Dead Space™

by B. K. Evenson

  PART TWO

  CONFINED SPACES

  11

  “He killed himself, just like that,” the man on the vidscreen said. It was less a question than a statement. He had a square-cut jaw and white hair that was swept back and plastered down. Even on the small vidscreen, he was an imposing man. He was wearing a uniform, but his screen had been set to dither out his insignia, to make it impossible to say just what branch of the service he was part of.

  “That’s what they tell me, sir,” said Tanner.

  William Tanner was head of the newly established DredgerCorp Chicxulub, the semisecret branch of the organization that had been set up hurriedly as soon as they’d had some indication that something was going on in the center of the crater.

  Tanner had a military background and specialized in running black ops through dummy corporations. He was running this one under the name Ecodyne. Enter the right command into the system at the right moment, and any sign of a connection to DredgerCorp would instantly vanish from the company files. Then Tanner would vanish and reappear under another name. So far, his operations had gone well, partly because of good luck, partly because he was very good at what he did, which was why he’d been with DredgerCorp for ten years.

  He didn’t know the name of the man on the screen. All he knew was that, three days before, he’d had a vid conference with Lenny Small, the president of DredgerCorp, who’d explained that they were bringing someone in from the outside. When Tanner asked who it was, Small had just smiled.

  “No need for names, Tanner,” he said. He flashed a vid still of the man onto Tanner’s screen. “Here’s your man,” he said. “You tell him anything he wants to know. And you do anything he says.”

  Once Small disconnected, Tanner had shaken his head. Why bring someone in from the outside? Just one more possible way for something to go wrong. Just one more hole he’d have to plug after the operation was over. Small was getting soft in his old age, drinking too much maybe, getting sloppy. Which put everyone at risk. Which put him at risk. Tanner didn’t like that.

  But when he saw the guy on the screen, first heard him talk, first heard the coldness of his voice, he realized that he’d misjudged his boss. This wasn’t just anyone. This was military, someone who’d clearly seen a lot and knew better than any of them what was going on. Privately, Tanner started thinking of him as the Colonel, though he had no idea what the man’s actual rank was, or if he even had the right branch of the service. It wasn’t even possible to guess at where he might be—the background had been deliberately pixilated out, which lent an odd shimmer to the edges of the Colonel’s body. It was the Colonel who had taken the data they’d intercepted from various scientists’ reports and generated a model that gave them an idea of what might be waiting for them at the heart of the crater. It was the Colonel who immediately had the security system replaced, who had seen the potential for the technician who had installed the first system to leave a back door for himself. And when that young geophysicist named Altman started asking around about anomalies in the crater, the Colonel immediately had his phone tapped.

  A few minutes later, the Colonel was back on the vidscreen, telling Tanner that Altman had already had a call from the technician—Bacon was his name. Or no, not quite that, another kind of meat: Ham. Hammond.

  “Too late to trace it,” the Colonel said, “but let’s bring this Hammond in and have a chat.”

  Which brought Tanner back to where he was now, impressed by how impassive and stern the Colonel’s face remained as Tanner told him that Hammond was dead.

  “Any chance they’re lying to you?” asked the Colonel.

  “I’ve seen the body myself,” said Tanner. “He’s dead, all right. They were just trying to bring him in, just talking to him, and he flipped and slit his own throat.”

  “He what?”

  “Slit his own throat. Almost sawed his head off.”

  “Just talking to him, you say,” said the Colonel. “What’s that supposed to mean? People don’t slit their throats when you’re just talking to them.”

  Tanner swallowed. Talking to the Colonel made him nervous.

  “Any chance they nudged him along a little too hard?” the Colonel asked.

  Tanner shook his head. “I’ve worked with these men before,” he said. “They’re completely reliable. They had their orders straight. Trust me, they were as surprised as you and I.”

  The Colonel gave a curt nod. “You think this Altman’s a threat?”

  Tanner shrugged. “I was hoping to find that out from Hammond.”

  “Best guess,” said the Colonel. “Threat or not?”

  Tanner glanced down at the holofiles he’d spread before him, spun them through the holoscreen. Copies of them, he knew, were appearing on the other side of the link, where the Colonel could see them. “I don’t think there’s much to worry about with Altman,” he said. “There’s nothing special about him. Your run-of-the-mill scientist. No Einstein, not really the sort that stands out from the pack.”

  “In my experience,” said the Colonel, “nobody stands out from the pack until they’re given a reason to. It’s not until then that you know whether they’ll bend or break.”

  “I suppose so,” said Tanner. “In my experience, very few people ever get that far.”

  The Colonel nodded, lips tight. “But if Altman does? . . .”

  Tanner thought about it. “I don’t know,” he said. “He doesn’t seem to be the hero type. He’s not likely to be an industrial spy for another corp, I don’t think, and not likely to opt to become one. He seems to have taken his current job exclusively so as to follow his girlfriend down to Chicxulub.”

  “Could be a good cover,” said the Colonel.

  “Could be,” said Tanner. “But you’d probably know better than me if it was, and, if so, for what. I don’t think it’s a cover.”

  The Colonel scanned quickly through the files. “No,” he said, once he’d finished. “I don’t think so either.” He stayed for a moment, staring straight into the screen. To Tanner it felt like the Colonel was staring through him, not even seeing him.

  Finally the Colonel said, “Let’s move things forward quickly.” He turned to his own holobank, sent a rendering through his vidscreen to Tanner. A three-dimensional image. Some kind of vessel. At first Tanner thought it was a spacepod and experienced a brief wave of fear: he had been part of the shock troops for the moon skirmishes, part of the deadly fight over which nation had the right to the resources of the moon. He had spent harrowing hours with his oxygen running out, siphoning from the tanks of the dead and dying around him. Last thing he wanted was to be in space again. But then he noticed the screw engines and realized it wasn’t a spacecraft at all: it was some sort of submarine. Deepwater, from the looks of it.

  “What is it, sir?” he asked.

  “The F/7,” the Colonel said. “Prototype submersible, not released yet, even among our people. I’m sending it to you. Find two men to man it, people you can trust. And quickly. We need to get there first.”

  12

  He chose Dantec, an ex-military man from his own outfit he’d brought with him ten years back when he’d first signed on, someone whom he trusted implicitly and who, in addition, knew how to pilot just about anything. Dantec was good at thinking on his feet, very quick. He also had no compunctions about doing something questionable as long as Tanner was the one asking. But he’d also been known to be a little too quick to resort to violence if something went wrong. Something had happened to Dantec during the moon skirmishes, something that had left his eyes steady but flat, as if nobody was home inside. Tanner wasn’t sure what it was.

  He’s not a bad guy, Tanner told himself the few times Dantec had done something that he found hard to accept, even with his own fairly lax morals. He just doesn’t see things the way I do. And then, as an afterthought, he would often find himself thinking, I’m not a bad guy either.

  Tanner sighed. Bad guys or not, both he and Dantec wo
uld do what they felt, in their own way, they had to do.

  He had to search a little for the other man, pulling him out of DredgerCorp’s North American headquarters. His name was Hennessy and he was a marine geologist, also with quite a bit of submarine experience. He was bald although still fairly young, mid-thirties. He was also well respected, and if he was already with DredgerCorp, that probably meant he wouldn’t object too strongly to something a hair outside the law. But the Colonel’s question about Altman was still nagging at him: If push came to shove and Hennessy realized the full extent of what they were doing, would he bend or break? No way to tell, Tanner thought, but thought he was more likely to go with the flow than to protest or try to stop them.

  Tanner made arrangements through President Small, got Hennessy on the next flight south. By the time the man had reached Puerto Chicxulub, the F/7 had arrived, was waiting for them under a tarp on the deck of an unmarked freighter about fifteen miles away from the center of the crater. Though a rusty hulk on the outside, the freighter was retrofitted with state-of-the-art equipment inside. It was crewed by either military or ex-military—they didn’t wear regulation uniforms, but their training was clear from the tight economy of their movements, their meticulous haircuts, and the way they snapped to obey an order.

  “Should we be careful what we say around the crew?” Tanner asked the Colonel over the vid linkup.

  “You should be careful what you say around anybody,” said the Colonel, and then showed his teeth in a way that Tanner guessed might be a smile. Definitely a carnivore, Tanner thought. Then the Colonel’s lips slid over his teeth again and he said, “Don’t say more than you have to.”

  The F/7 was a bathyscaphe. A prototype drilling model, something made to descend to great depths and then bore quickly down through solid rock. Hennessy responded to it like a kid waking up on Christmas morning to find a pony waiting downstairs. He went around the craft with Tanner and Dantec in tow, babbling about the combination of the titanium alloy drill and the molecular pulverizers meant to keep the path clear. Tanner and Dantec just pretended to humor him.

  “Don’t tell me we’re going down into Chicxulub,” said Hennessy, excited. “I’ve always wanted to go there. What are we looking for?”

  You’ll know soon enough, thought Tanner grimly. “Just a few dives,” he said as casually as possible. “Just something to run the F/7 through its paces. Routine.”

  Over the next few days, Tanner had them do just that. They put the F/7 through its paces, first seeing how maneuverable it was gliding along the surface, then testing it in deeper waters. and then finally testing the drill and the pulverizers. It wasn’t the most maneuverable craft Hennessy had ever seen, but that wasn’t the point of a bathyscaphe: it had to be solid and able to withstand tremendous pressure when it dived deep. On the surface it bobbed drunkenly along, slowly tacking in the direction it wanted to go. Underwater it was better, more responsive. And it was best of all once they had it boring through mud and into rock. Even when the drill was on full and biting into hard rock, the craft was stable, hardly shaking at all. Rear thrusters kept it up against the rock, and the drill itself pulled them forward if the threading had anything to grab. Meanwhile the pulverizers turned the remaining rock into a fine gravel and forced it back to where it caught in the thrusters and kicked away or dissolved entirely. Hennessy claimed he’d never seen anything like it.

  They took the F/7 down seven or eight times, test runs. At first, Dantec just watched what Hennessy did, listened to him talk, observed him. And then one day, suddenly, Dantec informed Hennessy that it was his turn.

  “But this is a delicate piece of equipment,” cautioned Hennessy. “You need to have months and months of training before—”

  “You’re making my headache worse. Move,” said Dantec. And Hennessy, turning away from the instrument panel and taking stock of his partner for perhaps the first time, seeing his dead expression and his steady eyes, did.

  That night, just as he had sat down on the bed and begun to take his shoes off, Tanner heard a knock at the door.

  “Come in,” he said, continuing to work on his laces until he saw a familiar pair of boots appear. He looked up. Why is it, he wondered, that Dantec always looks so predatory?

  “It’s you,” he said to Dantec. “Everything coming along nicely?”

  Dantec nodded. “I’ve figured it all out,” he said.

  “You can pilot the thing if you need to?”

  “After a moon lander, it’s a piece of cake,” said Dantec. “I won’t have any problems.”

  “What about using the drill?”

  Dantec shrugged. “Nothing too complicated to it,” he said. “I know how to drill a bore tunnel and can probably figure out how to make it do anything else we need. Hennessy is no longer essential. If he gets cold feet or something goes wrong, I can take over.”

  “What do you mean if something goes wrong?” asked Tanner.

  Dantec shrugged. “Just being prepared,” he said.

  “If something does go wrong,” said Tanner slowly. “I prefer you don’t kill him.”

  Dantec hesitated, then nodded. “Your preference is duly noted,” he said.

  The next morning found Tanner speaking to an image of the Colonel on the vidscreen. “We’re ready,” he said. “Anytime you want we can move the ship over the center of the crater and drop the F/7. Both pilots are trained and comfortable with the vessel. Both are eager to leave.”

  “Very good,” said the Colonel. He seemed again to be looking through Tanner, as if Tanner weren’t there. “Move the freighter into position tonight,” he said.

  “Tonight?”

  “Weigh anchor just before dusk. I want you in position by 2100 hours and ready to go by 2200. No need to tell your two pilots anything or do anything to make them suspect or get word back to someone if you’re wrong and they’re spies. Just wake them up and get them on board in time to drop the F/7 well before midnight.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Tanner.

  The Colonel reached out to disconnect the link, then stopped. “You look tired, Tanner,” he said. “Everything all right?”

  “I’m fine, sir,” said Tanner. “Just a little headache. I’ve been having trouble sleeping. But nothing to worry about.”

  “Tomorrow may be a historic moment,” the Colonel speculated.

  “Yes,” said Tanner.

  “What do you think is down there?”

  Tanner had been wondering the same thing for days now. How could something seemingly man-made end up at the bottom of the crater, buried under miles of rock?

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it’s just a natural formation that somehow doesn’t seem natural. Or maybe it’s something man-made that’s been placed there God only knows how. Or maybe . . . ,” he said, but couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence. It was too big to get his mind around.

  “Maybe what?” asked the Colonel.

  Tanner shook his head to clear it, which just made the headache throb more. “I really don’t know, sir,” he said.

  “I’ll tell you what you’re thinking since you’re not man enough to say it yourself,” said the Colonel. “You’re thinking, ‘Sure, it may be constructed, but not by us, not by humans.’”

  Tanner didn’t say anything.

  “Believe it or not, Tanner, it’s a genuine possibility. That’s what we’re hoping for. The first contact with intelligent life other than our own.”

  It made Tanner dizzy to think about it, even scared him a little. If that was what it was, if that’s what happened, it could change everything. “With a little luck, we’ll know soon enough,” he said in as steady a voice as he could muster. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed, sir,” he added, and then cut the link.

  13

  He was trying to run, but wasn’t getting anywhere. His arms and legs were flailing in the air, but nothing was happening. He couldn’t even feel the ground beneath his feet. And there was something wrong with the air. Ev
ery time he tried to breathe it, he ended up coughing, choking. He was slowly suffocating. He looked frantically around him, but on every side it was the same—an endless gray expanse, nothing solid, nothing definite, just he himself, alone, floating in a void, dying.

  He knew he was dead, but he still, somehow, was. He was floating, his eyes open but seeing nothing, his body turning slowly around and around. There was nothing there but him, but he wasn’t exactly there. He heard something. Quiet, like the sound of an insect scuttling over paper. It slowly got louder. It blossomed into a loud whisper. A human voice, speaking to him.

  Hennessy, it said. It was a familiar voice. He wished it would speak louder than a whisper so he could be sure about who it was.

  Hennessy, it said again. He heard it close to his other ear, and then in two slightly different whispers at once. It wasn’t just one voice, he suddenly realized, but legion, all of them whispering, all of them saying his name. Hennessy, Hennessy, Hennessy.

  And then, spinning around, the gray space around him suddenly didn’t look so gray anymore. It was changing. Transforming. Becoming something else.

  He knew he was dead, and he couldn’t move. All he could do was stay there, floating, body spinning slowly about, listening to the voices, as the blank gray void that had been there all around him quickly became more and more textured. For a moment it was striated, run through with creases and lines, and then those shifted and crumpled in a way that reminded him of a human brain. And then these, too, tightened and shifted, beginning to take on vague features. It was not a void, he realized, but a tightly packed mass of bodies, stuck to one another, fading into one another, all of them dead.

  He wanted to close his eyes but couldn’t. There were thousands of them, maybe more, and as the faces became more and more differentiated, he began to realize that they were people he knew, all of them dead. There was his wife there, her neck broken from the accident, his mother and father, both withered and decrepit just as they had been after the cancer took them, and others, many others, whom he hadn’t forgotten but who, upon noticing them, he knew were all dead.