The Talisman

“Yes . . . yes, but . . .”

Jack held out his arms. The wrists were covered with angry red weals that itched and smarted.

“Bites,” Jack said. “From the worms. The worms that fell out of Reuel Gardener’s head.”

Richard turned away and was noisily sick.

Jack held him. Otherwise, he thought, Richard simply would have fallen sprawling. He was appalled at how thin Richard had become, at how hot his flesh felt through his preppy shirt.

“I’m sorry I said that,” Jack said when Richard seemed a little better. “It was pretty crude.”

“Yeah, it was. But I guess maybe it’s the only thing that could have . . . you know . . .”

“Convinced you?”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Richard looked at him with his naked, wounded eyes. There were now pimples all across his forehead. Sores surrounded his mouth. “Jack, I have to ask you something, and I want you to answer me . . . you know, straight. I want to ask you—”

Oh, I know what you want to ask me, Richie-boy.

“In a few minutes,” Jack said. “We’ll get to all the questions and as many of the answers as I know in a few minutes. But we’ve got a piece of business to take care of first.”

“What business?”

Instead of answering, Jack went over to the little train. He stood there for a moment, looking at it: stubby engine, empty boxcar, flatcar. Had he somehow managed to flip this whole thing into northern California? He didn’t think so. Flipping with Wolf had been a chore, dragging Richard into the Territories from the Thayer campus had nearly torn his arm out of its socket, and doing both had been a conscious effort on his part. So far as he could remember, he hadn’t been thinking of the train at all when he flipped—only getting Richard out of the Wolfs’ paramilitary training camp before he saw his old man. Everything else had taken a slightly different form when it went from one world into the other—the act of Migrating seemed to demand an act of translation, as well. Shirts might become jerkins; jeans might become woolen trousers; money might become jointed sticks. But this train looked exactly the same here as it had over there. Morgan had succeeded in creating something which lost nothing in the Migration.

Also, they were wearing blue jeans over there, Jack-O.

Yeah. And although Osmond had his trusty whip, he also had a machine-pistol.

Morgan’s machine-pistol. Morgan’s train.

Chilly gooseflesh rippled up his back. He heard Anders muttering, A bad business.

It was that, all right. A very bad business. Anders was right; it was devils all hurtled down together. Jack reached into the engine compartment, got one of the Uzis, slapped a fresh clip into it, and started back toward where Richard stood looking around with pallid, contemplative interest.

“This looks like an old survivalist camp,” he said.

“You mean the kind of place where soldier-of-fortune types get ready for World War Three?”

“Yes, sort of. There are quite a few places like that in northern California . . . they spring up and thrive for a while, and then the people lose interest when World War Three doesn’t start right away, or they get busted for illegal guns or dope, or something. My . . . my father told me that.”

Jack said nothing.

“What are you going to do with the gun, Jack?”

“I’m going to try and get rid of that train. Any objections?”

Richard shuddered; his mouth pulled down in a grimace of distaste. “None whatever.”

“Will the Uzi do it, do you think? If I shoot into that plastic junk?”

“One bullet wouldn’t. A whole clip might.”

“Let’s see.” Jack pushed off the safety.

Richard grabbed his arm. “It might be wise to remove ourselves to the fence before making the experiment,” he said.

“Okay.”

At the ivy-covered fence, Jack trained the Uzi on the flat and squashy packages of plastique. He pulled the trigger, and the Uzi bellowed the silence into rags. Fire hung mystically from the end of the barrel for a moment. The gunfire was shockingly loud in the chapellike silence of the deserted camp. Birds squawked in surprised fear and headed out for quieter parts of the forest. Richard winced and pressed his palms against his ears. The tarpaulin flirted and danced. Then, although he was still pulling the trigger, the gun stopped firing. The clip was exhausted, and the train just sat there on the track.

“Well,” Jack said, “that was great. Have you got any other i—”

The flatcar erupted in a sheet of blue fire and a bellowing roar. Jack saw the flatcar actually starting to rise from the track, as if it were taking off. He grabbed Richard around the neck, shoved him down.

The explosions went on for a long time. Metal whistled and flew overhead. It made a steady metallic rain- shower on the roof of the Quonset hut. Occasionally a larger piece made a sound like a Chinese gong, or a crunch as something really big just punched on through. Then something slammed through the fence just above Jack’s head, leaving a hole bigger than both of his fists laced together, and Jack decided it was time to cut out. He grabbed Richard and started pulling him toward the gates.

“No!” Richard shouted. “The tracks!”