The Waste Lands (Page 131)

Gasher looked at him balefully, then slid his hand across his skull, peeling off his sweat-soaked yellow scarf. The skull beneath was bald, except for a few straggling tufts of black hair like porcupine quills, and deeply dented above the left temple. Gasher peered into the scarf and plucked forth a scrap of paper. “Gods bless Hoots,” he muttered. “Hoots takes care of me a right proper, he does.”

He peered at the scrap, turning it this way and that, and then held it out to Jake. He kept his voice pitched low, as if the Tick-Tock Man could hear him even though the TALK button on the intercom wasn’t depressed. “You’re a proper little gennelman, ain’t you? And the very first thing they teach a gennelman to do after he’s been lamed not to eat the paste and piss in the comers is read. So read me the word on this paper, cully, for it’s gone right out of my head—so it has.”

Jake took the paper, looked at it, then looked up at Gasher again. “What if I won’t?” he asked coolly.

Gasher was momentarily taken aback at this response . . . and then he began to grin with dangerous good humor. “Why, I’ll grab yer by the throat and use yer head for a doorknocker,” he said. “I doubt if it’ll conwince old Ticky to let me in—for he’s still nervous of your hardcase friend, so he is—but it’ll do my heart a world of good to see your brains drippin off that wheel.” Jake considered this, the dark laughter still bubbling away inside him. The Tick-Tock Man was a trig enough cove, all right—he had known that it would be difficult to persuade Gasher, who was dying anyway, to speak the password even if Roland had taken him prisoner. What Tick-Tock hadn’t taken into account was Gasher’s defective memory.

Don’t laugh. If you do, he really will beat your brains out. In spite of his brave words, Gasher was watching Jake with real anxiety, and Jake realized a potentially powerful fact: Gasher might not be afraid of dying . . . but he was afraid of being humiliated. “All right, Gasher,” he said calmly. “The word on this piece of paper is bountiful.”

“Gimme that.” Gasher snatched the paper back, returned it to his scarf, and quickly wrapped the yellow cloth around his head again. He thumbed the intercom button. “Tick-Tock? Yer still there?”

“Where else would I be? The West End of the World?” The drawl-ing voice now sounded mildly amused.

Gasher stuck his whitish tongue out at the speaker, but his voice was ingratiating, almost servile. “The password’s bountyful, and a fine word it is, too! Now let me in, gods cuss it!”

“Of course,” the Tick-Tock Man said. A machine started up some-where nearby, making Jake jump. The valve-wheel in the center of the door spun. When it stopped, Gasher seized it, yanked it outward, grabbed Jake’s arm, and propelled him over the raised lip of the door and into the strangest room he had ever seen in his life.

ROLAND DESCENDED INTO DUSKY pink light. Oy’s bright eyes peered out from the open V of his shirt; his neck stretched to the limit of its considerable length as he sniffed at the warm air that blew through the ventilator grilles. Roland had had to depend completely on the bumbler’s nose in the dark passages above, and he had been terribly afraid the animal would lose Jake’s scent in the running water . . . but when he had heard the sound of singing—first Gasher, then Jake—echoing back through the pipes, he had relaxed a little. Oy had not led them wrong.

Oy had heard it, too. Up until then he had been moving slowly and cautiously, even backtracking every now and again to be sure of himself, but when he heard Jake’s voice he began to run, straining the rawhide leash. Roland was afraid he might call after Jake in his harsh voice—Ake! Ake!—but he hadn’t done so. And, just as they reached the shaft which led to the lower levels of this Dycian Maze, Roland had heard the sound of some new machine—a pump of some sort, perhaps—followed by the metallic, echoing crash of a door being slammed shut. He reached the foot of the square tunnel and glanced briefly at the double line of lighted tubes which led off in either direction. They were lit with swamp-fire, he saw, like the sign outside the place which had belonged to Balazar in the city of New York. He looked more closely at the narrow chrome ventilation strips running along the top of each wall, and the arrows below them, then slipped the rawhide loop off Oy’s neck. Oy shook his head impatiently, clearly glad to be rid of it. “We’re close,” he murmured into the bumbler’s cocked ear, “and so we have to be quiet. Do you understand, Oy? Very quiet.” “I-yet,” Oy replied in a hoarse whisper that would have been funny under other circumstances.

Roland put him down and Oy was immediately off down the tunnel, neck out, muzzle to the steel floor. Roland could hear him muttering Ake-Ake! Ake-Ake! under his breath. Roland unholstered his gun and followed him.

EDDIE AND SUSANNAH LOOKED up at the vastness of Blaine’s Cradle as the skies opened and the rain began to fall in torrents. “It’s a hell of a building, but they forgot the handicap ramps!” Eddie yelled, raising his voice to be heard over the rain and thunder. “Never mind that,” Susannah said impatiently, slipping out of the wheelchair. “Let’s get up there and out of the rain.” Eddie looked dubiously up the incline of steps. The risers were shallow . . . but there were a lot of them. “You sure, Suze?” “Race you, white boy,” she said, and began to wriggle upward with uncanny ease, using hands, muscular forearms, and the stumps of her legs. And she almost did beat him; Eddie had the ironmongery to contend with, and it slowed him down. Both of them were panting when they reached the top, and tendrils of steam were rising from their wet clothes. Eddie grabbed her under the arms, swung her up, and then just held her with his hands locked together in the small of her back instead of dropping her back into the chair, as he had meant to do. He felt randy and half-crazy without the slightest idea why. Oh, give me a break, he thought. You’ve gotten this far alive; that’s what’s got your glands pumped up and ready to party. Susannah licked her full lower lip and wound her strong fingers into his hair. She pulled. It hurt . . . and at the same time it felt wonderful. “Told you I’d beat you, white boy,” she said in a low, husky voice. “Get outta here—I had you … by half a step.” He tried to sound less out of breath than he was and found it was impossible. “Maybe . . . but it blew you out, didn’t it?” One hand left his hair, slid downward, and squeezed gently. A smile gleamed in her eyes. “Somethin ain’t blown out, though.”