“Frankly,” the Cast Out murmured, “I liked you better before.”
How much of the old Guardian was resurrected in this thing? That one hated him as it hated no other. It would keep him out: away from the Nexus, from the Caretaker, from everything but exile in the endless expanse of sand, emptiness his only reward for once having reached beyond his station. He was a Cast Out, now and forever. Mage. Messiah. Madman. All of that was gone, lost to the realm of before. He was once again a pariah in the world of madmen and dreamers, fit only to wander the desert, sightless, burning beneath the relentless eye of the sun, the dust beneath his feet his only meal until the end of days.
“It’s all right, Hammerlock.”
The soft voice from inside the garage made Kreiger’s heart turn cold, his guts become water. He knew the voice even before the speaker stepped from the shadows, hands in his pockets, head tipped to one side as he regarded Kreiger evenly. Dressed only in his jeans, hair uncombed, bare feet walking gingerly on the cold ground, he looked as if he had just woken up.
It was not at all how Gusman Kreiger expected to meet the Caretaker again. For a moment, he was at a loss for words.
“I was beginning to wonder when you would get here,” Jack said. He crossed the narrow distance and crouched down before the Cast Out, looking him in the eye. Hammerlock followed a pace behind, the pry bar poised upon its metal shoulder. “How was your trip?” he asked.
Kreiger weighed his response carefully, unsure the depth of Jack’s insanity. “They bumped me to coach.”
“The flight was probably overbooked,” Jack answered back quietly.
“I expect it was more a scheduling conflict. But I made it; that’s all that matters.”
“Yes, it is.” Jack glanced at the dead metal clutched tight in Kreiger’s fist, its surface no longer disguised by the other world, the normal world. It was again ornately carved iron, copper-inlaid runes, a sphere of blue crystal caught within its length. “I see you kept that with you. It’s worthless now, you know?”
“I expected as much.”
Jack nodded thoughtfully. “Does it make you feel better to hold onto it?”
“Yes.”
“Keep it then. My rod and my staff, they comfort you.”
Kreiger felt himself shrink from the Caretaker, retreating from his madness, tightening like a coil. The Caretaker was looking at him, the hint of a smile on his lips, an unusual glint reflected in his eyes. It was the look of someone who understands madness, who has walked the fine line between sanity and unreality, and is walking it still. Jack had achieved his control; now all of the madness, all of the chaos that was channeling through him, was being directed, manipulated, shaped. He was a traveler in a ghost world of actual and possible where neither could be distinguished from the other. He was the Caretaker.
He was also very, very dangerous; so much more so than Kreiger ever imagined. The Cast Out abandoned any hope of regaining the Nexus, and instead turned his attention to surviving the coming moments. The Guardian shifted closer, its mannerism more in character with an animal, restless and eager to slip the leash.
“I suggest you stay clear of Hammerlock for a while,” Jack advised. “He came from those first days after I destroyed the Saloon and the Cast Outs, after I banished you to that same world I sent Ellen to for her protection. I appreciate you looking after her, by the way. It’s the only reason I allowed you to come back.” Then Jack paused, waiting for the challenge, waiting on some useless remark of bravado to contradict him and claim that the Cast Out’s return was not the Caretaker’s decision. But Kreiger kept silent, refusing the bait, and finally, Jack let it pass. “The point is Hammerlock comes from a time when I still believed the dregs might return; that there might be other Cast Outs I needed to protect myself against. I’m over that now, but it doesn’t change what he is. I can control him, but I can’t necessarily control myself.”
“Do you understand the contradiction of what you are saying?” Kreiger asked.
“I do, in fact. Do you?”
The Cast Out narrowed his eyes, but reluctantly nodded. “I’ll stay clear of the Guardian.”
“Do that. You’ll be safe out in the boneyard. Don’t try going into the café or the garage. Not just yet. Give me no reason to distrust you, and the Café won’t accidentally kill you. I’m warning you as a courtesy, and because I enjoy the tranquility of this place; I don’t want to see it end just because I allowed you to come here. Don’t try to take the focal lens; you won’t succeed. Don’t try to enter the buildings. Like Hammerlock, they were created from a time when I still distrusted the Wasteland. The Café will lash out against you, and there’s no magic rabbit hole to tumble down this time. Algernon was supposed to be my teacher, but you killed him. That was probably your biggest mistake. Algernon would have passed on everything to me including his limitations. But you eliminated him first. So all I had to learn from was you. Even that might have left me vulnerable, but I learned more. I learned what Algernon and all the others before him never even imagined. I discovered what you only ever suspected. For that, I expect I owe you a certain debt of gratitude. You’re still alive; we’re even.”
Ellen emerged from the garage wearing a long T-shirt, eyes half-closed with sleep; she was not a morning person, he knew. Squinting blearily at Jack, she asked, “Who are you talking to?”
Then she saw past Jack, past Hammerlock, to the Cast Out on hands and knees in the street; a groveling beggar; a crouching spider. Her eyes widened, and she stormed back into the garage.
The Caretaker cursed under his breath and moved to follow, leaving Hammerlock to watch him, the Guardian’s metal fingers tightening upon the pry bar, claws carving small dents into the tempered steel.
* * *
Jack stopped suddenly as Ellen reemerged carrying the long sword from his workbench, the pommel still unfinished. Hilt notwithstanding, the blade was perfect, hammered and honed to a razor’s edge. No doubt she had found it amidst the clutter, a detail lost but not forgotten. Gone was the blur of sleep, her eyes alert, her attention a scalpel, her nerves a sparking wire. Her focus drew down on the crippled sorcerer, looking past Jack and Hammerlock as if neither existed. Sword raised, she started towards him.
She would not forget. And she would never forgive.
“Ellen, wait,” Jack said, stepping in her way, wondering why things never seemed to work out the way he planned.
“What’s he doing here, Jack?” she demanded, voice like December shadows.
Jack sensed the rage behind her disconnected tone; nothing would prevent her from carrying out what needed to be done. It was the same way she killed Lenny, stabbing him in the throat with a sharpened screwdriver before he could assault her. No thought or hesitation, just action born of necessity.
But he could not allow her to kill the Cast Out. Regardless of how he felt, this was not the way to end paradise. Not again. “He was trapped in the other world with you,” he explained quietly. “He fell through the hole you created when you came here in the dream flyer.”
“He tried to kill you, Jack,” Ellen said, undeterred. “He tried to kill me.”
On hands and knees, Kreiger slithered back like an insect caught in the light, staff scraping uselessly against the asphalt. Even on the doorstep of Elysium, mercy is a boon not universally granted.
“I know,” Jack said, holding his ground, forcing Ellen to stop before she ran into him. He hoped to slow her down, cause her resolve to waver, fracture the wall that she used to separate away her conscience and make the task of ending Kreiger’s life more difficult. “I can’t let you do this, though.”
“He killed Nail!” she screamed.
“I know,” Jack said softly. “I know everything he did; everything he’s ever done. I’m not asking you to forgive him. I’m not even asking you to accept him. But don’t kill him. Not for me or for him, but for you. Leave that behind. He’ll stay in the junkyard. Hammerlock will watch him. He can’t hurt anyone anymore, I pr
omise you.”
She stared angrily, tears forming in her eyes. “I know you believe that Jack, but you’re wrong. Some things don’t change just because you want them to.” She turned, the sword dropping to the pavement with an awkward clang, and walked away. “I don’t know why you let him come here. You’ve ruined everything.”
Jack watched her go then retrieved the fallen sword, bringing the tip level with Kreiger’s forehead. The unfinished handle was uncomfortable in his grip, the sword heavier than it appeared. But it could still do what needed to be done. It could be so easy. No one would ever know. And the world would never have to change.
But the world has changed, and you would always know. This is not the way it’s supposed to be, and you know it.
“She may be right. Definitely stay away from her; she will kill you given the chance, and there’s nothing I can do to stop her. I’ll try to make her understand, but she’ll need time.” Jack turned and walked away, suddenly very tired. “Go out back. I’ll try to bring you something to eat later.”
He started after Ellen, then apparently changed his mind and turned towards the diner, offering as an afterthought, “Don’t make me regret letting you live.”
* * *
Kreiger sat in the furthest corner of the boneyard, his back to a torn section of fence. To his left—within arm’s reach—the void. Before him, he watched the world come alive, the focal lens clutched tightly in his hand for all the good it would do.
Jack had not lied; the Café wanted him dead.
Out in the boneyard, the monuments of Jack’s imagination littered a field of broken glass, metal fragments, exposed nails and shattered machines. Every step held the inherent possibility of injury; every misstep, the guarantee of pain. The Guardian had taken up post on the hood of a derelict Chevy, watching him, mechanical gaze unwavering. If Kreiger moved, if he even shifted, the robot advanced a step, tightening the gap, reducing Kreiger’s field of safety by that much more. Jack had understated the matter of Hammerlock; had perhaps not even fully understood himself. But Kreiger knew. He could sense the small creature’s inner workings, sniff out the motivation that kept it watching him like a guard dog. And there were physical signs as well, the robot different now than fifteen minutes before, their moment of first encounter. It was more limber, impossibly flexible for a machine of metal, gears and hydraulics. And more lethal, its exterior covered in a slew of spikes and blades: external manifestations of its inner malevolence. Hammerlock had inherited many things from its predecessor, not the least of which was the gargoyle’s unwavering loyalty to Ellen Monroe. Like all Guardians, it was a physical extension of its Caretaker, his thoughts and desires. And clearly a part of Jack would have liked nothing more than to see Kreiger’s head knocked free from his shoulders and cast into the great emptiness, so much jetsam in the sea of dreams, clogging the fisher’s nets.
Hammerlock would not hesitate to kill him the moment the opportunity presented itself.
And the Guardian was not the only threat in the junkyard. Something hid within the dumpster, growling and scratching at the metal; what it was, Kreiger could not guess, but he gave it a wide berth all the same. Hulking behemoths of iron and steel, rusted robots designed for armored combat plundered from sources for which Kreiger had no cultural reference, kept watch on him like a wary herd. Before he arrived, Kreiger was certain that rust and neglect had left them paralyzed, awaiting the inevitable decay, the unstoppable slide to entropy, more junk in Jack’s cerebral waste pile. But from the moment he set foot in the yard, they had sprung to life, milling quietly like beasts at a watering hole, watching him, pressing their group closer to him, pachyderms forming a protective mass. Layers of oxidized metal shaken loose like so much savanna dust, they would not move when he watched them—they were too clever for that. Wily hunters, they fed his paranoia. They moved only in his distraction: when he looked away, closed his eyes, allowed himself to blink. And when he looked at them again, they were a little closer than a moment before. A two-legged warbot would rise up over the scatter of derelicts and debris to watch him before sinking back below his line of site, front portholes on the chassis—rude eyes to a kind of face—kept him under constant watch.
It seemed an eternity he waited in the corner of Jack’s world, waiting for the Caretaker, waiting without blinking.
But eventually, he came.
“You may be more trouble than you’re worth,” Jack said. “This was all I could find for you.” He extended a couple beers still held by the plastic ring of a former six-pack. He also handed the once-leader of the Tribe of Dust a half-empty bag of potato chips. “The Edge of Madness is balking at your presence; an outward manifestation of my own reticence, I suppose. Let’s face it; we didn’t part on good terms.”
The beer was warm, the chips—salt and vinegar—stale. Kreiger consumed both ravenously. Jack sat opposite him, leaning against the enormous, half-buried rib cage of the air whale, and waited, sipping quietly at a cup of coffee. Hammerlock left, leaving the two of them alone, the Caretaker and the Cast Out.
Kreiger eyed him warily while he ate, searching for any hint as to the Caretaker’s game. For his part, Jack only looked back evenly, drinking his coffee, his face expressionless, lost in his own thoughts. The Cast Out wolfed down the bag of chips along with the first can of beer, tossing the empties over the edge. He popped the tab on the second, and took a long, deliberate drink before leaning back a little and saying, “So Jack, you’re going to tell me why I’m here.”
“Am I?” Jack asked politely.
“You are. You will tell me why I’m here, so that I won’t labor under the misconception that I was the one who freed myself from your little trap—your second, if I count the crippling chair and the bomb in the Jabberwock.”
“To be fair, what you call the second trap you stepped into very willingly.”
“The alternative being blasted into bits. I’d say I was driven.”
“I’d say you got what you deserved.” Then the Caretaker made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Neither here nor there. That was all before. You’re here now. I opened the door, and you walked in. Welcome back to dreamland.”
“The question remains, why? Why let me back? What do you want?”
Jack took a drink of coffee. “You understand the layers of reality, don’t you? You know that there isn’t just one world, one universe, one time. You know that there are infinite numbers of all of these being created and recreated, stacked one on top of the other like the pages of a book, each block of text describing a reality different from the one on top of it, different from the one below it. And each book of pages is stacked beside another and another, a library of lifetimes and realities and timelines. This you know. It’s how you and I do what we do. How we manipulate the reality here near the Nexus. It’s a fundamental understanding that reality can change because it is not fixed to begin with.”
Kreiger looked at Jack and offered a loud belch.
“Ellen doesn’t understand this,” Jack said, unfazed. “She thinks of reality as solid and unalterable. Gravity pulls you down. The Earth holds you up. You are born, you grow old, and you die. The future is unreadable, the past unalterable. That is Ellen’s perception of reality. It’s shared by almost everyone. Those who disagree join the rank and file of the lunatic brigade, the dreamer’s posse. And a few of these rebels find their way here in a place where a world without limitations is merely a thought away from reality. A very directed, very controlled thought.”
And for one moment—one horrifying moment that made the skin on Gusman Kreiger’s back shudder, his guts shrivel, his breath catch—he saw Jack’s eyes change colors, one shimmering and blue as ice, the other burning green.
Then Jack blinked, and everything was as it had been before.
Only nothing was as it had been before! Before was lost, and it would never be again. Never!
Kreiger forced out the words in a harsh whisper. “What do you want of me, Jack?”
> “How did you see yourself failing when you wrote and rewrote this moment in your head a thousand times over in the desert? Or did it never even occur to you that it was a possibility?”
“You want confessions, Jack?” Kreiger asked, incredulous. “Do you think you’re worthy to hear them? Can you grant me absolution for my sins?”
Jack smiled. “I doubt either of us are worthy on that level. You can’t plan everything, no matter how hard you try. There will always be things outside of your control. If you can’t or won’t adapt, it will break itself apart, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t hold it together. The story slips away. It all slips away. And you know the rest.
Yes, he knew the rest. Cast Out.
“How many more times do you think you would have repeated that life back there? Walked though it all verbatim, knowing each step, knowing each word, helpless to stop them from repeating over and over and over. Three times? Five? A dozen?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. You’re not that good.”
Jack shrugged. “Then you’d find your life sold off in a garage sale for a quarter, bartered at a paperback exchange, or donated to the local Methodist lawn fete. Maybe thirty times in all. Maybe not even that. Eventually, someone would tire of you, drop you in the trash, and send you to a landfill, food for termites or nesting fodder for rats. But that’s all behind you now.”
“Are you sure?”
Jack leaned back and laughed. “You mean am I sure that it’s not going on still, that you and I aren’t just constructs of another? No, I’m not sure I’m not a construct. And neither are you. Maybe God wrote this all down a long time ago, and we’re all just reading along and playing our parts. It doesn’t matter, really. We all find ourselves in a reality, and we play it out because it’s all we have; all we know how.”
The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) Page 43