From his slumped-down position, Kit glanced over at Nita. "Those arc the first we've seen." " 'The usual accesses,' " Nita said. "They've got it down in the subway somewhere." "Oh, no," Kit muttered, and (Wonderful,) Fred said. Nita swallowed, not too happy about the idea herself. Subway stations, unless they were well lighted and filled with people, gave her the creeps. Worse, even in her New York, subways had their own special ecologies — not just the mice and rats and cats that everybody knew about, but other less normal creatures, on which the wizards' manual had had a twenty-page chapter. "They're all over the place," she said aloud, dealing with the worst problem first. "How are we going to—"
"Ooof!" Kit said, as the dark Book, sitting on his lap, sank down hard as if pushed. The Lotus kept driving on down Broadway, past City Hall, and Kit struggled upward to look out the back window, noting the spot. 'That was where the other Book was — straight down from that place we just passed."
The Lotus turned right onto a side street and slowed as if looking for something. Finally it pulled over to the left-hand curb and stopped. What—" Kit started to say, but the racer flicked open first Kit's door, then Nita's, as if it wanted them to get out.
They did, cautiously. The Lotus very quietly closed its doors, Then it rolled forward a little way, bumping up onto the sidewalk in front of a dingy-looking warehouse. It reached down, bared its fangs, and with great delicacy sank them into a six-foot-long grille in the sidewalk. The Lotus heaved, and with asoft scraping groan, the grille-work came up to reveal an electric-smelling darkness and stairs leading down into it.
"It's one of the emergency exits from the subway, for when the trains break down/' Kit whispered, jamming the dark Book back into his backpack and dropping to his knees to rub the Lotus enthusiastically behind one head-light. "It's perfect!"
The Lotus's engine purred as it stared at Kit with fierce affection. It backed a little and parked itself, its motions indicating it would wait for them. Kit got up, pulling out his antenna, and Nita got out her wand "Well," she said under her breath, "let's get it over with… "
The steps were cracked concrete, growing damp and discolored as she walked downward. Nita held out the wand to be sure of her footing and kept one hand on the left wall to be sure of her balance — there was no banister or railing on the right, only darkness and echoing air. (Kit—) she said silently, wanting to be sure he was near, but not wanting to be heard by anything that might be listening down there. (Right behind you. Fred?)
His spark came sailing down behind Kit, looking brighter as they passed from gloom to utter dark. (Believe me, I'm not far.)
(Here's the bottom,) Nita said. She turned for one last glance up toward street level and saw a huge sleek silhouette carefully and quietly replacing the grille above them. She gulped, feeling as if she were being shut into a dun-geon, and turned to look deeper into the darkness. The stairs ended in a ledge three feet wide and perhaps four feet deep, recessed into the concrete wall of the subway. Nita held up the wand for more light. The ledge stretched away straight ahead, with the subway track at the bottom of a wide pit to the right of it. (Which way, Kit?) (Straight, for the time being.)
The light reflected dully from the tracks beside them as they pressed farther into the dark. Up on the streets, though there had been darkness, there had also been sound. Here there was a silence like black water, a silence none of them dared to break. They slipped into it holding their breaths. Even the usual dim rumor of a subway tunnel, the sound of trains rumbling far away, the ticking of the rails, was missing. The hair stood up all over Nita as she walked and tried not to make a sound. The air was damp, chilly, full of the smells of life — too full, and the wrong kinds of life, at least to Nita's way of thinking. Mold and mildew; water dripping too softly to make a sound, but still filling the air with a smell of leached lime, a stale, puddly odor; wet trash, piled in trickling gutters or at the bases of rusting iron pillars, rotting quietly; and always the sharp ozone-and-scorched- soot smell of the third rail. Shortly there was light that did not come from Nita's wand. Pale splotches of green-white radiance were splashed irregularly on walls and ceiling — firefungus, which the wizards' manual said was the main food source of the subway's smallest denizens, dun mice and hidebehinds and skinwings. Nita shuddered at the thought and walked faster. Where there were hidebehinds, there would certainly be rats to eat them. And where there were rats, there would also be fireworms and thrastles— (Nita.)
She stopped and glanced back at Kit. He was holding his backpack in one arm now and the antenna in the other, and looking troubled in the wand's silver light. (That way,) he said, pointing across the tracks at the far wall with its niche-shaped recesses. (Through the wall? We don't even know how thick it is!) Then she stopped and thought a moment. (I wonder — You suppose the Mason's Word would work on concrete? What's in concrete, anyhow?)
(Sand—quartz, mostly. Some chemicals—but I think they all come out of the ground.) (Then it'll work. C'mon.) Nita hunkered down and very carefully let her-self drop into the wide pit where the tracks ran. The crunch of rusty track cinders told her Kit was right behind. Fred floated down beside her, going low to light the way. With great care Nita stepped over the third rail and balanced on the narrow ledge of the wall on the other side. She stowed the wand and laid both hands flat on the concrete to begin implementation of the lesser usage of the Word, the one that merely manipulates stone rather than giving it the semblance of life. Nita leaned her head against the stone too, making sure of her memory of the Word, the sixteen syllables that would loose what was bound, Very fast, so as not to mess it up, she said the Word and pushed.
Door, she thought as the concrete melted under her hands, and a door there was; she was holding the sides of it, (Go ahead,) she said to Kit and Fred. They ducked through under her arm. She took a step forward, let go, and the wall re-formed behind her. (Now what the—) Kit was staring around him in complete confusion. It took Nita a moment to recover from the use of the Word, but when her vision cleared, she understood the confusion. They were standing in the fiddle of another track, which ran right into the wall they had just come through and stopped there. The walls there were practically one huge mass of Aefungus. It hung down in odd green-glowing lumps from the ceiling and ayered thick in niches and on the poles that held the ceiling up. Only the jack and ties and the rusty cinders between were bare, a dark road leading °wnward between eerily shining walls for perhaps an eighth of a mile before curving around to the right and out of view. U don't get it,) Kit said. (This track just starts. Or just stops. It would run right into that one we just came off! There aren't any subway lines in the city that do that! Are there?)
Nita shook her head, listening. The silence of the other tunnel did not persist here. Far down along the track, the sickly green light of the fircfungus was troubled by small shadowy rustlings,
movements, the scrabbling of claws. (What about the Book?} she said.
Kit nodded down toward the end of the track. (Down there, and a little to the right.)
They walked together down the long aisle of cold light, looking cautiously into the places where firefungus growth was sparse enough to allow for shadow. Here and there small sparks of brightness peered out at them, paired sparks — the eyes of dun mice, kindled to unnatural brightness by the fungus they fed on. Everywhere was the smell of dampness, old things rotting or rusting. The burning-ozone smell grew so chokingly strong that Nita realized it couldn't be just the third rail producing it — even if the third rail were alive in a tunnel this old. The smell grew stronger as they approached the curve at the tunnel's end. Kit, still carrying the backpack, was gasping. She stopped just before the curve, looked at him. (Are you okay?)