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Show Acting Alone pa g e 360 of the tunnels in front of him. Then the staccatos became legatos: lions' roars. Louder and louder. When he felt the solid granite beneath his feet tremble like jelly, he knew the intercontinental ganglia were real after all. With this little semi-American Jew's help, NORAD was sucking the continent down to hot hell in one huge swallow. Feeling the cold eyes of Mr. Cicerone's video surveillance system on his neck, Axelrad suddenly took a vaguely hysterical notion. He never would have guessed he had it in him; but he ran back up the roller-coastering tunnel, back in the direction of the chapel, screaming until his throat bled hot and rich inside its dark red shaft, reflexly intending to repent of his Jewishness and his Bar Mitzvah to the very sister he'd helped to fricassee. But he got lost and sidetracked in the trembling wet blackness. The grotesque nun's face had been burned into his retina, and he was blinded. He had to stop and get bearings. Perfectly excusable, it says so in the book, to stop moving altogether, if necessary, to figure out which way is up and which down. Too much now. If something doesn't come along soon that I can fit into some kind of matrix, I'm going to just sit down among these strange, sticky yellow crystals, put my little legs flat out in front of me, and cry like a boy. He wandered down one web of tunnels and approached what looked like candle flickers. He heard a sudden blast of Zulu drums and voodoo rattles (had he emerged on the Dark Continent?), and a thousand female voices echoing up the shaft from among the wobbling shadows, a thousand witches, chanting |