The Deep (35 page)

The ceiling shivered again as Luke crawled over to Toy. When Luke touched the man’s shoulder, Toy unleashed a desperate keening scream that made Luke flinch. The metal consumed another few inches of Toy’s shins, shattering bones and flattening flesh. What had Al said? Pressure equivalent to twenty-seven jumbo jets? The ceiling rolled over Toy’s legs as if his overalls were filled with Styrofoam packing peanuts.

“Ub-ubb-
uuuuuuub!
” he screeched, a senseless string of syllables.

The roof trundled over Toy’s kneecaps in a slow, persistent advance. It was no different than watching a man gradually run over by a steamroller. Toy’s bones were pulverized like shards of crockery. The veins in his wrists and neck stood out in horrid blood-bulged strings under his skin.

Luke grabbed Toy’s shoulder as if it was possible to pull him away from this fate. The man’s arm was tensed tight, the blood pumping it to a freakish density.

“GlllluuuuuuhHH!”

A rope of blood ejected from Toy’s mouth, unfurling like a scarlet ribbon from a New Year’s Eve party favor. His eyes rolled back to their twitching, vein-threaded whites as he shuddered in a sickening dream state.

Go! He’s done for. No saving him, Luke. Get the hell out of here!

Dumbly, Luke jerked at Toy’s arm even as the roof dented inward at him, its murderous weight no more than a foot from his head. He figured the pressure might sever Dr. Toy’s legs; Luke pictured it the way a hot dog gets sliced off the link at a factory—a quick
snip
between two sharp blades and six inches of pink, processed meat drops into the hopper. If so, Luke could drag Toy out and maybe, with any luck, cauterize the stumps before he died of blood loss.

But the pressure was
knowing
. Toy’s legs were merely crushed, leaving an inch or so of clearance to the floor. The foam popped spastically as the ceiling trundled over Toy’s thighs, blood spraying in pressurized fans, then over his hips, which shattered and flattened with a percussive jolt that shook his entire frame—the sight reminded Luke of a butterflied chicken, its spine snapped with one deft downward thrust of a chef’s palm.

Toy’s face was greasy with shock. The gamy stink of adrenaline poured off him. The ceiling pushed drifts of paper forward; the balled-up wads accumulated at the sides of Toy’s body like dust bunnies around a bedpost. The metal rolled over Toy’s chest, but only enough to crack his ribs, which snapped with the sound of Black Cat firecrackers.

It’s savoring it,
Luke’s mind yammered.
Whatever it is, this thing or things, it’s taking its time now.

Dr. Toy’s eyelids sucked around their edges like the papery mouths of suckerfish. Blood burped from his ears in fits and starts, like sludgy water from a tap that hadn’t been used in some time. Toy vented a volley of gluey, piglike squeals. How was he still alive?

The roof bellied down menacingly, striking Luke and knocking him aside. He stood and staggered to the hatch.

I’m sorry so sorry Hugo . . .

He spun the wheel and glanced back just as the ceiling flowed over Toy’s head in an awesome wave.

Toy’s skull bulged in its overtaxed wrapping of skin.

Nonononono . . .

Toy began to laugh. The sound was muffled by the frantic pop-pop of
the space-age material, but Luke heard it perfectly. Horrifically, insanely, it was the laughter of a child. An infant’s laugh—his son Zachary’s laugh: that high, wheezing, out-of-control titter he used to make as a toddler when Luke pressed his lips to Zach’s belly and blew a raspberry. A
zzzrrrbbt!
he’d called them, that being the sound it made.

Zzzzzzrrrbbt! ZZZZZZRRRRRBT!

Toy’s skull split with an ear-rending crack. The skin tore apart in a perfect horizontal seam—a tight smile splitting his scalp. Tremendous pressure forced Toy’s mashed and twitching brain through the split.

Luke threw the hatch open as the metal ballooned toward him. He shoved it shut just as the ceiling flowed against it with a hissing crinkle.

The porthole glass webbed. Luke backed away and tripped over LB, who skidded backward on her rump. Luke watched the porthole with bulging eyes. He expected the glass to break and that flexible material to flow through—he pictured it stretching like taffy to project in a blunt spike, splitting his head in half as it came.

But it didn’t. The glass held.

The
Trieste
shivered. The walls seemed to expand like a pair of lungs inhaling a slow, contented breath. The station settled and there came, suddenly, a persistent silence—a creeping, secretive silence that carried down every tunnel.

1.

LUKE FOUND ALICE
in the main lab. He’d backtracked from the horror of Dr. Toy’s quarters in a daze, his entire body trembling, to find her standing in front of Westlake’s hatch. The walls creaked dimly, issuing those spastic crackling noises, but the station wasn’t shuddering on the verge of collapse as it had seemed to be in Toy’s quarters. No, the
Trieste
felt quite solid at the moment.

It’s as strong as it needs to be,
was Luke’s preposterous, overheated thought.
It exists—it, and everything in it—at the benevolence of something far greater and more terrible than itself.

Luke’s mind was still reeling; his hands were clamped on his skull as if to prevent his brain from ripping in half: he pictured his frontal and parietal lobes tearing apart from each other like the stitches popping along an overtaxed inseam. He couldn’t stop thinking about how
calculated
Dr. Toy’s death had been. There was a methodical brutality about it—there was no way it had been a mere accident.

The
Trieste
had killed Hugo Toy. It had done so in the most horrible, gloating fashion. And it had made Luke watch.

Al’s face was slack. Her lips curled in a ghostly smile as if she’d heard somebody’s voice and appreciated what that person was telling her.

“Oh yes, Monty,” she said, “I’d
really
like to try for what’s behind door number three.”

Her fingers played over the keypad. She punched five digits, pressed
enter,
and got the red Fail light. Her features twisted in anger.

“No, I
am
sure. Totally one hundred percent. I want door number three.” Her voice rose to a girlish squeal. “I’m feeling lucky, Monty! No Zonks!”

It dawned on Luke: Alice was dreaming—
no
, she was trapped in a dream-pool. In this particular dream, she was a contestant on that old Monty Hall game show,
Let’s Make a Deal.
Luke’s mother used to watch reruns of it while shoveling lukewarm porridge into her mouth, laughing spitefully when a hapless contestant risked his new color TV or tropical vacation for a shot at what lay behind door number three, only to get
zonked
with a wheelbarrow full of creamed corn, a llama, or a pair of clown shoes.

Greedy guts!
she’d shout at the screen, flecks of porridge flinging from her lips.
Greedy guts got greedy so that’s what greedies get!

Al tried a different code, pressed
enter,
and got the Fail light again. Her body vibrated with rage.

“Door number three, Monty,” she seethed through gritted teeth. “Show me what’s behind the goddamn motherfucking door, for fuck’s sake.”

The drone from behind the hatch rose to an eager buzz. The porthole was smeared with that viscid substance—
honey, Luke,
he thought;
it’s honey
—and behind it, in the feeble light of Westlake’s lab, Luke swore he saw things zipping about.

Luke set a hand on Alice’s shoulder. “Al?”

She brushed his hand away. She laughed—a flighty, quizzical titter.

“Hey, Al, come on.
Hey
.”

Luke squeezed Al’s shoulder, still highly adrenalized after what had happened with Dr. Toy. Al’s eyelids flickered. Her eyes were filmy, as if they’d been soaped. Her lips spat out a loop of idiot babble.

“Door three—door three—three—three . . .”

“Goddamn it, Al!”

Luke shook her roughly. Al staggered back, her spine rattling on the wall.

“The
what
—?” she squawked.

But her eyes were clearer; her expression was that of a woman roused from a bad dream. The buzz died down. Those zipping shapes zipped no more. Al regarded Luke reproachfully—the same look Abby had given Luke the night their son went missing.

“Where the hell were you?”

“Me?” Luke said. “I was right where you left me, in Westlake’s room. I’ve been looking for you.”

“Bullshit.”

Luke recoiled. It was less the word itself than the icy tone Al spoke in.

“I checked Westlake’s room. You weren’t there.”

“You couldn’t have checked, Alice. You’d have seen me sitting there, reading.”

Al raked her unbandaged hand down her face. “Why are you lying to me?”

Something’s wrong here, Luke. Tread carefully.

“I’m not lying, Al. You were working on the generator—”

“I got it working. But I couldn’t move it,” she said. “It’s too heavy. I needed your help. But when I went to find you . . .
poof!
You were gone.”

Luke took a step back—he was worried that Al might lash out. Confused anger was kindling inside him now, too; hot coals burned at his temples.

It wants you to fight. Kill each other, maybe.

“I’m sorry, Al. I went to find you. The generator was there, but not you.”

“I went looking for
you
. But you weren’t . . . and then . . . and then . . .”

“Did you fall asleep, Al?” Luke raised his arms, just an innocent question. “Could that have happened? It was dark in that room and we’ve been up a real long time. Did you just, for a minute . . . shut your eyes?”

Al bit her lip. Her gaze kept flicking to Westlake’s hatch.

“Al, Dr. Toy is dead.”

Her gaze oriented on him again. “What do you mean?”

What else could I possibly mean? He’s dead, Al. The station killed him.

No, Luke realized, not the station. The station didn’t have the ability to kill, in the same way a pistol didn’t kill a person—only its wielder did. The station was simply the instrument. The Skinner Box, overseen by whatever was administering the shocks.

“After I tried to find you, LB dashed off,” said Luke. “I followed her. She led me to Hugo.”

Al slapped herself, hard. Her eyelids had been sinking closed. She slapped herself again. The sound, a sharp
spak!,
made Luke wince. She jetted air between her teeth in a series of hard gusts like a weight lifter preparing for a record lift. She nodded as if to say,
Okay, I’m good now
, and then said: “Tell me what happened to Dr. Toy.”

Luke gratefully let the terrible event pour out of him—sometimes the only way to disburden oneself of the poison is to share it with somebody else.

“That poor bastard,” Al said, her cheeks pink from the slaps. “Jesus Christ.”

Luke told Al what he’d read in Westlake’s journal, too. He felt ludicrous telling her—they were the confessions of a rubber-roomed madman. And yet, listening to him, Al became very quiet. Ambrosia drifted past the huge window as Luke spoke. Shreds piled up like snow against the side of a barn. LB growled at it, a low huff that puffed the loose skin over her upper teeth.

“A hole?” was Al’s first question once Luke finished.

Luke nodded. “That’s what Westlake wrote. Small at first, but growing bigger. He could hear voices from it. Sounds crazy, I know.”

Al’s expression wasn’t disbelieving. It was fearful.

“Luke, listen . . . I think . . . yeah, I might’ve fallen asleep. I sort of remember tightening a few wires on the generator, then sitting down to catch my breath. If I nodded off, the thing is—my dream picked up right
there
. It began in that storage room with my body in the exact same position as it was when I nodded off. And so I got up
in my dream
and walked down the tunnel to find you, thinking I was still awake. You weren’t there. You’re saying you were—which makes sense if I dreamed it. And then you find
me
here, trying to get in there.”

She nodded at Westlake’s lab. A shudder racked her frame.

“What I’m saying is,” she went on, “
if
I sleepwalked to the lab, how did you miss me? I would have stumbled right past Westlake’s room, right?”

Luke nodded. “You would have, yeah. And I would have seen you. Unless . . .”

“Unless you fell asleep, too. You were sleeping as I walked past.”

That was the only possibility that made sense: Luke had somehow drifted off while reading Westlake’s journal—slipped into a dream-pool without even knowing it. They’d both been asleep when Alice walked past Westlake’s room, right past Luke, neither of them aware of it.

How else
could
it have happened? Unless the
Trieste
was reorganizing itself, arranging into new configurations like puzzle pieces, snaking in different directions to ensure they wouldn’t have seen each other?