The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) (49 page)

Ellen signed. “I guess I
shouldn’t have expected a straight answer.”

“There isn’t one. Not a
simple one, at least.” Jack thought a moment then recanted. “No, that’s not
true. There is a simple answer, but it doesn’t make sense sometimes, and
explaining it is difficult.”

She turned a little, and he saw her mouth hint at the
beginnings of a smile, one eyebrow tilted just so, an almost playful look of
challenge.

“It’s a place to start over,” he said. “A place to practice
what we want to become. It’s someplace where we can forget the parts of our
past that aren’t of any use to us, and remember the parts of our past that are.
It’s an escape from all aspects of reality, both the mundane and the grand. But
there’s no going back, not ever. What’s behind is gone now. This place is both
the journey’s beginning and the journey’s end. This is Bali-hai, Xanadu, Eden and Disney World; all and none.”

She remained quiet for a moment, and he almost started to say
something more, an effort to fill the void, to make the silence less
conspicuous, his inadequate speech less confused. Then she said, “When I first
got here, I thought I was dreaming, or that this place was some kind of plane
your spirit traveled to. I thought maybe this was where you went after you
died: Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, whatever. I even imagined that it was what your
soul experienced just before being born. Now, I just don’t know. And your
explanation didn’t help.”

“I told you it wouldn’t.”

“When …” She trailed off, hesitant to voice a question in
case the answer was not to her liking; once known, there would be no going
back, no return to innocence.

But she asked anyway; she had to know. “When do we have to go
back?”

“When we’re ready.”

“And how are we supposed
to know when that is?”

“When we want to leave,
we’re ready.”

“Is that why Kreiger’s
here?”

“No. Kreiger’s here
because he followed you.” Things between them were improving; Jack saw no
reason to upset her again, even if what he said bordered on a lie.

“Can we trust him?” she
asked.

“No. But he can’t hurt
us. He’s almost completely powerless. Hammerlock will watch him.”

The robot turned at his
name, looking up at Ellen and nodding mutely.

“I won’t let anything bad
happen to you,” Jack promised.

She shook her head. “At
some point, Jack, that’s not your decision.”

He didn’t answer her
back. He didn’t say anything at all. But he thought that maybe it was, more
than anyone wanted to admit.

“You realize we’re not
going to be having sex on the diner floor anymore,” Ellen said.

“I know.”

“Or in the road.”

“I know.”

“And I won’t be sunning naked
anymore, either.”

Jack nodded, trying to
give her protestation the gravity it deserved, though her teasing made a smile
twist at the corner of his mouth. “Did I mention a part of me wished he had
lost his way and disappeared?”

She turned to him,
smiling as she leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the mouth. He kissed
her back, a soft gesture, less romantic than apologetic. “What’s so wrong with
paradise that it doesn’t last?” she asked softly.

“What would be the point
of dreams if it did?”

There was something else
he needed to ask her—something important—but it could wait. For a little while,
anyway.

*     *     *

Everyone thought it would be the polar
bears or the silverback gorillas or some obscure tree lemur from the decimated
forests of Madagascar, but it wasn’t. The first mammal of the twenty-first
century to go extinct was the elephant. Climate change eliminated food and
water sources the animals relied upon as the human population soared past nine-billion,
forcing elephants into even closer proximity. Native savannahs became communal grazing
lands for domestic livestock. In 2073, a variant of
aftosa
jumped the
species barrier, and the wild elephant population, the genetic pool too small,
too close, was wiped out. Zoos harbored the last remaining elephants on the
planet.

Breeding and reintroduction programs were
drafted, but placed on hold with the outbreak of the War, the expense of saving
a doomed population of captive elephants easy enough to forego in light of a
global conflict; there would be time enough to save them afterwards.

As it turned out, there was not. The War
went on too long, and when it was done, the elephants were gone.

As the last elephants died of old age in
zoological habitats meant to recreate jungle environments they had never known,
robotics and computer engineers turned wartime technology to resurrecting them,
their every movement and sway, the soft, intelligent expression of their eyes,
the sinuous grace of their trunks. Artificial intelligence imbued these
simulacrums with all the random behavioristics of real elephants while their
bodies of steel and wires and servos were diligently encased in a soft, pliable
skin of polyvinyl
hot-flesh
and foam latex. These facsimiles allowed
humanity to come to grips with the elephants’ passing, to mourn these great
creatures that once graced the imagination and filled our dreams with notions
of far away lands and distant times we would never know.

And so we said our good-byes.

But the surrogates outlived our grief.
Mankind paid its respects and moved on, and those things of comfort that
assuaged our guilt and sadness were no longer needed, their ongoing presence a
source of shame, a reminder of our complicity. They gradually found their way
into roadside zoos and carnivals and internet auction warehouses.

And after that, they started to
disappear.

It was assumed that most had broken down
or malfunctioned, and been melted into scrap, harvested for steel,
microprocessors, and gold-stamped circuits. Standard reclamation. And for some,
that was true. But most simply left, making their way across lands unknown from
times unremembered. They followed a way they all knew, had always known, a
fragment of self-written code, a piece of the artificial intelligence the
programmers could never have foreseen, a shade of the animal’s actual instinct
they hoped for, but could never replicate or even explain: the ghost in the
machine.

If it looks like an elephant and
thinks like an elephant and believes it is an elephant then it is an elephant.

Neglected latex skin dried up and fell
away over time until it was entirely gone. Exposed to the elements, steel bones
and joints wore away. Optic lenses blurred under the assault of the fine,
desert sand. Stripped to bare metal skeletons of unnerving power and grace,
they came here, the last of the last, and they waited, for what, even they no
longer knew. The only thing they were certain of was that it would not be long
now.

Out in the junkyard, one
of the tall steel behemoths creaked forward, legs rusted with disuse, gears and
motors locked with time and pointlessness; it could no longer respond to the
ceaseless push of wind, the metal stress of the blazing sun, the relentless
grip of time. Gravity dragged it to the ground, limbs snapping, body crunching,
its steel shell smashing beneath its own weight, weakened by disuse and
disinterest. Those that remained, the herd now smaller by one, simply waited to
follow; waited for the inevitable, their time having passed, the last remnants
of a species gathered at the Elephant’s Graveyard in the secret place of a
world that no longer knows elephants.

*     *     *

Kreiger hid out behind
the café, tearing down the carnival canvas and curling up beneath it. Jasper
remained with him, as faithful as a dog who doesn’t know any better. Laying
there all morning and into the afternoon, Kreiger listened as decay overtook
the junkyard; the slow erosion that was typical of such a place, a force
arbitrarily halted by Jack that he might enjoy the fishbowl world he had
created—it was the prerogative of a Caretaker to do as he pleased with regards
to the forces of the universe—was lurching forward again at its own chaotic
pace.

Jack was thinking about
leaving; he hadn’t said so, but Kreiger knew.

And when Jack left, he
would take reality with him. He hadn’t said so, but again, Kreiger knew.

The white wizard mused
over this all afternoon, the certainty of his supposition punctuated by the
occasional cracks and thumps of scrap collapsing down upon itself, turning to
dust.

Will the Nexus obey
you when Jack is gone?
the
voice in his head clucked, sly and wicked and riddled with unaccustomed
truth. It sounded a little like the Caretaker, Jack Lantirn high on godhood and
mescaline, maybe a bit too quick-witted and preachy.
Do you think it will?

It should.

Yes, you crazy
motherfucker, you deranged, poor man’s messiah, it
should.
But
will
it? Will
it listen to you? Will it bend reality to the dreams inside of your mind, or
simply bend your mind until you cannot distinguish reality from dream? Do you
remember the hot sun? The cold nights? The world of dust? Eating things that
would make a pig vomit? Do you remember wishing only for a way out?

“It wasn’t everything I
remembered,” Kreiger whispered, thinking of the reality that Jack had shown
him.

It never is, you crazy old man. It never is. The question
is, are you ready to give all of that up for this place, and risk it not
working? Who do you think you will become if you are cast out a second time?
Will you be Rebreather, a hulking mindless shell with only the dimmest
recollections of a life he was no longer even certain he lived? Or will you be Papa
Lovebone, a pathetic hedonist living in a hole in the ground, frightened of
everything, his only pleasure lies to masturbate his ego? Who will you be if
you find yourself once more in the Wasteland? Or will you just kill yourself,
and save everyone the bother of wondering?

Kreiger pulled the canvas
tighter about himself, stealing it from Jasper a little at a time until he’d
wound it around himself like a cocoon. “Fuck you.”

This time, there was no
reply from the demon he called conscience, useless baggage he’d thought himself
rid of long ago. But it was less like luggage than a bad penny, one that smelled
like dead flies and old plumbing. It was back like it had never been missing at
all. Back to drive him mad. Back to set his teeth on edge, make his temples
throb, make his forehead ache like a rail spike slowly cleaving his skull in
two. And its voice sounded like Jack—too smart to be the upstart writer,
Kreiger knew, but like him all the same. Jack tried to break him, tried to push
him back into the Wasteland, and failing that, tried to push him into hell. And
now he was inside his head, pushing his brain apart with notions like
conscience and doubt. And if he succeeded, the Nexus would twist free of his
grasp, and he would be truly and completely lost.

Lost.

Cast Out.

Forever and ever and ever
and ever and ever and ever and …

Without realizing, Gusman
Kreiger started banging his head upon the hardpan, forehead thumping into the
ground in a rhythmic act of contrition, self-destruction, a zealot observing
penitence before God.

Or a retard too enfeebled
to stop abusing himself.

“Mr. Gooseman?”

He froze as a man caught
in the midst of an act he does not want others to know about, and opened his
eyes. In front of him, a shaded patch of sand pounded into a shallow depression.
He let his gaze move up the edges of his tightly wrapped swaddle of canvas.

Jasper Desmond was down
on hands and knees, his cheek pressed to the ground, trying to see inside the
worm-shaped wrap of canvas to the face of his friend and mentor. Kreiger
regarded the youth expectantly. When Jasper did not reply after a long minute
of staring, Kreiger tried another tack. “Yes, Jubjub Bird?”

“I’m hungry.”

“So am I.”

He had hoped the remark
would be enough to send the youth away. Instead, the boy only continued to
stare at him, half of his face pressed into the sand, his eyes bright and
strangely comical.

“What?” Kreiger asked.

“I’m hungry.”

Kreiger sighed and
shifted within the canvas. “Go inside the building then. There is food there. Go
in through the backdoor. And bring me back something to eat.”

The boy
was up instantly, disappearing before Kreiger could wriggle around to follow
his progress. By the time he oriented himself, Jasper was little more than a
distant head threading its way though the piles of wreckage towards the
backdoor of the café. More visible was the Guardian balanced atop the space
rocket, a cordless reciprocating saw in one hand. Upon seeing Kreiger’s eyes
flit up towards him, the robot flexed the trigger, the blade jumping to life
with a sound like a high-pitched growl, the warning of a small dog that has
learned to bite.

“You won’t hurt him, will
you?” Kreiger asked, and immediately felt foolish for voicing the question. “Of
course you won’t. Why would you? You never cared when the Dust Eater entered.
You never cared when Oversight entered. Why should Jubjub Bird be any
different? Their kind is all the same to you: collections of details only
interesting when willed into action against your master. Besides, mine’s the
only blood you instinctively want to see spread across the sand, isn’t it?