The Waste Lands (Page 125)
“Come on,” the woman said. “I want to be done with you.” “The feeling’s mutual,” Eddie replied.
But before she and Jeeves led them away, the woman did something which made Eddie repent a little of his hard thoughts: knelt, brushed back the hair of the man in the kilt, and placed a kiss on his dirty cheek. “Goodbye, Winston,” she said. “Wait for me where the trees clear and the water’s sweet. I’ll come to ye, ay, as sure as dawn makes shadows run west.” “I didn’t want to kill him,” Susannah said. “I want you to know that. But I wanted to die even less.”
“Ay.” The face that turned toward Susannah was stem and tearless. “But if ye mean to enter Blaine’s cradle, ye’ll die anyway. And the chances are that ye’ll die envying poor old Winston. He’s cruel, is Blaine. The crudest of all demons in this cruel, cruel place.”
“Come on, Maud,” Jeeves said, and helped her up. “Ay. Let’s finish with them.” She surveyed Susannah and Eddie again, her eyes stem but somehow confused, as well. “Gods curse my eyes that they should ever have happened on you two in the first place. And gods curse the guns ye carry, as well, for they were always the springhead of our troubles.”
And with that attitude, Susannah thought, your troubles are going to last at least a thousand years, sugar.
Maud set a rapid pace along The Street of the Turtle. Jeeves trotted beside her. Eddie, who was pushing Susannah in the wheelchair, was soon panting and struggling to keep up. The palatial buildings which lined their way spread out until they resembled ivy-covered country houses on huge, run-to-riot lawns, and Eddie realized they had entered what had once been a very ritzy neighborhood indeed. Ahead of them, one building loomed above all others. It was a deceptively simple square construction of white stone blocks, its overhanging roof supported by many pillars. Eddie thought again of the gladiator movies he’d so enjoyed as a kid. Susannah, educated in more formal schools, was reminded of the Par-thenon. Both saw and marvelled at the gorgeously sculpted bestiary— Bear and Turtle, Fish and Rat, Horse and Dog—which ringed the top of the building in two-by-two parade, and understood it was the place they had come to find. That uneasy sensation that they were being watched by many eyes— eyes filled equally with hate and wonder—never left them. Thunder boomed as they came in sight of the monorail track; like the storm, the track came sweeping in from the south, joined The Street of the Turtle, and ran straight on toward the Cradle of Lud. And as they neared it, ancient bodies began to twist and dance in the strengthening wind on either side of them.
AFTER THEY HAD RUN for God knew how long (all Jake knew for sure was that the drums had stopped again), Gasher once more yanked him to a stop. This time Jake managed to keep his feet. He had gotten his second wind. Gasher, who would never see eleven again, had not.
“Hoo! My old pump’s doing nip-ups, sweetie.” “Too bad,” Jake said unfeelingly, then stumbled backward as Gasher’s gnarled hand connected with the side of his face. “Yar, you’d cry a bitter tear if I dropped dead right here, woontcher? Too likely! But no such luck, my fine young squint—old Gasher’s seen em come and seen em go, and I wasn’t born to drop dead at the feet of any little sweetcheeks berry like you.”
Jake listened to these incoherencies impassively. He meant to see Gasher dead before the day was over. Gasher might take Jake with him, but Jake no longer cared about that. He dabbed blood from his freshly split lip and looked at it thoughtfully, wondering at how quickly the desire to do murder could invade and conquer the human heart.
Gasher observed Jake looking at his bloody fingers and grinned. “Sap’s runnin, ennet? Nor will it be the last your old pal Gasher beats out of your young tree, unless you look sharp; unless you look wery sharp indeed.” He pointed down at the cobbled surface of the narrow alley they were currently negotiating. There was a rusty manhole cover there, and Jake realized he had seen the words stamped into the steel not long ago: LaMERK FOUNDRY, they said. “There’s a grip on the side,” Gasher said. “Yer see? Get your hands into that and pull away. Step lively, now, and maybe ye’ll still have all your teeth when ye meet up with Tick-Tock.”
Jake grasped the steel cover and pulled. He pulled hard, but not quite as hard as he could have done. The maze of streets and alleys through which Gasher had run him was bad, but at least he could see. He couldn’t imagine what it might be like in the underworld below the city, where the blackness would preclude even dreams of escape, and he didn’t intend to find out unless he absolutely had to. Gasher quickly made it clear to him that he did. “It’s too heavy for—” Jake began, and then the pirate seized him by the throat and yanked him upward until they were face to face. The long run through the alleys had brought a thin, sweaty flush to his cheeks and turned the sores eating into his flesh an ugly yellow-purple color. Those which were open exuded thick infected matter and threads of blood in steady pulses. Jake caught just a whiff of Gasher’s thick stench before his wind was cut off by the hand which had encircled his throat.
“Listen, you stupid cull, and listen well, for this is your last warning. You yank that f**king streethead off right now or I’ll reach into your mouth and rip the living tongue right out of it. And feel free to bite all you want while I do it, for what I have runs in the blood and you’ll see the first blossoms on yer own face before the week’s out—if yer lives that long. Now, do you see?” Jake nodded frantically. Gasher’s face was disappearing into deepen-ing folds of gray, and his voice seemed to be coming from a great distance. “All right.” Gasher shoved him backward. Jake fell in a heap beside the manhole cover, gagging and retching. He finally managed to draw in a deep, whooping breath that burned like liquid fire. He spat out a blood-flecked wad of stuff and almost threw up at the sight of it.