Submerged (26 page)

“Victor? Are you all right?” Henry asked. He
had crumpled to the floor with Zeisler. There was no response.
“Victor.” Henry gently slapped the unconscious man’s face. He
checked his pulse. It was present and strong. Henry looked up to
Sanders. “He’s out cold.”

Before Sanders could speak, Nash said, “We
have another problem. The door is gone.” He cut Zeisler a fierce
glance. “What did you do?”

Zeisler stirred, then blinked. “Ow, my
head.”

Chapter25

1974

“What did you do,
Zeisler?”
Nash shouted. “What did you do with the door?”

“Leave me alone. My head hurts.”

“I’ll show you hurt.” Nash bent, grabbed
Zeisler by the front of his shirt, and yanked him to his feet as if
he were a straw man. “You couldn’t leave things alone, could you?
You had to mess with stuff, push things too far, didn’t you? Just
had to show off, didn’t you? Make the door come back!”

Henry sprung to his feet. “Ease up, Nash.
Something’s wrong with him.”

“He hasn’t begun to hurt yet.” Nash let his
large fist fly.

Henry acted before thinking. He stepped
between Nash and Zeisler just in time to catch the blow on the back
of his own head. He felt the thud, and his scalp was on fire with
pain. The force of the blow rattled Henry’s brain. His legs
weakened, and his knees buckled. Darkness flooded in from the edges
of his eyes. He dropped to his knees and fought against the tide of
unconsciousness rolling over him.

“You will stand down, now!”

It was Sanders. Henry was still aware enough
to recognize the voice.

“It’s his fault,” Nash shouted.

Sanders bellowed, “I gave you an order. Do
you read me, mister? You will stand down now, or you will be
spending the rest of your career in a military prison.”

Henry struggled to his feet. His head was
starting to clear. Zeisler was still in Nash’s grasp. Sanders stood
to Nash’s side, one hand holding the man’s arm so he couldn’t swing
again.

“Stop yelling,” Cynthia shouted. “Everyone is
yelling. Stop it. I can’t hear myself think.”

“I’m going to make him pay for his
stupidity,” Nash roared.

There wasn’t much time to think. Nash was
acting like McDermott before he ran off. Nash was not himself. Who
he was, Henry would have to figure out later. In a quick motion,
Nash freed his arm from Sanders’s grasp. He pulled back his fist
and paused just long enough to smile at Zeisler.

Henry charged. The last thing he wanted was a
fistfight with a man trained to kill with his bare hands, a man who
was no longer rational. The best way to end a fight was not to let
it begin. Henry dropped a shoulder and plowed into Nash, his
shoulder catching the man square in the gut. He heard the air rush
from Nash’s lungs. Henry kept pushing with his legs while grabbing
Nash’s thighs with his hands. With his legs hindered, and Henry
driving forward, Nash fell to the ground, landing hard. Henry
landed on him.

Releasing Nash’s legs just before the two men
hit the floor, Henry scrambled for purchase. The shock of the
impact left Nash stunned. Henry sat on Nash’s chest, pinning the
man’s arms beneath his legs. Henry’s mind still spun, and his eyes
wouldn’t focus, but he held his spot.

“Let me go, Sachs,” Nash ordered.

“I don’t think so. I’m still reeling from the
last punch.”

“Zeisler had it coming. You got in the
way.”

“Yeah, I did. I may have to rethink that
move.” Henry rubbed the back of his head. A knot was rising behind
his left ear. He stared at Nash’s right hand. A purple botch
covered the back of the hand and a knuckle was broken, but Nash
showed no pain.

Sanders leaned over Nash. “Have you lost your
senses, man? You have lost control. You come to order. Is that
clear, mister?”

“I’ll be fine just as soon as I rip Zeisler’s
head from his shoulders,” Nash spat.

“Why? What did I do? Oh, my head,” Zeisler
moaned.

“Listen to me, Nash,” Henry said. “Look at
me.”

Nash kept his eyes cut toward Zeisler.

Henry took Nash’s jaw in his hand and
straightened his head. “I said, look at me.”

At last Nash did.

“McDermott.”

“What about him?” Nash still struggled
beneath Henry. “Get off me, or I’ll give you some of what’s coming
to that pencil-neck Zeisler.”

“You’re not giving anyone anything,” Henry
said. “Think about McDermott.”

“Where is he?”

“You don’t remember?”

“He should be helping me,” Nash said.

Grant groaned. “This is incredible. What are
we going to do with him now?”

Henry waved him off and focused on Nash.
“He’s dead. McDermott is dead. Remember?”

“Dead?”

“You carried his body back to this house.
McDermott went nuts and ran away. We went after him. Can you
remember that?”

“I don’t know what kind of game—”

“He thought he was in Vietnam. We heard
gunfire. We found his body. It looked like he had been shot—”

“But he wasn’t,” Nash interrupted. “He . . .
he . . .”

“We think that he believed he was shot. That
he believed it enough that it killed him.” Henry lowered his voice.
“Nash, do you remember what McDermott did before he ran off?”

“No . . . I don’t remember any . . .” Nash
paused. His brow furrowed. “He was terrified. Yeah, that’s it. He
lost his composure and freaked out.”

“That’s what you’ve been doing, except you’re
feeling anger instead of fear.”

Nash’s expression changed as if someone had
thrown a switch. “I—I think I’m in control now.”

“Don’t let him up. He’ll come after me
again.” Zeisler paused. “Hey, my headache is gone.”

“I think you can let him up now,” Sanders
said. “He seems to have come to his senses.”

“Not just yet,” Henry replied. “Sanders, I
take it you know how to unload the M16. I’d feel better if it
couldn’t be fired. Can you pull the clip?”

“I can do better than that.” Sanders picked
up the automatic weapon, pulled the clip, then began dismantling
the weapon, first clearing the chamber, removing the sling, and
separating the upper and lower receivers. Until Nash had pushed
McDermott’s weapon in Henry’s hand, he had never held an M16, but
he had read that they were subject to jamming, and soldiers often
had to field strip the weapon and reassemble it before it would
fire again. The news carried stories of soldiers shot dead while
holding the pieces of their M16 in their hands.

“Take this, Mr. Grant.” Sanders tossed a
slotted, cylindrical part across the few feet that separated
them.

“What’s this?” Grant asked.

“It’s the carrier assembly,” Sanders replied.
“Dr. Zeisler, this is for you.” He tossed another oily part.
Zeisler caught it.

In a few moments the weapon was dismantled,
and each person had one small part in their possession.

“I don’t understand,” Cynthia said. “Why give
us the parts?”

Henry knew. “Because the weapon has to be
reassembled to be fired. If we each have a key part, then it can’t
be assembled without everyone’s consent or someone to overpower all
of us. Possible, but not likely.”

“I think you can let me up now,” Nash
said.

Henry studied him for a moment, then looked
at Sanders.

“He sounds like the old Nash to me.”

“No, it might be a trick,” Zeisler said.

Henry rose from Nash’s chest and rubbed the
back of his head. Nash sat up, crossed his legs, and worked his
hand. He grimaced with each movement.

“I take it I hit something hard.”

“Yeah,” Henry said. “Something real
hard.”

Zeisler backed away from Nash. “You were
aiming for something soft—my face.”

“Tell us what happened,” Henry said. “What
set you off?”

Nash shook his head. He looked like a dog
that had just been beat. “I don’t know. I was watching Dr. Zeisler
in that ring thing and feeling pretty put out about having to wait
because of him. Then the lights came, the walls went transparent,
the outside began to change, and I just kept getting angrier and
angrier. Then you pulled him out and things stopped. I looked for
the door and . . . it wasn’t there.”

“It’s still not there,” Grant said.

Henry walked to the wall where the door had
been and ran his hand along the surface. It was clean, smooth, and
gave no indication that a door had ever been present. He returned
to the center of the room. “What happened to you, Victor? One
moment you seemed on top of things, then you lost it.”

“I thought I was controlling things. I
learned that I could make the walls clear with just a word, then
you asked me to change the landscape. I thought of some of the
places I had been. Then,
wham
, everything
went nuts. My head began to throb. The pain was hideous. I was
waiting for a cerebral hemorrhage.” He rubbed his temples again.
“Then you pulled me from the ring. Next thing I know, Nash is
trying to tear my head off.”

Henry was at a loss. He knew it wasn’t a
dream, but it felt worse than any nightmare he had ever
experienced.

“It’s an interface,” Cynthia said.

“A what?” Grant asked.

“We’re entering the computer age,” she
replied. “There’s a lot of talk about human-computer interface—that
is, how information is exchanged between a user and a computer.
Right now information is loaded into memory by punch cards or
magnetic tape. But it’s not enough to have a machine do
calculations; you have to be able to tell it what you want. The
talk around the campus is that a typewriter keyboard is the way to
go, or perhaps some kind of pointing device. The goal is to make
computers easy to access. There’s talk that people will be able to
buy computers for the home, like we buy electronic calculators
today.”

“That will be the day,” Grant said, amused.
“I wouldn’t bet your life’s savings on that happening.”

“She’s right,” Zeisler said. “But I don’t
know what that has to do with this.”

“Think,” Cynthia urged. “You said,
‘exterior,’ and the walls changed. You thought about places you had
been, and the landscape changed. It’s the perfect interface.
Instead of typing out instructions on a punch card and feeding it
into the computer, this thing reads it from your mind.”

“You’re saying that pile of sand is some kind
of computer?” Grant asked.

“No, I’m saying the ring is the interface to
the computer.” She stared at the others. “We may be standing
in
the computer.”

“Why did Victor have so much trouble
controlling it?” Grant asked.

“Because it wasn’t designed for him or anyone
like him,” Cynthia said. “No offense, Victor, but it may take a
bigger brain than yours to control that thing.”

“All we need is a brain big enough to get us
out of here,” Nash said. “Why is the door gone?”

“I can only guess,” Cynthia said. “Maybe it
wants us to stay.”

“For how long?” Sanders asked.

“There’s no way to know,” she replied. “Maybe
forever.”

Chapter26

1974

“All right,
people,”
Sanders said. “We brought you down here to figure
some of this out. We wanted to know how the base was built and by
whom. We chose you because you represent the best in your fields.
Well, now the mission has changed. You’re going to have to use
those fine minds of yours to get us out of here. I’m open to
ideas.”

“First,” Henry said, “I think we need to
defuse the greatest danger we face—ourselves.”

“How do you mean?” Sanders asked.

“McDermott was frightened, and that fear
crescendoed until he lost control. I think he reverted back to
other fears he had faced. In his case, Vietnam. Nash became peeved
at Victor, who he blamed for holding things up. His anger grew
until he lost control. The environment seems to change based on
elevated emotions or memories. If Cynthia is right, and the ring or
this whole room is some sort of computer interface, then we have to
be very careful what we think.”

“Avoid extremes, you mean,” Sanders said.

“Yes,” Henry replied. “Victor was enjoying
the experience until the device took over.”

Sanders nodded. “Agreed. First order of
business: keeping our emotions in check.”

“The question is,” Henry continued, “is the
door gone, or do we just
think
it’s
gone?”

“Of course it’s gone,” Grant said. “You
examined the wall yourself.”

“At this point, I don’t trust my own senses.”
Henry walked back to the wall. “We’ve seen things change in a
heartbeat.”

“How do we know what is real and what isn’t?”
Nash asked.

“I’m not sure we can know. But I’ve noticed
one thing: The things we’ve seen are always lacking something. For
example, when Nash and I were tracking McDermott, we were immersed
in an Asian jungle, in Vietnam, but we noticed that it wasn’t quite
right. I saw a monkey, but it made no sound. And although we didn’t
make the connection then, I realize now that it should have been
hot, but it wasn’t. The humidity should have been higher, but it
remained the same as it was when the terrain was desert. There’s a
big difference in humidity from the desert to the jungle.”

“It’s real, all right,” Zeisler said. “No way
are we imagining this. However, our imaginations are driving it.
Well, most of it. I doubt any of us imagined that creature.”

“How would that work?” Henry asked. “I don’t
know how big this place is, but it’s big. How can such change take
place?”

“Terraforming,” Grant said.

“Terraforming?” Sanders asked.