The Talisman

“Gloating,” Jack mused.

“Sometimes he asked me if I wanted to come with him, and I always said no. He’d nod and I remember once he said, ’There’ll be time. You’ll understand everything, Rich . . . in time.’ I remember thinking that if it was about that black hotel, I didn’t want to understand.

“Once,” Richard said, “when he was drunk, he said there was something inside that place. He said it had been there for a long time. We were lying in our beds, I remember. The wind was high that night. I could hear the waves hitting the beach, and the squeaky sound of those weathervanes turning on top of the Agincourt’s towers. It was a scary sound. I thought about that place, all those rooms, all of them empty—”

“Except for the ghosts,” Jack muttered. He thought he heard footsteps and looked quickly behind them. Nothing; no one. The roadbed was deserted for as far as he could see.

“That’s right; except for the ghosts,” Richard agreed. “So I said, ’Is it valuable, Daddy?’

“ ’It’s the most valuable thing there is,’ he said.

“ ’Then some junkie will probably break in and steal it,’ I said. It wasn’t—how can I say this?—it wasn’t a subject I wanted to pursue, but I didn’t want him to go to sleep, either. Not with that wind blowing outside, and the sound of those vanes squeaking in the night.

“He laughed, and I heard a clink as he poured himself a little more bourbon from the bottle on the floor.

“ ’Nobody is going to steal it, Rich,’ he said. ’And any junkie who went into the Agincourt would see things he never saw before.’ He drank his drink, and I could tell he was getting sleepy. ’Only one person in the whole world could ever touch that thing, and he’ll never even get close to it, Rich. I can guarantee that. One thing that interests me is that it’s the same over there as over here. It doesn’t change—at least, as far as I can tell, it doesn’t change. I’d like to have it, but I’m not even going to try, at least not now, and maybe not ever. I could do things with it—you bet!—but on the whole, I think I like the thing best right where it is.’

“I was getting sleepy myself by then, but I asked him what it was that he kept talking about.”

“What did he say?” Jack asked, dry-mouthed.

“He called it—” Richard hesitated, frowning in thought. “He called it ’the axle of all possible worlds.’ Then he laughed. Then he called it something else. Something you wouldn’t like.”

“What was that?”

“It’ll make you mad.”

“Come on, Richard, spill it.”

“He called it . . . well . . . he called it ’Phil Sawyer’s folly.’ ”

It was not anger he felt but a burst of hot, dizzying excitement. That was it, all right; that was the Talisman. The axle of all possible worlds. How many worlds? God alone knew. The American Territories; the Territories themselves; the hypothetical Territories’ Territories; and on and on, like the stripes coming ceaselessly up and out of a turning barber pole. A universe of worlds, a dimensional macrocosm of worlds—and in all of them one thing that was always the same; one unifying force that was undeniably good, even if it now happened to be imprisoned in an evil place; the Talisman, axle of all possible worlds. And was it also Phil Sawyer’s folly? Probably so. Phil’s folly . . . Jack’s folly . . . Morgan Sloat’s . . . Gardener’s . . . and the hope, of course, of two Queens.

“It’s more than Twinners,” he said in a low voice.

Richard had been plodding along, watching the rotted ties disappear beneath his feet. Now he looked nervously up at Jack.

“It’s more than Twinners, because there are more than two worlds. There are triplets . . . quadruplets . . . who knows? Morgan Sloat here; Morgan of Orris over there; maybe Morgan, Duke of Azreel, somewhere else. But he never went inside the hotel!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Richard said in a resigned voice. But I’m sure you’ll go right on, anyway, that resigned tone said, progressing from nonsense to outright insanity. All aboard for Seabrook Island!

“He can’t go inside. That is, Morgan of California can’t—and do you know why? Because Morgan of Orris can’t. And Morgan of Orris can’t because Morgan of California can’t. If one of them can’t go into his version of the black hotel, then none of them can. Do you see?”

“No.”

Jack, feverish with discovery, didn’t hear what Richard said at all.

“Two Morgans, or dozens. It doesn’t matter. Two Lilys, or dozens—dozens of Queens in dozens of worlds, Richard, think of that! How does that mess your mind? Dozens of black hotels—only in some worlds it might be a black amusement park . . . or a black trailer court . . . or I don’t know what. But Richard—”

He stopped, turned Richard by the shoulders, and stared at him, his eyes blazing. Richard tried to draw away from him for a moment, and then stopped, entranced by the fiery beauty on Jack’s face. Suddenly, briefly, Richard believed that all things might be possible. Suddenly, briefly, he felt healed.

“What?” he whispered.

“Some things are not excluded. Some people are not excluded. They are . . . well . . . single-natured. That’s the only way I can think of to say it. They are like it—the Talisman. Single-natured. Me. I’m single-natured. I had a Twinner, but he died. Not just in the Territories world, but in all worlds but this one. I know that—I feel that. My dad knew it, too. I think that’s why he called me Travelling Jack. When I’m here, I’m not there. When I’m there, I’m not here. And Richard, neither are you!”

Richard stared at him, speechless.

“You don’t remember; you were mostly in Freakout City while I was talking to Anders. But he said Morgan of Orris had a boy-child. Rushton. Do you know what he was?”