Part 18 (2/2)

The bolt-cu:ter was long, clumsy, its handles wrapped in greasy blue tape. He saw the red band narrowing, starting to sink below the level of his flesh. Fumbled the cutter one-handed from the tangle, sank its jaws blindly into his wrist and brought a.l his weight down on the uppermost handle. A stab of pain. The detonation.

Skinner blew air out between his lips, a long low sound of relief. 'You okay?'

Yamazaki looked at his wrists. There was a deep, bluish gouge in the left one. It was starting to bleed, but no more than he woulc have expected. The other had been scratched by the saw. He glanced around the floor, looking for the remains of the restraint.

'Do me,' Skinner said. 'But hook it under the plastic, okay? Try not to take a hunk out. And do the second one fast.'

Yamazaki tested the action of the cutter, knelt behind Skinner, slid one of the blades beneath the plastic around the old man's right wrist. The skin translucent there, blotched and discolored, the veins swollen and twisted. The plastic parted easily, with that same ridiculous noise, instantly whipping itself around 5kinner's other wrist, writhing like a live thing. He severed it before it could tighten, but this time, with the cartoon pop, it simply vanished.

Yamazaki stared at the s.p.a.ce where the restraint had been.

'Katey bar tie door!' Skinner roared.

'What?'

'Lock the f.u.c.king hatch!'

'5'.

Yamazaki scrambled across the floor on hands and knees, dropped the hatch into place, and bolted it with a flat device of dull bronze, something that might once have been part of a s.h.i.+p. 'The girl,' he said, looking back at Skinner.

'She can knock,' Skinner said. 'You want that d.i.c.khead with the gun back in here?'

Yamazaki didn't. He looked up at the ceiling-hatch, the one that opened onto the roof. Open now.

'Go up there and look for the 'mo.'

'Skinner-san? Pardon?'

'Big f.a.g buddy. The black one, right?'

Not knowing what or whom Skinner was talking about, Yamazaki climbed the ladder. A gust of wind threw rain into his face as he thrust his head up through the opening. He had the sudden intense conviction that he was high atop some ancient s.h.i.+p, some black iron schooner drifting derelict on darkened seas, its plastic sails shredded and its crew mad or dead, with Skinner its demented captain, shouting orders from his cell below.

'There is n.o.body here, Skinner-san!'

The rain came down in an explosive sheet, hiding the lights of the city.

Yamazaki withdrew his head, feeling for the hatch, and closed it above him. He fastened the catch, wis.h.i.+ng it were made of stronger stuff.

He descended the ladder.

Skinner was on his feet now, swaying toward his bed. 's.h.i.+t,' he said, 'somebody's broken my tv.'

He toppled forward onto the mattress.

'Skinner?'

Yamazaki knelt beside the bed. Skinner's eyes were closed, his breath shallow and rapid. His left hand came up, fingers spread, and scratched fitfully at the tangled thatch of white hair at the open collar of his threadbare flannel s.h.i.+rt.

Yamazaki smelled the sour tang of urine above the acrid edge

152. ).

of whatever explosive had propelled Loveless's bullet. He looked at Skinner's jeans, blue gone gray with wear, wrinkles sculpted permanently, s.h.i.+ning faintly with grease, and saw that Skinner had wet himself.

He stood there for several minutes, uncertain of what he should do. Finally he took a seat on the paint-splattered stool beside the little table where he had so recently been a prisoner. He ran his fingertips over the teeth of the saw blades. Looking down, he noticed a neat red sphere. It lay on the floor beside his left foot.

He picked it up. A glossy marble of scarlet plastic, cool and slightly yielding. One of the restraints, either his or Skinner's.

He sat there, watching Skinner and listening to the bridge groan in the storm, a strange music emerging from the bundled cables. He wanted tc press his ear against them, but some fear he couldn't name heli him from it.

Skinner woke once, or seemed to, and struggled to sit up, calling, Yamazaki thought, for the girl.

'She isn't here,' Yamazaki said, his hand on Skinner's shoulder. 'Don't you remember?'

'Hasn't been,' Skinner said. 'Twenty, thirty years. Motherf.u.c.ker. Time.'

'Skinner?'

'Time. That's the total f.u.c.king mother f.u.c.ker, isn't it?'

Yamazaki held the red sphere before the old man's eyes. 'Look, Skinner. See what it became?'

'Superball,' Skinner said.

'Skinner-san?'

'You go and fucung bounce it, Scooter.' He closed his eyes. 'Bounce it high...'

20 The big empty

'Swear to G.o.d,' Nigel said, 'this s.h.i.+t just moved.'

Chevette, with her eyes closed, felt the blunt back of the ceramic knife press into her wrist; there was a sound like an inner-tube letting go when you've patched it too many times, and then that wrist was free.

's.h.i.+t. Jesus-' His hands rough and quick, Chevette's eyes opening to a second pop, a red blur whanging back and forth around the stacked sc.r.a.p. Nigel's head following it, like the counterweighted head of a plaster dog that Skinner had found once and sent her down to sell.

Every wall in this narrow s.p.a.ce racked with metal, debraised sections of old Reynolds tubing, dusty jam jars stuffed with rusting spokes. Nigel's workshop, where he built his carts, did what shadetree fixes he could to any bike came his way. The salmon-plug that dangled from his left ear ticked in counterpoint to his swiveling head, then jingled as he s.n.a.t.c.hed the thing in mid-bounce.

A ball of red plastic.

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