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
would 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.
0 Comments