Джек Макдевитт - Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

“No,” I said, trying not to feel guilty.

Moss laughed. It was an ugly sound. “Tiel, I’ve told this story a hundred times. I’ve told it to Survey, and I’ve told it to their analysts. I’ll live with it forever. Just like Uxbridge did.

“What you have to understand is, when the thing walked into the chamber, its slick humanoid skin glistening, its pink eyes surveying us, I was with it. Inside it. I felt the water-cold rock beneath padded feet, and the dusty air sucked past curving rows of incisors. I looked from Ux to Chellic to myself, delaying the moment of selection even though I knew, knew from the beginning. The lean one, Chellic, had been on its feet and turned to face me. The light from the lamps had acquired an amber tint.I, we , knew our danger. The three—things—were terribly slow, but all had burners.

We—it, I —hesitated. We wanted Chellic, and we advanced cautiously toward the altar, and dreamed how it would be. She seemed frozen, her breast rising and falling. And her face: my God, her face had twisted into a dark leer, lips drawn back in a feral snarl to reveal her own pitiful white teeth, an expression all the more horrible in that it contained no hint of fear, but rather implied that she too was about to share a live meal.

“And then I understood what was happening. We were all of us drawn into the mind and will of the beast: we all looked out through its eyes, and we would all rend Chellic muscle from bone.

“I tried to get out. To find my own eyes. The laser was a dead weight in my right hand, desperately far away. Chellic’s animal face was close now: she opened her arms wide, and advanced. Ux, with a scream that echoed round the chamber, got to his feet, but could only lean drunkenly against the slab from which his lamp illuminated the ghastly scene.

“In that moment, I got the laser up. We watched the weapon swing in our direction, and looked into the huge muzzle.

“I’ll tell you what it was like, Tiel: it was as if I were pointing the weapon at myself. I looked at its business end as certainly as I am looking at you now. I was terrified of it, but I tried to pull the trigger all the same. I can make no claim to a heroic act, because I was even more terrified and repulsed by what would happen if I did not succeed.

“I’m not sure how to tell you the rest. Maybe you already know.Ux was also looking down the throat of the laser. And I guess it was more than he could take. He screamed and leaped at me. I jumped, and the weapon went off, slicing a chunk out of the ceiling. The creature took Chellic.

“Ux hit me hard, the laser slipped away, and the mindlink dissolved. To his credit, he recovered himself almost immediately, and scrambled after the weapon. Chellic and the beast melded together in a grim parody of a sexual embrace. They moved against each other’s bodies and Chellic cried out, more in ecstasy than in pain. Blood spurted, but the dance continued. It went after her throat, and Chellic sagged. Ux brought the laser up and fired. The creature shrieked, released her, threw a glance of pure malevolence and hatred at its attacker, and fled into the lower levels.

“A second shot went wild.”

He took my arm, and we walked slowly along the seafront. His palm was wet. “Ux never forgave himself.”

“What happened? To the woman? To Chellic?”

His jaw worked. “She was dead before we could get her to the surface.”

And I thought about the inscription on the west portico, which took on a dark new meaning.

In the hour of need, I am with you.

So in the end it came down to the house at the bottom of the bay.

I’d intended to be out on the Point shortly past dawn, but I woke late, after another restless night, and then delayed over a long breakfast. I had a fair notion what was waiting for me beneath that calm surface, and I was in no hurry to confront it.

I landed in thick grass near the ruined projector station. Strangely, the dome was more difficult to see up close, where its dark bronze coloring blended with the thick vegetation that overwhelmed it.

A black ragged hole had been burned through the outer shell, big enough to allow entry. I’d brought a small sculptor’s laser with me, and used it to cut through the brambles. The place was half full of clay and mud. (The previous night’s rain hadn’t helped.) The console had beencannibalized, and the projector was gone.

There were a few scorch marks, and the frame that would have supported the projector was cut in half.

What had Hollander said? Now, the projectors are pretty well shielded. Undoubtedly by something other than a physical barrier.

Directly across the mouth of the bay, I could see the connector station which had once formed a link with this one. It still functioned, but only northward, and was now on the outermost edge of the seawall.

After a while, I got back into the skimmer and lifted off. The bay was unsettled: there was a steady eastern chop, and the water looked rough. It was a gray, formless day, oppressive and quiet save for the steady beat of the incoming tide. I located my buoy, and circled it slowly. Uxbridge’s house was not visible from the air.

A sharp gust rocked the skimmer. I took it down, eased it into the water, more carefully this time, and anchored it. I did not stop to think about what lay below: I kicked off my clothes, stowed them in the aft locker, and extracted my breather from its carrying case. I checked out the lamp, put on a belt, and attached a utility pouch. I strapped a depth gauge and timer to one wrist, the lamp to the other, pulled on the fins and mask, and slipped overboard.

The water was warm. But the sunless day reduced visibility severely; I could see only a few meters in natural light. I took my bearings from the buoy and the skimmer and started down.

I passed through alternating cool and warm currents. A few fish darted away, and one of the broad-ferned swimming plants common in Fishbowl’s temperate latitudes startled me by wrapping a tendril around one ankle and giving it a tug. When I reacted, it lost interest.

The grim, mottled, sea-shrouded house gradually took shape: turrets and parapets rose out of the gray depths, stone walls formed, ocular windows peered sightlessly down into a courtyard. I hovered above for several minutes, maybe choosing my best approach, maybe hesitating. Then I descended to one of the turrets, followed its sloping roof past exposed plates, and started down the face of the building.

At the upper level, I thumbed on my lamp and looked through a window that was, remarkably, still intact. Inside, silt was thick. A bed was jammed into a doorway, light furniture had been scattered about, and the contents of a bureau were spilled and buried. A closet door, partially open, had exposed two rows of hanging garments. These fluttered gently in whatever currents passed through the room.

Below me, lower on the wall, a long, serpentine fish glided out of a venting pipe and slipped into the gloom. I seized a cornice and hung on until it was gone. The stone was slippery with the algae that inhabit most water oceans.

The front door was missing, and the frame which had supported it was bent.

I passed inside, and the beam of my lamp faded into the depths of a large central hall. A staircase rose on the right, and double doors opened on the left. Chairs and tables were tumbled about, bookcases overturned, and the whole covered with sediment. Two portraits had once hung beneath the staircase: the frames were still in place, but the canvas had shriveled in each, and no hint of the subjects remained.

Though I knew more or less where I was going, I took a moment to look through the double doors. They had opened into a sitting room; even in its present condition, I could see that it had been a stiff, formal place: the sort of room in which one conducts formal matters, designed to impress a business acquaintance, and at the same time to hurry things along.