He tried to keep his breathing slow, measured. The water all around him was swirling and foamy, and it was some effort to keep above it. He watched Harmon, but he seemed to be doing all right now. Twice he disappeared beneath the surface, but he reappeared again almost immediately.
And then Altman’s head grazed the ceiling. He looked up at it and grabbed on to the grating there, holding still, breathing slowly in and out until the water covered his face.
He dived, stroking back to the controls, and opened the bay floor. Harmon was already down there, he saw, knocking against the metal of the floor, trying to get out. As soon as the floor split, he was through it and gone. Altman quickly followed.
· · ·
The water was much darker than it had been earlier. He struck through it blindly, trying to go straight out, and then turned and started to rise too soon, striking the underside of the bay. He swam out farther and then made for the surface.
It wasn’t as hard as going down, but it was difficult. The temptation was to go too quickly, which would have left him cramped and shivering and probably killed him. So, he went up slowly, all the while aware of the way his air was running out, his heart beating slower and slower. By the time he finally broke the surface, his lungs felt like they were on fire. There was a sliver of moon, just enough to see by. He looked around, saw the ghost of the boat platform, but no sign of Harmon. He spun his head around but didn’t see him.
“Harmon!” he called as loud as he could.
He kicked up, trying to pull himself as far out of the water as he could. Even then, he wouldn’t have seen it, if it hadn’t been for the way a dip caught the platform and showed him the head floating on the other side.
He swam to the platform, climbed the ladder up onto it, and stumbled along the swaying platform to its far side. The facility now had started to settle strangely, listing in the water. There was the roar of water rushing into it, or maybe the roar was from something else, the whole structure creaking, too, as the change in buoyancy shifted its weight, putting pressure on girders and links.
“Harmon!” he called again.
But the man didn’t hear him, perhaps couldn’t hear him over the noise. Altman dived in, swam to him, touched him.
“Harmon,” he said, “come on!”
He was confused and seemed dizzy, in a state of shock. Altman slapped him, pulled him toward the platform. He got him swimming again, though somewhat lethargically, and had to practically drag him up onto the platform once they arrived.
The platform was already listing, half submerged in water, being dragged down by the sinking dome. He pulled Harmon over to the boat and dumped him in, and fell in himself. Then the dome behind them creaked noticeably lower and the platform was underwater, the mooring rope between it and the boat stretched taut, the boat listing hard to one side, threatening to turn over. His fingers shaking, he picked at the knot, but the pressure had tightened it too much for him to loosen it. His eyes cast desperately around for a knife but he didn’t see one. There was an anchor, though, and he grabbed it up and began striking the mooring with it as hard as he could, trying to break it free.
The boat tipped farther, very close to taking on water. “Get to the far side of the boat!” he cried at Harmon, but couldn’t look around to see if he did. He kept hitting the mooring with hard, smashing blows.
Suddenly the boat bobbed back and threw him to the boards. It was only after scrambling up again with the anchor that he realized the mooring and rope were gone, that he had succeeded.
The boat began to swirl. There was a sucking sound as the facility began to go down now in earnest. He leapt into the driver’s seat and started the craft, throwing the throttle down hard. The boat leapt forward, but it was heading wrong, directly toward the dome: he corrected it, but there was still something wrong. They were caught in a vortex, some sort of whirlpool that the facility was creating as it went down.
Instead of forcing the rudder against it, he turned and followed it, trying to edge carefully free. The last dome slipped all the way under and was gone. He felt the drag on the rudder but kept it steady, trying not to look to the side, trying not to panic. For an instant he felt the boat resisting him, threatening either to turn and plunge downward or to flip over, but then suddenly they were free.
He sped away, looking back over his shoulder. The inside of the compound, the little he could see of it through the waves, was flashing and sparking, the electrical systems and generator still in the process of shorting out. He had just a glimpse of it and then it was gone. He took the boat in a long curve then headed back toward Chicxulub.
He was just thinking he should check on Harmon when he realized that he was standing there behind him. He turned and was struck in the side of the head by the anchor, knocked out of his seat.
“You were lying, Altman,” Harmon said. “The Marker didn’t want to be sunk. You don’t love the Marker, you hate it.”
No, he tried to say, no. But nothing came out.
He saw Harmon bend over him. He roughly took hold of Altman’s hands, put them together, began to tie them.
“I thought you were my friend,” said Harmon. “I thought you were a believer. But if you were really a believer, why don’t you have one of these?” He touched the Marker pendant hanging from his neck. “I shouldn’t have trusted you.”
I saved you, Altman tried to say. I could have left you to die, but I saved your life.
“Now I’m going to get some real help,” said Harmon, and he stood and took the controls.
Altman lay there, eyes glazed. A warm fluid was puddling up against his cheek and his mouth. It was only when he tried to swallow that he realized it was blood. It took him another minute to realize it was his own.
Okay, he thought. I’ve been in worse situations. He tried to move his hands, but couldn’t feel them. It was as if his body had become disconnected from his head. I’ll just rest a moment, he told himself. I’ll just lie here and then, in a moment, I’ll wriggle free of these ropes.
His vision started to go dim, and then slowly faded away. He listened to the sound of the engine, then that slowly left him, too. He lay there, feeling the movement of the boat through the waves. After a while, it seemed to come only from a distance. A while longer and even that was lost. He lay in the boat, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, feeling nothing. The whole world had dissolved around him. He tried as long as he could to focus on the taste of blood in his mouth. But soon he couldn’t hold on to even that.
Epilogue
And then it began again. It started first with a pinprick of light in the darkness at a great distance. He watched it, trying to determine if it was getting closer or farther away, but was unable to say. He watched it a long time, or what felt like a long time, until it disappeared again.
Darkness. Plain and simple. But a sense, too, of a body. Of his body, the limits of it.
I’m dead, he thought. This is hell.
There was a long moment in which nothing happened. The pinprick of light came back again. He did not notice it reappear exactly, just knew that it was there, and knew it had been there for a while. He watched it. This time it grew slowly larger. It was moving slowing toward him. Suddenly, it became excruciatingly bright.
Things began to take shape around it. A thin silvery casing from which the light itself came. Something pinkish nestled around it, which he began, slowly, to realize was a human hand.
“A little response,” said a voice, flat, uninflected. “Up the dosage.”
He felt something, a stinging somewhere on his body. Suddenly he could move the muscles on his face.
Where am I? he tried to ask, but what came out was a dim, inarticulate sound.
“There we are,” said another voice. The light pulled back and he saw a face, half-hidden behind a surgical mask. Behind it were other faces, maybe a half dozen in all.
“Where am I?” he asked, and this time the words came out.
“You’re alive,” said t
he muffled voice through the surgeon’s mask. “That’s all you need to know.”
He tried to move his arm, found it strapped down. The other arm was strapped, too, his legs as well. He struggled against them, arched his back.
“There, there,” said the voice. “You won’t be able to break them. Just relax.” The surgeon’s mask turned to address someone behind him. “Go get Markoff,” it said. “Tell him that Altman is awake.”
He must have drifted off again. When he opened his eyes, there were three people over the bed, looking down at him: Krax, Markoff, and Stevens.
“Congratulations, Altman,” said Krax. “You still seem to be alive.”
When he opened his mouth and spoke, his voice was hoarse, his throat sore. “You killed Ada,” he said.
“No,” said Krax. “Ada killed herself. She started hallucinating and then cut her own throat. She wasn’t strong enough. She wasn’t worthy.”
“Worthy?” Altman asked.
“We need to have a little talk,” said Markoff.
Altman narrowed his eyes. He watched him, warily.
“We’ve talked with your friend Harmon,” said Krax. “He told us everything that happened.”
“You sank the Marker,” said Stevens. “Why would you do that?”
“It was dangerous,” said Altman, his voice barely above a whisper.
“It’s not dangerous,” claimed Krax. “It’s divine.”
“You’re crazy,” said Altman.
“No, he’s right,” said Stevens. “I’m afraid that’s the conclusion that all three of us have reached.”
Altman turned his head slightly in Markoff’s direction. It hurt to move it. “You don’t believe this, do you? How can you believe it’s divine now that you’ve seen what it’s capable of?”
Markoff offered him a hard, glittering smile. “It created life,” he said. “I saw that for myself, saw it take dead flesh and bring it back to life.”
Maybe he doesn’t actually believe, thought Altman. Or maybe he’s pretending as a way of bending the others to his will. Just as I did with Harmon.
“But what kind of life?” asked Altman. “It was monstruous.”
“There must have been a glitch,” said Stevens. “The Marker must have gotten damaged somehow. But as a principle, it’s sound. All we have to do is fix it.”
“Or if not fix it, make a new one,” said Markoff.
“After all,” said Stevens, “every indication is that when it was originally working, millennia ago, it established life on earth. Once we have one that’s working properly, it will allow us to evolve beyond our mortal form. It will lead us into eternal life.”
“No, it’s not that. It’s not that at all. You’re wrong,” whispered Altman. “It wasn’t damaged; it was doing what it was meant to do. It meant to destroy us.”
“Then why did it stop?” Stevens asked. “And why did it stop when you began to broadcast its own code back to it, showing that you’d figured out how to replicate it?”
“How do you know about that?”
“You don’t think we left the facility without making sure that we could record everything that went on in it, do you?” said Krax. “We watched the whole thing. We have footage of everything.”
But Altman just shook his head. “You’re wrong,” he said. “It’ll destroy us.”
“The Marker wants to help us,” Stevens claimed. “Harmon has told us what you figured out: the Marker wants to be replicated. It was broken and must have known it was broken. It wants us to make it again so that it can help us. But we’ll improve the technology, Altman. We’ll make one that works and then make it even better.” He leaned in closer. Altman could feel the man’s breath on his face, could see in the man’s eyes traces of fanaticism that belied his calm exterior. “There are sure to be other Marker s, somewhere, on other worlds,” said Stevens. “They will lead us forward. In the meantime, we’ll do our best to try to understand this one and duplicate it.”
“You’ve done a lot to help with that,” Markoff said.
“But this one is sunk,” said Altman desperately.
“It was sunk before,” said Markoff, “and we got it up. You know that as well as anyone. All you did was slow the inevitable down slightly, by a few weeks, a few months.”
“You don’t have the research,” said Altman. “Everything must have been destroyed by the water and the pressure. You’ll have to start over.”
Krax shook his head. “Altman,” he said. “You’re so naïve.”
“Remember Harmon?” said Markoff. “What do you think Harmon was doing while he was in the Marker chamber? He was recording everything, making sure that none of the data would be lost. And then he carried it all away in his pocket. If you’d thought to check his pockets or simply left him to die, you might have set us back. But you didn’t. You’re far too trusting, Altman. We have everything.”
“We also have all of Guthe’s research,” said Stevens. “We can learn from it what went wrong with the Marker and learn how to repair it. We ran our first experiments, synthesizing and reproducing the creature’s DNA, while you were still unconscious. Hermetically sealed labs, a variety of fail-safes. We’re being a great deal more careful about it than Guthe was, though most likely hallucinations were to blame for his rashness.”
“And to be frank,” said Krax, “watching you struggle past them taught us a great deal about how to control them. We wouldn’t be nearly as far along without you.”
“You’re making a terrible mistake,” whispered Altman. He was very tired. He was helpless, couldn’t do anything. But maybe soon. All he had to do was regain his strength. Once he regained his strength, he’d do everything he could to stop them. “If you go ahead with this, it’ll mean the end of humanity. Maybe not right away, but soon.”
“That’s what we’re hoping for,” said Stevens. “If we go ahead with this, we’ll reach the next evolutionary stage. We won’t be human; we’ll be better than human.”
“Good-bye, Altman,” said Markoff. “You’ve been a worthy adversary. But this time you’ve lost.”
Once the three of them had left, a doctor who had accompanied them to the door returned and whispered in the surgeon’s ear. The surgeon nodded his head, and then filled and primed a hypodermic. He pushed it into Altman’s arm. The world grew gray, slowly faded away.
2
When he woke up, he was still strapped down to a bed. He was alone in a small room, something very like a cell. He struggled against the straps, but they were firm.
He slept, he woke, he slept again. Occasionally a nurse would come in and change the bag of fluids hanging beside him. His head throbbed. Once when the nurse came, she took out a small pocket mirror and held it so he could see himself.
His head was wrapped in bandages. He hardly recognized his own face.
“There, see,” said the nurse, and gestured to the top of his head. “That’s where you had your accident.”
“Accident?” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Where you slipped and fell.”
“It wasn’t an accident,” he said.
She smiled. “After head trauma, sometimes things can get confused,” she said.
“No,” he said. “I know exactly what happened.”
Her smile looked painted on, fake. “I’m not supposed to talk to you,” she said. “Those are the rules.” She backed slowly out the door.
A few minutes later, the door opened and a man with a hypodermic entered.
When he woke up again, he was in a different place, a place that didn’t just look like a cell, but was one. The bandages were no longer on his head, though a lump and a healing wound were still there. They had unstrapped him, had left him lying on the floor. He got unsteadily to his feet, his muscles weak from disuse.
The room was white, without mark or other design. There was one door, small, in the middle of one wall. High above him and out of reach was a vid recorder. A small toilet in the corner, a food dispenser just
beside it.
He went to the door and pounded on it. “Hello!” he called. “Hello!” Then he pressed his ear to the door. He heard nothing.
He waited, tried again. Nothing happened. And then again. Still nothing.
Hours went by, then days. The only noise that did not come from himself was the clunk when food came down the slot. There was no way for him to control when it came, no button to push. Suddenly there was a clunk and the food was there. He saved the containers and they slowly filled one side of the room.
He felt like he was the last man on earth. He felt like he was going mad.
He withdrew deeper and deeper into himself, paid less and less attention to the outside world.
Then the dead started to return, one by one, to keep him company. All the people whose deaths he felt responsible for, sitting around him, judging him. There was Ada and Field, Hendricks and Hammond, and others he couldn’t recognize. It was just him, and his guilt, and the dead.
And then he awoke to find that he was no longer in that room, that instead he was sitting in a chair at a large table. His hands were cuffed to the arms of the chair. Across from him, on the other side of the table, were Markoff and Stevens.
“Hello, Altman,” said Markoff.
He didn’t answer at first. It was strange to be in a room with living people, almost unbearable. He couldn’t believe it was really happening.
“Altman,” said Stevens. He snapped his fingers. “Here, Altman. Focus.”
“You’re not here,” said Altman. “I’m hallucinating you.”
“No,” said Stevens. “We’re here. Even if we’re not, what will it hurt you to talk to us?”
He’s right, said Altman. What will it hurt? And then he remembered Hennessy, dead from listening to a hallucination; Hendricks, dead from listening to a hallucination; Ada, dead from listening to a hallucination. On and on and on. His eyes filled with tears.
“What’s wrong with him?” Markoff asked.
“We broke him,” said Stevens. “I told you it was too long. We’re real, Altman. What do we have to do to prove that we’re real?”
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