shooter long before Ryan reached the gateway chamber.
No way was he going to let one of Kaa’s men make a jump and warn his master who and what was coming down the pipe. Ryan snatched the chamber door before it could be closed to trigger a jump.
The would-be jumper, a grubby-looking swampie, held a beat-up hand-blaster in his fist. The action of the autopistol was locked back. The weapon was out of beans.
Ryan didn’t shoot him. He just reached over and grabbed the little creature by the greasy roots of its hair and jerked it bodily out of the chamber. The swampie crashed to the linoleum outside.
As Doc and J.B. crossed the room to join them, something big and yellow dashed across their field of view. They both opened fire, Doc with the revolver portion of his Le Mat, J.B. with his 12-gauge scatter-gun. Neither man came close to hitting the great beast. With an irritated yowl it vanished behind the rows of desks.
KRYSTY FELL through darkness. Her sense of rapid, uncontrolled descent didn’t come from her whizzing past anything stationary-the space she occupied was devoid of landmarks, beacons, signposts. It came from a sinking feeling in her gut, a rushing sensation against her skin, a fluttering wind against the tight coils of her hair. She was completely at the mercy of gravity,
unable to make meaningful progress in any direction, except down.
She was grateful when she lost consciousness.
Then she began to dream.
The figure of a woman loomed over her, backlit by a supernova, rays of incandescent light shooting out from the tips of her writhing hair.
It was Krysty’s birth mother, Sonja Wroth. She could tell by the voice.
“Come here, child,” Mother Sonja said in tones both soothing and tender, arms stretched wide to take her in and comfort her.
Krysty tried to go to her waiting mother, but she could hardly move. She was connected to things behind her, things that held her back, things that rattled and clanked, things that scraped and tinkled. She looked over her shoulder. Strings were tied to her clothes, her hair, her fingers, her arms, her legs, her ankles, her toes; they stretched back for miles. There was no end to them. And knotted along their lengths every few feet along the way were objects of assorted types: tin cans, empty bottles, cartridge casings, homemade straw dolls, hubcaps, long-playing records, sunglasses. Bright bits of rubbish fanned out as far as she could see.
“Come on, child,” Mother Sonja said. “You must hurry. We are late.”
“Mother,” Krysty sobbed, “I can’t Help me.”
She stood there shaking, eyes downcast, afraid to look straight into her mother’s light, light that grew brighter as Sonja descended and came closer.
“This you do not need,” her mother said. “Nor this. Nor this.”
At her words the strings began to break. And as they did, Krysty realized that they weren’t only holding her back, but they were holding her down. She began to rise up in the air, tethered only by a few remaining lines. Behind and below her, she dragged answering machines, VCRs, candelabras, wax fruit, napkin rings, cans of paint.
At her mother’s touch, these, too, broke away. And Krysty rose from the flat dark plain, hurtling faster and faster toward distant pinpoints of light
KRYSTY AWOKE ON THE FLOOR of the gateway chamber with her stomach knotted in cramps. Fighting back the pain, she pushed up into a sitting position. Jak was dry-heaving on his hands and knees, his long white hair swaying over his face. There were many black plastic bags in the chamber. And one other person.
Krysty had thought she’d dreamed him.
He was enormous. His white skin was blotched with velvety brown patches. He was hairless and practically naked. All that covered his private parts was a knotted and filthy loincloth.
Lord Kaa rolled over on his back, still struggling against the aftereffects of the jump. His third eye was closed, but the lids had slipped apart, leaving a gap between them. She could see the glistening white surface of the blind orb.
Krysty backed as far away from the piebald mutant