And then it began again. It started first with a pinprick of
light in the darkness at a great distance. He watched it,
trying to determine if it was getting closer or farther away,
but was unable to say. He watched it a long time, or what
felt like a long time, until it disappeared again.
Darkness. Plain and simple. But a sense, too, of a body.
Of his body, the limits of it.
I’m dead, he thought. This is hell.
There was a long moment in which nothing happened.
The pinprick of light came back again. He did not notice it
reappear exactly, just knew that it was there, and knew it
had been there for a while. He watched it. This time it grew
slowly larger. It was moving slowing toward him. Suddenly,
it became excruciatingly bright.
Things began to take shape around it. A thin silvery
casing from which the light itself came. Something pinkish
nestled around it, which he began, slowly, to realize was a
human hand.
“A little response,” said a voice, flat, uninflected. “Up the
dosage.”
He felt something, a stinging somewhere on his body.
Suddenly he could move the muscles on his face.
Where am I? he tried to ask, but what came out was a
dim, inarticulate sound.
“There we are,” said another voice. The light pulled back
and he saw a face, half-hidden behind a surgical mask.
Behind it were other faces, maybe a half dozen in all.
“Where am I?” he asked, and this time the words came
out.
“You’re alive,” said the muffled voice through the
surgeon’s mask. “That’s all you need to know.”
He tried to move his arm, found it strapped down. The
other arm was strapped, too, his legs as well. He struggled
against them, arched his back.
“There, there,” said the voice. “You won’t be able to
break them. Just relax.” The surgeon’s mask turned to
address someone behind him. “Go get Markoff,” it said.
“Tell him that Altman is awake.”
He must have drifted off again. When he opened his eyes,
there were three people over the bed, looking down at him:
Krax, Markoff, and Stevens.
“Congratulations, Altman,” said Krax. “You still seem to
be alive.”
When he opened his mouth and spoke, his voice was
hoarse, his throat sore. “You killed Ada,” he said.
“No,” said Krax. “Ada killed herself. She started
hallucinating and then cut her own throat. She wasn’t strong
enough. She wasn’t worthy.”
“Worthy?” Altman asked.
“We need to have a little talk,” said Markoff.
Altman narrowed his eyes. He watched him, warily.
“We’ve talked with your friend Harmon,” said Krax. “He
told us everything that happened.”
“You sank the Marker,” said Stevens. “Why would you do
that?”
“It was dangerous,” said Altman, his voice barely above a
whisper.
“It’s not dangerous,” claimed Krax. “It’s divine.”
“You’re crazy,” said Altman.
“No, he’s right,” said Stevens. “I’m afraid that’s the
conclusion that all three of us have reached.”
Altman turned his head slightly in Markoff’s direction. It
hurt to move it. “You don’t believe this, do you? How can
you believe it’s divine now that you’ve seen what it’s
capable of?”
Markoff offered him a hard, glittering smile. “It created
life,” he said. “I saw that for myself, saw it take dead flesh
and bring it back to life.”
Maybe he doesn’t actually believe, thought Altman. Or
maybe he’s pretending as a way of bending the others to
his will. Just as I did with Harmon.
“But what kind of life?” asked Altman. “It was
monstruous.”
“There must have been a glitch,” said Stevens. “The
Marker must have gotten damaged somehow. But as a
principle, it’s sound. All we have to do is fix it.”
“Or if not fix it, make a new one,” said Markoff.
“After all,” said Stevens, “every indication is that when it
was originally working, millennia ago, it established life on
earth. Once we have one that’s working properly, it will
allow us to evolve beyond our mortal form. It will lead us into
eternal life.”
“No, it’s not that. It’s not that at all. You’re wrong,”
whispered Altman. “It wasn’t damaged; it was doing what it
was meant to do. It meant to destroy us.”
“Then why did it stop?” Stevens asked. “And why did it
stop when you began to broadcast its own code back to it,
showing that you’d figured out how to replicate it?”
“How do you know about that?”
“You don’t think we left the facility without making sure
that we could record everything that went on in it, do you?”
said Krax. “We watched the whole thing. We have footage
of everything.”
But Altman just shook his head. “You’re wrong,” he said.
“It’ll destroy us.”
“The Marker wants to help us,” Stevens claimed.
“Harmon has told us what you figured out: the Marker wants
to be replicated. It was broken and must have known it was
broken. It wants us to make it again so that it can help us.
But we’ll improve the technology, Altman. We’ll make one
that works and then make it even better.” He leaned in
closer. Altman could feel the man’s breath on his face,
could see in the man’s eyes traces of fanaticism that belied
his calm exterior. “There are sure to be other Marker s,
somewhere, on other worlds,” said Stevens. “They will lead
us forward. In the meantime, we’ll do our best to try to
understand this one and duplicate it.”
“You’ve done a lot to help with that,” Markoff said.
“But this one is sunk,” said Altman desperately.
“It was sunk before,” said Markoff, “and we got it up. You
know that as well as anyone. All you did was slow the
inevitable down slightly, by a few weeks, a few months.”
“You don’t have the research,” said Altman. “Everything
must have been destroyed by the water and the pressure.
You’ll have to start over.”
Krax shook his head. “Altman,” he said. “You’re so
naïve.”
“Remember Harmon?” said Markoff. “What do you think
Harmon was doing while he was in the Marker chamber?
He was recording everything, making sure that none of the
data would be lost. And then he carried it all away in his
pocket. If you’d thought to check his pockets or simply left
him to die, you might have set us back. But you didn’t.
You’re far too trusting, Altman. We have everything.”
“We also have all of Guthe’s research,” said Stevens.
“We can learn from it what went wrong with the Marker and
learn how to repair it. We ran our first experiments,
synthesizing and reproducing the creature’s DNA, while you
were still unconscious. Hermetically sealed labs, a variety
of fail-safes. We’re being a great deal more careful about it
than Guthe was, though most likely hallucinations were to
blame for his rashness.”
“And to be frank,” said Krax, “watching you struggle past
them taught us a great deal about how to control them. We
wouldn’t be nearly as far along without you.”
“You’re making a terrible mistake,” whispered Altman.
He was very tired. He was helpless, couldn’t do anything.
But maybe soon. All he had to do was regain his strength.
Once he regained his strength, he’d do everything he could
to stop them. “If you go ahead with this, it’ll mean the end of
humanity. Maybe not right away, but soon.”
“That’s what we’re hoping for,” said Stevens. “If we go
ahead with this, we’ll reach the next evolutionary stage. We
won’t be human; we’ll be better than human.”
“Good-bye, Altman,” said Markoff. “You’ve been a worthy
adversary. But this time you’ve lost.”
Once the three of them had left, a doctor who had
accompanied them to the door returned and whispered in
the surgeon’s ear. The surgeon nodded his head, and then
filled and primed a hypodermic. He pushed it into Altman’s
arm. The world grew gray, slowly faded away.
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