it was Hendricks himself who had wriggled free of his bonds.

  “We did a diachronic tracking of the pulse signal,” Altman said. “The strange thing is that it seemed to correspond to Hendricks’s mental decay. When the signal was stronger, he started seeing things, becoming paranoid and violent. When it was weaker, he seemed to be like he normally is. I think the signal changed him.”

  Markoff looked at him a long time. “That doesn’t seem possible,” he finally said.

  “I know it doesn’t,” said Altman. “But it correlated perfectly. I think the pulse signal does something to the human brain.”

  “Why didn’t it do the same thing to you?”

  “Who knows?” said Altman. “Maybe I can resist it for some reason. Or maybe it’s doing things that I haven’t managed to notice yet.”

  “What do you think it is?” Markoff asked again, just as he had asked weeks before, in Altman’s kitchen.

  “I don’t know,” said Altman. “I haven’t even seen it yet. But I can tell you one thing: it scares the living shit out of me.”

  They were both silent for a while, lost in their own thoughts. Finally Markoff looked up.

  “You’ll have to go down again,” he said.

  “Now?”

  “Soon. We need to add some equipment to the console so that you can communicate with the MROVs.”

  “Funny,” said Altman.

  “What’s funny?”

  “I was going to suggest doing that,” he said. “Adding something to the console.”

  Markoff gave him a quizzical look. “You did suggest it,” he said. “That was one of the first things you said to us. Don’t you remember? Are you all right?”

  I must have been more rattled than I realized, Altman thought. He thought about how to answer Markoff, rapidly decided the best strategy was to ignore it.

  “As long as it’s not with Hendricks, I’m willing. I don’t mind going down alone.”

  “Not alone,” said Markoff. “I want you to take a few trips down, we’ll try a different person each time.”

  “How do I know they’re not going to react like Hendricks did? I was lucky with him. I may not be lucky next time.”

  “You’ve become more important than I expected you to be,” Markoff said. “You know how to run the bathyscaphe and take the proper measurements. Which means I’m counting on you. I need you to do this.”

  “And in exchange?”

  Markoff gave him a level stare. “No ‘and in exchange.’ You’ll do it.”

  “Is that a threat?” Altman asked.

  “When I’m threatening you, you’ll know.”

  Altman closed his eyes. If it wasn’t a threat, it wasn’t far from one. But he knew he didn’t really have a choice.

  “All right,” he said. “But I want a tranquilizer gun just in case. And I want whoever goes down with me to be strapped to his chair.”

  “Agreed,” said Markoff. He stood and made a show of shaking Altman’s hand. “Thank you for your cooperation. I’ll be in touch.”

  39

  Hendricks woke up in a strange place, some sort of medical facility. The last thing he could remember was being on the bathyscaphe. He and Altman were going down, and then his head had started to hurt so much, he could hardly stand it. After that, it all felt like a dream. There had been some kind of problem. He remembered Altman speaking calmly to him, remembered taking readings, but also remembered the feel of the floor. He must have fallen. Maybe they hit something.

  He felt groggy. Parts of his body were numb, and parts of his brain felt like they had been torn out. There was a tube running into his forearm. Maybe they were experimenting on him.

  He looked around. He was the only one there.

  He moved furtively out of bed, peeling the tape off the tube in his arm and pulling it out. It burned coming out. He dropped it, left it dripping beside the bed, and stumbled to the door.

  It was locked.

  He stayed there, staring at the handle.

  After a while he heard the sound of footsteps in the hall outside. He rushed back into his bed and half closed his eyes.

  Through his eyelashes he watched the door open. A woman came in, dressed in white, carrying a holoboard. She walked straight to his bed. His mind pictured him running out the door at the far end of the room, but in the end his body did not move.

  “Hello,” said the woman. “How are we today?”

  He didn’t say anything, still pretending to be asleep.

  “Oh, dear. You’ve torn your IV out again,” she said. “We can’t have that, can we?”

  She bent down for the end of the tube. It was at that moment that his body decided to reach up and grab her wrist. True, he was in his body, was watching through his eyes, but it was doing things he wasn’t telling it to do. He wasn’t the one controlling it, which meant there must be someone else in there with him.

  As soon as he thought that, it felt like everything was happening at a little distance, like he’d sunk deeper into his body, like he’d never be in control of the body again. And yet he could still feel everything. He watched the hand holding the nurse’s arm pull her on top of him like she was a doll. He felt the jaw opening and the teeth closing around the nurse’s neck, and then a series of wet sounds as the neck burst open and warm blood spilled down across his chin and h
is own neck. Her wrist, the one he was holding, he saw, was broken, crushed, and the arm attached to it was no longer sitting in the socket right. She was trying to gasp for breath, but there was a hole in her windpipe now and all that came out was a hissing and a mist of blood. Her face was there just above him, her eyes terrified for a moment but almost immediately becoming loose in their orbits as she lost consciousness.

  A few seconds later, after his body had done a few more things to her, he was certain she was dead. If he’d been asked to describe how exactly it had happened, he wouldn’t have been able to say, though he was fairly certain he had something to do with it. Or not him, exactly: his body. One moment she was still alive, even if just barely, and then there was an awful blur of things happening. When they stopped, she was dead.

  He padded softly to the door and tried it. It was still locked. How was that possible? She’d come through it, hadn’t she?

  She must have had a key. He shambled back to her corpse in search of her pockets. But he couldn’t find any pockets. She was too much of a mess. Pushing his bloody hands through the sopping remains of clothing and flesh, he finally found something hard that wasn’t a bone.

  He had just straightened up, bloody key in hand, when he realized that he wasn’t alone in the room after all. There was a shape there, in the shadows of the last bed.

  “Who is it?” he said.

  Don’t you recognize me? a voice said.

  He went a little closer, then closer still. It was as if the person was both there and not there at the same time. And then, suddenly, he felt a piercing pain in his head. He staggered. When he looked back up, he knew who it was.

  “Dad,” he said.

  Good to see you, Jason, he said. Come sit down. I want to have a serious talk with you.

  “What about, Dad?”

  But his dad wasn’t where he thought he was. He turned around and found him in another bed.

  We’re failing, Jason, his dad said. You should leave that thing down where you found it. Convergence is not the only thing that matters.