“I love him,” said Cordelia.
Troll looked at them a moment longer, then turned and was gone.
“Now what?” said Cordelia.
Wyungare looked down at the outside window. He smiled. “The clinic deals with laundry several times a day.”
“The clean comes in, the dirty goes out, so?”
“There is a truck downstairs now, apparently loading soiled laundry.”
“So?” Cordelia said. “You proposing to smuggle Uncle Jack out in a laundry hamper? That’s another movie I’ve seen more than once.”
“I think not. He’s just a little large for a hamper.” The alligator was beginning to writhe on the bed platform. The black cat jumped onto the chair at the platform’s head and stared at the alligator, nose to snout. “We are on the third floor,” said Wyungare. “We have to get past the second to the ground floor. I saw some reconstruction going on — on the second level. We have to get Jack down there.” He quickly outlined the rest of his plans to Cordelia. “I’ll accompany you for a ways, then I will go down to the ground floor and maneuver the truck in place.”
The Aborigine went to the alligator, whose eyes were now fully open. Fetid breath whistled in and out of the powerful jaws. Wyungare placed the heel of his hand on the reptile’s forehead. His palm seemed dwarfed by the armored plates. He concentrated for a few seconds. “All right,” he said, “let us go.”
“Thank God,” said Cordelia, once they were out in the corridor. Jack took up a considerable amount of that corridor. Wyungare looked at her questioningly. “I’m afraid there’ll be more witnesses a floor down,” she said. “The elevator?”
Wyungare shook his head. “I don’t think so. Your uncle’s flexible, but I don’t think he’ll bend that much.” They came to the door to the stairwell and the Aborigine pulled it open. He held it for the others.
“We could just walk all the way down to the first floor,” said Cordelia.
“There are many more people there,” said Wyungare. “Our answer is a floor above them.”
“You’re the shaman,” said Cordelia, flashing him a brilliant smile. She went ahead, the cat bounding down the steps as though on point. The alligator wheezed and cantilevered his body down the concrete flight. Wyungare followed.
The mid-floor landing was a squeeze, but the alligator got around it. The party approached the second-floor access door. Cordelia slipped it open a few inches, looked out, turned, and motioned the rest to follow. She opened the door as far as it would go. The doorway was close to the juncture of two main halls.
“To the right,” said Wyungare, “to the renovation work.”
“Ssh,” said Cordelia.
The alligator’s short legs pumped and the reptile squeezed into the hallway. The other hallway led to the physicians’ office wing. The elevator bank was about halfway to the offices where they had searched in vain for Finn.
A bell chimed and elevator doors hissed open.
“Oh, shit,” said Cordelia.
Three people exited the car and turned toward the offices, and away from the escape party. One of them was Finn, prancing a little as his hooves clattered on the tile. One was Troll. The other was Dr. Bob Mengele.
Troll ushered the party along the hall, away from the escapees. Finn carefully kept his eyes to the fore. Wyungare couldn’t see Dr. Bob’s face, but it sounded as though he was talking through clenched teeth.
“Tonight,” said Dr. Bob. “I will disassemble our Cajun friend tonight. There is no question of ethical ambiguity here. I will be vivisecting only an alligator, not a human being. I will find things out. The gay community will thank me. I may, as well, discover things of great importance to the joker community as well.”
“I don’t think this will be possible,” Finn said.
“It will be possible,” said Dr. Bob tightly. “Trust me.”
The doctors and the security man reached an office door at the end of the hail. Finn and Dr. Bob went first. Wyungare was sure he saw a flash of one huge Troll eye winking back at him. Then the door closed.
He started, realizing the explosive rush of fetid air beside him was because the alligator had been holding his breath too.
“You can take Jack the rest of the way,” said Wyungare. “I will find another stairwell and go to the ground. Wait for my signal.”
Cordelia nodded. She looked appraisingly at the alligator and then kissed Wyungare. “Hurry,” she said.
The Aborigine sprinted down to the end of the corridor, noting with approval the placement of the mouth of the waste chute to the street. He found the stairwell access and sped down the concrete steps silently.
On the ground floor, he found the street exit. Outside, the laundry truck was still there, and only a few yards from the spot he wanted. Wyungare sprang into the back and started throwing armloads of dirty linens out onto the street. He had a small mountain of soiled laundry piled up when the driver came out of the clinic.
“Hey, muthuh!” he yelled. The driver was short and spindly, skin looking like it had been crisped in a waffle iron.
Wyungare grunted and tossed another armload of sheets out the back. “Please leave me alone,” he grunted. He fixed the driver’s eyes and grinned in what he hoped was a maniacal way.
“Urn, sure, man,” said the driver. “Take all the filthy sheets you want. No problem.” He turned and walked toward the clinic door. “Honk when you’re done. I’m gonna shoot up some Java.”
Wyungare was done. He glanced up at the second floor, then reached forward past the driver’s seat and punched the horn rim three times. Then he got out and waited.
Like many other buildings renovating on the cheap in Manhattan, the builders used a simple plank-and-timber chute to convey all the broken wallboard and plaster and scrap down to the street, where it could be carted off.
Wyungare saw the snout of the alligator first, then the rest of him as he wiggled into the chute and started to flow downward like a mossy, green tidal wave. The alligator hit the mounded laundry with an audible whoof and an impact that shook the sidewalk.
The Aborigine saw Cordelia staring down from a window. He motioned to her. Then he stood clear as the large reptile whipped his tail back and forth, struggling free of the sheets and towels.
“Let’s go, my cousin,” said Wyungare. He glanced about, getting his bearings. He knew which way was the Rox.
Cordelia and the black cat burst out through the door of the clinic and followed after them, on the run. Wyungare was trotting now. “Uncle Jack can really motor,” gasped Cordelia, catching up.
Man, woman, alligator, and cat, they escaped together. Nobody seemed to notice.
After all, this was Jokertown.
And it was New York.
Do whatever the Great White Worm wants, Travnicek had said. Just check with me every couple hours.
What the Great White Worm wanted was information.
“Your memory is very detailed, yes?” Kafka leaned forward to peer at Modular Man from only a few inches away. The android had noticed that Kafka kept his distance from everyone else but didn’t seem to mind getting close to him. Maybe he liked machines, Modular Man thought. Or disliked people.
“Yes,” Modular Man said. “My memory is very detailed, though I frequently edit unimportant parts to save space.”
“And you’ve been in Zappa’s headquarters.”
“Yes.”
“Did you see the maps?”
“Yes.”
“Describe them.”
“I wasn’t paying any particular attention to them.”
“But the memories are very detailed. Pay attention to them.”
“I will.” He brought the images scrolling out of his memory banks. “I don’t know what most of the symbols mean,” he added.