The Primus Labyrinth

by Scott Overton

  It was over.

  No, that wasn’t true. He had survived, but it was far from over. Not until he had found who was responsible, or they managed to stop him first.

  Someone had found out what he was doing . . . had decided to silence the “Silent Man” forever. Had nearly succeeded. The thought sent a tremor of rage through his body.

  With a start, he realized that he smelled smoke. The car was on fire.

  That didn’t make sense. He shouldn’t have punctured the gas tank or lines.

  Of course. The car was too incriminating. Mustn’t leave any telltale evidence.

  He had to get to a safe distance. Theodore Roosevelt Island was nearby, but there was no easy way down to it. Grimly he began to trot back toward the east end of the bridge, waving his arms in an attempt to warn traffic away. It finally began to have an effect as the drivers spotted the growing plume of smoke. From somewhere in the distance he heard the sound of sirens.

  15

  A vast, milky globe, motionless and silent. Death in tangible form. Soulless. Remorseless. A testimony to human ingenuity, perverted. Up close it has a gritty texture, the molecular lattice nearly visible.

  The bomb.

  No, only one bomb of many. An infestation waiting to strike. The scale is overwhelming. Like trying to attack a battleship with a rubber dinghy, knowing that the remainder of the fleet still lies in wait.

  The obscenity of it is palpable: recognizing that human skill has willfully brought such death into the very sanctum of life itself. Yet, human skill has also brought a chance for renewed life.

  The approach isn’t easy, and the whole area is littered with massive blobs of protoplasm—dead and dying antibodies and white blood cells called to do battle, but unequal to the task. The detritus of the fallen. They no longer move of their own volition, but drift with wayward surges of current—most of the artery blocked off by the huge globe of silicon. It’s possible to maneuver the Primus slowly between the walls of cellular matter, ride the upwelling fluids between cliffs of protein. The remarkable craft is truly in its element, with no raging torrent to combat, like a creature of the deep silently gliding toward a fellow predator.

  The controls are light and responsive, barely noticeable as constructs and mechanisms, but more and more like an extension of human muscle and nerve and tissue. No, even more than that. Like an extension of human will.

  Never experienced that in other submersibles—not like this.

  It is unexpected and intoxicating. Addictive.

  No time for that, now. There’s a job to do.

  The procedure has been established: get close, make contact with the shell, attempt to incinerate it. The “torch” is mounted on an extendable arm that can reach well beyond the lipid and protein coating of the Primus. Not a good idea to ignite the bomb casing and fry Primus’ protective disguise.

  The bomb is a behemoth. Close up, its wall is flat, with no perceptible curve. It’s not pristine, either. There’s a thick, gelatinous coating over most of the surface—the bomb’s own protein disguise, plus the entrails of killer T cells that have given their lives in vain battle. Can the covering be penetrated? Probably. Will it catch fire itself? Or put out the flame? A help, or a hindrance?

  Better try to find a clear spot.

  That takes longer than expected, scanning the vast surface for patches of darker color, detouring around clinging, ragged appendages of milky protoplasm. Dodging drifting clumps of clotted jelly. No knowing what might damage the ship’s protective cloak.

  There. An octagonal area, shinier and nearly the size of a house wall.

  Time to extend the torch arm. It moves smoothly, erupting through the sheath of protein—a skin peeling back like petals. A slight vibration as the probe tip contacts the surface of the bomb. The silicon shell won’t burn, though enough heat can fuse it into another form. The success of the mission depends on igniting the chemicals within, destroying them before they can work their evil. The shell must be penetrated, but there’s no way to be sure the torch arm won’t crumple in an attempt to just force it through. That would be disastrous. Not repairable within the narrow window of time available. So, try to melt a hole through, instead. Heat the silicon into something glasslike and brittle.

  If only the damn torch will light.

  Its capacitor is inclined to discharge all of its power in one brief instant, but a step-down system is designed to allow it to burn for short bursts of several seconds. With luck, the sudden violent differential in temperature over a small area will make the silicon crack.

  A slight forward thrust to keep contact . . . key the switch, close the circuit.

  The flare of light is startling, like the painful brilliance of an arc welder.

  The immediate reaction is to close the eyes, protect them. Except the danger is non-existent. This is virtual reality—the blinding light has no direct route to the retina. Real eyes are safe in a wire-and-plastic helmet somewhere far away. That’s not the impression, though. The sun-like radiance burns a ragged bolt of lightning into the mind.

  Tyson will be cheering, somewhere. The contraption works! Now shut it off to conserve power.

  The sudden darkness afterward is impenetrable. Even with computer help, it takes long seconds to be able to see the bomb’s surface again. A surface ravaged by a miniature sun played over its face. A surface . . . unscratched. Undented. Unmarked.

  No sign of damage. A failure.

  Is the heat being dissipated by the surrounding fluid, or channeled away by the silicon? No, silicon is not indiscriminately conductive. That’s why they use it for computer chips. The fluid, too, is an unlikely conductor of the intense heat.

  Could there be structural damage not visible to the eye? A hidden weakening of the molecular lattice? Maybe it’s worth risking a tap.

  A light shot of forward thrust.

  Contact.

  Nothing.

  Try again, just a shade harder.

  Nothing.

  That’s it, then. Don’t dare use any more force. If the torch arm breaks the whole mission is over, the patient lost.

  Something strange is going on: tiny globes have suddenly appeared nearby, and then edged away, most in the same direction. They scamper and skitter along the surface, like beetles across a tabletop. Are they alive? Are they molecules, broken free of the casing material, their attractive forces disrupted by the supercharged energy of the torch? What are they?

  Bubbles.

  Bubbles of hydrogen and oxygen, probably, containing only a few molecules each. Electrolysis. The fiery spark of the torch has split the surrounding water into its component gases. Common with underwater welding jobs. Not a hazard, because the potentially explosive gases float harmlessly away. They’re not floating here, though, only sliding haphazardly over the surface, to join the gelatinous covering farther away. But they’re not in the way. Focus on the job at hand.

  Problem: the resistance of the shell material versus the charge life of the Primus’ battery-like capacitor. That charge took the whole day’s travel time to build up but will take only moments to expend. The charge gauge is like a bar graph in the corner of the heads-up display. It reads one quarter discharged already. Even if a second or third attempt succeeds in rupturing the shell, at what point will the charge be too low to kindle a spark? The ADP inside the bomb must be ignited before it leaks out.

  Not much choice. Have to try again.

  Another sunrise in this dark cavern. Another surge of bubbles chasing each other across the silicon shell.

  Shut it off. Charge is down three-quarters. No, closer to seven-eighths. Look at the shell.

  Nothing. Not a damn thing different.

  Not enough charge left for another burn-through attempt.

  What then? Brute force? Bump the surface with the side of the ship, while the silicon is still hot, and perhaps vulnerable? No time to waste thinking it over.

  A tweak of the fan
motors, the ship rotates . . . no hint of danger.

  Danger?

  An image frozen within a microsecond: the bubbles of gases pooled within and around the nearby cell residue . . . the white hot torch tip sliding over toward them . . . .

  Then a blast that rocks the whole world.

  16

  Hunter lay in bed staring at the ceiling above his cot, and tried to make patterns out of the cracks and blemishes in the paint. His body ached like a wall had fallen on him. He felt weak. But it was all in his mind. Wasn’t it?

  He was asking that question far too often.

  A phone call from Bridges had awakened him from evil dreams: dreams of helplessness. He remembered an image of quicksand or something similar, and then scuba diving, alone—something he never did in reality—and some part of the gear on his back snagged on an unreachable piece of wreckage in the dark night at the bottom of the sea.

  Waking up was a relief. Except Bridges had called to say that Hunter’s first therapy session was scheduled for right after breakfast.

  Damn. He’d hoped everyone had forgotten about that.

  Would they have let it remain forgotten if he hadn’t lost his cool the night before?

  He pictured the last moments of the mission as the errant torch ignited the oxygen and hydrogen bubbles trapped next to the bomb casing. The explosion was tremendous on that scale, tossing the Primus like a wood splinter in a tornado, embedding it deeply into the wall of the blood vessel.

  And worse, the bomb’s shell had cracked, spilling its cargo of ADP.

  Stunned by the blast, both physically and mentally, Hunter had somehow kept enough presence of mind to free the ship and then dump its own cargo of plasmin and anticoagulant, spreading it as widely as possible. It had worked—no clot had formed.

  More remarkably, the giant blast had peeled back the ship’s fragile shielding of lipids and proteins, but not beyond its ability to self-repair. That was the good news.

  The bad news was that the pressure wave of the explosion had burst open the artery and several others surrounding it, enough to leave a noticeable mark on the patient’s face from the spilled blood. With its plasmin supply gone, there was no choice but to remove the Primus from the body so it could be re-stocked, a task that was still far from routine.

  Gage was furious. Tyson sulked. Tamiko avoided him, and Mallory simply made herself scarce, as she often did.

  Kierkegaard pointed out that the potential for such accidents was the very reason that Primus carried a cargo of plasmin in the first place. But his calm acceptance only made it harder for Hunter to accept his own failure.

  That night, he made a serious dent in the base canteen’s supply of bourbon, then proceeded to smash things. He even tried to pick a fight. None of that was like him, not even when drunk; but then, it hadn’t felt like him doing it. It was as if he were an outside observer, detached and curious, watching his body behave outrageously.

  He didn’t plan to mention any of that to Bridges.

  “We need to talk.” The older man looked up from the file he was reading, removed a pair of glasses and slid them onto the desk. “Sit down. Be comfortable. I know the suits are expecting me to do some kind of official assessment, or even perform some sort of trauma therapy with you, but I don’t want it to be like that. I just want us to talk, all right?”

  “You mean I don’t have to lie down on the couch?”

  “If you can find one, be my guest. They took mine out ages ago. I think they suspected I was taking too many naps on it.”

  “When I agreed to this, Kierkegaard said it would just be a formality. I wouldn’t even have to say a word.”

  “And I think he meant it. But you screwed up last night.”

  The sub pilot tried to come up with a sarcastic reply, but all he said was, “Yeah, I know.”

  “Devon Kierkegaard isn’t easily impressed, but he’s been impressed with you—especially your coolness under pressure. Now, all of a sudden you go smashing things. Why?”

  “I…I don’t know. I really don’t. Something just snapped.”

  “Have you given up on the project? Do you want to quit?”

  “No.”

  “Is there a personality problem with someone on the team?”

  “No. It’s nothing like that. I’m just frustrated, I guess.”

  “It’s a difficult undertaking. It must be frustrating a lot of the time. What made this time different?”

  Hunter shook his head. “I have no idea. No, that’s not true. I felt like this one was all my fault. I didn’t have any technical problem to blame it on. I screwed up. Simple as that.” He looked into Bridges’ face. “I don’t like to screw up.”

  “I’d say that’s obvious.” The doctor reached for the folder and put his glasses back on. “You don’t like to talk about your accident.”

  “No. And I don’t intend to talk about it now.”

  “Why not? Did you feel that you screwed up that time, too? Were you to blame?”

  Hunter let his annoyance show. “You’ve obviously read the report. It was inconclusive. The evidence was too confused to draw any final conclusion. I don’t think I did anything wrong. I don’t remember doing anything wrong.”

  “Do you think we’re pushing you too hard? Expecting too much of you?

  The younger man was puzzled by the question. Then his face lit with recognition.

  “Shit. My father—you’re trying to link this to my father. For Christ’s sake, Bridges, every shrink I went to after the accident brought that up. Haven’t you guys come up with any new theories since Freud?”

  Hunter stood up angrily, but didn’t leave the room. Instead he walked to a nearby wall and tried to find something to look at. “Yes, my father had high expectations of me. Yes, I disappointed him by washing out of college football. Sometimes I try too hard to prove myself. And by the way, if I continue this bullshit psychoanalysis for you do I get a cut of your pay?”

  He turned back to face the desk. “Dammit, Doctor, there’s a hell of a lot riding on this project. Can’t it just be that I was fried and had too much to drink?”

  Bridges looked calmly back. “Are you trying to convince me? Or yourself?”

  “Like I’ve never heard that one before. What happened to the I’m your friend, not your shrink approach?”

  “I’m trying to be your friend.”

  “Then cut the psych textbook stuff. I’ve had my fill for a lifetime.”

  The room went quiet. Hunter felt like sitting down, but didn’t want to put himself back into the role of patient.

  “Maybe we should be shooting the breeze over a couple of beers,” Bridges said softly.

  “Good idea.”

  “Why do you drink so much?”

  The question caught Hunter off guard. He grasped for a pat answer.

  “I like it. I learned to like beer in college, and bourbon was even better, when I could afford it.”

  “Do you drink when you’re scuba diving?”

  “No, that would be stupid. You can’t afford to make mistakes. Even tying one on the night before makes you more susceptible to decompression sickness and nitrogen narcosis. Divers who do that don’t live long.”

  “So you can control it. You can choose not to drink so much.”

  “Of course I can control it. What are you suggesting, that I’m an alcoholic?”

  Bridges didn’t back down. “Then it’s OK to be drunk or hungover as long as it isn’t your life at stake.”

  The shot struck home. Hunter’s fingers clenched the foam of the chair back.

  “Are you implying that my drinking is impairing my work on this project?”

  “I don’t know, I’m not there. You tell me.”

  Hunter was about to snap off a bitter reply, when a sudden thought struck him hard. He sank slowly into the chair, while his mind raced. There had been times when his interface with the VR equipment had come effortlessly,
like an extension of his own body, and other times when it had been a painful struggle. Was that the fault of the alcohol? He found that he couldn’t rule it out.

  Bridges sensed an advantage and pressed on. “Do you take risks when you dive?”

  Hunter sat still. His voice was quieter when he answered.

  “No, I don’t. I did some yahoo stuff when I was young and stupid. Not for long.”

  “Is that because you had an accident? Got into trouble?”

  “It never went that far. I remember one time early on when a buddy of mine talked me into doing a deep dive—beyond what I’d been trained for. One hundred and fifty feet, on ordinary air, not mixed gases. Cold water. Dark. Very risky. You can get seriously narc’d that way—nitrogen narcosis—and forget to check your air, or anything.” His face was blank as he stared at the wall, reliving the memory. “I went down to about a hundred feet and then called it off. In fact, I faked a problem with my mask.”

  “You were scared?”

  “Sure I was scared. That’s not why I called it off.”

  “Why did you?”

  “Because it was stupid. I knew it was stupid going in. It just took me a while to realize that being stupid wasn’t something to be proud of.”

  The doctor leaned back in his chair, then said softly, “Maybe you need to remind yourself of that a little more often.”

  17

  The briefing room was still, the atmosphere thick. A draft of air-conditioned air from the wall vents only stirred the tension.

  Kierkegaard, both hands planted firmly on the desk, raised his head to survey the room. He spared no breath for trivialities.

  “Did anyone anticipate that the oxygen and hydrogen given off by the torch could ignite?”

  After a moment, Tyson moved his right hand, as if he’d intended to raise it, but realized there was no need. “Mallory . . . , ” he began. “Mallory and I discussed it once. We felt it was very unlikely.” His discomfort was evident.