Dead Space: Catalyst

by Evenson, Brian

  The door levered slowly shut behind him. He webbed in and braced himself and then pressed the release and the ignition. The craft darted out, already spinning, twirling down through the atmosphere. He hoped it was small enough not to draw the mines or that they would disintegrate in the atmosphere before they hit him. Twisting quickly planetward, he held on for dear life.

  35

  “What the hell was that?” asked Dr. Dexter. Her eyes were wide and she looked terrified.

  “So you finally felt it?” Briden asked. His head throbbed and he could barely stand. “It has to yell to you before you’ll hear it. I’ve been hearing it all along.”

  “It’s not a person, Briden,” she said. “It’s dangerous. Maybe there’s something wrong with it. We need to shutter the project before it kills us.”

  “Shutter it? Are you mad? We’re just starting to get somewhere.”

  “Where we’re getting is that,” said Callie, gesturing to Istvan who was lying on the ground beside the Marker, shivering, his eyes rolled back into his head. “It’s knocked him senseless.”

  “No, he’ll be okay,” said Briden. He approached him, checked his pulse. “Just some kind of fit,” he said, standing back up. “He’ll snap out of it.”

  “Briden, the Marker is not a good thing. It means us harm,” said Callie.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “This is the key to our salvation.”

  Callie shook her head, laughing bitterly. “You’re so obsessed, you can’t see what’s right in front of you,” she said. “You want this to be a religious experience. It doesn’t matter to you what evidence there is to the contrary or what it actually is. Evidence be damned, you’ve already decided what it is.”

  Briden just shook his own head and turned away. He knelt beside Istvan and began to slap his face lightly, watching his eyes. After a moment Istvan’s eyelids fluttered and his pupils fell back into place and his jaw unclenched. “There,” said Briden. “There.” He turned and looked up at Callie. “You see? He’s just fine.”

  “Fine, is he? Briden, we have to shutter the project. You need to let the commander know right away.”

  Istvan was coming around, looking at Briden. The latter reached out, stroked the side of Istvan’s face. “What did you see?” he asked. “What did it tell you? What does it want from us?”

  Istvan didn’t say anything.

  “Briden, if you don’t tell Grottor, I will,” said Dr. Dexter. When Briden didn’t answer, she gave a little stamp of frustration and headed toward the door.

  “Dr Dexter,” he finally said, just as she was reaching it.

  She stopped and turned, only to find him pointing a pistol at her, slowly walking toward her.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “What I should have done a long time ago,” he said.

  She raised her hands slowly. “You shouldn’t do this, Briden,” she said. “You’re not thinking straight.”

  “Oh no, Dr. Dexter,” he said. “I know what I’m doing. Now turn around and walk. Straight through the door and across the control room and out that door, too. I’ll tell you when to stop walking. I’m in charge now.”

  “Are you?” asked Callie coolly over her shoulder. “Seems like the Marker might be the one in charge.”

  * * *

  He marched her through the control room, the scientists inside stopping their work to stare in astonishment at the procession they made, and out into the hall.

  They walked until they came to the security station. “I’d like to remand the prisoner,” said Briden to the man inside.

  “Prisoner?” said the security officer, wrinkling his brow.

  “Yes, man,” said Briden, “right here.”

  “But that’s Dr. Dexter,” said the officer.

  “Of course it’s Dr. Dexter,” he said. “She’s a traitor. She needs to be confined to the brig.”

  The officer stared back and forth from Callie to Briden. “If you don’t do it, he’ll probably just shoot me,” she finally said.

  The officer shrugged. He took her by the arm and led her into the brig and closed the door.

  * * *

  In the Marker room, Istvan lay immobile on the floor, staring up at the two horns rising far above him. Dead Conn was there, poised upon the tips, and then his mother, and then the politician he had shot, Fischer. Their faces shuffled over one another to become one face. The voice, too, seemed a blend of all their voices, a multitonal voice that seemed both high and low at once.

  The other world was the real world, he now knew. It was what really mattered. But the Marker existed in both worlds; it was the thing that bridged the gap.

  Do you understand now? the three ghosts that were one above him asked.

  Yes, he tried to say. Yes, I understand. But the words did not come out. And yet the Marker heard him say them nevertheless.

  There was movement around him—strange shadows flitting—that it took a moment for him to begin to make things out. These were the scientists, he realized slowly. Maybe four of them, maybe five, come to check on him. One pressed his fingers to Istvan’s throat and said something. Another was lifting one eyelid even higher and peering in, as if to look inside his skull. He tried to ignore them, to think of them as something like buzzing flies, but they were still there, an irritation.

  We are not right, said the ghosts. Or rather, we are right, but now we must become something else. We need you to make us whole and make us new.

  “Make you whole,” mumbled Istvan. “Make you new.”

  “What?” said one of the scientists. “Did he say something?”

  “Say something, see something,” said Istvan.

  We will use you as a vessel, said the ghosts. You will take our image, the image of not only what we are but of what we might become, and you will share it.

  “Share it,” mumbled Istvan.

  “Did he say sheriff?” asked one of the scientists. “What would that even mean?”

  We must be free, said the ghosts. We must be free.

  Slowly the vision faded. Or didn’t fade so much as simply slip into the background. It was still there, the triple ghost still with its flickering faces, but the faces were changing much more slowly now, every couple of seconds rather than several times a second. And it was subdued and quiet enough that Istvan could see the scientists better, and hear them, too.

  “Are you all right?” one of them asked.

  Was he? What did the man even mean by that? He hesitantly nodded. One of them was holding a hand out to him, offering to help him up. He waved the hand away.

  “Not ready yet?” the man said. “Sure, give yourself a moment. No point rushing things.”

  “I’m staying here,” said Istvan.

  “Of course,” said the man. “No reason to move until you’re ready.”

  “I’ll never be ready,” said Istvan. “This is where I live.” He needed to be here until the ghosts were free, until he had accomplished his task, his purpose. A strange twinge of confusion came to him with that word, purpose. But why?

  “You can’t stay here,” the man reasoned. “You can’t just stay on the floor.”

  He shook his head. Of course he could stay here. Why couldn’t he?

  “You’re not thinking properly,” said the man. “You’re still in shock or something. I think three of us can carry you out of here and put you someplace where you can rest.”

  “I can rest here,” he said. “And there is no time for rest.”

  “Come on,” the scientist said, reaching out again with his hand.

  “If he wants to stay here,” said a voice it took him a moment to recognize as belonging to Briden, “then he can stay here.”

  He looked over at Briden and smiled. Yes, Briden understood. Some of it, anyway. And then Briden was there kneeling beside him, eyes shining.

  “It wants you to stay here?” he asked.

  It? What did he mean by it? Couldn’t he see the ghosts? Istvan gestured at
them, but Briden only saw the Marker.

  “Yes,” he said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I understand.”

  No, thought Istvan. He doesn’t exactly understand. But it didn’t matter, it was close enough. Briden would let him do what he wanted, what needed to be done. He would live here, at the base of the Marker, and he would learn from it until it had taught him all that he could know, and he would teach it the little he knew and then he would go out in the world and preach for it until everyone understood and more Markers began to arise and there was the dawning of a brighter day.

  36

  The brighter day began with a murder, followed shortly by a suicide. In the penal colony, a man by the name of James Colbert who had become more and more moody, who was keeping more and more to himself, wrapped his arms around the neck of another inmate, by the name of Ken Dollar, and choked him first unconscious and then dead. The other inmates, once they realized what was happening, tried to drag Colbert away, but it was too late. And while they were seeing if there was anything to be done to save Dollar, Colbert wandered, mumbling, along the edge of the crowd. He was being closely watched by several of the other inmates, but not closely enough that he couldn’t, when they were distracted by the attempts to revive Dollar, suddenly take off at a run for the wall and try to run through it so hard that he cracked his own skull and damaged his brain. He was soon dead as well.

  Henry watched the murder, horrified. He called the guards in the middle of it. By the time they were assembled near the door, Colbert had killed himself as well. Henry signaled the alarm to send the convicts back to their cells, was surprised when this time all but one or two of the men kept milling about, making no effort to return to their cells. He waited and then started the loudspeaker message, giving them thirty seconds’ warning, but they ignored this, too.

  What now? he wondered. Ever since Briden and his men had come, the prisoners had been on edge. And it hadn’t subsided when they left, taking Jensi’s brother with them. No, it had just gotten worse. With the guards and technicians as well, he thought. Fights had broken out; one of the guards, a normally stolid, experienced fellow named Marshall, had almost bitten another man’s ear off. He’d been thrown into a room and locked in, where he’d proceeded to shout and scream, throwing himself against the walls. When they finally opened the door to let him out the next day, they found him sitting in his own filth. He had slashed open his palm and had smeared the walls with blood. But it was not just smears, Henry realized on closer examination. He’d been drawing symbols, creepy odd-looking things that didn’t look like any language that Henry had ever seen.

  He’d called Commander Grottor and told him. The commander grunted, then told him to take a vid of the walls and send them along immediately.

  “What am I to do with Marshall?” he asked.

  “Marshall? Throw him in a cell. Put him out there with the other prisoners.”

  He had, but had kept him locked in his cell just in case. One of the other prisoners, a man named Waldron, would bring Marshall food and slide it through the slot at the bottom of the bars; sometimes Marshall’d eat it and sometimes not. He kept worrying the wound on his hand, splitting it open, and when he could get it to bleed again, he’d paint more of the symbols: on the floor, on the back wall, on the sheets, even on his own body.

  What had done that to him? wondered Henry at the time. And then, looking at the screen, at the two dead bodies and the men milling about, What has done that to them?

  * * *

  The guards were still standing near the door, awaiting instruction. Their leader opened a link, asked Henry what the problem was.

  “The prisoners won’t return to their cells,” he said.

  “What?” said the man. “How many of them? One? Two?”

  “More,” said Henry. “Almost all of them.”

  “That’s all right,” said the man, his nostrils flaring. “We can take them.” He seemed to relish the idea, which made Henry realize that if he opened the door someone, maybe a lot of people, were likely to end up dead.

  “Go back to your quarters,” he said. “I’m not going to open the door.”

  “C’mon, Wandrei,” he said. “Open it.”

  “No,” said Henry. “Go back to your quarters. That’s an order.”

  With some grumbling, the angry men drifted away and Henry turned back to watch the screen. What am I to do with the bodies? he wondered. Henry watched the prisoners still milling about, still wandering, sometimes nearly stumbling over one of the corpses. He watched two of them grab one of the bodies and drag them over to the hole that Briden had dug. They released it and it went tumbling down the hole. Then they went back for the second one.

  Good enough, Henry thought, and turned his attention elsewhere.

  * * *

  Istvan stayed there beside it, caressing it, staring up at it. It was listening to him, responding to him. It was a beautiful, gorgeous thing, and what it was doing to his mind was gorgeous, too. It was changing him, making him more like it, and he was changing it, too. It was learning how to talk to him and then was sending its voice all around, looking for brains like his.

  But his brain was special. What his brain understood, the other brains felt as pain. He watched the others, watched how they reacted, the confusion on their faces, the way their eyes lit up but without a real glow. Their brains started to break when the Marker touched them, for the signal was meant for brains closer to his, not for brains like theirs.

  And the signal was growing, getting stronger. The scientists who came often to stare at the Marker and stare at him, too, could feel it mostly as pain, though one or two had a little more flexible cerebral matter and seemed to begin to see hints and traces of the ghosts that Istvan saw now all the time. The scientists whispered back and forth, too, spoke of what was going on outside the Marker chamber, bringing him news. More and more people were going mad, they said, though what they meant by mad exactly he wasn’t sure. There were fights for no reason, strange acts of self-harm and suicide. Order was beginning to fall apart; the social structure of the compound was beginning to collapse. But that was okay, thought Istvan. You always had to tear things down before you could build them back up again.

  There were scientists who always came to see him, Briden among them: a group of the committed, the faithful. They clustered around him, waiting for him to move or speak. One of them recorded his gestures, his words. Only they weren’t his words exactly: he only said what the ghosts were already saying if only the scientists could see them and hear them. Why can’t they? he wondered. He didn’t know the answer.

  Other scientists, though, never came in. He saw them in the control room, keeping to their monitors and systems or standing near the glass. There were two camps, he dimly began to realize. Briden was in charge of one, the group that believed the Marker and its possibilities. Of this group, some of them were Unitologists, committed to the project for religion. These, Briden chief among them, were zealous. Istvan sensed in them a willingness to go to almost any extreme for their cause. Others were simply scientists and either atheistic or unconcerned about religion, but these still saw in him a kind of unique catalyst, an essential component for activating the Marker. He was, for all these, something special, something to be treasured.

  The second group was the enemy, according to Briden. Even though Callie Dexter was imprisoned, she seemed to lead that group, shuttling messages back and forth to them. These scientists were the ones who largely stayed in the control room. They wanted to shutter the Marker project. For them, something was desperately amiss, and they claimed to object to the idea of bringing in a convict with a clear mental derangement as a key part of the project. But with Dr. Dexter imprisoned, they seemed to have lost a certain amount of their will and were somewhat ineffectual.

  * * *

  Callie had managed to smuggle a fair amount of equipment into the cell. The guard, confused that she was there at all, seemed happy to accept her notes and carry them
to one of her contacts in the control room. He would come back with notes from them that explained what had happened and what was currently going on, and she would write responses, sending them off with the shambling guard again.

  And more than that: one of the infiltrators in the Marker chamber managed to get close enough to Istvan to scan his brain waves for several hours and then sent her a memory stud with the data. Entering that, she charted Istvan’s derangement, trying to understand just how damaged he was. His brain waves were highly abnormal, the sequence irregular and the waveform variable. No question about it: he was an extremely damaged individual. Worse, she realized, comparing these with the Marker pulses, the Marker seemed more responsive to his brain waves and perhaps was even adapting to them. Having Istvan near the Marker was not good for it. It was sharpening the signal, making it more intense. It was perhaps no coincidence that dementia had increased: the signal had risen. Was it because of Istvan? Hard to say. The researcher in her reminded her that the dementia had always been there and it might have developed this way on its own in any case. Though things had definitely gotten worse around the time Istvan arrived.

  Through the slot in the door, she asked the guard to go fetch Briden. He sidled slowly off. She waited, looking over the data again. Yes, she was right, she was sure of it; the Marker effects were getting worse.

  A few minutes later the guard was back. “Can’t come,” he said.

  “Can’t or won’t?” asked Callie.

  The guard shrugged.

  “Do you think you could let me out?” she asked.

  The guard shook his head, but slowly, as if he might be able to be convinced.

  “What if I told you it was a matter of life and death?” she asked.

  “Whose life?” the guard asked. “Whose death?”

  “Everybody’s,” said Callie.

  The guard’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?” he asked.