The Primus Labyrinth

by Scott Overton

  That thought was surprisingly painful. His mental bond with her was something unique. Something special.

  How do you introduce yourself to a disembodied mind?

  Spelling out his name would mean nothing. What she needed was reassurance… proof that she could trust him. She had every right to ask. He’d just witnessed what must be some of her most private memories: images of loss, of abandonment. Even treachery and… violation? Was that what he’d just seen?

  He’d unwittingly tapped the deepest essence of her identity, far more personal than a mere name.

  No, that wasn’t accurate. She had allowed him to see it, perhaps had deliberately shown it to him.

  Is that what she wanted from him in return?

  Could he trust that far?

  What image could he use to reveal himself? Where did his truest self lie?

  He licked nervous sweat from his lip, unclenched his hands, and tried to relax. He closed his eyes again.

  Darkness.

  Darkness, like the deep blue-black of the sea. The sea at depth: dense and cool, motion slowed into smooth sweeps and lazy swirls. Slowing time itself.

  The sea is a private kingdom, where myriad performers parade in bright array between columns of watery sunlight, and powerful denizens of deep shadows honor a truce between natural rivals.

  Slipping calmly beneath the waves, the body is at once free of gravity; the mind free of the cares of that other world. Its sounds are left behind… its distractions, its demands. Hot sunlight mutes to cool turquoise and aquamarine. The impersonal vastness of airy space gives way to a womb-like connection within the fluid world, comfortably bounded by the limits of vision.

  Rolling over frees billows of silver-blue bubbles that wriggle toward the glassy surface. Flashes of bright yellow sun prism dancing wave-tops into darting, dazzling spotlights that illuminate weightless motes of plankton floating like pollen on a summer breeze.

  Another roll over and a lean forward begins an effortless glide: a free-fall dive in slow motion, with care to feed bursts of pressurized air into the vest-like Buoyancy Control Device to brake descent, reassuring with its light squeeze on the chest. A brief pinching of nostrils and a puff of air equalizes the pressure in eardrums and sinuses. Second nature. Regular breathing—no more labor than a gentle walk.

  Hover head down, and survey the world spread beneath. It stretches beyond sight, far, far below where the body alone cannot go. For that you need…

  ….a submersible with its solid steel shell of a reassuring heaviness revealed in round, ringing tones as metal strikes metal. Dozens of gauges are like friendly faces surrounded by party lights. There is comforting protection in forged steel and the added satisfaction of a technological safety net.

  The motion of such a craft is smooth, nearly imperceptible; but its passage through the water is revealed to other senses: inner senses sharply aware of increasing depth and mounting pressure. Still, there is only excitement, not concern, not fear. It is the calm of familiarity. Routine. A confidence born of thorough acquaintance.

  The oceanaut and the deep blue sea.

  This is life. This is home.

  This is who I am.

  An idea! In this memory there is a flat glass computer screen in the submersible. At the right angle it could become a mirror.

  Overhead light spills onto the surface revealing a reflection of a face: dark hair, strong jaw, high cheekbones… a hint of blue in the eyes. A somber face.

  My face.

  The reflection is not entirely still, as small features and patches of skin waver in and out of focus. Then suddenly the outline changes. The hair is darker, its profile rounder with a suggestion of curls. The skin is darker too, even in the dim reflection. Female. Her face.

  The face is blank. It has no features. Instead there is a nothingness, like the “blind spot” produced by a trick of the human eye with only a tantalizing suspicion of details that cannot be seen. The blank circle becomes the mouth of a tunnel, drawing the eye inward into shadowed, gloomy darkness, and something more.

  A menacing presence is there too.

  Him. Him again. The bringer of pain and shame. Hiding within… waiting always to be revealed anew, and to rekindle the hurt.

  No. NO. Not again.

  The tunnel recedes, and the reflection ripples, shatters and fades. The encircling steel shell reappears, with its winking lights and frenetic needles on passionless faces.

  But it is no longer comforting, no longer safe.

  The submersible is still. Inert. Not only unmoving, but unable to move. No longer a sheltering cocoon, but a chilled prison. Darkness invades it. Cold pervades it.

  No… this is not a place to go. Not a good place to be.

  NO!

  There was a way out before. There must be a way out now.

  “HUNTER!”

  What? How could she know…?

  “HUNTER!”

  “HUNTER! PRIMUS IS RECHARGED.”

  It was like being slapped awake from a dream. He gasped and felt his body jerk. His impulse was to tear off helmet and visor to get a solid dose of reality, but that would provoke questions he certainly didn’t want to answer… didn’t know how to answer Better that the others assume he’d simply dozed off.

  Maybe he had.

  No. It was tempting to dismiss the experience as a dream, but he knew it was not.

  In Primus he traversed a labyrinth with each new level more enigmatic than the last. He had not only opened Pandora’s box, he had fallen in.

  The interaction with the woman’s mind had been pleasant at first—why would it take such a turn for the worse? Was identity so inextricably entwined with our pain and fear? He was almost sure that she had deliberately shown those things to him, but he couldn’t understand why. Was it a display of trust, or a plea for help? And what did it say about her feelings for him, an invader of both her body and mind?

  Hunter's own mind refused to open itself again so soon to the link and its emotional peril. Instead, he would have to do his job the hard way, by computer-fed VR alone.

  As he worked, he tried to imagine himself as an unfeeling machine, coldly carrying out its assigned tasks. He found eight more bombs. The right lung was clear and the task was done. He stripped off the gear, bolted for his room and collapsed on the bed.

  His last thought before unconsciousness was, Will I dream?

  And will I hurt her if I do?

  49

  It was late afternoon when he awoke, but with the blinds drawn it took him a few moments to decide if it was day or night.

  He couldn’t have been asleep for long, but traces of a pleasurable dream lingered in his mind—a rare thing. He tried to recall details but they were elusive. There was a woman—he remembered that much, and the recollection gave him a warm feeling.

  Not Lucy, though.

  A woman with mocha skin.

  Damn. It wasn’t hard to see where that had come from. And it was definitely not a good line of thought to pursue.

  He stumbled to the commissary and swallowed some food, not tasting it, then made his way to the control room. Tamiko was already there.

  “How’s the ship, Lucy? It hasn’t… moved, has it?”

  “No. Why would it?” she asked. “Didn’t you dock it properly?”

  “Sure, I think so… but I was tired, that’s all.” He settled into the pilot’s chair. “Are you here to check up on me?”

  She responded with a mildly wounded look.

  “I think it’s pretty clear that you don’t need me,” she said.

  He was taken aback. “I… think my unconscious mind just picks up on a lot of clues and makes predictions about bomb locations from them. But without your maps, I still wouldn’t know where I was.”

  She gave a snort of derision. “I don’t mean with Primus. I already knew you weren’t using the maps to find the bombs—I’ve accepted that. I mean in the bedroom.” />
  “What are you talking about?”

  “Come and have a look, lover boy.” She sat in front of one of the monitors and began a flurry of keystrokes. “Look at what we recorded while you were taking your nap.” The screen showed a series of bar readouts.

  “What am I looking at?” He knew she was having fun at his expense, but he had no idea where it was leading.

  “Our patient’s vital signs.” She drew a finger across several of the bars. “Heart rate, respiration, perspiration… and down here are hormone levels, even muscular contractions. Watch this.” She tapped a final key and the playback began at the chosen point. Hunter could see all of the levels begin to rise, though at slightly varying rates, then they clearly reached a strong peak, and danced for a time before gradually tapering off to something close to the original readings.

  “What was that all about?” he asked, as Gage walked in and broke into a smile. Tamiko swiveled the chair to face him, with an expression that was hard to read.

  “An orgasm,” she answered. “Your lady friend climaxed. Not long after you’d spent so much time with her. In her. I think the connection’s obvious.” She looked up at Gage, sharing the joke. “I guess it’s true what they say. Size really doesn’t matter.”

  “It’s not how big it is. It’s what you do with it,” Gage contributed, then broke into a loud laugh.

  Hunter angrily slapped at the keyboard and cleared the screen.

  “For Christ’s sake. I thought we were above voyeurism here.”

  The others paused, and looked at each other. “No, not necessarily,” Gage deadpanned, and then laughed again. Tamiko’s control dissolved and she joined in helplessly. Stung, Hunter swept up the helmet and put it on, as much to hide his expression as for any other reason.

  Could they be right? Tamiko had said it happened just after the mission, probably just after he’d fallen asleep.

  What if his mind had somehow linked with hers, the way he’d unconsciously piloted Primus?

  Shit! He was playing around in the psyche of another human being where even the best-trained experts would fear to tread. What gave him the right to do such a thing?

  He pulled the helmet off his head. Tamiko was sitting nearby, watching him. Gage was no longer in the room.

  “Sorry about that. No offence intended,” she said. When he didn’t reply she continued, “Frankly, if I were in as bad a situation as that woman is, and still had enough desire left to masturbate… I’d be pretty pleased with myself. Honestly, I think it’s a tribute to human nature.” She smiled softly. “We were only pulling your leg. How could you have had anything to do with that? You’re linked to a micro-miniature submarine in her bloodstream, for Pete’s sake.”

  How indeed? Hunter thought. That was the billion-dollar question.

  # # #

  The next twelve hours was a blur of missions and all-too-short snatches of sleep. He returned to both kidneys and her liver and found them riddled with bombs. They had to be new, released by the bomb launcher after his previous sweep.

  With the last of his energy, he purged the spleen of a dozen bombs. He’d learned how to produce the absolute minimum spark from the torch that would trigger a burn, and Primus was recharging ever more quickly; but even so, he found the necessary downtime a frustrating impediment. As usual, he failed to recognize his own need for a recharge, until Kierkegaard firmly commanded him to unplug and get some rest.

  “You’ll need it,” he insisted. “We’ve decided that we can’t afford to ignore the pancreas, so that’s next. After that...,” he sighed. “I feel we no longer have a choice: I’ve asked Doctor Tamiko to map the brain.”

  The darkness surrounded him. It permeated him. He was the darkness and the darkness was him.

  Air was running short now. Hungry silence circled its prey like a vulture. The dimly glowing eyes that had kept him company here and there around the compartment were starting to wink out. Saying goodbye.

  Goodbye. To sunlight, to surf, to sand... to smiles and sweethearts and songs.

  No one was coming. The indifferent sea would claim him, as it had claimed so many others, never caring to know the names of those it took, nor of those who would miss them.

  He blinked. Then again.

  There was someone there. Except he couldn’t see them. Her. It was her, he knew it. He experienced her, like the darkness enveloping him. Except... cradling, not smothering. Comforting, not tormenting. How had she found him?

  How had she come? Why?

  To show the way.

  With a gentle sense of rebuke, she lifted his head from the darkness, and made him look up into the light. Without words, she told him that he was neither the submersible, nor the silence. She told him that he was the waves above, the smell of salt air, the raucous cries of birds, and the warm kiss of the sun.

  And suddenly... he was.

  This is not how it happened, came a whisper from a rebellious corner of his mind.

  No matter. It’s better this way.

  Fierce sunlight sucked the wetness from his skin and seared away his last remnants of fear like the scattered shreds of morning mist leaving him free and alive. A prisoner given an eleventh-hour reprieve.

  Saved.

  In gratitude, he turned his head to see her face, aware of its outline in his peripheral vision. Then....

  She was gone. He was alone. Lying on his bed listening to the faint sound of air through the heating ducts, and some barely discernible noises of movement in the corridor outside.

  There was a loud knock at the door.

  “Mr. Hunter? Sir? You’re wanted at a staff meeting right away. In the lecture room.” It was the voice of one of the military support people. “Mr. Hunter? Did you hear me, sir?

  “On my way,” Hunter managed, his voice raspy.

  He sat up, the dream still fresh in his mind.

  It bore no relation to the actual event, but it was a whole lot better.

  How had she come to be in it? Was that his choice? Or hers?

  50

  The team was already hotly discussing something when he came into the room. Kierkegaard waved at a chair, then continued with what he’d been saying.

  “It would be reckless to assume that they have not planted bombs in her brain.”

  “But why would they take that risk?” Tamiko asked. “A detonation anywhere in the brain could cause irreversible trauma—permanent brain damage, or even death. A hostage who’s become a—I hate to say it, a 'vegetable'—wouldn’t be much of a bargaining chip anymore. More likely to seal the president’s resolve, if anything. They couldn’t be sure a bomb wouldn’t plant itself in a key vessel and cause cell death extensive enough to be fatal.”

  “Unless they got the information from us,” Gage muttered darkly.

  The project leader shot a glare at the white-haired scientist. “There is no indication of a leak anywhere within this project, Dr. Gage, and I think such suggestions are counter-productive. Please keep them to yourself.” He lifted his head to take in the whole group. “Is there anyone else who believes we could be doing more harm than good by searching the brain?”

  Hunter hesitated, then raised his hand. “I think it would take too much time, sir. If we’re getting down to the last strokes, the time could be better used elsewhere.”

  “Where might that be, Mr. Hunter?” The voice carried a film of frost.

  “I don’t think there are any bombs planted in her brain.”

  “No doubt you’ll share your evidence for this?” Colder still.

  Hunter sighed, eyes fixed on the tabletop. “I have no evidence. It’s natural to think the bombs would drift into the arteries of the brain as readily as anywhere else, but I have a strong... sense that there are no bombs there, at least not yet. It’s the same sense I get after we’ve cleared one of the organs.” He looked up. “You’ve taken my word on that up to now.”

  Kierkegaard was not mollified. “It ma
y be that I was in error. Especially since all of those sites have subsequently been found to be riddled with bombs.”

  Hunter took a sharp breath. It had never occurred to him that Kierkegaard might doubt his explanation for the new infestations.

  Tamiko snapped her head toward her boss. “That’s unfair and unreasonable,” she said. “I was the last one who wanted to accept Hunter’s assessments of bomb placements without hard proof. But we’ve all seen the evidence. He’s got some ability to sense the presence of the bombs. It’s uncanny, but it’s also undeniable, and we’ve all come to accept it.” She waved toward the projector screen. “Don’t forget that scans backed him up afterward. Those organs were clear. Then they weren’t. So unless you’re going to start calling into question the abilities of the technicians who performed and analyzed the scans...”

  “You’ve made your point, Dr. Tamiko,” Kierkegaard interrupted heavily. “Mr. Hunter, I owe you an apology. I should not have implied...” He gave a slight shake of his head, then stood up straight and addressed the far wall. “I think we’ve heard all the arguments. I will make my decision shortly. That is all.”

  No-one else moved until Kirkegaard had stiffly left the room. Gage let out a long whistling breath. Tyson wiped his brow with a handkerchief.

  As the others filed out, Bridges rose from his chair and stepped toward Hunter.

  “Don’t judge him too harshly,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe the pressure he’s under. Most other men would have cracked.”

  Hunter nodded, still in a daze. “I don’t blame him,” he said. “Why should he accept my hunches at face value? Half the time I don't believe them myself.” He suddenly slammed a fist on the table. “Why does it have to be me anyway? I’d be perfectly content just to put my brain in neutral and steer the sub. That’s my job. That’s what I was supposed to do. All I was supposed to do.”

  Bridges gave the wry smile of a philosopher. “None of us really knows what we are supposed to do with our lives. Until it’s been done.”