29

“What are you looking for exactly?” asked Henry.

“We’ll know when we find it,” said Briden curtly.

“At least he hopes we will,” said Callie Dexter, and winked.

There were six of them in all, with Briden and Dexter clearly in charge. They had arrived only a few hours after the commander’s call, bringing with them a vehicle full of equipment, which they had promptly started stringing all through the space that Henry normally occupied. Some of them were sitting on the floor, others standing idly by. Briden had immediately commandeered his desk and chair, which made it so that Henry had to watch the monitors standing. He wasn’t doing a very good job of that, though, since he was distracted by the newcomers.

“How dangerous are they?” asked Briden. “These are killers or what?”

“A few weeks ago, I would have said not all that dangerous,” said Henry. “They’re political prisoners rather than rapists or murderers. They feel very strongly about whatever their cause was but usually are fairly ordinary apart from that.”

“A few weeks ago, you said,” said Briden. “What about now?”

“Now, I don’t know,” he said. “They’re restless, something’s wrong with them. I can’t predict how they’ll behave.”

Briden was staring at him strangely. He came a little closer, took him by the arm, spoke softly. “How do you feel?” he asked.

“Me?” said Henry, surprised. “Fine, I guess.” He tried to keep his eyes from darting around. What if this was a trap? What if all this had been set up as a way to trap him? Maybe that was why the project was classified. He tried to push the thoughts down, swallowed.

“No … anxiety?” asked Briden, standing too close to him and narrowing his eyes. “No changes in behavior?”

“Uhh,” said Henry, not sure what it was best to answer. “I’m all right,” he finally said. “It’s a stressful time.”

Briden raised one eyebrow. “I can see you feel it,” he said, his voice even softer now. “Are you a believer?”

“A believer?” asked Henry.

Briden reached into the neck of his shirt, pulled out his icon, a small twisting shape, the Unitologist symbol. “Altman be praised,” he said.

“No, sorry,” said Henry almost too quickly. “I’m not a believer. Not that I have anything against it.”

“You will be,” said Briden, slowly tucking his icon away, a smile still frozen on his face. “You’re feeling it already, but you just haven’t admitted it yet.”

And with that he turned away, went back to directing his team and setting up the equipment, leaving Henry a little shaken and not quite sure what to do with himself.

*   *   *

It’s here, thought Briden. I’m sure of it. Whatever the Marker wanted them to find was to be found here, and he, Briden, was going to be the one to find it. He had been chosen to do so. His calling was a sacred one, and he could almost feel a holy crown there shining on his head, invisible for all to see except the truly sacred, the truly chosen. He would find it and he would do whatever he needed to do to protect both it and the Marker from all unbelievers.

It had been a mistake to approach Wandrei the technician as he had, but he had felt something, detected something in the man. He knew that Wandrei felt something, just as he, Briden, felt something. Everybody felt a little bit of something—that was how powerful the Marker was, reaching out to believers and unbelievers alike—but for most it was nothing significant: a headache, a little anxiety, or nausea. More and more people, though, were sensing a call to Convergence, a call to lose their life so that they could find it, so that they could find a larger sense of unity and life in the one. Already six people among their number had let go of their lives, or had had them taken away by a well-meaning soul, and Briden had made very certain that their bodies were prepared and preserved for the day they might rise again. Yes, he understood that the work here was holy.

And there was Callie Dexter beside him suddenly. She was his affliction, the thorn in his side. She did not believe and he knew better than to speak to her about his belief: she would not understand it. She would mock him and would try to use it against him. No, she was there as a test for him, something for him to fight against and overcome, but quietly and subtly and with great care.

“We’re all set?” Briden asked.

Callie nodded. “All the monitoring equipment is in place. Now we just wait for a surge.”

“Yes,” said Briden. “But there are things we can do in the meantime.”

“Things? Like what?”

“We need to get a feel for the place,” he said. “We need to walk out there and sense its energies.”

“Energies?” said Dr. Dexter. “What sort of mystical bullshit are you trying to feed me?”

“I mean, measure for any anomalies,” said Briden, backtracking. “Magnetic abnormalities, pressure irregularities, any unusual readings of any sort. Anything that can tell us what’s there, what the Marker is looking for.”

“There you go again,” said Dr. Dexter. “Always thinking of the Marker as human.”

Briden bristled. He wasn’t thinking of the Marker as human. Sentient yes, but hardly human: it was far beyond human. “It’s just a metaphor,” he said. “I don’t mean anything by it.”

Dr. Dexter gave him a hard stare. “I wish that were true,” she said. “All right, let’s see what we can find.”