The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) (8 page)

Jack stood on the landing and looked
out over the desert. No matter where he looked, there was nothing; a million,
million miles of dust. He saw a widow’s walk atop the small room on the roof
that would have afforded an even better view, but to what end. All anyone would
ever see was a thin gray line on the horizon and the long thread of rails. No
utility poles or buildings or water towers, no trees or grass. Not even a rock
to stand upon in the vast sea of dust. Nothing. Just an empty track rolling
into the distance …

…
empty track?
…

And that was when Jack realized that
the train that carried him here had vanished as certainly as if it had never
been.

THE TRIBE OF DUST

Far across the Wasteland, from atop a
rift of stone—the gray line on the edge of Jack’s horizon—Rebreather watched
the Nexus, a battered telescope held to one goggled eye. The saloon sat like a
blight on the bone of the Wasteland, the torso of an engorged tick, head buried
in the very artery of the universes as it sucked the blood from all the
realities that had been or might ever be.

The Nexus was under new management.

Rebreather collapsed the telescope
and dropped it in a pocket of his long coat, the once Confederate-gray bleached
nearly white by the sun and the saturation of the ever-present dust. It was the
way of the Wasteland. The air stole the life from any who stayed too long, who
dared to survive. It began like consumption; death followed shortly thereafter.
And the sparse waters of the desert offered little relief, heavy with rust and
lime and sometimes arsenic; they encrusted the bottom of his cup, scales of
orange and white on tin.

For too long he called this place
home.

He should have lived within the glow of the Nexus, but all attempts to
wrest it from the Caretakers had met with failure. The Nexus was the throne of
God, and reality was as soft clay to its possessor. A Caretaker who knew how
could easily repel any outcast aching for what the Nexus offered—outcasts like
himself.

Ache was too mild a word, truly. It
was
agony
, a pain that overrode reason and sanity, filling the mind with
an all-consuming need to possess what could never be held.

But all of that was about to change.
Rebreather had found God, and God promised to help him destroy the Caretaker.
Not alone this time, God promised him soldiers; soldiers over which his control
would be absolute. And the pleasure this brought after centuries of impotence
and isolation was … indescribable.

There were few pleasures in the dead
air of the Wasteland.

Some made light of the consequences
of breathing Wasteland air; the sand was whiter for the dust of their bones. But
no matter how hard he tried, the air still crept in, penetrating his lungs, permeating
his flesh. He used to shave to keep the fit of the mask tight, but the stubble
always grew back. And exposing himself to the Wasteland risked breathing in
more of its air, or opening his skin with the blade and succumbing to sepsis.

The solution was obvious; he set his
face on fire. Now all that remained was a nerveless paste of thickened scar
tissue. No hair grew there ever again, and the mask’s integrity was preserved.

But now the air was starting to slip
past the mask, find its way through the air filters and into his lungs, making
him old. He tried taping his gloves to the sleeves of his shirt, tying the
cuffs of his pants tight around his boots, but the wasting of the desert
infected everything, drying the tape and making it peel, or wearing the cloth
into flimsy, threadbare fabric. If he controlled the Nexus, he would never want
for fresh air, or clean water, or fine clothes. He would dine upon the finest
of foods, and never again be forced to eat things that scuttled and crawled
upon the sand, or gnaw the flesh from the bones of fresh kills like a cannibal.

But he did not own the Nexus. He was
a victim of the Wasteland. His gloves were torn through in the fingers, and try
as he might, Rebreather could not mend them or keep the yellow-nailed tips from
tearing through, his flesh sickly and pale, appearing as bones emerging from
the rot of a corpse. Knots of gray hair shot from the edges of the mask like sidewalk
weeds restrained only by the straps bound tightly around his head, and the
wide-brimmed hat he had pulled down upon his skull, once bright black, now the
color of rain-sodden ashes, the remnants of some long-forgotten fire.

He would never live to see another
Caretaker. If he could not reclaim the Nexus now, the Wasteland would claim him
as it claimed so many others before; not as a god, but as a nameless victim
forgotten for his mediocrity.

And it was in his most desperate hour
that God came to him, unclothed, the dust and the dead air incapable of
touching Him. And that was how Rebreather knew that this was God; He walked
across the desert, feet never touching the hardpan. It was weeks ago, and time
in the Wasteland was not constant—years evaporated as quickly as sweat while
minutes under the merciless sun were each small pieces of eternity unto
themselves—but he remembered clearly the day God chose him to be His general.

God stood before him holding a glass
of water. He saw ice cubes—something he had not seen since coming to the
Wasteland—and condensation running from God’s hand to sprinkle the bone-white
ground.
Wondrous!
For such a gift, God could have demanded obeisance to
His mightiness, commanded Rebreather to kneel before Him and ask forgiveness
for his sins.

Instead, God simply handed him the
glass, remarking, “You look thirsty. Drink this.”

Rebreather felt the cold through the holes in his gloves. Not since his
exile had he seen so much water all at once—
and so pure!
Water in the
Wasteland was not what it was on Earth—not any of the Earths along any of the
lines. Here, dust was the rule, mud was as gold, and rain as impossible to find
as a unicorn or the virgin who brought such a beast to bay.

But God mistook his reverence for
doubt. “I assure you it’s safe. Drink. When death comes, he will not offer you
water. He will only laugh while you choke on your own dried and blackened
tongue.”

So Rebreather removed his mask, let
his hat fall to the dusty earth, and drank greedily. He did not spill a drop,
and even sucked the dampness from the sides of the glass and the skin of his
fingers.
Let nothing be wasted
.

Then God amazed him anew by taking
back the glass and filling it again, the water catching and magnifying the
brilliance of the noon sun until it pained his eyes, too-long protected by the
smoked-glass of his mask. The water did not wink into existence—for such was
the way of a mesmerist and not of God at all—but simply refilled the glass as
if drawn from an invisible fountain.

God handed the glass back to him
without remark, and Rebreather drained it just as quickly; it would have been
blasphemy to forsake the gift, or pause in the acceptance of His bounty.

“We could probably do this all day,
but it would grow tiresome and I have things to do. The Nexus must be taken
back from the outsiders. You understand this, don’t you? The sun can drive a
man mad, as can eating the black meat of certain giant centipedes. Tell me your
wits are not poisoned beyond repair?”

“No,” Rebreather answered, voice a
cracked whisper from decades of disuse and dry, water-starved air.

“Good because I will send an army
against these outsiders to drive them from the Nexus, and I will need someone
to lead it. For too long, the Nexus has played servant to them, childish,
immature simpletons with no conception of the power they are playing with,
totally undeserving of what they wrongfully possess—”

God faltered, teetering upon the
brink of rage or epiphany; Rebreather did not know which. He was an angry and
vengeful God, and Rebreather trembled before His might, and thought that this
was good. What use had he for a weak or compassionate God? Who amongst the Cast
Out could want for anything but blood and vengeance? What else was there,
really?

But God’s control was absolute, His wrath brought quickly to heel. “Do
not fear me. Not yet. You are to be my general, and I will raise you up above
all other creatures that infest the Wasteland. I will gather my forces from the
desert, and you will drive them against my enemy as the hammer is driven
against the nail. We will walk together against the outsiders, and together we
will crush their sweet hands beneath our boot heels like crystal spiders. Do
you understand?”

Rebreather nodded.

“Good. Then go to the mountains and
await my return. The time is at hand when I will take back the Nexus, and any
who walk with me will drink from that power as easily as water from a glass.”
Then God produced from behind his back a staff, conjured from its hiding place
within a fold of thin, desert air, six feet of decorative iron and blackened
copper tapering to a sharp point, a sphere of blue crystal caged within the
middle of its length, the metal carved and decorated like a stairway spindle
from a night witch’s home, symbols and hieroglyphs dancing up and down its
length, scarabs and ibises, eyed-pyramids and japing faces; terrible
juju
the likes of which had never been seen this far from the Nexus. Rebreather knew
what this was.

“Yes,” God said. “This is the rod and
the staff of God. But it is also a key, and the Nexus is the lock to which this
key fits. It is a lightning rod, but the lightning it draws in is the lightning
of the Nexus, and with this rod I can bend that lightning to my will.”

Then God thrust the staff into the
dust. “Behold!”

And where God’s scepter punched the
hardpan, water was released as if the Wasteland was merely the skin of a
balloon that, once punctured, would pour forth all the oceans of the universe.
Water bubbled up from the dust, running over Rebreather’s booted ankles, the
press of liquid reaching through the cracked leather to brush feather-light
against nerves he thought long ago dead to such sensations.

God pulled the staff from the dust,
and the waters subsided, leaving behind a puddle in a land that had never known
such a thing. “Now go. I will send my servants to you, so that when next the
train crosses the desert, we will take the devil unaware, and cast him from my
throne. And all who serve me will be raised up above all other men and made as
gods themselves … or something like that.”

“The key of God will open the Nexus
to the Cast Outs?”

“Of course, my aspiring dreamer. I am
Gusman Kreiger, and I shall lead the Cast Outs from the Wasteland and to their
rightful place. Now, for the last time, go to the mountains and wait, and I
will send my servants to you. First I must wrestle the Beast, for he has grown
careless, and believes himself immune to my wrath.” And God turned and walked
away, stepping upon the air as if born on the skirls of heat rising off the
hardened sand. “
He is wrong
.”

Beneath Rebreather’s boots, the water
turned to wine! It was a cheap, flavorless port, as dry as the dust of the
Wasteland from whence it came, but a miracle nonetheless.

The minions arrived later as God
promised. Rebreather found three of them waiting at the ridge of stone,
simple-minded Wasteland dregs: a gerrymander, a dust runner, and a skinker.
Poised like statues, they remained until this morning when they arose and
walked as one into the Wasteland. Rebreather watched them go, uncertain whether
he was meant to intervene, or whether he could even do so without permanently
damaging them.

But then God who would be called
Gusman Kreiger appeared before the dregs clothed in a suit of pale linen, His
skin smelling pleasantly of distantly remembered aromas, musk and ionized
water. The odor somehow penetrated the filters of Rebreather’s mask, awakening
memories of long ago, shrieking haunts threatening to awaken something else;
something old and dead and forgotten; something nearly rotted and gone, but
which had the power to ruin him if he allowed it to be brought back to life.

But before it could happen, God waved
to Rebreather as if they were old friends and disappeared, taking the three
creatures with him. Gone as completely as mescaline dreams the morning after,
the system crashing out as the angry demons ripped themselves free of the
cloistering flesh prison, Rebreather could now see a single person crossing the
desert alone, a speck on the illusionary mirror of the desert, the water that
was not.

So he waited.

And when she arrived—and it was a
she
—she
offered him a single look, an acknowledgment that spoke volumes of her hatred.
She was thin, her skin the color of roach husks bleached in the sun, her hair
long and black and full of the dust and the wind of the Wasteland. Her eyes
were like the night sky, and she wore leather that looked somehow new, black
and fine, and Rebreather knew she was not anything from the Wasteland. This one
was made by God’s own hand from the dust of the desert and the sepia of His
pen. But she was not a Cast Out. She was …
lower
.

Pity. There was a time when he might
have enjoyed this bountiful gift of God. No doubt she was born from the dust
with knowledge of all carnal matters, for she was a child of the Wasteland
shaped by God’s raving fantasies. In that, she was not so different from the
animals God had taken with him just now. Rebreather might have pleasured
himself upon her, used her for his amusement. But that part of him was gone
now, as dead as the memories of scented tinctures or the old words rolling
unconnected around his mind. It was all long ago, and he did not see the world
that way anymore. This thing that crossed the Wasteland at God’s bidding was a
temptation to open himself to the air, to draw in its disease that it might rot
his flesh and burst his brain with fever like a copper kettle left too long on
the fire. She was nothing to him, fodder in God’s cannon; and he held the fuse
in his fingers, atremble with anticipation.