The Game of X: A Novel of Upmanship Espionage by Robert Sheckley Read Free Book Online Page B

the corridor. My rescuer was being kept busy.
    Beppo tried to pull the knife out. He got it halfway before he collapsed, almost knocking Dr. Jansen over.
    Jansen ducked back hurriedly to avoid him. He was still holding the pincers, and he was a little càreless. I managed to grab the free end. I yanked, pulling Jansen off balance before he could let go. As soon as he did, I swung hard with the pincers, hitting him across the ankles and knocking him down. I stretched out and grabbed him by the apron. He screamed and tried to pull away. His apron tore, and he began crawling out of my reach.
    I reversed the pincers, pulled the handles open and stabbed out. I caught Jansen’s left biceps between the big snapping-turtle jaws, and I brought the handles together.
    Jansen’s breath whistled out of him so fast that he didn’t have time to scream. He writhed around the axis of the pincers like a gaffed salmon, his free hand tearing at the immovable iron mouth. I applied a little more pressure. His face started to turn a yellowish gray. His eyes rolled back into their sockets, and his chin was covered with spittle.
    “Give me the key!” I shouted at him. “Give me the handcuff key, or I’ll squeeze your arm into a goddamn paste.”
    That was excessively melodramatic, of course; but I was using a psychological approach.
    He pulled the key out of his breast pocket and held it out to me. I started to reach for it, then remembered that we were separated by several feet of pincers. I pulled Jansen toward me, then dropped the pincers and took a grip on his throat “Unlock me,” I told him.
    He got the handcuffs off, and then unwound the chain from around my waist. I was free. I hit Dr. Jansen behind the ear with a loop of chain, and he went down hard and didn’t move.
    I stepped over Beppo and went up the staircase to the corridor. It was dark, and I couldn’t see anyone. I thought I heard footsteps to my left, so I turned right and began to run.
     
     

 
    10
     
     
    I ran down endless marble corridors, and I could hear my footsteps echo from the plaster ceilings. I passed rows of narrow medieval windows, and each of them was covered with a modern steel shutter. There were a lot of them, and I began to think I was running in circles. I had a stitch in my side and a cramp in my leg, but I kept on going. Then I found an unlocked door and I went through it into fog and salt air, and the slick round touch of cobblestones. I was outside.
    I was on an insignificant street that ran alongside a stagnant canal. To my left was the mouth of a dark alley, far ahead to my right was the halo of a street light. I was lost. Although I couldn’t be more than a few blocks from San Marco and the Riva degli Schiavoni, I didn’t know in which direction they lay. I turned right and began to pursue the street light.
    Venice is an extremely small city unless you want to get somewhere in a hurry. Then its dirty tangle of streets, canals and bridges clings to you like an outrageous old beggar. The city takes on insufferable airs. All of those ridiculous piazzas, small as postage stamps, yet each with five or seven threadlike streets radiating from it—and those endless calles, salizzadas, rios, fondamentas, molos—crossing and recrossing each other like courtiers in a minuet, eternally ready with the exquisite and unnecessary gesture. It is a provincial town pretending to be a metropolis; a superfluous and fantastical monument pretending to be real and necessary. … Go to Venice and look at the monuments, spend money, make love—those are its proper pursuits. But never try to save your life. The eccentric old city resents your practicality.
    I passed over a humpbacked little bridge and found myself in a concrete courtyard. Gaunt houses rose on all sides with their backs turned to me. Through their blank stucco walls I could hear the sound of television. When I stopped walking, I felt someone else stop.
    I moved quickly toward an alley between the