nothing. “Nothing much we can do on our own,” he finally said. “I’ll file a report with CASRC and see what they advise. Until I hear back, I suppose I’ll just keep on with the readings.”
With a sigh, Field turned back to his screen. Altman just stared at him, disgusted.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked. “Are you even curious?”
“What?” said Field, turning back. “Of course I am, but I don’t know what to do about it. We tried to figure it out, and everybody else is just as confused as we are.”
“And that’s it? You’re just going to give up.”
“Not at all,” said Field, his voice rising. “I told you: I’m filing a report with CASRC. They’ll be sure to have some ideas. That seems the best way to handle it.”
“And then what, you wait a few weeks for someone to read the report and then a few more weeks for a response? What goes on in the meantime? You just keep taking readings? What are you, a company man?”
Field’s face flushed dark. “There’s nothing wrong with following protocol,” he said. “I’m just doing my job.”
“This could be huge,” said Altman. “You said yourself it’s not like anything you’ve seen before. We’ve got to try to figure it out!”
Field pointed one shaky finger at him. “You do what you want,” he said in a low, quavering voice. “Go ahead and be a maverick and see where it gets you. This is a big deal, and it needs to be handled properly. I’ll do my job the way that I know it should be done.”
Altman turned away, his lips a tight line. I’m going to find out what’s going on, he vowed, even if it kills me.
Hours later, Altman still hadn’t gotten any further than Field. He called every scientist he knew in or around Chicxulub, anybody at all with an interest in the crater. Each time he hit a wall, he’d ask the person on the other end who else they thought he should call and then called them.
By a quarter to five, he still hadn’t gotten anywhere and had run out of names. He ran back over the data and correlated it with what he could get his colleagues to send him. Yes, there definitely was a gravitational anomaly. Something had shifted with the electromagnetic field as well, but that was all he knew.
Field, who like any good bureaucrat quit promptly at five every day, had begun to transmit his data and to pack up.
“You’re leaving?” asked Altman.
Field smiled and heaved his pear-shaped bulk out of the chair. “Nothing left to do here today,” he said. “I’m not paid overtime,” he explained, and then walked out the door.
Altman stayed on another few hours, going over the data and maps again, searching for precedents for shifts like this in records about the crater itself or about similar sites, records that stretched all the way back to the twentieth century. Nothing.
He was just on the way out the door himself when his phone sounded.
“Dr. Altman, please?” said a voice. It was barely louder than a whisper.
“This is Altman,” he said.
“Word has it you’ve been asking around about the crater,” said the voice.
“That’s correct,” he said, “there’s this odd anomal—”
“Not over the phone,” the voice whispered. “You’ve already said too much as it is. Eight o’clock, the bar near the quay. You know where that is?”
“Of course I know,” said Altman. “Who is this?”
But the caller had already hung up.
5
By the time Chava came back, dragging along his mother and a few of the other people from the nearby shantytown, the creature had changed again. The wet gray sacs on its back were larger now, each almost the size of a man when fully inflated. Its arms and legs had somehow joined, melding into one another. The flayed quality of the neck had changed, the flesh now looking as if it were swarming with ants.
The air around it had taken on an acrid yellow sheen. It hung in a heavy cloud, and when they got too close, they found it difficult to breathe. One man, a small but dignified-looking old drunk, wandered into the cloud and, after staggering about coughing, collapsed. Two other villagers dragged him out by the feet and then began to slap him.
Chava watched until the drunk was conscious again and groping for his bottle, then turned back to stare at the creature. “What is it?” Chava asked his mother.
His mother consulted in whispers with her neighbors, watching the