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By Root 176 0

the pipe, the light still on, burning out an hour later. Patrick swims in darkness, just the pull of the water to guide him, clenching and releasing like that fist Caravaggio imagines, but banging his legs and hands against the sides of the pipe, doing this so often they are already bleeding from the blows and scrapes. Grease moves from his hair down his cheeks into his mouth. Most of all his body fears no air if the tank runs out, and the danger of silence among the pumps a mile away so he will suddenly move only at human speed. These fears are greater than the fear of no light or the remembered nightmare where he embraces the lost corpse. So his body, moving without thought, listens for silence. If the pumps stop, Caravaggio has told him to dynamite the pipe and climb out, leap from the water and yell. He will be there. But both know there is little chance of climbing out of that gashed metal while the whole lake pours in.

The searchlights from the filtration plant glance over the water. Now Caravaggio has to leave Patrick. He changes direction and rows towards Kew Beach a half-mile further west. The lights of the amusement park are slowly being turned off, past midnight. The outline of the Ferris wheel disappears.

Patrick swallows the first flutter of the dying tank.

He heaves faster along with the current and he takes deeper breaths from the tank. In the middle of the third breath he crashes against bars. He is almost there. Gasping, the mouthpiece dry, empty, torn out of his mouth. He is almost there with an empty tank. Now he needs the light. He slips off the tank, an arm painful from the crash, and dives through the bars and swings up, no air in him, no light, up into the brick of the well, avoiding the suction of the side-screens built into the walls. If these catch his body fully the suction can hold him and never release him. He swims up by feel till he reaches the barrier screen. Thinking where should he go, down again? How to get up further? For precious seconds, his chest vacuumed and almost imploding before he realizes he is in air. His shoulders and head and forearms are in the delicious air. This is the screen he is supposed to cut himself through. He can breathe if he opens his mouth. He is in the natural air of the waterworks.

He hangs, his fingers hooked through the wires of the screen, everything below his waist in water. The wire-cutters must have fallen in the crash against the bars or when he unstrapped the tank. For a while he doesn’t care. He has air now. He knows he can never fight his way back against the current, down to the foot of the well. He is caught.

He hangs from one arm. A very small explosion to dislodge the firmly rivetted screen and he will be out. He has five detonators. Sacrifice one location. How small an explosion can someone make? He attaches a blasting cap to the screen with a clip fuse, sets it off, and dives down as far as he can go. He does not hear the sound at all, he is just picked up and flung hard against the brick and then sucked upwards in a hunched ball with the water towards the buckled screen so his back and face are lacerated. Then he falls back down. There has been no sound for him, just movement, sideways and up, skin coming off his cheek and his back. There was, he remembers, temporary light. He can taste blood if he puts his tongue outside his mouth. And he can taste blood which comes down his nose through the roof of his mouth.

Patrick climbs out of the well and stands on the floor of the screen room among the grey machines, touching them to see if any are hot, a faint light from the main pumping station coming through a high window. He begins unwrapping the sticks of dynamite from his body and lays them in a row on the floor. Finding some cloth he wipes them dry. He removes from his pockets fuses, crimpers, timers, and detonator caps, which are wrapped in oil cloth. He unwinds the electrical wire and begins to assemble the blasting-box and plunger.

Stripping completely naked he squeezes the water out of his clothes and lays his shirt and pants against