54
It was Showalter who made the initial breakthrough by
suggesting a possible function for the Marker. The symbols,
he theorized, were mathematical codes that symbolized
DNA. The Marker itself was a representation of a DNA
sequence.
The scientists set about decoding the sequence. Another
scientist, a radio astronomist named Grote Guthe, made
the next breakthrough, suggesting that the Marker ’s signal
could be read as a transmission of a sequence of genetic
code. Field made sure that Altman heard about both.
Showalter’s team sequenced the Marker itself, and came
up with a genetic profile that was, so he told Altman,
remarkably similar to that of humans.
“So something like humans?” said Altman.
“Maybe,” said Showalter. “Maybe even something exactly
like humans. I think that the Marker has the DNA code for
our ancestors.”
“So it records our genetic code,” said Altman. “So what?”
“Not just records,” said Showalter. “We think the pulse
transmits it as well, deliberately changing genetic structure
slightly in existing human organisms. It may, in fact, have
been the beginning of human life.”
Altman didn’t know what to say. It was staggering to think
that human life had neither evolved naturally nor been a gift
from God but was, instead, based on the Marker.
“But why would it be rebroadcasting our genetic code?”
asked Altman. “We’ve already evolved. What would be the
point of that?”
“Have you talked to Grote Guthe?” asked Showalter.
“He’s hit a snag. For God’s sake, go talk to Grote.”
And so he did. The German scientist was not what he
expected he would be; he was small and very thin, and had
a skin condition that had left him hairless. He looked
harmless, almost helpless. He seemed to be expecting
Altman.
“Yes,” he said, “Herr Doktor Field has told me about you.
You are one of us, yes?” Altman neither nodded nor shook
his head, but Guthe went on. “You want to know about the
pulse,” he said. “Whether my team has decoded the pulse.
Perhaps Herr Doktor Shovalter has said something, yes?”
“Yes,” said Altman.
“We have decoded the pulse, perhaps. But we have
struck a complication.”
“What’s the complication?”
“My team has decoded the signal and we think it is
decoded correctly. We understand it to be a code and we
understand what that code is. Herr Doktor Shovalter thinks
he has decoded the signal and he, too, thinks it is decoded
correctly. The complication is that we have different
answers. For him it is a code that is a step upon the
sequence to human life. For me it is something else
entirely, not correlatable to a known species. I am making a
synthetic version of mine now, to get a closer look at it.”
“Perhaps one of you is wrong,” said Altman.
“Perhaps,” said Guthe. “Or perhaps the pulse signal is
transmitting a different code than is recorded on the
Marker.” He leaned forward and gave Altman a steady
look. “I must say something to you,” he said. “I am a
believer, you must not doubt my belief. But I am also a
scientist. I have looked carefully at Herr Doktor Shovalter’s
calculations and I have looked carefully at my own. Our
calculations are correct. If the Marker was the beginning of
human life, then it has no need to be broadcasting this now.
And yet it is communicating a pulse, one with an unfamiliar
genetic code. Perhaps it is communicating a pulse, but
perhaps it is a flawed pulse with a flawed genetic code.
Perhaps this Marker has begun a process of deterioration.”
“The Convergence,” said Altman.
“But maybe it has simply become confused,” said Guthe.
“We must try to understand it. We must work with it.”
“But what if this is what it’s meant to do?” said Altman.
Guthe groped his necklace out of his shirt, clutched the
icon of the Marker in his fist. “No, it cannot intend this,” he
insisted. “The Marker is here for us. It has simply become
confused.” And then he looked at Altman for guidance.
Altman just nodded, and left without another word. I’m
surrounded by madmen, he couldn’t help but think.
Fanatics.
But later that night, he began to have doubts. What if Guthe
was right? What if the Marker was just broken? Maybe they
could fix the Marker by returning the core sample to its
rightful position.
That’s ridiculous, he thought. It was transmitting its
signal before the core sample was taken.
He lay in bed staring at the ceiling until another idea
came to him. But maybe it was transmitting a different
signal then, the correct signal.
He couldn’t sleep until he at least tried.
He woke up Showalter, explained what he wanted to do.
“Already been tried,” said Showalter. “Doesn’t make a
difference.”
“But maybe—”
“The missing piece isn’t crucial,” Showalter explained. “In
fact, no single piece is crucial. The Marker is a complex but
internally replicated structure in the same way, for instance,
that the pattern of a nautilus replicates even as it tightens.
Even if parts of it are broken or damaged, it still works.
Probably the only way to stop it from working would be to
pulverize it.”
Depressed, Altman went back to bed. Chalk one up for
the Marker. Not damaged, or at least not damaged in a
way they could understand. Which meant it must be acting
the way it was for other reasons. Either it was working for
their own good or for their destruction.
55
Herr Doktor Guthe had been up for hours. With the help of
his team, he’d sequenced the synthetic strand and then had
it biotically assembled by a nanosystem. Then he’d
meticulously gone over the results to make sure it was right.
It was rough, hardly the kind of job that he would be proud
of, but it was accurate. If he could get it to replicate, he’d be
able to make some extrapolations about the original strand,
about the purpose of the mutation, and this might in turn tell
him if the Marker was broken or if it was working
intentionally.
His team had stuck with him around the clock until the
moment when they’d injected the sequence within a proxy
nucleus into four dozen embroyonic sheep cells, followed
by chemical encouragement to get them to divide. After
that, there was nothing to do but wait. Either it would work
or it would not. For the first time in several hours, he looked
around at his team, saw that they were haggard and
frazzled by turns, some of them barely standing. So he sent
them to bed.
Herr Doktor Guthe had intended to go to bed himself.
Only he wasn’t tired. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last
time he’d been tired. He hadn’t slept for days.
And so he had stayed on, alone, in the laboratory. He
waited, motionless, sitting on his stool. He felt as though he
had entered a completely different state of mind, one that
did not need sleep. He expected never to have to sleep
again. This, he was sure, was due to the Marker.
Upon thinking the word, he pulled the necklace out of his
shirt and clutched the icon in his fist. Would she come? If he
thought hard enough, would she come?
And then she stepped out of the wall and toward him. At
first she was no more than a blur, but as he squeezed the
charm and concentrated, she began to change. The
shadowy air around her was cut away and she became
herself—tall, thin, a perfect face save for one small scar just
above her left cheekbone.
I missed you, she said.
“I missed you, too,” he said.
She smiled, and a little blood dripped out of her mouth,
but not too much. He tried to ignore it. Except for the blood,
he loved the way she smiled.
What are you doing? she asked.
“An experiment,” he said. “I’m trying to understand the
thing that brought you back to life.”
How flattering, she said. But I wish you wouldn’t.
“I wish I would have spoken to you then,” he said. “Back
when you were alive. I watched you, you know. I followed
you everywhere.”
I know, she said.
“And then you died and I thought I had missed my
chance. But now you are here again.”
I’m just a projection of your mind, she said. You know
that. You told me that yourself. You know that I’m a
construct made from your memories.
“I know,” he said. “But you seem so real.”
She smiled again, wider this time, and blood began to
slip down her cheek and to her chin. He had found her like
that, twenty years before. He hadn’t even known her name.
Then, as now, he was unsure of what had happened to her.
Then, she was as good as dead when he found her. Now
she kept dying but kept being brought back to life again.
You musn’t . . . , she started, and then she slowly faded
and was gone. He sighed. He never got much further with
the message the Marker sent, never heard as much of it as
his colleagues had. He figured it was because his desire to
see the girl was too strong, too intense.
He took a look in the cooker, was surprised to see that
all forty cells in all forty receptacles had multiplied. That was
unprecedented. Also unprecedented was the speed with
which they multiplied—he had never seen anything like it. It
had been only a few hours, and already the sample was
visible to the naked eye.
He stayed for the next hour watching them until each of
the receptacles was teeming with a pale pink substance
like nothing so much as biological tissue. Should he take a
closer look? Why not: there were plenty of samples. What
would it hurt to look at just one?
He opened a receptacle, ran a mild electric charge
through it. The pinkish substance withdrew, as if it felt it.
Maybe it did.
He upturned the receptacle, poured it onto the table. The
substance lay there, undulating slightly. Carefully, he cut it in
half with a scalpel. He watched an empty furrow appear
between the two halves, then watched the substance run
back together again into a single sheet, leaving no visible
line or scar. Marvelous, he thought.
He was still experimenting with it when his grandmother’s
face appeared, hovering just over the counter. Startled, he
jumped.
Sure, he loved his grandmother, but not nearly as much
as he loved the girl. Or maybe it was just different: he had
known the girl for only a moment, and so his love for her
was pure and unadulterated. His feelings toward his
grandmother were much more complex. After his parents
died, she had taken him in. She had treated him all right,
but she was old and grumpy, and sometimes she did things
that he had a hard time understanding. And then one day,
when he was a little older, she had simply disappeared.
Even then he basically understood that something must
have happened to her, something that she couldn’t help,
that perhaps she had even been killed. But part of him had
a hard time not resenting her for not coming back.
“What do you want?” he asked in German.
Is that any way to treat your grandmother? she said. She
was speaking in a heavily accented English, even though
he knew that if she had been real, she would be screeching
in German.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’ve come, I imagine, because
there was something the girl was unable to express. You
know I love you.”
That’s more like it, she said, and held out to him a
cellophone-wrapped sweet. She had always been doing
that when she was alive. He tried to take it, but his hand
met empty air.
It’s time, she said. You’ve learned too much. It’s time.
Time for what? He hadn’t felt whole since he lost his
grandmother. And now she was here again, but not here at
the same time. He could see her and hear her but not touch
her or smell her. His whole life had been like that, a life of
loss, first his parents gone and then his grandmother. In the
end, all that was left was just his laboratory, the only thing he
could count on. His laboratory had never let him down.
Are you listening to me? she asked, snapping her
fingers. Do you understand what I’m saying? You must
stop this research at once!
Stop his research? He felt a rage rising in him. She had
never understood what he was trying to do, so why should it
surprise him that she didn’t understand him now? “But I’m
doing important work,” he said. “I’m making discoveries
beyond human imagination.”
What you are doing is dangerous, she said. Trust me,
child. I say this for your own good. The Marker will destroy
you. You must stop before it is too late.
His eyes were stinging with tears. Stop his work? What
else did he have? It’s not really her, he told himself. The
Marker has just borrowed her image and voice. Why
couldn’t it have stayed with being the girl? He had loved her
but never really had her, so he couldn’t miss her in the
same way that he missed his grandmother. And now it was
trying to manipulate him, trying to use his grandmother to
get him to stop.
“Please, go away,” he said, trying not to look at her. “It’s
too much.”
Too much? she was saying. Her voice was a little shrill
now, grating on his nerves. I need you to listen to me,
Grote. This is very important.
He groaned. He couldn’t listen; he couldn’t bear it. He
covered his ears, but somehow he could still hear her
anyway. He shook his head back and forth and started to
sing as loudly as he could. He could still hear her, could still
tell she was saying words, but couldn’t hear what they were
exactly. But she just stood there, still talking, refusing to go
away.
He closed his eyes, her voice still humming on. What
could he do? He was so tired, he just needed a rest. How
could he drive her away?
Confusedly, he told himself she was a mental construct:
his mental construct. If he simply stopped thinking, he could
drive her away. All he’d have to do was knock himself out
and he’d be all right.
There was a syringe in the drawer, a fresh needle. He
had to uncover his ears to reach for it, and suddenly her
words were spilling louder through his head. No, Grote! she
yelled at him. Stop this foolishness right now! You haven’t
understood at all. You’re going to do yourself harm.
He shuddered. He needed a sedative. There it was,
already on the table.
Grote! she said. Can’t you see? This is what the Marker
wants! You are not thinking straight. Stop and listen!
“Leave me alone,” he mumbled.
He affixed the needle and sucked the fluid up and in. It
was thicker than he thought, hard to get into the needle. Still
listening to his grandmother’s yammering, he tied his arm
off and flicked the vein, then held the needle to it.
Grote, why are you doing this? she asked.
“I just need to sleep,” he said, and plunged the needle in.
“Just a few hours’ sleep.”
It burned going in, and then his arm began to tingle. His
grandmother gave him her awful, heartbroken stare.
You think that is a sedative? she said. She shook her
head and drew back, a look of horror on her face. That is
not what it is. You have hastened the Convergence. You
must hurry to the Marker, she said. Surrounding the
Marker is a dead space that will stop this thing in you from
progressing. Go there and show the others what has
happened to you and warn them. You must convince
them to leave the Marker alone. You must try to stop the
Convergence before it is too late. It is urgent that you
convince them, Grote. Very, very urgent. And then slowly
she faded away into nothingness.
He sat there for a moment, relieved, before realizing that
she wasn’t saying it just to needle him; she was telling the
truth. Oh, God, he thought, staring down at the empty
receptacle, the empty syringe, realizing what he’d just
injected. He looked at his arm, the strange swelling in the
vein, the painful undulating movement that was not his own
now deep within his arm.
He reached out and triggered the alarm, but then found
he couldn’t sit still. Something was wrong. Something was
already starting to change. His arm was tingling, had gone
numb, and the undulating movement was larger now, had
spread. He had to get out, had to see the Marker, had to
talk to it. The Marker would save him, his grandmother had
said.
He rushed out and down the passage, took the spiral
down. The alarm was howling, people starting to appear,
confused. He stumbled through two laboratories he had a
passcard for, then through a transparent corridor with the
move and shift of the water playing on its walls.
There, at the end, was the door to the Marker chamber,
two guards standing in front of it.
“Let me in,” he said.
“Sorry, Professor Guthe,” said one of them. “There’s an
alert. Can’t you hear it?”
The other said, in a strange voice, “What’s wrong with
your arm?”
“I sounded the alert. That’s why I have to get in. The arm,”
he babbled. “I need to talk to it about the arm.”
“Need to talk to what?” said the first guard suspiciously.
Both guards had their weapons raised.
“The Marker, you idiot!” he said. “I need it to tell me what
is going to happen to me!”
The two guards exchanged looks. One of them began
talking into the com unit very quickly; the other now actively
pointed the gun at him.
“Now, Professor,” he said. “Calm down. There’s nothing
to worry about.”
“No,” he said, “you don’t understand.”
There were other people in the hall now, people behind
him, watching, puzzled.
“All I want is to see it,” he pleaded to them.
“What’s wrong with his arm?” someone behind him
asked.
The arm was twisted now, his hand facing backward as if
it had been cut off and flipped over, then reconnected. It
was not just in his arm now, but in his shoulder and chest,
too, everything changing.
He tried to speak, and it came out as a deep retching
sound. The alarms were still going off. He took a step
forward, and now the guard was shouting. He held his arm
out in front of him and they shrank back, moving slowly out
of the way. I’ll shoot! I’ll shoot! one was yelling, but he didn’t
shoot. Guthe was at the door now, swiping his card. A bullet
thudded into his leg, but it didn’t matter, he hardly felt it. And
then the door opened and he fell in.
The chamber was empty except for him and the Marker.
He moved toward it, his injured leg suddenly giving out
underneath him. He pulled himself along on his knees until
he could touch it.
Whatever was happening in his arm seemed to have
stopped. It wasn’t getting better, but it wasn’t getting worse.
The Marker was helping. The Marker was stopping it. He
breathed a sigh of relief, then winced from the stabbing
pain in his leg.
He would stay here, protected by the Marker. Once he
figured out what had happened, he could put his team to
work helping him to get better. If worse came to worst, he
would have the arm amputated.
The alarm stopped and he found he could think better.
He would have someone move his laboratory down here
and would continue his work. He moved his leg, winced
from the pain. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the door
to one side opening. He turned, recognized one of the
leaders, the man who ran the guards, the one with the brutal
face. What was his name again? Ah, yes, Krax. He was just
the one to help move his lab. And he had brought others
with him, lots of men, healthy strapping lads. They could all
help.
He was just opening his mouth to speak when Krax lifted
a pistol and shot him through the forehead.
“That wasn’t necessary,” said Markoff from behind him.
“Funny,” said Krax. “You never really struck me as the
squeamish type.”
“I’m not,” Markoff said. “But his condition was worth
investigating while he was still alive.”
Krax shrugged.
Markoff gave him a cool look. “Give them the body to
examine. And watch your step,” he said. “Don’t start
assuming you’re not expendable. You’re more expendable
now than you were ten minutes ago.” He turned on his heel
and left.
Krax watched him go, feeling at once a little
contemptuous and a little scared, and then started out the
door himself.
“Take the body,” he said to the guards. “Carry it to one of
the labs and leave it there.” He looked at the crowd of
researchers. “Which of you have dissection experience?”
he asked. Nearly all of them raised their hands. He singled
out three of them at random. “Take a closer look at it and
tell me what was happening to him.” And then he pushed
through the already dispersing crowd and left.
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