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
Luckily, he didn’t need to. Everything he needed was in the Dogan. Left foot…forward. (
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.
Then he heard the triceratops roar again. It was answered by the bird-thing riding the air overhead.
Jake closed his — well, Oy’s — eyes. In the dark, the bumbler’s side-to-side motion was even worse. Jake was concerned that if he had to put up with much of it (especially with his eyes shut), he would ralph his guts out. Just call him ’Bama the Sea-sick Sailor.
Nine
Had Eddie been there, he might have been reminded of Mrs. Mislaburski from up the block: Mrs. Mislaburski in February, after a sleet storm, when the sidewalk was glazed with ice and not yet salted down. But, ice or no ice, she would not be kept from her daily chop or bit of fish at the Castle Avenue Market (or from mass on Sunday, for Mrs. Mislaburski was perhaps the most devout Catholic in Co-Op City). So here she came, thick legs spread, candy-pink in their support hose, one arm clutching her purse to her immense bosom, the other held out for balance, head down, eyes searching for the islands of ashes where some responsible building super had already been out (Jesus and Mother Mary bless those good men), also for the treacherous patches that would defeat her, that would send her whoopsy with her large pink knees flying apart, and down she’d come on her sit-upon, or maybe on her back, a woman could break her spine, a woman could be
So did Oy of Mid-World walk the body of Jake along a stretch of underground corridor that looked (to him, at least) pretty much like all the rest. The only difference he could see was the three holes on either side, with big glass eyes looking out of them, eyes that made a low and constant humming sound.
In his arms was something that looked like a bumbler with its eyes squeezed tightly shut. Had they been open, Jake might have recognized these things as projecting devices. More likely he would not have seen them at all.
Walking slowly (Oy knew they were gaining, but he also knew that walking slowly was better than falling down), legs spread wide and shuffling along, holding Ake curled to his chest just as Mrs. Mislaburski had held her purse on those icy days, he made his way past the glass eyes. The hum faded. Was it far enough? He hoped so. Walking like a human was simply too hard, too nerve-wracking. So was being close to all of Ake’s thinking machinery. He felt an urge to turn and look at it — all those bright mirror surfaces! — but didn’t. To look might well bring on hypnosis. Or something worse.
He stopped. “Jake! Look! See!”