Jerry leaned over to sign out on the sheet. The guard kept his nose buried in the tabloid.
"Good night," he said. The guard mumbled a response without looking up from his magazine. As they went by, Jerry got a glimpse of the headline.
Americans Falling Down
On the Job, Prof Warns
Wiz took a deep breath and examined the scene in front of him carefully, weighing the odds. There was a faint reptilian scent in the air he didn’t like at all, but he was hungry enough and desperate enough to ignore it.
Most of the buildings in this district were utilitarian; warehouses, barracks, workshops and the like. This one was different. It was made of glossy dark marble instead of rough hewn basalt. The slanting late afternoon sun picked out the fine carving on the window and door frames. The courtyard itself was paved in an elaborate pattern of black and white and dark green blocks, laid in a way that made the surface appear to swoop and undulate wildly even though it was perfectly flat. Around the court was a colonnade and extending off the colonnade at close intervals were open doors like gaping black mouths. Wiz stood in a niche in the gateway for a moment and studied the place.
He could edge around the courtyard under the colonnade, but that would expose him to anything that might be hidden in the deepening shadows or lurking in one of those rooms. The main entrance was directly across from the gate and in this case the better part of valor seemed to be a dash across the center of the court.
Place like this ought to have a lot more in it than a barracks, he thought as he looked around carefully for the last time. Then again, maybe not. A place like this would attract looters.
He was halfway across the courtyard when he had another thought. A place like this would have been guarded, too.
Then the ground opened up beneath him.
Jerry and Moira stepped out the door into a world Moira found completely unsettling. The sky was gray but the night was not foggy. She wrinkled her nose. The air stank—an odd pungent reek like nothing she had ever smelled before.
In front of them was a large flat area whose black surface was marked with white lines. Here and there curiously shaped and brightly painted metal boxes or sheds stood on the dark surface. Lights on tall metal poles cast an orangish-pink glare over the scene. In the background she heard a continuous whooshing roar.
All in all, it was an unsettling place, stranger than she had imagined. Yet Wiz had come from here so it must be all right.
"Okay," Jerry told her, "the next question is where do we go to eat."
"My Lord, could we get pizza?"
"Right. Pizza it is. Little Italy’s just around the corner. Come on, we’ll walk." He set off toward the gate with Moira trailing behind.
The Little Italy was the sort of place that develops both regular clients and an idiosyncratic style over the years.
It was four o’clock on Saturday morning, but Mario, the owner, was behind the counter, baking loaves of bread to be used in the day’s sandwiches. Jerry knew that at seven Mario’s son would relieve him so the old man could go home and get a few hours sleep. Then he would be back for the lunch rush, take a nap in the afternoon and come back for the dinner crowd.
"Well, what do you want?" Jerry said as they came up to the counter. Mario stopped shaping loaves of dough and came up to wait on them.
"Pizza," Moira told him.
"Yeah, but what do you want on your pizza? What toppings?"
"Toppings?"
"Those things listed on the board."
Moira frowned. "Lord, I cannot read your language," she confessed.
"Look in the bins then." He pointed at the row of stainless steel containers lining the rear of the counter.
"What are you having?" she asked Jerry.
"I"ll have my usual. Sausage, ham, salami, pepperoni, hamburger and extra cheese. Medium, to eat here."
Mario nodded and got to work, swabbing the dough with spicy red tomato sauce redolent with basil and oregano. Next he scooped up handfuls of coarsely grated cheese and sprinkled them lavishly over the pizza. He didn’t stop until the cheese hid nearly every trace of the sauce.
"Do you want the same thing?" Jerry asked.
"That is a great deal of meat," Moira said dubiously as the old man piled on the toppings. "I think I would prefer something else." She looked at Jerry. "I can have any of those I want?"
"Or any combination. If you come up with an unusual combination Mario names it after you." He nodded toward the board. "Wiz had one up there for a while. Something with jalapeños and pepperoni."
"I want Wiz’s pizza."
Mario shook his head. "Don’t got no jalapeños."
The hedge witch’s brow furrowed and she went back to frowning at the bins, absently brushing back her coppery hair as it fell forward.
"Made up your mind yet, lady?" Mario asked, setting Jerry’s pizza aside.
"What are those?" she asked, pointing to one of the bins.
"Anchovies," Jerry told her. "Highly salted fillets of tiny fish."
"I want some of those on mine," Moira said, looking over the bins. "And onions. Lots of onions. Oh, and is that garlic? Can I have some of that as well?
"And what is that on the end, floating in water?"
"That’s feta. Goes on the gyros."
"It looks wonderful. I would have that on my pizza as well."
Jerry and Mario exchanged looks, but the counterman marked the order down.
"By the way lady, what’s your name?"
"Why do you wish to know?"
"Because," Mario said, "if you eat that, I’m gonna put it on the menu and name it after you."
Even deathtraps need regular maintenance. This one had not been touched since the City of Night fell and it might have been damaged by the earthquakes touched off by the attack. That, and an instinct to keep his feet together, saved Wiz.
Wiz shook his head and climbed slowly to his feet. He was bruised, stunned and his ankles ached from the shock of landing, but he was alive and basically unhurt. He looked up and saw a strip of daylight disappearing as the trap door swung slowly closed with a creaking of unoiled hinges. The door didn’t close all the way and by the dim light coming though the remaining crack, Wiz took stock of his surroundings.
On either side of the pit was a contrivance of rotting wood and rusty iron spikes as long as his arm. Wiz wasn’t at all sure what it was supposed to do and he didn’t want to think about it too closely. Whatever it was, it wasn’t working and that had saved him.
Still, his position was precarious enough. The trap was shaped like a bottle, narrow above where the trap door was and wider down at the bottom. Even if the pit had not been twenty feet deep It would have been impossible to climb back out.
Wiz looked around. He didn’t think he was going to get out of this without help and right now he didn’t have the faintest idea where he could find help.
"… so you see, My Lord," Moira said, "Wiz needs help."
They had taken a booth in the back while they waited for their pizza and Moira filled Jerry in on his cubicle-mate’s adventures and current plight.
Jerry considered. The more he considered, the less likely the whole thing became. There was no way that Wiz Zumwalt could ever have landed someone like the redheaded dish sitting across from him. The rest of her story didn’t sound too plausible either.
Still… When a beautiful woman drops into your lap out of thin air, the event demands some explanation. Hers was no more outrageous than any other theory Jerry could come up with.