37
He started broadcasting a looped SOS at 2,500 meters,
but got only static. Hendricks was starting to come around.
By two thousand meters, he was back to his hysterical
babbling. Altman tried to ignore it. Through his earpiece,
Altman caught brief bits of something that he recognized as
a human voice submerged in a wash of static. By 1,700
meters, it was less static than voice, but Hendricks was
shouting now, straining at his bonds.
“Michael Altman, please respond,” he finally heard the
voice say. “Michael Altman, do you read?”
He turned the loop off and went live. “This is Altman,” he
said.
The other voice started to answer and was suddenly
interrupted. Markoff’s voice came on. “Altman?” he said.
“What the fuck is going on?”
“Hendricks flipped out,” Altman said. “I’ve got him tied up.
That’s him screaming in the background.”
“What happened?”
“Just a minute,” said Altman. Hendricks had started to
work his way loose. He took off his shoes again, slowly
crept up next to him. Altman? Markoff’s voice was saying in
his ear. Are you all right, Altman? He struck Hendricks
hard in the back of the head, twice, and he stopped
moving.
“What was that sound?” asked Markoff.
“That sound was the sound of me trying to stay alive,”
said Altman. He undid the ligature and re-hogtied
Hendricks. “I’ll tell you more when I get to the surface,” he
said. “Oh, and it might be a good idea to have a few guards
on hand in the submarine bay.”
Markoff had started to speak again, but Altman turned
the transmitter off. He began to think. It wasn’t likely that
Hendricks would break free. As long as he didn’t forget
about him, things would be okay. He looked out the
observation porthole. The tatter of the pale pink substance
was still there on the rivets, undulating slightly as the
submarine rose. He knew if Markoff saw it, he’d take it
away for testing by members of his inner circle and he,
Altman, wouldn’t hear anything further about it. Same with
the footage of the unusual fish.
He removed his holopod from his pocket and connected
it to the console, then copied the vid footage of the fish onto
it. He’d have to leave it in the system as well. Markoff and
his minions would no doubt be able to tell if something had
been erased, but maybe they wouldn’t be able to tell it had
been copied. He had to try to find some answers on his
own.
The pink swath was a little harder. But a plan began to
form in his mind.
He checked the pulse signal monitor. The signal had
fallen off again. He checked back through the history. If the
pattern continued, it should start to rise again.
What he was planning to do was dangerous. No doubt
Ada would tell him to leave well enough alone, that he was
only likely to get himself killed. Which was why he would
never tell her about it. Maybe she was right, but his desire
to know was much too great.
He slowed the bathyscaphe as he came up, trying to time it
so that the signal would be strongest and Hendricks would
be regaining consciousness just at the moment the craft
moved into the submarine bay.
Hendricks was groaning, his eyes fluttering, by the time
they were fully in. Altman knelt down and undid the ligature
that hogtied Hendricks, then undid the rope around his legs
but left his hands tied. He unrolled one of the ropes and tore
a square of fabric off it, which he tucked into his pocket.
Then he helped Hendricks get to his knees.
It was cruel, but he couldn’t think of another way.
“Where’s your father, Hendricks?” he asked.
The man’s eyes focused briefly then moved
independently of each other, wandering about the sockets.
“Hendricks,” he said again. He had to hurry. The bay was
almost drained down to the catwalk. Soon enough water
would be pumped out and the guards would be there.
“Where’s your father?”
Hendricks’s eyes focused again and this time stayed
focused. “My father,” he said. “He was just right here.”
“We left him down there,” suggested Altman. “We
abandoned him. You abandoned him.”
For a moment there was no response, and then, abruptly,
Hendricks let out an ungodly howl of pain and slammed his
head into Altman’s chest. It hurt like hell. Then he fell on top
of Altman, slavering, trying to bite his face.
Altman got his hands up against his shoulders and tried
desperately to hold him away, watching the man bare his
teeth and shake his head like a wild animal. But he was too
heavy, was bearing down too hard, his teeth getting closer
and closer to Altman’s face. He cried out and pushed out
as hard as he could, genuinely terrified now, trying to roll
him off but failing.
Just when he thought he couldn’t hold him back any
more, the bathyscaphe’s hatch hissed open and a guard
dropped in and wrapped an arm around Hendricks’s neck.
Altman scrambled back and away, dodging a second
guard who had dropped down and scurrying up the ladder
to the hatch. There was a group of guards around the hatch,
pointing their weapons at him when he came out. He
pushed past and, stumbling, rolled off the curve of the
bathyscaphe not onto the catwalk but into the water.
He had only a few seconds. Holding his breath, he
floundered briefly to the observation porthole, tugging the
square of cloth from his pocket and using it to gather up the
pale pink swath. Through the porthole he caught a glimpse
of Hendricks struggling with the two guards, who had forced
him back to the floor. He balled up the sodden cloth and
thrust it deep into his pocket and returned to the surface.
He broke to shouts and cries. Hands were immediately
there, pulling him onto the catwalk and out of the water.
Somebody wrapped a blanket around him.
“Don’t kill Hendricks!” he heard himself shouting. “He
doesn’t know what he’s doing!” And then he was hustled
out.
38
They let him stop off in his room to get a change of clothing.
He managed to slip the rag out of his pocket and force it
and the pink substance into an empty water bottle. He
secured it in his drawer and then let the men lead him out.
He stripped his clothes off and showered. When he
stepped out, he saw that his clothing was gone. When he
asked the guards about it, they didn’t answer.
He got dressed as the guards impassively watched.
When he was done, they opened the door and gestured
him out.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Debriefing,” one said.
A few minutes later, he was on the command deck. As
soon as he entered, the other people in the room started to
clear out. In the end, only he and Markoff were left.
“All right,” said Markoff. “Let’s hear it. Tell me everything.”
He told him almost everything. He mentioned the strange
fish, knowing that Markoff would see the vid recording
anyway. He told him about the pink swaths but didn’t
mention the sample he had retrieved. He told him about the
problems with the MROVs, that they either weren’t
receiving their commands or had failed in some other way.
He described the progress that had been made. Markoff
just nodded.
“What happened with Hendricks?” he asked.
“How’s he doing?”
Markoff shrugged. “Delirious,” he said. “They’re shooting
him full of something to calm him down. He keeps talking
about his father.”
“He was doing that down there,” Altman said. “He thought
he saw his father outside the bathyscaphe. He wanted to let
him in.” He gave a wry smile. “I, quite understandably, was
opposed to this.”
“I thought Stevens gave him a clean bill of health,” said
Markoff.
“He did,” said Altman. “No reason to think otherwise. I
thought he was okay most of the way down. He was a
friend. I’m sorry this happened to him.”
“He was unstable.”
“No,” said Altman. “I think there’s more to it than that.”
He told Markoff the whole story, only glossing over the
end, suggesting that it was Hendricks himself who had
wriggled free of his bonds.
“We did a diachronic tracking of the pulse signal,” Altman
said. “The strange thing is that it seemed to correspond to
Hendricks’s mental decay. When the signal was stronger,
he started seeing things, becoming paranoid and violent.
When it was weaker, he seemed to be like he normally is. I
think the signal changed him.”
Markoff looked at him a long time. “That doesn’t seem
possible,” he finally said.
“I know it doesn’t,” said Altman. “But it correlated
perfectly. I think the pulse signal does something to the
human brain.”
“Why didn’t it do the same thing to you?”
“Who knows?” said Altman. “Maybe I can resist it for
some reason. Or maybe it’s doing things that I haven’t
managed to notice yet.”
“What do you think it is?” Markoff asked again, just as he
had asked weeks before, in Altman’s kitchen.
“I don’t know,” said Altman. “I haven’t even seen it yet. But
I can tell you one thing: it scares the living shit out of me.”
They were both silent for a while, lost in their own
thoughts. Finally Markoff looked up.
“You’ll have to go down again,” he said.
“Now?”
“Soon. We need to add some equipment to the console
so that you can communicate with the MROVs.”
“Funny,” said Altman.
“What’s funny?”
“I was going to suggest doing that,” he said. “Adding
something to the console.”
Markoff gave him a quizzical look. “You did suggest it,”
he said. “That was one of the first things you said to us.
Don’t you remember? Are you all right?”
I must have been more rattled than I realized, Altman
thought. He thought about how to answer Markoff, rapidly
decided the best strategy was to ignore it.
“As long as it’s not with Hendricks, I’m willing. I don’t
mind going down alone.”
“Not alone,” said Markoff. “I want you to take a few trips
down, we’ll try a different person each time.”
“How do I know they’re not going to react like Hendricks
did? I was lucky with him. I may not be lucky next time.”
“You’ve become more important than I expected you to
be,” Markoff said. “You know how to run the bathyscaphe
and take the proper measurements. Which means I’m
counting on you. I need you to do this.”
“And in exchange?”
Markoff gave him a level stare. “No ‘and in exchange.’
You’ll do it.”
“Is that a threat?” Altman asked.
“When I’m threatening you, you’ll know.”
Altman closed his eyes. If it wasn’t a threat, it wasn’t far
from one. But he knew he didn’t really have a choice.
“All right,” he said. “But I want a tranquilizer gun just in
case. And I want whoever goes down with me to be
strapped to his chair.”
“Agreed,” said Markoff. He stood and made a show of
shaking Altman’s hand. “Thank you for your cooperation. I’ll
be in touch.”
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