Apparatus 33: Dead Man Switch

by Lawston Pettymore

  Immediately and with muscular elegance, NIX doubled its tail and swung the forward end upstream, resuming the flipping motion more vigorous than Zerrissen ever imagined was necessary, and quite beyond its design limits. NIX would destroy itself following the reversal instructions from the sequencer before much longer. It was fighting the two kilometers per hour current rather than relax in it for the first time since leaving the safety of the workshop. The dashboard reported that the batteries were draining power as quickly as the craft was taking on water. He evacuated the water at an equal rate using the lever on his left, then he doused the interior lights to conserve power. Unable to see the water level, he entrusted his life to the mathematics. The journey that had taken him fifteen minutes to this point would require thirty more to return. This was a total of forty-five minutes in a craft designed only to last an hour. Because the scrubbers were waterlogged, the level was climbing, and each meter of movement was made more challenging than the last as NIX’s health continued to fail.

  On the verge of losing consciousness, Zerrissen’s last thought was that he had committed a triple murder: Nicolaus, Halina, and her unborn baby. And a suicide: himself.

  The last sound he heard was of the chunk of metal against the clamp of the magnetic grapple, pulling NIX into its dry dock.

  Five stages of loss

  Nicolaus and Halina returned to the workshop, both carrying bags containing supplies and those odd things they wished to carry into their new lives. They stopped in the rain-slick street, seeing that the workshop was completely dark, their breaths in the cold air only illuminated by a single streetlamp. Halina sniffed loudly, and even Nicolaus noticed the odor of the polluted Spree overlaying the usual odors of cigarettes, burnt motor oil, and sweat. The last time they had smelled such a fragrance was the night of the Alka-Seltzer test. Had the Stasi already been there? Did they haul Zerrissen away?

  Waiting for some movement in the dark but sensing none, Nicolaus wished that they had a place to run; he would have taken Halina and fled. But there was no safe place if the Stasi had already raided the workshop. His fingerprints were all over the place. If there were to be arrests tonight, he decided he wanted to get it over with. He flipped the light switch on by the door of the workshop, revealing no one.

  Across the workshop he saw something almost as dreadful. The duct hatch had been flung open exposing the river water below. Nicolaus picked his way through the bits and pieces left over from building a submarine in an auto shop.

  Water on the floor around the open porthole confirmed his suspicion. Nicolaus staggered over to the stool by the workbench, where Buttercup once presided on its perch, and sat down with a plop to contemplate the truth. Halina stared at the empty hole, and the space where NIX should have been.

  NIX was gone. And Zerrissen was gone with it.

  Nicolaus worked through the five stages of loss, pausing at denial, briefly visiting anger, then he had several minutes of what-if and if-only. He stayed at the stage of depression, never quite reaching acceptance, and then started all over again, head resting in his hands. He did not know how to process the reality that Zerrissen had abandoned him and Halina and left them to the butchers of Friedrichstrasse.

  If Zerrissen’s goal was to escape to the West without the two of them, he would not be happy with the reception he received at the Tea Garden. Those waiting there were not fond of the activities that took place at Die Kuppel, and would not care that Zerrissen had tried to avoid using Todtenhausen’s Apparatus 33. The Mossad’s sense of humor for suspected war criminals was much less developed than the Americans’. But if Zerrissen’s destination was, in fact, the Tiergarten, his friends waiting there would have contacted him by now, leaving Nicolaus to question himself about what the real destination on the blue microcassette could have been. Had Zerrissen lied to him about its actual navigational sequences?

  An hour passed before he was able to pick himself up, on the threshold of accepting the reality of the situation, when the mechanism powered on, accompanied by a rattling of the chain laid to retrieve NIX should it ever slip into the river during a test.

  Watching the chain link by link, Nicolaus began to have hope that this fishing pole had caught a sewer pipe submarine with Zerrissen inside like Jonah in a whale. As it came to a stop at its starting position, he waited for the hatch to open, confirming that Zerrissen was inside. A minute passed and nothing moved, nor were there any sounds. Impatient, Nicolaus threw the craft open, half expecting to find it empty. He had begun to believe that Zerrissen made the journey to the Tea Garden as a test, and then, finding that it worked, sent it back using the RETURN sequence. What he actually saw, however, was an unconscious Zerrissen, up to his neck in water.

  After several moments of breathing real air, Zerrissen awoke, sputtering, coughing, and finally vomiting. He opened his eyes, taking in his surroundings and trying to understand how he could see the inside of the workshop again, instead of the hypoxic hallucination of being on board with Pyotr, screaming back into the atmosphere as the spheroidal warhead shell melted away, exposing the cesium and cobalt to air and causing sparkling, sand grain-sized explosions.

  Seeing rage in Nicolaus’ eyes, and the hurt expression on Halina’s, Zerrissen defused the moment as best he could.

  “Well… the RETURN lever appears to work.”

  Holding Zerrissen’s head in his lap, Nicolaus stared into his face, not believing that he was capable of the worst interpretation of the events, that he had abandoned Nicolaus and Halina for his own escape, nor of the best interpretation, that he was truly concerned for their safety.

  “So. Many. Questions.”

  Zerrissen was conflicted about what to confess. Had he taken NIX for a test drive, or to escape and abandon the two of them? He himself was not sure.

  “I told you I wouldn’t put Halina in this monster if I thought it would only kill her.”

  “OK,” was all Nicolaus could muster in response, expecting more.

  “So, I can tell you NIX works rather well.”

  “Rather well? She’s completely flooded with water.”

  “Yes. She’s a bit leaky now thanks to some border guards.” Zerrissen let this premier hang teasingly as he took a deep breath and wiped water from his mouth and eyes before continuing, “Before that, though, she was fine. Here’s a tip. When you pump out water, you must adjust the depth planes down to compensate for the weight change. I let her ride too high. Their rifles did the rest.”

  Nicolaus weighed the explanation while looking for obvious damage on the visible portion of NIX. Even in the limited light, he could see an oval gouge in the tubular section, the first strike that had caught Zerrissen’s attention, but had not penetrated the Krupp steel pipe. The hole in the tail section went through the softer material, creating two holes in the otherwise watertight compartment.

  Nicolaus glared at Zerrissen as he continued his tutorial. “NIX will surface if you just let her drift with the current. You need to propel a bit faster than the current to keep it submerged.” Seeking approval from the pair, and receiving none, Zerrissen continued lobbying.

  “So, I saved your life finding that out. Again. You’re welcome. And I am fine, thanks for asking.”

  Nicolaus’ lips remained pursed. His flannel shirt, wet from river water, adhered to his skin. A big dark-red stain was glistening in the low light, expanding slowly. Zerrissen was bleeding from a wound, whether from a bullet, shrapnel, or both, it was not clear. Halina began to cut away the shirt to find out.

  Zerrissen wiped water from his lips, still streaming from his thinning hair. “Also, fuck you.”

  “Did the guards understand what they were shooting at?”

  “I don’t know. I was busy not drowning. Did you hear the part about ‘Fuck you’?”

  Nicolaus signaled for Halina to press a rag against the Zerrissen’s wound to stem the bleeding, while he crossed the slippery floor to a motorized device with a long hose attached to the wall. He used it to pum
p water out of the interior. By the time the first rays of dawn had flowed into the workshop, the water was out, exposing the pillows and much of the sound absorbing fabric ruined by the polluted river water. As there would be no time to replace any of it, their trip to Tiergarten would be done with much less luxury than Zerrissen’s cruise to nowhere. He noticed bullet holes in the rubber joints of the tail section and announced to Halina that she had to repair them herself if Zerrissen was unable to help.

  As he looked in her direction for a reaction, he noticed that the sequencer had the red scuttle tape, not the blue Tiergarten destination tape. He pulled it out and went to question Zerrissen, whose wound was freshly sewn up by Halina. She had extracted from his skin a splinter of aluminum made shrapnel by a bullet and began prepping NIX for another voyage: recharge the batteries, replace the scrubbers, and find the blue Tiergarten tape.

  Zerrissen, pressed a makeshift bandage to the wound which Halina had sewn rather nicely using fishing line, though would nonetheless leave a permanent scar, a railroad track to nowhere.

  “So, was the red cassette programmed to scuttle NIX or to send you to neutral ground?”

  “Believe what you like.”

  “Well, what I’d like to believe is that the blue tape will really take us to the Tiergarten, or do you have another surprise for us?”

  Zerrissen fumbled in his shirt pocket for the other microcassette.

  “This will work. That’s the truth. I have no reason to lie.”

  Nicolaus considered the truth of that statement, and the falsity of Zerrissen’s other statements.

  “We have no choice but to believe you. My friends will come for you if we don’t arrive alive. Their feelings will be hurt. You won’t like them.”

  “I know.”

  Zerrissen struggled to his feet, not expecting any help from Nicolaus, and not getting any. He yelped as he held the stitches together, careful not to rip them out, and hobbled over to assist Halina prepare NIX. In an hour, it was ready to go, and it was time for the goodbyes that Zerrissen always hated.

  Halina was about to hop into NIX, braced leg first, but stopped to sign something to Nicolaus, and held out her hand, which was holding a metal object.

  Nicolaus translated, “She says she has no money to pay you for what you’ve done.”

  Zerrissen was baffled by the comment. The thought of financial reward never crossed his mind at any moment during the year-long project. If anything, this demonstrated his incapacity to live in the world of capitalists across the river.

  “So, she wants you to have this.”

  Halina’s hand was outstretched, fingers wrapped around another one of her sculpted objects.

  Zerrissen cradled it in both his hands, recognizing it as one of her cranked kinetic sculptures, another automaton for his menageries of insects. As with her first sculpture, it consisted of a twig and branch, but instead of a caterpillar, a fat pouch about the size of a teabag hung suspended from the branch. The word NIX was stitched in thread to the side.

  “It’s intriguing, but, ah, do you know what it is?” Zerrissen asked.

  “Erm. A cocoon?” Nicolaus read some signs from Halina’s hands. “Ah. A chrysalis,” he corrected.

  Zerrissen looked at the companion piece Halina had made earlier, the black and red caterpillar.

  “And I suppose…”

  “Yes. She’s telling a story in sculpture. Turn the crank.” Nicolaus pointed to the twig crank similar to the one in her caterpillar piece. It wound a spring causing something inside the fat pouch to wiggle briefly. Not very dramatic. Was it not working? If not, this would be the first time Zerrissen had seen any of her creations fail. But the thought was there, as they say.

  For the first time in a decade, Zerrissen heard himself say, “Thank you, Halina. I…” His rare attempt at sincerity was overcome by a wave of guilt about what could have happened that night.

  Halina smiled and, nodding to the chrysalis, signed something to Zerrissen only parts of which he recognized, the words “Wait” and “See”.

  No time for explanations. She and Nicolaus must make good their exodus now. With help from Nicolaus, Halina stepped into NIX and crumpled to the bottom with a yelp. Zerrissen recognized the spasm immediately.

  “That was labor pain.”

  For the first time, Zerrissen saw an expression of utter helplessness cross Nicolaus’ face.

  “That baby is coming. It’s too dangerous. Have the baby here, then we can leave.”

  Nicolaus and Zerrissen fumbled for their move. Only Halina seemed calm, and ready to make the hard choice. As if on cue, Buttercup fluttered in and landed on NIX, a signal to a horrified Nicolaus as certain as any dove was to Noah.

  “I locked up the bird in the old shop. If Buttercup flew out an open door, that means they’re here.”

  Everyone in the room understood who ‘they’ were.

  Zerrissen found some energy somehow and stated calmly. “Unless you want that baby born in a Stasi prison hospital, you’ll leave now. I’ll hold them off.”

  In Halina’s mind there were no options. This baby would be born in the West. She waved off all attempts at assistance and took her place in the forward seat. Buttercup flew in on her shoulder.

  Nicolaus looked at Zerrissen for guidance, but Zerrissen was just as useless, and was less inclined to contradict Halina on any matter, much less the choice of birthplace for her child. With a resigned shrug, Nicolaus took his position in the pilot’s seat, followed by a salute to Zerrissen, and closed the hatch over him.

  With a loud chunky sound, NIX was released from the magnetic grapple chain, and it fell down the duct with a whoosh, leaving Zerrissen alone in the workshop.

  Through the silence, Zerrissen could her men yelling his name, knocking down doors of neighboring shops, working their way to his.

  Waiting for the inevitable, he plopped down at the drafting table and admired Halina’s most recent sculpture of the chrysalis, making clicking noises of its own before it popped open. Plopping down on the table was the object it held inside like a crude Iron Curtain version of a Faberge Egg. He recognized it as a beetle. Red with black spots, with one of its legs in a brace.

  He smiled and looked up into the face of the KGB man staring back.

  “It’s a ladybug.” He explained to the humorless man with the typically broad, Russian face, pointing a 9mm pistol at Zerrissen’s chest. “Fly away home. A new home. This one is on fire.” The Russian began barking orders, none of which Zerrissen cared to follow.

  Instead, he studied the reflection in the polished hub cap always on the bench for Buttercup’s amusement, seeing for the first time the sewn wound on his arm. Magnified in the curve of the hubcap, he saw details not visible from his perspective. She had used sutures to form legs, twelve in all, one fatter and malformed, along the length of the curvy incision, two feelers at the head where freckles formed eyes. The combined effect resembled a caterpillar crawling up his arm. Halina’s self-image was as an ugly, disfigured caterpillar just wanting to crawl away to shed its handicapped body and trade its tree branch prison for a more beautiful body that could fly. This was Halina signing her work. Zerrissen laughed out loud. Some may have thought this was an inappropriate time to experience delight.

  The bulky Soviet agent, not accustomed to being laughed at, raised his gun hand to strike some humility into the laughing moron with the pistol butt. Broken jaws, according to an unwritten KGB handbook, have a way of sapping one’s pluck.

  Before he could land the blow, however, Zerrissen had produced a 9mm pistol of his own from the drafting table drawer, put it in his mouth, and escaped Russian justice one final time.

  Postpartum

  Zerrissen’s aborted sea trial-cum-escape to the West had been conducted under first-class accommodations in comparison to the decidedly down-graded steerage class experience Halina and Nicolaus were having.

  The odor of the organic pollutants in the Spree, an accumulation of the offal of centu
ries of neglect and abuse, laid heavy in the ambience. The scrubbers were unable to disguise or otherwise suppress the sparse breathable air trapped within, leading Halina and then Nicolaus to contribute organic pollutants of their own to the bottom of the craft.

  They sat on the ruined, partially dry pillows that Nicolaus now cursed himself for adding to the interior, reminding them both that NIX was originally a sewer pipe after all.

  As the space constraints were extreme, the controls were correspondingly Lilliputian. There were no foot pedals or corresponding cables to clutter the interior, giving greater access to the forward seat. As with Pyotr, still orbiting inexorably above, Nicolaus’ legs were useless appendages when navigating NIX, and stretched useless but painfully forward. In the hatch’s closed configuration, no manual operation was possible or even desired there being no porthole to steer by. And because they were underwater, the view would have been as black as obsidian anyway.

  Once the hatch was sealed, all maneuvering was done by the self-control and memory of sequencer. The pilot’s only responsibility was to pump the bilge, and otherwise watch the knobs and levers operate on their own. In this manner, NIX was like a ghost ship, a Mary Celeste, a Flying Dutchman.

  Halina shaped her body to conform to the internal contours of NIX so she fit into the remaining passenger seat as much as her figure would allow, each contortion pushing the baby further into its birth canal.

  The precipitous drop at the end of the duct threw Halina against the top of the pipe, leaving a small scrape on her cheek and pushing the fetus farther out, its head now fully exposed. After crying out to Nicolaus, who could do absolutely nothing, Halina coddled the baby’s head in her hands to assist it with gentle pulling.

  Nicolaus had no way to help and instead focused on the story being told by the instruments. The sequencer was doing its job, and in fact was in better frame of self-control than any of the passengers, now approaching three in total.