by Bob Finley
"A chimney," he thought. He remembered hearing the term on a rock-climbing teevee special he'd seen. The thought intimidated him. He remembered the extreme effort the climbers had had to expend to climb it. He wasn't sure he had enough stamina left to make it. But when he considered the alternative, it was by far the lesser of evils.
Levering himself into the bottom of the opening, he forced his feet against one wall and his back against another. And began climbing. A foot at a time. A grunt at a time. And somewhere along the way, he mercifully entered Sanctuary.
Sanctuary. A place, but not a place. A state of mind, but real. Too real. Dangerously real. While his body strained every fiber to climb the dark vertical tunnel, his mind was divorced from his body. He'd jokingly referred to the process as the opposite of an "out-of-body" experience. But even joking about it made him uncomfortable. The sanctity of Sanctuary had been so ingrained in him by his grandfather that to speak lightly of it was almost blasphemous.
He'd never been sure whether his grandfather had thought of Sanctuary as a form of judo or Zazen or some other form of religious practice. Or whether he'd been capable of distinguishing between the two. But, since he'd been his grandfather's only student, he never had a basis of comparison because he'd never been exposed to other Judoists until after his grandfather's death. And the one or two times he'd casually dropped the term in conversation with others who should have known it, he'd got no reaction. Finally, he'd come to accept Sanctuary as something unique to his grandfather. He stopped talking about it and only rarely sought it. Except in times of great stress. Like now.
Entering Sanctuary required a conscious effort. Escaping it sometimes required superhuman effort. He empathized with those people who claimed to have ‘died’ and ‘walked down a long tunnel toward a bright light’. The emotional experience was extremely real to them. But the most soul-wrenching part of the entire episode always seemed to occur when the person was forced, against their will, to abort the encounter and return to ‘real’ life. Many times their loved ones were devastated when the one being ‘brought back to life’ tearfully and heart-rendingly demanded to know why they hadn't been allowed to continue on ‘into the light’. That was what leaving Sanctuary was like.
First he had to step through the ‘secret door’. One person's secret door was always different from another's. When he'd first begun introducing his boss/friend to Sanctuary, he'd explained several times in different ways before Marc Justin finally understood. Finding the door was always difficult the first time. But it was only the first of a series of difficulties in peeling away the many layers that gradually yielded access to one's innermost core being. Kim's secret door was to visualize himself in an environment that was absolutely free from stress of any kind: no schedule to keep; no work that needed doing; no expectations from other people that he must fill; no accountability. Just total freedom to follow whatever whim randomly occurred to him. He closed his eyes to block out the reality of where he was and what he was doing and opened his mind.
He was transported to a high mountain meadow, surrounded by spectacular scenery, bathed in a soft spring breeze that caressed his skin, gently tousled his hair, and whispered through the fragrant balsam forest nearby. The grass was long and filled with a profusion of wildflowers, all swaying gently for as far as he could see down the mountain that fell away steeply into the deeply-shadowed valley before him. In slow motion, he fell backwards into the soft, fragrant grass. And tumbled into the darkness of an Alice In Wonderland rabbit hole that was somehow large enough to hold him.
The sensation wasn't so much falling as drifting, weightlessly tumbling, end over end, deeper, ever deeper into a dark, peaceful silence.
Gradually, he began to be aware of sounds...pleasant, musical, like a symphony of distant wind chimes. Then there began to be light. Tiny, golden sparks of light drifted up from below...or was he falling past them? The glow grew brighter, but diffused so that it was impossible to know the source of the light. The walls of the shaft down which he was falling...if he was falling...became more defined, as the points of light fused into a network, interconnected by delicate, glowing strands of light. The strands became hundreds, then thousands, then...
He could see quite distinctly now, and held out one hand before him. It seemed perfectly normal except for the golden glow that seemed to emanate from somewhere inside himself, as if his body were becoming transparent, his arteries and veins pulsing visibly with streamers of light, glowing darkly like burnished copper kettles in a candle-lit medieval kitchen.
Softly he settled to a cool floor that shone, pure and white, from within. No blemish marred it, not the slightest imperfection. He looked around and smiled. He knew this room well. It was circular and precisely twenty feet across. Precisely. Every aspect of this room was precise. Exact. Mathematically perfect. No imperfect thing could exist here. It was his Sanctuary.
His primal need for order was fulfilled in this place, where atoms and electrons in the form of electronic data swirled as walls and ceiling, cascaded in torrential bytes of meaning, trickled in minuscule bits of interpretation, thundered by as interconnected data stream trains of mysterious origins, bound for wondrous and distant places.
The fibrous matrix of dendrons formed a latticework of pulsing, glittering comets of light, streaming contrails out behind themselves in their swift, skittering passage through this central electronic clearing house he had come to believe was his soul.
In this place no harm could reach him. No force in the world could penetrate his protective fortress. His invulnerability was absolute. Here he was safe from physical, emotional and psychological pain. Safe from infringement on his social conscience by those who prey on others whose caring nature make them vulnerable to exploitation. Safe from the demands of those who presumed on intimacy to realize their own personal agendas. Safe. Sanctuary.
It was in its very promise of inviolable safety that danger lurked. The depth of peace and tranquility that accompanied achievement of the state of Sanctuary was so intense that the desire to remain there forever easily escalated into addiction. Kim Matsumoto never approached Sanctuary without first layering his consciousness. It wasn't an exercise in ritualistic symbolism...it was a survival tool. He thought of it as keeping one hand on the pull pin to the ejection seat. He couldn't risk proving his theory, but he thought that if he ever completely surrendered to the siren call of Sanctuary, he'd never return. Marc had once asked him what would actually happen to his physical body if he committed his mind to Sanctuary. Kim had grudgingly admitted to two incidents that had been related to him by his grandfather. In both instances, the people had simply stopped living. It seemed that, in choosing to stay in Sanctuary, they had somehow crossed a threshold of existence, abandoning the prisons of their bodies in exchange for a chance at eternal peace of mind.
He was aware on a subliminal level that his body was climbing, doing what his compartmentalized consciousness had set it to do. But on a separate plane, another stratum of his mind could isolate and subjugate the associated pain and sweat and terror of climbing the dark, rough shaft as if the act existed in another world. He knew that his body was being physically abused as it was driven to extreme limits far beyond what it was normally capable of. But he was just as aware that failure was preordained to end, after his battered body fell from the shaft to the rocks below, in fiery consumption in a bubbling cauldron of molten lava. The greater fear of such a horrible death overcame the lesser fear of climbing. And of the possible fate that awaited him at Leo's hands if...when...he succeeded.
It was lighter. The realization startled him. He had difficulty separating the reality of what his senses told him from the "reality" of Sanctuary. He very carefully allowed his consciousness to rise, like a slow elevator, through one level at a time, pausing at each level while he evaluated the environment before becoming a part of it.
Yes, it was definitely lighter. He tilted his head back and looked above him. There was an opening just
ten feet away and light issued from it. Not a big opening. And not a lot of light. But he felt hope surge and swell somewhere, at some level of awareness.
He stepped back from himself and took a careful look. The condition of his body scared him. It didn't look like it could go any farther. His limbs were shaking, his fingers bloody. There was a wild look in the eyes of the face that turned up to hunger for the light. Still immersed in the detachment of Sanctuary, but nearing the surface, he summoned and focused the will to reach the light. He was suddenly struck by the similarity to ‘near-death’ experiences. Reach for the light. Walk toward the light. Climb toward the light. He felt the surge of energy as it welled up. Climb toward the light. He didn't dare fully emerge from Sanctuary until he was clear of the shaft. He was sure he couldn't survive the pain that was surely there without the anesthetic that Sanctuary provided.
He curled his fingers over the edge of the hole and pulled, dragging himself upward, clinging desperately to the sewage pipe. He heaved the top part of his body out of the hole and lay there gasping, the side of his face in grateful contact with the cool stone floor. Finally, spreading arms that themselves seemed made of stone, he put his hands palm-down on the floor and tried to leverage himself from the hole. But his hands were too slippery from the bloody fingernails and only slid along the floor. Grunting, he drew his legs up beneath himself, walked them up the inside of the shaft until he could move them no higher, and in a final expenditure that he knew would leave his body bankrupt, shoved with all that was left in him.
He flopped out of the shaft and rolled over onto his back, passing out from the supreme effort.
When he finally rose to the surface of conscious reality, leaving Sanctuary reluctantly behind, he instantly knew two things: he was in great pain; and he was back in Leo's world. His eyes snapped open but he didn't move a muscle. He was afraid Leo might discover him at any second. Letting his eyes roam, he worked at focusing on his surroundings.
A dimly-lit, rough-hewn stone ceiling stretched away to his left. He traced its junction with a wall of similar construction down to where he lay on the floor. He tentatively stretched out his right hand and laid it, gently and with palm out, on its cool surface. It felt good. Until he tried to explore it with his fingertips. Then, as pain stabbed up his arm, he remembered his bloody fingertips and decided he didn't really want to look at them just yet.
Very slowly, he ratcheted his head to the left and found himself looking across what seemed to be some kind of mechanical space. The room looked to be about twenty-five feet across. There were pipes and check-valves running down and along the wall. He couldn't see any more of the far wall because he seemed to be lying behind some kind of equipment that was partially blocking his view. With the sudden arrival of sounds, he knew he had completely returned to the real world. Once, while backpacking, he'd camped next to a waterfall and had a strange experience. Several times during the night, as he awoke to turn over, he'd realized that he was fully awake for nearly two seconds before he could hear the waterfall, and that the sound of it suddenly clicked on as if he'd flipped a switch. That was the first time he'd known that his brain could ‘turn off’ extraneous sounds while in a different level of consciousness. Since then he'd noticed the same phenomenon whenever he exited the mental state of Sanctuary. So, as soon as the sounds in the room kicked in, he knew he was fully back to normal. Not that normal was so great.
Dreading the act, but knowing it had to be, Kim rolled over. In stages. Even the thought of moving hurt. Actually doing it seemed to him the ultimate in masochistic self-indulgence. He heard a strange noise and realized it was his own groaning. He made a conscious effort to stifle the sound. At last he made it to his knees and peeped cautiously out from behind whatever machinery he'd been lying behind.
The room was unremarkable. Typical machinery space, common to similar functions anywhere. Pipes. Valves. Gauges. The muted thrum of four-stroke engines. Common, but for one particular machine that Kim easily recognized. As well he should. There was a smaller version of it aboard the VIKING. It was the irony of finding it here that struck Kim Matsumoto as almost funny. Taking up almost a fourth of the room to his right was a sea water conversion generator manufactured by Justin Enterprises. It processed sea water, extracted oxygen, distilled fresh water into tote tanks, and compressed the oxygen into a breathable mixture. That mixture was then stored in high-pressure cylinders that regulated and dispensed air on demand, according to ambient pressure sensors strategically located throughout the facility. In the VIKING, which was for the most part a self-contained pressure vessel, very little of the compressed mix leaked out and had to be replaced. But here in a mountain beneath the sea, rife with fissures and honeycombed with lava tubes that meandered off the main cavern, terminating who-knows-where, there would be a constant and significant air loss. Which would explain the need for such a large conversion unit. The sheer proportions of such a massive chasm would dictate machinery with equally massive capabilities. Without its continuous replenishment of breathable air, and the accompanying need to maintain pressure sufficient to keep the sea at bay, the entire undersea structure would be flooded and uninhabitable.
"So here's my boss's invention, keeping his enemies alive," Kim thought ruefully. On the other hand, since it was also keeping him alive...so far...he decided it wouldn't be in his best interest to press the issue.
Reaching down into his shorts, he pulled out the transceiver and, taking a firm grip on it, he eased out from behind the compressor behind which he'd been lying and stepped apprehensively into the room.
He held the transceiver out before him with both hands, like a talisman. He had no way of knowing whether Leo's watchful "eyes" included the room into which he'd emerged, since he also didn't know where the room itself was located in relation to the rest of the complex.
Nothing. He took a few more tentative steps, checking to make sure that the transceiver was, in fact, on. It was. Emboldened, he made a cautious circuit of the room, more closely examining the equipment, but finding nothing of pertinent interest.
Coming to the entrance to the room, he took a quick peek out into the corridor that led at a fifteen degree slope down to the main passageway. Other than recessed lighting that dimly illuminated both sides of the corridor from behind two-by-eight handrails mounted on the walls, there was nothing of significance. Taking a last look around, he eased into the corridor. Hugging the right wall, he kept one hand on the rail as reference and the other on the transceiver and made his way stealthily down the hallway.
When he reached the main passage, he stopped and put his back to the wall. He listened for almost half-a-minute but heard only his own carefully rationed breathing and thumping heart. Finally, encouraged, he slid one eye into the long hallway and was relieved when it appeared to be empty. Looking both ways, he saw that there was a sharp bend in the passageway to his left. Driven by the need to know his alternatives, if there were any, he slipped into the lava tube-cum-corridor and headed downhill toward the bend. Reaching it in less than sixty feet, he got down on his belly and eased forward until he could just sneak a quick peek around the bend. He was glad he had. The passage dead-ended a dozen yards ahead. But there was apparently some kind of hallway leading off to the right near the dead-end. And there was a heavy-looking gate barring entrance to the hallway. And a heavy chain looped through it. But that wasn't what really bothered him. The security camera watching the doorway was the bad news. A security camera...this had to be the room with the bomb in it that Marc had told him about.
"Well," he thought, "this makes the decision about which direction to go easier." He slid backwards until he was clear of the camera and then retraced his steps. Whatever lie ahead, it couldn't be worse than the fiery fate he'd just escaped. Then, the memory of how quickly the basin down below was filling with lava reminded him that his escape, and that of his friends, was most likely a very temporary reprieve and that, whatever he was to do, he'd best do quickly. The thought hasten
ed his pace considerably.
Chapter 84
They'd never been allowed on this level before and were both uncomfortable.
"I don't like this," the shorter one said. His ferret eyes darted about the dim corridor nervously, searching even the tiniest crevasses as if something the size of a person could wedge itself into a crack the width of his hand. His voice bounced back at him flatly in the hard, narrow confines of the lava tube.
"Let's jist git the job done and git back," his companion said. "All he said we got to do is take a look around."
"Yeah, well, we ain't never been up here before, so why make us come up here now? That little puke didn't come up here. We all seen him go up the steps 'n take off down the tunnel downstairs. He cain't even git up here without he went up the elevator! I jus' don't think it's right, sendin' us up here."
"We ain't paid t' think. Jist do what the Sarge says. So knock off th' whinin' an' let's git the job done, okay?"
"Well, I still don't like it."
"Yeah, yeah."
They both checked the computer room, holding their weapons the way they'd seen the cops do it on T.V., jumping dramatically around the ends of equipment, guns stiff-armed before them as if an army lurked in every nook and cranny. Neither had a military background. They'd been on the run from the law after an unsuccessful string of petty robberies when they'd run into a guy in a bar. After a few drinks and more than a few lies, he'd told them about a high-paying security job he'd heard about that would be just right for a couple of mercenaries like themselves. They'd almost backed out when they met the big'un called Banner. Sergeant Banner, he'd been quick to point out. But, with him short on time and needing a couple of warm bodies, and them in need of some easy cash and a chance to lie low from the cops for a while, they'd signed on. It had been a mistake.
