Ventilation Grille Quotes

The voice called his name again and it came through a lot of throat. Steven twisted quickly on his stool. Just a white wall and, down near the floor, the ventilation grille. Then movement behind the grille and Steven was on his knees, peering through it, pressing his face against the mesh. In there, in the shadows beyond the spill of light from the hall, the outline of an anvil-shaped head swayed gently. Two eyes blinked limpidly, insolent in their slowness. A dark mass moved forward into the light. “That Cripps man is going to fuck you up, dude.” It was a cow. Most of the body was below floor level but Steven could tell it was a full grown animal. A sienna Guernsey. He looked closely at the flawless sandy curves of forehead and cheek, at the chocolate darkening of the mouth and nostrils, at the badger rings around the eyes. For an absurd second he thought that if he looked hard enough at it the thing might phase back into his head and disappear. But it was real and it stayed. “What … ?” “Yeah, I’m a cow, man. Touch me.” Steven stuck his fingers through the grille. The cow was a cow, warm and solid.

Gasher's right. 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 understand?" Jake didn't reply. He was looking at a panel of the ventilator grille which circled the chamber. The Tick-Tock Man grabbed his nose between two of his fingers and squeezed it viciously. "Do you understand me?" "Yes!" Jake cried. His eyes, now watering with pain as well as terror, returned to Tick-Tock's face. He wanted to look back at the ventilator grille, wanted desperately to verify that what he had seen there was not simply a trick of his frightened, overloaded mind, but he didn't dare. He was afraid someone else--Tick-Tock himself, most likely--would follow his gaze and see what he had seen. "Good." Tick-Tock pulled Jack back over to the chair by his nose, sat down, and cocked his leg over the arm again. "Let's have a nice little chin, then.

We'll begin with your name, shall we? Just what might that be, cully?" "Jake Chambers." With his nose pinched shut, his voice sounded nasal and foggy. "And are you a Not-see, Jake Chambers?" For a moment, Jake wondered if this was a peculiar way of asking him if he was blind...but of course they could all see he wasn't. "I don't understand what--" Tick-Tock shook him back and forth by the nose. "Not-See! Not-See! You just want to stop playing with me, boy!" "I don't understand--" Jake began, and then he looked at the old machine-gun hanging from the chair and thought once more of the crashed Focke-Wulf. The pieces fell together in his mind. "No--I'm not a Nazi. I'm an American. All that ended long before I was born!" The Tick-Tock Man released his hold on Jake's nose, which immediately began to gush blood. "You could have told me that in the first place and saved yourself all sorts of pain, Jake Chambers...but at least now you understand how we do things around here, don't you?" Jake nodded. "Ar. Well enough! We'll start with the simple questions." Jake's eyes drifted back to the ventilator grille. What he had seen before was still there; it hadn't been just his imagination. Two gold-ringed eyes floated in the dark behind the chrome louvers. Oy. Tick-Tock slapped his face, knocking him back into Gasher, who immediately pushed him forward again. "It's school-time, dear heart," Gasher whispered. "Mind yer lessons, now! Mind em wery sharp!" "Look at me when I'm talking to you," Tick-Tock said. "I'll have some respect, Jake Chambers, or I'll have your balls." "All right." Tick-Tock's green eyes gleamed dangerously. "All right what?" Jake groped for the right answer, pushing away the tangle of questions and the sudden hope which had dawned in his mind. And what came was what would have served at his own Cradle of the Pubes...otherwise known as The Piper School. "All right, sir?" Tick-Tock smiled. "That's a start, boy," he said, and leaned forward, forearms on his thighs. "Now...what's an American?

He held the dipper out to Jake. When Jake reached for it, Tick-Tock pulled it back. "First, cully, tell me what you know about dipolar computers and transitive circuits," he said coldly. "What..." Jake looked toward the ventilator grille, but the golden eyes were still gone. He was beginning to think he had imagined them after all. He shifted his gaze back to the Tick-Tock Man, understanding one thing clearly: he wasn't going to get any water. He had been stupid to even dream he might. "What are dipolar computers?" The Tick-Tock Man's face contorted with rage; he threw the remainder of the watter into Jake's bruised, puffy face. "DON'T YOU PLAY IT LIGHT WITH ME!" he shrieked. He stripped off the Seiko watch and shook it in front of Jake. "WHEN I ASKED YOU IF THIS RAN ON A DIPOLAR CIRCUIT, YOU SAID IT DIDN'T! SO DON'T TELL ME YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M TLAKING ABOUT WHEN YOU ALREADY MADE IT CLEAR THAT YOU DO!" "But...but..." Jake couldn't go on. His head was whirling with fear and confusion. He was aware, in some far-off fashion, that he was licking as much water as he could off his lips. "THERE'S A THOUSAND OF THOSE EVER-FUCKING DIPOLAR COMPUTERS RIGHT UNDER THE EVER-FUCKING CITY, MAYBE A HUNDRED THOUSAND, AND THE ONLY ONE THAT STILL WORKS DON'T DO A THING EXCEPT PLAY WATCH ME AND RUN THOSE DRUMS! I WANT THOSE COMPUTERS! I WANT THEM WORKING FOR ME!" The Tick-Tock Man bolted forward on his throne, seized Jake, shook him back and forth, and then threw him to the floor. Jake struck one of the lamps, knocking it over, and the bulb blew with a hollow coughing sound. Tilly gave a little shriek and stepped backward, her eyes wide and frightened. Copperhead and Brandon looked at each other uneasily. Tick-Tock leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, and screamed into Jake's face: "I WANT THEM AND I MEAN TO HAVE THEM!" Silence fell in the room, broken only by the soft whoosh of warm air pouring from the ventilators. Then the twisted rage on the Tick-Tock Man's face disappeared so suddenly it might never have existed at all. It was replaced by another charming smile. He leaned further forward and helped Jake to his feet. "Sorry. I get thinking about the potential of this place and sometimes I get carried away. Please accept my apology, cully." He picked up the overturned dipper and threw it at Tilly. "Fill this up, you useless bitch! What's the matter with you?" He turned his attention back to Jake, still smiling his TV game-show host smile. "All right; you've had your little joke and I've had mine. Now tell me everything you know about dipolar computers and transitive circuits. Then you can have a drink.

One did not need to know why the ovens were so ugly, so very ugly. A tragically burly insect eight feet tall and made out of rust. Who would want to cook with an oven such as this? Pulleys, plungers, grates and vents were the organs of the machine… The patients, all dead, were delivered on a stretcher-like apparatus. The air thick and warped with the magnetic heat of creation. Thence to the Chamber, where the bodies were stacked carefully and, in my view, counter-intuitively, with babies and children at the base of the pile, then the women and the elderly, and then the men. It was my stubborn belief that it would be better the other way round, because the little ones surely risked injury under that press of naked weight. But it worked. Sometimes, my face rippling peculiarly, with smiles and frowns, I would monitor proceedings through the viewing slit. There was usually a long wait while the gas was invisibly introduced by the ventilation grilles. The dead look so dead. Dead bodies have their own language.