The Golden Globe

"I can wait," he said, confidently. And he probably could. Someone in the Charonese Mafia must have something pretty powerful on someone in the Oberoni government. Or maybe a jail term simply didn't scare him.

But I didn't intend to wait around.

I unrolled a big wad of toilet paper. Activated the lighter accessory on my knife, and lit the wad. It flared up very quickly, singeing my fingers before I could drop it down on him. It fell right on the seat of his pants, burning merrily. Let's all sing: "Chestnuts roasting..."

He never cried out, never threatened me. He began to wiggle and squirm with amazing energy, not making a sound. He managed to get one hand to the right spot, slipping down a few more inches, and batted at the burning wad. Smoke billowed up around me, making my eyes tear. I endured it heroically. After all, tragedy is when my eyes hurt. Comedy is when your testicles are being cooked.

The fireball fell past him, but his pants were burning. And that wasn't the worst of his problems, because I dropped another flaming depth charge on him, this one lodging briefly against his body until he pressed his back against the pipe to smother it.

Distantly, I heard an alarm go off. Smoke detector, most likely. Which meant it was really time to get out of here. I had dropped half a dozen fireballs on him, and he was blazing fitfully from head to toe. I saw him start to slide. He picked up speed and then he was gone in the smoke. Had he gone to the bottom? How could I know? I didn't know where the bottom was. He was deeper down than he'd been, though, which I guess was as good as I could hope for. When he got the fires out, it should take him a while to inch himself back up the pipe. I hoped it was enough time for me to escape.

I stood up in the place I'd removed the section of pipe, my knees popping loudly. I played the light around this small, crowded space, looking for the egress. I saw nothing but pipes of blue, white, copper, and red, wires in hundreds of colors, and some sort of foamy stuff I couldn't identify. It was all haphazard, seemingly without plan. Few people know of this other world behind their ceilings and walls. I'd been in places like this before, but the experience granted me little advantage, since without a blueprint there was little means of telling what was what or what was on the other side of a wall.

Well, there was bound to be a way to access this space. I'd just have to go find it. The distant sound of the alarm provided the urgency.

I did identify one pipe. It was copper, about an inch in width, and printed all along the side were the words EMERGENCY SPRINKLER SYSTEM, over and over. Where were you when I needed you?

I leaned over to pick up my suitcase and his hand fastened on my wrist.

There is no way to transliterate the scream I let fly. Spell it any way you want, scream it aloud, and then magnify it by ten. And boost it an octave. Many a woman could never have uttered that scream.

There he was, at my feet as I swept the light over him, a vision from hell, streaked with blood that had run up his face, patches of hair still glowing embers. Most of one side of his face was burned black, cracking, sloughing off. Even the eye was roasted. None of it seemed to bother him. With maniacal concentration he tried to bring his other, maimed hand around to lever himself out of the hole. His good hand gripped like steel.

Bzzzzzzzz zzzzzt!

Once more vaporized flesh and bone became a pink mist in the air. Completely by reflex I had reached down and lopped off his hand at the wrist. He began to slide, then steadied himself somehow, began to lift himself up with his stump and his ruined right hand. I tried to bring the chain knife down to his head, thrust it into his brains, see how he liked that, but his flailing arm hit my hand, almost made me lose the knife again. He was still too quick; I couldn't risk a neck slice.

Bzzz uuuzzz uuuz. The knife met some resistance as I passed the blade through the copper pipe of the sprinkler. Water gushed from one severed end, and I tugged at the malleable metal, pulled it out and down, aimed it at the face of the beast.

With a roar of rage, he slipped an inch, three inches, a foot, and then lost his grip entirely. I shined the light down through the torrent, saw him clinging to a crosspipe opening about ten feet down. That's how he got himself turned around, I imagined. And climbing the inside of the down duct must have been a lot easier with his head up. Now he clung, slipped, and down he went, like a log flume ride, past another opening, and another, and then I couldn't see him anymore.

Another alarm was ringing now, set off by my sabotage of the emergency system. Gotta go, gotta go right now.

Then I saw the pieces of him still lying at my feet. I kicked the severed hand over the edge. Maybe it would hit him on the head. Another piece was four entire fingers barely co

Never can tell when a spare thumb might come in handy.

I picked up my suitcase, stepped out of the pipe and onto the foamy stuff covering the floor, and promptly broke through it, falling ass over end to the floor of a hallway full of hurrying people.

Only one child seemed to have noticed my pratfall, and he thought it was pretty darn fu

I went through the stairway door and started down. So the second floor wasn't good enough for me? If I'd been a little lower I'd probably already be out.

Those tricky Oberoni. I'd gone down one flight of the spiral stairway when yet another alarm sounded. Then a voice:

"Everyone on the fire stairs, sit down, now!" And everyone did, except for one goofy looking fellow who looked as if he'd already been through fire, flood, pestilence, and plague. I'm speaking of myself.

The little boy tugged at my pants. Sweet of him, considering he could have had another good laugh if he'd just let me alone. I sat, and the stairs all collapsed. We started to slide down an endless spiral.

You had to admire them. The folding stairway probably came from a funhouse, but it sure got us out fast. Other people leaped in from other floors, until pretty soon we were jam-packed, some upside down, some tumbling head over heels. Still I think there would have been more chance of injury if they'd let us walk out.

At the bottom we landed on a rotating disk that quickly spun us off onto soft, sweet-smelling grass. I lay there just a moment, savoring my escape, then someone grabbed my arm and helped me up and rushed me away from the area, where more guests were arriving every minute. It was all as orderly and efficient as the baggage delivery in a spaceport, but faster.

"Are you injured?" It was a young emergency worker. I knew it because of the large red cross on his tunic.

"I'm fine. A little disoriented."

"If you'll move along over there, we have forms you can fill out for any damages you have incurred. We hope this little crisis is over soon, and that you can continue enjoying your stay at the Othello."

"Thank you. I've had a wonderful time already."

I walked toward the table, then right past it, and on down the street and into the park and down to a train station and onto a car which took me far, far from Mr. Isambard Comfort.

You've heard that old expression, to follow one to the ends of the earth. I'm sure Comfort would try, if we were on Earth, but as most people know, Earth has no ends, being a big sphere like most places in the system. Oberon does have ends, though. Four of them. And that's where I was.