Dead Space: Martyr (31 page)

“Oh my God, you’ve become a true believer,” said Altman.

“Why else do you think I convinced Markoff to have you released? I have to wish you the best of luck,” said Stevens. “If you’re right and I’m wrong, I hope you can figure it out and save all of us. If you’re wrong and I’m right, then I have everything to gain by believing.”

“That’s not how belief works,” said Altman. “You can’t just decide to believe.”

“Apparently,
you
can’t,” said Stevens. “But I can. I hope you’re wrong.” Altman watched him reach out and cut the link.

Stevens’s attitude, Altman realized, was likely be shared by many, though very few would be as rational-sounding or as coherent in the way they managed to deliberately shut their eyes to the
danger. By raising it with his colleagues, he risked their resentment and, even, their attacks. Even if they believed him, it might well mean that panic and fear and depression might compromise their ability to work.

No, he was going to have to make a little gambit of his own: Altman’s wager. He’d wager that he could pretend to proceed as if he agreed, pretend to move forward with fulfilling the Marker ’s will, and then at the last minute, once he’d learned enough to defeat it, turn things around. If he won, then life would probably continue on roughly as it was. If he lost, then he’d probably be dead, and maybe everyone else would be as well.

Not good odds, but they were the only odds he had.

54

It was Showalter who made the initial breakthrough by suggesting a possible function for the Marker. The symbols, he theorized, were mathematical codes that symbolized DNA. The Marker itself was a representation of a DNA sequence.

The scientists set about decoding the sequence. Another scientist, a radio astronomist named Grote Guthe, made the next breakthrough, suggesting that the Marker ’s signal could be read as a transmission of a sequence of genetic code. Field made sure that Altman heard about both.

Showalter’s team sequenced the Marker itself, and came up with a genetic profile that was, so he told Altman, remarkably similar to that of humans.

“So something like humans?” said Altman.

“Maybe,” said Showalter. “Maybe even something exactly like humans. I think that the Marker has the DNA code for our ancestors.”

“So it records our genetic code,” said Altman. “So what?”

“Not just records,” said Showalter. “We think the pulse transmits it as well, deliberately changing genetic structure slightly in existing human organisms. It may, in fact, have been the beginning of human life.”

Altman didn’t know what to say. It was staggering to think that human life had neither evolved naturally nor been a gift from God but was, instead, based on the Marker.

“But why would it be rebroadcasting our genetic code?” asked Altman. “We’ve already evolved. What would be the point of that?”

“Have you talked to Grote Guthe?” asked Showalter. “He’s hit a snag. For God’s sake, go talk to Grote.”

And so he did. The German scientist was not what he expected he would be; he was small and very thin, and had a skin condition that had left him hairless. He looked harmless, almost helpless. He seemed to be expecting Altman.

“Yes,” he said, “Herr Doktor Field has told me about you. You are one of us, yes?” Altman neither nodded nor shook his head, but Guthe went on. “You want to know about the pulse,” he said. “Whether my team has decoded the pulse. Perhaps Herr Doktor Shovalter has said something, yes?”

“Yes,” said Altman.

“We have decoded the pulse, perhaps. But we have struck a complication.”

“What’s the complication?”

“My team has decoded the signal and we think it is decoded correctly. We understand it to be a code and we understand what that code is. Herr Doktor Shovalter thinks he has decoded the signal and he, too, thinks it is decoded correctly. The complication is that we have different answers. For him it is a code that is a step upon the sequence to human life. For me it is something else entirely, not correlatable to a known species. I am making a synthetic version of mine now, to get a closer look at it.”

“Perhaps one of you is wrong,” said Altman.

“Perhaps,” said Guthe. “Or perhaps the pulse signal is transmitting a different code than is recorded on the Marker.” He leaned forward and gave Altman a steady look. “I must say something to you,” he said. “I am a believer, you must not doubt my belief. But I am also a scientist. I have looked carefully at Herr Doktor Shovalter’s calculations and I have looked carefully at my own. Our calculations are correct. If the Marker was the beginning of human life, then it has no need to be broadcasting this now. And yet it is communicating a pulse, one with an unfamiliar genetic code. Perhaps it is communicating a pulse, but perhaps it is a flawed pulse with a flawed genetic code. Perhaps this Marker has begun a process of deterioration.”

“The Convergence,” said Altman.

“But maybe it has simply become confused,” said Guthe. “We must try to understand it. We must work with it.”

“But what if this is what it’s meant to do?” said Altman.

Guthe groped his necklace out of his shirt, clutched the icon of the Marker in his fist. “No, it cannot intend this,” he insisted. “The Marker is here for us. It has simply become confused.” And then he looked at Altman for guidance.

Altman just nodded, and left without another word.
I’m surrounded by madmen,
he couldn’t help but think.
Fanatics.

But later that night, he began to have doubts. What if Guthe was right? What if the Marker
was
just broken? Maybe they could fix the Marker by returning the core sample to its rightful position.

That’s ridiculous,
he thought.
It was transmitting its signal before the core sample was taken.

He lay in bed staring at the ceiling until another idea came to him.
But maybe it was transmitting a different signal then, the correct signal.

He couldn’t sleep until he at least tried.

He woke up Showalter, explained what he wanted to do.

“Already been tried,” said Showalter. “Doesn’t make a difference.”

“But maybe—”

“The missing piece isn’t crucial,” Showalter explained. “In fact, no single piece is crucial. The Marker is a complex but internally replicated structure in the same way, for instance, that the pattern of a nautilus replicates even as it tightens. Even if parts of it are broken or damaged, it still works. Probably the only way to stop it from working would be to pulverize it.”

Depressed, Altman went back to bed. Chalk one up for the Marker. Not damaged, or at least not damaged in a way they could understand. Which meant it must be acting the way it was for other reasons. Either it was working for their own good or for their destruction.

55

Herr Doktor Guthe had been up for hours. With the help of his team, he’d sequenced the synthetic strand and then had it biotically assembled by a nanosystem. Then he’d meticulously gone over the results to make sure it was right. It was rough, hardly the kind of job that he would be proud of, but it was accurate. If he could get it to replicate, he’d be able to make some extrapolations about the original strand, about the purpose of the mutation, and this might in turn tell him if the Marker was broken or if it was working intentionally.

His team had stuck with him around the clock until the moment when they’d injected the sequence within a proxy nucleus into four dozen embroyonic sheep cells, followed by chemical encouragement to get them to divide. After that, there was nothing to do but wait. Either it would work or it would not. For the first time in several hours, he looked around at his team, saw that they were haggard and frazzled by turns, some of them barely standing. So he sent them to bed.

Herr Doktor Guthe had intended to go to bed himself. Only he wasn’t tired. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been tired. He hadn’t slept for days.

And so he had stayed on, alone, in the laboratory. He waited,
motionless, sitting on his stool. He felt as though he had entered a completely different state of mind, one that did not need sleep. He expected never to have to sleep again. This, he was sure, was due to the Marker.

Upon thinking the word, he pulled the necklace out of his shirt and clutched the icon in his fist. Would she come? If he thought hard enough, would she come?

And then she stepped out of the wall and toward him. At first she was no more than a blur, but as he squeezed the charm and concentrated, she began to change. The shadowy air around her was cut away and she became herself—tall, thin, a perfect face save for one small scar just above her left cheekbone.

I missed you,
she said.

“I missed you, too,” he said.

She smiled, and a little blood dripped out of her mouth, but not too much. He tried to ignore it. Except for the blood, he loved the way she smiled.

What are you doing?
she asked.

“An experiment,” he said. “I’m trying to understand the thing that brought you back to life.”

How flattering,
she said.
But I wish you wouldn’t.

“I wish I would have spoken to you then,” he said. “Back when you were alive. I watched you, you know. I followed you everywhere.”

I know,
she said.

“And then you died and I thought I had missed my chance. But now you are here again.”

I’m just a projection of your mind,
she said.
You know that. You told me that yourself. You know that I’m a construct made from your memories.

“I know,” he said. “But you seem so real.”

She smiled again, wider this time, and blood began to slip down her cheek and to her chin. He had found her like that, twenty years before. He hadn’t even known her name. Then, as now, he was unsure of what had happened to her. Then, she was as good as dead when he found her. Now she kept dying but kept being brought back to life again.

You musn’t . . . ,
she started, and then she slowly faded and was gone. He sighed. He never got much further with the message the Marker sent, never heard as much of it as his colleagues had. He figured it was because his desire to see the girl was too strong, too intense.

He took a look in the cooker, was surprised to see that all forty cells in all forty receptacles had multiplied. That was unprecedented. Also unprecedented was the speed with which they multiplied—he had never seen anything like it. It had been only a few hours, and already the sample was visible to the naked eye.

He stayed for the next hour watching them until each of the receptacles was teeming with a pale pink substance like nothing so much as biological tissue. Should he take a closer look? Why not: there were plenty of samples. What would it hurt to look at just one?

He opened a receptacle, ran a mild electric charge through it. The pinkish substance withdrew, as if it felt it. Maybe it did.

He upturned the receptacle, poured it onto the table. The substance lay there, undulating slightly. Carefully, he cut it in half with a scalpel. He watched an empty furrow appear between the two halves, then watched the substance run back together again into a single sheet, leaving no visible line or scar.
Marvelous,
he thought.

He was still experimenting with it when his grandmother’s
face appeared, hovering just over the counter. Startled, he jumped.

Sure, he loved his grandmother, but not nearly as much as he loved the girl. Or maybe it was just different: he had known the girl for only a moment, and so his love for her was pure and unadulterated. His feelings toward his grandmother were much more complex. After his parents died, she had taken him in. She had treated him all right, but she was old and grumpy, and sometimes she did things that he had a hard time understanding. And then one day, when he was a little older, she had simply disappeared. Even then he basically understood that something must have happened to her, something that she couldn’t help, that perhaps she had even been killed. But part of him had a hard time not resenting her for not coming back.

“What do you want?” he asked in German.

Is that any way to treat your grandmother?
she said. She was speaking in a heavily accented English, even though he knew that if she had been real, she would be screeching in German.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’ve come, I imagine, because there was something the girl was unable to express. You know I love you.”

That’s more like it,
she said, and held out to him a cellophone-wrapped sweet. She had always been doing that when she was alive. He tried to take it, but his hand met empty air.

It’s time,
she said.
You’ve learned too much. It’s time.

Time for what? He hadn’t felt whole since he lost his grandmother. And now she was here again, but not here at the same time. He could see her and hear her but not touch her or smell her. His whole life had been like that, a life of loss, first his parents gone and then his grandmother. In the end, all that was left was just his laboratory, the only thing he could count on. His laboratory had never let him down.

Are you listening to me?
she asked, snapping her fingers.
Do you understand what I’m saying? You must stop this research at once!

Stop his research? He felt a rage rising in him. She had never understood what he was trying to do, so why should it surprise him that she didn’t understand him now? “But I’m doing important work,” he said. “I’m making discoveries beyond human imagination.”

What you are doing is dangerous,
she said.
Trust me, child. I say this for your own good. The Marker will destroy you. You must stop before it is too late.

His eyes were stinging with tears. Stop his work? What else did he have?
It’s not really her,
he told himself. The Marker has just borrowed her image and voice. Why couldn’t it have stayed with being the girl? He had loved her but never really had her, so he couldn’t miss her in the same way that he missed his grandmother. And now it was trying to manipulate him, trying to use his grandmother to get him to stop.