kept changing directions, and it didn't get any nearer.
He sat on the floor, one foot under him, the other leg stretched out before him, his head hanging down and his chin on his chest, his oral breathing shallow and rapid. He felt weightless. And contented. He was comfortable, and it was too funny—this trying to find a mantel.
No! He ground his teeth together and forced himself to think. Keep crawling. Find a wall. Then crawl along it. Must lead to the hearth eventually.
He crawled on. Once he rested with his face in a corner of the room, and the walls felt soft and comfortable against his cheeks. He wanted so much to sleep. But he snapped himself out of it and crawled on. Then his hand touched marble—beautifully grained, somehow luminescent marble. That was the mantelpiece.
Now climb up on the ledge!
Too high. Too hard.
Climb.
Twice he slipped and fell back to the floor, and it took all his mental strength to resist the desire to stay there and enjoy the ceiling.
At last he stood on the narrow ledge of the mantel, his back against the wall, his arms cruciform, fingers trying to hold onto the flowers in the wallpaper. He was frightened and his heart pounded. The floor, rippling and blurring, was so far down there.
Good. The fear was good. It made his pulse race. It would burn off the dope. Now exercise. Isometric tension... release. Tension... release.
He had the impression that he could see by means of darkness as other people saw by means of light. And so much darkness was coming in through the open window that he could see details in the room clearly. There were bursting sacs of light behind his eyes. The rug. Beautiful color. It floated up toward him slowly, seductively.
The pain and shock of the fall brought him briefly to his senses. He was lying face down on the rug. He couldn't breathe through his nose. Blood. It didn't hurt. It made him want to sleep.
The climb back up was cerebral. His sense of balance was gone, along with his sense of direction. He had to tell himself that tops tend to be above bottoms. He had to think out the fact that leaning out would cause a fall. Eventually he was on the mantel ledge, on his knees. He could not stand. Kneeling, his chest now against the wall, he began the isometric exercises. Tension... release. Tension... release.
An infinity of timelessness passed. He needed to sleep. Right now. He rested back on the supporting air.
This time, he slept through the fall and crash.
The cold woke him up. He was sweating and cold. His mouth was dry from oral breathing, and his upper lip was stiff. He touched the stiff lip. It was flaky, gritty. The blood from his nose had congealed. He had been out for some time. But he knew from the nausea and the cold that the hallucinatory effects of the drug had passed. He was weak and dizzy, but he could think and he could move. He got to his hands and knees slowly and looked around the room. Dark shadows, a rectangle of gray city smear at the window. The window. He remembered.
With the help of the bedpost, he got to his feet and reeled to the window. The night air was freezing cold as it flowed over his sweating, naked body. He stood, supporting himself on the casement and sucking in great breaths of damp refreshing air. The sheet was still knotted about the center post.
Looking down, he could just make out the stone terrace three stories below. A mist of light from a room below spilled out over the wet flagstones. He climbed up onto the sill and stood in the frame. Then he gripped the underledge of the eaves and leaned out. And instantly he was overcome by vertigo, drowning in dizziness. Desperately, he scrambled back. Too soon. He would have to wait until the last moment. Just before they came in. Give his mind a chance to get as clear as it would ever be.
Leonard and Darling left their dart game with fellow employees and crossed the deserted Art Deco salon, their reflections following them along the wall of mirrors that hid the Aquarium. They took the long curving stairway two steps at a time because they were a little late for the next scheduled injection. Leonard unlocked the door, and Darling switched on the lights.
'Christ!' Darling ejaculated.
In a rush they checked the closet, the bathroom, and under the bed. Then Leonard noticed the open window and the sheet knotted around the center post. He slammed his fist against the casement in fury.
'The Guv won't half be browned off at this!' Darling said. 'He'll have our arses for it!' He looked down to the terrace below. 'Can't have got far. That sheet didn't help much. Must of broke both his legs. Come on!'
They ran from the room, Leonard charging down the staircase to examine the grounds, while Darling ran up the corridor to his room, where he snatched up the revolvers he had liberated from Jonathan's attache case.
Head downward on the steep sloping roof, Jonathan lay tense and still. When he had heard them approaching the door, he had gripped the underedge of the eaves and swung out, tuck-rolling up and over. For a terrible moment, only the lower half of his body was on the slippery roof, his torso and head dangling over. The incline was greater than he had expected, and the sharp overlapping edges of the tiles prevented him from scrambling up. Only his fingertip hold on the underside of the edge prevented him from falling to the terrace below, but the pressure out against his reflexed wrists was agonizing and enervating. He clenched his teeth to keep from screaming with the pain as he pressed against his wrists with all his force, his jaw muscles roped and his head shuddering with the effort as he wriggled up against the sawtoothed set of the rough tile edges, gouging skin from his knees and rib cage and abrading his scrotum. His leverage was spent before he could get his chin past the eaves, and his angle on the roof was such that he could maintain his purchase only by keeping the throbbing wrists locked and by spreading his legs, increasing the area of traction to the maximum. Blood rushed to his head, and his racing pulse thrummed with dry lumps in his ears.
The lights came on in the room below, dimly illuminating the fog around him. He heard Darling say 'Christ!,' then there was the sound of a search through the room. Would the sheet mislead them? His lungs needed air, and he opened his mouth wide to breathe, so the intake would make less noise. Some of the dope was still in him, making thought slimy and vision uncertain. The strength was leaking out of him, draining from his wrists and shoulders.
He slipped... only a couple of inches, but he couldn't get it back. Now even more weight over the edge. Vertigo. The dim flagstone terrace so far below. No strength. Wrists winced with pain.
Leonard's head appeared just below him. The Mute snatched at the dangling sheet, then peered down. Jonathan squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated with all his force: Don't look up! Don't look up! The cold of the wet tiles against his nude body was numbing. Again he slipped two inches! But at that second Leonard banged his fist against the casement in fury, covering the sound. Darling said something from within.
They ran out of the room.
A strangled, whimpering groan escaped Jonathan. Getting down would be as dangerous as getting up had been. The pitch of the roof was sharp, and there was a thin coat of greasy dirt on the tiles lubricated by the moisture of the fog. Once he pulled in his legs and let the slip start, there would be no stopping it. With those limp and throbbing wrists, he would have to catch the underedge of the eaves as he slid past and swing back in through the window. If he was off by six inches to either side, he would crash against the building and fall to the flagstones below.
No use thinking about it. No time. No strength left.
He let go.
He was an inch or two off, and as he swung into the room backward, he clipped his head on the center post of the window casement. Dizziness and pain made him reel as he got to his feet, but he drove on, head down, running for the open door.
As Darling started back down the hall with the big revolvers, he heard the crash in Jonathan's room and ran toward it. They collided in the doorway and went down in a jumble in the hall. Jonathan fought blindly and desperately, grappling for Darling's throat and getting it, both thumbs against the larynx. He could feel that there was little strength left in his grip, so he closed his eyes and bared his teeth, pressing desperately as Darling struggled to bring either revolver to bear on Jonathan's naked side. He wriggled like a beached fish as Jonathan squeezed for all he was worth, expecting at any moment to hear the roar of a gun and to have his guts blown out by a flattening dumdum. From nowhere, the thought came to Jonathan of Vanessa struggling on her kitchen table. Darling had probably held her down as Leonard had prodded at her. With a final surge of desperate fury, Jonathan
