She spat her denial and advanced the knife so that it touched his shirt.
Phil didn't budge. "You're going to let me go past," he repeated softly, "because you're not sure any more that being cruel and smart, and if need be deadly, is the right way to face the world. You're not sure any more that the approval of your gang is the only thing that matters. Incidentally, it's a pretty grudging approval, Mitzie, something you've had to sit up and do tricks for like that other dumb pooch, and your comradeship with them isn't at all the romantic, until death, one for all and all for one thing you pretend it is. But I haven't the time to tell you any more about that now, because I've got my business and I've got to get on with it."
"Get back," she snarled. But Phil, although the knife now pricked his chest, knew it was no longer a command but a plea.
"I'm going past now, Mitzie," Phil murmured and walked ahead into the knife. For about two feet it drew back at exactly the same speed with which he walked into it, then it was whipped suddenly to one side, and as he passed Mitzie he caught the choked off beginning of a sob.
Neither of them made another sound. He looked back once and saw her profile in the light from the big room, and the slack line of her shoulder and the arm holding the knife. Often faces look unexpectedly weak in profile, but Phil felt he'd never seen one that also looked so tragically lost.
Its image haunted him as the curving corridor grew darker and then lighter again and then made a very sharp turn and unexpectedly emerged into a long, richly furnished room. He blundered a step forward before he saw there were three people at the far end and that one of them was Moe Brimstine. They weren't looking his way and he could have ducked back out of sight easily enough, but he hurried it too much and brushed against a slim pillar topped by a small aquarium in which tiny pink, green and violet octopuses clung and swam. The pillar teetered dangerously. Stumbling as he grabbed to steady it, he fell out into the room with it and thudded into the foam flooring, as the water and the candy colored octopuses gushed all over.
XI
After a couple of seconds Phil decided regretfully that keeping himself scrunched against the yielding floor with both eyes tightly closed was not going to help. He opened them cautiously, blinked at the flooring, and tried to nerve himself to look up. Meanwhile:
"Brimstine, what's keeping that FBL man?"