Wizard and Glass

belt-buckle. And then Jimmie Polio said. Come on. Henry, stop fuckin around. This a serious question. Who 'd you want watching your hack if the shit was gonna come down?

I am being serious. Henry had replied.

Why Eddie? Georgie Pratt had asked, echoing the question which had been in Eddie's own mind. He couldn’t 't fight his way out of a paper bag. A wet one. So why the fuck?

Henry thought some more—not, Eddie was convinced, because he didn't know why, but because he had to think about how to articulate it. Then he said: Because when Eddie's in that fuckin zone, he could talk the devil into setting himself on fire.

The image of Jake returned, one memory stepping on another. Jake scraping steel on flint, flashing sparks at the kindling of their campfire, sparks that fell short and died before they lit.

He could talk the devil into setting himself on fire.

Move your flint in closer, Roland said, and now there was a third memory, one of Roland at the door they'd come to at the end of the beach, Roland burning with fever, close to death, shaking like a maraca, coughing, his blue bombardier's eyes fixed on Eddie, Roland saying, Come a little closer, Eddie—come a little closer for your father's sake!

Because he wanted to grab me, Eddie thought. Faintly, almost as if it were coming through one of those magic doors from some other world, he heard Blaine telling them that the endgame had commenced; if they had been saving their best riddles, now was the time to trot them out. They had an hour.

An hour! Only an hour!

His mind tried to fix on that and Eddie nudged it away. Something was happening inside him (at least he prayed it was), some desperate game of association, and he couldn't let his mind get fucked up with deadlines and consequences and all that crap; if he did, he'd lose whatever chance he had. It was, in a way, like seeing something in a piece of wood, something you could carve out—a bow, a slingshot, perhaps a key to open some unimaginable door. You couldn't look too long, though, at least to start with. You'd lose it if you did. It was almost as if you had to carve while your own back was turned.

He could feel Blaine's engines powering up beneath him. In his mind's eye he saw the flint flash against the steel, and in his mind's ear he heard Roland telling Jake to move the flint in closer. And don't hit it with the steel, Jake; scrape it.

Why am I here? If this isn't what I want, why does my mind keep coming hack to this place?

Because it’s as close as I can get and still stay out of the hurt-zone. Only a medium-sized hurt, actually, but it made me think of Henry. Being put down by Henry.

Henry said you could talk the devil into setting himself on fire.

Yes. I always loved him for that. That was great.

And now Eddie saw Roland move Jake's hands, one holding flint and the other steel, closer to the kindling. Jake was nervous. Eddie could see it; Roland had seen it, too. And in order to ease his nerves, take his mind off the responsibility of lighting the fire, Roland had—

He asked the kid a riddle.

Eddie Dean blew breath into the keyhole of his memory. And this time the tumblers turned.

2

The green dot was closing in on Topeka, and for the first time Jake felt vibration … as if the track beneath them had decayed to a point where Blaine's compensators could no longer completely handle the problem. With the sense of vibration there at last came a feeling of speed. The walls and ceiling of the Barony Coach were still opaqued, but Jake found he didn't need to see the countryside blurring past to imagine it. Blaine was rolling full out now, leading his last sonic boom across the waste lands to the place where Mid-World ended, and Jake also found it easy to imagine the transteel piers at the end of the monorail. They would be painted in diagonal stripes of yellow and black. He didn't know how he knew that, but he did.

'TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES,' Blaine said complacently. 'WOULD YOU TRY ME AGAIN, GUNSLINGER?'

'I think not, Blaine.' Roland sounded exhausted. 'I've done with you; you've beaten me. Jake?'

Jake got to his feet and faced the route-map. In his chest his heartbeat seemed very slow but very hard, each pulse like a fist slamming on a drumhead. Oy crouched between his feet, looking anxiously up into his face.

'Hello, Blaine,' Jake said, and wet his lips.

'HELLO, JAKE OF NEW YORK.' The voice was kindly—the voice, perhaps, of a nice old fellow with a habit of molesting the children he from time to time leads into the bushes. 'WOULD YOU TRY ME WITH RIDDLES FROM YOUR BOOK? OUR TIME TOGETHER GROWS SHORT.'

'Yes,' Jake said. 'I would try you with these riddles. Give me your understanding of the truth concerning each, Blaine.'

'IT IS FAIRLY SPOKEN, JAKE OF NEW YORK. I WILL DO AS YOU ASK.'

Jake opened the book to the place he had been keeping with his finger. Ten riddles. Eleven, counting Samson's riddle, which he was saving for last. If Blaine answered them all (as Jake now believed he probably would), Jake would sit down next to Roland, take Oy onto his lap, and wait for the end. There were, after all, other worlds than these.

'Listen, Blaine: In a tunnel of darkness lies a beast of iron. It can only attack when pulled back. What is it?'

'A BULLET.' No hesitation.

'Walk on the living, they don't even mumble. Walk on the dead, they mutter and grumble. What are they?'

'FALLEN LEAVES.' No hesitation, and if Jake really knew in his heart that the game was lost, why did he feel such despair, such bitterness, such anger?

Because he's a pain, that's why. Blaine is a really BIG pain, and I'd like to push his face in it, just once. I think even making him stop is second to that on my wish-list.

Jake turned the page. He was very close to Riddle-De-Dum's tom-out answer section now; he could feel it under his finger, a kind of jagged lump. Very close to the end of the book. He thought of Aaron Deepneau in the Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind, Aaron Deepneau telling him to come back anytime,