The Golden Globe

It wouldn't have been my weapon of choice against Isambard C, but it was the weapon I had. My main problem was that, to use it, one had to be in close, and in close I knew he held all the high cards. I might not get more than one swipe at him. That swipe had to count.

So what I'd been doing was preparing a trap.

The chain knife barely buzzed as I poked it through the top of the air-duct pipe. I moved it left to right cutting an arc, then back, then over the top again, then forward. I ended with a half cylinder of thin plastic suitable for my purpose. I put my light and my head up through the hole I'd just made, but it was very close and black and I couldn't tell much. Maneuvering room was to his advantage, so I rejected the idea of simply standing up and stumbling away in the dark. Unless...

No, it was too risky. If I'd retraced the pipe, from the outside this time, maybe I could have found the section that he was in and sliced him up while he was trapped inside. But how would I know where he was? Again, I'd get one shot, and I'd be stabbing blindly. As soon as he knew I had a chain knife a lot of my advantage would be lost. My best shot seemed to be face-to-face, in close quarters.

I thought there was a good chance he didn't realize I knew about how his pistol worked. Maybe he was expecting to close the last yard or two while I clicked the trigger at him, uselessly. One can hope.

I knelt back down in the pipe and fitted the cutaway section over the big hole in the bottom of the pipe. It was a bit too large. Working with only very brief flickers of light from my knife, I trimmed off edges and corners until it was just slightly bigger than the descending shaft. I ran my hand over it, lightly tested its strength. I couldn't tell any difference in texture. The plastic bent only slightly, but it seemed sure that if I put my weight on it I'd buckle it, and plunge headfirst down into the pipe.

I'd done all I could do. I moved back a few feet, hunkered down, and waited. The trap was between us and it was pitch-black. But I was far from sure he wouldn't scent something wrong.

Thump sssh. Thump sssh.

What was making that noise? Dragging a broken leg? That would account for the sssh, but what about the thump?

I never found out, because I never saw him in motion down the tube.

There was the slightest new sound. Had he reached the trap? Could he feel it with his fingers? The noise of his movement stopped.

"Left... right, and... yes. Straight ahead," he said. My god, he was here. I still hunkered, drenched in sweat, not daring to breathe.

"Which way would you go, Sparky? I can smell you, I can smell your fear. I like that smell."

I prayed to all the Muses. No sneezes. No growling stomach.

"Which way would a coward go? Seems obvious, doesn't it? Turning left or right involves too many decisions. You'd go straight ahead.

Thump. And then a glorious sound: narrow-gauge plastic crumpling like a sheet of thick paper. I snapped on the light and saw him half in, half out of the down tube. His head and shoulders were in, and he had one hand on the edge of the pipe nearest to me. That, and his knees, were all that kept him from the plunge.

Without even thinking about it I slashed at his hand with the chain knife. Bzzzzt! The air filled with a fine pink mist, and half of his hand was lying there like a bundle of hard little sausages. At the same time I sidled over and jammed my foot down hard on the back of his neck. He slid down, held there poised for a moment with his knees straining to hold his body in a position too angled to fit into the tube, and then he started to slide. I shoved his ass with my shoe, to get him going.

Then he was gone.

I collapsed into a quivering hulk, sitting tailor fashion. I wiped my brow with the back of my hand, coming within an inch of slicing off my ear with the chain knife. I stopped the whirring of the chain, took a few deep breaths. I still had the light on, simply because I'd never been this afraid of the dark. I knew he had to be gone, but a part of me kept expecting him to leap out of the down tube and go for my throat. To reassure myself, I leaned over and played the light down the tube.

He was five feet away, head down. All I could see was his feet and part of his legs. But he was moving. He was moving up.

"Why won't you die?" I shouted at him. The sound of my own voice frightened me. It sounded very near to madness.

Like a bird might watch a snake, I stared in fascination at his slow progress. He was holding himself in position by forcing his shoulders, his elbows and hands—including the partial one I'd left him—his lower back and knees and feet against the inside of the tube. Then, in a rippling motion that reminded me of a caterpillar, he moved his feet up an inch, then his knees, then his elbows and back and hands. On the best day of my life I couldn't have done it. With the injuries he had sustained it was monstrous to think he could do it. But there he was.

"Will you never stop?"

"Never."

"Give up. Call it a day. Go get cleaned up and lick your wounds. Please, just slide down the pipe and we can both go home for a while. Somebody's going to find us in here."

"That's your problem."

I thought it was at least partly his problem, but I guess if he just didn't give a damn, it wasn't.

He kicked off his shoes. I heard them clatter a long way down the tube. Now his feet got better traction; he moved up an inch and a half at a time.

He got within my range, so I reached down and stabbed the sole of his right foot with the chain knife. Not only did it not bother him in the least, he kicked at the knife, losing a part of the foot but almost knocking the knife out of my hand. And still he came up.

That's when I got my silly idea, squatting there on the edge and watching him rise slowly up the tube, like heartburn. I snapped the chain knife back into its slot and opened out the ice-pick blade. I pulled the ice pick free of its socket. You were supposed to seat the blade into a different part of the handle to chip ice, but I didn't want to risk losing my weapon again, so I reached down just with the pick blade. I drew the tip slowly, slowly across the bottom of his foot.

He jerked like a mackerel on a hook.

"Stop that!" he shouted. It was the first time his voice had shown any emotion.

Oh-ho!

I drew the tip of the pick lightly over the other sole.

"Don't ever do that again!" he snarled.

"Izzy. You're ticklish!" I could feel the big grin on my face. Unable to stop myself, I laughed aloud. Never had I felt such a blessed relief of tension. I reached down and diddled him with my fingertips. He jerked again, and loosened his grip on the inside of the tube, slid down about a foot and a half to where I could no longer reach him.

"I'm starting back up," he said, after a moment, his voice cold and emotionless again, yet with vast anger bubbling just below the surface. "If you ever do that again to me, I will give you one entire week more of life."

"Don't you have that backward?"

"I said what I meant. You have no conception of how much pain I can put into those seven days. You'll beg me for death."

I thought I probably would, too. In fact, I'd beg for it as soon as he got down to serious work.

"Does that mean if I surrender to you now, I get a quick death?"

"I didn't say that." He started inching his way up again. It was a little harder now, since his maimed foot was oozing blood and making the pipe slippery. If only I had a bucket of soapy water, I thought.

But I didn't. So when he was in range, I tickled both his feet and he dropped down again.

"This is called a Mexican standoff," I told him. At least I think that's what it's called. I wonder why? "You can't get up here, and I can't leave or you'll be up and out in just a minute or two."