Jake tried counting the stairs, made it as far as a hundred and twenty, then lost his grip on the numbers. He wondered if they were still in New York (or under it). Once he thought he heard a faint, familiar rumbling and decided that if that was a subway train, they were.
Finally they reached the bottom of the stairs. Here was a wide, vaulted area that looked like a gigantic hotel lobby, only without the hotel. Oy made his way across it, snout still low to the ground, his squiggle of a tail wagging back and forth. Jake had to j og in order to keep up. Now that they no longer filled the bag, the 'Rizas jangled back and forth. There was a kiosk on the far side of the lobby-vault, with a sign in one dusty window reading LAST CHANCE FOR NEW YORK SOUVENIRS and another reading VISIT SEPTEMBER 11, 2OO1! TIX STILL AVAILABLE FOR THIS WONDERFUL EVENT! ASTHMATICS PROHIBITED W/O DR's CERTIFICATE! Jake wondered what was so fabulous about September 11 th of 2001 and then decided that maybe he didn't want to know.
Suddenly, as loud in his head as a voice spoken directly into his ear: Hey! Hey Positronics lady! You still there?
Jake had no idea who the Positronics lady might be, but he recognized the voice asking the question.
Susannah! he shouted, coming to a stop near the tourist kiosk. A surprised, joyful grin creased his strained face and made it a kid's again. Suze, are you there?
And heard her cry out in happy surprise.
Oy, realizing that Jake was no longer following close behind, turned and gave an impatient Ake-Ake! cry. For the moment at least, Jake disregarded him.
"I hear you!" he shouted. "Finally! God, who've you been talking to? Keep yelling so I can home in on y-"
From behind him-perhaps at the top of the long staircase, perhaps already on it-someone yelled, "That's him!" There were gunshots, but Jake barely heard them. To his intense horror, something had crawled inside his head. Something like a mental hand. He thought it was probably the low man who had spoken to him through the door. The low man's hand had found dials in some kind of Jake Chambers Dogan, and was fiddling with them. Trying
(to freeze me freeze me in place freeze my feet right to the floor)
to stop him. And that voice had gotten in because while he was sending and receiving, he was open-
Jake! fake, where are you?
There was no time to answer her. Once, while trying to open the unfound door in the Cave of Voices, Jake had summoned a vision of a million doors opening wide. Now he summoned one of them slamming shut, creating a sound like God's own sonic boom.
Just in time, too. For a moment longer his feet remained stuck to the dusty floor, and then something screamed in agony and pulled back from him. Let him go.
Jake got moving, jerkily at first, then picking up steam.
God, that had been close! Very faintly, he heard Susannah call his name again but didn't dare throw himself open enough to reply. He'd just have to hope that Oy would hold onto her scent, and that she would keep sending.
THREE
He decided later that he must have started singing the song from Mrs. Shaw's radio shortly after Susannah's final faint cry, but there was no way of telling for sure. One might as well try to pinpoint the genesis of a headache or the exact moment one consciously realizes he is coming down with a cold. What Jake was sure of was that there were more gunshots, and once the buzzing whine of a ricochet, but all that was a good distance behind, and finally he didn't bother ducking anymore (or even looking back). Besides, Oy was moving fast now, really shucking those furry little buns of his. Buried machinery thumped and wheezed. Steel rails surfaced in the passageway floor, leading Jake to assume that once a tram or some other kind of shuttle had run here. At regular intervals, official communiques
(PATRICIA AHEAD; FEDIC; DO YOU HAVE YOUR BLUE PASS?) were printed on the walls. In some places the tiles had fallen off, in others the tram-rails were gone, and in several spots puddles of ancient, verminous water filled what looked for all the world like potholes. Jake and Oy passed two or three stalled vehicles that resembled a cross between golf-carts and flatcars. They also passed a turnip-headed robot that flashed the dim red bulbs of its eyes and made a single croaking sound that might have been halt. Jake raised one of the Orizas, having no idea if it could do any good against such a thing if it came after him, but the robot never moved. That single dim flash seemed to have drained the last few ergs in its batteries, or energy cells, or atomic slug, or whatever it ran on. Here and there he saw graffiti. Two were familiar. The first was ALL HAIL THE CRIMSON KING, with the red eye above each of the I's in the message.
The other read BANGO SKANK, '84. Man, Jake thought distractedly, that guy Bango gets around. And then heard himself clearly for the first time, singing under his breath. Not words, exactly, but just an old, barely remembered refrain from one of the songs on Mrs. Shaw's kitchen radio: "A-wimeweh, a-wimeweh, a-weee-ummm-immm-oweh..."
He quit it, creeped out by the muttery, talismanic quality of the chant, and called for Oy to stop. "Need to take a leak, boy."