The Waste Lands (57 page)

“Ay.” The face that turned toward Susannah was stern 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 cruelest 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 stern 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 Parthenon. 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 fucking 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 deepening 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.

“Now yank back that cover, my heart’s delight, and let’s have no more natter about it.”

Jake crawled over to it, slid his hands into the grip, and this time pulled with all his might. For one terrible moment he thought he was still not going to be able to budge it. Then he imagined Gasher’s fingers reaching into his mouth and seizing his tongue, and found a little extra. There was a dull, spreading agony in his lower back as something gave there, but the circular lid slipped slowly aside, grinding on the cobbles and exposing a grinning crescent of darkness.

“Good, cully, good!” Gasher cried cheerfully. “What a little mule y’are! Keep pulling——don’t give up now!”

When the crescent had become a half-moon and the pain in Jake’s lower back was a white-hot fire, Gasher booted him in the ass, knocking him asprawl.

“Wery good!” Gasher said, peering in. “Now, cully, go smartly down the ladder on the side. Mind you don’t lose your grip and tumble all the way to the bottom, for those rungs are fearsome slick and greezy. There’s twenty or so, as I remember. And when you get to the bottom, stand stock-still and wait for me. You might feel like runnin from yer old pal, but do you think that would be a good idea?”

“No,” Jake said. “I suppose not.”

“Wery intelligent, old son!” Gasher’s lips spread in his hideous smile, once more revealing his few surviving teeth. “It’s dark down there, and there are a thousand tunnels going every which-a-way. Yer old pal Gasher knows em like the back of his hand, so he does, but you’d be lost in no time. Then there’s the rats—wery big and wery hungry they are. So you just wait.”

“I will.”

Gasher regarded him narrowly. “You speak just like a little triggie, you do, but you’re no Pube—I’ll set my watch and warrant to that. Where are you from, squint?”

Jake said nothing.

“Bumbler got your tongue, do he? Well, that’s all right; Tick-Tock’ll get it all out of you, so he will. He’s got a way about him, Ticky does; just naturally wants to make people conwerse. Once he gets em goin, they sometimes talks so fast and screams so loud someone has to hit em over the head to slow em down. Bumblers ain’t allowed to hold no one’s tongue around the Tick-Tock Man, not even fine young triggers like you. Now get the fuck down that ladder.
Hup!
”

He lashed out with his foot. This time Jake managed to tuck in and dodge the blow. He looked into the half-open manhole, saw the ladder, and started down. He was still chest-high to the alley when a tremendous stonelike crash hammered the air. It came from a mile or more away, but Jake knew what it was without having to be told. A cry of pure misery burst from his lips.

A grim smile tugged at the corners of Gasher’s mouth. “Your hardcase friend trailed ye a little better than ye thought he would, didn’t he? Not better than
I
thought, though, cully, for I got a look at his eyes—wery pert and cunning they were. I thought he’d come arter his juicy little night-nudge a right smart, if he was to come at all, and so he did. He spied the tripwires, but the fountain’s got him, so
that’s
all right. Get on, sweetcheeks.”

He aimed a kick at Jake’s protruding head. Jake ducked it, but one foot slipped on the ladder bolted to the side of the sewer shaft and he only saved himself from falling by clutching Gasher’s scab-raddled ankle. He looked up, pleading, and saw no softening on that dying, infected face.

“Please,” he said, and heard the word trying to break into a sob. He kept seeing Roland lying crushed beneath the huge fountain. What had Gasher said? If anyone wanted him, they would have to pick him up with a blotter.

“Beg if you want, dear heart. Just don’t expect no good to come of it, for mercy stops on this side of the bridge, so it does. Now go down, or I’ll kick your bleedin brains right outcher bleedin ears.”

So Jake went down, and by the time he reached the standing water at the bottom, the urge to cry had passed. He waited, shoulders slumped and head down, for Gasher to descend and lead him to his fate.

ROLAND HAD COME CLOSE to tripping the crossed wires which held back the avalanche of junk, but the dangling fountain was absurd—a trap which might have been set by a stupid child. Cort had taught them to constantly check all visual quadrants as they moved in enemy territory, and that included above as well as behind and below.

“Stop,” he told Oy, raising his voice to be heard over the drums.

“Op!” Oy agreed, then looked ahead and immediately added, “Ake!”

“Yes.” The gunslinger took another look up at the suspended marble fountain, then examined the street, looking for the trigger. There were two, he saw. Perhaps their camouflage as cobblestones had once been effective, but that time was long past. Roland bent down, hands on his knees, and spoke into Oy’s upturned face. “Going to pick you up for a minute now. Don’t fuss, Oy.”

“Oy!”

Roland put his arms around the bumbler. At first Oy stiffened and attempted to pull away, and then Roland felt the small animal give in. He wasn’t happy about being this close to someone who wasn’t Jake, but he clearly intended to put up with it. Roland found himself wondering again just how intelligent Oy was.

He carried him up the narrow passage and beneath The Hanging Fountain of Lud, stepping carefully over the mock cobbles. Once they were safely past, he bent to let Oy go. As he did, the drums stopped.

“Ake!” Oy said impatiently. “Ake-Ake!”

“Yes—but there’s a little piece of business to attend to first.”

He led Oy fifteen yards farther down the alley, then bent and picked up a chunk of concrete. He tossed it thoughtfully from hand to hand, and as he did, he heard the sound of a pistol-shot from the east. The amplified thump of the drums had buried the sound of Eddie and Susannah’s battle with the ragged band of Pubes, but he heard this gunshot clearly and smiled—it almost surely meant that the Deans had reached the cradle, and that was the first good news of this day, which already seemed at least a week long.

Roland turned and threw the piece of concrete. His aim was as true as it had been when he had thrown at the ancient traffic signal in River Crossing; the missile struck one of the discolored triggers dead center, and one of the rusty cables snapped with a harsh twang. The marble fountain dropped, rolling over as the other cable snubbed it for a moment longer—long enough so that a man with fast reflexes could have cleared the drop-zone anyway, Roland reckoned. Then it too let go, and the fountain fell like a pink, misshapen stone.

Roland dropped behind a pile of rusty steel beams and Oy jumped nimbly into his lap as the fountain hit the street with a vast, shattery thump. Chunks of pink marble, some as big as carts, flew through the air. Several small chips stung Roland’s face. He brushed others out of Oy’s fur. He looked over the makeshift barricade. The fountain had cracked in two like a vast plate.
We won’t be coming back this way
, Roland thought. The passageway, narrow to begin with, was now completely blocked.

He wondered if Jake had heard the fall of the fountain, and what he had made of it if he had. He didn’t waste such speculation on Gasher; Gasher would think he had been crushed to paste, which was exactly what Roland wanted him to think. Would Jake think the same thing? The boy should know better than to believe a gunslinger could be killed by such a simple device, but if Gasher had terrorized him enough, Jake might not be thinking that clearly. Well, it was too late to worry about it now, and if he had it to do over again, he would do exactly the same thing. Dying or not, Gasher had displayed both courage and animal cunning. If he was off his guard now, the trick was worth it.

Roland got to his feet. “Oy—find Jake.”

“Ake!” Oy stretched his head forward on his long neck, sniffed around in a semicircle, picked up Jake’s scent, and was off again with Roland running after. Ten minutes later he came to a stop at a manhole cover in the street, sniffed all the way around it, then looked up at Roland and barked shrilly.

The gunslinger dropped to one knee and observed both the confusion of tracks and a wide path of scratches on the cobbles. He thought this particular manhole cover had been moved quite often. His eyes narrowed as he saw the wad of bloody phlegm in a crease between two nearby cobbles.

“The bastard keeps hitting him,” he murmured.

He pulled the manhole cover back, looked down, then untied the rawhide lacings which held his shirt closed. He picked the bumbler up and tucked him into his shirt. Oy bared his teeth, and for a moment Roland felt his claws splayed against the flesh of his chest and belly like small sharp knives. Then they withdrew and Oy only peered out of Roland’s shirt with his bright eyes, panting like a steam engine. The gunslinger could feel the rapid beat of Oy’s heart against his own. He pulled the rawhide lace from the eyelets in his shirt and found another, longer, lace in his purse.