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of
nausea inside him, and he almost lost consciousness. Everything had gone
black. For an instant he was insane, a screaming animal. Yet he came out of
the blackness clutching an idea. There was one and only one way to save
himself. He must interpose another human being, the body of another human
being, between himself and the rats.
The circle of the mask was large enough now to shut out the vision of
anything else. The wire door was a couple of hand-spans from his face. The
rats knew what was coming now. One of them was leaping up and down, the
other, an old scaly grandfather of the sewers, stood up, with his pink
hands against the bars, and fiercely sniffed the air. Winston could see the
whiskers and the yellow teeth. Again the black panic took hold of him. He
was blind, helpless, mindless.
'It was a common punishment in Imperial China,' said O'Brien as
didactically as ever.
The mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his cheek. And then
-- no, it was not relief, only hope, a tiny fragment of hope. Too late,
perhaps too late. But he had suddenly understood that in the whole world
there was just one person to whom he could transfer his punishment -- one
body that he could thrust between himself and the rats. And he was shouting
frantically, over and over.
'Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don't care what you
do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not
me!'
He was falling backwards, into enormous depths, away from the rats. He
was still strapped in the chair, but he had fallen through the floor,
through the walls of the building, through the earth, through the oceans,
throug


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