42

This is getting to be a habit, Altman thought, carefully easing the chunk of rock out of the core sampler. Nobody seemed to notice. They were all too preoccupied with the interior of the bathyscaphe itself, the wash of blood and gore inside, the rotten, damaged bodies. Markoff quickly had the area quarantined, but not before Altman had gotten away with the sample.

Now he took it to his bedroom to examine it. He was certain it was from the artifact itself. It was seemingly ordinary rock, but one that he couldn’t identify. The bit he held had an indentation on it, where something had been carved or inflicted on the rock, but it was too small a sample to give a clear sense of what it was.

Sneaking into an unlocked lab at night, he tested it. The substance was not unlike granite but harder, almost as hard as corundum. One face was smooth; he could see where the rest had been cut, was surprised the cutters hadn’t burned out. Within the rock he found mineral veins that struck him as too regular to be natural. But if they weren’t natural, what were they? In the end, puzzled, he decided to assume they were natural formations: there was no technology that he was aware of that would allow someone to manipulate solid rock in this way.

·  ·  ·  

Whatever had happened to the others in the bathyscaphe, what Markoff had been able to determine about it, Altman was never told. Once quarantined, the bathyscaphe disappeared and was never seen again. No doubt Markoff and his inner circle had analyzed it to death. Altman was eager to see the rest of the vid from Hennessy, but his request to Markoff was met with silence.

Now that the bathyscaphe was up, the floating compound was frantic with preparations to raise the artifact itself. It was impossible to have a conversation that didn’t turn to the monolith lying down at the bottom of the crater, and people seemed both excited and incredibly nervous. Whatever it was, whatever was down there, could change everything, and they would be the first to come into contact with it. The signal had returned but seemed to be broadcasting differently now, intermittently, on and off, in fairly regular bursts. Some researchers speculated it was a distress call, though who or what was in distress nobody dared guess. Perhaps it was a result of a failing piece of technical equipment, the artifact itself faulty or breaking down. It was, after all, very, very old. And many believed, Altman among them, that it was old enough that it couldn’t possibly be of human origin, that the artifact was clear proof of alien life.

“If you’d seen it,” he told Markoff in his debriefing, “you’d agree with me. There’s nothing human about it.”

The pulse signal was now interfering with radios and vids, creating a static communication wave and fuzzing images. Often when he descended in the bathyscaphe Altman was out of touch very quickly because of the interference, and stayed out of touch for a good part of the trip. He was piloting descents daily, with several members of Markoff’s inner circle, all of whom showed no signs of cracking. He questioned whomever he was with, trying to find out anything he could. Mostly they were closed-lipped, but every once in a while they let something slip.

A scientist called him in from the hall while he was walking past a lab and, thinking he was someone else at first, began asking him questions about a winch mechanism. Was it really enough? Would it lift the thing? And what about the cable? What sort of cable would you need for something like that?

Altman played along as long as he could, finally admitted he didn’t know what he was talking about.

“You’re not Perkins?” the scientist asked.

Altman shook his head.

“Never mind,” said the scientist, retreating quickly into his lab. “Forget I said anything.”

Showalter, too, was almost as much on the outside as Altman, though he knew geophysics well enough that he was somehow consulted.

“Always just bits and pieces,” Showalter confessed to Altman in a low voice over coffee. “They think if they give me just a little, I won’t be able to figure it out. That’d be true if it was just them, but their colleagues sometimes consult me as well. I know more than anybody realizes.”

“And?” asked Altman.

“I think we’re very close to bringing it up,” said Showalter. “Almost all the theoretical problems have been solved. A few more tests and they’ll just be waiting for an okay.”

Ada had made friends with the medical team, even helping out informally when she was needed. And she was needed more and more. In the floating compound, Ada told him, reports of scientists and soldiers beset by insomnia and hallucinations were on the rise.

“According to Dr. Merck,” she claimed, “he’s never seen anything like it. Violent incidents of all kinds are on the rise, nearly double what they were just a few months ago. The suicide rate has skyrocketed and the assault rate has climbed considerably.”

“It’s a tense time,” said Altman, playing devil’s advocate, the role Ada usually would play. “Maybe that’s all it is.”

“No, you were right. It’s more than that,” said Ada. “Even Merck thinks so. There are signs of widespread paranoia, people having visions of dead relatives, and more and more people speaking in a trancelike state of ‘Convergence,’ without being really able to explain what that meant exactly once they were themselves again. Everyone is on the verge of paranoia or panic. Goddammit, you’ve got me thinking like you.”

Altman nodded. “Then my nonscientific inquiry was right,” he said. “Everyone is on edge. Something is going on.”

“What do you think it means?” Ada asked him.

“What does it mean?” said Altman. “If you ask me, it means were fucked.”