The Primus Labyrinth

by Scott Overton

  # # #

  Hunter destroyed three bombs close together within the pancreas, and then was compelled to wait until Primus could be recharged. The organ wasn’t yet bomb-free; he hadn’t sensed the “all clear”. Why was it he could recognize the absence of bombs, but not their presence? Perhaps he’d never really tried. Perhaps he simply hadn’t learned how.

  Well, he had some time now to start.

  He tried to define what the “all clear” felt like. Mostly, it was a sensation of relief like the lifting of a weight or a lightening of darkness. If so, he should be able to sense that darkness, as a man with eyes closed can detect the direction of sun and shadow.

  He deliberately slowed his breathing, relaxed his muscles, and tried to picture his mind pushing outward. Sending pulses of thought… ripples that would echo back like sonar from a hard object.

  Nothing.

  He kept it up for several minutes, but without result.

  It must be the wrong approach. Too technical. Instead, he tried to picture his thought as a welling spring of water, overflowing its bounds and spreading slowly through the surrounding space. Not flooding, not forcing, only winding sinuously around, and between, and behind, and through. Then it was ivy, growing in ultra-fast-motion, spreading pervasively, seeking the light, and encountering….

  Non light. Non heat. A void, where warm tissue belonged.

  A bomb.

  He’d done it! He’d located one.

  Were there more?

  Another. Close behind the first.

  Search again. A trickling, seeping pool of curiosity. Thought invading flesh, imbuing blood, becoming flesh and blood. Surrounding and permeating. Finding… nothing. There were no more to be found.

  Only two more bombs were left within the pancreas. He knew it. He was sure.

  He pictured them as two stark sentinels waiting in the dark, cold and lifeless. Enemies of life. The more his thought defined their alien-ness, the more clearly he sensed their presence.

  Two black objects blocking the light. No… soaking up the light. Draining the light like colors bleeding from a watercolor picture left in the rain.

  Two tall shapes silhouetted against bright light.

  Two people, framed in an open doorway, their backs turned. They are leaving.

  Abandoning?

  It feels like that.

  Mommy. Daddy. Don’t leave. Don’t go. Please don’t go. Please don’t leave me with him.

  But the doorway is empty.

  The room is not empty. There is another. Oh, yes. Waiting, just beyond view. In the dim light—light that makes all shapes seem the same. No way to tell good from bad.

  He seemed good. How could she know? But then… evil. Betrayal. Pain. No way to escape. No way to ask for help.

  He is there. He is coming. He touches….

  The view recedes. There is the shape of a small girl, head bowed in the fading light, and the shape of a man, tall only in relation to the child but dominant as he leans forward, menacing in the implacability of his movement. They blur together, and a cry of anguish reverberates as the light winks out.

  Another time, the girl is taller, but no match for him. The result is the same. The shame and hurt burn like a black flame that consumes the figures, and blots out the scene like inky smoke.

  Again….

  No! It must be stopped.

  …the girl and the faceless man. She tries to resist, but there is no resisting. The only source of rescue has left long before through the open door. Leaving him as her protector—her guardian. The irony is bitter as gall. He presses closer…

  No! I can stop him. Block him. Stand in the way….

  He does not stop, inexorable as the darkness. Hunter himself has no solidity, is only a wisp of mist, easily walked through. The nightmare repeats. How many times?

  The girl is a young woman now. Taller, shapely, yet as vulnerable as ever. Abandoned still.

  Her protector/tormentor approaches again.

  NO.

  Suddenly the observer understands. It is darkness that is the accomplice. It is darkness that enables this evil. There must be light. Light to wash darkness away.

  There. A window, blocked by thick curtains. Pull them back! Pull them down.

  Another, closed by shutters. Throw them open!

  Another, obscured by blinds. Pull them up! No more blindness. Let the room be filled with light. Revealing, cleansing, burning light.

  And so it is.

  The man recoils, retreats… staggers backward. He raises an arm to block the stabbing brightness, but it can’t be blocked, not entirely. A ray of golden white catches his shielded face and unmasks it!

  Old skin. Strong cheekbones. Square chin. Balding head, grey-fringed.

  Eyes of soulless black.

  Then he is gone, plunging into the retreating shadows. Fleeing.

  As daylight pours in one door, blackness drains out the other, and the blackness has a name.

  Uncle!

  And another name:

  Frank.

  Perfidy unveiled. Identified. Named. And thereby defeated?

  For now, the dark is banished. Color begins to return, one rich, gleaming dewdrop at a time. A trickle, then a rain of color, flooding the view with joy, and suddenly…

  He is back in Primus. The warning screen is strobing its impatience, demanding attention with red letters that flare across his view.

  He is back. He is Pilot. He is Hunter.

  Yet he is not the same. He never can be.

  51

  Tyson pushed his food slowly around his plate without enthusiasm. “I still can’t understand who could do such a thing. A cowardly act against a defenseless woman.”

  Tamiko gave a bitter smile. “There are all kinds of societies around the world where individual life has almost no worth at all. Especially a woman’s.”

  “I don’t think it’s a foreign country at all,” Gage offered, as he lifted a piece of Salisbury steak to his mouth.

  “You mean independent terrorists?” asked Tyson.

  “Nope.” The other shook his head, chewing the meat. “I think our enemies are from among the very rich and very powerful right here at home.” He appreciated the shocked looks. “Consider the facts. How many countries could manage to produce this level of technology? Skylar, you should have an idea.”

  The balding scientist shrugged. “A handful. Less than half a dozen, I should think.”

  Gage nodded. “And five of the six would be friends of ours. Sure, technology can go missing from labs and be purchased on the open market, but why use this particular method? Taking an embassy full of hostages or shooting down a civilian airliner would be cheaper and easier.”

  He didn’t wait for a reply. “Because there’s a message in the medium. Whoever it is wants to tell the president they have the power and the money to play this game with impunity, and that they can get to anyone.” He leaned back, looking satisfied with himself. “We’re talking about the power elite, here. The Establishment. Not terrorists.”

  Hunter gave an uneasy laugh. “You sure you haven’t been spending too much time with the Conspiracy Channel?”

  “Laugh if you want to. I’ll bet if we could read the fine print on those bombs it would say ‘Made in the USA.’”

  Lorelei Mallory gasped softly. Her face was pale. Noticing their attention, she breathed, “I hope you’re wrong, Kenneth. You must be.” Then she got up, leaving most of her food uneaten.

  “Sorry, Lorelei,” Gage said, looking apologetic. “I’m just reading the evidence.”

  The biologist looked as if she had more to say, but she turned and left the room.

  The others exchanged looks. Tyson was the first to speak.

  “I hope you’re wrong too. The idea is unthinkable, but unfortunately, I’m afraid you may be all too right.” He stood slowly, a sour look on his face. “I once had such hopes….” He turned to leave.
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  “Skylar, wait.” Hunter reached out to touch the man’s arm. “There have always been people who turn new discoveries to the wrong purpose. All through history. The human race survives and flourishes because most people want what’s good for all of us. Don’t forget that.”

  The older man nodded, and then left. Tamiko pushed her empty plate away.

  “Well, it’s been a lot of fun, boys, but I have work to do.”

  As he watched her go, Gage muttered, “Who knew that would be such a conversation-killer?”

  “It’s not your fault for being right,” Hunter said. “We’d just rather believe we’re fighting a foreign threat, instead of being caught up in a homegrown power struggle.”

  Gage looked at him over his coffee cup. “You’re more perceptive than I ever gave you credit for, Hunter.” He took a long swallow. “Look. I know you don’t like me much. You think I’m… what? Pompous? OK, I can be pompous sometimes, I guess. Maybe I’m just compensating because I didn’t have a star quarterback father to put me through school.”

  Hunter bristled. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Gage held up a hand. “Truce. That was only supposed to be a good-natured jab—I’m just not very good at it. But I do know what I’m talking about.”

  He sat back and clasped his fingers together on the table in front of him. “I was a big fan of your dad. I followed every game, every statistic. To me, he was the perfect quarterback: smart and gutsy. Willing to buck the coach’s orders if he saw a better way.

  "I see now that he might have been too cocky, too sure of himself, but I didn’t see it then. I even tried to copy his moves in college ball, except I didn’t have the talent he had. Even so,” he said, looking into Hunter’s eyes, “I can certainly see that it would have been a bitch to try to follow in his footsteps.”

  The pilot only shrugged a little defensively, wondering where the conversation was going.

  “Believe it or not,” Gage resumed, a brooding look on his face, “I know what that’s like. My father was a star, too, but a physicist—one of the most respected minds in the country. His opinion was in demand everywhere. Just his name could open any door I wanted—educational institution, research job, you name it. Except I would have been expected to measure up to him. How could I hope to do that? He was a giant—I was bound to disappoint. So I did: others, him, and most of all, myself.”

  He forced a smile and hid behind his coffee cup. “Oh, I’m not looking for a shoulder to cry on. It forced me to seek out my own path, and work my ass off, which means it was probably a good thing in the end. Except I never got over being defensive about it. So instead, I come across as a cocksure prick sometimes.” He looked up. “What about you?”

  “I just come across as a regular, average prick.” Hunter laughed. “And a drunk, and a mental case. I suppose you’ve heard about my accident, too?”

  Seeing Gage shake his head, he hesitated, then continued, “I got trapped in a malfunctioning submersible on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. I nearly died. By the time the surface crew realized something was wrong they couldn’t find me.

  “Anyway, somehow the sub did surface—just in time—but it was all smashed up inside. They figured my mind had snapped. The company tried to get out of paying me compensation by trying to dig up proof of pre-existing mental illness. They failed, but it could have been the end of my career. Still might be. Kierkegaard took a big chance hiring me.”

  “Devon is a smart man,” Gage said softly. “He made a good choice.” Then, as if deciding he’d said too much, he cleared his throat and stood, gathering his dishes into a pile. “See you back in the control room.”

  As he watched the scientist walk away, Hunter sat in quiet thought, amazed to learn that Kenneth Gage had a human side.

  # # #

  The two remaining bombs in the pancreas were destroyed easily and quickly, but Kierkegaard had still not announced his decision about whether to search the brain or to trust Hunter’s intuition that doing so wasn’t necessary. If they opted to leave the brain alone, and they were wrong, there would be no hope of a last-minute deliverance. If they wasted their remaining time searching for bombs where there were none to find, any devices left undiscovered elsewhere in her body would be free to sow destruction.

  It was a decision to test the wisdom of Solomon, no doubt about that.

  In the meantime, Hunter snatched whatever rest he could, but he couldn’t fall asleep. The mysteries of the past twenty-four hours saturated his brain like caffeine.

  Had he really been witness to the woman’s appalling memories or were they fictional scenarios that she projected?

  No, creating such fictions would be a sign of an unbalanced mind.

  And so, what he’d seen was truth: the woman had been abused repeatedly by someone her parents had trusted enough to leave him as guardian of their daughter. An uncle? “Uncle Frank?”

  He shuddered with disgust. To him, people who preyed on children were no longer fit to be called human beings. This monster had been a friend or relative. The very worst kind of betrayal.

  Why had she shown all this to Hunter, who himself was an invader in her body? The irony was grotesque. The kind of torments she had faced were the darkest secrets of a lifetime, surely not even revealed to a professional counselor without long hours of trust-building. Or perhaps to a lover. What would make her give such trust to him? That seemed to prove once again that he was interacting with her subconscious mind alone, and from that mind’s depths had come a heartsick plea for help. Yet he was still faced with the same dilemma: even if he could do something to help, did he have the right to do so?

  He longed to ask Bridges or Kierkegaard for advice, but how? He’d become convinced that the mental connection he experienced was no thing of mysticism or the occult—it simply involved energies and a mechanism not yet understood. But that which is not understood is often not believed.

  Maybe his greater fear was that, once they knew, they would stop him. After all, he could tap into the patient’s most private store of thoughts and memories and, worst of all, control Primus without any supervision of his conscious will. Sublime potential, yes, but also horrific danger.

  Wait a minute. Why did such control have to be unconscious?

  He lay flat on the bed, and relaxed his muscles and his brain. Then he pictured Primus and tried to imagine her surroundings as he had last seen them: a small passageway just off the main artery leading from the pancreas. Vein wall nearby. Translucent cell membranes nearly touching the hull on the port side. Darker color of venous blood.

  A mammoth white cell drifts by. It doesn’t notice the ship.

  A red cell gently nudges from behind, then slides past. The current isn’t strong here. Nothing is damaged.

  It’s working. At least in one direction. Reception is loud and clear.

  What about the rest? Is there control?

  The engines are idling with the fans neutral. Try giving them thrust... there. A gentle push against the small outcropping anchoring the bow, weak but discernible. Test the directional controls. Carefully. Mustn't get loose in the bloodstream and then find out the connection isn’t reliable.

  There is some response. A light surge to starboard. Now back to port. Throttle back.

  Try reverse? Is it worth the risk? What if someone notices? Would they believe that the ship has simply broken loose on her own? What then?

  They’d come to fetch her pilot.

  What the hell. It's worth a try.

  Ease her back... gently... gently. If the link starts to falter, find a sheltered spot quickly.

  The mouth of the tiny backwater vein is still visible astern. Easiest to turn around and fight the weak current that distance.

  In the clear. A feeling of being slammed back by the sudden forward lunge as the full current takes hold.

  A junction, out into a larger vein. It's easy to dodge blood cells and other assorted
traffic. Still only a moderate current, compared to the main trunk veins.

  “Hunter?”

  Damn. Too soon.

  “Hunter!”

  “HUNTER, OPEN YOUR DOOR.”

  Shit. They’ve come already. Better find a place to pull off, before Primus joins the express lane to the heart. A small opening, a maintenance tunnel to a cluster of cells is best. Close in to the vein wall.

  There’s one, and in she goes, the current providing a last-minute push in the right direction. Final burst of thrust to jam the prow up tight. Good... very good. Perhaps a touch less precise than with the mechanical controls, but....

  Why were his hands in the air?

  Oh. Holding imaginary joysticks.

  He hurried to the door.

  It was Truman Bridges.

  “Hello, Hunter,” the doctor said as he stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. His face had all the smugness of a mark who’s caught the con man.

  “Nice trick.” He smiled.

  52

  Detective stories and investigative TV shows all said, “follow the money." Mannis knew it was true only to a point. In the real world, those with money—real money—knew how to hide it. It was their top priority to hide it from being taken in exorbitant taxes by profligate bureaucracies. Hide it from meddlesome law enforcement agencies with a naive morality regarding “lawful gain.”

  His own search had become follow the blanks. The blanks were where the money trail—or any other line of investigation—came to an abrupt end.

  The end of a trail was always suspicious. In Mannis’s experience, where a simple query could no longer solicit an answer, there lay a cover-up. He never questioned that anymore, and he did not believe in coincidences.

  The tough part was learning the reasons for the subterfuge. Often such reasons were trivial: sexual indiscretion, a minor business double-cross, simple tax evasion. Some high-rollers simply covered up everything they could because they liked to. Perhaps it gave them an inflated sense of power and control. He didn’t care. Let them all play emperor if they wanted to. What mattered was knowing which walls were put in place to stop him.