he flashed, signaling that halftime was over.
Finally he got hold of an ankle and reeled me in with what I could have sworn was a rumbling grunt of satisfaction. I flailed at him, but I knew I had as much chance of hurting him as of unhinging a heavy punching bag. I expected him to start picking me apart like a fried chicken, but he wasn't going to do anything that gross or messy. Instead he casually lifted me off the floor by the seat of my pants, grabbed the back of my neck, and plunged my head under the water in the aquarium. And he held me there.
Real panic, I discovered, was colored silver, despair brown; those were the colors of the dots that swirled in front of my eyes as I held my breath. My lungs felt ready to explode as I used up still more oxygen futilely struggling against the black leather fingers that held me in a grip as tight and final as death.
Hope, on the other hand, smelled like a dentist's office. That was the faint odor I'd detected just before the gorilla had dunked me in the 'aquarium'; the 'water' I was under wasn't water.
With absolutely nothing to lose, I released the pressure from my lungs. The breath exploded from my mouth and nose in great silver bubbles. Then I played gerbil, sucking in the fluid just as if it were nothing more than good old only-slightly-polluted New York City air.
Air it wasn't. In connection with my coven of witches, I'd undergone a series of rabies shots. They'd been exquisitely painful, given directly in the belly. The sensation I'd experienced then was a feeling of swelling in my stomach and chest, of being pumped full of some viscous liquid, like silicone. The feeling of swelling now was essentially the same, without the searing pain. There was a bubbling, tickling sensation in my sinuses, as if I'd drunk warm soda too quickly, a bitter licorice taste; then the taste and sensation were gone and I was- breathing.
There was an unexpected side effect of immersion that could explain why the gerbil I had seen paddling around in Bill Jackson's jar of Fluosol-DA had seemed so content with his lot; I was getting high.
It occurred to me that this particular gorilla was going to be looking for something a bit more dramatic than a submerged, giggling dwarf. I sucked in a huge lungful of the solution, held my breath for a few seconds, then executed what I hoped was a very convincing performance of twitches, shudders, and kicks. Then I went limp and waited.
And waited.
It looked as if I were going to have to start 'breathing' again, but just as I was about to exhale my hairy attacker pulled me up out of the tank. I opened my eyes to slits and watched as the gorilla dangled me in the air by the back of my shirt and peered quizzically up into my face. I hated to hurt him, would have much preferred a long session with his trainer, but I didn't have too many options. I despised cruelty to dwarfs even more than cruelty to animals, so I poked him in the right eye with my index finger. The force of the stab wasn't hard enough to puncture his eyeball, just sufficient to produce an unpleasant diversion.
The gorilla bellowed in pain and dropped me to the floor as he reflexively let go of my shirt in order to alternately swipe at his eye and thump his chest. I jumped to my feet-and immediately ran into a problem. The gerbil had obviously had lots of practice clearing fluid out of its lungs; I wasn't so fortunate, and the transition from breathing Fluosol-DA to breathing air wasn't a problem I'd given a lot of thought to. Consequently, I began coughing and choking as the fluid spurted out of my lungs through my mouth and nose. By the time I recovered, my companion was in full, lumbering gait, heading in my direction, trailing multicolored wires from the smashed machine on his chest.
At the last moment I tumbled out of his way, and he smashed into a file cabinet. By the time he turned, I was out the door and running; I could hear the rhythmic padding of him on all fours right behind me. I didn't know whether he could catch me over a short course, but I didn't want to risk a foot race I might lose. I sprinted fifteen yards, cut sharply to my left into the unfinished office-laboratory. I felt a leathery paw slap against my shoulder, slip off as the gorilla's momentum carried him past the entrance. He recovered, came scampering through the door.
'Me the fuck Mongo,
It was an immense relief to find that it was possible to knock a gorilla unconscious. Every instinct urged me to get out of Volsung as quickly as possible, rush home and do something sensible-like crawl under the bed. But if I left empty-handed, the evening's expedition would have been for nothing. Worse than nothing; unless I somehow managed to cover my tracks, Jake Bolesh and his masters in Volsung would know there had been a break-in. Bolesh would have no problem knowing who to come looking for.
What, I asked myself, do you do with an unconscious gorilla? The answer came: frame him, try to make it look as though he'd been playing house with the equipment and had hurt himself.
I went out of the office, hurried to the far end, and peered down I he darkened corridor leading to the scientists' quarters. Either the scientists were very sound sleepers or their quarters were soundproofed, because the lights remained out and the walkway remained still.
The huge electron microscopes were on rollers, obviously designed to be moved about the complex. I pushed one into the office-laboratory and used a pipe as a lever to topple it over on the floor next to the gorilla; the half- million-dollar piece of equipment smashed to the tile with a resounding crash, which spelled the beginning of the end to my evening of fun and games.
I'd hoped to be able to sort through the files at my leisure, try to understand some part of what was in them, make some copies on the Xerox machine in another office, replace the files and steal safely away into the night. I should have done it before tipping over the electron microscope, but the reassuring silence that had returned after the cacophonous bellowing of the gorilla had made me feel secure. Cocky.
Stupid.
Just as I was digging into the first open filing cabinet, I heard a distant clicking sound, then a whir. The walkway. I grabbed three files that were thin enough so that I hoped they wouldn't be missed right away. I closed the file cabinet, then raced like hell to the stairway leading to the garage, slapping light switches on the way.
9
'Robby?' my mother whispered through the half-open door.
'I'm awake, Mom. Come on in.'
My mother, slippers on her feet and quilted robe cinched loosely about her waist, came quietly into my room and sat down on the edge of the bed. The promise of dawn shone in her silver hair and softly spotlighted her face. She looked very old, very tired, very worried. She still seemed incredibly beautiful to me, as lovely as she had been in reality when she was young. Only her eyes were absolutely unchanged; even beneath a veil of anxiety, they shone like beacons.
'Coop Lugmor called twice during the night,' she said softly. 'Said he was calling from some pay phone out on the highway. He wants you to go over there as soon as possible. He sounded very strange.'
'I'll bet he did,' I said wryly. Jake Bolesh had undoubtedly paid him a visit.
'He said he had something important to tell you.'
That surprised me; I'd assumed he was simply in a big hurry to cut any ties. 'Okay, Mom, I'll take care of it later. I'm sorry he woke you up.'
'He didn't wake me. I heard you get up, looked out the window later, and saw you leave in that funny outfit. I've been so worried about you.'
I sat up in bed, took her right hand and pressed it against my lips. 'You shouldn't worry,' I said, kissing the translucent, parchmentlike flesh of her hand.
'Robby, there's a strange odor about you. Did you have an upset stomach?'
The Fluosol-DA I'd absorbed was still transpiring out of my system through my lungs and skin. 'No, Mom. I'm all right.'
'Where did you go, son?'
'Out drinking and womanizing,' I said with a large grin, again kissing the back of her hand.
'Please, son.'
'Mom,' I replied seriously, 'I've never lied to you or Dad, and I don't want to have to start now. I can't tell you
