The Talisman (32 page)

Interlude

Sloat in This World (II)

From the pocket of his bulky parka (he had bought it convinced that from the Rockies east, America was a frigid wasteland after October 1st or so—now he was sweating rivers), Morgan Sloat took a small steel box. Below the latch were ten small buttons and an oblong of cloudy yellow glass a quarter of an inch high and two inches long. He pushed several of the buttons carefully with the fingernail of his left-hand pinky, and a series of numbers appeared briefly in the readout window. Sloat had bought this gadget, billed as the world’s smallest safe, in Zurich. According to the man who had sold it to him, not even a week in a crematory oven would breach its carbon-steel integrity.

Now it clicked open.

Sloat folded back two tiny wings of ebony jeweler’s velvet, revealing something he had had for well over twenty years—since long before the odious little brat who was causing all this trouble had been born. It was a tarnished tin key, and once it had gone into the back of a mechanical toy soldier. Sloat had seen the toy soldier in the window of a junkshop in the odd little town of Point Venuti, California—a town in which he had great interest. Acting under a compulsion much too strong to deny (he hadn’t even wanted to deny it, not really; he had always made a virtue of compulsion, had Morgan Sloat), he had gone in and paid five dollars for the dusty, dented soldier . . . and it wasn’t the soldier he had wanted, anyway. It was the key that had caught his eye and then whispered to him. He had removed the key from the soldier’s back and pocketed it as soon as he was outside the junkshop door. The soldier itself he threw in a litter-basket outside the Dangerous Planet Bookstore.

Now, as Sloat stood beside his car in the Lewisburg rest area, he held the key up and looked at it. Like Jack’s croaker, the tin key became something else in the Territories. Once, when coming back, he had dropped that key in the lobby of the old office building. And there must have been some Territories magic left in it, because that idiot Jerry Bledsoe had gotten himself fried not an hour later. Had Jerry picked it up? Stepped on it, perhaps? Sloat didn’t know and didn’t care. Nor had he cared a tinker’s damn about Jerry—and considering the handyman had had an insurance policy specifying double indemnity for accidental death (the building’s super, with whom Sloat sometimes shared a hashpipe, had passed this little tidbit on to him), Sloat imagined that Nita Bledsoe had done nipups—but he had been nearly frantic about the loss of his key. It was Phil Sawyer who had found it, giving it back to him with no comment other than “Here, Morg. Your lucky charm, isn’t it? Must have a hole in your pocket. I found it in the lobby after they took poor old Jerry away.”

Yes, in the lobby. In the lobby where everything smelled like the motor of a Waring Blender that had been running continuously on Hi Speed for about nine hours. In the lobby where everything had been blackened and twisted and fused.

Except for this humble tin key.

Which, in the other world, was a queer kind of lightning-rod—and which Sloat now hung around his neck on a fine silver chain.

“Coming for you, Jacky,” said Sloat in a voice that was almost tender. “Time to bring this entire ridiculous business to a crashing halt.”

17

Wolf and the Herd

1

Wolf talked of many things, getting up occasionally to shoo his cattle out of the road and once to move them to a stream about half a mile to the west. When Jack asked him where he lived, Wolf only waved his arm vaguely northward. He lived, he said, with his family. When Jack asked for clarification a few minutes later, Wolf looked surprised and said he had no mate and no children—that he would not come into what he called the “big rut-moon” for another year or two. That he looked forward to the “big rut-moon” was quite obvious from the innocently lewd grin that overspread his face.

“But you said you lived with your family.”

“Oh, family! Them! Wolf!” Wolf laughed. “Sure.
Them!
We all live together. Have to keep the cattle, you know.
Her
cattle.”

“The Queen’s?”

“Yes. May she never, never die.” And Wolf made an absurdly touching salute, bending briefly forward with his right hand touching his forehead.

Further questioning straightened the matter out somewhat in Jack’s mind . . . at least, he thought it did. Wolf was a bachelor (although that word barely fit, somehow). The family of which he spoke was a hugely extended one—literally, the Wolf family. They were a nomadic but fiercely loyal race that moved back and forth in the great empty areas east of the Outposts but west of “The Settlements,” by which Wolf seemed to mean the towns and villages of the east.

Wolfs (never Wolves—when Jack once used the proper plural, Wolf had laughed until tears spurted from the corners of his eyes) were solid, dependable workers, for the most part. Their strength was legendary, their courage unquestioned. Some of them had gone east into The Settlements, where they served the Queen as guards, soldiers, even as personal bodyguards. Their lives, Wolf explained to Jack, had only two great touchstones: the Lady and the family. Most of the Wolfs, he said, served the Lady as he did—watching the herds.

The cow-sheep were the Territories’ primary source of meat, cloth, tallow, and lamp-oil (Wolf did not tell Jack this, but Jack inferred it from what he said). All the cattle belonged to the Queen, and the Wolf family had been watching over them since time out of mind. It was their job. In this Jack found an oddly persuasive correlative to the relationship that had existed between the buffalo and the Indians of the American Plains . . . at least until the white man had come into those territories and upset the balance.

“Behold, and the lion shall lie down with the lamb, and the Wolf with the creep,” Jack murmured, and smiled. He was lying on his back with his hands laced behind his head. The most marvellous feeling of peace and ease had stolen over him.

“What, Jack?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Wolf, do you really change into an animal when the moon gets full?”

“ ’Course I do!” Wolf said. He looked astounded, as if Jack had asked him something like
Wolf, do you really pull up your pants after you finish taking a crap?
“Strangers don’t, do they? Phil told me
that
.”

“The, ah, herd,” Jack said. “When you change, do they—”

“Oh, we don’t go
near
the herd when we change,” Wolf said seriously. “Good Jason, no! We’d eat them, don’t you know that? And a Wolf who eats of his herd must be put to death.
The Book of Good Farming
says so. Wolf! Wolf! We have places to go when the moon is full. So does the herd. They’re stupid, but they know they have to go away at the time of the big moon. Wolf! They better know, God pound them!”

“But you
do
eat meat, don’t you?” Jack asked.

“Full of questions, just like your father,” Wolf said. “Wolf! I don’t mind. Yeah, we eat meat. Of course we do. We’re Wolfs, aren’t we?”

“But if you don’t eat from the herds, what do you eat?”

“We eat well,” Wolf said, and would say no more on that subject.

Like everything else in the Territories, Wolf was a mystery—a mystery that was both gorgeous and frightening. The fact that he had known both Jack’s father and Morgan Sloat—had, at least, met their Twinners on more than one occasion—contributed to Wolf’s particular aura of mystery, but did not define it completely. Everything Wolf told him led Jack to a dozen more questions, most of which Wolf couldn’t—or wouldn’t—answer.

The matter of Philip Sawtelle’s and Orris’s visits was a case in point. They had first appeared when Wolf was in the “little moon” and living with his mother and two “litter-sisters.” They were apparently just passing through, as Jack himself was now doing, only they had been heading east instead of west (“Tell you the truth, you’re just about the only human I’ve ever seen this far west who was still
going
west,” Wolf said).

They had been jolly enough company, both of them. It was only later that there had been trouble . . . trouble with Orris. That had been after the partner of Jack’s father had “made himself a place in this world,” Wolf told Jack again and again—only now he seemed to mean Sloat, in the physical guise of Orris. Wolf said that Morgan had stolen one of his litter-sisters (“My mother bit her hands and toes for a month after she knew for certain that he took her,” Wolf told Jack matter-of-factly) and had taken other Wolfs from time to time. Wolf dropped his voice and, with an expression of fear and superstitious awe on his face, told Jack that the “limping man” had taken some of these Wolfs into the other world, the Place of the Strangers, and had taught them to eat of the herd.

“That’s very bad for guys like you, isn’t it?” Jack asked.

“They’re damned,” Wolf replied simply.

Jack had thought at first that Wolf was speaking of kidnapping—the verb Wolf had used in connection with his litter-sister, after all, was the Territories version of
take
. He began to see now that kidnapping wasn’t what was going on at all—unless Wolf, with unconscious poetry, had been trying to say that Morgan had kidnapped the minds of some of the Wolf family. Jack now thought that Wolf was really talking about werewolves who had thrown over their ancient allegiance to the Crown and the herd and had given it to Morgan instead . . . Morgan Sloat and Morgan of Orris.

Which led naturally enough to thoughts of Elroy.

A Wolf who eats of his herd must be put to death.

To thoughts of the men in the green car who had stopped to ask him directions, and offered him a Tootsie Roll, and who had then tried to pull him into their car. The eyes.
The eyes had changed
.

They’re damned.

He made himself a place in this world.

Until now he had felt both safe and delighted: delighted to be back in the Territories where there was a nip in the air but nothing like the dull, cold gray bite of western Ohio, safe with big, friendly Wolf beside him, way out in the country, miles from anything or anyone.

Made himself a place in this world.

He asked Wolf about his father—Philip Sawtelle in this world—but Wolf only shook his head. He had been a God-pounding good guy, and a Twinner—thus obviously a Stranger—but that was all Wolf seemed to know. Twinners, he said, was something that had something to do with litters of
people
, and about such business he could not presume to say. Nor could he describe Philip Sawtelle—he didn’t remember. He only remembered the smell. All
he
knew, he told Jack, was that, while both of the Strangers had
seemed
nice, only Phil Sawyer had really
been
nice. Once he had brought presents for Wolf and his litter-sisters and litter-brothers. One of the presents, unchanged from the world of the Strangers, had been a set of bib overalls for Wolf.

“I wore em all the time,” Wolf said. “My mother wanted to throw em away after I’d wore em for five years or so. Said they were worn out! Said I was too big for them! Wolf! Said they were only patches holding more patches together. I wouldn’t give em up, though. Finally, she bought some cloth from a drummer headed out toward the Outposts. I don’t know how much she paid, and Wolf! I’ll tell you the truth, Jack, I’m afraid to ask. She dyed it blue and made me six pairs. The ones your father brought me, I sleep on them now. Wolf! Wolf! It’s my God-pounding pillow, I guess.” Wolf smiled so openly—and yet so wistfully—that Jack was moved to take his hand. It was something he never could have done in his old life, no matter what the circumstances, but that now seemed like his loss. He was glad to take Wolf’s warm, strong hand.

“I’m glad you liked my dad, Wolf,” he said.

“I did! I did! Wolf! Wolf!”

And then all hell broke loose.

2

Wolf stopped talking and looked around, startled.

“Wolf? What’s wr—”

“Shhhh!”

Then Jack heard it. Wolf’s more sensitive ears had picked the sound up first, but it swelled quickly; before long, a deaf man would have heard it, Jack thought. The cattle looked around and then began to move away from the source of the sound in a rough, uneasy clot. It was like a radio sound-effect where someone is supposed to be ripping a bedsheet down the middle, very slowly. Only the volume kept going up and up and up until Jack thought he was going to go crazy.

Wolf leaped to his feet, looking stunned and confused and frightened. That ripping sound, a low, ragged purr, continued to grow. The bleating of the cattle became louder. Some were backing into the stream, and as Jack looked that way he saw one go down with a splash and a clumsy flailing of legs. It had been pushed over by its milling, retreating comrades. It let out a shrill,
baaa
-ing cry. Another cow-sheep stumbled over it and was likewise trampled into the water by the slow retreat. The far side of the stream was low and wet, green with reeds, muddy-marshy. The cow-sheep who first reached this muck quickly became mired in it.

“Oh you God-pounding good-for-nothing cattle!”
Wolf bellowed, and charged down the hill toward the stream, where the first animal to fall over now looked as if it were in its death-throes.

“Wolf!” Jack shouted, but Wolf couldn’t hear him. Jack could barely hear himself over that ragged ripping sound. He looked a little to the right, on this side of the stream, and gaped with amazement. Something was happening to the air. A patch of it about three feet off the ground was rippling and blistering, seeming to twist and pull at itself. Jack could see the Western Road through this patch of air, but the road seemed blurry and shimmery, as if seen through the heated, rippling air over an incinerator.

Something’s pulling the air open like a wound—something’s coming through—from our side? Oh Jason, is that what I do when I come through?
But even in his own panic and confusion he knew it was not.

Jack had a good idea who
would
come through like this, like a rape in progress.

Jack began to run down the hill.

3

The ripping sound went on and on and on. Wolf was down on his knees in the stream, trying to help the second downed animal to its feet. The first floated limply downstream, its body tattered and mangled.

“Get up! God pound you, get up! Wolf!”

Wolf shoved and slapped as best he could at the cow-sheep who milled and backed into him, then got both arms around the drowning animal’s midriff and pulled upward.
“WOLF! HERE AND NOW!”
he screamed. The sleeves of his shirt split wide open along the biceps, reminding Jack of David Banner having one of the gamma-ray-inspired tantrums that turned him into The Incredible Hulk. Water sprayed everywhere and Wolf lurched to his feet, eyes blazing orange, blue overalls now soaked black. Water streamed from the nostrils of the animal, which Wolf held clutched against his chest as if it were an overgrown puppy. Its eyes were turned up to sticky whites.

“Wolf!” Jack screamed. “It’s Morgan! It’s—”

“The herd!”
Wolf screamed back.
“Wolf! Wolf! My Godpounding herd! Jack! Don’t try—”

The rest was drowned out by a grinding clap of thunder that shook the earth. For a moment the thunder even covered that maddening, monotonous ripping sound. Almost as confused as Wolf’s cattle, Jack looked up and saw a clear blue sky, innocent of clouds save for a few puffy white ones that were miles away.

The thunder ignited outright panic in Wolf’s herd. They tried to bolt, but in their exquisite stupidity, many of them tried to do it by backing up. They crashed and splashed and were rolled underwater. Jack heard the bitter snap of a breaking bone, followed by the
baaaa
-ing scream of an animal in pain. Wolf bellowed in rage, dropped the cow-sheep he had been trying to save, and floundered toward the muddy far bank of the stream.

Before he could get there, half a dozen cattle struck him and bore him down. Water splashed and flew in thin, bright sprays. Now, Jack saw, Wolf was the one in danger of being simultaneously trampled and drowned by the stupid, fleeing animals.

Jack pushed into the stream, which was now dark with roiling mud. The current tried continually to push him off-balance. A bleating cow-sheep, its eyes rolling madly, splashed past him, almost knocking him down. Water sprayed into his face and Jack tried to wipe it out of his eyes.

Now that sound seemed to fill the whole world:
RRRRRIIIPPPP
—

Wolf. Never mind Morgan, at least not for the moment. Wolf was in trouble.

His shaggy, drenched head was momentarily visible above the water, and then three of the animals ran right over him and Jack could only see one waving, fur-covered hand. He pushed forward again, trying to weave through the cattle, some still up, others floundering and drowning underfoot.

“Jack!”
a voice bellowed over that ripping noise. It was a voice Jack knew. Uncle Morgan’s voice.

“Jack!”

There was another clap of thunder, this one a huge oaken thud that rolled through the sky like an artillery shell.

Panting, his soaked hair hanging in his eyes, Jack looked over his shoulder . . . and directly into the rest area on I-70 near Lewisburg, Ohio. He was seeing it as if through ripply, badly made glass . . . but he was
seeing
it. The edge of the brick toilet was on the left side of that blistered, tortured patch of air. The snout of what looked like a Chevrolet pick-up truck was on the right, floating three feet above the field where he and Wolf had been sitting peacefully and talking not five minutes ago. And in the center, looking like an extra in a film about Admiral Byrd’s assault on the South Pole, was Morgan Sloat, his thick red face twisted with murderous rage. Rage, and something else. Triumph? Yes. Jack thought that was what it was.