Simultaneously, I realized the unnatural source of my discomfort. It would require a superfluity of naivete not to.
My furry little enemy was broadcasting the sensation, trying to create an acrophobic attitude, succeeding.
But some things must go beyond the physical, the somatopsychic. At least, those small shreds of mysticism which make up the only religion I know kept insisting it wasn’t all that simple to turn love into hate, passion to fear, to overcome the will of a lifetime with the irrationality of a moment.
I beat my fist against the beam, I gnawed at my lip. I was scared. Me. Fred Cassidy. Scared to climb it.
=Falling, falling … Not the drifting of a leaf or a stray bit of paper, but the plummeting of a heavy body … The only interference, perhaps, the bars of our cage … A bloody print here, there … That is the only statement you may record on your passage down … As from the trees where your not-so-distant ancestors clung, fearfully-=
I saw it then. It had just given me what I needed, what I had been groping for while trying to bear the assault: an object outside myself on which I could focus my attention fully. It had allowed a patronizing attitude toward the whole human race to slip through just then. Sibla had irritated me with a touch of the same sentiment back at Merimee’s place. It was all that I needed.
I allowed myself to get mad as hell. I encouraged it, stoked it.
“All right,” I said. “Those same ancestors used to poke things like you off limbs just for laughs-to watch you spit and fall, to see whether you always landed on your feet. It’s an old game. Hasn’t been played properly in ages. I am about to revive it, in the name of my fathers. Behold the riant anthropoid, beware its crooked thumbs!”
I seized the beam and pulled myself up.
It backed up, paused, advanced, paused again. I felt a growing elation at its indecisiveness, a sense of triumph over the halting of the bombing of my mind. When I reached its level I ducked my head low and thrust both hands up onto the girder far enough apart so that whichever got clawed the other would still be sufficient for support.
It made as if to attack, apparently thought better of it, then turned and ran.
I pulled myself up. I stood.
I watched it scamper away, not halting until it was on the opposite side of the square of steel we held. Then I moved to the nearest corner and it moved to the farthest corner. I started up the next side. It started down the opposite side. I halted. It halted. We stared at each other.
“Okay,” I said, taking out a cigarette and lighting it “With a stalemate you lose, you know. Those folks below aren’t just sitting on their hands. They’re calling for assistance. Every route down will be covered before long. I’m betting someone will be by soon in a chopper, too-with a mercy gun with infra-red sights. I have always understood it to be a little better thing to surrender than to resist arrest when you are in trouble. I am a bona fide representative of both my country’s State Department and the United Nations. Choose whichever one you prefer. I-“
“Very well,” the thought came into my mind. “I will surrender to you in your capacity as a State Department employee.”
It immediately moved to the next corner, turned there and advanced along that side at a steady pace. I turned back, moving toward the corner I had recently quit. It reached that point before I did, however, turned and continued on toward me.
“Hold it right there,” I said, “and consider yourself in custody.”
Instead, it bounded forward and sprang toward me, my mind instantly filling with something which, when supplied with words, came through, roughly, as “It is (satisfying / noble) to die with your (teeth / claws) (in / at) the (throat / heart) of the enemy of (nest / totem / civilization)! Die, nestmolester!”
My hand had shot forward just as it was springing, and for want of any other weapon I had flipped my cigarette into its face.