The Sacrifice Game

(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.

I put the cover back on. My hands were covered with black rubber-scum and I scrubbed them in the sink, wiped them with paper towels, went back and cleaned the side of the tank cover, and went back to the sink.

I turned the water on, reopened the medicine cabinet, jammed the rod into the slit, and pried back the sheet metal, sawing down into the depths of the cabinet, pulling the sharp flap back with my fingers.

Metal is such weird stuff, I would never have expected it. In Ix I’d owned tiny and extremely expensive earplugs made out of gold, the Venus-feces of the South, and copper, the sun-feces of the North. But here it was cheaper than pebbles and came in all colors, even that pure mirror zero-color, and nobody seemed to notice it. I went back to what I was doing, sawing and digging, the ragged hole getting bigger.

Finally, at the base of the hollow wall, nestled against the cinder block, was a stack of rusted rectangles.

I dug it out carefully, wrapped it in Band-Aids™, and Band-Aided it under my scrotum. It was the safest spot I could think of. Jed’s testicles instinctively retracted, shrinking from the idea of sharpness. Just in case, I stuck forty or so wrapped Band-Aids next to it in three thick little wads.

Marena was sound asleep. But the nurse might check in early.

I separated sixteen of the old double-edged razor blades from the brick, scraped as much of the rust off them as possible, and folded them into V’s down the center, so that they had two edges sticking out at about forty-five degrees from each other. After some picking I peeled back the outer layer of my hand cast. It wasn’t plaster, it was some kind of light breathable cheesenylon stuff.

I cut slits through the edge of the cast and threaded the V’s into them points outward, kind of like fishhooks in a cork, so that I finally had two rows of double blades traveling around the edge of my paddle hand.

It was a bit like the way they make weapons out of two safety-razor blades and a toothbrush in prison. Two edges do a lot more damage on the first stroke than one because they take out a kerf that’s hard to sew up.

Finally I filled in on either side of the blades with little folded paper tabs from the back of the Band-Aids, wrapped the outer layer of stiff beige cheesecloth loosely back around the whole thing, and stuck that down with looped Band-Aids on its inside hems so that it would look as normal as possible. When I hit someone with the assembly the edges of the blades would go right through the outer layer of cloth as though it wasn’t there.

It was bigger and lumpier than before, but I figured if I kept it down at my side and turned away from their lines of sight it probably wouldn’t get noticed.

Just as a last touch, I made a little balloon out of Saran Wrap, filled it with Tabasco, and secreted it between my teeth and upper lip.

Right.

I pulled the IV out of Marina’s arm, rolled her gently under the bed, retaped the needle onto my own arm like it was still in my skin, and hit the lighted call button on the padded bed rail. Wait. Marena’s bag was still on the window ledge radiator thingy. I slid it under the bed just before Nurse Wretched came in.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said. In fact I’m feeling great, I thought. I feel more like myself with every p’ip’il. “Sorry to bug you, but I really needed to talk to Grgur, I’ve got to tell him something.” She put down the tray and left. Grgur came in.

“I really need a cig,” I said.

“Forget it,” he said.

“I also have some information.”

“Save it.”

“I just worked out a couple of dates Marena wanted,” I said.

“It’ll wait.”

“Please, Gulag, you know I am a nicotine addict.”

“No,” he said, “you have to detox.”

I thought for a few beats about how Jed would put it. All right. Let’s try this.

“Come on, please please please,” I said. “We carcinogen lovers have to stick together. Right?”

“Yeah,” he said. He beeped at the backgammon game on his phone.

“I’ll split a box of Monte Cristo Piramides with you when I get home.”

“Ungh.”

“What’s going on with you,” I asked, “are you wearing like, ten NicoDerms or what?”

“I have the power of the will,” he said.

“I’ll wire you ten thousand dollars,” I said. “Otherwise I’m just going to toss and turn and thrash until Grandfather Heat-until dawn. And then I will start screaming. And then when people ask I’ll tell them you did let me smoke, and it messed up my meds.”

“We can not smoke in here anyway,” he said. “It sets off the sirens. We would have to take us out into the stairs.”

Hah. Progress. “Or I could go down into the morgue and crawl into a drawer with a dead guy,” I said.

He went out. I could hear him mumbling something into his phone. He came back in.

“Grg, old pal next to me,… wow, I knew you had some pity in you.” Tears almost burbled up in Jed’s/Sic’s/my cowardly eyes. “Thanks. Really.”

“Yeah.”

We waited.

There was a rap on the door and the other one from the house came in wearing a shirt woven out of the blue hair of some odd creature that Jed’s memory said was called a Nylon. He also wore a pectoral on his chest with his name and mask. I mean, portrait. Somehow I didn’t think he was so alert as Grgur.

“This is Hernan,” Grgur said.

“Yeah, we’ve met, hi,” I said. Did that sound natural? Other One didn’t say anything. I hoisted myself up more unsteadily than I had to. Hurry up, I thought. Marena might cough or twitch or start singing. We went out and they steered me in front of them down the hall, letting me pull my own IV pole. They certainly didn’t seem to notice that the cast on my right hand was a little larger than it had been. I didn’t see any of the guards either.

We turned right at the far end of the hall. I couldn’t see any of those dart shooter weapons-I mean, guns-printing on Hernan’s clothing, but one never knows. I got an impression of a deserted waiting-area of bolted-down mats. That is, seating units. Chairs.

We turned down another humming green corridor to a FIRE/EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY door. There was a door across from it labeled NAHSO, which something deep in Jed’s hard drive told me was the hospital’s code for Pharmacy. Grgur ran a badge through the lock, pushed the door open without touching the aluminum bar, and went out ahead of us into the white concrete stairs.

Other One-Hernan-herded me in behind him and shut the door. He said something about how the Magic were going to make it to the Finals against the Jazz, but Grgur just grunted and pulled a pack of Kolumbos out of his shirt pocket.

He shook three out, put one in his mouth, handed one to me and one to Hernan, and took out a book of Delano Hotel matches.

He lit one one-handed and touched it to his own first.

At least Marena’d really trained this guy to be polite, I thought. A lot of people think it’s polite to light the other person’s first, but with matches you’re supposed to absorb that awful sulfur taste yourself before you move the clean match on to someone else.

I put my cig in my mouth and sort of moved into position. He held the match out to me and just as the end was about to light I blew the match out through the cigarette.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. This is the move, I thought.

I took the book of matches with my left hand, shaking my head, and he let me take it.

YES! I pulled a match around to the back of the pack with my left thumb, lighting it one-handed, and sucked in the smoke, double-inhaling it up through my nose. You can’t really explain the pleasure of smoking to a nonaddict. It’s like trying to describe sex to a five-year-old.

Okay. I moved the little balloon of Tabasco out from under my upper lip with my tongue and got ready to bite down on it.

Right. I held the still-lit match out to Hernan, sucking that big old blowgun breath down into my lungs so that I’d be ready.

Hernan leaned forward and I moved the burning match to his cigarette and then moved the matchbook under his chin, my thumb extruding two old razor blades from under the cardboard in a V-shape.

I sliced into Hernan’s throat from the left side, the first blade quickly burying itself up to the crook of the V, and continued the same motion in a smooth arc up toward his right ear. Thin flat strings of blood jetted out of the slit, black in the minty nonlight.

I let go just before reaching the ear and pulled back. Hernan reacted late to the relatively painless cut, bringing his hand up to his throat, and he lurched forward and grabbed my right wrist with his other hand but I twisted against his thumb and pulled back and fell against the corner of the wall. Only, it wasn’t the wall, it was Grgur grabbing me from behind.

I accentuated my fall, going off balance, and as Grgur came down after me, grabbing at my cast arm, I bit down on the balloon of Tabasco and swung my head around, getting the bolus of liquid position.

His face came into range.