“I don’t know,” said Stone. “How can we be sure?”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” said Wood.
They both laughed.
“Feeling better now, sir?” asked Stone.
“I guess.”
“So why don’t you tell us what happened this evening, sir?”
“We did some tourist stuff. Went to the House on the Rock. Went out for some food. You know the rest.”
Stone sighed, heavily. Wood shook his head, as if disappointed, and kicked Shadow in the kneecap. The pain was excruciating. Then Wood pushed a fist slowly into Shadow’s back, just above the right kidney, and knuckled it, hard, and the pain was worse than the pain in Shadow’s knee.
I’m bigger than either of them, he thought. I can take them. But they were armed; and even if he—somehow—killed or subdued them both, he’d still be locked in the cell with them. (But he’d have a gun. He’d have two guns.) (No.)
Wood was keeping his hands away from Shadow’s face. No marks. Nothing permanent: just fists and feet on his torso and knees. It hurt, and Shadow clutched the Liberty dollar tight in the palm of his hand, and waited for it to be over.
And after far too long a time the beating ended.
“We’ll see you in a couple of hours, sir,” said Stone. “You know, Woody really hated to have to do that. We’re reasonable men. Like I said, we are the good guys. You’re on the wrong side. Meantime, why don’t you try to get a little sleep?”
“You better start taking us seriously,” said Wood.
“Woody’s got a point there, sir,” said Stone. “Think about it.”
The door slammed closed behind them. Shadow wondered if they would turn out the light, but they didn’t, and it blazed into the room like a cold eye. Shadow crawled across the floor to the yellow foam-rubber pad and climbed onto it, pulling the thin blanket over himself, and he closed his eyes, and he held onto nothing, and he held onto dreams.
Time passed.
He was fifteen again, and his mother was dying, and she was trying to tell him something very important, and he couldn’t understand her. He moved in his sleep and a shaft of pain moved him from half-sleep to half-waking, and he winced.
Shadow shivered under the thin blanket. His right arm covered his eyes, blocking out the light of the bulb. He wondered whether Wednesday and the others were still at liberty, if they were even still alive. He hoped that they were.
The silver dollar remained cold in his left hand. He could feel it there, as it had been during the beating. He wondered idly why it did not warm to his body temperature. Half asleep, now, and half delirious, the coin, and the idea of Liberty, and the moon, and Zorya Polunochnaya somehow became intertwined in one woven beam of silver light that shone from the depths to the heavens, and he rode the silver beam up and away from the pain and the heartache and the fear, away from the pain and, blessedly, back into dreams . . .
From far away he could hear some kind of noise, but it was too late to think about it: he belonged to sleep now.
A half-thought: he hoped it was not people coming to wake him up, to hit him or to shout at him. And then, he noticed with pleasure, he was really asleep, and no longer cold.
Somebody somewhere was calling for help, loudly, in his dream or out of it.
Shadow rolled over on the foam rubber, in his sleep, finding new places that hurt as he rolled.
Someone was shaking his shoulder.
He wanted to ask them not to wake him, to let him sleep and leave him be, but it came out as a grunt.
“Puppy?” said Laura. “You have to wake up. Please wake up, hon.”
And there was a moment’s gentle relief. He had had such a strange dream, of prisons and con men and down-at-heel gods, and now Laura was waking him to tell him it was time for work, and perhaps there would be time enough before work to steal some coffee and a kiss, or more than a kiss; and he put out his hand to touch her.
Her flesh was cold as ice, and sticky.
Shadow opened his eyes.
“Where did all the blood come from?” he asked.