The Deep Sea Diver's Syndrome

by Serge BRUSSOLO

  His heart was beating way too fast. The veins in his left arm were beginning to ache, a painful blister throbbing on his wrist, right over his pulse. He leaned on the desk to catch his breath. He had to stay cool in the face of a nightmare, or else the dream would eject him without regard for decompression stops. He mastered his breathing. If he gave in to the nightmare, the excess of anxiety would result in a brutal awakening as his consciousness tried to flee unbearable images by snapping back to reality. If he wasn’t careful, he’d take off right from where he was standing, literally sucked up toward the surface. He’d rise straight into the air, clothes and shoes tearing away, punch through the ceiling and the whole building like an arrow through a lump of clay … he’d lived through it once or twice before, and it was a horrible memory. The feeling of suddenly becoming a human cannonball, tearing headfirst at the most terrifying obstacles: walls, floorboards, ceilings, rafters, roofs … Each time he was sure his skull would burst open at the next impact, and even though that never happened, hurtling through buildings of slime was still a disgusting experience. When the dream stopped short, the structure of things weakened, the hardest materials took on an ectoplasmic consistency like raw egg whites or jellyfish. He’d had to make his way through that cloacal mire, arms over his head to streamline his ascent, mouth clamped shut to keep from gulping down the gelatinous substance of a decomposing dream …

  Nightmare ejected you without a care for the demands of your mission, subjecting you to the stress of an emergency procedure that left you empty-handed. Whenever it happened, the ascent was too swift to hang on to your haul. Jewels, stacks of bills, bags of precious stones—the pressure inevitably tore them from your grip. Your clothes split at the seams, you felt in every abused joint like you’d been torn apart by wild horses. And then there was the friction of water on your body: a pleasant silken caress that grew ever more painful as the speed increased. When you woke up, your skin was red as if it’d been sandpapered, with open wounds where the friction had been greatest.

  David forced himself to breathe slowly. Clutching the bags of diamonds to his chest, he groped his way toward another consistency pill. He slipped it from the tube onto his tongue, swallowing to force out saliva and dissolve it. Three pills: he’d reached the maximum dosage. Any more and he was in danger of what divers called the bell: an extreme inertia that slowed your every move and forced you to make countless calculations before lifting so much as a finger. In his early days, David had made that mistake once or twice; he’d found himself literally paralyzed by a maniacal obsession with measurements. While sitting in an armchair, he’d suddenly been plagued by an insane need to determine at once the exact resistance the seat offered the weight of his body; then to derive the equation governing the translocatory motion that would take him from the armchair to the door. After that, he’d furiously calculated the pressure his fingers exerted on every square inch of the porcelain knob. He’d wound up abysmally lost in estimating the perimeter and volume of the room, trying to determine the specific resistances of the materials that composed it. He woke just as he was beginning a new series of computations to ascertain with the greatest possible precision the number of years—centuries?—it would take rain to erode the walls and reduce them to the thickness of rolling papers. The bell was a holy terror. A kind of mental vertigo that hurled you down a well of mathematical formulae and equations. Three pills was really the max, if you didn’t want your brain to turn into a crazed calculator.

  His heart was beating almost normally now. The punctured safe was no longer singing. Only the severed hand kept twitching on the blotter. Suddenly it threw itself at David, trying to claw his face, put out an eye. He flung it aside with the back of his hand and hurried from the room. He was almost to the airlock when he remembered he needed the body parts to get through it again. He eyed the metal plate that concealed the two scanners. If he wanted to get out of the boutique, he’d have to go through the exact same steps he’d used to get in. He needed what Nadia had removed from the anesthetized jeweler. The image came back to him: the man reclining in a barber’s chair, all leather and upholstery tacks (a rich man’s fancy), with his oddly truncated arm wrapped in a towel, and a gauze plug stuffed in his empty eye socket like an out-of-place cork. “He didn’t feel a thing,” Nadia had said. “I left him instructions for when he wakes up, and a little something for the pain.” But where was the hand now? And the eye?

  David retraced his steps. The severed hand was scratching at the blotter like a mad beast, raising a cloud of pink dust. The eye was floating high above between the pendants of the chandelier. “C’mere!” David ordered stupidly, taking a step forward. The hand sprang from the desk at once and scuttled under a chest of drawers. David got up on a chair to try to grab the eye, but it hugged the ceiling, remaining out of reach. He took another swipe, but the legs of the chair went rubbery and the seat tore under his weight, throwing him to the ground. The back of his neck struck the corner of the desk, but it was painless; even the desk was now soft as marshmallow. The deterioration was getting worse. He checked his watch. The glowing face read 1,650 feet. He had to get out of the shop at any cost; that was how things worked. If he woke up before he got away, he’d lose the haul and surface empty-handed. Violent blows shook the shop window behind him. He turned, nervous: it was Nadia, slamming the armored glass with both fists to get his attention. “I can’t get out!” he yelled, exaggerating the words so she could read his lips. “I lost the eye and the hand.” Nadia puckered up, blew mist on the glass, and began writing something backwards. It was slow going, and she messed up a few letters, but soon David could make it out: Doesn’t matter for you now. Dream breaking up. You can make it through. More solid than me.

  Instinctively, David felt himself with his hands. She was right. Dreamers were always denser than the dream worlds they moved through. The difference was negligible when the dream was in full swing, but useful once things started falling apart.

  “You can make it through!” Nadia was yelling on the other side. “You’re more solid than the glass! C’mon!”

  David started backing up to throw himself through the pane, but the fear of hurting himself stopped him cold. For a moment he had a vision of glass shards shredding his face, severing his carotid. No, he wouldn’t make it; the shattered window’s razor-sharp fragments would rip his throat open. He—

  The howl of the alarm made him start. He realized the jeweler’s hand must have set it off, just pressed a button hidden in a drawer, sending a signal straight to the nearest precinct. The alarm wailed like a cow being tortured … or a ship heading out to sea. David shut his eyes. He could smell the sea again, his feet were in the sand, and his hands were clutching pebbles … No! Dammit! Not pebbles: uncut stones! Raw diamonds!

  Nadia’s frenzied blows brought him to his senses. Her pale face was gleaming with sweat, and a lock of red hair fallen free from her cap streaked her forehead like blood. David backed up, gauging the window’s solidity, the door’s steel frame. At first glance it all seemed terribly solid, capable of withstanding even a truck at full speed without cracking. But that was just an illusion; he was much too close to the surface now for the dream world to stand up to the materiality of the dreamer. All he needed was a little speed and the glass would crack like the safe had just now … but what about the consistency pills? Wouldn’t they help reinforce the density of the armored glass? In which case he was running smack into disaster. Nadia was still shouting, but he couldn’t hear her anymore. The din of the alarm filled his ears. From sheer nerves, he kicked a sofa, which pulled back like a jellyfish. The jewels on display had an oily gleam, the pearls seemed to be melting like dabs of butter in the sun. He could afford to wait no longer. Clutching the bags of jewels to his chest, David tensed his muscles and dove headfirst through the glass, flying right over the display. In real life, he’d never have been able to pull off a stunt like that without winding up in traction, but in dreams his body rarely betrayed him. It was a well
-oiled machine, ever faithful and reliable. Or almost …

  The armored glass exploded the moment his skull hit it. The shards weren’t sharp at all, and showered soundlessly onto the sidewalk. David rolled to a stop at Nadia’s feet, his hair covered in crystalline dust. He spat out a few pieces of glass, noticing they left a minty aftertaste—maybe because of the greenish tint?

  Nadia helped him back to his feet and dragged him toward the car. He barely felt her hand on his biceps. He wondered if the vehicle would bear his weight, or if he’d find himself sitting in the street. With the change in density, you had to be ready for anything.

  “You’re slow,” Nadia groaned. “Did you take all your pills?”

  “Yes,” he confessed, getting gingerly into shotgun.

  Nadia always took the wheel when it was time for the getaway. As a diver steadily approaching wakefulness, he was afraid that at the first turn he’d tear the steering wheel right off the column with his increased density.

  Nadia turned the key and pulled away just as the red lights showed up down the avenue. “Five-O,” she said in a flat voice. David shriveled into the seat, not daring to move for fear of tearing through the vehicle. Luckily, the car held together, and the metal hadn’t yet taken on the gelatinous look that signaled imminent waking.

  “They’re in hot pursuit,” Nadia said, swinging the muscle car into an alley. The tires screeched at every turn, and the smell of burning rubber filled the car.

  “Gonna be tight,” the redhead muttered. “You took too long. Lost focus. Scared me. I should’ve come with you.”

  “You can’t, you know that,” David said softly, putting a hand on her arm. “That’s now how it works. No changes to the ritual. I always have to go alone.”

  “That’s why it keeps getting harder and harder. Your guilt’s getting stronger. Somewhere deep down, you want to fail and come back empty-handed.”

  “No! That’s not true!”

  “C’mon!”

  They were being shot at. Short bursts hammered the bodywork like a hail of ball bearings.

  “We’ll be OK,” said Nadia, letting out a breath. “How deep are we?”

  “Six hundred fifty feet,” said David. “Waking any minute now.”

  “You take care of yourself up there, OK?” she whispered. “In the real world, I mean. Down here you always make it through, but up there … I’m scared whenever you go away. When will you come back down?”

  “I don’t know. In a week, if I can.”

  “That’s a long time. When you’re not here, I can’t stop thinking about all the dangers waiting for you up there: diseases, accidents, hit and runs … what a terrible world.”

  “Terrible,” David agreed, as the back windshield burst into pieces from the bullets. Nadia popped the glove box with one hand, grabbed a grenade, yanked the pin out with her teeth, and tossed it through the missing windshield.

  “Diseases scare me the most,” she said. “There’s the—what do you call it again? The flu?”

  The grenade exploded, tossing a police cruiser into the air. It landed heavily, blocking the street, belching out curls of smoke and flame.

  “The flu’s not that bad,” said David. “Except if you’re old. Don’t worry about the flu.”

  He looked over his shoulder. Some cops were struggling to get clear of the twisted chassis. Others ran through the night frantically waving their arms, human torches, their screaming mouths the only dark spots on their bodies.

  “You could die even if you never left the house,” Nadia was saying. “You could slip on a bar of soap in the shower and crack your skull on the edge of the tub. Promise you won’t shower too much? It doesn’t matter if you’re filthy. There are no smells in dreams.”

  No one was chasing them now. Nadia was still going pedal to the metal to the edge of town. “We made it,” she said, turning toward David with her eternally pained smile.

  “It wasn’t an easy job,” he said sadly. “I have to do better next time. We can’t keep going on like this.”

  “Don’t let those people up there get to you,” Nadia objected almost immediately. “You gotta be in tip-top shape to go lower than three thousand feet. No point tempting fate. If I hadn’t been there tonight—”

  The car was now rolling through a landscape of empty lots cluttered with unrecognizable shadows that stood out against the horizon like the plywood flats of a set. Nadia slowed down. The race was over now.

  “Jorgo’s coming for me,” she murmured. “The cops can’t trace this back to us, even if they find the car. I stole it this morning.”

  David opened the door and got out. The sun seemed too soft, jellyish. Nadia ran to his arms and pressed her lips to his. Her lips were always too hot, possessed of an unhealthy heat, a kind of chronic fever that alarmed him a little. David wanted to hold her close, but his muscles were melting away, losing their flattering volume. Suddenly his clothes hung loose on him, and it occurred to him he must look like a child in his father’s raincoat. He tried to hunch forward and found his pecs had completely disappeared. He was nearing the surface; the process was irreversible. He knew if he stuck his hand in his pocket for his revolver (a huge Kass-Wrengler .357 magnum, blue steel with a ventilated rib and a stopping distance of …) he’d pull out something weird, even absurd: a water pistol, a suction dart gun for kids, maybe even a half-peeled banana. Or just a handful of sand. Or a tiny creature, very fragile and almost dead. A kind of hairless kitten, blind and deaf … blind and deaf.

  “I’m taking off,” he gasped, grabbing Nadia by the shoulders. “Hold on to me!” But his fingers sank into the young woman’s flesh, meeting no resistance. All he held now was a ghost.

  “Remember!” Nadia cried, her face shrinking. “Diseases, accidents—don’t stay up there too long!”

  He wanted to say something in return, but the pull from the surface sucked him into the sky just as Jorgo came tearing through the empty lot on a motorcycle. He closed his eyes. He was waking up, and that wasn’t the least bit reassuring.

  [ 2 ]

  Surface: Zero Point/Apparent Calm

  David was suffocating under sheets that covered him head to toe. He jerked instinctively, tossing them off. He hated coming back to reality under a shroud; it always made him feel like he’d woken from being buried alive only to slam his head against a coffin lid firmly nailed shut.

  All he managed to emit—mouth gaping, neck muscles distended with effort—was a barely audible wail. He milled his arms and legs about in the middle of the bed in something like the crude breaststroke of a drowning man trying desperately to stay above water. Swim! cried a voice somewhere deep in his head. Swim or you’ll drown! Awash in sweat, he tossed sheets and pillows around, dreading the cramps that might seize him any second now. He didn’t want to drown, to sink like a rock into the mattress whose supple depths terrified him.

  His eyelids were stuck shut as if sewn to his cheeks with the catgut of his lashes. He had to use his fingers to pry them open. His vision was still blurry, and he made out shapes in the room around him only through a flickering fog. The uniformly blue walls, the furniture and sheets of the same color, all contributed to an atmosphere of deep sea depths, and for a moment he thought he was still down below … he was beached on his back, sideways across the bed, legs hanging off the edge, still kicking weakly, from reflex. The blue sheets stank of sweat … and something else. An indefinable odor. Electric. Dumb, but it was the only word that came to mind. An electric smell. Something reminiscent of copper, ozone, the air after lightning. It was a clear sign he’d brought back something of value. This time he’d ascended without letting go of his booty from the depths. He wanted to stand up, but it was all he could do to roll over on his side. His head was spinning. There it was—the thing—at the foot of the bed, a prisoner of the crumpled sheets, palpitating faintly. He couldn’t make out its exact shape. David reached out for it, but it was too far away. He sighed. He rarely ever saw them. He was the one who gave them life,
but they always felt the need to hide beneath sheets, blankets, like frightened animals. What was it that scared them? Light? He’d carefully painted the room dark blue from floor to ceiling. Even the nightstand, the wardrobe, the rug were blue. When sun shone through the curtains, it was like being in a sea grotto. Very relaxing, conducive to sleep. They should have felt right at home …

  “Are you awake?” Marianne said sharply, opening the door. “About time, the fridge was almost empty.”

  As usual, she had pulled her dark hair back into a teacher’s strict bun and planted her thick tortoiseshell glasses on her straight nose. She was still young, and without the lips she always kept pursed, as if afraid of accidentally swallowing something, she might have been pretty. She came over to the bed, a thick novel in hand. David noted that she kept a finger in the book to mark the page. No, it wasn’t a novel—rather, some technical study or clinical report. Marianne never read fiction. She leaned over the young man, took his pulse with a finger on his jugular. David pushed her away.

  “How is it?” he whispered, pointing to the object struggling under the sheets. “Tell me.”

  Marianne shrugged and picked up a metal box from the floor. It was like a steel coffer for transporting cash. A complicated lock kept it shut.

  David, trying once more to rise up on an elbow, begged, “Describe it to me—”