Virtual Light

19. Superball

Skinner-san?”

“Look at that brace there.”

Discolored blobs of puddled welding-rod held the thing together, but it looked sturdy enough. He counted the mismatched heads of nine screws. The diagonal brace itself seemed to be made up of thin metal shims, lashed together top and bottom with rusting twists of wire.

“I made that” Skinner said. “Those’re three sections of blade off a factory saw. Never did grind the teeth off. On top there.”

Yamazaki’s fingertips moved over hidden roughness.

“Shot, Scooter. Wouldn’t cut for shit. Why I used ’em.”

“I saw plastic?” Poising his wrists.

“Wait up. You start sawing on that crazy-goo, it isn’t gonna like it. Have to get through it quick or it’s gonna close up right down to the bone. I said wait…”

Yamazaki froze. He looked back.

“You’re too close to the center. You cut through there, you’ll have a ring around each wrist and the suckers’ll still close up. You want to go through as close to one side as possible, get over here and get the cutter on the other one before it does you. I’ll try to get this open…” He bumped the case with his toes. It rattled.

Yamazaki brought his face close to the red restraint. It had a faint, medicinal smell. He took a breath, set his teeth, and sawed furiously with his wrists. The thing began to shrink. Bands of iron, the pain hot and impossible. He remembered Loveless’s hand around his wrist.

“Do it” Skinner said.

The plastic parted with an absurdly loud pop, like some sound-effect in a child’s cartoon. He was free and, for an instant, the red band around his left wrist loosened, absorbing the rest of the mass.

“Scooter!”

It tightened. He scrambled for the toolkit, amazed to see it open, as Skinner kicked it over with his heel, spilling a hundred pieces of tooled metal.

“Blue handles!”

The bolt-cutter was long, clumsy, its handles wrapped in greasy blue tape. He saw the red band narrowing, starting to sink below the level of his flesh. Fumbled the cutter one-handed from the tangle, sank its jaws blindly into his wrist and brought all his weight down on the uppermost handle. A stab of pain. The detonation.

Skinner blew air out between his lips, a long low sound of relief. “You okay?”

Yamazaki looked at his wrists. There was a deep, bluish gouge in the left one. It was starting to bleed, but no more than he would have expected. The other had been scratched by the saw. He glanced around the floor, looking for the remains of the restraint.

“Do me” Skinner said. “But hook it under the plastic, okay? Try not to take a hunk out. And do the second one fast.”

Yamazaki tested the action of the cutter, knelt behind Skinner, slid one of the blades beneath the plastic around the old man’s right wrist. The skin translucent there, blotched and discolored, the veins swollen and twisted. The plastic parted easily, with that same ridiculous noise, instantly whipping itself around skinner’s other wrist, writhing like a live thing. He severed it before it could tighten, but this time, with the cartoon pop, it simply vanished.

Yamazaki stared at the space where the restraint had been.

“Katey bar the door!” Skinner roared.

“What?”

“Lock the fucking hatch!”

Yamazaki scrambled across the floor on hands and knees, dropped the hatch into place, and bolted it with a flat device of dull bronze, something that might once have been part of a ship. “The girl” he said, looking back at Skinner.

“She can knock” Skinner said. “You want that dickhead with the gun back in here?”

Yamazaki didn’t. He looked up at the ceiling-hatch, the one that opened onto the roof. Open now.

“Go up there and look for the ’mo.”

“Skinner-san? Pardon?”

“Big fag buddy. The black one, right?”

Not knowing what or whom Skinner was talking about, Yamazaki climbed the ladder. A gust of wind threw rain into his face as he thrust his head up through the opening. He had the sudden intense conviction that he was high atop some ancient ship, some black iron schooner drifting derelict on darkened seas, its plastic sails shredded and its crew mad or dead, with Skinner its demented captain, shouting orders from his cell below.

“There is nobody here, Skinner-san!”

The rain came down in an explosive sheet, hiding the lights of the city.

Yamazaki withdrew his head, feeling for the hatch, and closed it above him. He fastened the catch, wishing it were made of stronger stuff.

He descended the ladder.

Skinner was on his feet now, swaying toward his bed. “Shit” he said, “somebody’s broken my tv.” He toppled forward onto the mattress.

“Skinner?”

Yamazaki knelt beside the bed. Skinner’s eyes were closed, his breath shallow and rapid. His left hand came up, fingers spread, and scratched fitfully at the tangled thatch of white hair at the open collar of his threadbare flannel shirt.

Yamazaki smelled the sour tang of urine above the acrid edge of whatever explosive had propelled Loveless’s bullet. He looked at Skinner’s jeans, blue gone gray with wear, wrinkles sculpted permanently, shining faintly with grease, and saw that Skinner had wet himself.

He stood there for several minutes, uncertain of what he should do. Finally he took a seat on the paint-splattered stool beside the little table where he had so recently been a prisoner. He ran his fingertips over the teeth of the saw blades. Looking down, he noticed a neat red sphere. It lay on the floor beside his left foot.

He picked it up. A glossy marble of scarlet plastic, cool and slightly yielding. One of the restraints, either his or Skinner’s.

He sat there, watching Skinner and listening to the bridge groan in the storm, a strange music emerging from the bundled cables. He wanted to press his ear against them, but some fear he couldn’t name held him from it.

Skinner woke once, or seemed to, and struggled to sit up, calling, Yamazaki thought, for the girl.

“She isn’t here” Yamazaki said, his hand on Skinner’s shoulder. “Don’t you remember?”

“Hasn’t been” Skinner said. “Twenty, thirty years. Motherfucker. Time.”

“Skinner?”

“Time. That’s the total fucking mother fucker, isn’t it?”

Yamazaki held the red sphere before the old man’s eyes. “Look, Skinner. See what it became?”

“Superball” Skinner said.

“Skinner-san?”

“You go and fucking bounce it, Scooter.” He closed his eyes. “Bounce it high…”