They looked at each other. Then the one who had lent her the razor shrugged. “It’s fair, Biff,” he said. “We knew she wasn’t coming here to play posies. She said endurance. She didn’t say what kind.”
Biff swallowed. He was now in the position of put up or shut up. “Okay. You start.”
He thought she was bluffing. He didn’t know she was suicidal. “Gladly.” She extended her left arm over her bucket, lifted the razor, and made one fast pass across her forearm. No bluffing here!
The edge was, by no coincidence, razor sharp. It cut much deeper than she had expected, almost painless in the first seconds. Blood welled out immediately, flowed across her arm, and dripped into the bucket. There was so much of it that it threatened to spill onto the floor. She had to lower her hand, so that the blood flowed down and off her fingers. Now the pain was coming, but it really wasn’t bad. It was masked by excitement. She had done it! With aplomb, even. She had never cut herself like this before! What a sight it was!
She looked up. Biff was standing there, staring. So were the others.
“What’s the matter?” she inquired sweetly. “Never seen blood before?”
This time two of them chuckled.
She addressed Biff. “You’re a lot bigger than I am,” she said. “You must have twice as much blood in you as I have in me. You can beat me easy, if you care to.”
“She’s right,” the razor man said.
Still Biff stood, not moving.
“But you have to play the game,” Colene said. “It’s not fair to let me bleed myself out if you don’t even start.”
The men nodded. “Do it, Biff,” one said.
“But what good’s a bled-out chick to me?” Biff demanded somewhat plaintively. “Me weakened, and her unconscious—”
“There’s no time limit on the payoff,” Colene said. “I thought you’d want it right away, but you can take a rain check. Make it six months from now. I’ll be there. You know where I live.” She looked down again at the blood dripping from her hand, so bright and beautiful. She felt dizzy, and knew it wasn’t from the blood loss; it was exhilaration.
Still Biff hesitated.
“Biff, she’s got you,” the razor man said. “Cut or yield.”
Biff considered a moment more. At last he smiled. “Okay, kid, you beat me. You win.”
“Thank you,” she said. But she didn’t move.
“Here’s your slug,” he said, handing it to her. She took it with her knife-hand, carefully.
“Thank you,” she repeated. She had the victory, if she didn’t lose her nerve now and do something monumentally stupid. So she did nothing. That seemed safest.
Biff took his clothes and walked from the room. One of the other men fetched some bandage material. Trust them to have such supplies; they probably had to doctor their own bullet wounds. “You won, kid; we won’t touch you. But you gotta let us help you before you bleed to death.”
“Thank you,” she said a third time, smiling.
They did a competent job of closing and bandaging her wound, and helped her get dressed. Not one tried to handle her body even “accidentally,” but they seemed to like handing her the panties, bra, and skirt. It was as if each wanted to have a personal part in what had turned out to be a most unusual game. “I’ll take you home, if that’s okay with you,” the razor man said. “I don’t think Biff feels like it.”
“Just remember, no—”
“Kid, you won. No one touches you. Not now, not ever. Not until you say so. We’re—you know what we are. But you got our respect. Just keep your mouth shut, and it’s done.”
“Thank you,” she said once again. “You may take me home.” She completed her dressing, donning her shoes.
The razor man extended his elbow. Startled by this bit of chivalry, Colene put her hand on it, and walked with him out of the building.
He drove her home. “Kid, you’re as gutsy as I’ve ever seen,” he said. “If you’re ever in bad trouble, ask for Slick. We’ll make a deal.”
“Thank you.” It seemed to be the only thing she was able to say now. She was riding on a high like none before. She had played her scene flawlessly, every part of it, and it had worked exactly as she had hoped. What a dream come true! It wasn’t just that she had won the key, it was that she had made one of her weird fantasies come true, and gotten away with it. She had liked stripping before those tough men, having them admire her body. Rape she did not like at all, but this had been showmanship. See, no touch. There was all the difference in the world.
He drew to a stop a block from her home. “You can walk from here. I’ll watch, then go.”
“Thank you.” She slid out.
“You got a nice little body,” he said as she closed the door. “Damn nice. Keep it clean, kid. Don’t mess with our kind if you don’t have to.”
“Thank you,” she said yet again, experiencing another thrill of pleasure. Then she walked away, knowing he was watching that body in motion. His name was Slick, as in slick-as-a-razor. She would remember.
THINGS were normal at home: Dad was out and Mom was drunk. Colene fixed herself a generous meal and bundled it up and took it out to the shed. If she was spending more time there now than she used to, nobody noticed. As long as she kept her grades up and stayed out of trouble, nobody cared. There had been a time when that bothered her.
She knocked, then entered. Darius had been snoozing; there really wasn’t much for him to do, as he had not made much progress learning to read her books.
She brought out the key and held it up.
He seemed almost afraid to touch it. But when he turned it over and saw the coding, he knew.
“Colene, I didn’t think you could do it!” he said, hugging her. “But you have! You have recovered the key! We can go to my reality!”
Now she was descending from her euphoria. She had not actually lost that much blood, but she had taken a phenomenal risk, and knew it. It had been her luck that Biff had been squeamish about letting his own blood, and that his criminal friends had had a sense of honor about a game played by their rules. In the letting of her own blood she had shown guts, not quite literally, and they had respected that. She knew that some killers had very conservative family lives and were kind to children. But some were otherwise. She had gambled that not only could she beat Biff, but that his friends would side with her. She had won, but she wouldn’t care to try it again.
Now she faced another gamble: that Darius wasn’t crazy or a con-man. Because either that key would work or it wouldn’t. And she knew it wouldn’t. Which meant that the lovely bubble would burst, and things would be back as they had been before.
She set down her bundle of food. “I think we’d better talk,” she said. She spread out the makings, and they began to eat.
“Yes, of course.” His actual speech was much more limited, but she liked to think of it as educated and courtly, and her fancy filled in the nuances. “I realize that it is a daunting decision, to leave your family and your entire Mode, without any guarantee that—”
“ ‘Snot that, Darius. I want to go. I love what you have described. I have nothing much to hold me here. And if you can’t marry me, but all the rest is real, well, I’ll be your lover instead. You’ve been up-front about that aspect. But there’s a problem.”
“You don’t believe me,” he said.
“I wish I could! But I just don’t.”
“When I take you there, you will believe. I will take you there now, if you wish. With the key—”
“Here’s the thing: suppose you take that key, and hold it to your head, and make your wish—and nothing happens? What then?”
“Colene, it will work. The same Chip that sent me here will bring me back. But as I said, you do not need to believe, because this is not a matter of faith. I will take you there, and then we shall discover whether you can multiply your joy, and—oh, I want so much to marry you!”