17
So far, so good, thought Dantec, or good enough anyway.
He’d probably make it through. His head had been aching
ever since he got into the goddamn sub. Or, if he was to be
honest with himself, for weeks now. Pills didn’t seem to
help. Whatever he did, it was still there, not unbearable, just
always throbbing quietly, keeping him from sleeping,
destroying his concentration. He hadn’t felt so strung out
since the moon skirmishes. For that matter, he hadn’t felt
this confined—this trapped—since then. He hadn’t realized
how much being in a sub underwater was going to feel like
being in a jettison pod in space. It brought all sorts of things
flashing back at him from the moon skirmishes, that weird
war that wasn’t officially a war, where all it took was one
little tear in the fabric of your suit for you to die and where,
by the end, if you wanted to survive, you had to stab a knife
in a buddy’s back just so you could steal what was left of his
oxygen. How many men had he had to kill to stay alive? All
that had changed him, hardened him. He thought at first that
it had lifted him above things, had made it so he wouldn’t
feel fear, wouldn’t be subject to the same emotional
weaknesses as others. But he was beginning to realize that
that wasn’t quite right. True, he’d managed to avoid those
parts of himself for a long time, but they were still there. And
now that they were forcing their way up to the surface, they
were raw and red, more sensitive than an exposed nerve.
And that bastard Hennessy. It didn’t help being stuck with
him. He was a real, genuine fucking chucklehead, that was
for sure. First he had been like a kid in a toy shop, unable
to contain his delight at the F/7, at his new toy. Then put him
in the thing and he does a Jekyll/Hyde, becomes nothing
but panic and nerves and slow collapse into madness. That
was the last thing you wanted in a confined space like this.
In the moon skirmishes, he’d killed men for less.
Not like the thought didn’t cross his mind. But Tanner
didn’t want him to do it. Tanner had been good to him over
the years. Though if Tanner had understood what had really
happened during the moon skirmishes, Dantec knew, he
might treat him a lot differently.
During the skirmishes, Tanner never realized that Dantec
was not interested in saving him so much as stealing his air
supply. Dantec had planned to kill him and take his oxygen
tank, and he would have done it, too, except that, while
looking for a safe place to kill Tanner, he’d stumbled onto a
working transmitter, a technician’s severed and frozen arm
still stuck to it. So, instead of killing Tanner, he called the
dropship to pick them up. Tanner never understood that the
reason he blacked out and almost died before the ship
arrived was because Dantec had turned the airflow on his
tank down. Just in case the ship didn’t come fast enough
and he needed Tanner’s air after all.
But loyalty and guilt toward Tanner weren’t the only
reasons that Dantec hadn’t killed Hennessy. He didn’t like
the idea of killing someone in such a confined space,
where he couldn’t dispose of the body. He just couldn’t
imagine sitting there, knowing the body was behind him,
feeling its dead eyes on his back. Add to that the fact that
over the last six or so hours, he’d actually become a little
afraid of Hennessy. Panicking, then whispering to himself,
speaking to the bulkhead to his left as if there was actually
someone sitting beside him. The man was out of his mind,
and Dantec didn’t want to do anything to provoke him. He
knew, from personal experience, that when people went out
of their minds, they became unpredictable. They could do
things you’d never expect and they’d do them with a
strength you’d never expect them to have.
He just wanted to come through this alive. They’d made it
halfway. They were here now, right beside the monolith,
which, he had to admit, also scared the shit out of him. But
it filled him with awe as well. It had been there more than
fifty million years if the geological data was to be believed.
Which meant it predated humankind. But it was clearly
man-made—or made by some intelligent life. It was mindboggling.
Hennessy was staring out the porthole at it, lost in
contemplation of the thing, looking like his brain had been
switched off.
Dantec had the core sampler primed. It was readied and
partly extended. He’d tested the molecular cutters that
would slice into the stone. Carefully he extended the arm
until it was touching the monolith itself, and then he thrust it
forward and started to cut.
Almost immediately his head was filled with a piercing
pain, so intense that he felt he was going to pass out. His
vision first seemed as though it had been coated in blood
and then it vanished entirely, being replaced by an empty
white expanse. He gripped the control panel, struggling to
breathe. Hennessy was screaming behind him.
Very slowly, the pain began to ebb away. His vision crept
back. Hennessy was moaning, all but passed out behind
him. The core sampler had kept cutting—very slowly, but it
was still cutting. All they needed was a little bit, just a little
bit, and then he could turn the F/7 around and get the hell
out of there.
18
One minute, Hennessy was sitting there, looking at his
brother, everything fine, and the next there was a piercing
noise and his head felt like it was going to burst. His
brother began to shake all over. His head tilted to one side,
his neck tearing open just where it did when Shane had
been killed. He shook more and in a burst his body
exploded, spattering everything with blood. Hennessy
began to scream and suddenly couldn’t breathe. A moment
later the ship around him was spinning, and then darkness.
When he came to, Shane was back, looking just as he
had before he’d dissolved into a burst of blood, the same
strange fixed expression on his face. He’d moved, though,
and was now sitting next to Dantec, facing the other way,
looking back at Hennessy. Or not next to Dantec exactly: he
seemed to be sitting, so it seemed, partly on Dantec. But
as Hennessy pulled himself up, he saw. Shane was partly in
Dantec, their hips fused together, his legs somehow jutting
through the back of the command chair.
“You’re all right?” asked Hennessy.
“Yes,” said Dantec. “Except for my head. And you?”
He shouldn’t be doing this, said Shane, his mouth
moving soundlessly in the air, like a fish out of water. It’s
dangerous. Looking’s bad enough, but touching is too
much. Neither of you should be doing this. Jim, I thought
you were better than that.
“Doing what?” asked Hennessy.
“I’m taking a core sample, of course,” said Dantec. “What
did you expect me to be doing?”
This is not something to be examined, said Shane. This
is not something to be understood. It needs to be left
alone and untouched, where it’s been lying undisturbed
for millions of years. Do you think they would have buried
it this deep if it was meant to be found?
“What does it do?” Hennessy asked.
Dantec still wasn’t looking at him. “It’s a molecular cutter
with a titanium cylinder behind it,” he said. “The circular
cutter makes a round hole and pushes slowly in. Once the
cylinder is far enough in, the cutters rotate to shear off the
end of the sample. I thought you knew all that. Don’t worry,
not much longer, we’re almost done.”
You don’t want to know what it does, said Shane. You
shouldn’t try to destroy it. You shouldn’t listen to it. You
should just leave it alone. You must resist Convergence,
Jim.
“Convergence?”
“What?” said Dantec, half turning around. “I guess that
yes, the molecular beams converge, in a manner of
speaking. But why are you so interested?”
Not to mention the Convergence, said Shane. The last
thing you want to do is get that started. He stretched
uncomfortably in his chair.
“Be careful how you move,” said Hennessy to Dantec.
“You don’t want to tear Shane apart.”
19
Oh, shit, thought Dantec. He turned fully around to face
Hennessy, who immediately started screaming.
“Shane!” Hennessy screamed, “Shane! The blood! The
blood! He’s all over everything! He’s all over you!” Making
gagging sounds, he started rubbing his hands up and down
Dantec’s chest, a terrible expression on his face. “We have
to get him off!” he said, and cast Dantec a desperate look.
“Can’t you see it?” he asked. “Can’t you see the blood?”
Dantec slapped him hard enough to knock him down.
“Just calm down,” said Dantec. He was shaking. “Just
relax.”
“Easy for you to say,” Hennessy was muttering. “It isn’t
your brother who just burst.”
“Hennessy,” said Dantec, “it wasn’t your brother either.
It’s just you and me here.”
But Hennessy was shaking his head. “I saw him,” he was
saying, “I saw him.” His voice was more and more
hysterical. “He was here, I swear, right here, right there,
where you’re sitting, there.”
“But that’s me,” said Dantec, starting to get really
frightened. “How could he be sitting here if I was here the
whole time?”
“He was,” said Hennessy. “He was halfway inside you.
You tore him, and then he burst.”
Oh, shit, thought Dantec again. “Try to get a hold of
yourself, Hennessy,” he said, keeping his voice level.
“You’re imagining things.”
“We have to stop,” said Hennessy. “Shane told me—we
have to leave it alone. We have to bury it and get the hell
out of here. Stop the core sampler!” He was screaming
now. “Put it back!”
“It’s okay,” said Dantec, “I’ll stop it,” he said. “I’m stopping
it now,” he claimed. He reached out for the controls and
then hesitated. It was nearly through, the sample nearly
extracted. Just a few seconds more and they’d have it, and
then they could get the hell out of there.
“Stop it!” raved Hennessy. “Stop it!”
“I’m stopping it,” lied Dantec. “Don’t shout, you’re
confusing me. It’s almost done, I swear.”
And it was done, for at that moment the molecular cutters
finished and the core sampler began to withdraw with its
sample in the extraction cylinder.
“There, you see?” said Dantec. “Everything’s okay.” He
turned around, smiling, just in time to have his jaw broken
by a metal bar. He raised his arm, felt the pain as the bar
struck him there as well. He half slid, half fell out of the
command chair. He saw the bar hit and crumple the
armrest just above his head. It was a strut from the oxygen
recirculator—he wondered how Hennessy had
disassembled it so quickly. He kicked out, watched
Hennessy lurch to one side and stumble against the
bulkhead. Dantec started to scramble up, but his arm
wouldn’t support him. Blood was pouring out of his mouth
and down his chest. He managed to heave himself to his
feet, but Hennessy had already recovered and was coming
at him, bringing the bar down. He raised the broken arm
and Hennessy struck it again, the pain this time so intense
that his vision faded to a dark blur. He slipped in his own
blood and was down again. And then Hennessy struck him
in the head.
As he lay there, the life leaking out of him, he began to
feel people crowding around him. It was impossible. Even
though he was dying, he knew it wasn’t possible, it was only
he and Hennessy there, and even if it were possible, there
were too many people to fit. But even though he was sure it
couldn’t be happening, it was unbearable that it was.
Particularly when he recognized the faces. They were all
men he had been with in the moon skirmishes, men who
not only had died, but died by his hand, so that he could
take their oxygen and survive. One by one, they came
forward while Hennessy continued to batter him with the
iron bar, kneeling beside him and then leaning over him to
suck the breath out of his mouth. When the last one finally
came, he died.
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