And yet he knew it was real enough to kill him. If he went down there, the cartoon triceratops would tear him apart just as it would have torn apart the Daisy Mae with die bodacious ta-tas if Cesar Romero hadn't appeared in time to put a bullet into the thing's One Vulnerable Spot with his big-game hunter's rifle.
Jake had gotten rid of the hand that had tried to monkey with his motor controls-had slammed all those doors so hard he'd chopped off the hand's intruding fingers, for all he knew-but this was different. He could not close his eyes and just walk by; that was a real monster his traitor mind had created, and it could really tear him apart.
There was no Cesar Romero here to keep it from happening.
No Roland, either.
There were only the low men, running his backtrail and getting closer all the time.
As if to emphasize this point, Oy looked back the way they'd come and barked once, piercingly loud.
The triceratops heard and roared in response. Jake expected Oy to shrink against him at that mighty sound, but Oy continued to look back over Jake's shoulder. It was the low men Oy was worried about, not the triceratops below them or the Tyrannasorbet Wrecks that might come next, or-
Because Oy doesn't see it, he thought.
He monkeyed with this idea and couldn't pull it apart. Oy hadn't smelled it or heard it, either. The conclusion was inescapable: to Oy the terrible triceratops in the mighty jungle below did not exist.
Which doesn't change the fact that it does to me. It's a trap that was set for me, or for anyone else equipped with an imagination who might happen along. Some gadget of the old people, no doubt. Too bad it's not broken like most of their other stuff, but it's not. I see what I see and there's nothing I can do about i-
No, wait.
Wait just a second.
Jake had no idea how good his mental connection tp Oy actually was, but thought he would soon find out.
"Oy!"
The calling voices of the low men were now horribly close.
Soon they would see the boy and the bumbler stopped here and break into a charge. Oy could smell them coming but looked at Jake calmly enough anyway. At his beloved Jake, for whom he would die if called upon to do so.
"Oy, can you change places with me?"
It turned out that he could.
EIGHT
Oy tottered erect with Ake in his arms, swaying back and forth, horrified to discover how narrow the boy's range of balance was. The idea of walking even a short distance on but two legs was terribly daunting, yet it would have to be done, and done at once. Ake said so.
For his part, Jake knew he would have to shut the borrowed eyes he was looking through. He was in Oy's head but he could still see the triceratops; now he could also see a pterodactyl cruising the hot air above the clearing, its leathery wings stretched to catch the thermals blowing from the air-exchangers.
Oy! You have to do it on your own. And if we 're going to stay ahead of them you have to do it now.
Ake! Oy responded, and took a tentative step forward. The boy's body wavered from side to side, out to the very edge of balance and then beyond. Ake's stupid two-legs body tumbled sideways. Oy tried to save it and only made the tumble worse, going down on the boy's right side and bumping Ake's furry head.
Oy tried to bark his frustration. What came out of Ake's mouth was a stupid thing that was more word than sound:
"Bark! Ark! SAif-barkl"
"I hear him!" someone shouted. "Run! Come on, doubletime, you useless cunts! Before the little bastard gets to the door!"
Ake's ears weren't keen, but with the way the tile walls magnified sounds, that was no problem. Oy could hear their running footfalls.
"You have to get up and go.I" Jake tried to yell, and what came out was a garbled, barking sentence: "Ake-Ake, affal Up n go!"
Under other circumstances it might have been funny, but not under these.
Oy got up by putting Ake's back against the wall and pushing with Ake's legs. At last he was getting the hang of the motor controls; they were in a place Ake called Dogan and were fairly simple. Off to the left, however, an arched corridor led into a huge room filled with mirror-bright machinery. Oy knew that if he went into that place-the chamber where Ake kept all his marvelous thoughts and his store of words-he would be lost forever.
Luckily, he didn't need to. Everything he needed was in the Dogan. Left foot... forward. (And pause.) Right foot... forward.
(Andpause.) Hold die thing that looks like a billy-bumbler but is really your friend and use the other arm for balance.
Resist the urge to drop to all fours and crawl. The pursuers will catch up if he does that; he can no longer smell them (not Ake's amazingly stupid little bulb of a snout), but he is sure of it, all the same.
For his part, Jake could smell them clearly, at least a dozen and maybe as many as sixteen. Their bodies were perfect engines of stink, and they pushed the aroma ahead of them in a dirty cloud. He could smell the asparagus one had had for dinner; could smell the meaty, wrong aroma of the cancer which was growing in another, probably in his head but perhaps in his throat.