The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) (33 page)

Jack turned, prepared to leave
without awaiting a reply. Instead, he got a question, both simple and horrible:
“Has anything disappeared yet, Jack?”

His feet rooted into the hardpan, his
body become stone, his brain locked upon the words, trapped.
Has anything
disappeared yet, Jack?
A part of him said he should keep walking;
hell,
he should start running!
Kreiger knew! Like it or not, Kreiger was wise to
the ways of the Saloon and the Nexus and the Wasteland, and he knew exactly
what was going on.

And Jack knew nothing.

He turned slowly, hearing tendons
creak as he moved, muscles tight, joints locked. “What have you done?”

“Nothing, I assure you. This is all
your own doing, Jack.” Kreiger gestured absently to the sand then sat down upon
the ground. The rest of the Tribe of Dust did likewise. “It’s good that we can
meet like this at long last. No posturing. No threats back and forth. No more ‘this
is mine’ or ‘I’m in charge.’ Empty and useless, eh, Jack?” Again, he gestured
with his hand to the dust at Jack’s feet. “Please, sit down. The wall separates
us, and you have the Guardian to protect you. You’re safe for now. Let us sit …
and talk.”

Cautiously, Jack sat down upon the
sand, knees popping as he did so. His body felt like a coiled spring,
compressed to the point of breaking, ready to release, to leap up and run like
hell. But he didn’t. He crossed his legs, and faced the Cast Outs.

“That’s better,” Kreiger said. “A
gathering of Caretakers, old and new.”

“You’re not Caretakers. None of you
are. You were cast out.”

“And just because you are in there
now, and we are out here, you think that makes you better? You think that makes
you a Caretaker?”

Jack opened his mouth to reply, but
Kreiger cut him off. “Don’t flatter yourself, Jack. You’re no Caretaker,
either. You will become a Cast Out soon enough, just as we are.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking
about,” Jack said, an unwanted waiver in his voice.

“Don’t I? What have you done, Jack?
Have the trains come and taken any of your charges away, sent them on to new
lives, new realities? Have you been writing, or whatever it is that you pretend
to call it? Or have you spent all of your time quashing the petty disputes that
erupt around you? Figuring out what to eat for breakfast and where everyone
should sleep? The bridge is burned behind you, Jack. There is no going back
now. And in your indecision, the fire has caught up to you and left you swatting
sparks while the timbers burst into flame.”

Jack said nothing.

“That sound you hear is the clock
ticking, Jack, though you mistook it for your own pounding heart. This isn’t
your second chance, it’s your only chance, and it’s slipping through your
fingers. The barrier is collapsing around you. Your gilded cage is getting
smaller as the vice tightens, gilt flaking away in toxic chips of lead-wash.
The power is running out, and I’ll bet you don’t even know why.”

Jack did not respond, afraid he would
confirm what Kreiger was suggesting. Did the Cast Out know that he could not
make the trains come back? That his attempts at writing netted little in which
to send even one of the others, let alone all five? What had he accomplished
with the supreme power available to him? Corona with lime, junk food from a
broken-down candy dispenser, an updated sound system?

As a Caretaker, he was failing.

“It’s okay Jack,” Kreiger said
sympathetically. “The deck was stacked against you from the start.”

“Tell me what you know.”

“No. But I will tell you some. Some
is all you need, Jack. Enough to let you know that you can’t win. In the two
thousand years that I have wandered the Wasteland, no Caretaker has ever been
in a position the likes of which you are caught in now. Do you know what this
is?” Kreiger patted the staff at his side, the sharpened piece of steel and
copper with its rune-carved surface, the blue crystal ball caged in its middle.
It hardly resembled a staff at all; nothing like he would have imagined from
years of reading fantasy novels about wizards and their staves, no gnarled
stand of ash or an elaborate device affixed with phoenix feathers and dragon’s
claws. Kreiger’s staff was haphazard, almost comical.

“It’s the Saloon’s lightning rod,”
Kreiger said. “I stole it from the rooftop during one of Algernon’s excursions
into your world.”

And as Kreiger said it, Jack could
suddenly place it. The small inset on the corner of the widow’s walk; he’d
thought it a flag sconce when he’d seen it the other morning, but now its
purpose seemed obvious. It was the fixture for a lightning rod.

But what did it mean if Kreiger had
it?

“The lightning rod is not simply a
lightning rod, Jack. There are no thunderstorms in the Wasteland.” He lifted
the staff, inspecting the runes with casual interest. “The fact of the matter
is this is just a symbolic representation of a focal lens, an allegorical
construct of the Nexus by some long-gone Caretaker. It actualizes the point
through which the energy of the different lines of reality enters the Nexus,
and can, in turn, be utilized by the person closest to the Nexus: the
Caretaker. If it makes it easier, think of this as a power outlet with a
built-in voltage converter and the Nexus as the penultimate live wire.”

Jack’s head was reeling. He understood
the words, but couldn’t grasp their meaning. Kreiger had the lightning rod from
the roof of the Saloon, the focal lens for the power of the Nexus, the means of
capturing the power that the Caretaker would use, power he would manipulate,
power he would create with.

“The staff doesn’t work so well out
here, I’ll grant you,” Kreiger said mildly. “It is out of alignment. I can draw
in stray energy, even a little from the Nexus, but most of it is lost. It
simply passes down through the lines of reality and proceeds on. Still, the
little I gather is better than the little you have left. This barrier you have
created to keep us out is drinking it all away, and there has been no new
energy brought into the Nexus since Algernon fled to the other side to find
you. Your power’s off-line, you’re on auxiliary batteries only, and you’re
trying to run with full shields and warp drive.” Kreiger chuckled absently. “It
can’t take it, Jack. The power is slipping away too fast. That’s why things are
disappearing. First, things you didn’t notice, things you forgot about. Their
matrix has been undone; their energy converted back to power the rest of the
Saloon’s artifacts and structure. But it’s a stopgap measure only. A starving
man will first discover his body converting fat into energy to survive. Then
muscle tissue. And finally bone matter and portions of his own liver. But you
can’t hold on forever, Jack. Sooner or later, you’ll run out. Your barrier is
draining the juice too fast, not that you had a choice. Without the barrier,
we’d have annihilated you.”

Kreiger paused, and the two faced
each other across the silent, dead sand.

“But it won’t protect you forever,
Jack. No, far short of that, really. And when it collapses, it will take most
of the Saloon down with it.”

“You’re just saying that to make me
give up. You want the Nexus, and you need me to give it to you.” But Jack knew
even as he said it that it wasn’t true. He didn’t even believe it himself.
Kreiger was being honest; honest because lies were unnecessary.

“Soon, there won’t be enough power
left in the Saloon to make a soda cracker or a shoelace,” Kreiger remarked.
“When that moment comes, the walls of Jericho will fall, and my creatures will
storm over you like the wrath of God. We shall take back Babylon, me and mine,
cast out the infidel that he may perish in the desert, and hang all of his
servants from the high walls. Are you getting the picture? A Caretaker could
recreate the lens, Jack, but you’re no Caretaker. Not yet. You’re still on
trial. You need this back,” he motioned to the staff, “because all you have
left to power everything in that fool place is the residual energy left behind
by Algernon; his legacy of sorts. And you’re gobbling that up sight unseen.”

Jack felt his mouth open, but nothing
came out. No sound. No protest. No strong words of denouncement. There was
nothing to say. Kreiger was telling the truth and he knew it. It all made sense
now. The disappearing things; things he never really noticed or cared about.
How soon before it was something more important? He needed the barrier to keep
the Cast Outs away, but it was hastening his end. Kreiger forced the
confrontation two days earlier knowing this was Jack’s only alternative;
knowing he would win regardless of what Jack did. The endgame was never in
doubt, only the timeframe.

“Son of a bitch,” Jack murmured,
attention lost to his own despair.

“There, there, Jack. You fought a
good fight. Remarkable, all things considered. I’m still willing to let bygones
be bygones. Yield, and I’ll let you and the others go.”

Jack looked up at him, beyond him,
into the brightening Wasteland and the single, dark tent in the distance. Not
the three tents of two days before with the smell of food and the smoke from
their fires, just a single, lonely tent.

“Your choice. Tell me where you and
the others want to go, and I’ll send you there.”

And why did he keep asking him to
relinquish the Nexus? Why was it so important that he give it up? The power
would run out soon enough. The barrier would fail, and the Tribe of Dust would
take the place. It would be relatively simple to dispose of Jack and the others
then, replace the lightning rod—
focal lens
—and power the Saloon back up.
Like plugging the god machine back in. Why not simply wait for the inevitable?

Because the Cast Outs are also
running out of power.

Jack stood up slowly, brushing the
pale dust from the seat of his jeans. “Come on, Nail. Let’s go.”

The gargoyle nodded indifferently,
that dog-like expression upon his face that suggested he was merely waiting for
Jack to say the word. He turned and started back to the Saloon.

Kreiger leaped to his feet, the
façade evaporating like desert rain, and his face twisted in the darkness, rage
and hatred, the visage of a mad demon. “Dammit, Jack! If you play this out, you’ll
lose. Give up now and I’ll let you go. Push on, and I swear you’ll beg me for
death!”

“Good night, Kreiger,” Jack said
distantly, thoughts charging ahead on a different vein. He did not hear
anything the leader of the Cast Outs said after that, not the shouted threats
or snarled warnings. He did not hear and he did not care. He had to get back to
the Saloon; back to the Nexus. He had to figure it out; figure out what it all
meant. There was still time left, but could he do anything with it?

He left the Tribe of Dust alone there
in the Wasteland.

Forgotten.

Cast out.

*     *     *

Standing on the second landing of the
Stairway to Heaven, the sun just beginning to rise, Jack watched the steam off
his coffee, the only cloud the desert air might ever know. With him, Ellen,
Lindsay and Oversight.

He had asked all of them to come up
here ten minutes ago, but still had not said a word, hoping that Alex and
Leland would show.

But neither did.

After the incident with the Dust
Eater, Quince retreated to his room; while his door remained open, he neither
spoke to or acknowledged anyone. Completely withdrawn, he stared out the window
at the endless Wasteland and brooded, over what, Jack could not even guess.
Alex was on the front porch where the shadows were still deep and long. The
young man sat with his forehead upon his knees, hands covering his head. That
Jack had no idea why only made him realize how little he knew about what really
led up to the night’s carnage. He cleared his throat and told Alex that he was
having a meeting with all of them on the Stairway to Heaven then left without
knowing whether the young man had even heard. Whether he had or not was
academic now; Alex was not coming. Jack had only Lindsay, Ellen, and Oversight
to glean advice from.

“We’re running out of time,” Jack
said, unsure how else to begin.

“You just figured that out?”
Oversight remarked.

“No,” he said, keeping his voice
even. “But I just confirmed it. The Tribe of Dust isn’t trying to destroy me.
They’re waiting for me to destroy myself. And that’s exactly what will happen
if I don’t create the stories that will generate the tickets and get us out of
here.”

“When you say
us
, I assume you
understand that not all of
us
will be going on to these new realities
you hope to create,” Oversight informed him needlessly. “Or have you found some
magical way of making more tickets than the previous Caretaker left you?”

“No, there’s only the five. I asked
you here for advice because you understand the Wasteland and the Nexus and just
about everything else around here. At least, you understand it better than I
do.”

Oversight rolled her eyes.

“What will happen if you don’t finish
in time?” Ellen sat high on the steps, unafraid of the three-story drop to the
desert below. Her eyes were red, expression exhausted. The Saloon seemed to be
draining her as well, but he didn’t know why.