Dead Space™

by B. K. Evenson

  “Convergence?” asked Hendricks, then had to search frantically for his father, who somehow had moved again.

  They want us all to become one, son. He gave a mournful smile, shaking his head. Can you imagine? he said.

  “Who’s they, Dad?”

  We have to be very careful or there will be nothing left of us.

  Then his dad smiled. It was a beautiful smile, like he used to give Jason back when he was very young, just a few years old. Jason had forgotten that smile, but now it all came flooding back.

  Tell them, Jason, he said. Tell everyone.

  “I will, Dad,” he whispered. “I will.”

  There was some noise behind him, but he didn’t want to look away from his father’s face. If he did, he feared he’d never find it again. Then there was shouting. He ignored it as long as he could, but it was too powerful. He turned around and moved toward it.

  There was a roar and a flash and he was suddenly on the ground, staring straight up at the ceiling. I should get up and tell them, he thought, but when he tried, he couldn’t move. I’ll just lie here, he thought. “Dad?” he whispered, but there was no answer.

  40

  “Can I have a copy of this?” asked the icthyologist, watching the vid.

  Altman shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “What do you think?”

  “I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” he said. “Those strange hornlike projections, I don’t have a precedent for those. You may have discovered a new species. Or it may be the result of a mutation of some kind. I can ask around, see if anybody’s seen anything like it, but I never have.”

  “So, it’s unusual.”

  “Very unusual.”

  “Well?” Altman asked. He was in Skud’s lab, the water bottle with him. The pinkish swath had been extracted from it and placed into a specimen tube. From this, Skud had taken a tiny sample, running a genetic test.

  “It’s strange,” said Skud. “It’s tissue.”

  “What sort of tissue?”

  “Living tissue,” said Skud. “Like flesh. It was once alive. But it has a very unusual genetic profile.”

  “So, it is skin that has been torn off something?”

  “I don’t think this is so,” said Skud. “I think it was alive not so long ago. It was alive when you found it. Maybe even alive until you bottled it.”

  “That can’t be,” said Altman. “When I found it, it was just like this, but in big sheets. It couldn’t have been alive.”

  “Yes,” said Skud. “It is a very simple organism. I do not know what it is. It has no brain and no limbs and was made of almost nothing at all. But it was, technically, alive.”

  Altman shook his head.

  “You are a doubter, I see,” said Skud. “I can prove it with a simple experiment.” He upturned the sample vial, leaving the pink swath lying curled on the table. He took a battery with a pair of wires connected to it, sparked them against each other, then touched them to one another. Immediately the swath jolted, moved.

  “You see,” said Skud proudly. “Alive.”

  “Don’t,” said Ada. “It’s morbid.”

  “It’s not morbid,” said Altman. “I’m just stating the facts. This is just anecdotal, mind you, but it still must mean something.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Just listen,” said Altman. “Just listen and give me a hand.” He held up one finger. “You were the one who started this back in the town. I’m just going to give you the same talk you gave me, more or less. Nearly everybody I’ve talked to on the ship has a headache. Even if I haven’t heard them say it aloud, I’ve seen them clutching their heads. That’s not normal.”

  “It’s just anecdotal,” said Ada. “It’s not scientific.”

  “I said that already,” said Altman.

  “It could be a gas leak,” said Ada, “or a problem with the ventilation system.”

  “It could be,” said Altman, but most of those people have been having headaches long before that. They’ve been having them ever since the first signal broadcast.”

  He held up a second finger. “Insomnia,” he said. “I’ve asked around about this. Showalter has it. I have it off and on. That German scientist has it. I heard the two guards outside of the command center complaining about it and then later another three in the main dome. Have you had it?”

  “No,” said Ada. “But I’ve been having weird dreams.”

  “That’s the other thing people are talking about,” said Altman, raising another finger. “Strange, vivid dreams. I’ve had them, too, lots of people have. And then we get to the more extreme cases.” He held up two more fingers. “Attacks,” he said, wiggling one, “and suicides,” he said, wiggling the other. “Not scientific, I admit,” he said. “But we’ve only been talking a few minutes and I’ve already run out of fingers. I’ve never been around a place where I’ve seen so many of either.”

  “I heard that Wenbo went crazy,” said Ada. “Tried to strangle one of Markoff’s men.”

  “I heard the same thing,” said Altman. “Similar thing happened with Claerbout and Dawson. And Lumley stabbed Ewing and then painted a set of weird symbols on the walls of his own room with his own shit. And who knows what we’re not hearing about, what they’re covering up.”

  Ada shuddered. “And poor Trostle,” she said. “He always seemed so stable.”

  “Suicides and attempted suicides. Don’t forget Press.”

  “Frank Press? Did he attempt suicide?”

  “Not only did he attempt it, he succeeded. There must be at least three or four more on that list, too. Doesn’t that seem abnormal? I mean there are only two or three hundred on board. That’d put the suicide rate up over two percent. That can’t be normal, can it?”

  Ada shook her head.

  “It’s not scientific,” said Altman, waving his fingers around. “But I still don’t like what it’s telling me. Ask around. See if I’m wrong. I hope to God I am.”

  A few hours later, Markoff appeared at his door. He was carrying a tranquilizer gun in his hand. It looked like an ordinary pistol but with a longer and thicker barrel, a square cartridge near the barrel’s end.

  “Ever worked one of these?” he asked.

  Altman shook his head.

  He opened the cartridge. “Darts go here,” he said. “Cartridge snaps in and out. There are CO2 cartridges in the grip, but you don’t need to worry about changing those; we’ll handle it. You pull this bolt back,” he said, drawing back a lever on the gun’s side, “and set the safety like this. It’s easy to thumb off. As long as the bolt’s back, it’ll shoot. Aim for flesh.”

  “It won’t go through clothing?”

  “I didn’t say that,” said Markoff. “It’ll go through clothing, but clothing means more chances of something going wrong. Aim for flesh. Or, if you’re not much of a shooter, just try to push it up against the person’s chest before you fire.”

  He handed the tranquilizer over to Altman, who held it awkwardly.

  “The dart contains a strong sedative. It’ll take a few seconds to take effect,” Markoff said. “It’ll hurt going in but probably not enough to slow a maniac down much. You sure you don’t want a real gun?”

  Altman shook his head.

  “You leave in fifteen minutes,” Markoff said.

  Hurriedly he tracked down Ada and told her what was happening.

  “I don’t want you to go down there again,” she said.

  “It doesn’t affect me.” He kissed her again. “Besides, I have no choice.”

  “But after what happened to Hendricks . . .”

  “I handled that all right, didn’t I? We’re still both in one piece, aren’t we?”

  She covered her mouth with one hand. “You haven’t heard?” she said.

  “Haven’t heard what?”

  “Hendricks is dead. He killed a nurse, tore her apart. They had to shoot him.”

  Stunned, he collapsed onto the bed. He didn’t trust himself to speak. Even more
so than Moresby, this had been his fault. Maybe if he’d turned back when Hendricks had first wanted, it wouldn’t have happened. How many deaths would be on his conscience before it was all over?

  Ada was lying beside him, stroking his forehead. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry.” And then, “Michael, don’t go.”

  He shook his head. “I have to go,” he replied. “I have no choice.” Turning away from her, he climbed out of the bed and made his way heavily down to the submarine bay.

  PART FIVE

  COLLAPSE

  41

  He took two trips and had to use the tranquilizer gun once. The first trip reprogrammed the MROVs, switched them over to robotic self-control, and the digging progressed at a tremendous pace, but he had to tranquilize the technician accompanying him before they reached the surface.

  The man gave him a fair amount of advance warning, growing more and more irritable and then finally lashing out. He waited to tranquilize until he was absolutely sure he was violent and as a result almost waited too long. Indeed, the man was trying to choke him to death as the tranquilizer took effect and his hands slowly relaxed and he collapsed.

  The other trip, strangely enough, was with Stevens, the psychologist, who applied electrodes to both his and Altman’s heads, reading changes in their brain waves as they descended.

  “So I guess this means Markoff agrees with me that Hendricks’s mental problems might have been caused by the signal,” Altman asked.

  Stevens smiled. “How can I know what Markoff thinks, Mr. Altman?” he answered.

  Altman stayed ready the whole time, one hand on the tranquilizer gun, but like him, Stevens didn’t seem to suffer any adverse affects. He just stayed crouched over his equipment, looking up at Altman from time to time and smiling.

  “Learn anything?” asked Altman.

  “Yes, I did,” said Stevens. “But I’d learn more if one or the other of us had an attack. I don’t suppose you’d like to oblige me, would you?”

  Altman shook his head.

  “I didn’t think so,” said Stevens. “Maybe another time, then.”

  The next trip consisted of himself and a jovial engineer named David Kimball descending to retrieve the driller bathyscaphe, though Altman wasn’t briefed until they were already on the way down.

  “It’ll be simple,” said Kimball, patting a large chrome-plated machine that had been bolted to the console just for this trip. “Just a matter of a few minutes. All we have to do is direct an electrical pulse at the bathyscaphe.”

  “What’ll that do?” asked Altman.

  “It’ll release the latches for the ballast chambers,” said Kimball. “This will cause the ballast to rush out. After that, the bathyscaphe will rise on its own.”

  “Sounds easy enough that a robot could do it,” said Altman.

  “A robot could do it,” said Kimball. “But Markoff thought it’d be better to have us do it.”

  “Why?” asked Altman.

  “I don’t know,” said Kimball. “He didn’t say.”

  In case anything goes wrong, Altman added in his head.

  When they reached the ocean floor, they continued to move downward into the inverted cone that the robotic excavators had created. Having completed their tasks, the units now stood motionless, strange statues in the darkness. The bathyscaphe descended, the cone slowly tightening on them.

  He brightened the lights and turned on the vid cameras. Altman glanced over at Kimball. He seemed like he was doing all right, though he looked a little distracted, slightly jumpy. Nothing to worry about yet, thought Altman, but just to be safe, he checked to see that the tranquilizer pistol was cocked and ready.

  “You been down here before?” Kimball asked.

  Altman nodded. “Nothing to worry about,” he said.

  “They showed me the vid,” he said. “You seen that?”

  “Yes,” said Altman.

  “I had no idea,” said Kimball. “Do you think it’ll be as bad as it looks?”

  “Yeah,” said Altman.

  They fell silent. Down below, they could see something, a vague shape that slowly became clearer.

  It was a huge structure, two tapering pillars twisting sinuously around each other and rising to a point. It seemed to be made of stone, but there was no doubt in Altman’s mind that it was constructed rather than a natural phenomenon. Coming closer just confirmed it; it was covered with symbols, weird hieroglyphics unlike anything he had ever seen. They covered every inch of the object, winding downward around its body and up to the twin horns of the thing. It was massive and gave off the impression of great age. At once beautiful and vaguely menacing, it was completely alien. It had not, Altman knew immediately upon seeing it, been built by human hands. Why had it been built, and how? The stone showed no breaks or cracks or joints, as if it was a single gigantic piece. And the shape: it reminded him of something. But what was it?

  And then suddenly he knew. “The tail of the devil,” whispered Altman.

  “Holy shit,” said Kimball, awe in his voice.

  The symbols were either luminescent or catching the bathyscaphe’s light in a very particular way. He checked the displays. The pulse signal was negligible at the moment. Probably a good thing, he thought.

  “Do you think it’s safe to get close?” asked Kimball.

  “What is it?” wondered Altman aloud. “Who made it?”

  He moved the bathyscaphe slowly around just above it, filming it from all angles. It was the most impressive thing he had ever seen. Then he zoomed the camera in closer to record some of the symbols. He would have kept doing it, but Kimball’s nerves were rising.

  “This is freaking me out. Let’s get the other sub and get out of here,” Kimball said.

  There it was, sunken at the base of the artifact. Altman descended farther, got as close to it as he could and shone the light into the observation porthole.

  Even from that vantage, the inside of the cabin was a nightmare—blood spread over the windows and the walls, smeared in odd patterns. He moved the lights quickly away before Kimball could get a better look.

  He played the lights along the side of the craft, looking for signs of damage, but the air seal seemed intact. In theory, it should rise, albeit slowly.

  “Ready?” he asked Kimball.

  “Ready,” Kimball said.

  Altman moved around until there was no danger of hitting the Marker and then fired the pulse. It struck the driller bathyscaphe full on, an eerie electric glow fizzling along its hull. Then its ballast chambers began to empty, the lead pellets pattering down and raising a cloud of silt. Slowly it began to rise. He watched it come, passing just a half dozen meters away from them, and move upward. It tilted and a disembodied arm rolled against the observation porthole.

  Ready or not, he thought, and then their own bathyscaphe started up in pursuit.

  42

  This is getting to be a habit, Altman thought, carefully easing the chunk of rock out of the core sampler. Nobody seemed to notice. They were all too preoccupied with the interior of the bathyscaphe itself, the wash of blood and gore inside, the rotten, damaged bodies. Markoff quickly had the area quarantined, but not before Altman had gotten away with the sample.

  Now he took it to his bedroom to examine it. He was certain it was from the artifact itself. It was seemingly ordinary rock, but one that he couldn’t identify. The bit he held had an indentation on it, where something had been carved or inflicted on the rock, but it was too small a sample to give a clear sense of what it was.

  Sneaking into an unlocked lab at night, he tested it. The substance was not unlike granite but harder, almost as hard as corundum. One face was smooth; he could see where the rest had been cut, was surprised the cutters hadn’t burned out. Within the rock he found mineral veins that struck him as too regular to be natural. But if they weren’t natural, what were they? In the end, puzzled, he decided to assume they were natural formations: there was no technology that he was aware of t
hat would allow someone to manipulate solid rock in this way.

  · · ·

  Whatever had happened to the others in the bathyscaphe, what Markoff had been able to determine about it, Altman was never told. Once quarantined, the bathyscaphe disappeared and was never seen again. No doubt Markoff and his inner circle had analyzed it to death. Altman was eager to see the rest of the vid from Hennessy, but his request to Markoff was met with silence.

  Now that the bathyscaphe was up, the floating compound was frantic with preparations to raise the artifact itself. It was impossible to have a conversation that didn’t turn to the monolith lying down at the bottom of the crater, and people seemed both excited and incredibly nervous. Whatever it was, whatever was down there, could change everything, and they would be the first to come into contact with it. The signal had returned but seemed to be broadcasting differently now, intermittently, on and off, in fairly regular bursts. Some researchers speculated it was a distress call, though who or what was in distress nobody dared guess. Perhaps it was a result of a failing piece of technical equipment, the artifact itself faulty or breaking down. It was, after all, very, very old. And many believed, Altman among them, that it was old enough that it couldn’t possibly be of human origin, that the artifact was clear proof of alien life.

  “If you’d seen it,” he told Markoff in his debriefing, “you’d agree with me. There’s nothing human about it.”

  The pulse signal was now interfering with radios and vids, creating a static communication wave and fuzzing images. Often when he descended in the bathyscaphe Altman was out of touch very quickly because of the interference, and stayed out of touch for a good part of the trip. He was piloting descents daily, with several members of Markoff’s inner circle, all of whom showed no signs of cracking. He questioned whomever he was with, trying to find out anything he could. Mostly they were closed-lipped, but every once in a while they let something slip.

  A scientist called him in from the hall while he was walking past a lab and, thinking he was someone else at first, began asking him questions about a winch mechanism. Was it really enough? Would it lift the thing? And what about the cable? What sort of cable would you need for something like that?