Rivas braced himself, holding the breath he'd taken, and waited while the cage shook and swung on the hook, and he told himself, Wait, just a few seconds more. They've got to haul this up out of the water in a moment. Wait. . . .
His lungs were working in his chest, trying to break the seal of his closed throat and inhale sea water, and again he felt his consciousness fading. Christ, he thought shrilly, you're about to pass out, man, you'll drown for sure, struggle to the top while you still can and hook an arm through the bars so that even if you do lose consciousness you'll be held up out of the water, do you want to die for afar-gone, who can't even see or think or feel gratitude, do you want to die for this absolutely minimum example of humanity?
He was bitterly disappointed in himself when he realized that he was not going to trade places with the boy. Good job, Greg, he thought—the man hires you to save Uri, and you lose your damn life saving a mindless, poisoned kid who's probably got only days to live at best, and who'll most likely die right now as soon as you pass out and let go of him.
Abruptly all the water rushed down past him with a racket of bubbling and the kid was suddenly far too heavy and the surface of the water swirled past his face and he was gasping air—and then his left arm buckled and the boy fell down onto him and Rivas's crushed right hand was jammed under the two of them and with a scream that only dogs could have heard he sprang away from consciousness like an arrow from a bow.
Rivas had for a while been dimly aware that he was lying on his back with a weight across his middle on a corrugated surface that, though uncomfortable, he couldn't be bothered to get up from. He didn't care what had awakened him, for he planned to sleep quite a while longer. It was still dark after all.
Some people were up and about, though. Somebody was even whistling.
Then a wet canvas was flapped away somewhere overhead and suddenly there was light beyond his closed eyelids. Without particularly noticing them, he was aware of the smells of beer, sweat and fish.
«Well!»
Rivas didn't open his eyes or move.
«Uh,» the voice went on, «this ain't Blood, in this one.»
«What's in there, then?» queried another voice irritably.
A finger touched Rivas's sea-chilled cheek. «It's . . . well, Joe, it's a couple of dead guys.»
«Dead guys.» Rivas heard a chair scrape on a floor. He kept his eyes shut and held his breath when clumping boots approached. If they think you're dead, he told himself, be dead. «Damn me, you're right. Jaybirds trying to escape, I guess. Hell! And we've paid for the stuff that was in here.»
«Can we get our money back?»
A pause followed, and then a disgusted exclamation as the boots moved away. «That'll take some considering. Whether we even ask or not, I mean. We could show 'em these two and say, see, these guys dumped the Blood and climbed in in its place, but that'd be awful damn close to admitting we know it's from the Holy City. It ain't just to keep the product cold that they use all the extra fuel it takes to drag these baskets on the outside of their boat—the main reason they do it that way is so guys like us can hook it and run real quick, without getting any kind of look inside their boat. And the stuff's in glass and metal so if there's any mix-up it'll just sink. They don't want rumors getting out about any connection between Irvine and Venice. No, I'm afraid we'll have to eat this loss. That or go asking to eat some bullets.»
«Dump 'em?»
There was a sigh. «I guess.»
«Out like with the garbage?»
«No point carrying 'em any distance, is there? What'd you want to do, say some prayers over 'em?»
Some gesture may have been the reply, but the next thing Rivas knew the battered metal basket was being noisly pushed across an uneven floor. He braced himself, wondering what the garbage arrangements consisted of around here.
They turned out to be primitive. The man kept pushing the basket across the floor until the bottom edge caught against the sill of a very low, open window, and the basket simply turned over and dumped its two occupants out.
Rivas found himself cartwheeling through empty air– the sensation reminding him of something—and then he impacted onto a slanted heap of rotting, feculent trash. As he rolled dizzily down the slope of broken wood, boxes and bad old food, he was sure that he and the boy were not the first bodies to be tossed here.
Dizzy and sick with the pain of his hand, Rivas simply lay for a while in sunlight at the foot of the garbage heap. When the pain had backed off a little he sat up, worked his arms and legs cautiously to see if anything had broken during his fall—nothing, it seemed, had—and then he looked around for the far-gone kid. He saw him off to the right, lying on his back. He was breathing.
Rivas looked at his own right hand. The fingers were swollen and black, and at least two of them seemed not to be attached to the hand very securely. Poor old hand, he thought sadly.
He looked around, ignoring the mildly interested stares of a couple of children who'd been digging in the trash. He was in a wide court with high foliage-topped brick walls, and an arch to his left showed a segment of old alley that someone had tried to brighten by painting a lot of vividly blue birds across the surface of it. Certainly seems to be Venice, he thought.
He got up and limped over to where the boy lay. The boy's eyes were open, staring straight up into the noon sun, and Rivas crouched to close them.
»New girls!» the boy exclaimed suddenly. «All right, gonna give 'em a treat, let 'em receive the sacrament from the Messiah himself, yes sir. . . .»
«Good afternoon, Sevatividam,» said Rivas wearily.
»And won't I touch them! Oh my, yes . . .» the boy said, and the contrast between the fatuous insinuation of the voice and the bony, wasted face it issued from was appalling.
«I've come to take one of them away from you.»
»Some pretties and some piggies,» the boy said judiciously.
«You know,» said Rivas hoarsely, leaning forward and bracing himself against the wall with his good hand, «I don't think I can kill people anymore. Animals, even.»
»The piggies I'lltouch with my finger.»
«But I believe I could kill you. I believe I'll try very hard to do that.»
As the boy's voice diminished into muttering about how tasty it would be, Rivas tried, one-handed, to pick him up. A week ago he might have been able to do it. After five minutes he gave up and stood up straight.
The two children had resumed digging around in the trash—their ancient shopping cart was half full of junk– and Rivas said, «Hey. Kids.»
They looked up warily, their eyes in the wide, unspecific focus of animals ready to bolt in any direction.
«Could you . . . keep an eye on my friend here for a few minutes?» He knew he might as well be making the request to a couple of the monkeys swinging around and screeching in the wall-top greenery, but he needed to make the gesture, needed to let the universe know that he wasn't ditching the boy.
The children stared at him, and one of them might have nodded before resuming the excavations.
«Thanks.» Rivas trudged to the arch and through it to the narrow alley outside. Tall houses, liberally scaffolded with wooden and iron balconies, leaned against each other in the sun, and to his right the alley was shaded by the rooftop connection of two old buildings, one on either side of the alley, that had bowed forward until their tops touched, like a couple of ragged old women exchanging gossip.