The Tick-Tock Man shifted his gaze to Hoots, who looked sick with fear. “What about it?” Tick-Tock asked in his soft, terrible voice. “What about it, Hooterman? I know you and Gasher was butt-buddies of old, and I know you’ve the brains of a hung goose, but surely not even you could be stupid enough to write down a password to the inner chamber . . . could you? Could you?”
“I . . . I oney thought . . .” Hoots began.
“Shut up!” Gasher shouted. He shot Jake a look of pure, sick hate. “I’ll kill you for this, dearie—see if I don’t.”
“Take off your scarf, Gasher,” the Tick-Tock Man said. “I want a look inside it.”
Jake sidled a step closer to the podium with the buttons on it.
“No!” Gasher’s hands returned to the scarf and pressed against it as if it might fly away of its own accord. “Be damned if I will!”
“Brandon, grab him,” Tick-Tock said.
Brandon lunged for Gasher. Gasher’s move wasn’t as quick as Tick-Tock’s had been, but it was quick enough; he bent, yanked a knife from the top of his boot, and buried it in Brandon’s arm.
“Oh, you barstard!” Brandon shouted in surprise and pain as blood began to pour out of his arm.
“Lookit what you did!” Tilly screamed.
“Do I have to do everything around here myself?” Tick-Tock shouted, more exasperated than angry, it seemed, and rose to his feet. Gasher retreated from him, weaving the bloody knife back and forth in front of his face in mystic patterns. He kept his other hand planted firmly on top of his head.
“Draw back,” he panted. “I loves you like a brother, Ticky, but if you don’t draw back, I’ll hide this blade in your guts—so I will.”
“You? Not likely,” the Tick-Tock Man said with a laugh. He removed his own knife from its scabbard and held it delicately by the bone hilt. All eyes were on the two of them. Jake took two quick steps to the podium with its little cluster of buttons and reached for the one he thought the Tick-Tock man had pushed.
Gasher was backing along the curved wall, the tubes of light painting his mandrus-riddled face in a succession of sick colors: bile-green, fever-red, jaundice-yellow. Now it was the Tick-Tock Man standing below the ventilator grille where Oy was watching.
“Put it down, Gasher,” Tick-Tock said in a reasonable tone of voice. “You brought the boy as I asked; if anyone else gets pricked over this, it’ll be Hoots, not you. Just show me—”
Jake saw Oy crouching to spring and understood two things: what the bumbler meant to do and who had put him up to it.
“Oy, no!” he screamed.
All of them turned to look at him. At that moment Oy leaped, hitting the flimsy ventilator grille and knocking it free. The Tick-Tock Man wheeled toward the sound, and Oy fell onto his upturned face, biting and slashing.
32
ROLAND HEARD IT FAINTLY even through the twin doors—Oy, no!—and his heart sank. He waited for the valve-wheel to turn, but it did not. He closed his eyes and sent with all his might: The door, Jake! Open the door!
He sensed no response, and the pictures were gone. His communication line with Jake, flimsy to begin with, had now been severed.
33
THE TICK-TOCK MAN blundered backward, cursing and screaming and grabbing at the writhing, biting, digging thing on his face. He felt Oy’s claws punch into his left eye, popping it, and a horrible red pain sank into his head like a flaming torch thrown down a deep well. At that point, rage overwhelmed pain. He seized Oy, tore him off his face, and held him over his head, meaning to twist him like a rag.
“No!” Jake wailed. He forgot about the button which unlocked the doors and seized the gun hanging from the back of the chair.
Tilly shrieked. The others scattered. Jake levelled the old German machine-gun at the Tick-Tock Man. Oy, upside down in those huge, strong hands and bent almost to the snapping point, writhed madly and slashed his teeth into the air. He shrieked in agony—a horribly human sound.
“Leave him alone, you bastard!” Jake screamed, and pressed the trigger.
He had enough presence of mind left to aim low. The roar of the Schmeisser .40 was ear-splitting in the enclosed space, although it fired only five or six rounds. One of the lighted tubes popped in a burst of cold orange fire. A hole appeared an inch above the left