Ellen was right; Kreiger had ruined everything. But her understanding of how was wrong. The sorcerer from the Wasteland was not the agent of destruction so much as the harbinger: a dark-winged bird on the bust of Pallus, a raucous crow on the battle’s edge. He was a reminder of the folly of forcing stability upon something that, by its very nature—to its very essence—was necessarily unstable. Jack was trying to control chaos and it was wriggling free, his efforts as useless as tightening one’s grip on an afternoon breeze. The Cast Out was not to blame.
Kreiger would have paled to hear him say it—ground his teeth and even learned to hate the Caretaker anew—but Jack knew what the old wizard was in the grand scheme of things. Kreiger was an alarm clock, the one that reminds you you’ve been dreaming, and it’s time to wake up.
It had been three days since Kreiger’s arrival, and the Edge of Madness had slipped into an uncomfortable rhythm, like a clock ticking too loudly at a viewing. Ellen was still asleep; she had not slept well the night before, sounds from the boneyard keeping her awake. The small creaks and groans, the grate of metal on metal, wreckage falling to the earth, was easy enough to get used to; disconcerting but passable. But when the windmill toppled over, the blades crashing, the wood buckling in an explosive crack, she awoke and could not fall back asleep. She roused him into making love to her, but it was less an act of passion than desperation, a grasp at the trappings of normalcy.
But normal did not exist anymore. Perhaps it never truly did.
She drifted into a troubled sleep around daybreak, and Jack slipped away so as not to disturb her. The yard turned quiet in the small hours before dawn, as if forgetting its obsessed self-destruction. It was a good time to sleep. Peaceful. He owed her that much. Soon enough, the sun would rise, the day would start in earnest, and the boneyard would fall apart a little more, grinding itself away, wearing itself down. It resembled a field of memories less and less now, and a junkyard more and more. It would not be long before he cared for none of it.
Gusman Kreiger was awake, the Cast Out wrapped up in a section of carnival canvas like some mountaintop mystic, or a mad hermit in an isolated cave. Attendant to his wisdom, the faithful—if somewhat distracted—Jasper Desmond ferried food out to the Cast Out, moving about the Café as easily as a shadow or a ghost …
… or a memory of things already gone.
Somewhere within the jumble of wrecked metal and twisted machines, rusted plates of steel and aluminum and tin sinking lower with each passing hour like a heap of autumn leaves settling with winter’s passage, was Hammerlock. Per Jack’s instructions, the Guardian kept an eye on the Cast Out, but more and more Jack suspected the task to be a wasted one. Kreiger was no longer a threat. If anything, Jack needed this sorry excuse for a rival now more than ever, dragging the mad wizard back from across the great void of unreason and dream.
Algernon taught him one thing if nothing else: you don’t leave the Nexus unattended. Beyond that, the old man’s teachings failed.
Where this went would depend on her, he thought. Hammerlock, Kreiger, Jasper Desmond. They were all waiting. They did not know why or for what; they only knew to wait.
Just as he was waiting; waiting for her.
And she was waiting for him.
And meanwhile, the world waited for no one. Time slipped by as it will, and reality slipped by with it. And the junkyard settled a little more. And the dust of the Wasteland drew that much closer.
Finally, Jack got up and started across the junkyard.
* * *
“Hello, Caretaker,” Kreiger said absently, not bothering to turn around. The Cast Out was staring out into the Wasteland, the bone-white world of dust and sand kept just beyond the fence-line against which he was pressed. “Rough night last night?”
Balancing a half-cup of coffee, Jack stepped lightly upon the hood of the Impala. It was not a difficult feat; the vehicle had sagged down upon itself like an old tire running flat. The paint had blistered and burned white within days, ground down to bare metal and pocked with holes. The glass was gone, the fabric of the roof shredded and dangling like thick swatches of dead skin on a decaying carcass. The Caretaker squatted down carefully on the remnants, crossed his legs and stared at the Cast Out.
And he sipped his coffee.
When Kreiger did not turn or speak, he sipped at it some more.
By the time the leader of the Tribe of Dust spoke, Jack’s cup was nearly finished. The old wizard had his pride; it was the hardest sin to repent.
Hate was the second.
“What brings you out here, Caretaker?”
“There are some things we need to talk about,” Jack said quietly. “Decisions to be made. I need to know where you stand.”
“Your concern is touching, but misplaced. I’ll be fine here, thank you.”
“That wasn’t going to be my question, but I think you already knew that,” Jack said, his voice even. How many times had he rehearsed what he was going to say? Only now, here with Kreiger, none of that made any difference. Reality left him without a script, words too diligently thought out, inapplicable. Kreiger knew his flaws well. It was likely why the miserable Cast Out had begun this way.
The white wizard turned slowly in his blanket of weathered canvas. “I suppose I do. I suppose I also know why you’ve come here. The real question is: do you know, Caretaker? Do you know why you’re here?”
“I think so. Where you fled to—that world I created that you got yourself caught in—what did you think of it?”
“Not much,” Kreiger answered, his dual-colored eyes staring back steadily. “Too bohemian for my tastes.”
Jack nodded. “You went in search of Shangri-La and found a village of backwards yak herders. Instead of showering you with praise and opening up their libraries of ancient lore, they threw rancid yak-butter in your coffee and made you till fields for your lodging. No naked virgins prostrate before you, no honeydew, no milk of paradise. Lost Xanadu was still lost. None of the promises that were made; only the savage reality of a savage world.”
Kreiger grunted something of an affirmation, but did not answer.
“I expect you learned a few things during your time in the wilderness?” Jack asked cautiously.
“I did,” Kreiger replied, but would not elaborate.
“Details matter. You understand that best when you have nothing.”
“That’s true.”
“But details are only one half. The rest is the design, the big picture. If you can’t see it, the details fall apart; there’s nothing for them to hang upon. But you knew that before. The master manipulator, you could foresee outcomes and events, choices and changes, reading the world like a fortuneteller reading the lay of the Tarot, or the tea leaves at the bottom of the cup. You almost caught me.”
“I did catch you. You wriggled free.”
“You only thought so. You were blinded by the grandeur of the design, and you missed the details. You forgot about Nail, and he saved Ellen. You neglected the stairway, and it killed Rebreather. You misjudged Oversight, and she turned on you. But most of all, you underestimated me. You didn’t think I could stop you.”
“You didn’t. I wanted to escape the Wasteland, and I did.”
“But not the way you wanted.”
“Details,” Kreiger remarked dismissively.
Jack felt some of the old emotion boil up in him for the sadistic, self-aggrandizing magician, always baiting, always prodding. He was an old cyst, festering at the most inopportune moments. But as he gazed at the old wizard—and Kreiger did look old now—he saw the masked shame on Kreiger’s face over the admission; an admission to an oversight that had cost him everything. And letting Jack know as much had cost the Cast Out in a different way. It was the last shreds of his pride, the final vestige of nerve tissue harshly plucked away by the vultures of this world, carrion of the mind. The confession of his failings was the last barbed thorn still caught under his skin, and it bled to pull at it.
&nb
sp; “There’s one more thing you need to know.”
“And what is that, Caretaker?”
“When to let it all go.”
The two men were quiet for a moment, each coming to terms with Jack’s last statement, watching as it dispersed into the stillness of the morning like smoke.
“Why have you come to me, Caretaker?” Kreiger asked finally.
“I don’t want to be here any longer,” Jack said, drinking the last of his coffee, now cold. “I want to go home.”
Kreiger scowled in confusion, his silence one of genuine puzzlement. “I don’t understand.”
“I need to get on with my life. I can’t live forever in my own head, in my own fantasy of what should be but isn’t.” Then Jack smiled ruefully. “Well, maybe I can. But I don’t think I want to anymore. If I do, it’s like I haven’t ever stopped running.”
Kreiger glanced up at him, a kind of sad look on his face. It was the look of a mentor who has spent a very long time trying to educate a pupil whom he now realizes will never be what he thought. It was the look of someone forced to swallow the bitter, inevitable truth of reality: it is not always what is planned. That is not to say that the leader of the Tribe of Dust was about to let it happen without some effort at reclaiming what could be lost.
“You won’t like it out there in the real, Jack. Once you’ve been in paradise, every food is ashes in your mouth, every drink tastes like horse piss, and everything becomes as dust beneath your fingertips. Everything out there grows old in a heartbeat, dies like mayflies on the Fourth of July, and cares not one bit for you for all the while that it lives. I am not the scourge of those worlds out there at the end of that long road, at the end of those distant rails. I am just a sad reflection of its blackened mind, more at home there than you ever were, or will ever be. You are an outsider there, Jack. You always were. And the real has little tolerance for aliens. From one who’s been back and forth, once you’ve drunk the milk of paradise, nothing ever again tastes as sweet.”
“I’m tired of paradise,” Jack answered gravely.
Behind them, something in the odd block of whitewashed buildings stirred, and they both turned to look. On the second level of the fire escape, Ellen Monroe looked across the wreckage to the Wasteland beyond, her eyes scanning the emptiness of the open desert. She leaned her hips against the railing, her arms locked straight, her hands gripped tight to the metal. Even from here, Jack could see the nakedness of her feet below the cuffs of her jeans, tendons taut as they pushed her up and out as far as the railing would allow. Wind caught and billowed at her sleeves, the loose front of her T-shirt, her long hair. She did not see him. She only looked out across the empty world of too many possibilities, her eyes searching.
Jack turned back to Kreiger. “You have a decision to make. Don’t take too long. The boneyard is full of gateways that I have no use for. They’re already starting to collapse on their own, but you can understand how I might not like to watch that happen. So they may not be around all that much longer. Take care of any loose ends, and give me your answer tomorrow morning.”
Then Jack stood up, brushed off the seat of his jeans, and walked away. Ellen saw him and waved. He waved back.
Behind him, unnoticed, Kreiger slowly rose and made his way along the fence-line, hand running lightly across the chain-links and the hastily positioned slabs of corrugated tin like a blind man examining an unfamiliar wall for the door he is confident will be found.
* * *
Hammerlock stood facing the wall just outside of the garage, leaning forward until his head touched the cinderblock. He was bored.
What use a Guardian when there is nothing to guard against?
“Hammerlock?” Jack said.
The robot leaned slowly back from the wall and turned his attention to the Caretaker. “I’ll need the truck tomorrow, but that’s all. Will you clean up the boneyard for me?”
The Guardian let his attention cross the vast expanse of decaying artifacts, lost memorabilia and forgotten dreams, and nodded before wandering away. Jack watched him a moment longer then went inside.
Ellen sat near the front entrance of the garage, holding her knees and staring across the silent road into the emptiness of the Wasteland. Across from her, Anubis stared blindly, eyes of stone. “Did you manage to get any sleep?” Jack asked.
“Some,” she said.
He came up beside her and sat down upon the cement. Across the road were three posts of road signs, the destinations insensible. Could a road sign really point the way to Dreams or Sanity or Madness? Were such places really just points on a map, locations along blue highways on a gas station road atlas? Jack wasn’t sure he knew the answer; once maybe, but no longer.
Realizing what you do not know is the first step on the path to enlightenment.
“Did I see Jasper out there?” Ellen had easily acclimated to the young man’s presence.
“Probably, yes.”
“What is he doing here, Jack?”
He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. He’ll be going home soon.”
“And what about us?”
“Yes. Soon.” She did not ask him to be more specific, and he did not offer. Instead, he changed the subject. “Do you want to get away from this place for a little bit? Go out into the desert and have a picnic?”
The suggestion amused her. “I never do know quite what to expect with you.”
“Sorry,” he replied, though he wasn’t.
“I didn’t say I mind.” She leaned over and gently kissed him.
Preparations were made hastily. In the diner, they found a couple submarine sandwiches made up in the cooler, already wrapped and ready, little single-serving packets of mayonnaise and mustard sealed into the cellophane. Jack found a small Styrofoam cooler in the freezer and tossed a thin layer of ice cubes on the bottom. Then he packed the sandwiches, a couple apples, and two bottles of mint-flavored iced-tea. Ellen borrowed a large blanket from the loft that they could sit on and met him in front of the diner. Together they started walking, the edge of reality to their left, ahead of them the simple emptiness of the unknown.
They walked for a while, neither talking, until the Café was an indistinct shape behind them, so far away that one might almost think it normal, a pale structure glinting unobtrusively on the horizon, a rest stop on a long, empty highway in a nameless desert, all around them only silence and blue sky and an unbroken plane of white, dusty sand.
“Let’s stop here,” Jack said.
Ellen nodded and shook out the blanket, sitting down. “So what’s this about?” she said, taking off her shoes to cool her feet.
“I thought you might want to get away from the Café for a while,” he said, sitting down beside her. “It’s become a little more complicated in the last few days.”
She nodded. “But why are we here?”
Jack shrugged, avoiding her gaze. “I wanted to talk to you … without the others around.”
She had been wondering when this moment would come.
* * *
Kreiger waited by a section of the fence, the chain covered with sheets of corrugated metal, rusted and dinged with impact scars from carelessly thrown rocks. Nearby, two cars lay sandwiched one atop the other, crushing one another down, both slowly being reduced to rusted flakes and paint flecks, powdered candy apple and midnight-black dust. Nothing lasts forever, not even here.
At least, not anymore.
Further away, the Guardian was working on Jack’s makeshift shelter, the place the Caretaker lived during the height of his madness. The door remained ajar, revealing a hobo’s squat, the lyrics of an old Steely Dan song scrawled on the metal like some kind of high school graffiti; once relevant, now meaningless. Hammerlock started there, wrenching and prying in silent machine voracity, the trailing pipes sunk deep into the hardpan like the roots of an old birch. When he finally extracted the decayed hovel from the desert, Hammerlock launched it over the edge with no more concern than a dentist discarding a r
otted tooth.
Kreiger saw in that moment the breadth and scope of Jack’s intentions, and he knew what he had to do. Jack had given him until tomorrow morning to make his decision, but the decision was already made. It had been made long ago, fate’s rhyme etched upon the bedrock of the universe a thousand, thousand years before and finally revealed. There was nothing to consider, the matter already decided.
But there was still one loose end.
“What’s the little robot doing, Mr. Gooseman?” Jasper asked, crossing to where Kreiger was seated. The young man had a talent for unerringly navigating Jack’s boneyard, avoiding shards and debris littering the ground. Kreiger thought he knew why.
“He’s tidying up,” the wizard remarked as the robot turned his attention to the bank of television screens mounted around a worn leather chair. Pulling the TV sets from the ground like weeds, he ferried them four and five at a time to the edge, spilling them unceremoniously over before heading back for more. “Anyway, I don’t expect it’s anything you need to worry about.”
“Ellen and the man left,” Jasper said. “They took an ice chest and a blanket and walked away.”
“Yes, I expect they’ll be going home soon.”
Jasper looked confused. “Don’t they live here?”
“No,” the Cast Out said, smiling gently. Jack and Ellen did not live here. This was not their home. No one and nothing made this place home. And no one truly lived here, not in any sense of the word. Everyone and everything at the Edge of Madness Café, the former Sanity’s Edge Saloon, the physicality that was the base of the Nexus, feeding from it like a creeper from the oak around which it grows, was transient. No one and nothing belonged here; they were all simply passing through. This was a way station, and Ellen Monroe and Jack Lantirn were waiting for the next train out. Or coach. Or cab. Or plane. Or whatever contrivance ferried them to the next world beyond this one. Jack could stay here for a while; he was the Caretaker. He could stay for a very long while if he chose. And so long as he did, Ellen could stay here with him—provided she wanted to.
The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) Page 46