Change back with me!

Oy was eager to comply—never had hewanted anything so much—but before they could effect the swap, thepursuers caught sight of them.

“Theah!” shouted the one with theBoston accent—he who had proclaimed that the Faddah was dinnah.“Theah they aah! Get em! Shoot em!”

And, as Jake and Oy switched their mindsback into their proper bodies, the first bullets began to flick the air aroundthem like snapping fingers.

Ten

The fellow leading the pursuers was a mannamed Flaherty. Of the seventeen of them, he was the only hume. The rest saveone were low men and vampires. The last was a taheen with the head of anintelligent stoat and a pair of huge hairy legs protruding from Bermuda shorts.Below the legs were narrow feet that ended in brutally sharp thorns. A singlekick from one of Lamla’s feet could cut a full-grown man in half.

Flaherty—raised in Boston, for thelast twenty years one of the King’s men in a score of late-twentieth-centuryNew Yorks—had put together his posse as fast as he could, in anerve-roasting agony of fear and fury. Nothing gets into the Pig. Thatwas what Sayre had told Meiman. And anything that did get in was not,under any circumstances, to be allowed out. That went double for the gunslingeror any of his ka-tet. Their meddling had long since passed the merely annoyingstage, and you didn’t have to be one of the elite to know it. But now Meiman,who had been called the Canary by his few friends, was dead and the kid hadsomehow gotten past them. A kid, for God’s love! A fucking kid!But how were they to know that the two of them would have such a powerful totemas that turtle? If the damn thing hadn’t happened to bounce beneath one of thetables, it might be holding them in place still.

Flaherty knew it was true, but also knewthat Sayre would never accept it as a valid argument. Would not even give him,Flaherty, a chance to put it forward. No, he would be dead long before that,and the others, as well. Sprawled on the floor with the doctor-bugs gorging ontheir blood.

It was easy to say that the kid would bestopped at the door, that he wouldn’t—couldn’t—know any ofthe authorization phrases that opened it, but Flaherty no longer trusted suchideas, tempting as they might be. All bets were off, and Flaherty felt asoaring sense of relief when he saw the kid and his furry little pal stopped upahead. Several of the posse fired, but missed. Flaherty wasn’t surprised. Therewas some sort of green area between them and the kid, a fucking swatch ofjungle under the city was what it looked like, and a mist was rising, making ithard to aim. Plus some kind of ridiculous cartoon dinosaurs! One of them raisedits blood-smeared head and roared at them, holding its tiny forepaws againstits scaly chest.

Looks like a dragon, Flahertythought, and before his eyes the cartoon dinosaur became a dragon. Itroared and spewed a jet of fire that set several dangling vines and a mat ofhanging moss to burning. The kid, meanwhile, was on the move again.

Lamla, the stoat-headed taheen, pushed hisway to the forefront and raised one furred fist to his forehead. Flahertyreturned the salute impatiently. “What’s down theah, Lam? Do you know?”

Flaherty himself had never been below thePig. When he traveled on business, it was always between New Yorks, which meantusing either the door on Forty-seventh Street between First and Second, the onein the eternally empty warehouse on Bleecker Street (only in some worlds thatone was an eternally half-completed building), or the one way uptown onNinety-fourth Street. (The last was now on the blink much of the time, and ofcourse nobody knew how to fix it.) There were other doors in the city—NewYork was lousy with portals to other wheres and whens—but those were theonly ones that still worked.

And the one to Fedic, of course. The one upahead.

“ ‘Tis a mirage-maker,” the stoat-thingsaid. Its voice was wet and rumbling and very far from human. “ ‘Yon machinetrolls for what ye fear and makes it real. Sayre would’ve turned it on when heand his tet passed with the blackskin jilly. To keep ‘is backtrail safe, ye doken.”

Flaherty nodded. A mind-trap. Very clever.Yet how good was it, really? Somehow the cursed shitting boy had passed, hadn’the?

“Whatever the boy saw will turn into what wefear,” the taheen said. “It works on imagination.”

Imagination. Flaherty seized on theword. “Fine. Whatevah they see down theah, tell em to just ignore it.”

He raised an arm to motion his men onward,greatly relieved by what Lam had told him. Because they had to press the chase,didn’t they? Sayre (or Walter o’ Dim, who was even worse) would very likelykill the lot of them if they failed to stop yon snot-babby. And Flaherty reallydid fear the idea of dragons, that was the other thing; had ever sincehis father had read him a story about such when he was a boy.

The taheen stopped him before he couldcomplete the let’s-go gesture.

“What now, Lam?” Flaherty snarled.

“You don’t understand. What’s down there isreal enough to kill you. To kill all of us.”

“What do you see, then?” This was notime to be curious, but that had always been Conor Flaherty’s curse.

Lamla lowered his head. “I don’t like tosay. ‘Tis bad enough. The point is, sai, we’ll die down there if we’re notcareful. What happened to you might look like a stroke or a heart attack to acut-em-up man, but t’would be whatever you see down there. Anyone who doesn’tthink the imagination can kill is a fool.”

The rest had gathered behind the taheennow. They were alternating glances into the hazy clearing with looks at Lamla.Flaherty didn’t like what he saw on their faces, not a bit. Killing one or twoof those least willing to veil their sullen eyes might restore the enthusiasmof the rest, but what good would that do if Lamla was right? Cursed old people,always leaving their toys behind! Dangerous toys! How they complicated a man’slife! A pox on every last one!

“Then how do we get past?” Flaherty cried.“For that mat-tah, how did the brat get past?”

“Dunno about the brat,” Lamla said, “butall we need to do is shoot the projectors.”

“What shitting projectors?”

Lamla pointed below… or along the course ofthe corridor, if what the ugly bastard said was true. “There,” Lam said. “Iknow you can’t see em, but take my word for it, they’re there. Either side.”

Flaherty was watching with a certainfascination as Jake’s misty jungle clearing continued to change before his eyesinto the deep dark forest, as in Once upon a time when everyone lived in thedeep dark forest and nobody lived anywhere else, a dragon came to rampage.

Flaherty didn’t know what Lamla and therest of them were seeing, but before his eyes the dragon (which had been aTyrannasorbet Wrecks not so long ago) obediently rampaged, setting trees on fireand looking for little Catholic boys to eat.

“I see NOTHING!” he shouted atLamla. “I think youah out of your shitting MIND!”

“I’ve seen em turned off,” Lamla saidquietly, “and can recall near about where they lie. If you’ll let me bring upfour men and set em shooting on either side, I don’t believe it will take longto shut em down.”

And what will Sayre say when I tell himwe shot the hell out of his precious mind-trap? Flaherty could have said. Whatwill Walter o’ Dim say, for that mattah? For what’s roont can never be fixed,not by such as us who know how to rub two sticks together and make a fire butnot much more.

Could have said but didn’t. Because gettingthe boy was more important than any antique gadget of the old people, even oneas amazing as yon mind-trap. And Sayre was the one who turned it on, wasn’t he?Say aye! If there was explaining to be done, let Sayre do it! Let him make hisknee to the big boys and talk till they shut him up! Meanwhile, the gods-damnedsnot-babby continued to rebuild the lead that Flaherty (who’d had visions ofbeing honored for stepping so promptly into the breach) and his men had soradically reduced. If only one of them had been lucky enough to hit the kidwhen he and his little furbag friend had been in view! Ah, but wish in onehand, shit in the other! See which one fills up first!