“The question is, what are you doing?”
“I’m trying to kill that thing—which intends to destroy the earth. Don’t you understand that you’ve been infected? You’re being manipulated!”
At this, Sax gave a low laugh. “So you, too, Gideon, have drunk the Kool-Aid. This splendid and intelligent life-form comes to earth, and our response is to try to kill it? How sad.”
“Yes: because it’s a parasite, and it’s going to kill us if we don’t kill it first.”
Another mild laugh of amusement. “You know nothing about it. I’ve been communicating with it, Gideon. What an extraordinary experience. I know what it wants, what it thinks, what it feels. It’s come here in peace and goodwill—and it can’t understand why you want to exterminate it.”
This was nuts. And he saw that something else was coming in besides her voice transmission; some sort of data dump into the UQC. Was she trying to hack into his DSV? But even as he was getting ready to shut it down, her DSV was bearing down on him. He rotated Pete, once again trying to shield his propulsion. But this time he could see that Sax was coming in low.
She’s going to ram the ROV containing the nuke.
He reversed the joystick and slowed his ascent so she wouldn’t hit the ROV. But to Gideon’s absolute horror, his maneuver only caused her to miss the ROV and come in just above it—the mech arm of the John slicing right through his tow cable. It snapped with a violent jerk, and, through the downward viewport, he saw the ROV plummet toward the wreck of the Rolvaag and disappear into the big gash in the hull.
Suddenly—untethered from the weight of the bomb—Pete shot up like an air bubble, rushing faster and faster, leaving John a rapidly dwindling cluster of lights in the blackness below. Out the side viewport, he had an extraordinary view of the gigantic glowing creature as he rushed upward past it, its vile orifice swelling and pumping; it writhed its branches threateningly toward him, but he was now moving so fast that he caromed right through their grasp, and a few minutes later the DSV popped up on the surface of the ocean, the mini sub tumbling about like a billiard ball before finally righting itself.
In pure astonishment, Gideon looked out the forward viewport. Pete was bobbing like a cork on the surface of the ocean. A few miles away, he could see the receding silhouette of the Batavia.
He glanced at the countdown. Twelve minutes to go.
What the hell, Gideon thought; his mission had failed but he might as well try to save his own ass. He jammed the joystick forward and headed the DSV for the ship.
Nine minutes to detonation.
He kept the joystick pushed to the maximum, but the DSV moved slowly at the surface, impeded by the heavy seas of the approaching storm. He was eking out a few knots at best. For whatever reason, the Batavia clearly wasn’t going at top speed, either, but nevertheless it was still going faster than he was…and he was never going to catch up.
Eight minutes.
So the bomb had dropped into the Rolvaag itself. The quick-and-dirty simulation he’d managed to do in the short time available showed that the bomb, detonated on or inside the Rolvaag, would probably be insufficient: the steel of the hulk would absorb too much of the blast. He could only hope his calculations were off.
Six minutes.
He knew that the Batavia itself had to be at least six miles from the point of detonation, or the shock wave would rupture its hull. There was no way Pete was going to clear the danger zone, and as he saw the Batavia limping along, he realized it would not make it, either.
Four minutes.
At his current speed of two knots, he would be three surface miles from the Rolvaag when the bomb went off. Two squared plus three squared…what was the God-damned square root of thirteen? Three and a half miles—that would be his straight-line distance from the blast.
Two minutes.
He had to stop thinking about the blast. Instead, he thought of Alex. He pictured her face. He thought of her, freed from that monster. That was better.
One minute.
The light arrived first—a dull flash in the bottom viewport. And then, three seconds later, the shock wave hit and it was like being punched by a gigantic fist and all went black.
68
AFTER THEIR WOULD-BE jailer had sealed the hatch, Eli Glinn could make out the clang of his departing footsteps. They had been put in the lowest part of the hold, called the lazarette, which contained the ship’s steering gear and enclosed the hull seals for the azimuthing propulsion pod. It was dark and hot. Below the steel-grate floor, he could hear water sloshing around and the sucking sound of a bilge pump.
He could also hear a gathering noise all around them, a chorus of rustling and scratching: the worms, emerging from their hiding places.
“The scientist in me,” said Wong, “wonders how it works. I mean, you get this worm up your nose and into your brain, and then you’re doing the creature’s bidding. But you have no idea that’s what you’re doing. How do the infected people rationalize their actions?”
Glinn felt a certain comfort in the distraction this problem afforded. “Human beings,” he said, “have a bottomless capacity for rationalization and self-deception. The worms simply jack into that capacity.”
“True. But do you suffer amnesia? Do you remember a worm crawling up your nose?”
“I imagine we’ll soon find out,” said McFarlane.
In the darkness, Glinn was sorry he couldn’t check his watch to tell the time. There were only minutes to go before the explosion. He wondered if the ship was inside or outside of the danger zone. He hoped inside, and that the ship’s destruction would be quick.
McFarlane gave a shout. “Son of a bitch! Fucking worm!” Glinn heard him moving around, stomping and shuffling.
“Ugh!” Wong brushed off a worm and slapped at her clothing. “They’re all over!”
He heard, around his feet, the sound of the gathering worms like the rustling of autumn leaves. He felt one begin to slide up inside one pant leg, then the other. He shook his limbs, slapping at the clothing even as he realized he was only delaying the inevitable. Maybe he should submit. But somehow he couldn’t do that—the feeling of the worms crawling on his flesh was so revolting that he slapped and kicked at them, trying to shake them off. But there were too many, too many, and they clung to the skin in a sticky sort of way.
Garza was shouting, McFarlane was swearing, Wong was screaming. The hold filled with their cries. And still the worms came…
And then it happened. It was as if they were inside a bass drum and someone abruptly pounded it, viciously, with a mallet. It was a boom so deep and so violent that it shook Glinn to his very bones, shook the brain within his skull, shook him into oblivion…
But not for long. He came to lying on the grate, with a splitting headache, his ears buzzing. It was still dark. The scritching of the worms was gone—to be replaced by the sound of roaring water.
“Sam?” he croaked.
A groan.
“Rosemarie?” Glinn felt around and located her, giving her face a light pat, then another. “Rosemarie?”
She gasped. He helped her sit up. “My head,” she murmured.
“You hear that?” came Garza’s voice. “The explosion ruptured the hull. The ship is sinking.”
“And we’re locked in the hold,” said Wong, her own voice strengthening. “From worms to water. Pick your fate.”
Meanwhile, the throbbing sound of the engine had become a grinding noise. After a moment, it ceased altogether.