Decompression Chamber Death.

The recompression chamber was one of several hundred produced for a Navy contract requirement by the Dykstra Foundry and Tool Company, Inc., of Houston, Texas, or so the name plate said. Made of high-quality steel, it was designed to reproduce the pressure that came along with scuba diving. At one end was a triple-paned four-inch-square Plexiglas window. There was even a small air lock so that items could be passed in, like food or drink, and inside the chamber was a twenty-watt reading light in a protected fixture. Under the chamber itself was a powerful, gasoline-powered air compressor, which could be controlled from a fold-down seat, adjacent to which were two pressure gauges. One was labeled in concentric circles of millimeters and inches of mercury, pounds-per-square-inch, kilograms-per-square-centimeter, and 'bar' or multiples of normal atmospheric pressure, which was 14.7 PSI. The other gauge showed equivalent water depth both in feet and meters. Each thirty-three feet of simulated depth raised the atmopsheric pressure by 14.7 PSI, or one bar.
'Look, whatever you want to know, okay ...' Kelly heard over the intercom.
'I thought you'd see things my way.' He yanked the rope on the motor, starting the compressor. Kelly made sure that the simple spigot valve next to the pressure gauges was tightly shut. Then he opened the pressurization valve, venting air from the compressor to the chamber, and watched the needles rotate slowly clockwise.
'You know how to swim?' Kelly asked, watching his face.
Billy's head jerked with alarm. 'What - look, please, don't drown me, okay?'
'That's not going to happen. So, can you swim?'
'Yeah, sure.'
'Ever do any skin diving?' Kelly asked next.
'No, no, I haven't,' replied a very confused drug distributor.
'Okay, well, you're going to learn what it's like. You should yawn and work your ears, like, to get used to the pressure,' Kelly told him, watching the 'depth' gauge pass thirty feet.
'Look, why don't you just ask your fucking questions, okay?'
Kelly switched the intercom off. There was just too much fear in the voice. Kelly didn't really like hurting people all that much, and he was worried about developing sympathy for Billy. He steadied the gauge at one hundred feet, closing off the pressurization valve but leaving the motor running. While Billy adjusted to the pressure, Kelly found a hose which he attached to the motor's exhaust pipe. This he extended outside to dump the carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. It would be a time-consuming process, just waiting for things to happen. Kelly was going on memory, and that was worrisome. There was a useful but rather rough instruction table on the side of the chamber, the bottom line of which commanded reference to a certain diving manual which Kelly did not' have. He'd done very little deep diving of late, and the only one that had really concerned him had been a team effort, the oil rig down in the Gulf. Kelly spent an hour tidying things up around the machine shop, cultivating his memories and his rage before coming back to his fold-down seat.
'How are you feeling?'
'Look, okay, all right?' Rather a nervous voice, actually.
'Ready to answer some questions?'
'Anything, okay? Just let me outa here!'
'Okay, good.' Kelly lifted a clipboard. 'Have you ever been arrested, Billy?'
'No.' A littlе pride in that one, Kelly noted. Good.
'Been in the service?'
'No.' Such a stupid question.
'So you've never been in jail, never been fingerprinted, nothing like that?'
'Never.' The head shook inside the window.
'How do I know you're telling the truth?'
'I am, man! I am!'
'Yeah, you probably are, but I have to make sure, okay?' Kelly reached with his left hand and twisted the spigot valve. Air hissed loudly out of the chamber while he watched the pressure gauges.
Billy didn't know what to expect, and it all came as a disagreeable surprise. In the preceding hour, he had been surrounded by four times the normal amount of air for the space he was in. His body had adapted to that. The air taken in through his lungs, also pressurized, had found its way into his bloodstream, and now his entire body was at 58.8 pounds per square inch of ambient pressure. Various gas bubbles, mainly nitrogen, were dissolved into his bloodstream, and when Kelly bled the air out of the chamber, those bubbles started to expand. Tissues around the bubbles resisted the force, but not well, and almost at once cell walls started first to stretch, and then, in some cases, to rupture. The pain started in his extremities, first as a dull but widespread ache and rapidly evolving into the most intense and unpleasant sensation Billy had ever experienced. It came in waves, timed exactly with the now-rapid beating of his heart. Kelly listened to the moan that turned into a scream, and the air pressure was only that of sixty feet. He twisted the release valve shut and re-engaged the pressurization one. In another two minutes the pressure was back to that of four bar. The restored pressure eased the pain almost completely, leaving behind the sort of ache associated with strenuous exercise. That was not something to which Billy was accustomed, and for him the pain was not the welcome sort that athletes know. More to the point, the wide and terrified eyes told Kelly that his guest was thoroughly cowed. They didn't look like human eyes now, and that was good.
Kelly switched on the intercom. 'That's the penalty for a lie. I thought you should know. Now. Ever been arrested, Billy?'
'Jesus, man, no!'
'Never been in jail, fingerprinted -'
'No, man, like speeding tickets, I ain't never been busted.'
'In the service?'
'No, I told you that!'
'Good, thank you.' Kelly checked off the first group of questions. 'Now let's talk about Henry and his organization.' There was one other thing happening that Billy did not expect. Beginning at about three bar, the nitrogen gas that constituted the majority of what humans call air has a narcotic effect not unlike that of alcohol or barbiturates. As afraid as Billy was, there was also a whiplash feeling of euphoria, along with which came impaired judgment. It was just one more bonus effect from the interrogation technique that Kelly had selected mainly for the magnitude of the injury it could inflict.
* * *
The screams were getting louder. Billy had just taken another excursion to sixty feet, staying there for a couple of minutes. It was useful to be able to watch his face. Kelly saw him claw at his ears when both tympanic membranes ruptured, not a second apart. Then his eyes and sinuses had been affected. It would be attacking his teeth, too, if he had any cavities - which he probably did, Kelly thought, but he didn't want to hurt him too much, not yet.
'Billy,' he said, after restoring the pressure and eliminating most of the pain. 'I'm not sure I believe that one.'
'You motherfucker!' the person inside the chamber screamed at the microphone. 'I fixed her, you know? I watched your little babydoll die with Henry's d**k in her, slinging her {Mod Slapped for bad language} for him, and I seen you cry like a fucking baby about it, you fucking pussy!'
Kelly made sure his face was at the window when his hand opened the release valve again, bringing Billy back to eighty feet, just enough for a good taste. There would be bleeding in the major joints now, because the nitrogen bubbles tended to collect there for one reason or another, and the instinctive reaction of decompression sickness was to curl up in a ball, from which had come the original name for the malady, 'the bends.' But Billy couldn't fold up inside the chamber, much as he tried to. His central nervous system was being affected now, too, the gossamer fibers being squeezed, and the pain was multi-faceted now, crushing aches in the joints and extremities, and searing, fiery threads throughout his body. Nerve spasms started as the tiny electrical fibers rebelled against what was happening to them, and his body jerked randomly as though being stung with electric shocks. The neurological involvement was a little disquieting this early on. That was enough for now. Kelly restored the pressure, watching the spasms slow down.
'Now, Billy, do you know how it was for Pam?' he asked, just to remind himself, really.
'Hurts.' He was crying now. He'd gotten his arms up, his hands were over his face, but for all that he couldn't conceal his agony.
'Billy,' Kelly said patiently. 'You see how it works? If I think you're lying, it hurts. If I don't like what you say, it hurts. You want me to hurt you some more?'
'Jesus - no, please!' The hands came away, and their eyes weren't so much as eighteen inches apart.
'Let's try to be a little bit more polite, okay?'
'... sorry ...'
'I'm sorry, too, Billy, but you have to do what I tell you, okay?' He got a nod. Kelly reached for a glass of water. He checked the interlocks on the pass-through system before opening the door and setting the glass inside. 'Okay, if you open the door next to your head, you can have something to drink.'
Billy did as he was told and was soon sipping water through a straw.
'Now let's get back to business, okay? Tell me more about Henry. Where does he live?'
'I don't know,' he gasped.
'Wrong answer!' Kelly snarled.
'Please, no! I don't know, we meet at a place off Route 40, he doesn't let us know where -'
'You have to do better than that or the elevator goes back to the sixth floor. Ready?'
'Nooooo!' The scream was so loud that it came right through the inch-thick steel. 'Please, no! I don't know - 1 really don't.'
'Billy, I don't have much reason to be nice to you,' Kelly reminded him. 'You killed Pam, remember? You tortured her to death. You got your rocks off using pliers on her. How many hours, Billy, how long did you and your friends work on her? Ten? Twelve? Hell, Billy, we've only been talking for seven hours. You're telling me you've worked for this guy for almost two years and you don't even know where he lives? I have trouble believing that. Going up,' Kelly announced in a mechanical voice, reaching for the valve. All he had to do was crack it. The first hiss of pressurized air bore with it such terror that Billy was screaming before any real pain had a chance to start.
'I DON'T FUCKING KNOOOOOOOOOWWW!'
Damn! What if he doesn't?
Well, Kelly thought, it doesn't hurt to be sure. He brought him up just a little, just to eighty-five feet, enough to renew old pains without spreading the effects any further. Fear of pain was now as bad as the real thing, Kelly thought, and if he went too far, pain could become its own narcotic. No, this man was a coward who had often enjoyed inflicting pain and tenor on others, and if he discovered that pain, however dreadful, could be survived, then he might actually find courage in himself. That was a risk Kelly was unwilling to run, however remote it might be. He closed the release valve again and brought the pressure back up, this time to one hundred ten feet, the better to attenuate the pain and increase the narcosis.
* * *
'I just know the phone number,' Billy said, drunkenly now from the high partial-pressure of nitrogen gas, and his release from pain was helping him to be much more compliant.
'Give it to me,' Kelly ordered. Billy did as he was told and Kelly wrote it down. He had two full pages of penciled notes now. Names, addresses, a few phone numbers. Seemingly very little, but far more than he'd had only twenty-four hours before.
'How do the drugs come in?'
Billy's head turned away from the window. 'Don't know...'
'We have to do better than that.' Hissssssssssssss ...
Again Billy screamed, and this time Kelly let it happen, watching the depth-gauge needle rotate to seventy-five feet. Billy started gagging. His lung function was impaired now, and the choking coughs merely amplified the pain that now filled every cubic inch of his racked body. His whole body felt like a balloon, or more properly a collection of them, large and small, all trying to explode, all pressing on others, and he could feel that some were stronger and some weaker than others, and the weaker ones were those at the most important places inside him. His eyes were hurting now, seeming to expand beyond their sockets, and the way in which his paranasal sinuses were also expanding only made it worse, as though his face would detach from the rest of his skull; his hands flew there, desperately trying to hold it in place. The pain was beyond anything he had ever felt and beyond anything he had ever inflicted. His legs were bent as much as the steel cylinder allowed, and his kneecaps seemed to dig grooves into the steel, so hard they pressed against it. He was able to move his arms, and those twisted and turned about his chest, seeking relief, but only generating more pain as he struggled to hold his eyes in the sockets. He was unable even to scream now. Time stopped for Billy and became eternity. There was no light, no darkness, no sound or silence. All of reality was pain.
'... please ... please ...' the whisper carried over the speaker next to Kelly. He brought the pressure back up slowly, stopping this time at one hundred ten feet.
Billy's face was mottled now, like the rash from some horrible allergy. Some blood vessels had let go just below the surface of the skin, and a big one had ruptured on the surface of the left eye. Soon half of the 'white' was red, closer to purple, really, making him look even more like the frightened, vicious animal he was.
'The last question was about how the drugs come in.'
'I don't know,' he whined.
Kelly spoke quietly into the microphone. 'Billy, there's something you have to understand. Up until now what's happened to you, well, it hurts pretty bad, but I haven't really hurt you yet. I mean, not really hurt you.'
Billy's eyes went wide. Had he been able to consider things in a dispassionate way, he would have remarked to himself that surely horror must stop somewhere, an observation that would have been both right and wrong.
'Everything that's happened so far, it's all things that doctors can fix, okay?' If wasn't much of a lie on Kelly's part, and what followed was no lie at all. 'The next time we let the air out, Billy, then things will happen that nobody can fix. Blood vessels inside your eyeballs will break open, and you'll be blind. Other vessels inside your brain will let go, okay? They can't fix either one. You'll be blind and you'll be crazy. But the pain will never go away. The rest of your life, Billy, blind, crazy, and hurt. You're what? Twenty-five? You have lots more time to live. Forty years, maybe, blind, crazy, crippled. So it's a good idea not to lie to me, okay?
'Now - how do the drugs come in?'
No pity, Kelly told himself. He would have killed a dog or a cat or a deer in the condition he'd inflicted on this ... object. But Billy wasn't a dog or a cat or a deer. He was a human being, after a fashion. Worse than the pimp, worse than the pushers. Had the situation been reversed, Billy would not have felt what he was feeling. He was a person whose universe was very small indeed. It held only one person, himself, surrounded by things whose sole function was to be manipulated for his amusement or profit. Billy was one who enjoyed the infliction of pain, who enjoyed establishing dominance over things whose feelings were nothing of importance, even if they truly existed at all. Somehow he'd never learned that there were other human beings in his universe, people whose right to life and happiness was equal to his own; because of that he had run the unrecognized risk of offending another person whose very existence he had never really acknowledged. He was learning different now, perhaps, though it was a little late. Now he was learning that his future was indeed a lonely universe which he would share not with people, but with pain. Smart enough to see that future, Billy broke. It was obvious on his face. He started talking in a choked and uneven voice, but one which, finally, was completely truthful. It was only about ten years too late, Kelly estimated, looking up from his notes at the relief valve. That ought to have been a pity, and truly it was for many of those who had shared Billy's rather eccentric universe. Perhaps he'd just never figured it out, Kelly thought, that someone else might treat him the same way in which he treated so many others, smaller and weaker than himself. But that also was too late in coming. Too late for Billy, too late for Pam, and, in a way, too late for Kelly. The world was full of inequities and not replete with justice. It was that simple, wasn't it? Billy didn't know that justice might be out there waiting, and there simply hadn't been enough of it to warn him. And so he had gambled. And so he had lost. And so Kelly would save his pity for others.
'I don't know ... I don't -'
'I warned you, didn't I?' Kelly opened the valve, bringing him all the way to fifty feet. The retinal blood vessels must have ruptured early. Kelly thought he saw a little red in the pupils, wide as their owner screamed even after his lungs were devoid of air. Knees and feet and elbows drummed against the steel. Kelly let it happen, waiting before he reapplied the air pressure.
'Tell me what you know, Billy, or it just gets worse. Talk fast.'
His voice was that of confession now. The information was somewhat remarkable, but it had to be true. No person like this had the imagination to make it up. The final part of the interrogation lasted for three hours, only once letting the valve hiss, and then only for a second or two. Kelly left and revisited questions to see if the answers changed, but they didn't. In fact, the renewed question developed yet more information that connected some bits of data to others, formulating an overall picture that became clearer still, and by midnight he was sure that he'd emptied Billy's mind of all the useful data that it contained.
Kelly was almost captured by humanity when he set his pencils down. If Billy had shown Pam any mercy at all, perhaps he might have acted differently, for his own wounds were, just as Billy had said, only a business matter - more correctly, had been occasioned by his own stupidity, and he could not in good conscience harm a man for taking advantage of his own errors. But Billy had not stopped there. He had tortured a young woman whom Kelly had loved, and for that reason Billy was not a man at all, and did not merit Kelly's solicitude.
It didn't matter in any case. The damage had been done, and it progressed at its own speed as tissues torn loose by the barometric trauma wandered about blood vessels, closing them off one at a time. The worst manifestation of this was in Billy's brain. Soon his sightless eyes proclaimed the madness that they held, and though the final depressurization was a slow and gentle one, what came out of the chamber was not a man - but then, it never had been.
Kelly loosed the retaining bolts on the hatch. He was greeted with a foul stench that he ought to have expected but didn't. The buildup and release of pressure in Billy's intestinal tract and bladder had produced predictable effects. He'd have to hose it out later, Kelly thought, pulling Billy out and laying him on the concrete floor. He wondered if he had to chain him to something, but the body at his feet was useless to its owner now, the major joints nearly destroyed, the central nervous system good only to transmit pain. But Billy was still breathing, and that was just fine, Kelly thought, heading off to bed, glad it was over. With luck he would not have to do something like this again. With luck and good medical care, Billy would live for several weeks. If you could call it that.