specially made wetsuit. (?) a three-dimensional space whose limits she could not (?) oiled her skin and dressed her in the specially made wetsuit, discern. She felt her arms and legs moving effortlessly, but when she looked to see her limbs, she found that they were out of her field of view. She could feel them move, but? they weren't there. The part of her mind that was still rational told her that this was all an illusion, that she was swimming toward her own destruction-but even that was preferable to being alone, wasn't it?
This effort lasted for an eternity. The most gratifying part was the lack of fatigue in her invisible limbs. Svetlana shut out her misgivings and reveled in the freedom, in being able to see the space around her. Her pace speeded up. She imagined that the space ahead of her was brighter than that behind her. If there were a light she would find it, and a light would make all the difference. Part of her remembered the joy of swimming as a child, something she hadn't done in? fifteen years, wasn't it? She was the school champion at swimming underwater, could hold her breath far longer than all the others. The memories made her young again, young and spry and prettier and better-dressed than all the others. Her face took on an angelic smile and ignored the warnings from the remaining shreds of her intellect.
She swam for days, it seemed, for weeks, always toward the brighter space ahead. It took a few more days to realize that the space never got any brighter, but she ignored this last warning of her consciousness. She swam harder, and felt fatigue for the first time. Svetlana Vaneyeva ignored that, too. She had to use her freedom to advantage. She had to find where she was, or better yet find a way out of this place. This horrible place.
Her mind moved yet again, traveling away from her body, and when it had reached a sufficient height, it looked back down at the distant, swimming figure. Even from its great height it could not see the edges of this wide, amorphous world, but she could see the tiny figure below her, swimming alone in the void, moving its spectral limbs in futile rhythm? going nowhere.
The scream from the wall speaker almost made Vatutin bolt from his chair. Perhaps Germans had heard that once, the scream of the victims of their death camps when the doors were shut and the gas crystals had sprinkled down. But this was worse. He'd seen executions. He'd seen torture. He had heard cries of pain and rage and despair, but he had never heard the scream of a soul condemned to something worse than hell.
'There? that ought to be the beginning of the third stage.'
'What?'
'You see,' the doctor explained, 'the human animal is a social animal. Our beings and our senses are designed to gather data that allow us to react both to our environment and our fellow human beings. Take away the human company, take away all sensory input, and the mind is totally alone with itself. There is ample data to demonstrate what happens. Those Western idiots who sail around the world alone, for example. A surprising number go insane, and many disappear; probably suicides. Even those who survive, those who use their radios on a daily basis-they often need physicians to monitor them and warn them against the psychological hazards of such solitude. And they can see the water around. They can see their boats. They can feel the motion of the waves. Take all that away?' The doctor shook his head. 'They'd last perhaps three days. We take everything away, as you see.'
'And the longest they've lasted in here?'
'Eighteen hours-he was a volunteer, a young field officer from the First Directorate. The only problem is that the subject cannot know what is happening to him. That alters the effect. They still break, of course, but not as thoroughly.'
Vatutin took a breath. That was the first good news that he'd heard here. 'And this one, how much longer?'
The doctor merely looked at his watch and smiled. Vatutin wanted to hate him, but recognized that this physician, this healer, was merely doing what he'd been doing for years, more quickly, and with no visible damage that might embarrass the State at the public trials that the KGB now had to endure. Then, there was the added benefit that even the doctor hadn't expected when he'd begun the program
'So? what is this third stage?'
Svetlana saw them swimming around her form. She tried to warn it, but that would mean getting back inside, and she didn't dare. It was not so much something she could see, but there were shapes, predatory shapes plying the space around her body. One of them closed in, but turned away. Then it turned back again. And so did she. She tried to fight against it, but something drew her back into the body that was soon to be extinguished. She got there just in time. As she told her limbs to swim faster, it came up from behind. The jaws opened and enveloped her entire body, then closed slowly around her. The last thing she saw was the light toward which she'd been swimming-the light, she finally knew, that was never there. She knew her protest was a vain one, but it exploded from her lips.
'No!' She didn't hear it, of course.
She returned now, condemned to go back to her useless real body, back to the gray mass before her eyes and the limbs that could move only without purpose. She somehow understood that her imagination had tried to protect her, to get her free-and had failed utterly. But she couldn't turn her imagination off, and now its efforts turned destructive. She wept without sound. The fear she felt now was worse than mere panic. At least panic was an escape, a denial of what she faced, a retreat into herself. But there was no longer a self that she could find. She'd watched that die, had been there when it happened. Svetlana was without a present, certainly without a future. All she had now was a past, and her imagination selected only the worst parts of that
'Yes, we're in the final stage now,' the doctor said. He lifted the phone and ordered a pot of tea. 'This was easier than I expected. She fits the profile better than I realized.'
'But she hasn't told us anything yet,' Vatutin objected.
'She will.'
She watched all the sins of her life. That helped her to understand what was happening. This was the hell whose existence the State denied, and she was being punished. That had to be it. And she helped. She had to. She had to see it all again and understand what she'd done. She had to participate in the trial within her own mind. Her weeping never stopped. Her tears ran for days as she watched herself doing things that she ought never to have done. Every transgression of her life played out before her eyes in fullest detail. Especially those of the past two years? Somehow she knew that those were the ones that had brought her here. Svetlana watched every time she had betrayed her Motherland. The first coy flirtations in London, the clandestine meetings with serious men, the warnings not to be frivolous, and then the times she had used her importance to breeze through customs control, playing the game and enjoying herself as she committed her most heinous crimes. Her moans took on a recognizable timbre. Over and over she said it without knowing. 'I'm sorry?'
'Now comes the tricky part.' The doctor put on his headset. He had to make some adjustments on his control board. 'Svetlana?' he whispered into the microphone.
She didn't hear it at first, and it was some time before her senses were able to tell her that there was something crying out to be noticed.
Svetiana? the voice called to her. Or was it her imagination??
Her head twisted around, looking for whatever it was.
Svetlana? it whispered again. She held her breath as long as she could, commanded her body to be still, but it betrayed her yet again. Her heart raced, and the pounding blood in her ears blanked out the sound, if it was a sound. She let out a despairing moan, wondering if she had imagined the voice, wondering if it was only getting worse? or might there be some hope??
Svetlana? Slightly more than a whisper, enough to detect emotional content. The voice was so sad, so disappointed. Svetlana, what have you done?
'I didn't, I didn't-' she sputtered, and still could not hear her own voice as she called out from the grave. She was rewarded with renewed silence. After what seemed an hour she screamed: 'Please, please come back to me!'
Svetlana, the voice repeated finally, what have you done??
'I'm sorry?' she repeated in a voice choked with tears.
'What have you done?' it asked again. 'What about the film??'
'Yes!' she answered, and in moments she told all.
'Time eleven hours, forty-one minutes. The exercise is concluded.' The doctor switched off the tape recorder. Next he flicked the lights in the pool room on and off a few times. One of the divers in the tank waved acknowledgment and jabbed a needle into Subject Vaneyeva's arm. As soon as her body went completely limp, she was taken out. The doctor left the control room and went down to see her.
