27

It was sleep. Not good sleep—something was wrong. But no dreams. He turned his head, and a stone in his skull rolled and careened.

He took a breath, and it hurt. He was wet. He tasted hot salt water. He would be fine if he did not move. No moving. No moving at all.

Must live. The thought shook him. He might be dying, he realized, and he began to climb upward, out of the wet place that floated him.

Concrete at his cheek. He blinked. A brick wall.

It all came back. How long ago had it been? he asked himself. Not long. A light was on, and another. A head looked out to see what was happening, and Davis would have called but all the words had been slammed out of him.

He had landed with an impact greater than anything he had ever known. Like a great balloon bursting, but he had been the balloon.

Dead now, he thought. Now I’m dead.

Not dead. It was impossible to believe, but the evidence was there. Only a minute or two had passed since he fell. No time at all. Not hours. Otherwise, why was someone still looking out to see what the noise had been?

Davis mouthed the words he had no strength to speak. Down here. Here. I’m here.

I fell.

The two lights went off.

He must have slept again. Perhaps he had tried to move too quickly. He woke again, with a nausea that came and went, like a flashing light.

He tried to judge the time. It was, he thought, much closer to morning. The world seemed hushed, and the sky too dark. A bird squeaked somewhere, a voice from another world.

If he slept again he would not wake.

He would save himself. That would be easy, if he could walk. He wondered if that would be possible.

He would move his body. That was a very good plan. Davis had always liked plans. Formulate a plan, and carry it out.

Move the body. Shock. He would go into shock, and he would die of that, now that he had survived everything else. The thought angered him, and he moved his arms. He was wearing a shirt. And pants. He had not undressed before lying down. Yes, it all came back to him.

He worked his legs. Arms and legs. Good. Very important. He shakily felt himself, his chest, which was wet and warm, and, with great hesitation, his upper thighs, and the seat of his pants, which were wet, but not, he could tell, with great relief, impaled on a spear fence. His crotch felt intact. He was sprawled on cold concrete, and it was not such a bad place to rest.

Then he remembered all of it.

The Skeldergate Man.

His sightless eyes. His leathery, empty arms.

He had to warn people. He had to tell everyone.

But now Davis was afraid. He was very cold, and he did not have the strength to shiver. The cold rose from his toes, up his legs, into his torso. Shock from his injuries, he told himself, and fear.

Shuddering, Davis dragged himself to the brick wall. His legs danced with spasms. He investigated his ankles with his hands. He winced. He had, apparently, landed on his feet, half crouched. This had been his plan. The merest touch hurt, but he did not think they were broken. Hanging onto the drain had slowed his fall just enough.

Something wrong with my ribs, too, he thought. And my skull. But the damage did not seem mortal. There was a flutter of joy. He was alive, and he would be strong again some day.

This sense of great happiness gave him a strange detachment from his fear, and he understood what had happened. It was funny, although he could not laugh. It was amazingly funny. The greatest joke ever played on anyone.

A brilliant joke.

Peter was a genius, and he was also very sick.

Davis clawed the brick wall, struggling to stand. It was a risk. If his ankles were sprained he would sprawl again. He leaned, sweating icily, and let the brick wall support him for a long time. He did not really have to move again for a long time.

Not for a long, long time.

Peter was mad.

Must move now. Must try to take a step.

The slashed thighs crippled him, and his ankles barely supported his weight. He staggered. The blood on his shirt was from his mouth, he discovered, exploring with his fingers. He had bit his lips badly. He did not seem to be missing any teeth.

The next part would be difficult. The back steps. But they weren’t so hard. The back door was difficult, because it was locked. He would not have the strength to stagger around the row of buildings, to the front door to begin ringing flats, trying to wake someone to come down and haul him up.

He had the strength. Swaying, he crept around the building, climbed from spear to spear along the black rail fence, and dragged himself up the front steps.

He was gathering himself to begin pushing the buttons to all the flats, when a familiar figure hurried up the street in the dawn.

Davis grinned, and tried to wave.

Mr. Langton scurried toward the front steps, still not seeing what awaited him.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Langton,” said Davis. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

Langton faltered and gasped. He fell to one knee and tried to drag himself to his feet, one hand on the rail.

“I’m all right, Mr. Langton,” said Davis. “Just a little bit banged up.”

Langton opened his mouth and shut it. “Davis,” he whispered. “Is that you?”

“I fell.”

“What has he done to you?”

That, Davis thought, will take some telling.

“We must get you to a doctor. Can you stand?”

Davis stood, hunched, and bleeding again, but on his feet. “I want you to listen to me,” Davis began, enunciating as clearly as he could with his puffy lips. “We have to hurry.”

“Indeed we will.” Langton began pushing bells to the flats. “Is there a telephone in this building?”

“Listen to me.”

“I’m responsible for this. I should have known that Peter was far more sick than we all thought. I was swept along by all the optimism.”

“Langton, shut up and listen to me.”

“Optimism is a half step ahead of foolhardiness.”

No one answered. Of course not, Davis thought. The missing Mandy was in the ground-floor flat, a furtive woman who was never home was, as usual, absent from the cellar flat, Peter was gone, and Davis was here on the steps. He tried to enumerate the flats on his fingers. There were one or two others he could not think of just now.

“This,” said Davis, “is what we will do.”