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 barotraumatism and decompression sickness, countless mechanics and technicians, a housekeeping and kitchen staff. There was even a linguist and, with Ada, an anthropologist.
A number of them were researchers who, although once quite famous, had vanished from the public eye years before. None of them would speak about what they’d been doing in the intervening years and if pressed, spoke only of “coming out of retirement.” Retirement, my ass, Showalter whispered to him. Altman agreed: if they were here now, it was because they had been working covertly for military intelligence in the meantime. They were given away by being the only ones who didn’t seem surprised at the massive expense and effort going into the expedition: they took it all for granted.
What disturbed Altman even more were the number of military guards present and how actively they were training. It was clear—or in any case seemed clear to Altman—that Markoff had some notion that they had to be prepared for combat.
There were three possibilities for this that Altman could come up with. One, the least disturbing to him, was that Markoff was simply being a soldier himself. That he thought the military weren’t needed but that as long as they were here, they deserved to be put through their paces. The second, more disturbing, was that Markoff expected someone to try to take the object away from them, that he was aware there were competing interests trying to get their hands on it, or would be. The third, and the worst of all, was: perhaps Markoff was expecting the object to fight back.
Which made Altman realize something he should have realized a long time before. Without having an altogether clear idea of what it was, Markoff thought of the object at the center of the crater as a weapon. Maybe he wasn’t intending the extraction for the betterment of mankind or the advancement of science after all.
Altman talked it over with Ada, told her his suspicions.
“Does that surprise you?” she asked. “Markoff’s ruthless. He thinks of everything as a potential weapon. Even people. He’s a very dangerous man.”
He quickly found that a lot of places were out of bounds to him. There were certain areas, certain sets of laboratories both below and above the waterline, that his keycard did not grant him access to. Sometimes he could get in following on the heels of a careless scientist or guard, but he was never allowed to remain long enough to get a good sense of what was happening. Other rooms were even more off-limits, protected by round-the-clock guards. Field was in one of these, but when Altman asked him about it, he got nowhere, less because Field was suspicious than because Field didn’t see enough of the big picture to understand what was actually going on.
After just a few days, he started to notice he was being watched. It began as just a vague feeling, but grew stronger. He thought at first it was just paranoia, until Showalter noticed it as well. The guards regarded him in a different way than they did many of the other researchers, and whenever he’d spent some time alone in one of the corridors, often just to gather his thoughts, a guard suddenly showed up. Several of the technicians seemed to be paying him special attention. One man in particular, a man who always wore the same rumpled coverall, seemed always to be lingering, just behind him.
“What should I do?” he asked Ada.
“What can you do?” she said. “If they want to watch you, they can watch you. There’s nothing you can do about it. You’re in their power.”
She was right, he knew. Who was he going to complain to? Markoff? Markoff had given him three alternatives: be part of the team, be locked up, or end up dead. Maybe Markoff had had his cake and eaten it, too: maybe he was both part of the team and locked up at the same time. The floating compound made a good prison. And it was a better alternative than being dead.
“What do you think is going on?” he asked Ada.
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t want it to start all over again, Michael. It’s dangerous to ask yourself these questions. So what if we can’t go into certain parts of the ship? We’re not the only ones in that position. Most of the researchers from Chicxulub are being treated in exactly the same way.”
“Not Field,” said Altman. “Field has access.”
“Limited access,” she said. “One room only. I’ve been watching. Showalter and Skud don’t,” she said, ticking them off on her fingers. “Lots of others don’t as well.”
He didn’t answer, just turned away, thinking. There were ways of finding out. All he’d have to do was to replicate a card and then—
His thoughts were interrupted when she slapped him on the cheek.
“Don’t,” she said, pointing a finger at his face.
“What?”
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “You don’t need to have full run of the place in order to do your job. If you did, you’d only get into trouble. I want you to promise me you’ll leave it alone.”
He looked at her for a long moment, finally shook his head. “I can’t,” he said.
She slapped him once more for good measure and turned away. He, not knowing what else to do, wrapped his arms around her to prevent her from going. She struggled at first, not willing to meet his eyes, but he kept hold of her until finally she began to soften a little.
“You never listen to me,” she said. “I’m always right and you never listen.”
“I always listen,” he claimed. “I just don’t always do what you say.”
Finally she met his eyes. “Damn it, Michael. Promise me you’ll be careful this time,” she said. “Be discreet. Promise me you won’t do anything to end up dead.”
“All right,” he said, finally letting her go. “That I can promise.”
He was careful. He learned more about the floating compound, talking to some of the mechanics and engineers. It was a converted semisubmersible rig, mobile, made to float half in the water and half out. The mist, which they referred to as the blur effect, was sprayed by high-grade jets, their apertures less than one hundred microns in diameter. The water was forced through the jet
s and onto extremely fine needle points, causing it to atomize into droplets so small that most of them remain suspended in the air. If anyone with any sort of advanced equipment wanted to determine what was in the cloud, they would have no difficulty, but it was enough to keep at least a few of the curious ships and boats away.
On the second or third day, a sturdy man with an exceptionally frizzy red beard joined him in the cafeteria. He stretched one large hand across the table, shook Altman’s hand.
“Jason Hendricks,” he said. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”
Altman nodded. “Michael Altman,” he said. “I just got here.”
Hendricks gave a slow, easygoing smile that Altman immediately liked. “None of us have been here for long,” he said. “I just got here a week or so ago myself.”
He began to eat, and almost immediately his beard was full of crumbs and scraps of food. “What brings you here, Michael?”
Altman thought a moment about what to say, finally settled on “They’re still figuring out what to do with me, I’m afraid.”
“Me, I’m a pilot,” said Hendricks. He rubbed his hands through his beard to work the crumbs out and then wiped his palms on his shirt. “Submarines mostly. Was trained by the navy to pilot a midsize sub. Also did some work with submersibles for a construction firm.”
“You must enjoy it,” said Altman.
“I like it well enough,” said Hendricks. “Also spent some time in a small one-man affair working for treasure hunters in the Caribbean. Had to reconsider that line of work when I realized the treasure they had me looking for was a sunken boat full of heroin.”
“Probably a good decision,” said Altman.
“Probably,” said Hendricks, his eyes crinkling up warmly as he smiled. “Though maybe if I’d stuck with it, I’d be rich by now. Either that or very, very high. You think I’m going to have the same ethical dilemma with this job?”
They met the next day at the same table, then the next, and soon Altman had come to think of Hendricks as a friend, as someone he could trust. After a few days, Hendricks told him more about what he was doing, that he was to be on a two-man team working with a bathyscaphe. He’d had little enough experience with bathyscaphes, but wasn’t worried: there was still plenty of time before they arrived.
“I’m slated to copilot with some deep-sea explorer guy named Edgar Moresby,” he told Altman. “Man’s in his late sixties and has skin that looks like it’s been cured. Drinks like a fish. Not much of a pilot as far as I’m concerned. Claims to be the descendent of Robert Moresby.”
“Who?” asked Altman.
Hendricks shrugged. “Don’t ask me,” he said. “Some Brit hydrographer and naval officer. He brings it up any chance he gets.”
Moresby had no interest in going out on Hendricks’s practice runs, claiming he could pilot a bathyscaphe drunk and in his sleep. “And I often have,” he had told Hendricks. “No better way of getting the job done, if you ask me.” But as long as he had the choice, he preferred to do his drinking in the privacy of his own berth.
“That leaves me in a dilemma,” said Hendricks. “I can’t go out alone. What if something goes wrong?”
Altman waited for a few moments so as not to appear too eager before answering. “I’ll go with you,” he said, trying to sound casual.
“Would you?” said Hendricks, and gave Altman a warm smile. “That’d be a big help.”
He fully expected Markoff to find out and put a stop to it, but either news hadn’t gotten back to him or he didn’t care that Altman was going out in the bathyscaphe. He didn’t learn much new from either the bathyscaphe or Hendricks, but he was at least keeping busy.
Plus, Altman quickly found that he had an aptitude for piloting. He knew instinctively how much to flex the controls to get the bathyscaphe to perform how he wanted it to. When asked to dive to a certain depth or rise to a certain level, he could let in just enough water or release by feel just enough pellets to do it smoothly and precisely. He found it curiously satisfying and gratifying in a way that geophysics never had been.
“You should be piloting instead of me,” said Hendricks one day.
“Yeah, right,” said Altman. “I don’t think Markoff would ever agree to it.”
But surprisingly enough, when Hendricks asked Markoff, he did agree. It’d be good to have a backup pilot, Markoff claimed, in case anything went wrong. But that was not to say that Altman was off the hook for his other tasks. He’d still be expected to follow any instructions that the lead researchers gave him and to continue to take his geophysical readings. It was just that now he might sometimes be asked to take these readings below the water, from within the bathyscaphe.
34
They were still six or seven days away from the center of the crater when Markoff decided without warning to put the bathyscaphe through deepwater tests. Hendricks and Moresby were to be carried by freighter thirty miles or so ahead of the facility. There they were to dive as deep as they could, until they reached the ocean floor, test the equipment, the air systems, the communications systems, sonar, lighting, et cetera, take a few readings, remain in place for at least an hour, then ascend. Two submarines were to go along and stand by in case assistance was required.
Hendricks showed up at Altman’s door shortly before he was scheduled to leave. He looked nervous.
“I’ve got a problem,” he claimed. “It’s Moresby. He tied one on last night as soon as he heard we’d be going down.”
“Is he all right to go down?”
“Right now he can’t even see,” said Hendricks. “I’ve been trying to walk him out of it, but I’ve got to supervise the transfer of the bathyscaphe. Do you think you . . .”
He trailed off, waited.
“Maybe you should say something to Markoff,” said Altman.
“I don’t want to do that,” said Hendricks. “He already warned Moresby once, and I don’t want to do anything to get him fired. I know it’s a lot to ask, but will you look in on him, see if there’s anything that can be done?”
Altman nodded. “But I’m doing it not for Moresby but for you.”
Hendricks smiled. “Thanks, man. I owe you one.”
Altman clambered through the tunnels and up decks to Moresby and Hendricks’s cabin. He knocked on the door. There was no answer. He hesitated, knocked again. When there was still no answer, he tried the door and, finding it unlocked, entered.
It was a narrow space with two berths, the top belonging to Hendricks, the bottom to Moresby. The room reeked of vomit. Moresby was half in and half out of the bottom bunk, as still as a corpse. Altman shook him.
At first there was no response. After a few more minutes of shaking, he groaned slightly, his eyes barely opening before closing again.
Altman shook him harder, slapped him.
Moresby blinked, coughed. “Give me a minute to steady myself,” he said, and groped a bottle off the floor beneath the bed.
“You don’t need any more,” said Altman. “Come on, get up.”
“Who are you to tell me what I need?” asked Moresby. He tried to stand up and nearly fell. “I’m a Moresby, by God, a descendant of . . .”
He was still babbling out his pedigree while Altman dragged him down the hall and thrust him, fully clothed, into the shower, turning the cold tap all the way open. A moment later, Moresby was shouting. Ten minutes later, he was dressed in dry clothes and subdued. He was pale, was sweating a sour smell, and his hands were still shaking, but he was more or less presentable.
“You’re all right?” Altman asked.
“Just nerves,” said Moresby. “I’ll be all right once I’m down there.”
Altman nodded.
“You won’t tell anybody, will you?” said Moresby, refusing to meet his gaze now.
“Hendricks doesn’t want me to,” he said. “If it was up to me, I would.”
He led Moresby to the submarine bay, where Markoff was planning to pass them in review before leaving. The subma
rine pilots were already there, the bathyscaphe transferred.
“You stay here,” said Altman.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to find Hendricks.”
It might have been different if he’d found Hendricks sooner, or if the other submarine pilots had kept an eye on Moresby. Or if Markoff had come right away, before Moresby had had time to have second thoughts, but it took almost half an hour for him to arrive. As it was, Hendricks and Altman made it back just a few moments before Markoff, and it wasn’t until he’d started speaking that Altman realized Moresby was nowhere to be seen.
Markoff took the review very seriously. He wore a freshly pressed dress uniform and was flanked by two guards on either side. He thanked the pilots and crews and technicians for their efforts, reminded the other two submarine crews that they would stand by on the freighter in case anything went wrong and the bathyscaphe failed to rise. As for the bathyscaphe, if for any reason Hendricks and Moresby—
He stopped. “Where’s Moresby?” he asked.
Hendricks looked around. “He was here just a moment ago, sir,” he said.
In the end, two guards discovered him. He’d managed to find a bottle somewhere and had downed a good bit of it. Drunk, he had fallen from one of the lifts and broken his neck. It’s my fault, Altman thought. I should have watched him more carefully. He looked over and caught Hendricks’s eye, realized that Hendricks was thinking much the same thing, was blaming himself.
Markoff, however, didn’t react at all, and rejected out of hand Hendricks’s request to put the dive off for a day out of respect for the dead. “Just as well,” he said when the body was brought to him. “That way we’ll be sure to get the geophysical readings right. Sound all right to you, Altman?”
He had to repeat it twice before Altman realized he was being addressed. “Fine,” said Altman, trying not to stare at the body, at the way the head hung at an odd, impossible angle.
They took a boat to the freighter in silence, the bathyscaphe being towed behind. Once there, the guards held the bathyscaphe steady as they loaded on.
Dead Space™ Page 15
