Submerged (28 page)

“Okay,” Cynthia said, “I’ve had all of this
place I can stand.”

“How did it do that?” Sanders asked. “How can
dust just form itself into our identical shapes?”

“Maybe the dust is light enough to float,”
Grant suggested.

“If we had been looking at clouds, I’d
agree,” Zeisler said, “but what we just saw required some kind of
intelligent guidance. We didn’t just see shapes, we saw
our shapes
.”

“Has anyone looked outside?” Grant asked.

The wall had become transparent again, and
Henry could see the desert surroundings were gone. In its place was
a blue ocean with gentle waves. Whitecaps floated on the surface
like tiny hats. Overhead the full moon shone down with an alabaster
glow, creating a river of light along the water. Stars flickered as
if they had been there from creation’s dawn. It appeared to Henry
as if the room were floating on the deep.

“Whose mind is this from?” Sanders asked.

“I took a cruise once,” Cynthia said. “Maybe
it’s from me.”

“It may not be from any of us, and at this
point it doesn’t matter.” Henry scanned his surroundings again. “No
sense of motion. I think we’re more island than boat.”

“I think it’s important to remember that none
of this is real,” Zeisler said.

Nash gave him an angry glance. “The jungle
wasn’t real, but McDermott believed it enough. He’s dead.” Nash
motioned to the wall that previously held the door.

“The door,” Henry said. “It’s back.”

Behind Nash was the same door they had seen
when they first approached the house. Unlike the walls, it was
opaque and solid.

“Let’s go before it disappears again,” Nash
said.

“And what? Swim?” Zeisler retorted.

Nash reached for the handle but jumped back
when a pounding from the outside reverberated through the room.

Someone was knocking at the door.

Chapter27

1974

“I take it everyone
heard that?”
Nash said.

“Um, yeah,” Grant replied. “Yeah, I heard
it.”

Knock
, knock
.

“Maybe it’s Sanchez and Buckley.” Sanders
didn’t sound convinced. “Perhaps they came looking for us.”

“They would have had to swim the last mile,”
Grant said. “Real or not, that ocean looks as wet as any I’ve
seen.”

Nash looked at Henry, then Sanders. Sanders
nodded, and Nash returned to the door.

“Maybe we should ask who it is,” Cynthia
said.

“Just open the door,” Zeisler said. “Terror
is no reason to be impolite.”

Nash took the knob in his hand and turned it.
He pulled it open just an inch, as if he feared the ocean would
rush in. No water. He swung it open and let out a yelp.

Henry had to blink several times before he
would believe his eyes. His heart quivered, and every nerve seemed
to fire at once. Standing at the threshold was McDermott, his hand
raised to knock again.

“McDermott?” Sanders hesitated. “We . . . we
thought you were dead.”

McDermott stepped in. His movement was fluid,
but it seemed wrong. Maybe it was the way he held his head; maybe
it was the slight rocking motion; maybe it was because Henry was
certain beyond any doubt that McDermott was as dead as a man can
be. Henry didn’t believe in ghosts or zombies. Still, there he
was.

Henry charged for the door, brushing past the
others, and leaned out, the toes of his boots hanging over the edge
of the threshold. Water lapped just inches below his feet. Henry
turned his head to the right and directed his eyes to the place
where they had set McDermott’s body. It was there, two or three
feet beneath the surface of the water, his lifeless eyes staring at
things they could no longer see.

Henry spun and faced the McDermott in the
house. “Monte, come hold the door. I don’t want it to close
again.”

“I’m not going near . . . him.”

“I’ve got it.” Cynthia’s words were
courageous, but her face looked drained of blood. Henry assumed she
feared being locked in the room again more than she feared the
McDermott thing.

Henry released the door to Cynthia, closed
the distance to McDermott and, beating down fear by sheer will,
touched him. A faint layer of dust came off on his hand. “He’s not
real. He’s a fabrication.”

“How can you be sure?” Sanders said.

“Because the real one is still outside and
about three feet underwater.” Henry walked around so he could face
the unexpected guest. McDermott’s eyes didn’t move. They were open
and looked natural, except they didn’t move. Arctic water flowed
through Henry’s veins.

McDermott looked at Henry, then turned and
looked at each member of the team. “You do not fit.” The voice was
awkward, stilted; although clearly English, the words sounded
foreign.

“What does that mean?” Zeisler said. “We do
not fit?”

The artificial McDermott stared at the
electrical engineer. “Zeisler does not belong. Zeisler does not
fit.”

“Still winning friends and influencing
people, I see,” Nash said. But his bravado sounded strained and
weak.

The McDermott thing turned to Nash. “Nash
does not fit. Nash does not belong.”

“You were saying?” Zeisler said to Nash.

“Who are you?” Henry asked.

“You might want to ask him
what
he is,” Grant said. “That seems more
germane.”

“Grant does not belong. Grant does not
fit.”

“What do you mean we do not fit?”

“Sachs does not fit. Sachs does not
belong.”

“Um, guys,” Cynthia said from the doorway, “I
admit that scared me out of my bloomers, but I wouldn’t be much of
a scientist if I didn’t know that we are making history here. We
are talking to a nonhuman entity.”

“Wagner does not fit. Wagner does not
belong.”

“Not much of a conversationalist,” Zeisler
said.

Henry tried again. “What does, ‘does not fit’
mean?”

“Sachs not Keroob; not Kahee. Sanders not
Keroob; not Kahee. Grant not . . .”

“What is Keroob?” Henry asked.

The McDermott thing fell silent, as if
offended at the interruption. Finally it said, “Keroob is Kahee;
Kahee is Keroob.”

“I’m glad that’s settled,” Zeisler
quipped.

“Do you have any better ideas, Dr. Zeisler?”
Sanders asked.

“No. You can’t reason with someone—or some
thing—who is being obtuse on purpose.”

“I don’t think that’s it,” Cynthia said.
“It’s trying to communicate in a language that is not its own. It’s
identifying us as strangers—or worse.”

“Worse than strangers?” Henry said. “You
mean, like enemies?”

“I was thinking of an infection.” Cynthia bit
her lip. “Since I’m a bioengineer, I tend to see things from how
biology interacts with technology. In some ways this place acts as
if it’s alive.”

“How so?” Sanders asked.

“It reacts to stimuli, it recognizes foreign
intrusion like a human immune system, and it seems to possess the
desire to protect itself.”

Henry thought for a moment. “You mean it
interpreted McDermott’s actions as hostility and protected
itself?”

She nodded. “It responded in like kind.”

“Nash does not fit.”

Henry pointed at himself. “Not Keroob; not
Kahee.” He pointed at the McDermott thing. “Keroob? Kahee?”

“Mishmar not Keroob; not Kahee. Mishmar is
Mishmar.”

“Yup, we’re getting somewhere now,” Grant
said.

“Maybe we are,” Henry said. “At least he—it
is answering questions.” Henry walked to the pillar with its
free-floating chrome disks. He studied the disk. It was flat and
reflected his image. He couldn’t help noticing how tired he looked.
Turning back to McDermott, he pointed at one of the silver disks.
“What is this?”

There was no answer.

“I don’t think it understands the question,”
Cynthia said. “Maybe it doesn’t understand what a question is.”

“He corrected Henry when he called it the
wrong name,” Zeisler said. “Try it again.”

Henry pointed at the disk. “Keroob?”

“Not Keroob. Ophawn.”

A brief elation filled Henry but flickered
out as he thought about how long it would take to carry on a basic
conversation.

“Does the language sound familiar to anyone?”
Sanders asked.

“I can tell you it’s not French,” Cynthia
said.

“Or German,” Grant added. “My grandmother
speaks German, and it doesn’t sound like anything I’ve heard.”

“It sounds similar to a Middle Eastern
language,” Zeisler said, “but not exactly.”

Henry was about to ask another question of
the McDermott thing when Cynthia screamed. Everyone jumped except
the entity. Henry rushed to the door as Cynthia backed away. He
grabbed it before it could swing shut.

“What is it?” Sanders demanded as he and the
others approached.

“He’s moving!” Cynthia said. “McDermott rose
to the surface and began to float away.”

Henry leaned over the lapping waters as far
as he dared and saw the body of McDermott drifting away, as if
being towed by an invisible cable.

“Out of the way,” Nash demanded. He looked,
swore, and wheeled around to the entity. “Bring him back. I’m
responsible for him. You bring him back now. Do you hear?” He
placed his face close to the McDermott thing.

It remained expressionless. “Does not fit.
Does not belong.”

“Bring him back!”

“Stand down, Nash,” Sanders ordered. “That
won’t do any good.”

“I can’t let this happen,” Nash said.
“McDermott was my responsibility. He has a fiancée back home.”

“He was my responsibility, too, Nash. And you
have a family at home. I don’t want to have to explain two deaths,
so stand down.”

Nash took a step back and then returned to
the door. “I’m going after him.” He began to remove his boots.

“Wait,” Henry said.

“I will not wait.”

“You don’t know if you can swim in that
stuff,” Henry argued.

“It’s not real water, remember?”

“That’s what concerns me. You inhale that
stuff, you die just as surely as if you had drowned.”

“I won’t inhale it.”

“Look out,” Grant said. “He’s on the
move.”

Henry snapped his head around. The McDermott
look-alike was moving toward them. They moved back. Henry, still
clutching the door, pressed his back to the wall. The doppelgänger
walked through the door and onto the water. He took several
strides, following the path of the real McDermott’s body. He
stopped ten paces later and turned toward the crowded doorway.

“Do not fit. Do not belong.”

“I think he wants us to follow him,” Henry
said.

“On the water?” Grant exclaimed. “Not
likely.”

The entity continued to stare at them, and
then he looked down. Water exploded upward, then fell back as sand.
The ocean was gone, replaced by a sea of sand. Not desert sand this
time, just a flat field devoid of Joshua trees or any other plant
life. The dome overhead no longer held stars, just a high, arched
surface of brown.

“I think he’s showing us the door,” Sanders
said. “We’re being booted out.”

Henry knew Sanders was right. He stepped
through the doorway and onto the sand. The Victorian facade was
gone. All that remained was a large square box on the outside and
curved walls on the inside. The others followed. Soon they marched
forward just a few paces behind the body of McDermott as it scooted
along the sand as if carried by a million invisible ants.

The McDermott twin dissolved into the sand
base, only to appear a hundred yards down the path, guiding them.
Each time they reached him, he would again melt into the ground and
appear another hundred yards ahead.

No one spoke. No one argued. Ten minutes
later, Nash and Sanders jogged ahead to walk alongside McDermott’s
body. They would not leave their fallen comrade.

Time seemed irrelevant. One moment Henry felt
as if he had been walking for hours, the next as if he had just
started. He had no idea how much time had passed when they crossed
the threshold at the point where their journey began. They had to
help lift McDermott’s body from the chamber floor into the tunnel.
Once everyone was in, Henry tried something. He tried to push his
hand through the image of the stone wall, what someone had called a
hologram. It was solid.

It was just one other thing they had been
wrong about.

Chapter28

Perry walked around
the room,
considering all that Zeisler had told them. The
story was beyond credible. Had he not seen the image of a man who
could appear and disappear, he would have dismissed the story as
the result of too much imagination or a touch of mental
illness.

“All of that happened in this room?” Gleason
asked.

“Much of it,” Zeisler replied.

“If everything you said is true,” Jack said,
“then it’s a wonder you were ever able to go to sleep again.” Jack
moved toward the four-foot-high ring.

“I still don’t sleep well,” Zeisler said.

Perry saw in the pit the sand that Zeisler
had described, although it appeared whiter and more mottled than he
imagined. “You’ve been thinking about this for over thirty years.
Have you come to any conclusions?”

“Yes, but I’d rather hear your ideas.”

Perry turned to Gleason and saw in the head
techie’s eyes what he had expected. “I’ve got a feeling that this
is more up your alley, Gleason. What do you think?”

“My first thought is moletronics and
nanotechnology but at a grander scale than anything we can do.”

“Mole what?” Janet asked.

“Moletronics,” Gleason replied. “It’s a tech
word. It comes from molecular electronics and deals with
nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is the science of working with
materials at very small scales.”