A bright giggle came from somewhere below him. "Ge-go go wheee!" said Boots.
"She thinks she's on a big slide or something," thought Gregor. "At least she's not scared." He felt scared enough for the both of them. Whatever strange hole they had slipped into, it must have a bottom. There was only one way that this spinning through space could end.
Time was passing. Gregor couldn't tell exactly how much, but too much to make sense. Surely there was a limit to how deep a hole could be. At some point, you'd have to run into water or rock or the earth's platelets or something.
It was all like this horrible dream he had sometimes. He'd be up high, somewhere he wasn't supposed to be, usually like the roof of his school: As he walked along the edge, the solid matter under his feet would suddenly give way, and down he'd go. Everything would disappear but the sensation of falling, of the ground closing in on him, of terror. Then, just at the moment of impact, he'd jerk awake, soaked in sweat, heart pounding.
"A dream! I fell asleep in the laundry room and this is the same old crazy dream!" thought Gregor. "Of course! What else could it be?"
Calmed by the notion that he was asleep, Gregor began to gauge his fall. He didn't own a wristwatch, but anybody could count seconds.
"One Mississippi... two Mississippi... three Mississippi ..." At seventy Mississippi he gave up and began to feel panicky again. Even in a dream you had to land, didn't you?
Just then, Gregor noticed the mist beginning to clear a little. He could make out the smooth, dark sides of a circular wall. He seemed to be falling down a large, dark tube. He felt an updraft rising from below him. The last wisps of vapor blew away, and Gregor lost speed. His clothes gently settled back on his body.
Below him, he heard a small thump and then the patter of Boots's sandals. A few moments later, his own feet made contact with solid ground. He tried to get his bearings, not daring to move. Total darkness surrounded him. As his eyes adjusted, he became aware of a faint shaft of light off to his left.
A happy squeak came from behind it. "Bug! Beeg bug!"
Gregor ran toward the light. It leaked through a narrow crevice between two smooth walls of rock. He barely managed to squeeze himself through the opening. His sneaker caught on something, causing him to lose his balance. He tripped out from between the rock walls and landed on his hands and knees.
When he raised his head, Gregor found himself looking into the face of the largest cockroach he'd ever seen.
Now, his apartment complex had some big bugs. Mrs. Cormaci claimed a water bug the size of her hand had climbed out of her bathtub drain, and nobody doubted her. But the creature in front of Gregor rose at least four feet in the air. Granted, it was sitting up on its back legs, a very unnatural-looking position for a cockroach, but still ...
"Beeg bug!" cried Boots again, and Gregor managed to close his mouth. He pushed back onto his knees but he still had to tilt his head back to see the roach. It was holding some kind of torch. Boots scampered over to Gregor and tugged on the neck of his shirt. "Beeeeg bug!" she insisted.
"Yes, I see, Boots. Big bug!" said Gregor in a hushed voice, wrapping his arms tightly around her. "Very ... big ... bug."
He tried hard to remember what cockroaches ate. Garbage, rotten food ... people? He didn't think they ate people. Not the little ones, anyway. Maybe they wanted to eat people but they kept getting stepped on first. At any rate, this wasn't a good time to find out.
Trying to appear casual, Gregor slowly edged his way back toward the crack in the rocks. "Okay, Mr. Roach, so we'll just be going, sorry we bugged you -- I mean, bothered you, I mean -- "
"Smells what so good, smells what?" a voice hissed, and it took Gregor a full minute to realize it had come from the cockroach. He was too stunned to make any sense of the strange words.
"Uh ... excuse me?" he managed.
"Smells what so good, smells what?" the voice hissed again, but the tone wasn't threatening. Just curious, and maybe a little excited. "Be small human, be?"
"All right, okay, I'm talking to a giant cockroach," thought Gregor. "Be cool, be nice, answer the bug. He wants to know 'Smells what so good, smells what?' So, tell him." Gregor forced himself to take a deep sniff and then regretted it. Only one thing smelled like that.
"I poop!" said Boots, as if on cue. "I poop, Ge-go!"
"My sister needs a clean diaper," said Gregor, somehow feeling embarrassed.
The roach, if he could read it right, acted impressed. "Ahhh. Closer come can we, closer come?" said the roach, delicately sweeping the space in front of it with a leg.
"We?" said Gregor. Then he saw the other forms rising out of the dark around them. The smooth black bumps he had taken for rocks were actually the backs of another dozen or so enormous cockroaches. They clustered around Boots eagerly, waving their antennas in the air and shuddering in delight.
Boots, who loved any kind of compliment, instinctively knew she was being admired. She stretched out her chubby arms to the giant insects. "I poop," she said graciously, and they gave an appreciative hiss.
"Be she princess, Overlander, be she? Be she queen, be she?" asked the leader, dipping its head in slavish devotion.
"Boots? A queen?" asked Gregor. Suddenly he had to laugh.
The sound seemed to rattle the roaches, and they withdrew stiffly. "Laugh why, Overlander, laugh why?" one hissed, and Gregor realized he had offended them.
"Because, we're, like, poor and she's kind of a mess and ... are you calling me Overlander?" he wound up lamely.