Across from me, Eye was sitting on his pallet cross-legged, gnawing on his steak. Red juice ran into the matting of his beard. He saw me looking at him and grinned. “Go on, kiddie, eat while you got teeth to eat with. I’ll knock em out t’rectly.”
I ate. The steak was tough. The steak was delicious. Every bite made me hungry for the next.
Pursey had reached the last pair of cells. He threw meat into them and began backing up the way he’d come, ringing his bell with one flipper, pulling the cart with the other, and yelling “Hak! Hak!” Which I presumed was back, back. No one seemed interested in catcalling him now, let alone rushing him. From everywhere came the sound of smacking and chomping.
I ate everything but a ring of fat and gristle, then ate that, too. Hamey, meanwhile, had taken a few bites of his steak and then subsided to his pallet, holding it on one bony knee. He was staring at it with a puzzled expression, as if wondering why he didn’t want it. He saw me looking and held it out. “Do you want it? Food don’t like me and I don’t like food. I used to put it away with the best of them, back in my sawmill days. Must have been those mushrooms. Eat the wrong kind and they fry your guts. That’s what happened to me.”
I wanted it, all right, my stomach was still roaring, but I had enough restraint left to ask if he was sure. He said he was. I took it fast, in case he changed his mind.
Pursey had stopped outside our cell. He pointed at me with one of his melted hands. “Helli onts ooo eee ooo.”
“I don’t understand,” I said through a mouthful of mostly raw steak, but Pursey just started backing up again, until he was out the door. He gave one more ring of his bell, then shot the bolts: one, two, three, and four.
“He said Kellin wants to see you,” Hamey said. “I ain’t surprised. You’re whole, but you ain’t like us. Even your accent ain’t—” He stopped and his eyes widened as some idea struck him. “Tell him you’re from Ullum! That’ll work! Way north of the Citadel!”
“What’s Ullum?”
“Religiouses! They don’t sound like nobody else! Tell them you ducked the poison!”
“I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
“Hamey, don’t be saying what you shu’nt!” someone shouted. “You a voonatick!”
“Shut up, Stooks!” Hamey cried. “This kiddie’s going to berdeck me!”
Across the corridor, Eye got up and grasped the bars with grease-shiny fingers. He was smiling. “You may not be a lunatic, but nobody’s going to protect you, Hamey. There’s no protection for any of us.”
4
There was no pallet for me. I actually thought about taking Hamey’s—there was no way he could have stopped me—and then wondered just what the fuck I was thinking… or becoming. I had already taken his meal, but at least that had been offered. Besides, a damp stone floor wasn’t going to keep me awake, not the way I felt. I’d come to not all that long ago, and after being out for God knew how long, but a great weariness suffused me. I had a drink from the bucket, then lay down on what I supposed was my side of the cell.
In the next one were two men: Fremmy and Stooks. They were young and looked strong. Not big, like Iota, but strong.
Fremmy: “Babby go nappie-nap?”
Stooks: “All tiii-red out?”
The Abbott and Costello of Deep Maleen, I thought. And in the very next cell, how fucking lucky can I get?
“Don’t mind em, Charlie,” Hamey said. “You sleep. Everybody gets it took out of them after being handled by the nightwatch. They suck it out of you. They suck your… I dunno…”
“Life force?” I asked. I felt like my eyelids had been dipped in cement.
“That’s it! That’s just what it is and just how they do! And it was Kellin himself carried you in. You must be strong, or the bastard would have cooked you like an egg. I’ve seen it happen, oh yes I have!”
I tried to ask him how long he’d been here but could only mumble. I was going down. I thought of the spiral steps that had led me here, and it seemed that I was running down them again, chasing after Radar. Watch out for the roaches, I thought. And the bats.
“Ullum, north of the Citadel!” Hamey was kneeling over me, as he had been when I first woke up in this shithole of a place. “Don’t forget! And you promised to berdeck me, don’t forget that, either!”
I couldn’t remember promising him any such thing, but before I could say so, I was gone.