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“How will you see?”
“I have switched to infrared. It is lesssatisfying than three-X macrovision, but it will suffice to get me to therepair bays.”
“Is there anyone in the repair bays who canfix you?” Susa
“I’m sure I can’t say, madam,” Nigelreplied, “although the probability of such a thing is very low, certainly lessthan one per cent. If no one comes, then I, like you, will wait.”
She nodded, suddenly tired and very surethat this was where the grand quest ended—here, leaning against thisdoor. But you didn’t give up, did you? Giving up was for cowards, notgunslingers.
“May ya do fine, Nigel—thanks for thepiggyback. Long days and pleasant nights. Hope you get your eyes back. Sorry Ishot em out, but I was in a bit of a tight and didn’t know whose side you wereon.”
“And good wishes to you, madam.”
Susa
All she heard was the rusty, dying wheezeof the machinery in the walls.
Chapter V:
In the Jungle, theMighty Jungle
One
The threat that the low men and thevampires might kill Oy was the only thing that kept Jake from dying with thePere. There was no agonizing over the decision; Jake yelled
(OY, TO ME!)
with all the mental force he could muster,and Oy ran swiftly at his heel. Jake passed low men who stood mesmerized by theturtle and straight-armed a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. From the dim orange-redglow of the restaurant he and Oy entered a zone of brilliant white light andcharred, pungent cookery. Steam billowed against his face, hot and wet,
(the jungle)
perhaps setting the stage for whatfollowed,
(the mighty jungle)
perhaps not. His vision cleared as hispupils shrank and he saw he was in the Dixie Pig’s kitchen. Not for the firsttime, either. Once, not too long before the coming of the Wolves to Calla BrynSturgis, Jake had followed Susa
“Vai, vai, los mostros pubes, tre ca
“San fai, can dit los!” cried thechef. 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 ableary blue-gray, the eyes of a sentient being. Seen head-on, Jake realizedwhat it was: some kind of freakish, intelligent warthog. Which meant it wascooking its own kind. That seemed perfectly fitting in the Dixie Pig.
“Can foh pube ain-tet can fah! She-sopan! Vai!” This was addressed to Jake. And then, just to make the lunacycomplete: “And eef you won’d scrub, don’d even stard!”
The other washboy, the human one, wasscreaming some sort of warning, but the chef paid no attention. The chef seemedto believe that Jake, having killed one of his helpers, was now duty- andhonor-bound to take the dead cat’s place.
Jake flung the other plate and it shearedthrough the warthog’s neck, putting an end to its blabber. Perhaps a gallon ofblood flew onto the stovetop to the thing’s right, sizzling and sending up ahorrible charred smell. The warthog’s head slewed to the left on its neck andthen tilted backward, but didn’t come off. The being—it was easily sevenfeet tall—took two stagger-steps to its left and embraced the sizzlingpig turning on its spit. The head tore loose a little further, now lying onChef Warthog’s right shoulder, one eye glaring up at the steam-wreathedfluorescent lights. The heat sealed the cook’s hands to the roast and theybegan to melt. Then the thing fell forward into the open flames and its tuniccaught fire.
Jake whirled from this in time to see theother potboy advancing on him with a butcher knife in one hand and a cleaver inthe other. Jake grabbed another ‘Riza from the bag but held his throw in spiteof 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 “deephaircut.” This term had made the other Sisters of the Plate laugh hard. Yet asmuch as he wanted to throw, he held his hand.
What he saw was a young man whose skin wasa pallid yellowish-gray under the brilliant kitchen lights. He looked bothterrified and malnourished. Jake raised the plate in warning and the young manstopped. It wasn’t the ‘Riza he was looking at, however, but Oy, who stoodbetween Jake’s feet. The bumbler’s fur was bushed out around his body, seemingto double his size, and his teeth were bared.
“Do you—” Jake began, and then thedoor to the restaurant burst open. One of the low men rushed in. Jake threw theplate without hesitation. It moaned through the steamy, brilliant air and tookoff the intruder’s head with gory precision just above the Adam’s apple. Theheadless body bucked first to the left and then to the right, like a stagecomic accepting a round of applause with a whimsical move, and then collapsed.
Jake had another plate in each hand almostimmediately, his arms once more crossed over his chest in the position saiEisenhart called “the load.” He looked at the washerboy, who was still holdingthe knife and the cleaver. Without much threat, however, Jake thought. He triedagain and this time got the whole question out. “Do you speak English?”
“Yar,” the boy said. He dropped the cleaverso he could hold one water-reddened thumb and its matching forefinger about aquarter 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.
“Do you come from Mid-World?” Jake asked.“You do, don’t you?”
He didn’t think the washerboy was terriblybright (“No quiz-kid,” Elmer Chambers would no doubt have sneered), but he wasat least smart enough to be homesick; in spite of his terror, Jake saw anunmistakable flash of that look in the boy’s eyes. “Yar,” he said. “Come fromLudweg, me.”
“Near the city of Lud?”
“North of there, if you do like it or ifyou don’t,” said the washerboy. “Will’ee kill me, lad? I don’t want to die, sadas I am.”