35
A week later, they arrived, and everybody was eager to get to work. They started by taking readings from the surface, from a launch that rose and fell with the swell of the waves. Field was with him at first, taking readings of his own and double-checking Altman’s, though he became greener and greener as the afternoon went on. He spent the last hour of the day hanging over the launch’s side, retching.
By the next morning, a groaning, vomit-flecked Field had been shipped back to the floating compound and it was just Hendricks and Altman. They brought the bathyscaphe down a thousand meters and took their readings there, waiting for confirmation from Markoff to descend farther. When it came, they went down to two thousand meters and repeated the process.
“Seems straightforward,” said Altman.
Hendricks shrugged. “More or less,” he said. “Only problem is that down this deep, communication gets erratic. It’s hard to know if they’ll receive the data we’re sending.”
“We might be cut off?” asked Altman.
“It comes and goes,” said Hendricks. “Really nothing to worry about as long as nothing goes wrong.”
Through the front observation porthole, Altman thought he could see pinpricks of light from the excavation below, from the robotic diggers. But it was too far away to make anything out. “We could go down to three thousand meters, take readings, and then come back up,” said Altman. “We’ve got more than enough air for it. You’re the boss. Up to you.”
Hendricks said, “Have you heard the stories about the other bathyscaphe?”
“I’ve seen the vid,” Altman said.
“What do you think happened?”
“I don’t know,” said Altman.
“Doesn’t it worry you at all?”
“I don’t know,” said Altman. “I want to know what happened, but I’m not worried exactly. Does it worry you?”
Hendricks nodded. “Let’s take it slow. There’s no point in rushing things,” he said. “On the other hand, if I’m reading the data right, the pulse signal is starting again.”
“Really?” said Altman, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice. “Are you certain?”
Hendricks hesitated, then nodded slowly. “It’s very slight—I caught it at two thousand meters but not at one thousand—but it’s there.”
“What does it mean that it’s back?” asked Altman. “Maybe we should keep going down after all. Who knows how long it will last? We need to record it while it’s still broadcasting.”
But Hendricks had one hand cupped over his earpiece. “Too late,” he said. “They’re ordering us back up.”
They looked at each other a long moment. “You said yourself that communications are intermittent,” said Altman. “How will they know we got the message?”
Hendricks shook his head. “If we don’t get the okay to go down to three thousand meters, we’re to go back to the surface anyway. That’s protocol. If we disobey, what do you think the chances are of them letting us near a bathyscaphe again? We can’t do it.”
A half dozen counterarguments fired through his head and then quickly dissolved. Hendricks was right. They had no choice. The signal would have to wait.
A contingent of guards was waiting for them by the time they opened the hatch and stepped out in the submarine bay. They were hustled down to the command center, which was already occupied not just by Markoff but also by a half dozen researchers, all of them part of Markoff’s inner circle. Not men from Chicxulub. They looked stern, serious.
“The pulse signal has started again?” asked Markoff. “You’re sure about this?”
“Why the hell wouldn’t we be?” said Altman. “The instruments don’t lie.” He gestured at the other researchers. “But you apparently wanted a second opinion. Why don’t you ask them?”
“It’s much weaker than it was before,” said one of the men.
“We noticed,” said Altman.
“Maybe it’s not the same signal after all,” said another. “Maybe it’s static and feedback from the MROVs and robotic units that are handling the excavation.”
“Just barely possible,” said Altman. “But not at all likely. It’s the same signal.”
“Did you feel anything unusual? Sense anything strange?” asked Markoff.
Altman shook his head. “No,” he said.
“What about you, Hendricks?”
“I don’t know, sir,” said Hendricks.
“When I reached two thousand meters, I started to feel a little strange. It felt like a premonition or something.”
“Stevens,” said Markoff, and one of the researchers came forward. He was distinguished looking, but had a relaxed, kind face. “Take Hendricks and work up a full psychological profile. If you get any sense of a problem, you’re authorized to take him off duty. If he looks fine to you, we’ll have both of them in the bathyscaphe first thing tomorrow.”
That night Altman’s dreams began again. He woke up drenched in sweat in the middle of the night and found he could not move. He was jittery, little flashes of light going off behind his eyelids, and he had a sense of dread that refused to leave him. It took a long time for him to become aware that he wasn’t back at his house in Chicxulub, but when he did, the imagined shape of the room around him became amorphous and vague.
His heart began to pound heavily, and he could hear the blood in his ears. The space around him remained undetermined in the darkness. It was like he was in a place that wasn’t a place at all, like he was suspended in a void. He tried again to move but still couldn’t. Am I still dreaming? he wondered.
And then, only very slowly did he realize where he might be, in the floating compound, that sound just beside him the sound of Ada breathing in her sleep.
And suddenly he found he could move again. He got up, drank a glass of water, and got back into the bed again. Ada moaned in her sleep. He wrestled with trying to fall back asleep, when he heard a knock on his door.
It was Stevens.
“Altman, isn’t it?” he whispered.
“Yes,” Altman said.
“Can we go somewhere to talk?”
Altman slipped into his pants and a shirt and tiptoed out of the room, following Stevens down the hall. The man keyed an empty lab open, ushered Altman in.
“What’s this about?” Altman asked.
“You haven’t noticed anything unusual about Hendricks, have you?” asked Stevens.
“Is anything wrong?”
“Nothing wrong with the scans,” said Stevens. “Nothing wrong with the tests either. But there’s still something bothering me. I can’t quite put my finger on it. He seems normal, stable, but different somehow.”
“He seems the same to me,” said Altman.
“Maybe it’s just the pressure,” said Stevens. “Maybe he’s nervous. But it feels like he’s holding something back.”
Altman nodded.
“Since you’re going to be alone with him in the bathyscaphe and the one to suffer if things go wrong, I thought I’d talk to you about it.”
“I don’t know what to say,” said Altman. “He seems fine to me. I’ve never had any problems with him on a dive, never sensed any nervousness. I trust him. No,” he said. “I’m not worried about him. In fact, I’m a lot less worried about him than I’d be being confined in the bathyscaphe with many of the other people in this facility.”
Stevens nodded. “We want to be careful,” he said. “You can understand that, considering what happened with the last bathyscaphe. We don’t want anything going wrong. All right,” he said, “I’ll tell them we can move ahead.”