It was a strictly shut-ended situation because I didn’t know how much traffic there was behind the bus and it was going to depend on how long I could hang on like this: given a run of three or four green lights I’d have to drop and if I dropped I might just miss the wheels of the truck behind but there might be a whole line of traffic and sooner or later there’d be a blood-red smear on the snow, finis.
My heels were dragging on sand now and I kicked upwards with one foot and hooked it sideways and felt nothing and kicked again and got it lodged across a brake rod but it slipped off and I tried the other foot, feeling for a cross-member and not finding one, trying again and hitting the open propeller-shaft and letting it drop back to the roadway. Technically my heels were taking some of the weight and relieving the strain on my fingers but there was sand along this stretch and my shoes could wear through and I didn’t know what was going to happen in the next fifteen minutes: I might have to run for my life and I could lose it if a shoe came off.
Tried with my hands next, feeling for a girder where I could hook one arm through and hold the wrist to lock it in position, but I was too far forward and my face was just to the rear of the gearbox with one of the universal joints spinning within an inch of my head and if I moved too much the bolts would cut into the skull like a circular rasp: it wasn’t worth risking so I let my body hang limp and began waiting out the time, it was all I could do.
Oil was dripping against my face and I turned it slightly to let it run downwards, clear of my eye. There was a leak in the exhaust pipe and the fumes were acrid and sickly, setting up an irritation in my throat that I tried to control by swallowing. The deep-cut tyres of the truck behind us were sending out a moan as they ran across the hard-packed snow and I could see other lights now, showing beneath its silhouette: there was a line of traffic, possibly a military convoy, and somewhere in the din of the exhaust pipe I could hear their chains jingling on the snow.
My fingers were burning now with the strain of hanging on.
Ignore.
The oil dripped again and I turned my face away, feeling it creep down to the lobe of my ear. I was taking shallow breaths to keep the carbon monoxide out of my lungs but the muscles were working hard from the ringers to the shoulders and demanding oxygen and I began breathing more deeply because I couldn’t help it: there was no equation possible and at some distant point my hands would lose their grip because the gas had swamped the brain or because the muscles ran out of oxygen, one way or the other. If I could -
Slowing, we were slowing.
No brakes yet: the rod against my shoulder hadn’t moved. Just a gradual deceleration with the exhaust note snarling lower on the over-run as the cylinders went dead.
Assume traffic lights.
Fingers burning but hanging on. If I dropped too soon there’d be nothing to save me: the truck couldn’t pull up on this kind of surface even if the driver saw me and if I tried rolling to the kerb I could get it wrong and his front wheel would -
The exhaust was throbbing again and the whine of the universals rose to their normal pitch and I saw the faint green spread of light on the snow along the gutter as the bus got up speed and the traffic behind followed suit: the lights had been at red and the driver had started slowing and they’d changed to green and I’d have to keep hanging on and I didn’t think I could do it now because a muscle is electro-chemical and the will can push its limits but not to infinity.
My fingers are steel hooks.
Nothing can break them.
We were going faster than before and the gas began fluttering against the side of my head and I turned it the other way and felt the heat on my hair but that was all right, I could stand that, I could stand anything that didn’t increase the strain on the fingers because they’d got to hang on.
They are steel hooks.
Nothing can break them.
But the throb of the exhaust was vibrating inside my head and the stink of the gas was sharp and sweet and permeating, stinging my eyes and making them water, making them close, making my thoughts drift, steel hooks, until my body sagged lower and the heels of my shoes began skating from side to side as the thigh muscles loosened, nothing, from side to side on the sand and the snow, nothing can break them, side to side, wake up or you’ll -
Tighten the fingers: tighten.
And be aware of the gas because it’s lethal. Christ’s sake cerebrate:
necessary to stay conscious, essential to review the situation and get it into normal perspective because it was simply a question of time. Soon the bus would stop and I could drop and roll clear and all I had to do until then was maintain the tension in the finger muscles and concern my mind with nothing else, nothing at all.
My fingers are steel hooks.
Nothing can break them.
Sweat pouring over me and cooling in the freezing air, my hands burning, my arms burning, my shoulders, burning, steel hooks, and the sound of the drumming in my head and the sweet tang of the gas swirling inside and my body swimming, slowing, we were -
Slowing again.
Hooks.
Slowing.
The truck was still behind. I could hear it and see its lights. Its lights were yellow on the snow. Slowing. My feet dragged on the sand, from side to side, side to side, slowing.
Hooks.
The traffic shunting behind us, a bumper banging: they couldn’t pull up on the snow.
Slow.
A Mush of red somewhere below me, coming from a light.
I watched the light on the snow, holding my breath because of the gas.
My head was full of it.
Slowing.
Stop.
Drop and roll clear.
Chapter Seventeen: OBJECTIVE
“These are copies,” I said.
“Of everything?”
“Of everything I could find.”
He looked at them in the light coming through the window.
“This is all you found?”
“Christ, I’ve just told you.”
He looked at me and away.
“What happened to you?” he asked me.
“When?”
“I mean what sort of condition are you in?”
“First rate.”
I was getting fed up with him. You don’t throw yourself under a bus and come out looking like Little Lord Fauntleroy and he ought to know that. Come to think of it, of course, he didn’t know it was what I’d been doing.
“There may be some other papers,” he said.
“Where?”
“With Kirinski.”
A bus came in and filled the place with noise. It had the name Balkhash on the illuminated sign over the front. I supposed the lake was frozen now, though it hadn’t been when I’d flown over it to the north. Christ, that was a long time ago.
I shut my eyes and let them water. The exhaust gas had been the worst, though I still couldn’t feel my ringers.
“Opal Light,” he said after a while, ‘was our operation.”
I woke up very fast.
“It was what?”
He slipped the file back into the envelope with the films, and didn’t say anything. Someone came to the open doorway.