"Who the hell do you think it is?" said Altman. "Altman?" he said. "How can I be sure it's you?" "Come on, Harmon. Open up." "No," he said. "You have to tell me something that nobody but you, nobody but the real you, would know about me." What, was he crazy? "I don't know you that well, Harmon. I don't have anything to tell." "I'm sorry," he said, "I can't open it," and cut the feed. Altman reengaged the link. When Harmon picked it up, he said, "Don't disconnect. Turn on the vid feed and you'll see it's me." Harmon did. Altman saw his worried face squinting, peering at him. One hand was clutching something at the end of a necklace. "I don't know," he said slowly. "A vid can be faked." "You're paranoid," said Altman, and then realized that yes, that was exactly what he was. The Marker was making him that way. But, he remembered, Harmon was also a believer. "Look," Altman said quickly, "you were the one who told me that the creatures can't come close to the Marker, right? If that's true, I must not be one of them. If I was one of them, I wouldn't be able to get this close. The Marker will protect you if you believe in it. In the name of the Marker, open the door." Harmon gave him a long, solemn look that Altman couldn't interpret; then he reached out and pressed a button ending the vid transmission. A moment later the door opened. Altman walked in slowly, his hands up. "Ah, it is you," Harmon said. "Marker be praised."
64 "I knew you were coming," said Harmon. "I just knew." He was, Altman noted, sweating profusely. His responses were disconnected, his voice zigzagging back and forth between being affectless and flat and a panic-stricken roar. He was clearly not in his right mind. "Actually, I called you and told you I was coming," said Altman. "No!" Harmon said, his voice rising. "You didn't tell me! I knew!" "Calm down," said Altman. "How do you know I'm the one?" "You're the only one who has come," said Harmon, speaking with a calm simplicity. "It has to be you because you're the only one. Everyone else is dead." Altman slowly nodded. He might be able to play Harmon's belief in the Marker to his advantage, he realized. He wanted Harmon to believe whatever he had to believe to allow Altman to do what he needed to do. "I came here," said Harmon. "This is the first place that I came and then, when I saw that they couldn't come near me, I understood why. The Marker wanted me here. I used to mistrust the Marker, but I was wrong. The Marker is protecting me. The Marker loves me." "And me," said Altman. "And you," Harmon agreed. He reached out and took Altman's arm. His hand was feverish, burning hot. "Do you believe?" he asked. Altman shrugged. "Sure," he said. "Why not." "And have you understood my message?" he asked. He looked at Altman expectantly, clearly waiting. "Message received," Altman finally said. Harmon smiled. "I asked you to gather some information," said Altman. "Do you have it?" Harmon gestured to a holoscreen. There was a series of holofiles, some of which Altman had seen and some that he had not. There were vid images of the interior of the first bathyscaphe, taken after the bathyscaphe had been brought up. He had seen bits of it before, first in the intercepted vid from Hennesey and then later, from the outside, through the window. As the camera taking the images scanned slowly, he recognized the scrawlings in blood as symbols from the Marker. But, he also realized, they were not in the same order or sequence as they appeared on the Marker. What he'd seen before as a symptom of madness now actually struck him as rudimentary calculations and seemed to contain a glimmer of sense. In addition, there were analyses of the Marker 's structure and density, hundreds of dissections of its transmissions, speculations, unproven theories. There was information about the different genetic codes that Showalter and Guthe had read into the signal and the Marker. There were, in the end, more files than he could read--even more files than he could skim. Thousands and thousands of pages and images and hours and hours of vids. What was important and what wasn't? What was he going to do? How was he to start? Harmon was crouched on the deck beside his chair, staring at the Marker. "Have you ever seen anything like it?" asked Harmon. "No," said Altman. "It's good," said Harmon. "It loves us, I can tell. I touched it and when I touched it, I felt its love." "You felt something?" said Altman. "I felt its love!" insisted Harmon, shouting now, apoplectic. "It loves us! Touch it and you'll see!" Altman shook his head. "Touch it! Touch it!" Harmon was still screaming. And so Altman, not knowing how else to calm him, stood up, walked across the chamber, and did. It was not love he felt, but something different, something that was not a feeling at all. At first it was as if he was experiencing all the hallucinations he had had at once, as if he was experiencing all the experiences any of the others had had, all laid over one another. Most of it interfered with itself, created a kind of blinding static that blotted itself out, but beyond that, and in spite of it, he could see something he hadn't seen before. He could see that the hallucinations were not a function of the Marker but of something else that stood in opposition to it, of something that was ingrained in his own brain. The hallucinations had been trying to protect them, but they had failed: the process had begun. Now all he could do was try to satisfy the Marker enough that the process would stop but not do enough to lead to full-fledged Convergence. And then, suddenly, something cleared and he could see past the hallucinations to glimpse the Marker itself. It was as if it were changing the structure of his brain, reworking connections, rewiring circuits, to make him understand. Suddenly he felt he could see the structure of the Marker from the inside, and in a way that gave him a complex appreciation of it. It filled his head and set it aflame, and then it poured out through the cracks in his skull and took him with it. When he came conscious, Harmon was over him, stroking his head, a beatific smile on his face. "You see?" he said when he noticed that Altman's eyes were open. "You see?" Altman pushed him away and stood, stalking quickly over to the monitor. He began to type frantically, sketching a structure out as well. His hands were moving faster than his brain, working on different bits and pieces of it all at once, flipping from holofile to holofile and back again. He was, he realized with a shock, recording the basic rudiments for a blueprint of a new Marker. It was sloppy and skew. There were a lot of unanswered questions, a lot of mysteries to be sorted out, but that was definitely what he was doing. "What is it?" Harmon was asking from behind him. "What's going on?" "I've figured it out," Altman answered. "I thought I'd figured it out before, but I was still struggling to understand what it meant. Now I know." He worked awhile longer; how long he couldn't say. His head was spinning, his fingers aching. When he had finished, he turned to Harmon. "I need your help," he said. "What is it?" "I need you to help me translate what I have here, best as you can, and feed the signal back to the Marker." At first Harmon just stared and then he slowly sat down, took a closer look. He went through it, slowly. Suddenly he glanced up at Altman, the first coherent look he'd given since Altman had entered. "This is the Marker," he said, awe in his voice. "You understood it, just as she asked you to do." Altman nodded. "You want me to transmit to the Marker the image of itself?" he asked. "Yes," said Altman. "Marker be praised," said Harmon. And then he added, "Altman be praised." It made his skin crawl to hear Harmon say his name like that, but he bit his tongue, said nothing. What he had done was far from complete, would require years and years more work, but hopefully it would be enough right now to stop the process of Convergence. It took a few hours more, and a few attempts to transmit in different ways, before something connected. The Marker sent out a short, intense burst of energy, and then, as suddenly as it had begun broadcasting, it fell silent. "What's wrong with it?" asked Harmon. "It's resting," said Altman. "We've done what it wanted us to do. We've saved the world."
65 After it was over, he sat there for a long time, thinking. Why did the Marker want to be reproduced? What effect would it have? What did it mean? And if the hallucinations, the visions, weren't from the Marker but were opposed to it, where were they from? Which of the two was on their side? He still didn't trust it. No, what he had felt when he touched the Marker was not love but nothing--total absolute indifference to the human race. They were a means to an end. What that end was, he wasn't certain, but felt, more than ever, that for the Marker they were
expendable, a necessary step on the way to something else. When the new Marker was constructed--and he had no doubt that that was what the Marker intended--what would happen then? He had stopped the Convergence, but perhaps by doing so he had jump-started a discovery that would lead humanity to an even worse fate. Then again, another part of him responded, what if you're wrong? What if you're being paranoid? Or what if the love Harmon had felt was his own feelings, his own emotions mirrored back to him: his own religious love for the Marker being reflected as the Marker 's love for him? What if the indifference Altman sensed was not something inherent to the Marker, but something integral to himself, reflected back? He sat there thinking, thinking, but getting nowhere. What was he going to do now? Now that he'd given the Marker what it wanted, had he inadvertently made things worse for humanity? "We'll have to go," he said to Harmon. "The Marker wants us to leave." "How do you know?" "It told me," said Altman. Harmon nodded. He went to the Marker and touched his lips to it. He was no longer paranoid, no longer jumpy, no doubt because the Marker had stopped broadcasting. But he was still a believer. "Where are we going?" Harmon asked. "To the control room," said Altman. "I have something to take care of, and then we can leave." He didn't know what he expected--maybe that when the Marker stopped broadcasting the creatures would lose power, would collapse, even fall apart. But it wasn't like that. When they left the Marker chamber and went down the hall and opened the door at the far end, it was to find the strange spiderlike creature still there, still waiting for him. It was a little slower maybe, a little more listless, but it was still there, still eager to kill them both. Seeing that only strengthened his commitment to do what he planned. They opened the door and saw it, and the creature's back began to bristle. Altman grabbed Harmon, pulled them both behind the doorframe. The strange conical projections it cast from its back whipped down the hall and past them, whunking into the walls. He stuck his head back out and waited for what it would do next. All three heads, he saw, were loose now, scurrying toward them. He thumbed on the plasma cutter. "You might want to stay back," he said to Harmon, and then stepped into the doorway. He caught the first with the blade as it leaped at him, separating the head from its tendrils. The head, still grimacing, bounced and richoted off the wall and he crushed it with his foot. The second he caught with an upward thrust as it scurried along the ceiling just above the doorframe. Then he had to step back and press against the wall again as the creature slung more barbs at him. The last, he had to pry off Harmon's neck. It had gotten past him somehow, he didn't know how. He didn't even know it had attached itself to Harmon, and wouldn't have known if Harmon hadn't grabbed him from behind and shook him. He'd turned, saw Harmon going purple, thought Not this again, and sliced the thing in half, somehow managing not to take Harmon's face off along with it. Harmon coughed, rubbed his throat. "Altman be praised," he suggested in a hoarse whisper. "Stop saying that," said Altman. "Altman doesn't want to be praised." He glanced again around the door frame. The creature was moving forward now, its spearlike legs rattling down the hall and coming toward them. He put his finger to his lips, warning Harmon to be quiet, then flattened himself against the wall. He heard it coming, the tapping of each leg a kind of complex, echoing rhythm that suddenly made it difficult for him to tell exactly how close it really was. He heard it pause at the doorframe. He kept expecting it to sidle through, but for some reason it didn't. Instead, it turned around and started back the other way. Shit, thought Altman, so much for ambushes. And rushed around the door frame and after it. It spun around, surprisingly quick despite its many legs. He sheared off the one nearest to him, then threw himself to the floor as its back bristled and it spat its barbs. He sliced off another leg on the same side, almost lost his foot as it stabbed one of its remaining legs down. Another swipe and it crashed to one side, disabled. He dismembered it, careful this time not to cut into the yellow and black tumor. He went back for Harmon and they continued down the hall. They passed the laboratory doors and saw that they were open. Inside the second one, two of the creatures with scythes turned about in circles, performing a strange dance, as if the Marker, before falling silent, had sent them a message that they could not interpret and now they were caught in some kind of glitch, forced to perform the same motion again and again. Not knowing what else to do, Altman moved quietly past. If they noticed him, they didn't show it. Instead of going through the next hall and into the submarine bay, they took the side passage and cut up and back, toward the command center. There were two more of the scythers, these directly in the hall, same lost movements, blocking the way. But as soon as he touched one with the plasma cutter, both of them attacked. Harmon turned and, wailing, fled back down the hall. Altman cut the legs out from under one, but couldn't get the weapon around before the other on was him, its scythes wrapped around him and drawing him in, its mouth pressed to his neck and tearing at it, making a moaning sound, the neck burning as well from whatever fluid the dead mouth was secreting. He cut into its chest and through its torso and its legs fell off but the top half of it continued to cling. The other one, legless and all, had dragged itself forward by its scythes and was trying to climb up his legs. He tried to pull the head of the first away, tried to drag it off his neck, but couldn't. The cutter was still trapped. He held down the button and brought it up, carving slowly through the creature's torso then over to the side to cut off one of the scythes. From here he could shake it off, then stomp both it and its companion out of existence. He stumbled back down the hall until he found Harmon. "Come on," he said tiredly. "Let's go." He didn't have authorization to open the command center door, but Harmon did. The command center was clear, empty inside, perhaps because the Marker was there just above it. He went over to the console, found what he was looking for. He entered the sequence in, found himself locked out. He entered it in again. OVERRIDE? Y/N the holoscreen asked him. Y. ENTER AUTHORIZATION CODE . "Harmon," he asked. "Do you have an authorization code?" "Why?" said Harmon. "What do you want it for?" "I don't want it," said Altman. "The Marker does." After a brief pause, Harmon gave the code to him. He entered it. Immediately an alarm started to sound. FLOODING SEQUENCE WILL BEGIN IN 10:00. CANCEL SEQUENCE Y/N? "What did you do?" shouted Harmon. N. The countdown began. SEQUENCE CAN BE CANCELED AT ANY TIME BY PRESSING N . Harmon was screaming behind him. "What are you doing?" he was shouting over and over again. Altman grabbed him and shook him. "I'm sinking it," he said. Harmon had a hurt look on his face, seemed ready to melt into tears. "Why?" he asked. "To protect the Marker," lied Altman. "It was down there for a reason, to keep it safe. And to kill these creatures. I promise you, Harmon, this is what needs to happen." "You have to stop the countdown," said Harmon. "No," said Altman. "Then I'll stop it," said Harmon. "No," said Altman, holding the plasma cutter up near his face. "You're coming with me. Either that or I'll kill you." The pressure inside the station had already started to shift. There was a trickle of water in the corridor as he entered, the process starting slowly, nothing that couldn't be reversed. The system, he knew, would not commit fully until the full ten minutes had passed. At first Harmon was in a rage, and then overcome with tears, which slowly reduced to sniffles and then petered out entirely. Altman thought for a moment he'd have to kill him, but finally he allowed himself to be coaxed, prodded along. Altman looked at his chronometer. "We don't have much time," he said. "I don't know what creatures are still alive on the decks above or how long it'd take me to kill them. We'll have to go out the submarine bay." "I didn't know there was still a submarine there," said Harmon. "There isn't," said Altman. "Then how--" "We're going to swim," said Altman. "I'll flood the bay and open the doors. As soon as they open, swim out as quickly as you can and make for the surface. There's a rope. If you see it, follow it up. It'll lead you to the boat platform. I've left a boat moored there. I'll be right behind you." Eyes wide, Harmon nodded. They moved out. Altman took the lead, stayed on watch. Nothing. There must be more of the creatures in the facility, but he wasn't seeing them. He kept expecting them to
crash their way out through a vent or to hear a door slide open behind him and find one suddenly looming over him, but no, nothing. That was almost worse than if there was something. It kept him tense, expectant, a coiled spring of energy that never could release itself. By the time they reached the door of the submarine bay, there were two minutes left. The water was up to their knees in the corridor and when he tried to open the bay doors, they wouldn't respond. He threw the override and forced the doors open enough that they could slip through, the water from the hall pouring in along with them. He tried to shut the door, but couldn't get it shut. As long as it wasn't shut, he wouldn't be able to flood the chamber. He called for Harmon to help him, but the man just stood there, motionless, staring down over the edge of the catwalk. Altman finally had to yell at him, threaten him. Together, with Altman working the manual controls and Harmon pushing the door along, they forced it shut. "Swim higher in the chamber as the water rises," Altman said. "Keep your head above it until you get to the ceiling, then, once it starts to cover you, dive down and swim out the bottom. Got it?" Harmon didn't respond. Altman slapped him. "Got it?" he yelled. Harmon nodded. They began to flood the chamber. At first Harmon just stood there, watching the cold water rise, swirling up around his legs, and for a moment Altman just expected him to stand there, watching, not moving, and drown. But when the water reached his chest, he suddenly took a deep gasping breath and began to paddle. "Remember," called Altman, floating now himself. "Up to the ceiling and then down and out the bottom and then all the way up to the surface. But not too fast." 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.
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