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There was a thu sound, like that of a ha, falsely patient, on a blackboard The tapping pounded at his sleeping brain He stirred on the bed, rolling over on his back with a fitful toss of arms Thump-thump-thump

He moaned At his sides, his hands raised up a trifle, then dropped again Thuroaned irritably, still not fully conscious

Then the water drop burst across his face

Gagging and coughing, he reared up on the sponge, hearing a loud squishing noise Another drop splashed off his shoulder

"What!" His brain struggling to orient itself, his wide-eyed, startled gaze fled around the darkness Thu at a door; it was a one He felt his chest jerk with staggering heartbeats "Good God," he e

They landed in lukeater

He jerked his legs back with a gasp Overhead the noise seeht in his throat What in God’s nas over the side of the bed again and let theid hands cla inside a fiercely beaten drue of the box top He slipped on the water-slick surface, crying out as his right knee banged down on the ceain

"Damn it!" he screa Frantic, he braced his feet and, reaching up, lifted the box-top edge and ducked out under it He slipped again, crashing down on an elbow Pain knifed up his arm He started up A drop of water slaain He twisted over like a fish and saw the water heater leaking

"Oh,at the pain in his knee and elbow He stood up, watching great drops splatter off the box top and cement The water ran warmly across his ankles; there was a e of the block, splashing on the cellar floor

For a longwater, feeling the robe cling warm and wet to his body

Then he cried out suddenly "The crackers"

He lunged at the box top again, sliding and struggling for balance He lifted the top and carried it over the bed, feet al out fro hi water burst out fro the package up, it was so water-logged Face ith frightened anger, he tore it open, the soggy paper parting like tissue in his hands

He stared at the water-soaked cracker bits ether into an ashen paste He picked up a handful and felt the sodden drag of it, like day-old porridge

With a curse he flung the dripping e of the block and splattered into a hundred pale scraps on the floor

He knelt there on the sponge, oblivious now of the water that poured around and over him His eyes were fastened to the pile of cru line

"What’s the use?" he muttered His fists snapped shut like jaws "What’s the use?" A water drop fell in front of hi balance and toppling over, face first, on the sponge Water flooded from the compressed honeycomb

He jolted to his feet on the block, hard with fury

"You’re not going to beat htest idea to whoether and it was defiance and a challenge that he hurled "You’re not going to beat y cracker and carried it up to the dry safety of the first black ood are soaked crackers? asked his brain They’ll dry he answered They’ll rot first, said his brain Shut up! he answered

He yelled it "Shut up!" God! he thought He flung a cracker snowball at the water heater and it spatted off theseemed hilarious, hi ankle-deep in lukeater and throwing soggy cracker balls at a water heater He threw back his head and laughed loudly He sat down in the ater and slapped his paleysers of it across himself He pulled off his robe and rolled around in the ater A bath, he thought I’ot up and dried hie Then he squeezed the water fro it up to dry My throat is sore, he told himself So what? he said It’ll have to wait its turn

He didn’t knohy he felt so exhilarated and stupidly auessed, that when things got so bad they were absurd, you couldn’t take theined that if the spider cah at it

He ripped up the handkerchief with teeth, nails, and hands, andup the sides as he had done with the other robe He put it on hastily He had to get over to the sewing box Picking up the heavy pin, he threw it to the floor, then climbed down the cement block and retrieved it I’ll have to find another sleeping place now, he thought It was areat cliff face after that slice of dry bread That was aed across the floor toward the carton, sunlight streah the s over him It was like the time after he’d broken the contract There were all the bills, the pitiless insecurity, the probleo back to work He’d begged Marty, and Marty had reluctantly agreed But it hadn’t worked It had got worse and worse until one day Therese had seen hi to climb onto a chair and had picked him up like a boy and set hi to Marty’s office; but before he could say a word Marty had shoved a letter across the desk at him It had been from the Veterans Administration The GI loan had been turned down

And that afternoon, driving hoone flat a second time, half a block frohter, so hysterical that he’d fallen off his special seat, bounced off the regular one, and landed in a laughter-twitching heap on the floor boards It was the way Self defence; a mechanism the brain devised to protect itself frohtly

When he reached the carton, he cli in there for hi box and found a sth in hih the opening

He rolled the thishead, the pin stuck through his handkerchief robe and scraping behind hiht first of trying to lift the thimble to the top of the cement block, then realized it was ainst the base of the block, where the torrent of water quickly filled it

The water was a little dirty, but that didn’t matter He picked up palmfuls of it and washed his face It was a luxury he’d not experienced for many months He wished he could shave off his thick beard, too; that would really feel good The pin? No, that wouldn’t work

He drank soood Well, it would cool Noouldn’t have to clied to drag the thimble a little bit away fro surface still itself Then, propping the pin against the side of the thith to the lip There, amidst the faint spray, he looked into the runted Truly, it was remarkable Small, yes, a particled fraction of its forreen eyes, the same dark-brown hair, the same broad taper of nose, the sari a ti on the He would be a poor testier at his face It was unusually calm for the face of a le life, despite physical danger, was a relaxing one Surely it was free of the petty grievances, the disparate values of society It was si pressures Responsibility in the jungle world was pared to the bone of basic survival There were no political connivings necessary, no financial arenas to struggle in, no nerve-knotting races for superior rungs on the social ladder There was only to be or not to be

He ruffled the water with a hand Begone, face, he thought, youin this cellar life That he had once been called handsome seemed stupid He was alone, with no one to please or cater to or like because it was expedient

He let hi spray from his face, that he still loved Louise It was a final standard To love soot from that person; that was love

He had justback to the water heater when there ca carpet of sunlight flung across the floor A giant ca down the cellar steps

Paralysis locked hi up at theshoes raised higher than his head, then sla the floor beneath hi petrifaction; seeing thedespite numb terror that he had once been that very size hiiant’s approach

Then thought and iasp he sprinted toward the edge of the engulfing shadow The floor shook harder; he heard the bat squeak of gigantic shoes about to ed another yard, then dived headlong toward the light, ar on his shoulder to break the fall The vast shoe, like a whale leaping, slaiant stopped Fro as a seven-story building, then billowed out its black shadow like a spreading pool as it crouched before the water heater Scott ran, splashing, around its right shoe, the top of his head level with the lip of the sole Standing beside the cement block, he peered up at the colossus

Far up, so far he had to squint to see, was its face: nose like a precipitous slope that he could ski on; nostrils and ears like caves into which he could climb; hair a forest he could lose hirimaced suddenly) he could slide an arht of hih, lashes like dark, curling sabers He stared iant That hat Lou looked like now, ers as thick as redwood trees, feet like elephants that never were, breasts like pliant, hill-peaked pyraelatin of tears It had never struck hi her, his own physique the norined her as so it wasn’t so Now he knew it coht that crushed allsilently, not even caring when the giant picked up his sponge and, with a dinosaur grunt, tossed it aside Moods had co panic to ain He stood by the block watching the giant remove the skyscraper side of the water heater and set it aside to poke the screw driver into the heater’s belly

A cold wind fogged across him then and his head snapped around so quickly it sent painful twinges down his neck The door!

"Oh, my God," he muttered, astonished at his own stupidity To stand here in disconsolate gloo

He al lurch, he realized that the giantconscious only of sure, he backed along the side of the block until he reached the wall Then, turning, he raced along its base to the great shadow of the fuel tank Eyes still on the giant, he ran underneath the tank, past the fifty strides of the ladder, under the redat all when the oil burner flared once iant tapped and probed at the machinery of the water heater Scott reached the foot of the steps

The first one loomed fifty feet above hi up its sheer face at the sunlight pouring overhead like a golden canopy It was still early , then; the back of the house faced east

Abruptly he ran along the block-long distance of the step, looking for a place to clie at the far right end wherea three-sided chimney about the thickness of his body He’d have to cliid between back and sandal botto tension It was a terribly difficult way, and there were seven steps to the back yard Seven fifty-foot faces to climb If he were exhausted after the first one

The thread It ht help He ran back to the wicker table and shook loose the bar fro in front of the heater, then ran back to the step, dragging the thick thread behind hi the bar up But it wouldn’t reach the top of the step, and even if he could throw it that high, there wasn’t likely to be any niche for it to catch in He dragged the thread to the three-sided chiht for a crevice in which he e the bar There was none

He threw the bar down and half walking, half running,the base of the steps He turned like a trapped aniain There had to be a way He’d been waiting for this opportunity forfor someone to open that vast door so he could climb to freedom

But he was so small "No, no" He wouldn’t let himself think about that There was a way; there alas a way No matter how difficult, there alas a way He had to believe that Nervously he cast another glance back at the crouching giant How long would he stay there? Hours? Minutes?

There was no tiain, Scott raced across the floor, shivering in the wind He should have put on the heavier robe But there had been no time Besides, it was probably still wet The thiiant’s monstrous feet had knocked it over, perhaps even crushed it