All Tomorrow's Parties

65. OPEN AIR

FONTAINE, wielding the ax now, reflects that he has lived quite a long time and yet this experience is new: to lift the heavy head above his own and bring it down against the shop's rear wall, the plywood booming. He's a little surprised at how it simply bounces off, but with his next swing he's reversed the head, so that the sharp, four-inch spike, rather than the blade, contacts the wall, and this digs most satisfyingly in, and on a third blow penetrates, and he redoubles his efforts.

'Need us some air, he says, as much to himself as to the two seated on his bunk, the gray-haired man and the boy with his head down, lost in the helmet again. To look at these two, you'd think there was no problem, that the bridge wasn't burning.

Where'd that hologram girl go?

Still, this chopping is getting somewhere, though his arms are already aching. Hole there the size of a saucer, and getting bigger.

No idea what he'll do when he's got it big enough, but he likes to keep busy.

And this is the way it always is, for Fontaine, when he knows that things are bad, very bad indeed, and very likely over. He likes to keep busy.