PART FOUR THE DESCENT
32 He was asleep, having nightmares again. He was running in a strange pressurized suit, through narrow, bleak halls. Part of him knew it was a nightmare for a while, but knowing that didn't seem to help him control it, and gradually he forgot it wasn't real. Something was pursuing him, something with strange tusks in the place of hands and horns sprouting at the joints of its limbs. Its body looked like it had had its skin flayed off. Or even worse, like someone had taken a human skeleton and pressed raw hamburger to it. The bottom half of its face was falling apart. Its eyes gleamed yellow, glittering and burning. He realized he had some kind of weapon: a gun that sent out a whirling blade projected on a beam of light. He kept turning around and firing the thing, watching it cut with a grating sound through the creature's legs, spraying blood and gore all over. Its legs were gone, but it still kept coming, posting the tips of its tusks against the ground and dragging itself forward, moaning. He cut off its arms and then its head, and finally it stopped. Thank God, he thought, and wiped the blood off his face. He had started to turn away when he heard something behind him. The creature was still writhing, flopping this way and that, changing. With a wet sound, it sprouted new arms and legs. It clambered up, roaring, and was after him again. Screaming, he turned and ran. "Bad dreams?" asked the man beside his bed. He was a large man with a square jaw and white hair, dressed in the dark uniform of military intelligence. He was regarding Altman with a steady, aloof gaze. To either side of him were two even larger men who looked like they might be twins, dressed in street clothes. At a little distance was another man, smaller and wearing glasses. He looked vaguely familiar, but Altman couldn't quite place him. "Where am I?" asked Altman. "You're in your house," said the military man. "In Chicxulub." "Where's Ada?" "You're girlfriend? She's not here. She's safe." "What do you mean, safe?" asked Altman, starting to get out of the bed. The man raised a finger. Calmly but forcefully the twins to either side of him took Altman by the arms and lowered him back onto the bed, holding him down until he had stopped struggling. Warily, Altman eyed them. "What are you doing here?" he asked the military man. He made a gesture and the other two let go and stepped back. "I came to see you," he said. "And who are you?" "Markoff," he said. "Craig Markoff." "That doesn't tell me anything," said Altman. "No," said Markoff. "It doesn't." "And who are they?" he asked, gesturing to the other three men. Markoff looked left and right. "These?" he said. "These are my new associates." The man with the glasses gave a smirk. "Tim, Tom, and Terry." "Which one is which?" "Does it matter?" asked Markoff. "Look," said Altman, "you can't just break in here like this. You have no right to be here. I'm going to call the police." Markoff just smiled. When Altman reached for his phone, he said, "Tom? Tim?" The twins moved slowly forward. One of them put his hand on Altman's wrist and squeezed until he dropped the phone. The other punched him once, softly, almost lovingly, in the side. He fell back on the bed, gasping. Tim and Tom wandered back behind Markoff, watching Altman struggle to catch his breath. When he had calmed down, Markoff said, "Feeling better, are we? Would you like a drink of water?" Altman shook his head. Markoff snapped his fingers, and the man with the glasses tossed Altman a shirt and a pair of pants. "You're in the right frame of mind now," said Markoff. "Get dressed. We're going to have a little talk." A few minutes later, he was sitting across the kitchen table from Markoff, the other three standing next to the doors leading in and out of the room. "It's very simple," said Markoff. "You filed a grant to investigate Chicxulub crater." "There's nothing wrong with that," argued Altman. "That's what scientists do." "I've already spoken to your friends," said Markoff. "Or, rather, my associates have. We've determined that the person motivating this grant application was you." "So?" Markoff gave him a cold look. "Don't get cocky. If I have to, I'll have Tim break your arm," he said. "Or Tom," said one of the twins from where he stood near the doorway. "Or Tom," said Markoff. He turned and looked at the twin. "Don't worry, Tom. He has two arms. Enough to go around." Then he turned back to Altman, looked at him with one eyebrow raised. "I'm sorry," Altman said. "That's better," said Markoff. "Your proposal for investigating the crater has been pulled from the grant proposal pool. It is now classified. The investigation of Chicxulub crater has become a military matter." "So, I was right," said Altman. "About what?" asked Markoff. "You're not just trying to retrieve the submarine. You're trying to get at whatever is in the crater." "You're a clever boy," said Markoff. "Maybe too clever for your own good. The reason I'm here is to find out how much you know and evaluate whether you would be a valuable member of our team. If you are, I am prepared to allow you to join us--in a limited capacity, of course. If not, I'll have to figure out something else to do with you." "What do you mean by `something else'?" Markoff shrugged. "Could be ship you back to your own sector. Could be having you put in confinement for as long as it takes us to complete the project. Could be something a bit more serious." Behind him, the twins exchanged glances and smiled. "I suppose, Mr. Altman, that it's up to you." Markoff straightened in his chair, put both his hands palm down on the table. "Well, Mr. Altman, shall we begin?" Markoff started off slow. "How did you first realize there was something unusual going on in the crater?" "I detected a gravity anomaly." "It wasn't the pulse signal?" Altman shook his head. "The pulse signal came later." "Who told you about the pulse signal?" Altman hesitated, tempted to lie, and then he realized it didn't matter: Hammond was dead. And then, suddenly it clicked: he knew where he had seen the man with the glasses. "Charles Hammond told me," he said. "I believe your associates knew him." Markoff looked back at Terry. The latter hesitated a moment, nodded. "But we didn't kill him," said Tim. "No, we didn't kill him," said Tom. "No talking shop here, boys," said Markoff. "Terry, why don't you take Tim and Tom and wait for me outside?" The three of them quietly left the room. "How do I know you are who you say you are?" asked Altman. Markoff turned back, his gaze steady. "I wondered when you were going to get around to that. Either I am or I'm not," he said. "If I am, then it'll be worth your while to cooperate if it will get you on the expedition. If I'm not, then there's very little you can do about it. Whether you tell me the truth or not, you're probably in trouble either way. Tell me . . . what do you think you know?" It's a reasonable enough gamble, thought Altman. I know that DredgerCorp is working with the military to salvage the submarine, so chances are he is what he says he is. The trick is knowing how to tell him enough to get him to bring me aboard on the project, but not so much that he thinks he's already gotten all he can out of me, that he doesn't need me anymore. He took a deep breath. "I'd guess there's something in the heart of the crater," said Altman. "Not a natural phenomenon, but something else." "Go on," said Markoff. "Considering its location, it must have been there a very long time." "How long?" "It might have been there thousands of years. Or even longer." "Why do you think so?" "The Yucatec Maya have a kind of mythology surrounding it. They call it the tail of the devil." He saw a gleam of something in Markoff's eye. "You've told me something I didn't know, Altman," he said. "How did you find this out?" "I'll give you more details if you bring me in on the project." Markoff nodded, his lips tight. "I'll let you get away with that, for a few minutes, anyway. What do you think it is?" he asked. "I have no fucking idea," said Altman. "There's no room on the team for someone who doesn't have imagination. What do you think it could be?" Altman looked down at the tabletop, at his hands resting clasped together on it, at Markoff's hands still palm down on the other side. "I thought at first it might be a relic from some ancient civilization, but . . . I've thought a lot about it," he said, "and the only other thing I can come up with frightens me." He looked up, met Markoff's gaze. "An object, sending a pulse signal from the center of a vast crater, perhaps buried since the creation of the crater thousands or hundreds of thousands, even millions, of years ago. What if it wasn't an asteroid that made the crater but the object itself, striking the earth?" Markoff nodded. "Which suggests that it was something that came from outer space," said Altman. "Which in tur
n suggests that it was something sent here by intelligent life outside of our galaxy." "Which raises the question of why it was transmitting," said Markoff. "And who it was transmitting to," said Altman. "And what." They sat in silence for a while. "If that's what it is," Altman said, "it'll change our whole understanding of life as we know it." Markoff nodded, finally removing his hands from the table and putting them in his lap. When they returned, there was a gun in one of them. "Ah, Altman, Altman," he said. "What am I going to do with you?" "Are you threatening me?" asked Altman, his voice rising. He hoped he sounded tough and angry, that Markoff wasn't detecting the fear that he felt. "You obviously have guessed too much to be let go. You've even guessed too much for me to just throw you in confinement. I have to decide whether to kill you or take you with us." Altman slowly raised his hands. "I'd rather you took me with you," he said, a quaver to his voice now. "Not a shocking preference, considering the circumstances. Take you or shoot you?" he mused. "I can see advantages to both. Can you tell me anything else to tip the scales? Is there something else you forgot to add?" Altman kept his hands crossed, afraid that if he moved them, Markoff would see how much he was shaking. His mouth was very dry. His voice, when he began to speak, trembled. "There is one other thing," he said. "Yes?" said Markoff, casually cocking the gun. "The villagers found something. A strange creature, humanoid but not human, that they're convinced is connected to the happenings in the crater. They burned it, but there are still remains you can examine. I'll take you to them." "Is that all?" Altman swallowed. "That's all." "Good-bye, Mr. Altman," Markoff said. He raised the pistol and pointed it at Altman's head, then started to squeeze the trigger. Altman closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He heard the snap of the hammer, but no bullet came. He opened his eyes. Markoff was watching him, intensely focused. "All in good fun," he said. "The gun was empty. I never intended to shoot you. Welcome to the team." He stood and extended his hand. Altman was still in shock and didn't move. Markoff pried his hands apart from each other and shook one of them. "You will be closely watched. You won't have free run of the facility, but I want you available if and when I need you." He leaned in closer. "And if you do betray me, Mr. Altman, I will kill you," he said in a low voice. "Do you understand? Nod if you understand." Altman understood. "Very good," said Markoff, and started for the door. "I'll have Terry make your arrangements." "All right," said Altman quietly. His hand on the doorknob, Markoff stopped. He stood there a moment, his back to Altman. "There's the question of your girlfriend, isn't there," he said. Oh, shit, thought Altman. Markoff turned around, looked at him with searching eyes. "What should we do about her?" "You don't have to worry about her," said Altman. He tried to stay calm and expressionless as he said it, poker faced, but his voice, he knew, was still
trembling. "But I want to worry about her, Altman," said Markoff. "Let's just say it'd be my pleasure." "Look," said Altman desperately. "I understand why you feel you have to take me, but Ada's different. She has nothing to do with any of this. She even tried to stop me from taking an interest in it. Let her go." Markoff smiled. "What you've just shown me, Altman, is that you care enough about her that I couldn't possibly think about letting her go. I believe she might come in handy." "What are you planning to do with her?" "Ah, Mr. Altman," said Markoff. "Questions, always questions." He opened the door and went out.
33 Terry and the twins stood over him while he packed. They hurried him along. They impounded his phone and his holopod, as well as his terminal, the twins sealing them up in a crate and carrying them off. "You'll have them back once Markoff has taken a look at them," said Terry. "Except for the phone." "Can't I at least call Field and tell him I won't be in?" "No." "I need some time to wrap up my affairs--" "No." "What about my family, they'll be worried--" "You're stalling," said Terry. "None of that other stuff is important. What's important is doing the job and doing it right. You keep stalling, and I'll give Mr. Markoff a call and we'll see how badly he wants you along." "And then what, you'll kill me? Like you did Hammond?" Terry winced. "I resent the implication," he said. "I saw him die, sure, but I didn't have anything to do with it." "Then it was Tim and Tom." "Not them either," said Terry. He looked at Altman in a way that made the latter realize he was genuinely confused and strangely vulnerable. "What happened?" he asked. "We were just trying to question him and he flipped out," said Terry. "I've never seen anything quite like it. One moment he was running and the next he was trying to kill us." He showed Altman an angry, awkward scar on his hand. "We didn't even have any weapons. Tanner had just sent us there to talk to him." He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. "And then suddenly he took his knife and cut his own throat. Never seen anyone cut quite that deep so quickly. Been dreaming about it ever since." Abruptly he straightened up, his face becoming closed again. "I don't mind being blamed for what I've done, but don't blame me for what I haven't. Come on, get moving." They walked quickly to the DredgerCorp building, Terry holding on to his arm and hurrying him along. A few people looked at them curiously in the streets, but most just ignored them or deliberately looked the other way. The building now had a security fence around it, made of welded wire mesh. The building itself had been razed to the ground and was in the process of being replaced by a structure formed of interlocking concrete and steel panels, more like a fortress than like a corporate building. "Some changes being made," said Altman. Terry nodded. "You don't know the half of it." He led him around behind the construction, to a concrete pad. On it was a helicopter, blades already spinning. They hurried to it, and Altman climbed aboard. Ada was there, her face taut, drawn. He sat down next to her and she clung to him. She isn't usually like that, he thought. She must be terrified. Almost immediately the helicopter took off. "I've been worried about you," he said, having to shout to be heard over the noise. "I thought they might have done something to you." "I was worried about you, too," she said. "Are you okay?" He offered her a feeble smile. "No permanent damage." "Michael, do you know where we're going?" "No," he said. "I'm afraid I don't." "I told you," she said. "This would all end badly, I said. I told you to leave it alone. But you wouldn't listen." "It's not over yet," he said. He looked out the window. They had turned and were flying over the water now, were already fairly far from land. He looked around the helicopter, at the other passengers. Terry wasn't there; either he'd stayed behind or was up with the pilot. It contained eight other scientists, all people he recognized by sight, even if he didn't know them all. Field was one of them, looking like he was sick to his stomach. Skud was there, as was Showalter. Holding on to the roof straps, he moved over closer to them. "Where's Ramirez?" he shouted. "They didn't have him come," said Showalter. "What did they do with him?" Showalter shrugged. "Did they give you a choice?" asked Altman. "A what?" shouted Skud. "Why are they taking us?" "A choice?" "No!" shouted Showalter. "We had to come." "Do you know where we're going?" shouted Skud. Altman shook his head. "I was going to ask you," he said. He clambered back to his bench. "They don't know," he said. "Nobody knows where we're going." They flew for roughly three hours. Direction, Altman thought, judging by the sun was northwest, or west-northwest, though he wasn't exactly sure. At some point, he thought they turned south. How fast could a helicopter fly? Seventy-five miles an hour? A hundred? It seemed like they were covering a lot of distance. Maybe they're just planning to kill us, he thought. Just put all of us on the same helicopter and engineer a crash. If so, he realized, there was nothing he could do. He was already as good as dead. He sat on the bench, half-deafened by the sound of the blades, his arm around Ada. It was his fault that she was here, he knew. He was to blame. Across from him, Skud looked haggard, exhausted. Time slowed. The hum of the blades fell an octave and the craft slowed noticeably. They all started looking out the windows. Below was a cloud of mist, almost perfectly symmetrical, clinging to the water. They started moving down toward it. Altman began to catch glimpses of something within the cloud. A flash here and there. A strut or a bit of metal. They came down slowly, the blades of the helicopter making
the mist roil. He could see the top of a large glass dome, the glass bluish, wet and iridescent in the sudden light. They came very close, hovering maybe ten meters above it, and he thought he could see a glimpse of faces inside. He could see, on the metal struts and partitions of the glass, thousands of tiny jets, each of them releasing a fine spray of mist. Suddenly the jets stopped. The mist drifted around the structure for a moment and then slowly dissipated, revealing the dome and everything beneath it. It was a huge floating compound, hundreds of feet in diameter, made of a series of glass or plastic domes, connected or overlapped like frogs' eggs. Much of it descended well below the surface of the water. Indeed, as much of the structure seemed to be below water as above, perhaps more. The top of the central dome, where the metal supports met, had a flat spot. Carefully, the pilot brought the helicopter down. He touched once but with one strut off the flat spot, and they began to tilt. He went up again, came down even slower, and this time managed it. The cabin door opened from the outside. Two guards, wearing dark military garb, gestured to them to climb out. Altman expected the dome to sway up and down with the swells, but it was big enough that he hardly noticed anything. He climbed down onto the deck then turned to help Ada down. The others soon followed. Together they made their way to a hatch and climbed down it. By descending a short ladder, they reached a platform just under the roof of the dome. The platform had a transparent shaft in the center of it, one side of it open. As he looked at it, a lift rose up into it. The guards gestured and herded them into it. The lift began to descend. It was only once they were off the platform and moving down on the slowly descending lift that Altman really got a sense of how big the dome was. They were probably forty or fifty feet up, the large dome open and nearly empty, the foggy light dappling the glass walls and casting odd shadows. It was a hemisphere rather than a dome, a solid floor running along the bottom of it. Whether there was another reversed hemisphere below, there was no way to tell from here. Stacks of boxes and crates littered the floor along with partially assembled, or perhaps partially disassembled, machinery. Also military guards, lots of them, some of them standing at attention or employed in some small task, most of them walking or chatting idly, perhaps off duty. Here and there, a man in a white coat stood directing a group of them, getting them to lug equipment around. At the bottom of the lift, two more guards stood waiting to meet them. Skud began to ask a question, but one of the guards interrupted him. "No talking," he said. They kept the group there until everyone from the helicopter had made it down, then led them across the floor of the dome. Groups of guards stopped talking as they approached, following them with their eyes. Above, Altman heard the sound of the helicopter taking off again. Immediately the nozzles began to spray and the outside world dissolved in a cloud of mist. The ambient light in the dome dimmed, grew somber. Someone shouted a command, and banks of harsh fluorescents lined along the struts flickered on. The dome brightened with an antiseptic light, inflicting the skin of everyone around them with an unhealthy glow. They came to the edge of the large dome and passed through a sliding door, moving into a much smaller one. Down through a pressure hatch. Into a passage running around the edge of a third dome and curving slowly downward. Halfway around the passage, Altman noticed the water lapping up against the side of the tunnel, going higher with each step. There was a subtle change in the quality of the sound, as if everything here was lightly wrapped in cotton batting. He tapped the side of the corridor with his fingernail, heard only a dull, echoless sound. Something with a pale stretched eye veered out of the deeps and toward his hand, and then darted away again. A few steps later, the water rose all the way over their heads and closed over the top of the passage. They were completely below the surface. They left the corridor and came into a dome cast green from the reflection of the water. Fish and other animals swam around the floating compound and here and there barnacles had begun to take hold. At a distance was a phalanx of submarines, connected by a series of cables to the floating compound, pulling it very slowly along. "It's beautiful," said Ada. "It's terrifying," said Altman. The guard stuck the barrel of his gun firmly against Altman's ribs, hard enough to hurt. "No talking," he said. They twisted to the bottom of the dome and took another lift down, to a series of adjoined chambers, squarish rooms. They passed from one to the next, the guards keeping them in a straight line and hustling them along. It felt to Altman like he was being led to his own execution. Here the water was deeper, darker. The rooms had more metal in them than glass. They were all lit by the same harsh fluorescents. The guards hustled them into another slightly descending corridor, this one ending in a pressure hatch. Altman judged that they were back near the center of the lab, though well below the waterline now. One of the guards opened it, ushered them through. The room inside resembled the bridge of a moon cruiser. It was a spherical chamber with a central elevated command chair. In all directions, down a few steps, were banks of controls, readouts, and holoscreens. An uninterrupted bank of windows ran along the upper half of the wall. The command chair was just enough above the rest of the lab to give an unimpeded view of the water in all directions. The chair spun around to reveal Markoff. He looked down at them, and smiled. Here, in this environment, with his firm jaw and glittering eyes lit by the stark fluorescents, surrounded by water on all sides, he seemed like something monstrous pretending to be human. "Ah, you've arrived," he said without any warmth. "Welcome to your new home." It took a while, but they eventually got used to their new quarters. The lab was nicer than any he'd ever seen, and was compromised only by his having to share it, just as he had in Chicxulub, with Field. He saw this as a particular bit of sadism on Markoff's part, and even wondered if he'd brought Field along only to irritate him. They were still three weeks away from getting to the center of Chicxulub crater. The floating compound was towed forward very slowly and sometimes, depending on weather conditions, had to be stopped. He'd initially thought the command center was the lowest point on the ship, but quickly realized that side corridors led to a tight sequence of chambers just below that. And below that, finally, was an even larger chamber, perhaps the largest chamber on the floating compound. It was carefully pressurized. It had a crane and a water opening and a very high ceiling. It was a last-minute addition to the lab, Altman learned from one of the other scientists, and had been built specifically to accommodate the object in the heart of the crater. Everywhere Altman went, he was amazed. The floating compound, obviously built for a specific but different purpose, was being quickly retrofitted with state-of-the-art equipment. Almost hourly, boats and helicopters arrived, bringing not only brand-new equipment but also devices that were still in prototype phase. Expense was no object. Whatever was down there, they were prepared to spend whatever it took to get to it. They ate meals in shifts at the facility's cafeteria. The researchers stayed in dormitory rooms that, generally speaking, slept six, though there were a few exceptions: Altman and Ada, the only couple on board, were grudgingly given a converted storage closet as a bedroom. It was just big enough to hold their bed and a narrow filing cabinet that they stuffed with their clothes and made into a dresser, but they were still glad for the privacy. As Altman got to know the others, he had to admit that Markoff had assembled a first-rate team. Not knowing exactly what the thing in the crater might be, he had his bases covered. There were a few scientists whose fields were so cutting edge that there weren't names for them yet. There were geophysicists and astrophysicists, robotics experts, geologists, marine biologists, geneticists, oceanologists, engineers of various stripes, a mining foreman, an oceanographer, a seismologist, a volcanologist, a gravitologist, a philosopher, a cognitive scientist, various doctors, a medic specializing in
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