1
“But will ye be safe, my Lord?” Anders asked, kneeling down before Jack with his white-and-red kilt pooled out around him like a skirt.
“Jack?” Richard asked, his voice a whiny, irrelevant skirl of sound.
“Would you be safe yourself?” Jack asked.
Anders twisted his big white head sideways and squinted up at Jack as if he had just asked a riddle. He looked like a huge puzzled dog.
“I mean, I’ll be about as safe as you would be yourself. That’s all I mean.”
“But my Lord . . .”
“Jack?” came Richard’s querulous voice again. “I fell asleep, and now I should be awake, but we’re still in this weird place, so I’m still dreaming . . . but I want to be awake, Jack, I don’t want to have this dream anymore. No. I don’t want to.”
“Huh?” Richard said, rubbing his face and sitting up. If Anders resembled a big white dog in skirts, Richard looked like nothing so much as a newly awakened baby.
“My Lord Jason,” Anders said. Now he seemed as if he might weep—with relief, Jack thought. “It is yer will? It is yer will to drive that devil-machine through the Blasted Lands?”
“It sure is,” Jack said.
“Where are we?” Richard said. “Are you sure they’re not following us?”
Jack turned toward him. Richard was sitting up on the undulating yellow floor, blinking stupidly, terror still drifting about him like a fog. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll answer your question. We’re in a section of the Territories called Ellis-Breaks—”
“My head hurts,” Richard said. He had closed his eyes.
“And,” Jack went on, “we’re going to take this man’s train all the way through the Blasted Lands to the black hotel, or as close to it as we can get. That’s it, Richard. Believe it or not. And the sooner we do it, the sooner we’ll get away from whatever just might be trying to find us.”
“Etheridge,” Richard whispered. “Mr. Dufrey.” He looked around the mellow interior of The Depot as if he expected all their pursuers to suddenly pour through the walls. “It’s a brain tumor, you know,” he said to Jack in a tone of perfect reasonableness. “That’s what it is—my headache.”
“My Lord Jason,” old Anders was saying, bowing so low that his hair settled down on the rippling floorboards. “How good ye are, O High One, how good to yer lowliest servant, how good to those who do not deserve yer blessed presence. . . .” He crawled forward, and Jack saw with horror that he was about to begin that moony foot- kissing all over again.
“Pretty far advanced, too, I’d say,” Richard offered.
“Get up, please, Anders,” Jack said, stepping back. “Get up, come on, that’s enough.” The old man continued to crawl forward, babbling with his relief at not having to endure the Blasted Lands. “ARISE!” Jack bellowed.
Anders looked up, his forehead wrinkled. “Yes, my Lord.” He slowly got up.
“Bring your brain tumor over here, Richard,” Jack said “We’re going to see if we can figure out how to drive this damn train.”
2
Anders had moved over behind the long, rippling counter, and was rooting in a drawer. “I believe it works on devils, my Lord,” he said. “Strange devils, all hurtled down together. They do not appear to live, yet they do. Aye.” He fetched out of the drawer the longest, fattest candle that Jack had ever seen. From a box atop the counter Anders selected a foot-long, narrow softwood strip, then lowered one of its ends into a glowing lamp. The strip of wood ignited, and Anders used it to light his enormous candle. Then he waved the “match” back and forth until the flame expired in a curl of smoke.
“Devils?” Jack asked.
“Strange square things—I believe the devils are contained therein. Sometimes how they spit and spark! I shall show this to ye, Lord Jason.”
Without another word he swept toward the door, the warm glow of the candle momentarily erasing the wrinkles from his face. Jack followed him outside into the sweetness and amplitude of the deep Territories. He remembered a photograph on the wall of Speedy Parker’s office, a photograph even then filled with an inexplicable power, and realized that he was actually near the site of that photograph. Far off rose a familiar-looking mountain. Down the little knoll the fields of grain rolled away in all directions, waving in smooth, wide patterns. Richard Sloat moved hesitantly beside Jack, rubbing his forehead. The silvery bands of metal, out of key with the rest of the landscape, stretched inexorably west.
“The shed is in back, my Lord,” Anders said softly, and almost shyly turned away toward the side of The Depot. Jack took another glance at the far-off mountain. Now it looked less like the mountain in Speedy’s photograph— newer—a western, not an eastern, mountain.
“What’s with that Lord Jason business?” Richard whispered right into his ear. “He thinks he knows you.”
“It’s hard to explain,” Jack said.
Richard tugged at his bandanna, then clamped a hand on Jack’s biceps. The old Kansas City Clutch. “What happened to the school, Jack? What happened to the dogs? Where are we?”
“Just come along,” Jack said. “You’re probably still dreaming.”
“Yes,” Richard said in the tone of purest relief. “Yes, that’s it, isn’t it? I’m still asleep. You told me all that crazy stuff about the Territories, and now I’m dreaming about it.”
“Yeah,” Jack said, and set off after Anders. The old man was holding up the enormous candle like a torch and
