The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) (17 page)

“But we can still reach an accord,
one you’ll find acceptable. We’ve been where you are now. The details are
different for every Caretaker, but the task remains the same. You must take
control of the Nexus, make its power your own, a servant to your will. Fail and
be cast into the Wasteland.”

Roots of lightning coursed from
Kreiger’s staff to burrow into the bone-colored sand and send dregs sprouting
from the hardpan like eager weeds, gangly limbed beasts with long nails,
crooked tusks and malevolent eyes. First a dozen, then a hundred, they stood
tall and still as statues, soldiers awaiting their general’s command. The
combined rasp of their breathing overwhelmed the desert’s silence, the thick
snuffling of air through animal muzzles. No two were exactly alike, variations
on a theme: primitive, alien,
savage
. Jack felt the others inch closer
to him. Lindsay uttered a frightened sound, and Ellen whispered his name
urgently as if somehow thinking there was something he could do.

“The Wasteland is a hard place, boy—”
Kreiger began.

“My name is Jack.”

“The Wasteland is a hard place,
Jack
,”
Kreiger amended. “A hard place with hard rules. There is no life in the
Wasteland, only loose ends, misplaced allegories and tails of forgotten dreams
like the hollow seeds left behind by a moment of misguided self-indulgence. All
that exists here are the carnivores, the hunters and scavengers. And the collective
dregs of the Wasteland, the most vicious skinkers, gerrymanders, dust runners
and more, answer to me. Did you expect we’d come to you wringing our hat brims
and scuffing our feet, Jack, begging for your mercy, alms and sour gruel? No,
Jack. Your wall may keep
us
at bay for a time, but like yourself, the
Cast Outs do not truly belong here, strangers in a strange land. This barrier
is no protection against the creatures of this world.”

Rebreather swept the array of beasts
with his hand, and they started forward, a wave of abomination.

Jack was pushing backwards, his feet slipping on dust that felt
insubstantial as he collided with the others, motionless before the advancing
hoard.

“There’s another one behind us!”
Leland shouted, gesturing in horror.

Jack looked back as the first
Wasteland creature crossed the middle ground, that place he had so boldly
declared inviolable, and saw what Leland was pointing at: a black object
falling at them like a meteor, its features obscured by the brightness of the sun.

The nearest dreg turned its face up in time to watch its own headless
body collapse to the ground. A second fell beside it, the gargoyle from the
Saloon having buried a clawed fist into the creature’s chest like punching
through so much wet wallboard. Then it turned to face the Tribe of Dust, wings
outstretched, arms and jaws spread in challenge, and roared, fresh blood
dripping from its claws.

Rebreather brought the dregs to a
halt, frozen like leaderless zombies in a bayou graveyard. If Nail’s attack
surprised the Tribe of Dust, they didn’t show it. “And that would be two,
Jack,” Gusman Kreiger said softly. “I was wondering how long it would take for
him to show up.”

Nail snarled, a guard dog ignorant to
the conversations around it, understanding only what it should hate.

“All of your tricks are revealed,
Jack. Nothing more up your borrowed sleeve but a dead rabbit and a few faded
scarves. If you’d like to see how ineffectual he really is, order him across
that line you’ve drawn in the sand. My friend would enjoy nothing more than
augmenting his talismans with a few long bones from your pet pit bull.”

Reginald Hyde smiled pleasantly, but
his stare went past the small gargoyle and on to the others, sizing up fairer
bones than Nail possessed.

“You see, I know the tricks of your
Sanity’s Edge Saloon.” Then Kreiger paused and corrected himself. “Forgive me;
Algernon’s
Saloon. You are simply borrowing it, Jack. You understand that, don’t you? He
created everything you see here. You’re simply occupying his throne, a boy-king
undeserving of his laurels. You must realize that now, Jack. I can see the
confusion in your face, the complete lack of understanding. You come before me
making hollow threats of what I can and cannot do with no concept of the extent
of my power, or the limits of your own. Algernon underestimated me, and paid
for it with his life. What will you pay, Jack?”

“You don’t scare me,” Jack lied; the
adrenaline jacking through his system had him nearly shaking with the urge to
run.

“Nonsense. I can smell your terror
from here, Jack, even over the stench.” Kreiger snapped his fingers, and the
two carcasses slid back amongst the crowd of dregs as if towed on invisible
strings. The other Wastelanders fell upon the meat, tearing the bodies apart to
the Cast Out’s indifference. “Be honest, Jack. What have you accomplished so
far? You proclaim yourself to be the ruler of the Nexus, the very power of the
universes at your fingertips. So what have you done with it?”

What indeed?
Jack thought.
A good computer? A
CD player? A timely couple of beers?

“I’ll bet you managed to conjure something to eat,” Kreiger pursued. “You
smell of coffee, sweetly flavored with cream. And maple syrup. Or did one of
your constructs come up with that one?” Kreiger’s eyes traced over the other
four, measuring each in turn. His gaze lingered on Ellen. “She must have been
the one. She has a deepness about her that surpasses your other constructs. I’m
sure she’ll provide hours of amusement for you before she fades away.”

“What’s a construct?” Ellen whispered
into Jack’s ear. “Why does he keep calling us that?”

“Forgive me,” Kreiger said. “I
thought he would have told you by now.” Then Kreiger turned to Jack. “Shame on
you, Caretaker. This above all things, you should have told them.”

“Told us what?” Leland demanded
angrily. “What should he have told us?”

“None of you four exist. Jack does,
just as we do, because Jack came from one of the worlds outside. But the rest
of you are just ideas, figments, the beginnings of stories with no middle or
end.
Constructs
. You exist here and only here, in this minuscule
fragment of a world, but none of you actually exist in any true sense. I
thought Jack would have told you that by now. Unless he didn’t know.” The
possibility seemed to amuse the Cast Out.

“Look here, mister,” Quince declared,
“I don’t know what kind of mind-games you’re playing, or what the hell you and
the freak show are on, but if anything isn’t real, it’s this place and all of
you. I know I’m real. I know where I come from, and what I do, and where I’m
going. So you can save the metaphysical babble about how we’re all just undone
stories, or whatever nonsense you’re peddling, because it’s bullshit. Bullshit!
My name is Leland Quince, and I’m late for a very important meeting—”

“A meeting for what?” Hyde
challenged.

Mr. Quince hesitated as if he had
lost his train of thought, or his place on a cue card. “I buy and sell
companies—”

“Name three,” Hyde demanded, his
prissy tone made sinister as he stared down the businessman.

Leland glared, lips pursed tightly,
refusing to be baited.

“You say you know where you were
going,” Hyde pursued. “Let me guess. A high-powered business meeting to discuss
the profits and figures and forecasts of the last five quarters, cost to serve,
EBIT. Who to take over, what stocks to buy up, and what companies to tear
down.”

Leland would not answer.

“So tell me the name of any three
people who were going to be at the meeting with you. Any three. Your secretary?
Your aide? The CEO? Anyone?”

Mr. Quince’s face reddened with
frustration, but he would not answer, maybe could not answer.

“Don’t wrack your brain any more than
necessary, Mr. Quince,” Hyde concluded, dismissing the issue and Leland both at
once. “It simply isn’t within your capacity to know. The answers you’re looking
for aren’t there. They never were. You are a character; poorly fleshed,
pedantic, and predictable. A bad cliché. Were you not a construct, you might be
worth my pity or even my scorn, but you don’t even merit that. You’re nothing
more than a bad idea.”

Both Alex and Jack caught Leland as
he started towards Hyde, scarlet with rage, hands clenched into fists. The
dregs shifted near the guarded no-man’s land, and Hyde smiled, looking
ridiculously pleased by the reaction.

“They’ll rip you apart,” Jack warned
severely.

“He’s baiting you, Mr. Quince,” Alex
said. “Think about it.”

Leland shrugged them both off, but
did not renew his attack, instead turning away to adjust his tie and straighten
his lapels. When he turned back, he looked at all of them, the Tribe of Dust
and the group from the Sanity’s Edge Saloon alike. “I
know
who I am.”

“My associate may be too hasty in
judgment, Mr. Quince,” Kreiger said politely. “Myself, I never judge harshly
the dream for the inadequacies of the dreamer.” He turned again to Jack. “Do
you know where he will go, Caretaker, a man with ambitions and potential? All
he’s waiting for is you to write the life that will complete his ticket and
bring back the train. For a construct, it’s the only way. Knowing the little of
him that I do, I envision four different scenarios revolving around someone
like Mr. Quince. What about you, Lovebone?”

“Seven,” the fat man remarked
offhand, “though some are a bit …
outré
.”

“Seven,” Kreiger repeated with
feigned admiration. “What about you, Jack? You’re the one holding the Nexus.
You’re the one with the tickets that lead out of this world and back into the
lives and realities yet to be. You have all the cards—or so you claim. Tell us
the story of Mr. Leland Quince.”

Jack stared back, feeling the eyes of
the others fall upon him, watching, waiting.
What do you expect from me?
he wanted to scream.
You think I know what I’m doing here? You think I’m God
or something? How can I create lives for anyone when I can’t even fix my own?
What he saw was desperation; one he did not know how to assuage. The Writer
never explained this. As Caretaker of the Nexus, the duty fell to him to look
after them, but how? It was his mission, the one singular task that he needed
to perform. Only it was a task for which he was unprepared, perhaps even
incapable.

And the others would soon discover
that fact—those that did not suspect it already. So much for second chances.

“What a waste.” Kreiger lamented. “Do
you know what happens to constructs if you don’t finish their tickets in time?
And there is a time limit, in case you didn’t know.”

“I knew,” Jack said, and immediately
regretted it. Both Kreiger and Hyde smirked; Rebreather might have as well, but
his mask closed away all expression.

“They fade away,” Kreiger declared.
“Run out of time before you complete the task of finishing those tickets and
sending these people on, and you lose it all. The Nexus rejects you, and you
join the rank and file of the Cast Outs, roaming the Wasteland collecting the
spare bits of cosmic power that blow around like the winnowed chaff of last
autumn’s harvest. Someone as weak as you will die within days. And when you do,
all those unfinished constructs will simply fade away. Seldom does the
unrealized idea outlive the dreamer who conceives it. Soulless, they’ll
dissolve into oblivion.”

“I can free them,” Jack said. “I’m
the Caretaker.”

Kreiger shook his head. “There you go
again, Jack. Soon they won’t know whether to believe you or not. Fail and
they’ll fade away and be lost, and you’ll die a madman’s death in the
Wasteland, all the while screaming at your invisible friends.”

Kreiger let his words hang in the air
a moment then added, “But it doesn’t have to end that way. Give us the tickets,
relinquish the Nexus, and we’ll send all of you home … or anywhere else you
would like to go.”

“You’re lying,” Jack said.

“No, Jack.
You’re
lying, to
yourself and to them. You just don’t recognize the difference.”

“You were already cast out. What makes you think you could possibly
succeed any better this time?”

“The Nexus cast me out almost two
thousand years ago, Jack,” Kreiger said, anger slipping through some of the
veneer. “And for two-thousand years I have lived in the Wasteland, perfecting
my skill. The three of us have survived this world and risen to the top because
we are the best. We are the creators and the shapers of reality, bringing forth
life from the emptiness that exists all around us. What are you, Jack? Do you
think reality will change because you can brew a cup of coffee? What makes you think
you have the answers when you don’t even know the questions? Algernon made a
mistake that he paid for with his life. That mistake was you. And your mistake
will cost not only your life, but the lives of these four, as well.”

“How can we trust you?” Ellen asked.

Jack thought her question sounded
less like an accusation than a search for information to bargain with.

“You can’t, Ellen Monroe,” Kreiger
said. “And yes, I know you. I know everything there is to know about each and
every one of you. Constructs are like open books. The question you should be
asking is can you afford
not
to trust me? Can you afford to leave your
existence in the hands of the charlatan around whom you now rally? Can any of
you?”