Free GRAVITY RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon Page B

collapse at any moment. They draw near their quarry, who scrutinizes now the doctor, now Roger, with quick shifts of his head. He growls tentatively, tail keeping up a steady slap against the two sides of the corner they've backed him into.
    As Roger, who carries the light, moves rearward, the dog, some circuit of him, recalls the other light that came from behind in recent days-the light that followed the great blast so seethed through afterward by pain and cold. Light from the rear signals death / men with nets about to leap can be avoided-
    "Sponge," screams the doctor. Roger flings himself at the dog, who has taken off in Pointsman's direction and away toward the street whilst Pointsman, groaning, swings his toiletbowl foot desperately, misses, momentum carrying him around a full turn, net up like a radar antenna. Roger, snoot full of ether, can't check his lunge-as the doctor comes spinning round again Roger careens on into him, toilet bowl hitting Roger a painful thump in the leg. The two men fall over, tangled in the net now covering them. Broken beams creak, chunks of rain-wet plaster tumble. Above them the unsupported wall begins to sway.
    "Get out of there," hollers the sentry. But the efforts of the pair under the net to move away only rock the wall more violently.
    "We're for it," the doctor shivers. Roger seeks his eyes to see if he means it, but the window of the Balaclava helmet now contains only a white ear and fringe of hair.
    "Roll," Roger suggests. They contrive to roll a few yards down toward the street, by which time part of the wall has collapsed, in the other direction. They manage to get back to Jessica without causing any more damage.
    "He's run down the street," she mentions, helping them out of the net.
    "It's all right," the doctor sighs. "It doesn't make any difference."
    "Ah but the evening's young, " from Roger.
    "No, no. Forget it."
    "What will you do for a dog, then."
    They are under way again, Roger at the wheel, Jessica between them, toilet bowl out a half-open door, before the answer. "Perhaps it's a sign. Perhaps I should be branching out."
    Roger gives him a quick look. Silence, Mexico. Try not to think about what that means. He's not one's superior after all, both report to the old Brigadier at "The White Visitation" on, so far as he knows, equal footing. But sometimes-Roger glances again across Jessica's dark wool bosom at the knitted head, the naked nose and eyes-he thinks the doctor wants more than his good will, his collaboration. But wants him. As one wants a fine specimen of dog…
    Why's he here, then, assisting at yet another dognapping? What stranger does he shelter in him so mad-
    "Will you be going back down tonight, doctor? The young lady needs a ride."
    "I shan't, I'll be staying in. But you might take the car back. I must talk with Dr. Spectro."
    They are approaching now a lengthy brick improvisation, a Victorian paraphrase of what once, long ago, resulted in Gothic cathedrals-but which, in its own time, arose not from any need to climb through the fashioning of suitable confusions toward any apical God, but more in a derangement of aim, a doubt as to the God's actual locus (or, in some, as to its very existence), out of a cruel network of sensuous moments that could not be transcended and so bent the intentions of the builders not on any zenith, but back to fright, to simple escape, in whatever direction, from what the industrial smoke, street excrement, windowless warrens, shrugging leather forests of drive belts, flowing and patient shadow states of the rats and flies, were saying about the chances for mercy that year. The grimed brick sprawl is known as the Hospital of St. Veronica of the True Image for Colonie and Respiratory Diseases, and one of its residents is a Dr. Kevin Spectro, neurologist and casual Pavlovian.
    Spectro is one of the original seven owners of The Book, and if you ask Mr. Pointsman what Book, you'll only get smirked at. It rotates, the mysterious