59

“What about Markoff?” asked Altman.

“What about him?” asked Showalter.

“What’s he think about all this?”

“I don’t know,” said Showalter. “Been trying to contact him off and on for quite a while. Nothing doing. Dead maybe?”

“I’d be surprised,” said Altman.

They were traveling through a sequence of laboratories, moving first into the control station and then, through the safety door, into the lab itself. They had seen a few more of the creatures but had succeeded in dodging all but two of them, which they’d managed to carve up without losses. The first lab had been normal, nothing to worry about, but as soon as he opened the door to this one, Altman knew something was different. Something was off.

And then he saw it. Growing out of one of the air ducts and spilling onto the floor was a strange mass of tissue. It had spread along the floor itself, had seemingly become a part of it.

He gestured at it with his cutter.

“It’s starting to get around,” he said. “Spreading through the vents.”

A few seconds later, the lights flickered and went out, leaving only the emergency lighting on, the room now cast in thick shadow.

“They’re getting to the power grid now,” said Showalter. “We’d better hurry.”

They were almost to the door to the next lab when they heard a scuttling in the vents above them. The grille just above them was kicked out, and something fell down onto the deck, just missing them.

It was formless and pulsing, a kind of mound that at times stretched flat and looked like little more than a puddle. It slid slowly across the deck. As it crossed the floor, it left a sizzling stain inflicted on the deck itself. Anything it touched was either sucked in and disappeared or was stripped to bare metal. In the slow roll of it, Altman glimpsed from time to time a human skull, stripped to bone, and even once what looked like a laughing human face.

“How do you cut the limbs off something that doesn’t have any limbs?” asked Fert.

It moved slowly toward them, attracted perhaps by the vibration of their voices or propelled by some other means. It wasn’t aggressive; it seemed to have another purpose. As it eased them back, making them feel trapped, Altman began to wonder what it was. It stripped the deck bare, got rid of all features. Transfixed, he couldn’t help but watch, thinking they were finally out of time. It destroyed everything in its wake, living or dead. And he wouldn’t be surprised if, when it did, it grew. How big would it get? Were there any limits? Would it consume the entire world?

“We should go back,” Showalter said.

Altman nodded, and they started back toward the door they had come from. Fert was just about to open it, but Altman stopped him.

“Not yet,” he whispered. “Heard something.”

He pressed his ear to the door’s panel. Yes, definitely something out there, just on the other side of the door, and from the scraping and moaning sounds, he was pretty certain it wasn’t human.

What now? Altman wondered, his eyes casting around the room for something to get them out. Maybe they could leap the creature and run around it. Maybe they should simply leave the room and start firing at whatever was outside, trying to incapacitate it before the creeper caught up with them and engulfed them.

And then he realized Fert was pointing and gesturing. There, just shy of the edge of the creeper, was a hydrogen tank, a torch screwed into its nozzle. Altman reached out and grabbed it, dragging it back with him.

He spun the nozzle as open as it would go, sparked the torch alight, and adjusted it to give him the longest spurt of flame possible. He dipped it down, near the floor, and sprayed the creeper.

Where the flame touched it, it caught fire, burning and bubbling black. Elsewhere the creeper withdrew from the flames, trying to get away. He moved forward, spraying it, coughing in the acrid smoke it raised. Even where it was black and burning, it didn’t stop moving exactly, the burnt portions folding under into the core and disappearing. But at least it was moving in the other direction now.

“I can hold it at bay,” he called back to Showalter and Fert. “But I can’t get rid of it.”

Fert had just started to respond when the door crashed in. Still waving the torch, Altman glanced back over his shoulder to see Fert lopping off a scythe with his laser scalpel. Showalter was backing away, firing the laser pistol steadily, a half dozen of the shambling things coming at him with their bladelike arms. Fert was in the middle of them, surrounded on all sides, doing his best to cut his way free, but there were too many. Altman watched as one of them plunged his face into Fert’s neck. Fert, screaming, tried to pry it off and finally did, knocking it back and cutting into its mouth with the laser scalpel, but another was instantly in its place. Fert was screaming. A moment later his head had been torn free, his decapitated body collapsing onto the deck.

Two were down. Another was crippled, one arm and one leg inoperative, but it still dragged itself forward, hissing. Showalter stomped on it.

That left three. Altman gave the creeper a last blast and turned, dragging the cutter out. One was just bringing its bone scythe down whistling toward Showalter’s back, but the cutter caught it in time, shaving the appendage off close to the body. Another scythe tore a gash in his arm, and he almost dropped the cutter. Cursing, he managed to hold on to it and sliced the creature’s legs out from under it. A laser blast flashed by his head and left the arm of the last one half disarticulated, but with a cry it sprang forward, brushing past Altman and charging at Showalter.

The latter stumbled back, his laser pistol going off and singeing the wall. Together Showalter and the creature fell, toppling backward and into the creeper.

Altman immediately fired up the torch and rushed forward, but it was too late. Showalter was engulfed and simply gone, part of the pulsating, shifting mass. Weirdly enough, it did the same thing to the creature, engulfing it just as quickly and dramatically, swallowing one of its own.

He stomped on one of the creatures that was still moving and then lay down a blast of flame along the creeper’s side. It withdrew, moving back enough to allow him to sidle past and out the door.

Just me now, he thought. Down to one.

It was hard not to feel that there was no point going forward. It was inevitable—one of them would catch him, tear him apart.

But he kept going. He was limping now, though he wasn’t exactly sure why, not sure what had happened to his leg. He’d bandaged his arm with a first aid kit from the lab, stopping every once in a while to drive the creeper back with the torch.

He’d been lucky. Creeping through the half dark of the emergency lights, he’d met five of the bladed creatures since Fert and Showalter had died, never in sets of more than two, never in a place where one could get around behind him while the other tore him up from the front. The single one had been easy, but the pairs had been harder, and he couldn’t help thinking when it was all over that if the cutter had just once gone a little high or a little low one of the creatures would have sunk its maw into his neck and that would have been the end of him.

And then he saw Ada. She contacted him by holovid, a static-thick message.

“Michael,” she said. “Are you there?”

“Ada,” he said. “Is that you?”

“I’m here,” she said. “I’m safe for now, but I don’t know what they’re going to do with me. If you get this, please hurry, Michael.”

“Ada, where are you?” Altman said.

But she didn’t seem to be listening. She reached out beneath the camera, and the image flickered and shorted out, then began again.

“Michael, are you there?” she said.

A recording, then, being rebroadcast over and over. Still, it was enough, just enough, to get him going again.

As he moved higher in the facility, he saw fewer of the creatures. Those he did see, he either hid from or killed as silently as he possibly could, trying to avoid attracting the attention of the others.

Nevertheless, he was surprised when he realized that he was one hallway shy of the airlock. Suddenly he began to believe he might make it out alive after all.

There was only one problem. He almost walked straight into a creature assembled from not just one corpse but several. It looked like a spider, but with the scythelike appendages of the other creatures serving as legs, seven of them in all. The body proper consisted of overlapped and buckled torsos awkwardly melding with one another. Two heads dangled weakly at one end, as if ready to drop off.

He hid partly behind the doorframe, furtively examining it. On its underside was a pulsing yellow and black lump, maybe a tumor of some kind.

Rush forward, start cutting, he thought. Not much of a plan, but it was all he could think of.

He stayed for a long moment hesitating and then, taking a deep breath, rushed out and at it.

It immediately turned to face him and hissed. It scuttled toward him, the tips of its bonelike appendages thunking against the tunnel’s floor.

But before he’d gotten close enough to hit it with the cutter, something unsettling happened. One of the heads that had been dangling loose scrambled to the top of the body and launched itself at him. It struck him in the chest, wrapping a set of sinewy tendrils around his neck. It started to squeeze.

Holy hell, he thought. He stumbled back, trying desperately to pry it off. The spiderthing was still coming, still scuttling forward, its other head alert and on top of its body now as well. He struck the one already on him hard with the side of the cutter, again and again. It loosened just a little, enough that he could breathe, and he forced his hand in between it and his neck and tore it off.

It tried to crawl up his arm and back to his neck, but he held it tight by its writhing tendrils and didn’t let go. The other head launched itself at him and he batted it down to the ground with the first head, stamping it to a pulp. The head in his hands he slammed into the wall, then cut in half with the plasma cutter.

The rest of the spiderthing was on him now. He sliced off the tip of one appendage, and it reared back on its three hind legs and struck at him with the remaining four. He managed to parry two of them successfully and dodge the third. The fourth, having just lost its tip to the plasma cutter, struck him hard but bluntly in the chest. He fell to the floor, the wind knocked out of him.

Then he was beneath it as it danced about, trying to skewer him. He cut off one leg, then another, but it didn’t seem to hurt its balance. He kicked it hard and knocked it back and scrambled back himself and then, knowing it would do little good, just to buy time, he whipped out the plasma pistol and started firing.

The shots flashed off its legs or entered the flesh of the body with a hiss, but hardly seemed to slow it. It was nearly over him again, and he kicked it back with both feet this time, succeeding in turning it off balance and flipping it over.

As it struggled to right itself, he saw again the pulsing yellow and black lump. He fired at it.

The lump exploded, the blast knocking him back through the doorway, deafening him. Bits of the creature struggled about, including one whole enough to come at him. He stood, stumbled toward it, sectioned it with the plasma cutter.

The blast had stressed the corridor, covering the walls with hairline cracks. Stumbling up, he inspected it for leaks. For now it seemed to be holding.

Limping, still deafened, he moved to the end of the corridor and pounded on the airlock hatch. No answer. “It’s Altman!” he called. “Let me through!”

When there was still no answer, he realized there was an easier way and established a comlink to Field through his holopod. Immediately the airlock slid open and he stumbled through.

“Altman,” said Field. He was clutching his Marker icon tight in one hand, closing the airlock behind him with the other. “Thank the Marker. I had just about given up hope.”

“Where’s Ada?” was the first question Altman asked.

“What do you mean?” asked Field. “Still confined to the mainland, I presume. I haven’t seen her in days.”

“But I saw her,” said Altman. “I saw her vid. She was right here.”

“I’m sorry,” said Field. “I haven’t seen her.”

Maybe it was the Marker, he thought. But how could that be? The Marker only showed dead people. But Ada wasn’t dead. And then his blood froze as he realized what he’d known ever since he’d dreamt of her earlier: Ada was dead.

Field grabbed his arm. “We have to go,” said Field. “I don’t know how long we’ll be able to keep them contained.”

“Where’s Markoff?” Altman asked.

“I don’t know,” said Field. “I think he must have packed up and left. Either that or he’s dead. Doesn’t matter much to me either way.”

Altman nodded.

“We’ll have to come back, you know,” said Field.

“What?” said Altman.

“We need to go get help and come back. We have to make sure this is contained. We have to protect the Marker.”

Altman followed him away from the airlock and upward, through a series of open chambers and then around a curving corridor to the main dome. They got on the lift and prepared to take it to the top, but it didn’t move.

“What’s wrong?” asked Altman.

Field shook his head. “Apparently the lift won’t run on the auxiliary power,” he said. “We’ll have to climb. After you.”

Altman slung the cutter over his back and started up the access ladder, Field right behind him. It was a narrow climb, not much room between the ladder and the wall, and it quickly became an arduous one as well. Already exhausted by what he had just been through, Altman found he had to focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Behind him, Field wasn’t doing much better; he was wheezing like he was about to pass out.

“Everything okay, Field?” Altman called down.

“I’ll live,” said Field. He started to say something further, then made a choking sound and was suddenly cut off.

Altman glanced down and saw that Field was being choked by something that looked like a whitish gray snake or a length of intestine. One end was curled tight around the ladder, the other tight around his throat. Field was scrabbling at his throat with one hand, trying to hold on to the ladder with the other. Altman started down toward him, shouting, while Field let go of the ladder, both hands on the strangler now.

Altman was still clambering down, just heaving the cutter off his back, almost ready to cut the thing in two. But Field wasn’t holding the ladder. If he cut through the creature, Field would fall.

“Field!” he cried. “Grab hold of the ladder!”

But Field didn’t seem to hear him. His face was purple now, and Altman saw that blood was leaking slowly from his ears. Altman stretched down and stamped on the end of the strangler holding to the ladder. It squirmed beneath his foot but didn’t let go. At the other end it gave a little wrenching jerk, and Field’s head popped off like a grape, thunking down to the floor below. The body, knocking against the walls and the ladder, swiftly followed it.

He watched the strangler slither down, moving swiftly and sinuously. When it reached the bottom, it moved in twisting undulating motions until it reached Field’s headless corpse. He watched it prod his stomach and then one end of it narrowed to a point and it stabbed through the skin. Slowly, throbbing, it forced itself into Field’s belly. The belly swelled and slowly distended, until with a last wriggle the creature had disappeared entirely.

Altman felt sick. He clung to the ladder a moment, staring down. He might have hung there for longer, but then a thought occurred to him. There might be more of them. Glancing nervously about him, he forced himself to continue up the ladder.

When he reached the hatch, he opened it and clambered out onto the deck, making sure it was securely closed behind him. He hoped the creatures wouldn’t be capable of opening it, but he didn’t know for sure.

He started clambering down the side of the dome, following the narrow steps cut in the glass. Below was the boat platform, slopping up and down with the swells. Most of the boats were gone, but one was left. He undid the mooring and climbed in.

The motor started immediately. Only then did it start to seem real, like he might actually get away, like he might actually survive.

And then he remembered Field, dead because he had waited for Altman. We’ll have to come back, Field had said. Make sure it’s contained.

No, thought Altman. I’m free of it. I’m not going back.

And then suddenly he felt a presence in the boat beside him, just behind him, just out of sight. He was afraid that if he turned, he would see Field, his head loose, in place but not connected to his neck, threatening to fall off at any moment.

Hello, Altman, someone said.

“Leave me alone, Field,” Altman said.

Are you coming back for me? Only, when he thought of it, it didn’t seem exactly like Field’s voice.

“You’re dead, Field. I can’t come back for you.”

But what about me? it said.

Definitely not Field’s voice. It was the voice of a woman now. He turned his head, saw Ada.

“Where are you, Ada? Who killed you?”

I’m right here. I need you, Michael, she said. I need you to finish what you started.

He shook his head. “You’re not Ada,” he said. “You’re a hallucination.”

It’s not finished, Michael. Everyone is in grave danger. You have to stop the Convergence.

“What is Convergence?” he asked.

You’ve seen the Convergence, Ada said. You need to stop it.

And then she disappeared. He put the boat in gear and pushed the throttle down hard. Damned if he could figure out what exactly she wanted from him. What it wanted from him. I’m not going back, he told himself, I’m not going back.

But he already was afraid he would.