Man's green eyes. They were as they had been throughout: cool, cruel, and curious.
He reached a finger toward the Seiko, which now proclaimed the time to be ninety-one minutes past seven—A.M. and P.M.—and pulled it back just before touching the glass above the liquid crystal display. 'Tell me, dear boy—is this 'watch' of yours boobyrigged?'
'Huh? Oh! No. No, it's not boobyrigged.' Jake touched his own finger to the face of the watch.
'That means nothing, if it's set to the frequency of your own body,' the Tick-Tock Man said. He spoke in the sharp, scornful tone Jake's father used when he didn't want people to figure out that he didn't have the slightest idea what he was talking about. Tick-Tock glanced briefly at Brandon, and Jake saw him weigh the pros and cons of making the bowlegged man his designated toucher. Then he dismissed the notion and looked back into Jake's eyes. 'If this thing gives me a shock, my little friend, you're going to be choking to death on your own sweetmeats in thirty seconds.'
Jake swallowed hard but said nothing. The Tick-Tock Man reached out his finger again, and this time allowed it to settle on the face of the Seiko. The moment that it did, all the numbers went to zeros and then began to count upward again.
Tick-Tock's eyes had narrowed in a grimace of potential pain as he touched the face of the watch. Now their corners crinkled in the first genuine smile Jake had seen from him. He thought it was partly pleasure at his own courage but mostly simple wonder and interest.
'May I have it?' he asked Jake silkily. 'As a gesture of your goodwill, shall we say? I am something of a clock fancier, my dear young cully— so I am.'
'Be my guest.' Jake stripped the watch off his arm at once and dropped in onto the Tick-Tock Man's large waiting palm.
'Talks just like a little silk-arse gennelman, don't he?' Gasher said happily. 'In the old days someone would have paid a wery high price for the return o' such as him, Ticky, ay, so they would. Why, my father—'
'Your father died so blowed-out-rotten with the mandrus that not even the dogs would eat him,' the Tick-Tock Man interrupted. 'Now shut up, you idiot.'
At first Gasher looked furious . . . and then only abashed. He sank into a nearby chair and closed his mouth.
Tick-Tock, meanwhile, was examining the Seiko's expansion band with an expression of awe. He pulled it wide, let it snap back, pulled it wide again, let it snap back again. He dropped a lock of his hair into the open links, then laughed when they closed on it. At last he slipped the watch over his hand and pushed it halfway up his forearm. Jake thought this souvenir of New York looked very strange there, but said nothing.
'Wonderful!' Tick-Tock exclaimed. 'Where did you get it, cully?'
'It was a birthday present from my father and mother,' Jake said. Gasher leaned forward at this, perhaps wanting to mention the idea of ransom again. If so, the intent look on the Tick-Tock Man's face changed his mind and he sat back without saying anything.
'Was it?' Tick-Tock marvelled, raising his eyebrows. He had discovered the small button which lit the face of the watch and kept pushing it, watching the light go off and on. Then he looked back at Jake, and his eyes were narrowed to bright green slits again. 'Tell me something, cully—does this run on a dipolar or unipolar circuit?'
'Neither one,' Jake said, not knowing that his failure to say he did not know what either of these terms meant was buying him a great deal of future trouble. 'It runs on a nickel-cadmium battery. At least I'm pretty sure it does. I've never had to replace it, and I lost the instruction folder a long time ago.'
The Tick-Tock Man looked at him for a long time without speaking, and Jake realized with dismay that the blonde man was trying to decide if Jake had been making fun of him. If he decided Jake had been making fun, Jake had an idea that the abuse he had suffered on the way here would seem like tickling compared to what the Tick-Tock Man might do. He suddenly wanted to divert Tick-Tock's train of thought—wanted that more than anything in the world. He said the first thing he thought might turn the trick.
'He was your grandfather, wasn't he?'
The Tick-Tock Man raised his brows interrogatively. His hands returned to Jake's shoulders, and although his grip was not tight, Jake could feel the phenomenal strength there. If Tick-Tock chose to tighten his grip and pull sharply forward, he would snap Jake's collarbones like pencils. If he shoved, he would probably break his back.
'Who was my grandfather, cully?'
Jake's eyes once more took in the Tick-Tock Man's massive, nobly shaped head and broad shoulders. He remembered what Susannah had said: Look at the size of him, Roland—they must have had to grease him to get him into the cockpit!
'The man in the airplane. David Quick.'
The Tick-Tock Man's eyes widened in surprise and amazement. Then he threw back his head and roared out a gust of laughter that echoed off the domed ceiling high above. The others smiled nervously. None, however, dared to laugh right out loud . . . not after what had happened to the woman with the dark hair.
'Whoever you are and wherever you come from, boy, you're the triggest cove old Tick-Tock's run into for many a year. Quick was my great-grandfather, not my grandfather, but you're close enough—wouldn't you say so, Gasher, my dear?'
'Ay,' Gasher said. 'He's trig, right enough, I could've toldjer that. But wery pert, all the same.'
'Yes,' the Tick-Tock Man said thoughtfully. His hands tightened on the boy's shoulders and drew Jake closer to that smiling, handsome, lunatic face. 'I can see he's pert. It's in his eyes. But we'll take care of that, won't we, Gasher?'
It's not Gasher he's talking to, Jake thought. It's me. He thinks he's hypnotizing me . . . and maybe he is.
'Ay,' Gasher breathed.
Jake felt he was drowning in those wide green eyes. Although the Tick-Tock Man's grip was still not really tight, he couldn't get enough breath into his lungs. He summoned all of his own force in an effort to break the blonde man's hold over him, and again spoke the first words which came to mind:
'So fell Lord Perth, and the countryside did shake with that thunder.'
It acted upon Tick-Tock like a hard open-handed blow to the face. He recoiled, green eyes narrowing, his grip on Jake's shoulders tightening painfully. 'What do you say? Where did you hear that?'
'A little bird told me,' Jake replied with calculated insolence, and the next instant he was flying across the room.
If he had struck the curved wall headfirst, he would have been knocked cold or killed. As it happened, he struck on one hip, rebounded, and landed in a heap on the iron grillework. He shook his head groggily, looked around, and found himself face to face with the woman who was not taking a siesta. He uttered a shocked cry and crawled away on his hands and knees. Hoots kicked him in the chest, flipping him onto his back. Jake lay there gasping, looking up at the knot of rainbow colors where the neon tubes came together. A moment later, Tick-Tock's face filled his field of vision. The man's lips were pressed together in a hard, straight line, his cheeks flared with color, and there was fear in his eyes. The coffin-shaped glass ornament he wore around his neck dangled directly in front of Jake's eyes, swinging gently back and forth on its silver chain, as if imitating the pendulum of the tiny grandfather clock inside.
'Gasher's right,' he said. He gathered a handful of Jake's shirt into one fist and pulled him up. 'You're pert. But you don't want to be pert with me, cully. You don't ever want to be pert with me. Have you heard of people with short fuses? Well, I have no fuse at all, and there's a thousand could testify to it if I hadn't stilled their tongues for good. If you ever speak to me of Lord Perth again . . . ever, ever, ever . . . I'll tear off the top of your skull and eat your brains. I'll have none of that bad-luck story in the Cradle of the Grays. Do you understand me?'
He shook Jake back and forth like a rag, and the boy burst into tears.
'Do you?'
'Y-Y-Yes!'
'Good.' He set Jake upon his feet, where he swayed woozily back and forth, wiping at his streaming eyes and leaving smudges of dirt on his cheeks so dark they looked like mascara. 'Now, my little cull, we're going to have a question and answer session here. I'll ask the questions and you'll give the answers. Do you
