The Primus Labyrinth

by Scott Overton

  “The damn thing might not work at all.”

  His words silenced everyone in the room.

  Hunter finally asked, “If it does work, could I use the . . . torch . . . to fight off a macrophage attack?”

  “Torch. That’s a good name for it.” The balding scientist gave a childlike smile, then frowned again. “No. Unfortunately, drawing its power only from the surrounding blood, the capacitor will take a very long time to build up the level of charge required—possibly hours. Even then you could only attack one cell per charge. Not much use, I’m afraid.” He looked concerned.

  “Once the white cells know you’re around, they’ll swarm like sharks.”

  Sweat beading on the brow. Fear sweat.

  The damned white blood cell isn’t going away. Shit, it’s big. Is that another one just beyond? Too hard to tell—still moving too quickly to see anything at a distance. The computer must be having kittens, trying to keep up.

  Options? Not many. Could try using the torch on it. Might draw the rest to the scene of the damage while the ship gets away.

  Damn. Moot point anyway—the capacitor hasn’t got enough charge for a spark. Haven’t been in the body long enough. Hard to believe. Feels like a lifetime.

  Second option: tuck tail between legs and run. Turn the ship around and let it go flat out . . . give the white cells a run for their money.

  No. Speeding up would risk losing any chance of getting to an extraction point in a smaller artery.

  Out of options.

  What was that sound? An earthquake?

  A voice?

  Incredibly slow. What’s it saying?

  Turn? Turn where? Nothing but tunnel and more tunnel, and hounds nipping at the heels.

  Hold on. Darkness up ahead. Dark like a vortex?

  Hard starboard thrust. Skim the wall but don’t bounce off. Hurtling backward like a damned crayfish. Engine braking already at maximum. Hope it’s enough.

  Pulling heavy g’s around the curve, bucketing from side to side in the clash of currents. Keep it under control. Hug the wall.

  Extra turbulence calming a little. The current’s slower, isn’t it? Seems slower, more manageable.

  With luck, a much smaller blood vessel. The feel is different, more confining. A good sign.

  Scratch that. A bad sign. White cell still tagging along. White cells—three . . . maybe four more within visual range. The first one pulling alongside like a Greyhound bus trying to pass.

  Bus nothing. More like the frigging Houston Astrodome.

  It’s moving up, just slightly ahead. Why?

  The perfect position for ramming.

  Slam the throttle back to kill the braking thrust. Pick up speed!

  Too late! Like a giant sledgehammer battering Primus into the artery wall. Bouncing off. A glancing blow off something big and rounded attached to the wall. That cost some speed, but velocity is beginning to rise again.

  Not enough.

  Shit! Like a tennis ball hitting a fruit fly.

  Got to get far enough ahead to have maneuvering room. That means flipping the ship around to get the main engine into the game. All right. Let’s find out what this bucket has got.

  Watch it. Too close to the wall! Just missed another one of those clumps. Throttle flat out. Nearby wall racing by.

  Have to risk a look backward. Hairs on the back of the neck demand it.

  White cells are farther back, but still pursuing. Half a dozen or more now, blocking nearly all the tunnel behind, and the leader is . . . . gaining? No, it just looks that way because of the way it moves . . . expanding and contracting, or maybe rotating.

  Have to turn the sensor array and see what’s ahead. Can’t afford to miss another turnoff . . . find a way to the patient’s skin—the only chance of getting pulled out before the ship ends up as prey.

  There! Another blood vessel branching off to starboard ahead.

  Got to give up some speed or the ship will overshoot.

  Slew through the turn. Steer clear of the far wall—too damn close.

  Collision from behind.

  There goes the neighborhood.

  Picking up speed again on the straightaway. Might buy a few more minutes, but red cells are packed a lot more closely in here. Have to keep steering to avoid them. Will they slow down the pursuers too?

  Shit! Guess not. Body slam nearly snapped the old head off.

  Oh Christ.

  The artery—it’s coming to an end. Something’s blocking it! Pale,

  bloated white cells. And something else—something bigger, dead ahead.

  Macrophage.

  Star shells burst. Arms nearly snap off. Like slamming into safety barrels at a hundred mph. Instant stop. Dead stop. Feel dead. Can’t see. Can’t move. Impacts from behind . . . from the side . . . all over. Like sharks battering a carcass.

  A voice. Very faint. Very slow. Screaming, “Get him out of there! Get him out!”

  Blackness.

  7

  “You had us a little worried.”

  Lucy Tamiko stood over Hunter with her arms crossed. Truman Bridges was just behind her, re-coiling the blood pressure hose. They were in the infirmary, a modest room, but clean, in the requisite clinical white with light grey accents. Hunter lay in a reclining cot that looked like it could double as a dentist’s chair. His head throbbed.

  As if responding to a signal, Devon Kierkegaard walked into the room and pulled up the only other chair, left vacant for him.

  “What an interesting day you’ve had, Mr. Hunter.” He smiled at the responding groan. “I’m glad to hear you making sound. For a half-hour or so you were catatonic. Not completely unconscious, but apparently not aware of us. How do you feel?”

  “Like I’ve been hit by a blood cell the size of Cleveland.” The hoarseness of his own voice surprised Hunter. He cleared it a few times before he was satisfied. “What happened?”

  “You were hit by a blood cell the size of Cleveland.” Skylar Tyson stood in the doorway, then came a few steps closer, followed by Gage and Mallory. “Or you hit it, from the looks of the playback. Then a few suburb-sized cells tackled you for good measure.”

  “Did you get the Primus out? Is she safe?”

  “We did, and she is . . . barely,” Kierkegaard replied. He looked at Lorelei Mallory.

  “Watching the VR monitor,” she explained, “we could see that you were into a smaller artery. We were sure it was one of the arteries of the arm—that’s the way Lucy tried to steer you. But . . . I nearly chose the wrong one.”

  Tamiko interrupted. “Easy to do. We were pretty sure that after the second time through the heart Primus was carried into the subclavian artery—that seemed the most likely, but not a hundred per cent certain. Our visual monitors are almost no help at all. The nano time effect that makes it possible for you to navigate doesn’t extend to our equipment.”

  Hunter gave her a look as if she’d suddenly spoken in Greek.

  “The time dilation effect, Mr. Hunter,” Tyson said. “You remarked on it before, when you did your first test run in the Primus . . . how the test seemed to have lasted a long time for you, but in real time took only a few minutes. How long did this trip seem to last?”

  The pilot thought about his answer. So much had happened in that other world.

  “Hours,” he said. “At least an hour-and-a-half, but it felt like more.” He looked at them for confirmation.

  “Twelve minutes, thirty-two seconds,” Tyson said quietly.

  Hunter was speechless.

  “So you see our problem,” Tamiko said. “Everything happened too fast. We could only get detail by using a kind of slow motion replay every so often. We had to try to guess at your speed and eliminate your possible locations by deduction and mostly by landmarks you didn’t come to, like a major organ. Once we were pretty sure you hadn’t gone to the lower body, we guessed—correctly—that you’d gone into the axillary
artery of the left arm, and then on to the brachial artery toward the elbow. Lorelei saw something in the monitor view that made her believe you’d gone to the right arm instead. She had a fifty-fifty chance of being correct.”

  “And I thought gambling was one of the few vices I’d managed to avoid,” Hunter said. He saw a glass of water on the instrument table to his left, and took a long drink. It felt wonderful: the most basic need filled, a primal link to reality. “So how did you get it out?”

  “From the brachial artery the blood vessel splits at the elbow into the ulnar and the radial,” Tamiko continued. “The radial is more accessible. We hoped that was the way you would go, and we took a chance. Drained about a quarter-liter of blood at what we calculated would be the optimal time and we were right. Gage and Tyson just got back from the lab. Primus is safe and sound.”

  “Not quite,” Tyson disagreed. “It has virtually none of the lipid/protein shell left. Your disguise, Mr. Hunter—you left it behind.”

  “Not by choice, Dr. Tyson, I can promise you that. It was insane in there. I was drawn into a larger vein almost immediately, and there was just no way of controlling the ship. Primus was an acorn in a waterfall.”

  “Yes, we saw that.” Kierkegaard frowned. “Nobody’s blaming you for the loss of the lipid shield. It’s a setback, but it can be replaced. On the other hand, thank you for an excellent job of protecting the sensor array. The mission is still a go.”

  “It’s a remarkable ship,” the pilot replied. “Well-designed, incredibly maneuverable. I’d have to say that was the experience of a lifetime, for good and for bad. But to be honest, I’m not in a hurry to repeat it.” With a major effort he hoisted himself into a sitting position, but dizziness made him hang his head for a moment before slowly raising it.

  “Not repeat it?” Tyson’s voice matched the alarm on his face.

  “I just mean that I don’t want to repeat what I just went through. We have to tone down the responses of the motion simulator—it nearly tore me to pieces. And that second pass through the heart . . . some kind of a haptic feedback loop happened, I assume. It was brutal. Made me black right out.”

  The faces that looked back at him showed only confusion.

  “What are you talking about, Hunter?” Gage demanded, his face reddening. “There was nothing wrong with the motion simulator.”

  Hunter looked around the group. “The chair . . . pitching around so violently. It was realistic, I suppose, but my body can’t take the punishment. Let’s just adjust it, that’s all I’m saying.” He felt like a whiner. Apparently they expected him to be made of sterner stuff.

  “Hunter,” Tamiko said softly, “The chair hardly moved at all. It tipped and shifted like it’s supposed to, but there wasn’t any pitching or bumpiness. Are you sure you’re remembering what actually happened?” Her look of concern was real.

  “You’re kidding, right? Are you saying the chair didn’t vibrate like a jackhammer when we were shooting along that main artery? Didn’t kick like a bucking bronco when Primus went through the heart?”

  “Nonsense.” Gage snorted. “The system behaved exactly as it’s supposed to. It had about the same motion as a flight simulator going through basic maneuvers. There were only a few seconds during the second passage through the heart that the pressure pads of the suit climbed beyond the normal response range. I dampened it very quickly. You have a vivid imagination, Mr. Hunter. Or a very tender hide.”

  “Enough commentary.” Kierkegaard interrupted more loudly than usual, seeing the blood rise in the pilot’s cheeks. “It appears that the experience of riding the Primus is a very subjective one. We shouldn’t be surprised by unexpected results. What we’re doing has never been done before, in an environment no one has ever known. I suggest we all be quicker to collect data, and slower to judge.” His gaze rested on each of them in turn.

  Hunter slowly shook his head. “It couldn’t have been my imagination. My whole body aches like I’ve been hit by the defensive line of the Green Bay Packers. I blacked out. How do you explain that?”

  He was far out of his depth, and knew it. He tried to shake it off, like a boxer shakes off a blow, but too many blows and the foundation of his reality would crumble.

  “I’d certainly like an explanation.” Truman Bridges stepped close and rested the back of his hand on Hunter’s forehead. “Your temperature’s getting back to normal, but people don’t just go unresponsive without a reason.” He turned to Kierkegaard. “I couldn’t let him go back under the VR without a period of observation first. You said it yourself: this is all new territory. I know the time pressure we’re under, but if you lose your pilot there won’t be any mission.” There was something more to the look he gave his boss, but he didn't explain it.

  The head of the project nodded. He stepped to the nearest window and splayed his fingers along the sill.

  “It will take some time to replace Primus’ protective protein shield at any rate,” he said finally. “Twenty-four hours, Dr. Tyson?”

  “Uh . . . at least that.” The scientist was taken aback. “I’ll get everyone I have on it. But the first one took several attempts over nearly two weeks. Twenty-four hours . . . !” He began to shake his head absently, as if making and rejecting calculations in his head, and left the room.

  “Will that be enough for you, Dr. Bridges” Kierkegaard asked.

  “I can’t promise you that, Devon.” The psychologist stood his ground. “I don’t know what we’re dealing with. But I will give you a professional opinion at that time. It could be just a one-time glitch. Let’s hope so.”

  “A kill switch.” Hunter said. The faces turned to him. “I want a kill switch. For the virtual reality feed.” He looked at Kierkegaard. “Something right at my hand that will instantly cut off all of the simulator responses. Not your instrument feeds—you can still monitor everything coming back from Primus—but I want . . . .” He sighed, pushing aside his embarrassment. “I want to be able to come back to reality right away, if I have to. Whatever happened in there, I don’t intend to be a prisoner to it again.” He lay back slowly onto the cot, closing his eyes in obvious pain. Gage took a breath as if about to protest, but Kierkegaard held up a hand to stop him.

  “Very well, Mr. Hunter. Although I hope you’ll be properly grateful to Dr. Gage for the extra work he and his team are about to undertake.” The leader gave a nod of his head and Gage left the room, clearly displeased. “When you’ve rested, I’d like you to go over your recent experience with Dr. Tamiko in as much detail as you can remember. The more quickly we can learn about the circulatory environment, the better we can plan the rest of our missions. Our success will likely depend on that, now.”

  He gave another curt nod, and walked from the room, followed by everyone except Hunter and Bridges. Neither moved or spoke for several minutes, then Hunter shifted his eyes. He wasn’t about to unload his mind to a shrink again, but this man had stood up for him.

  “What do you think, Doctor? Did I have a short circuit, or something?”

  Bridges didn’t get much clinical practice anymore, but he still knew how to look and sound reassuring when his patient needed it.

  “It’s too early for me to make promises,” he said, “but personally, I doubt there’s anything wrong with you at all. I was standing nearby for the whole mission, and it’s true, the chair didn’t make any unusually violent motions. But I’m not doubting what you went through, either. I was monitoring your pulse, respiration, blood pressure . . . adrenaline levels were through the roof. I’d expected high readings—the strangeness of the experience would account for that all on its own. Your brain has to learn what to make of it all. Until that happens, there’s a strong fight-or-flight response, even if you’re not consciously aware of it.”

  “The physical punishment was so real.”

  Bridges was opening cupboards, removing various pieces of equipment. Then he began to attach them to a device in the corner that was c
learly a scanner of some kind. “Very vivid dreams can sometimes produce pretty strong physical results,” he replied. “Look at sleepwalkers. Their bodies respond physically to a kind of virtual reality not all that different from what you experienced.” He held up some wires with electrode pads at the ends. “I want to run a few tests. For our peace of mind.” He smiled reassuringly.

  “Tests? Uh-uh, Doctor, I don’t think so.”

  Bridges looked surprised, but then he nodded and tapped his lip with a finger. “Yes, of course. Devon said you were . . . reluctant to have me involved. Bad experiences with other psychologists?”

  “Bloodsuckers. Sadistic meddlers with no sense of decency.”

  “I’ve met a few like that. Usually the top students in the class, quickly recruited by the government, or the richest corporations. No field of study is immune to that, Mr. Hunter, when money becomes involved.”

  “Were you top of the class, Doctor?”

  “In fact, I was. Do I look like I’m in it for the money?” He gave a bemused smile as he glanced down at his rumpled clothes and scuffed brown oxfords.

  “Doesn’t matter. You’re a shrink—that means you’re a busybody. I’ll keep the contents of my head to myself, thanks.”

  Bridges sighed. “I have no intention of psychoanalyzing you Mr. Hunter. I simply want an EEG and some other readings to compare your current brain activity with the way it was while you were piloting the Primus. That may be revealing.”

  “You think I might have dreamed all of the rough stuff?” Hunter’s wide eyes showed he was still badly shaken.

  Bridges thought hard for a moment, then came to a decision. He spoke in a quieter voice, as if he didn’t want to be overheard.

  “No. No, I don’t think you dreamed it. I think your brain . . . made a leap we weren’t really prepared for. I can’t say much more than that, without more information. But I think the explanation is both simple and profound: I believe that in some way, your brain was able to step beyond virtual reality and link with the environment of the Primus much more directly.”