bed. Alpinist Marena-no problem. She leaped, just one foot on the edge of the bed, pushing her over. But because I knew it was coming, I swept her feet out from under her and she fell head-down onto the floor. She didn’t move. Alert that she might be faking, I leaned down and grabbed her throat, but she didn’t respond. I put my forearm, the one with the bandaged hand, across her throat and leaned on it, while I picked up the Tabasco bottle and pointed the sharp end next to her trachea. I waited for my arm to kill her. But it didn’t. Could I use her later? Or did I love her? Or did I even care about that? After two-score beats, I pulled over the IV pole and shoved the needle in her arm vein. I wasn’t very good at it, and it took a few tries, but she didn’t react. With the needle in, I opened the flow valve. The drip had been intended to keep me docile, but I was twice as heavy as Marena, so my dose ought to put her out. But to be on the safe side, I pushed the flow valve to max, and watched as the drip rate increased.
Hmm. Well, that all looks stable.
Now all I had to do was get out of here. Well, not all. There were a few things, a few quick, easy, fun things, easy experiments with everyday household objects…
(103)
So, Jed asked from down in the bottom right side of my head, when did you know you wanted to come back to our little old twelfth b’aktun?
I knew before the sacrifice, I answered. Before you squealed out English on the mul.
I wasn’t hard to fool, was I?
No.
Are you my other?
No.
What did you see on 4 Ahau?
I’m not going to tell you.
I need to know.
Everybody always wants to know what’s going to happen, I thought back.
I just want to know, he kept saying, like a dying cricket in my head. I want to know whether this is it for everything or what.
I’m not going to tell you, I thought.
I could feel him squirm, but there was nothing he could do.
Manac zub, I thought. Come on. I need to get a grip on this time. Think. Think. And who is the steward of our captors?
Probably just Grgur.
The only reason you got back at all was that 2 Jeweled Skull let you.
When, you mean, when he told me -
When you said “Play ball s ” instead of “Play ball,” that’s when 2JS knew I was inside you, that I was going to take over. That’s a phrase that only I use.
No way.
Yes. He saw what was going to happen and that’s why he told you where the nacom was. You know how tough he was, he wouldn’t have done it for any other reason.
What about my whole life? Jed asked. Did you set up the date of my birth, and the fact that I was going to come back? Did you guys set up everything?
You’d have to ask One Ocelot’s daughter about that, I thought.
Jed just floated for a few scores of beats. I thought he’d drowned, but he came back.
I still want us to leave Marena alone, he thought. I don’t care what she did.
She’ll make a prestigious captive, I thought.
I won’t let you do it, Jed thought. Let the girl go. We have a let-the-girl-go clause.
I felt muscles tightening up and down my body, Jed trying to fire my motor nerves, but he just shivered like he was pushing hard against a wall. You’re pathetic, I thought. Give it up.
He tried to make me exhale and hold it, maybe choke and die, but I just drew in a slow stream of air until it filled my torso basin.
You’re helpless, I thought. Betrayal’s a strange thing. I’ve been there. I know.
I won’t, I’ll get back up again -
Now fall you still, I thought, now little cousin, seize:
Unique point of the lancet, penis tip,
Now starts the bleeding, now you be aspersed.
Shame wind swept over Jed. The nerves released. I felt my penis inflate.
He eats, he licks the white blood, snake-clot blood,
On the wooden haft, the stone haft, here it strengthens.
Automatically, Jed went into the begging formula:
“Accepted, singular ahau, I froth
The beaten mouth broth: here I take the shoots,
Four are his forces, four doors to his arbor,
O 4 Ahau alone, unique ahau.”
And, with that, Jed was officially my captive. All nine of his-well, around here and now, they call them “souls”-were my thralls. Forever.
(104)
I touched the eel-edge of the mirror with my left hand and gingerly pulled it toward me.
It swung out, my uay-self turning aside.
Not one-way glass.
Thin smooth white plastic shelves bolted in.
I expected all sorts of magic things inside but there was just a cylinder vase that said Phisohex ™, an amber chunk labeled Neutrogena ™, a paper box of Band-Aids™, and a stack of disposable paper towels. There was nothing else.
There was something, though. Something in Jed’s memories about the white steel cabinet frame.
I moved the Phisohex and on the left side, five finger-widths above the bottom corner, there was a tiny slit with a square of ancient brown stickum glue underneath, the trace of a label that had once, in the preinjector, predisposable era, read USED BLADES.
Got it, I thought.
I gouged into the metal with my thumbnail. Too hard.
Tool needed.
I walked to the big white vase in the floor, said a purification over it, sat on it expecting an underworld batfish to come up and chomp me, and managed to squirt a little urine into it.
I looked around. The paper stuff they used came out of a dispenser that was bolted to the wall. There was a tank on the back of the vase with a cover. The cover was plastic and it seemed solidly attached.
I rose up, got my feet on the rim of the toilet basin-there was no seat cover-turned around, put my hands down over the plastic tank lid, hit the flush lever, and just as the sound crested I yanked up-and, thank Iztamna for small favors, the rectangular lid popped off relatively undamaged.
The old brown-crusted rod between the flush-lever and the wire that went down to the rubber drain-cap looked pretty sturdy.
I unhooked the wire that held it to the drain cap, shutting off the flush. On the lever end the rod was attached with a little nut that I tried to unscrew, but it was corroded on, so I bent it back and forth a few times and finally it broke and I wrenched it off.
