O Christ, those voices, would they never stop?
She opened her eyes and saw doors marked SHANGHAI/FEDIC and BOMBAY/FEDIC and one marked DALLAS (NOVEMBER 1963)/FEDIC. Others were written in runes that meant nothing to her. At last Nigel stopped in front of one she recognized.
NORTH CENTRAL TO3ITR0MCS, LTD.
… New librk/Fedic Maximum Security All of this Susannah recognized from the other side, but below VERBAL ENTRY CODE REQUIRED was this message, flashing ominous red:
… W9 FINAL DEFAULT …
SEVEN
"What would you like to do next, madam?" Nigel asked.
"Set me down, sugarpie."
She had time to wonder what her response would be if I
Nigel declined to do so, but he didn't even hesitate. She walk-hopped-scuttled to the door in her old way and put her hands on it. Beneath them she felt a texture that was neither wood nor metal. She thought she could hear a very faint hum. She considered trying chassit-her version of Ali Baba's Open, sesame-I and didn't bother. There wasn't even a doorknob. One-way meant one-way, she reckoned; no kidding around.
(JAKE!)
She sent it with all her might …
No answer. Not even that faint
(wimeweh)
nonsense word. She waited a moment longer, then turned around and sat with her back propped against the door. She dropped the extra ammo clips between her spread knees and then held the Walther PPK up in her right hand. A good weapon to have with your back to a locked door, she reckoned; she liked the weight of it. Once upon a time, she and others had been trained in a protest technique called passive resistance. Lie down on the lunchroom floor, cover your soft middle and softer privates. Do not respond to those who strike you and revile you and curse your parents. Sing in your chains like the sea.
What would her old friends make of what she had become?
Susannah said: "You know what? I don't give shit one. Passive resistance is also dead."
"Madam?"
"Nothing, Nigel."
"Madam, may I ask-"
"What I'm doing?"
"Exactly, madam."
"Waiting on a friend, Chumley. Just waiting on a friend."
She thought that DNK 45932 would remind her that his name was Nigel, but he didn't. Instead, he asked how long she would wait for her friend. Susannah told him until hell froze over. This elicited a long silence. Finally Nigel asked: "May I go, then, madam?"
"How will you see?"
"I have switched to infrared. It is less satisfying than three-X macrovision, but it will suffice to get me to the repair bays."
Is there anyone in the repair bays who can fix you?" Susannah asked with mild curiosity. She pushed the button that dropped the clip out of the Walther's butt, then rammed it back In taking a certain elemental pleasure in the oily, metallic sound it made.
I m sure I can't say, madam," Nigel replied, "although the probability of such a thing is very low, certainly less than one Pe r cent. If no one comes, then I, like you, will wait."
She nodded, suddenly tired and very sure that this was where the grand quest ended-here, leaning against this door.
But you didn't give up, did you? Giving up was for cowards, not gunslingers.
"May ya do fine, Nigel-thanks for the piggyback. Long days and pleasant nights. Hope you get your eyes back. Sorry I shot em out, but I was in a bit of a tight and didn't know whose side you were on."
"And good wishes to you, madam."
Susannah nodded. Nigel clumped off and then she was alone, leaning against the door to New York. Waiting for Jake.
Listening for Jake.
All she heard was the rusty, dying wheeze of the machinery in the walls.
<h3>Chapter V:IN THE JUNGLE, THE MIGHTY JUNGLE</h3>
ONE
The threat that the low men and the vampires might kill Oy was the only thing that kept Jake from dying with the Pere. There was no agonizing over the decision; Jake yelled
(OY, TOME!)
with all the mental force he could muster, and Oy ran swiftly at his heel. Jake passed low men who stood mesmerized by the turtle and straight-armed a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. From the dim orange-red glow of the restaurant he and Oy entered a zone of brilliant white light and charred, pungent cookery. Steam billowed against his face, hot and wet,
(the jungle)
perhaps setting the stage for what followed,
(the mighty jungle)
perhaps not. His vision cleared as his pupils shrank and he saw he was in the Dixie Pig's kitchen. Not for the first time, either. Once, not too long before the coming of the Wolves to Calla Bryn Sturgis, Jake had followed Susannah (only then she'd have been Mia) into a dream where she'd been searching some vast and deserted kitchen for food. This kitchen, only now the place was bustling with life. A huge pig sizzled on an iron spit over an open fire, the flames leaping up through a food-caked iron grate at every drop of grease. To either side were gigantic copper-hooded stoves upon which pots nearly as tall as Jake himself fumed. Stirring one of these was a gray-skinned creature So hideous that Jake's eyes hardly knew how to look at it. Tusks rose from eitfier side of its gray, heavy-lipped mouth. Dewlapped cheeks hung in great warty swags of flesh. The fact that the creature was wearing foodstained cook's whites and a puffy popcorn chefs toque somehow finished the nightmare, sealed it beneath a coat of varnish. Beyond this apparition, nearly lost in the steam, two other creatures dressed in whites were washing dishes side by side at a double sink. Both wore neckerchiefs. One was human, a boy of perhaps seventeen. The other appeared to be some sort of monster housecat on legs.
"Vai, vai, los mostros pubes, tre cannits en fauns!" the tusked chef screeched at the washerboys. It hadn't noticed Jake. One of them-the cat-did. It laid back its ears and hissed. Without thinking, Jake threw the Oriza he'd been holding in his right hand. It sang across the steamy air and sliced through the catthing's neck as smoothly as a knife through a cake of lard. The head toppled into the sink with a sudsy splash, the green eyes still blazing.
"San fai, can dit los!" cried the chef. He seemed either unaware of what had happened or was unable to grasp it. He turned to Jake. The eyes beneath his sloping, crenellated forehead were a bleary blue-gray, the eyes of a sentient being. Seen head-on, Jake realized what it was: some kind of freakish, intelligent warthog. Which meant it was cooking its own kind. That seemed perfectly fitting in the Dixie Pig.
"Can foh pube ain-tet can fah! She-so pan! Vai!" This was addressed to Jake. And then, just to make the lunacy complete:
"And eef you won'd scrub, don'd even stard!"
The other washboy, the human one, was screaming some sort of warning, but the chef paid no attention. The chef seemed to believe that Jake, having killed one of his helpers, was now duty- and honor-bound to take the dead cat's place.
Jake flung the other plate and it sheared through the warthog's neck, putting an end to its blabber. Perhaps a gallon of blood flew onto the stovetop to the thing's right, sizzling and sending up a horrible charred smell. The warthog's head slewed to the left on its neck and then tilted backward, but didn't come off. The being-it was easily seven feet tall-took two stagger-steps to its left and embraced the sizzling pig turning on its spit. The head tore loose a little further, now lying on Chef Warthog's right shoulder, one eye glaring up at the steamwreathed fluorescent lights. The heat sealed the cook's hands to the roast and they began to melt. Then the thing fell forward into the open flames and its tunic caught fire.
Jake whirled from this in time to see the other potboy advancing on him with a butcher knife in one hand and a cleaver in the other. Jake grabbed another 'Riza from the bag but held his throw in spite of the voice in his head that was yammering for him to go on, go on and do it, give the bastard what he'd once heard Margaret Eisenhart refer to as a "deep haircut."
This term had made the other Sisters of the Plate laugh hard. Yet as much as he wanted to throw, he held his hand.
What he saw was a young man whose skin was a pallid yellowish-gray under the brilliant kitchen lights. He looked both terrified and malnourished. Jake raised the plate in warning and the young man stopped. It wasn't the 'Riza he was looking at, however, but Oy, who stood between Jake's feet. The bumbler's fur was bushed out around his body, seeming to double his size, and his teeth were bared.
"Do you-"Jake began, and then the door to the restaurant burst open. One of the low men rushed in. Jake threw the plate without hesitation. It moaned through the steamy, brilliant air and took off the intruder's head with gory precision just above the Adam's apple. The headless body bucked first to the left and then to the right, like a stage comic accepting a round of applause with a whimsical move, and then collapsed.
Jake had another plate in each hand almost immediately, his arms once more crossed over his chest in the position sai Eisenhart called "the load." He looked at the washerboy, who was still holding the knife and the cleaver. Without much threat, however,
Jake thought. He tried again and this time got the whole question out. "Do you speak English?"
Yar," the boy said. He dropped the cleaver so he could hold
°ne water-reddened thumb and its matching forefinger about a qviarter of an inch apart. "Bout just a liddle. I learn since I come over here." He opened his other hand and the knife joined the cleaver on the kitchen floor.