Dead Space: Martyr (2 page)

He looked at Field’s holoscreen carefully. It looked normal to him, the gravity readings typical.

“What am I looking for?” asked Altman.

Field furrowed his brow. “I forget you’re new,” he said. “I’ll zoom in on the center.”

The center of the crater was in deep water, about a half dozen miles from their laboratory. Altman leaned toward the monitor, squinted. A darkness at the heart of the crater revealed a gravitational anomaly.

“Here’s what it looked like a month ago,” said Field. “See?”

He flashed up another profile. In this one, the darkness in the center wasn’t there, Altman saw. He checked the first profile. The readings everywhere but the center were the same.

“How’s that possible?” he asked.

“It doesn’t make sense, does it?” said Field. “It wouldn’t just change like that.”

“Probably just an equipment malfunction,” said Altman.

“I’ve been working here a long time,” said Field. “I know an equipment failure when I see one. This isn’t one. The anomaly appears both on the satellite images and the underwater scans, so it can’t be.”

“But how could it change?” asked Altman. “Maybe a volcanic eruption?”

Field shook his head. “That wouldn’t give this sort of anomaly. Plus, the other instruments would have sensed it. I can’t explain it. There’s something wrong,” he said, already reaching for his phone.

3

As he got closer, Chava became more and more nervous. It wasn’t a fish or anything like it. It wasn’t a sea turtle or a dog or a jaguar. He thought maybe it was a monkey, but it was too big to be a monkey. He crossed himself and then crossed two fingers for protection, but kept moving forward.

Even before he could see it clearly, he could hear it breathing. It was making a strange huffing noise, like someone trying to retch up something he was choking on. A wave pounded in and for a moment the huffing stopped, the creature swallowed up by the water and foam. Then the water ebbed and left it panting on the damp sand. It flopped over and swiveled something like a head in his direction.

It was like the creature in his dream, but much worse. It was not human, but seemed as though it once had been human. Its neck looked like it had been flayed free of skin, the reddish pith underneath flecked with white splotches, oozing slowly. What looked to be eyes were only empty sockets covered with veined, opaque membranes. The jawbone seemed to have vanished entirely, leaving only a flap of loose skin and a hole where the mouth should have been. The huffing noise came from that opening, along with a bitter, acrid smell that made Chava cough.

The creature was hunched over, its fingers webbed, a thin leathery membrane running between its elbow and hip like a bat’s wing. It tried to stand, then fell back again into the damp sand. There were two large red lumps bigger than his fists on its back. They were growing.

Mother of God,
thought Chava.

The creature gave a sound like a groan, the lumps on its back pulsing. The bones in its arms cracked, the arms themselves twisting, becoming less human. It coughed up a milky liquid that hung in strands from the hole in its face. The back split open with a loud cracking sound, spraying blood, and exposing spongy gray sacs that filled and deflated; filled and deflated.

Chava was unable to move. The creature suddenly swiveled its head, staring at him with its eyeless face. Its muscles tightened and the gaping hole pulled back into a poor imitation of a smile.

Chava turned on his heel and began to run.

4

A few minutes later, Field had spoken to Ramirez and Showalter, two other geophysical scientists working in the area. They had confirmed it: they were getting the same readings as Field. It wasn’t an equipment problem: something had changed at the heart of the crater itself.

“But why?” asked Altman.

Field shook his head. “Who knows?” he said. “Showalter thought it might have to do with seismic activity focused directly at one of the sensors, but even as he suggested this was already talking himself out of it. Ramirez is as confused as we are. He’s talked to a few others, none of whom seem to know what’s going on. Something’s shifted, something’s different, but nobody knows why it’s changed or even what it could be. Nobody has ever seen anything quite like it.”

“What should we do?” asked Altman.

Field shrugged, thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. He sat running his fingers through his thinning hair, staring at nothing. “Nothing much we can do on our own,” he finally said. “I’ll file a report with CASRC and see what they advise. Until I hear back, I suppose I’ll just keep on with the readings.”

With a sigh, Field turned back to his screen. Altman just stared at him, disgusted.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked. “Are you even curious?”

“What?” said Field, turning back. “Of course I am, but I don’t know what to do about it. We tried to figure it out, and everybody else is just as confused as we are.”

“And that’s it? You’re just going to give up.”

“Not at all,” said Field, his voice rising. “I told you: I’m filing a report with CASRC. They’ll be sure to have some ideas. That seems the best way to handle it.”

“And then what, you wait a few weeks for someone to read the report and then a few more weeks for a response? What goes on in the meantime? You just keep taking readings? What are you, a company man?”

Field’s face flushed dark. “There’s nothing wrong with following protocol,” he said. “I’m just doing my job.”

“This could be huge,” said Altman. “You said yourself it’s not like anything you’ve seen before. We’ve got to try to figure it out!”

Field pointed one shaky finger at him. “You do what you want,” he said in a low, quavering voice. “Go ahead and be a maverick and see where it gets you. This is a big deal, and it needs to be handled properly. I’ll do my job the way that I know it should be done.”

Altman turned away, his lips a tight line.
I’m going to find out what’s going on,
he vowed,
even if it kills me.

Hours later, Altman still hadn’t gotten any further than Field. He called every scientist he knew in or around Chicxulub, anybody at all with an interest in the crater. Each time he hit a wall,
he’d ask the person on the other end who else they thought he should call and then called them.

By a quarter to five, he still hadn’t gotten anywhere and had run out of names. He ran back over the data and correlated it with what he could get his colleagues to send him. Yes, there definitely was a gravitational anomaly. Something had shifted with the electromagnetic field as well, but that was all he knew.

Field, who like any good bureaucrat quit promptly at five every day, had begun to transmit his data and to pack up.

“You’re leaving?” asked Altman.

Field smiled and heaved his pear-shaped bulk out of the chair. “Nothing left to do here today,” he said. “I’m not paid overtime,” he explained, and then walked out the door.

Altman stayed on another few hours, going over the data and maps again, searching for precedents for shifts like this in records about the crater itself or about similar sites, records that stretched all the way back to the twentieth century. Nothing.

He was just on the way out the door himself when his phone sounded.

“Dr. Altman, please?” said a voice. It was barely louder than a whisper.

“This is Altman,” he said.

“Word has it you’ve been asking around about the crater,” said the voice.

“That’s correct,” he said, “there’s this odd anomal—”

“Not over the phone,” the voice whispered. “You’ve already said too much as it is. Eight o’clock, the bar near the quay. You know where that is?”

“Of course I know,” said Altman. “Who is this?”

But the caller had already hung up.

5

By the time Chava came back, dragging along his mother and a few of the other people from the nearby shantytown, the creature had changed again. The wet gray sacs on its back were larger now, each almost the size of a man when fully inflated. Its arms and legs had somehow joined, melding into one another. The flayed quality of the neck had changed, the flesh now looking as if it were swarming with ants.

The air around it had taken on an acrid yellow sheen. It hung in a heavy cloud, and when they got too close, they found it difficult to breathe. One man, a small but dignified-looking old drunk, wandered into the cloud and, after staggering about coughing, collapsed. Two other villagers dragged him out by the feet and then began to slap him.

Chava watched until the drunk was conscious again and groping for his bottle, then turned back to stare at the creature. “What is it?” Chava asked his mother.

His mother consulted in whispers with her neighbors, watching the thing. It was hard for Chava to hear everything they were saying, but he heard one word over and over again:
Ixtab
.
Ixtab.
Finally his mother turned to him. “Who is Ixtab?” Chava asked nervously.

“Go fetch the old
bruja,
” she told him. “She’ll know what to do.”

The
bruja
was already heading toward the beach when he came across her. She was moving slowly, leaning on a staff. She was old and frail, most of her hair gone and her face a mass of wrinkles. His mother claimed that she had been alive when the Spaniards killed the Mayans, a thousand years before. “She is like a lost book,” his mother had said another time. “She knows everything that everyone else has forgotten.”

She carried a pouch slung over one shoulder. He started to explain about the creature, but she silenced him with a gesture. “I already know,” she said. “I expected you sooner.”

He took her arm and helped her along. Others from the shantytown were coming down the beach as well, some walking as if hypnotized. Some wept; some ran.

“Who is Ixtab?” asked Chava suddenly.

“Ah, Ixtab,” said the
bruja
. She stopped walking and turned to face him. “She is a goddess. She is the rope woman. She hangs in the tree, a rope around her neck, and her eyes are closed in death, and her body has begun to rot. But she is still a goddess.”

“But is she dead?”

“The goddess of suicide,” mused the
bruja
. “She is the hanged goddess, the goddess of the end. And she gathers to her those who are dead by uncertain means.” She stared at the boy intently. “She is a very harsh mistress,” she said.

Chava nodded.

“Tell me,” the
bruja
said to him, “did you dream last night?”

Chava nodded.

“Tell me your dream,” said the
bruja,
and then listened carefully as he recounted it confusedly, in bits and pieces.

She gestured forward, at the people running in front of them, at the crowd of people around the strange creature up ahead. “These, too,” she said, “they have shared our dream.”

“What does it mean?” asked Chava.

“What does it mean?” she asked. She pointed a shaky finger at the creature ahead, its gray sacs now almost twice the size of the man, the cloud of noxious gas growing. “Here you see what it means.”

“We dreamed it and we made it real?” asked Chava, amazed.

She gave him a toothless smile and cackled. “You think you are so powerful?” she asked, and started shuffling forward again. “You think
we
are so powerful? No,” she said. “We could not make this. Our dream is a warning.”

“A warning?”

“The dream tells us there is something wrong,” she said. “We must set it right.”

For a time they walked through the sand without speaking, the old woman breathing heavily. Chava could already hear the hissing from the creature, louder than the crash of the surf.

“Have you begun to dream awake?” the
bruja
asked.

“What do you mean?” he asked, frightened.

“Ah, yes,” she said. “I can hear in your voice that you have. You must be careful. It found you first. It means to take you. Chicxulub: you know what this word means?”

The boy shook his head.

“And yet you have lived in this town all your life,” she scolded him. “You have lived within a word that you do not know.”

He was silent for a moment, then asked, “Is that bad?”

She made a noise with her lips but did not answer. Apparently it wasn’t a question worth answering.

“What does Chicxulub mean?” he asked after another moment.

She stopped briefly and with the tip of her stick drew a figure in the sand. It was two lines twisting around each other.

He crossed his fingers and imitated it by making the sign of protection he had learned as a child. She nodded. “What is this?” he asked.

She didn’t say anything. She spread her toothless mouth wide, which looked for a moment disconcertingly like the jawless maw of the creature on the beach.

“Tail of the devil,” she said. “The devil has started to wake and thrash its tail. If we cannot coax it back to sleep, then this will be the end of us.”

6

There was no reason to go, Altman thought. It was silly, probably someone’s idea of a joke. You ask enough questions, and it was inevitable that someone would screw with you. The last thing he needed was to start thinking espionage and conspiracy. He needed to figure this out rationally and scientifically. So instead of going to the bar, he just went home.

When he arrived, Ada was already there. She was sitting at the table, leaning back in the chair, asleep, her long dark hair tucked behind her ears and cascading over her shoulders. Altman kissed her neck and woke her up.

She smiled and her dark eyes flashed. “You’re later than normal, Michael,” she said. “You haven’t been cheating on me, have you?” she teased.

“Hey, I’m not the one who’s exhausted,” he said.

“I didn’t sleep well last night,” she said. “Had the worst dreams.”

“Me, too,” he said. He sat down and took a deep breath. “Something weird is going on,” he said. He told her about what he and Field had discovered, the calls he had made, the general sense that he felt, and that others seemed to share, that something was
off
.