20
He dropped the iron bar, exhausted, and limped back to his
chair. He wiped the blood off his face with his sleeve and
closed his eyes.
It was only after sitting there like that for a few moments,
his breath gradually slowing, that he started to realize what
he’d just done.
He opened his eyes and saw the mess on the floor and
retched. It was barely recognizable as a human form
anymore, the limbs twisted and turned in the wrong
directions, the head flattened out and split open on the top.
It was much worse than when his brother had exploded. He
looked away. Had he done that? How? Dantec was a
skilled and seasoned fighter, much stronger than he was—
when Dantec had grabbed his shoulder, he’d been
paralyzed with pain. No, he couldn’t have done this, he
couldn’t have gotten away with it.
But if not him, then who?
And where was his brother? Was this really happening or
was it just what they wanted him to believe?
“Shane?” he said.
His comlink suddenly crackled. Tanner’s voice, unless it
was someone pretending to be Tanner. “—eed me. Plea—
spond. Hennes—”
He went to the screen, which was now spattered with
blood.
“Tanner?” he said. “I’ve lost Shane.”
“—aa—” said Tanner. Hennessy saw his face for just a
minute on the scanner, looking grim; then a startled
expression crossed Tanner’s face and he was drowned out
in static.
Hennessy turned away from the control panel to see, just
behind him, his brother.
“Shane,” he said, and smiled. “You’re all right after all.”
Of course I am, Jim, he said. You don’t think a little
thing like that could hurt me, do you?
It must have been a trick, Hennessy told himself.
His brother leaned against the control panel and stared
down at him. I need to speak seriously with you, Jim, he
said.
“What is it, Shane?” asked Hennessy. “You know you can
talk to me about anything.”
His dead brother looked straight at him, his face
thoughtful, just as it had often been before, when they were
younger.
You did good, brother, you stopped him, said Shane.
But this is a very dangerous time, you are too close. Too
close to be able to hear clearly. The whispers, they may
take you. You mustn’t listen to them, Jim. Get free, stay
clear, keep your mind to yourself. Or you may be no
more. Tell all the others the same.
“But . . . I don’t . . .” Hennessey stuttered, groping for
words. “I have to be honest, Shane. I’m not sure I
understand exactly what you’re talking about.”
Let them know, said Shane. The Marker is the past, and
the past must remain undisturbed if we are to continue as
we are. You have already awakened it. It calls out for you
even now. But you must not obey. You must not listen.
Tell them that.
“Who am I supposed to tell?” asked Hennessy.
Everybody, said Shane. Tell everybody.
“But why don’t you tell them, Shane?” he asked. “You
know so much more about it than I do!”
But Shane just shook his head. It’s already begun, he
said. He reached out and touched his thumb to Hennessy’s
forehead. His touch burned like ice. And then, as Hennessy
watched, his brother slowly faded and was gone.
21
He felt bereft, and very lonely. He went to the observation
porthole, slipping on the carcass on the floor on the way.
Somebody should move that, he thought. The whole cabin
reeked of blood. Maybe Shane’s out there, he thought, like
he was before, but all he could see was the murky water,
cut through by the light, and the edge of the Marker. Yes, it
was definitely glowing now, its light pulsing slightly.
He stared at it. It was trying to tell him something. What
had Shane said? That it had to be left alone, that they didn’t
need to understand it. But why, then, did he feel like he
wanted to understand it, like he wanted to learn from it?
Maybe Shane had been wrong.
He stared and stared. For a moment, he felt he could
hear a voice again, maybe Shane’s voice, but then it grew
softer and softer and was gone. And then suddenly the glow
grew brighter and it was as if his head had been cracked
open and filled with light. He whirled around, his eyes
darting back and forth. He needed to get it all down. He
needed to record everything it was telling him. He could
type it all into the computer, but that wasn’t enough, there
could be a power failure and then everything would be lost.
No, he needed to write it, but he didn’t have a pen, a pencil,
paper. He hadn’t used actual paper since he was a child.
The computer would have to do.
On his way back to it, he slipped again, went partly down,
soaking his knee and his hand in gore. He looked at his
hand, dripping with blood, its bloody double inscribed right
on the flesh of his thigh, and then he knew what to do.
He dipped his fingers in Dantec’s blood and approached
the walls, waiting for his mind to crack open again. When it
did, it flared with symbols. He could see them perfectly in
his head, shimmering there. Frantically, he began to jot
them on the walls, writing as quickly as he could, stopping
only to dip his fingers in blood again. At first there was
something like an N, but only backward, with a bead on the
bottom of its leg. Then an L, but upside down, with its
horizontal bar crimped. Then something that looked like the
prow of a ship, moving left to right, a porthole just visible,
and a circle within a circle. After that he was writing so
furiously, trying to keep up with the figures streaming
through his head, that he couldn’t keep track, could only let
his fingers trace out the patterns and move on.
When he hit the porthole, he didn’t stop, just wrote right
over it. Anything that got in the way he wrote on. After a
while, he was running out of space and started writing
smaller so that there’d be enough room. When he ran out of
room on the walls, he wrote on and under the instrument
panels. When he ran low on blood, he stomped on what
was left of Dantec’s chest, trying to force more out. But only
a little came out. So he stomped on a limb hard and blood
began to leach out. Before too long, Dantec’s body had
been torn to pieces, looking even less human than when
he’d started.
The com unit crackled, sending out an angry hiss of
static. “—in, co—F/Seven—othersh—” it said.
“Not now, Tanner,” he said back.
“—ome in, come—o you read?” it said.
“Not now!” he shouted. The ceiling was already covered,
the walls were already covered; all that was left was the
floor. He piled the pieces of Dantec’s body in the command
chair. He tried to strap them in, but quickly realized it was
useless. That was all right, he told himself. The vessel
wasn’t moving. They weren’t going anywhere.
There was hardly any blood left, and what was left on the
floor was beginning to clot. He dipped his fingers in it, kept
writing in light, wispy strokes, conserving the blood. But
very quickly, he ran out of floor.
He wished Shane were there to tell him what to do next.
Had he done the right thing? Had he betrayed his brother?
He stayed there on his knees, staring.
It was hot, almost too hot to bear. How could it be so hot?
He stood up and took off his shirt, threw it on the other
chair. It helped a little, but not enough. He was still hot. He
took off his shoes, piled them on top of the shirt, then took
off his pants, his underwear. Naked, he stared down at his
body. Pale, he thought. White as a sheet. No, not a sheet,
he corrected. White as paper. And then he knew where he
would write next.
Only there wasn’t any more blood. He’d used all of
Dantec up; he hadn’t saved enough to write the ending.
He looked around. Surely there was more blood here
somewhere. Didn’t they travel with bags of blood? What if
they needed to do an onboard transfusion? How could they
go anywhere without blood?
His eyes were scanning over the room, searching, when
they passed over his arm, saw the pulse of a vein. “Ah,” he
said, breaking into a smile, “that’s where you’re hiding.
There you are.”
· · ·
It wasn’t easy to get the blood to come out, but in the end
he managed, tearing the arm open with the sharp corner of
the same strut he had used to discipline Dantec. At first, the
blood came readily and he could simply rub the finger
against his arm and then inscribe a symbol on his body. But
quickly the wound slowed and began to clot. He had to tear
it open again, and then a third time.
By the time he was done, it was as if he himself had
become a representation of the Marker. He was beautiful,
covered with a swarm of symbols, all the knowledge of the
universe expressed on the surface of his skin. He stood
straight, arms to his sides, and held still. He was the
Marker. He could feel its power flowing through him.
How long he was like that, he couldn’t say. He was
snapped out of it by a sharp noise and an intense pain in
his head. He swayed and fell down, clutching his temples.
When the noise finally stopped, he stood and stumbled up.
He had more to do, he remembered, confusedly. He had to
tell them; he had to warn them.
He turned on the vidscreen and stood in front of it, set it
to simultaneously record and to broadcast on all
frequencies. The message was for everyone—Shane had
been clear about that. He needed to tell everyone, if the
message could get through the rock and muck at all.
“Hello,” he said to the vidscreen. “Officer James
Hennessy here, acting commander of the SS Marker. I’ve
been informed by my brother, Shane, that there’s
something we all need to know.”
There was a stabbing pain in his head, as if someone
were prodding his optic nerve with the tip of a dull knife. He
clutched his head and leaned on the counter. After the pain
had passed, he stood there for a moment, unsure of where
he was. He opened his eyes and looked around him,
unable to take it all in. And then suddenly he remembered:
He was on TV!
He gave the camera his most winning smile. What was
he doing again? Oh, yes, that’s right: He was saving
humanity.
”We’ve heard the wrong whispers,” he started. “There’s
little time, and we’re listening to what they say, but Shane
says we should not obey. We are not following the right
answers. We have to resist the past before it is too late.
Too late for Convergence.”
He gave his winning smile again, looking straight and
intensely into the camera. Anyone watching would realize
he was talking directly to them. They had to understand how
important this was.
“I’ve drawn a map,” he said, gesturing to his body. “I don’t
know if that’s what Shane wants, but I looked at the Marker
and looked at it and then I had to draw. We need to change
our ways and learn to understand it,” he said. He shook his
head, confused. Had he gotten off track somewhere? “Or
else not understand it,” he said. It was like there were two
forces inside him, fighting to claim him, and he was no
longer sure which was which, and which he should listen to.
The Marker caught his eye through the porthole. He
watched it pulse a long moment. He looked at his left hand,
then looked at his right hand and slowly brought them
together, in front of him. “Convergence,” he said. He
gestured at the Marker through the porthole, then gestured
at the symbols on his own body. “We need to understand
it,” he said, even though a part of him was screaming at him
to stop. “That’s the only thing that’s important right now, to
learn from it. It is the way. We need to understand it, not
destroy it.”
He backed away and turned the vid off. He was so tired
now. His head hurt. He needed to rest. He would rest for
just a minute and then head for home.
He lay down on the floor. He felt both hot and cold. His
bare body felt unnatural against the smooth floor. Slowly he
folded in on himself, until he was curled into a ball, and
started to shiver.
At the end he had a brief moment of lucidity, when he
realized that he was tired because the oxygen was running
out, when he realized that something else had controlled
everything he had done, everything he had said. But by the
time he realized this, it was far too late to do anything about
it. I’ll get up in a moment, he thought. I’ll get up and drill my
way back up to the surface. And then I’ll sort this mess out.
A moment later he lapsed into unconsciousness.
Not long after, he was dead.
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