“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.”
46
They stood in the dim hallway outside radar support. Ekberg kept her head averted, hands clenched and fingers interlaced, shivering despite the warm air. Wolff glanced at her, then looked away again. Conti stood apart, reviewing the footage he’d recently shot on the camera’s small viewscreen.
“Why didn’t you let me respond to Gonzalez’s call?” she asked.
“He probably just wants to smoke out our location,” the director murmured. “He clearly retreated following the attack, and now he wants to pull us back as well.”
“He probably fell back to the life-sciences lab,” replied Wolff. “Rejoined the others. If he was smart, that’s what he did.”
“I doubt it. Gonzalez is a soldier; he wouldn’t have let a setback like this stop him.”
