He might as well sleep. Take advantage of the dark. Close his eyes and sleep. But why close his eyes? The whole point of closing one’s eyes is to shut out the disturbing stimulus of light. It would be a mockery to shut his eyes to help him sleep in here.
All right, keep them open and go to sleep. That proved to be impossible. He was too conditioned to going to sleep with his eyes closed. So close them and go to sleep. Absolute darkness and absolute silence should put him to sleep quickly.
But there wasn’t absolute silence. The steady but muffled whir of the air-conditioning motors penetrated the vault. It was, of course, a reassuring sound, but it soon became an annoying sound. What if they stopped? The vault was small. There might be four hours’ supply of air but never six. And if they stopped, could he stand absolute silence as well as absolute darkness?
It wasn’t the same. He could do something about the silence. He could talk, sing, clap his hands, kick the vault. No, stop that. The motors hadn’t ceased. It was insane for him to be talking, singing, clapping, and dancing around as if at a party.
Just sit still and wait for morning. He propped his back against the side of the vault and tried to go to sleep. Gradually he brought his thoughts under control. He was in a stressful situation. He didn’t try to deny that. And the usual way to deal with stress was either to alter the situation and destroy it, or to run away from it. He could do neither. Since he couldn’t alter the situation’s impact on him, he would try to alter his response to the situation
Actually, meditation might be better for him at this point than going to sleep. Meditation would reduce the consumption of oxygen. So would sleep, but not so much and not so quickly. Meditation would also cut down the amount of blood lactate. That should help. He would begin by contemplating something. At first he focused his attention on the bronze Buddha in the exhibition gallery.
No sooner had he chosen it as his object than he concluded he ought to assume the same position as the statue. He found it distracting to try to contemplate a statue which was in the lotus position while he himself had his back propped against a steel vault with his legs stretched out in front of him.
So he tried to assume the lotus position. He couldn’t do it with his shoes on. He took them off and realized immediately that the vault was cold. That shouldn’t be. The air conditioner was delicately adjusted to keep temperature and humidity at a constant level. But the vault was growing cold. There was no doubt about that.
He put his shoes back on, stood up, and reached up as close to one of the vents as he could. He should be able to feel a slight movement of air even if he couldn’t reach the vent itself. He felt nothing. And he realized that Renelle had clogged the air-conditioning system so that he wasn’t getting any air at all. That was why the motor sound was muffled. Being unable to shut the air conditioning off, Renelle had simply stuffed something into the air ducts.
That meant there might not be enough oxygen in the vault to last until the museum opened.
He fought down an automatic reaction of panic.
The darkness, the increasingly cold darkness, pressed in upon him with an almost physical pressure. He had no idea how much time had passed. Without matches, without an illuminated dial, he had no objective measure of time.
Then he realized that the air in the vault was already becoming thicker. There was a cold, moldy, musty smell, like a crypt in a cemetery.
“I must meditate,” he told himself. “I need the lower consumption of oxygen which comes from meditation.” And the more he told himself this, the tenser he got as he found that he could not meditate.
He shook himself, deliberately tensed all his muscles and relaxed them one by one. He inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly three times. He tried again to concentrate on the statue of the Buddha and found that it didn’t work. He was distracted by the lotus position, by the position of hands and fingers, and by the sensually withdrawn expression on its face.
He tried to concentrate on his own navel and found himself thinking about his belt buckle pressing on his navel. In this absolute darkness, contemplation of visual objects was proving impossible.
He tried sounds. Briefly, he tried losing himself in reciting the Lord’s Prayer, but despite his desperation, he was unwilling to use prayer as a mere technique, as a tool for self-help. He changed his approach, using “Om Mane Padme Hum” with more success, but came to the conclusion that it was too long for real meditation. The rhythm of chanting it suggested tunes with a similar rhythm and he had to fight against turning the mantra into a jingle with irreverent words.
At length, he settled for repeating ONE softly under his breath.
And then there began a singular transformation of will. Clipton gradually achieved the state of relaxation he sought, and as he automatically repeated the word ONE, he spent less and less energy vocalizing the word and it became sub vocal. Although the sound remained the same, his mind changed the word, it became WON, the same sound but with different associations.
As hours passed, the air in the vault became more and more fetid. His lungs pumped more slowly and with greater and greater difficulty. Seated as he was on the floor with his back to one wall, he could reach the wall on his right and his feet could touch the opposite wall. He was thus dreadfully aware of the narrow confines of his prison. At times they seemed to be closing in on him, and the word which he continued to mutter under his breath seemed to echo off the steel walls around him.
In spite of all attempts to keep his mind blank, memory of the outside world intruded with scenes of past light and laughter which taunted his present state. The very word he was using for relaxation betrayed him. ONE. WON. WON. Scenes of contests which he had won came to his mind.
The final moment of the hundred-yard dash he had won at college rushed in on him. There was the same difficulty breathing, the same exhaustion of spirit. But then there had been light, the hot sun of a Virginia spring day. He had not been alone. There had been people shouting and cheering. There had been coaches and teammates supporting him as he gasped and stumbled. There had been the feel of red earth beneath him as he sank to the ground. He had won. WON. WON. WON.
The end of a tennis match came to him. Several sets had seen games go to deuce again and again. Both players were worn out. A blister on his thumb had him using the Australian backhand in the last game. On match point, his opponent had dropped a dying ball inches over the net. He had charged it from mid-court and hit the ball when it was at the top of a sad bounce. His return hit the net and fell on the other side. There had been exhaustion. He had collided with the net and sprawled onto the red clay court. But there had been light, people, voices, and hands, and help. ONE. ONE. He had won. He won one.
Something was wrong. Clipton shut off all thought. He stopped repeating that insidious word.
That was all in the past. Here there was darkness. Here there was the cold metal vault. Here was two feet of steel shutting him off, perhaps forever, from the sun, fresh air, friends, human voices, help.
Hours passed and he had no way to count them. The air in the vault began to suffocate him. The waiting was interminable. Nothing happened. The air got thicker. The hideous darkness stretched out to infinity. And behind all the suffering was the knowledge that no one knew he was there except his murderer, the man who had locked him in. With foul air crushing his chest, Clipton rose and threw himself at the door of the vault. As he did so, he realized that he could breathe a bit better — not much, but some. For a moment he held the wild hope that he had jarred the steel door and air was rushing in. But there was no movement in the air of the vault, no current of warmth. Instead, he discovered that the couple feet of difference between sitting and standing had made a difference in the amount of oxygen available.