He could only watch the stasis creeping toward him, wavering into place in layer after layer of flesh. It was his worst possible future racing to meet him, and the crowd had been on its side all along. As he heard a murmur advancing down the tunnel from the direction of the unseen exit, he strained his ears to hear what it was saying about him. He was feeling almost calm—for how long, he couldn't predict—when words in an assortment of voices grew distinct. The message was past him before he succeeded in piecing it together. "Someone's collapsed in the middle of the tunnel. They're clearing the way for an ambulance."
"Bastard," Blythe snarled, not knowing if he meant the casualty or the crowd or the ambulance—and instantly knew he should mean none of them, because he was saved from the future he'd almost wished on himself. He began to shoulder his way forward. "Emergency. Make way, please. Make way," he was able to say more officiously, and when that failed to clear his route fast enough, "Let me through. I'm a doctor."
He mustn't let himself feel guilty. The ambulance was coming—he could see the far end of the tunnel beginning to turn blue and shiver—and so he was hardly putting the patient at risk. The ambulance was his only hope. Once he was close enough he would be injured, he would be however disabled he needed to seem in order to persuade the crew to take him out of the crowd. "I'm a doctor," he said louder, wishing he was and unmarried too, except that his life was controllable again, everything was under control. "I'm the doctor," he said, better yet, strong enough to part the flesh before him and to blot out the voices that were discussing him. Were they trying to confuse him by dodging ahead of him? They had to be echoes, because he identified the voice of the woman who'd pretended she had no phone. "What's he babbling about now?"
"He's telling everyone he's a doctor."
"I knew it. That's what they do when they're mad."
He needn't let her bother him; nobody around him seemed to hear her—maybe she was fishing for him with her voice. "I'm the doctor," he shouted, seeing the ambulance crawling toward him at the end of the visible stretch of tunnel. For a moment he thought it was crushing bruised people, exhaust fumes turning their pulse blue, against the walls, but of course they were edging out alongside it, making way. His shout had dislodged several voices from beneath the bleary sweat-stained lights. "What did she say he's saying, he's a doctor?"
"Maybe he wanted to examine your bum."
"I know the kind of consultation I'd like to have with him. It was a quack made my dad's ear worse."
Could the crowd around Blythe really not hear them, or was it pretending ignorance until it had him where it wanted him? Wasn't it parting for him more slowly than it should, and weren't its heads only just concealing its contempt for his imposture? The mocking voices settled toward him, thickening the heat which was putting on flesh all around him. He had to use one of the walkways. Now that he had to reach the ambulance as speedily as possible, he was entitled to use them. "I'm the doctor," he repeated fiercely, daring anyone to challenge him, and felt his left shoulder cleaving the saturated air. He'd almost reached the left-hand walkway when a leotarded woman whose muscles struck him as no more likely than her deep voice moved into his path. "Where are you trying to get to, dear?"
"Up behind you. Give me a hand, would you?" Even if she was a psychiatric nurse or warder, he had seniority. "I'm needed. I'm the doctor."
Only her mouth moved, and not much of that. "Nobody's allowed up there unless they work for the tunnel."
He had to climb up before the heat turned into sweaty voices again and trapped him. "I do. I am. There's been a collapse, the tunnel's made them collapse, and they need me."
He'd seen ventriloquists open their mouths wider. Her eyes weren't moving at all, though a drop of sweat was growing on her right eyelashes. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"That's all right, nurse. You aren't required to. Just give me a hand. Give me a leg up," Blythe said, and saw the drop swelling on her untroubled eyelid, swelling until he could see nothing else. If she was real she would blink, she wouldn't stare at him like that. The mass of flesh had made her out of itself to block his plan, but it had miscalculated. He flung himself at her, dug his fingers into her bristly scalp, and heaved himself up with all the force his arms could muster.
His heels almost caught her shoulders. They scraped down to her breasts, which gave them enough leverage for him to vault over her. His hands grabbed at the railing, caught it, held on. His feet found the edge of the walkway, and he hauled one leg over the railing, then the other. Below him the nurse was clutching her breasts and emitting a sound which, if it was intended as a cry of pain, failed to impress him. Perhaps it was a signal, because he'd taken only a few steps along the way to freedom when hands commenced trying to seize him.
At first he thought they meant to injure him so that the ambulance would take him, and then he saw how wrong he was. He had an unobstructed view of the ambulance as it rammed its way through the crowd, its blue light pounding like his head, the white arch flaring blue above it as he felt the inside of his skull flaring. There was no sign of anyone collapsed ahead. The ambulance had been sent for Blythe, of course; the message had been passed along that they'd succeeded in driving him crazy. But they couldn't conceal their opinion of him, hot oppressive breathless waves of which rose toward him and would have felt like shame if he hadn't realized how they'd given themselves away: they couldn't hold him in such contempt unless they knew more about him than they feigned to know. He kicked at the grasping fingers and glared about in search of a last hope. It was behind him. The woman with Lydia's hair had abandoned her pretense of having no phone, and he had only to grab the aerial.
He dashed back along the walkway, hanging onto the rail and kicking out at anyone within reach, though his feet so seldom made contact that he couldn't tell how many of the hands and heads were real. The woman who was still trying to convince him he'd injured her breasts flinched, which gratified him. She and the rest of the mob could move when they wanted to, they just hadn't done so for him. The beckoning aerial led his gaze to the face dangling from it. She was staring at him and talking so hard her mouth shaped every syllable. "Here he comes now," she mouthed.
She must be talking to the ambulance. Of course, she'd used the phone before to summon it, because she was another of the nurses. She'd better hand over the phone if she didn't want worse than he was supposed to have done to her colleague. "Here I come, all right," he yelled, and heard what sounded like the entire crowd, though perhaps only the tunnel that was his head, echoing him. As he ran the tunnel widened, carrying her farther from the walkway, too far for him to grab the aerial over the crowd. They thought they'd beaten him, but they were going to help him again. He vaulted the railing and ran across the mass of flesh.
It wasn't quite as solid as he had assumed, but it would do. The heat of its contempt streamed up at him, rebounding from the dank concrete of his skull. Was it contemptuous of what he was doing or of his failure to act when he could have? He had a sudden notion, so terrible it almost caused him to lose his footing, that when he raised the phone to his ear he would discover the woman had been talking to Valerie. It wasn't true, and only the heat was making him think it. Stepping-stones turned up to him and gave way underfoot—there went some teeth and there, to judge by its yielding, an eye—but he could still trample his way to the phone, however many hands snatched at him.