The white tunnels ebbed upward, and came out in a hall. More posters (Bovril, Guinness), these defaced with old naive graffiti, Kiss me quick, Up the Spurs.

The huge dragon-back escalators, unfurled from the upper gloom, came in motion, ascending.

Ivory had sprinted onto one. He stood, staring behind him, getting watery legs ready to run again.

Malach reached the escalators. He chose another, one which was frozen into time, like the dinosaur.

He raced. He raced up the dead escalator. And when he was above Ivory, had passed him, he vaulted the barrier between and came over on to Ivory's side, onto the moving track.

Ivory tried to go down the rocking up-escalator.

After a moment he tipped over on his knees, and the steps carried him upward again.

With no difficulty, Malach was descending.

Malach reached him.

Malach stood over him, and forced Ivory's head down onto the moving tread, so the ponytail of hair was caught inside. With a screech, Ivory was twisted around onto his side. Lying pinned, his hair in a vise, he pushed his hand up over his throat.

"Don't," he said.

Malach stood over him still, and, leisurely, once more they were carried up to the surface of hell.

When they were almost there, and the steps began to level out, Malach crushed Ivory's head over, and his face, or parts of it, were drawn into the cement with the track.

Presently, the stair mechanism jammed, but too late for Ivory.

The echoes of his anguish died slowly, as if the ancient station was unwilling to let them go.

When Malach went back below, the wounded dog, the only thing left alive, glared up at him again and growled and slavered bloody foam.

In the red and white furnace light the bodies lay, immaterial as debris. Only the other dog, the dead one, had bulk and presence still.

Malach reached out and the live dog bared its shovel of fangs, from which ripped flesh was hanging.

But Malach's hand came down in its rings and blood upon the head of the black dog, and the dog closed its mouth. Its face was ugly with a dreadful wisdom surprised.

Presently he knelt and picked it up. It was heavy and almost inert, and as he stood with it, he caught his breath.

Then he held it against him and the dog looked stonily into his face.

"You," Malach said, "you I can change."

He walked back up from hell, up the broken escalator, over the final body, and out of the little concealed door, into the city that was like all cities, and the time that was like all times, and the agony and tedium and loss that had no end.

CHAPTER 44