Bastard thought I was a fucking miracle worker.

He had the door open and he was crouching on his haunches, because even he'd got enough sense to know that if I were going to climb back into this train I'd need some help. You can't expect anyone to hang on and go on hanging on with the shimmering light and the scent of roses, till you can't. Wake up.

What? Yes. Nearly lost it all.

Dangerous, this is very dangerous, we- I don't want to the.

Shuddup.

'Come on,' he said, and I took another look upwards with the air-rush tearing at my eyes and the stink of the coal-smoke bitter-sweet in my lungs. He still had the gun on me but his knee was hooked against the edge of the doorway to keep him stable and he was reaching down with his free hand. I thought of taking hold of it but couldn't manage that: it would be too personal, like a handshake, too intimate within the context of kill or be killed. It would pay him to take my hand and pull me to safety but it would also pay him later to shoot aminazin or sulfazin into my veins and blow the last vestige of sanity out of my skull.

You're no friend of mine.

'Take my hand.'

Not bloody likely, you've probably got the pox.

He was reaching down but I wouldn't cooperate so he got fed up and took hold of my jacket and I let him get the top part of my body across the doorway with my face against the floor and the smell of linoleum and ancient tobacco stains in my nostrils and then I dragged back enough of my consciousness to work things out because we couldn't go on like this, it was bloody humiliating.

I could feel the relative warmth of the compartment against my head and shoulders and it brought back a feeling of life, a small flame that began flickering through the veins and the nervous system and working on this half-stiffened carcass and bringing some kind of rational thought back into the mind. I began noting things: the bulk of the Lithuanian still crouched on his haunches; the trembling of the floor as the train rocked on its way through the snows; the uncertain light from the bulbs in the ceiling as they blinked to a faulty contact; the ring of steel pressed against my temple and the smell of gun oil.

'Make an effort,' he said.

Rather formal, that. He could have said come on you bastard I haven't got all day, or something equally rude. He was quite educated, quite a gentleman, but frankly, you know, when someone's digging your grave for you it doesn't make any difference if he's a gentleman or an absolute shit.

'You know what this is?' The ring of steel pressed harder.

'Gun.'

I suppose he was testing me to see how far gone I was.

'Get a grip on that seat,' he said.

I could see the edge of it from where I was lying with my face still against the floor. I reached up and got a hold with my fingers below the cushion and realized that full consciousness was back in my head now and my body was losing its numbness in the warmth of the compartment. I didn't know how much time had gone by since I'd dropped from the window but it was probably a good three or four minutes. That was important, because this man was in a hurry to get me phased out in some way and shoved under the seat. Or he might rely on the gun and order me to sit beside him with the thing against my ribs and make some kind of plausible conversation when people went past along the corridor, we've had a rotten grain crop again, you know what that means, we'll have to buy it from those bloody Americans.

I got it half right and that was dangerous because it left the gun flat against the side of my head and if he pulled the trigger he'd probably blow my shoulder off but at least I'd made a start and he hadn't been ready for it — I'd swung my arm up in a sweeping forearm block and that had paralysed his arm and got the muzzle of the gun away from my temple but there was a lot to do yet if I wanted to survive and I wasn't at all certain I could muster enough strength out of a half-frozen body. He wasn't saving anything, wasn't trying to warn me. I suppose he was enough of a pro to know there wouldn't be any point in talking: the situation wasn't very complex and he knew I understood that unless I could do something effective I'd either finish up with my head blown off or he'd pitch me out of the train and deal with things that way.

We were in a lock at the moment, like two wrestlers. He was a strong man and he was above me and he had the gun but the face of my sensei had come into my mind and his image was floating there as he lent me his spirit, his ki, so that I was able to stop thinking about what had to be done and concentrate instead on how to do it, which moves to make, which muscle groups to call into action, which angles and surfaces and hand-holds would be best for me if I could find them and use them. There was for instance the strap of the window touching the fingers of my left hand, and I thought about it, picturing the inside of the compartment until I could identify the strap and decide whether it would help me.

My arm was still across his throat and his neck was arched back with his head against the door-hinge but I couldn't increase the pressure enough to block his windpipe because he knew where the danger was: the throat is the primary killing area at close quarters for three very good reasons and he knew what they were. I couldn't increase the pressure there but I had to maintain it because he was waiting for me to slacken off and lose the initiative and then he would move his right hand and fix on the target again and squeeze his index finger and send a 200-grain hollow-point projectile into my skull and through the soft grey convolutions of my brain at 1500 feet per second and I didn't want him to do that.

He'd shut the inside door of the compartment after him when he'd come in here and when the train hit the tunnel it slammed a gust of stinking air across us and blocked the eardrums as the tumult of the wheels built up against the tunnel wall and produced a long sustained roaring that shut down a certain degree of consciousness while the brain tried to accept what was going on and reassure the emotions.

For the moment I couldn't do anything but keep him where he was and it wouldn't be long before muscle fatigue set in and he made a move and caught me by surprise and finished me off so I began trying to work something out, using the tactile data that was available. He had a choice, of course, and we both understood what it was: if he couldn't put a bullet somewhere conclusive he would have to push me bodily off the train; and as I thought about it I became gradually aware that the tactile information coming in confirmed it. He'd started to ease the pressure of the gun against my head and transfer it to my left arm. If he could break my arm or paralyse it at the median or the radial nerve it would release my fingers from the edge of the seat and I would fall backwards through the open doorway and he'd have time to put the bullet in to make sure.

I began putting pressure the other way to see if I were right and I was: he reacted at once, increasing his own. It was like a silent conversation going on, not terribly civil but perfectly articulate; we were equally experienced at clinging to life and there wasn't likely to be anything more than luck involved when we reached the conclusion; meanwhile our two heads were within twelve inches of each other and inside them there was going on this telepathic dialogue, so explicit that each of us had started anticipating the other's next move.

The train was still in the tunnel and I was shallow-breathing again because the compartment was thick with smoke and my eyes were streaming the whole time. The muscles in my right forearm were beginning to feel the fatigue of keeping up a constant pressure and when I took it off and clawed for his eyes we both shifted to the shock of the sudden movement and I felt the gun swinging across my temple and waited for the noise and found my right arm free and smashed the elbow against his face but missed and grazed his head and felt the whole of my weight falling backwards until I found one of his eyes with my fingers and used a gouge and sent him hard against the seat as he tried to stop me. I thought he was screaming but it was the locomotive — the sound came shrilling along the tunnel like a cry of pain.