Майкл Крайтон - The Andromeda Evolution

Negative.

PAFB-STERN

Are you monitoring the tower that’s grown out of the lake? It’s nearly a mile high. I’m desperate, Sophie. And pardon me, but so far your utility has been low. I expected more. Any ideas?

ISS-KLINE

Negative. Sir.

PAFB-STERN

[ten-second pause] Very well. Your involvement has come to an end, Dr. Kline. Thank you for your contribution. But our mission has failed.

ISS-KLINE

I disagree, General.

PAFB-STERN

Excuse me?

ISS-KLINE

My mission has only just begun. I wanted to let you know myself, in my own words.

PAFB-STERN

What are you—

[end transmission]

Cutting off the connection, Kline kept her eyes trained on the internal ISS camera feed. Her two fellow crew members continued their daily work, oblivious. As she watched them, Kline’s physiological monitoring registered changes in respiration and heart rate that signaled her growing excitement.

This was unusual, as Kline rarely departed from a resting baseline. Through the use of deep breathing and mindfulness techniques, she normally kept her emotional state opaque to the physiological sensors and the prying eyes of the ground-based crew in Houston.

Today was different.

Kline employed no calming routines. Instead, she simply reached to her wrist and snatched off the watch-size Bluetooth wireless monitor. Deactivating it, she let the device float away—its signal gone dead.*

Dr. Sophie Kline was finished with pretense. She was done acting, lying, and hiding her emotions from constant ground-based observation. She had been concealing her true intentions for two years.

And now, those intentions were about to be revealed.

Heart thumping, Kline pulled out her custom robotic workstation interface. Slipping on the telepresence gloves and pulling her head-mounted display over her eyes, she flexed her fingers. A hundred yards away, the Robonaut R3A4 did the same.

The robot began to move its arms.

It typed on a keyboard, activating a suite of dedicated onboard computers located in the isolated laboratory module. The commands it was able to execute from this location had been given permanent emergency priority. In the event of a catastrophe, NASA had deemed it crucial that other ISS subsystems be accessible from the relative safety of the Wildfire lab.

A hostile action from within had never even been considered.

As she worked, Kline was blind to an ominous sight outside the cupola window just beyond her shoulder. A smudge had appeared on the nadir face of the Wildfire Mark IV laboratory module, still disguised as a Cygnus unmanned cargo vehicle after five years in operation. It was glowing violet in the vacuum of space, unnoticed. It flashed, a brighter purple, and then it was bigger.

Wearing her visor, Kline was seeing the world through a machine’s eyes. Only the lower half of her face was visible, lips moving as she spoke quietly to herself. After years of grinding work, she had now embarked on a unilateral course of action. It was a plan known only to her, but one that would soon change her own life and that of every human being on the planet.

Sophie Kline’s intention was to set the human race free.

Forensics

DEEP BENEATH THE AMAZON JUNGLE, AN UNRECOGNIZABLE body lay slumped under the drifting LED lights of half a dozen canary drones. The inhuman figure seemed to be emerging out of the solid floor like a swimmer surfacing. In death it had been trapped, half consumed, facedown and perfectly still.

No camera feed could explain exactly what it was.

A hundred yards farther up the tunnel, the team paused, uncertain. This only lasted an instant. In her typical fashion, Nidhi Vedala was already waving them onward with impatience.

“On we go,” she ordered, setting off down the tunnel. “Respirators tight. Eyes open. Prep your sample kit, Peng.”

Taking small, steady steps, Vedala advanced until she had reached the maelstrom of flickering lights and humming drones. She aimed her headlamp down, tracking the bright beam along ridges of ruined flesh. Looking beyond the body, she noticed that the wall didn’t reflect back—it was missing.

“There’s an opening,” she reported. “Rubble on the floor. Pitting on the walls. Probably caused by a kinetic energy release.”

Odhiambo spoke up from just over her shoulder, cracking a fresh chemical light stick that bathed the walls and his face in electric-green shadows.

“Oh yes,” he said, “certainly an explosion. And look at the surface features. See the striations? These fine grooves? Unique to this area of the anomaly. Almost crystalline, like quartz. Or perhaps like ice that has melted and been refrozen.”

“What caused it?” asked Vedala.

“Probably a shock wave passing through the structure.”

Vedala produced a slim digital camera from her hip-mounted kit bag. Stepping carefully around the body, she snapped a series of pictures. Once finished, she nudged the mass of flesh with the toe of her boot. The body swayed, shivering like gelatin, but didn’t roll over.

“Careful, Nidhi,” said Stone, unable to help himself. “We don’t know what the hell that is.”

Vedala pocketed the camera and kneeled. She curled her gloved fingertips under the corpse’s cheek. Pulling firmly but gently, she twisted the head to the side to reveal the hidden face.

Only then did Stone realize he was holding his breath. He let it out.

“It’s a man,” said Vedala. “Seriously infected. Look at the nostrils.”

Gray-green ash caked the nose and mouth. The cheeks were blemished with a patch of metallic hexagons. The chest and neck were fused with the floor, pulling grotesquely at the skin of his face.

“Get a sample, Peng,” Vedala ordered, releasing the head and letting it sink back to the floor. “Let’s compare it to what we’ve seen already.”

“He is not indigenous,” said Odhiambo, helping Vedala stand. “This person is a Caucasian male, or was. And you can see now he is wearing something . . . perhaps a lab coat or a uniform. The fabric is melted into his skin.”

“There’s part of a badge,” added Stone, pointing with his light. “No name, just a number.”

. . . k B . . . kstein #23402582

Vedala produced her camera and snapped a photo of the badge. She aimed her headlamp into the dark space beyond the corpse.

“He must have crawled out of this room,” she said, stepping over the sprawled body.

“Slow down, Nidhi,” called Stone. “I’m sending in the drones. We don’t have any idea what’s waiting for us in there.”

Stone scrambled after Vedala, with Odhiambo close behind him. They were preceded by a whirring swarm of drones. Peng stayed behind, scraping a sample vial over the pale flesh of the corpse. After a long final gaze at the motionless body, Peng Wu rose and joined the rest of the team.

None of them noticed the boy, crouched and watching from the shadows.

“WHOA,” SAID VEDALA. “This is big.”

Her voice echoed back across an open expanse.

The canary swarm spread out into the emptiness to explore. The team remained by the doorway, crowded around Stone and his monitor. Nobody spoke as a series of hideous images flickered over the screen. Occasionally, Stone would flip over to the laser rangefinders to see the room topography. And to provide a bit of relief.

This was the site of a massacre.

The narrow passageway had opened into a vast space with an impressively high ceiling. The floor was littered with debris: shards of metal, broken rock, and more human bodies. Barely visible, three knobby cylindrical machines rose in a line. Red glowing emergency lights shone at their bases, and a faint humming was audible. A fourth cylinder was scorched black and leaning at a precarious angle, its casing shattered.