Terminal Freeze

45

“I’ve finished my analysis of the blood from the vault shards,” Faraday said quietly.

Marshall glanced over at him. The biologist was staring up from his position at the fixed-angle centrifuge. He had spent the last several minutes moving from the stereozoom microscope to the centrifuge and back again, and the eyepieces of the microscope had left marks that made him look like a raccoon.

“And?” Marshall prompted.

“It’s unlike anything I’ve ever encountered.”

Sully sighed impatiently. Gonzalez hadn’t reported in, and he was taking the wait badly. “Specifics would help, Wright.”

Faraday replaced his glasses and blinked at Sully. “It concerns the white blood cells. Mostly.”

Sully waved his hand, as if to say, we’re waiting.

“You know white blood cells are all about infections, inflammation, and the rest. The neutrophils, lymphocytes, basophils, etcetera-they’re tasked with defense, with wound healing. Well, this organism has a hyper-developed white blood cell line. It’s like a healing machine on steroids. There’s an incredibly high concentration of monocytes. And they’re not at all typical-they’re huge. They’re clearly capable of transforming into macrophages and dumping a ton of cytokines and other chemicals into the bloodstream, promoting almost instant healing.”

When nobody replied, Faraday continued. “There’s something else. The tests indicate a chemical compound in the blood and cell tissue very similar to arylcyclohexylamine.”

“Come again?” said Marshall.

“It’s the causative agent in PCP. And it’s present in the creature’s blood in a remarkably high concentration-more than one hundred nanograms per milliliter. I believe it’s an NMDA receptor antagonist, acting as both a stimulator and an anesthetic. What I can’t understand is how the creature could produce such a chemical-I’ve never seen anything like it before in nature, certainly not in these concentrations. Assuming it’s not exogenous, perhaps the anterior pituitary gland is releasing it into the bloodstream as a response to stress. Anyway, such a flood of exotic chemicals in the bloodstream would account for its apparent imperviousness to bullets and other injury. It simply doesn’t feel the wounds, and-”

“This is all very interesting,” Sully interrupted. “But it doesn’t get us any closer to the real goal: finding the damn thing’s Achilles’ heel.”

“He’s right,” Logan said. “The most important thing is learning how to stop it.”

“Maybe it’s been stopped already,” Marshall said. He glanced around the life-sciences lab with eyes made bleary by the long trek through the snowstorm. “Maybe it’s dead. Electricity worked last time.”

“Last time, the beast they were dealing with was much smaller,” Sully replied. “We don’t even know if it was the same species.”

“It was the same,” Usuguk said. “Kurrshuq is kurrshuq. The difference is size, power, capacity for evil.”

Marshall glanced over at the Tunit, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the lab. He had taken several fetishlike items from his medicine bundle and arrayed them on the ground before him. Picking up each in turn, he spoke to it in a low, singsong tone, full of pleading and urgency. Then he carefully replaced it on the ground, gave it a loving half turn, and picked up the next.

“What are you doing?” Marshall asked.

“Performing a ceremony,” was the response.

“I gathered that. What kind?”

“This has become a place of unrest. Of evil. I am asking my guardian spirits for help.”

“Why don’t you ask them to send down a couple of bazookas while you’re at it?” said Sully. “M20s, preferably.”

There was a noise in the corridor outside. The speed with which everyone save Usuguk turned toward it drove home to Marshall just how much tension was in the air. The knob turned and the door pushed open. Sergeant Gonzalez and a private-the one named Phillips-stood outside. They came in slowly and closed the door behind them.

“Well?” demanded Sully.

Gonzalez walked stiff-legged into the center of the room. He un-houldered his M16 and let it drop to the floor. Phillips simply stood where he was, ashen-faced.

“Is it dead?” asked Marshall.

Gonzalez shook his head wearily.

“And the trap?” asked Logan. “The electricity?”

“The electricity made it mad,” replied Gonzalez.

“Why don’t you tell us what happened?” Marshall asked quietly.

The sergeant’s gaze drifted toward the floor. For nearly a minute he said nothing. Then at last he fetched a deep breath.

“We set it up just like you said. Standing water on the floor, atop a metal plate. A curtain of bare wires hanging down from the ceiling, attached to a high-voltage source. In a corridor the beast would have to traverse if it wanted to reach the rest of the base.”

“And?” Marshall prompted.

“It flanked us somehow. Came up from the rear. I don’t know how it got around our position, but it did. We managed to fall back. It approached, hit the wires. Took the full electrical load.” He shook his head at the memory.

“What kind of current?” asked Logan.

“Six thousand volts.”

“That’s impossible,” said Faraday. “You must have mis-wired it somehow. Nothing could take that kind of charge and survive.”

“I didn’t mis-wire it. It went off like a goddamned explosion.”

“And the creature?” asked Marshall.

“Charred its pelt here and there. That’s about it.”

A brief silence ensued.

“How did you get back?” Sully asked.

“Marcelin was inside the substation, controlling the current. He began to scream. The creature went for him. We managed to run past while…” Gonzalez didn’t bother finishing the sentence.

Another, longer silence settled over the room. Marshall glanced around again at the deflated faces. Not until now-when faced with failure-did he realize just how much he’d been relying on Gonzalez and his team to succeed. He had put so much faith in the Tunit’s story, on electricity being the way to combat the creature, that this setback seemed almost unbearable. And yet there was something in what Gonzalez had just said that sounded a familiar ring. He searched his memory for a connection.

And then, quite suddenly, he realized what it was.

“Just a moment,” he said aloud.

The others turned toward him.

“Maybe it wasn’t the electricity that made it mad.”

“What are you suggesting?” asked Logan.

“This creature is a complete mystery to us, right? It’s a freak of nature, a genetic aberration. Its blood is completely abnormal. Conventional weaponry doesn’t seem to have much effect on it. So why should we presume to understand its motivations-or its emotions-or anything else about it?”

“What’s your point?” asked Sully.

“My point is this. All along we’ve been assuming this creature is only interested in murdering us all. What if it didn’t start out that way? Remember what Toussaint said? That it plays with you. Maybe that’s actually what it was doing: playing.”

“Usuguk said the same thing,” added Logan. “About the other one. It played like a fox cub plays with a vole.”

“Playing?” repeated Sully. “Was the thing playing when it first killed that production assistant, Peters?”

“Maybe it didn’t know what it was doing. Or didn’t care. That can be part of playing, too-a cat doesn’t have any feelings for the pain of a mouse. The point is, maybe the creature wasn’t deliberately trying to kill. Not at first. When Peters’s body was placed in the infirmary, it came and took it back-like it would a plaything. And look at Toussaint-he was hung up like a toy. And there’s something else. It has killed, it has torn to pieces-but it hasn’t eaten any of its victims. Not a one.”

“Something we did angered it,” said Logan.

Marshall nodded. “And I think I know what it was. What did everyone who’s been killed so far have in common? They all screamed.”

“Kind of a normal reaction when you’re faced with a blood-thirsty monster,” said Sully.

“Marcelin screamed,” Marshall went on. “Didn’t Sergeant Gonzalez here imply that’s why the creature went after it instead of him?”

“And Ashleigh Davis,” Logan added. “The soldiers heard her scream, as well.”

“Creel screamed, too,” Gonzalez said. “It went right over me to get at him.”

Marshall turned toward Usuguk. “And you said that the first beast, the smaller one, didn’t become angry until it was played tapes of animals in distress. Rabbits screaming. But Toussaint didn’t scream. We heard him on the camera’s audio track. He just murmured under his breath: no, no, no.”

“This is nothing but arrant speculation,” said Sully.

“It’s not speculation when every action conforms to a pattern,” replied Logan.

“For all we know, the screams simply caught its attention,” Sully went on.

“Clearly all its senses are exquisitely acute,” said Marshall. “It wouldn’t need sound to catch its attention.”

The room went silent. All eyes, Marshall saw, were on him. Even Usuguk had put down his totem and was regarding him intently.

“I think sound is painful to this creature, perhaps exquisitely so,” Marshall said. “Specifically, sounds of a certain frequency and amplitude-such as a scream. Look at its ears, how closely they resemble a bat’s. Sound might have a completely different effect on it than it has on us. I think the creature perceives a scream as a threat, an act of aggression…and acts accordingly.”

“And after it’s been screamed at enough,” Logan added, “it assumes we are hostile-and grows angry.”

Marshall nodded. “Instead of killing us as a side effect of play, it begins to kill in earnest. For self-protection.”

“This is too much,” said Sully. “What do you suggest-that we kill it with sound?”

“I suggest that we look into the possibility, yes,” Marshall said. “At least, hurt it enough to drive it away.”

“Even if we could, just how would we do that?” Sully went on. “This is a radar installation. Radar uses electromagnetic waves, not sound waves.”

For a moment, nobody answered. Then Logan spoke again. “There’s the science wing.”

“What about it?” Sully asked.

“I know from that old journal its original use was something to do with sonar technology. I don’t know what, and Usuguk here couldn’t provide anything beyond a confirmation. Maybe it was some new submarine equipment, and they needed a remote place to research it undisturbed. Maybe it was meant to somehow supplement the phased radar arrays of the base. But remember: this research was abandoned when the creature was found, and the north wing re-tasked.”

“But for all we know the original equipment was already in place before the creature was discovered.” Marshall turned to Usuguk. “Do you remember seeing instruments, tools, in the north wing?”

The Tunit nodded. “Much was covered with sheets or tarps. Others were still in crates. And there was a room, large, round, with padding on the walls like caribou fur.”

“Perhaps an echo chamber of some sort,” said Faraday.

“But even if there are instruments stored there,” asked Logan, “who has the acoustic experience to put them to use?”

“That’s not the problem,” said Sully. “All of us took the requisite electrical engineering courses in graduate school.”

“You’ve seen my keyboard,” said Marshall. “I built an analog synthesizer in college.”

“I was a ham radio operator,” added Faraday. “Still have my license.”

Logan turned toward Gonzalez. “So how about it? Now will you let us in?”

“Nobody has been inside the north wing in fifty years,” the sergeant replied.

“That’s not an answer,” said Logan.

For a moment, Gonzalez said nothing. Then he gave a curt nod.

“What about Kari Ekberg and the others?” Marshall asked.

Gonzalez pulled out his radio. “Gonzalez to Conti. Repeat, Gonzalez to Conti. Come in.”

No response but static.

“Hold on a minute,” said Sully. “We don’t know for certain whether there’s truth to any of this. It’s just a theory.”

“Would you rather wait here for that thing to kill us all?” Marshall said. “We’re fresh out of options.” He stood up. “Let’s go. Time’s running out.”