Brian Evenson - Dead Space - Martyr

He gently disengaged his hand from his brother’s and looked at his chronometer. Six thirty-eight, it read, but he could tell by the way the numbers flashed and then slowly faded that it had stopped. Why wasn’t it working? He showed it to Shane, who just nodded.

Nothing to worry about, brother, Shane said. It doesn’t really matter.

Shane was right, of course, it didn’t really matter, but he still wanted to know what time it was.

“What time is it?” he asked Dantec.

“Leave me alone,” said Dantec. “We’re getting close. I have to watch this.”

Hennessy waited a moment and then asked again.

Distractedly, Dantec looked at his wrist, then held his chronometer to his ear. “It’s stopped,” he said.

“Mine, too,” said Hennessy.

Dantec turned and looked at him. He didn’t seem to notice Shane, even though he was right there, right next to Hennessy. People see what they want to see, thought Hennessy.

“Doesn’t that seem weird to you?” Dantec asked.

Hennessy shrugged. “Nothing to worry about,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter.”

Dantec narrowed his eyes. “And another thing,” he said. “Why are you so fucking serene all of a sudden?”

Hennessy cast his eyes toward Shane, then realized what he’d done and flicked them back quickly to look at Dantec. Dantec’s eyes moved to the side, stared through Shane, then moved back.

“It’s just like that,” said Hennessy. “I just feel better. I don’t know why.”

Rolling his eyes, Dantec turned away.

Just between you and me, Jim, should he really be doing this? asked Shane.

“I don’t know,” said Hennessy, “should he?”

Some things it’s better not to mess with.

Hennessy nodded. Shane was probably right, but if he told Dantec that, he wouldn’t listen. What could he do about it? Maybe it was a bad idea, but even if it was, he didn’t know how he could get Dantec to stop.

After a few more minutes — or maybe it was longer, impossible to say — Dantec slowed the drill. He drilled forward slowly until they struck something and the drill made a whining sound. He reversed it, backed up a little, and then approached at a slightly different angle, shearing away the side of the tunnel wall. Hennessy just stayed smiling, glancing occasionally over at his brother, waiting.

Are you sure it’s a good idea? asked Shane again. Hennessy shrugged.

Dantec backed up again, came in once more, then a fourth time.

I think it’s a mistake, Shane said.

There was, Hennessy could see, a strange shape, still half enclosed in rock on one side. It was hard to see past the particles of rock and silt swirling through the water. Dantec pulled back a little, then turned off the drill.

“What’s out there?” asked Hennessy.

“How the hell should I know?” said Dantec. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

It’s the Black Marker, said Shane.

The Black Marker, Hennessy thought. As the water settled, he began to see it more clearly. It looked like a monolith made of some sort of obsidian. It narrowed to a point at the top, the whole of it twisting slightly as it rose. It was horizontally striated and covered with thousands of symbols, symbols unlike anything he had seen before. Were they glowing, or did it only look like they were because of the way the light was catching them? He couldn’t tell for sure. What he could see of it, of the part that was uncovered now, was probably three meters tall.

“Oh my God,” said Dantec, his voice filled with an uncustomary awe. “Who put this here? Or what?”

That’s the last question you want to ask, said Shane to Hennessy. Better not to know.

He remembered suddenly the schematic that Tanner had shown them of the Marker. He pulled it up on his holoscreen. There were two horns at the top, pointing out in either direction, and he could see the Marker went on much deeper below them, probably another twenty meters or more. “How big is it?” Hennessy asked.

Dantec, confused, said something, but Hennessy wasn’t asking him.

Big, said Shane. He moved Hennessy’s hand to the porthole, pressed it against the glass. Together they stared out. You don’t want to mess with this, Shane said. You’re in danger.

“I’m going to move us closer,” said Dantec.

“Are you sure?” asked Hennessy, still staring out. “Maybe we shouldn’t mess with it.” Beside him, just at the edge of his peripheral vision, Shane nodded.

“Try calling Tanner,” said Dantec. “See what he wants to do.”

Hennessy tried, got only bursts of static, little bits of Tanner’s voice spliced into it like it had been torn apart.

“I don’t know,” said Hennessy. “There’s something seriously wrong here. Let’s leave it alone.”

“We came all this way,” said Dantec. “We’ve been in this coffin for hours. Now that we’re here, we have to get a better look.”

Hennessy remained for a moment, staring at it, and finally nodded. “It wouldn’t hurt to get closer, I guess,” he said. “As long as we’re careful.”

He looked over at his brother, who was shaking his head. It just might, he said.

Dantec eased the ship forward, then cut the engines, let them drift. There they were, right up against it. The F/7 bumping softly against the Marker ’s side.

“It’s marvelous,” Dantec whispered.

It’s not marvelous, said Shane, his face stretched into a strange rictus. It’s horrible. Dantec is becoming one of them, brother. I’m afraid we’re going to have to get rid of him.

So far, so good, thought Dantec, or good enough anyway. He’d probably make it through. His head had been aching ever since he got into the goddamn sub. Or, if he was to be honest with himself, for weeks now. Pills didn’t seem to help. Whatever he did, it was still there, not unbearable, just always throbbing quietly, keeping him from sleeping, destroying his concentration. He hadn’t felt so strung out since the moon skirmishes. For that matter, he hadn’t felt this confined — this trapped — since then. He hadn’t realized how much being in a sub underwater was going to feel like being in a jettison pod in space. It brought all sorts of things flashing back at him from the moon skirmishes, that weird war that wasn’t officially a war, where all it took was one little tear in the fabric of your suit for you to die and where, by the end, if you wanted to survive, you had to stab a knife in a buddy’s back just so you could steal what was left of his oxygen. How many men had he had to kill to stay alive? All that had changed him, hardened him. He thought at first that it had lifted him above things, had made it so he wouldn’t feel fear, wouldn’t be subject to the same emotional weaknesses as others. But he was beginning to realize that that wasn’t quite right. True, he’d managed to avoid those parts of himself for a long time, but they were still there. And now that they were forcing their way up to the surface, they were raw and red, more sensitive than an exposed nerve.

And that bastard Hennessy. It didn’t help being stuck with him. He was a real, genuine fucking chucklehead, that was for sure. First he had been like a kid in a toy shop, unable to contain his delight at the F/7, at his new toy. Then put him in the thing and he does a Jekyll/Hyde, becomes nothing but panic and nerves and slow collapse into madness. That was the last thing you wanted in a confined space like this. In the moon skirmishes, he’d killed men for less.

Not like the thought didn’t cross his mind. But Tanner didn’t want him to do it. Tanner had been good to him over the years. Though if Tanner had understood what had really happened during the moon skirmishes, Dantec knew, he might treat him a lot differently.