28

Tanner poured himself a glass of whiskey and fell back against the pillows. Finally he was going to get a good night’s sleep on a good bed. Between setting up the Chicxulub office, the arrangements to get the bathyscaphe and Hennessy and Dantec to Mexico, the time spent on the freighter, the agonizing hours trying to figure out what was going on inside the bathyscaphe and all the worry afterward, it seemed like it had been months since he had had a decent night’s sleep.

He sipped his whiskey. The key, he told himself, was not to think about it. The key was to relax. It was all over now. The press conference was done. The next stages of the operation had not yet begun.

His personal phone rang. He looked at it. If it was his wife, her name would come up. No name came up. Which meant it could be President Small or maybe Terry, Tim, and Tom. They were the only ones who had his number, except for Dantec. And Dantec was dead.

“Hello?” he said.

“William Tanner?” said a mellifluous voice. “I have a few questions for you about Dr. Hennessy’s death.”

“How did you get this number?” asked Tanner. “This is a private number.”

The man ignored him. “Was there really no sign of instability before the descent? Didn’t DredgerCorp’s safety procedures fail you in this case? Or should I say failed Hennessy and the late Mr. Dantec?”

Tanner clicked off. After a few seconds, the phone rang again.

“Hello!” said Tanner.

“Please don’t hang up, Mr. Tanner. There are important ethical issues at—”

He disconnected. He turned the telephone all the way off, left it sitting on his bedside table. If Small or the Colonel wanted to get in touch, they’d have to contact him by vid.

He took a big sip, felt the whiskey burn down his throat. He tried to relax, to empty his mind, to let himself go. He could relax now, he told himself. The phone was off; the door was locked. Finally, he could relax.

But he couldn’t relax. His head was throbbing and something was gnawing at him.

He got up and swallowed three sleeping pills, washing them down with whiskey. He stared at his face for a long moment in the mirror and then climbed back into the bed.

The problem was that he agreed with the reporter. There were ethical issues at stake, things that had been done that, despite everything else he had done at DredgerCorp over the years, he was having difficulty living with.

He’d been on operations where people had died before. He’d even been on operations when they’d died as a direct result of choices he had made. Not to mention the trauma of the moon skirmishes, where everyone had done terrible things and where on more than one occasion he’d felt less than human. But these two had died and he still didn’t understand why. Was it because instead of corpses that he could see and make sense of, all he had were brief, staticky images? Did he just need a little more finality? Or was it more than that?

There had been no sign of instability in Hennessy before the descent. He ran over their interactions in his head again. In his mind, if anybody had been in danger of becoming unstable, it was Dantec. Was it possible that Dantec had snapped first and that had made Hennessy snap?

The whiskey and the sleeping pills were finally starting to take effect. Things had begun to blur. Maybe there would be answers when they brought the bathyscaphe back to the surface, he thought. Maybe that would explain everything.

He was startled awake by the telephone ringing. He groped it off the nightstand and looked at the display.

The name that came up was Dantec.

His heart leapt into his throat and he was suddenly wide awake. Dantec was dead; he couldn’t be the one calling. He stared at the display: it still read Dantec.

He sat up in bed, put his feet on the floor. “Hello?” he said, facing the wall. “Who is this?”

But there was only static on the other end of the line.

He waited, feeling like he might pass out. “Dantec,” he said tentatively. “Are you alive?”

He stayed with the receiver pressed to his ear, listening. At some point he realized there wasn’t even static. The phone wasn’t even turned on.

He put the phone back on the nightstand. Immediately, even though it wasn’t on, it rang again. Dantec’s name came up on the display.

“Hello?” Tanner said.

There was only silence.

He put the phone back down again. When it rang this time, he just stayed there, watching it ring. It’s off, he tried to tell himself. It can’t be ringing. But the damned thing kept ringing.

Aren’t you going to answer it? said a voice from behind him, a voice he recognized.

He felt the hairs bristle on the back of his neck. Very slowly, he turned. There was a vague shape in the bed with him that, as he looked at it, slowly became human. Crude and awkward features became more and more refined until it was, at last, Dantec. His skin was very white, almost bloodless. His lips had turned blue.

“You’re not real,” said Tanner.

Aren’t I? said Dantec. Then why are you seeing me?

“But you died, in the bathyscaphe.”

Are you sure it was me? asked Dantec. Are you sure I was even in the bathyscaphe?

Tanner hesitated. “Are you still alive?” he asked.

I’m here, aren’t I?

Tanner just shook his head.

Go ahead and touch me, said Dantec. If I’m not real, you wouldn’t be able to touch me.

Tanner closed his eyes and reached out. At first he felt only the bed, the blanket. Then he reached a little farther and felt something different, something that moved, something alive. “It is you,” said Tanner, smiling. “I can’t believe it. How did you survive? What are you doing here?”

I’ve come to see you, said Dantec. Can’t a guy stop by to see an old friend?

“Sure,” said Tanner.

Also. . . .

“What is it, Dantec? You can tell me.”

I hate to ask, Tanner, but I need your help. I need something from you.

“Anything,” said Tanner. “What’s mine is yours.”

I’m having a hard time breathing, said Dantec. I need you to share your oxygen tank with me.

“How can I do that?”

Just make a slit in the breathing tube, said Dantec. I’ll cut mine off a few feet down and then we’ll splice them together. Then we can both breathe.

“I don’t—” I don’t have a breathing tube, he had started to say. But then he reached up and felt it; there it was.

I don’t have much longer, said Dantec. Indeed his lips looked even bluer than they had looked just a few moments before.

“I need something sharp,” Tanner said. “Where can I find something sharp?”

There’s a pocketknife in the drawer of the nightstand, said Dantec.

“How do you know what’s in my nightstand?”

I’m full of surprises, said Dantec, and smiled, his blue lips stretching and turning white.

Tanner got the pocketknife out and unfolded the biggest blade. “Where should I cut it?” he asked.

Anywhere, said Dantec, as long as the cut’s long enough. Remember, make it long.

Tanner nodded. “Ready?” he asked.

Ready, said Dantec.

He made a long horizontal cut, almost cutting the tube right in half. “All right,” Tanner said, “quickly, hand it to me.”

His voice sounded strange, something wrong with his vocal cords. He coughed, spat blood. The blanket in front of him seemed covered in a pink mist. He looked down, saw that his chest was coursing with rivulets of blood.

You should have left it down there where it was safe, he heard Dantec say, his voice distant now. You shouldn’t have tried to understand it.

“Quickly,” he said, holding out his hand. “Dantec? Understand what?”

But Dantec was nowhere to be seen.

The air kept hissing out of the breathing tube and out into space. He tried to close the gap with his hand, but it was too deep—air kept leaking out. His hands were sticky, his chest, too, the hair on it all matted with blood.

He tried to call out for Dantec again, but something was wrong with his throat. He could make only a gurgling sound. He tried to get out of the bed, but everything seemed to be moving too slowly, as if he were underwater.

Very slowly, he moved one foot and slid it to the edge and over, letting it fall to the ground. There was only the other foot to worry about now. And then he would stand up and go to the mirror and take a good hard look at himself and try to figure out where he had gone wrong.