The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1)

by Mark Reynolds

  No answers, only speculations.

  Jack saved the file he had created and went out on the roof, climbing up on the false front. Out here, he could not hear the goings-on of the second floor, not Leland’s arguments, or Ellen’s and Lindsay’s exploration. He saw Alex staring in silence at the emptiness. Perhaps he thought he was protecting them from whatever he imagined was lurking just beyond the barrier. Or perhaps he was only protecting himself. No matter. From up here, Jack had no idea what Alex was thinking or doing or saying. From up here, he could almost believe Alex was just another stranger who meant nothing more to him than the majority of the other seven billion people inhabiting the earth—wherever that was relative to here.

  Nail crept up beside him, unaware of the new Caretaker’s misgivings. Jack reached out and absently scratched under the creature’s muzzle, the fur course and thick. Nail leaned into his hand, a contented growl in his throat, one foot beginning a half-hearted thumping. “You deserve better,” he murmured to the small gargoyle. “I’m sorry.”

  Nail stared at him without comprehension, self-doubt not a concept within the Guardian’s grasp. Then he nuzzled Jack’s shoulder with his snout, hopped down and wandered away.

  Alone again, Jack thought as he watched the emptiness. Naturally.

  * * *

  As the sun sank into the horizon, they all trickled back to the main room, drawn by some mutual understanding, a sense of the dinner hour. Jack found Ellen and Lindsay pumping coins into the candy machine. Ellen stared uneasily at the chewed hole in the waiting room wall, refusing to turn her back on it. Lindsay seemed unconcerned. Alex rummaged behind the bar and in the refrigerator, his search yielding a brick of mild cheddar, a half-stick of pepperoni, and a box of Ritz crackers.

  “I don’t suppose you happen to have any change on ya?” Alex asked as Jack came down the stairs. “I’m nearly tapped out.”

  Jack dug into his pocket, and pulled out a dollar and sixty-five cents, mostly in nickels and dimes. “All I got,” he said, placing the sad offering on the bar. “Check the coin returns, or maybe under the porch boards for change that might have fallen through.”

  “Can’t hope for much from that,” Alex said. “This place doesn’t look like it gets a lot of foot traffic.”

  “The Saloon operates on a set of contrived principles,” Jack said. “What you need doesn’t just appear; it weaves itself into the existing reality. Food is in the vending machine or the fridge, blankets and clothes are in the closet. That’s why it isn’t as simple a matter as just sending all of you home. I have to construct a reality around each of you.”

  “How are you going to do that if you don’t know anything about us?”

  Jack shrugged. “I’ll have to learn.”

  “Are you sure that’s how it works?” Ellen asked, emerging from the waiting room ahead of Lindsay. Both were laden with snack bags of chips and nachos, a few candy bars, and a shrink-wrapped can of tuna fish with rye crackers.

  “No,” Jack confessed. “But it seems to make sense. For all its convenience, nothing is convenient. Cliché would be a more appropriate term. All of the dispensers require coins. Sleeping arrangements are inadequate, but there are plenty of blankets in the closet. The place is defended not so much by an impenetrable barrier of magic, but by a gargoyle. The place creates elements of reality like symbolic gestures; reality lenses to focus the power that the Nexus generates. I’m not saying I understand all the inner workings, but I am beginning to understand the premise upon which they seem to operate. The emphasis on the tickets and the trains, for one. Those tickets aren’t for passage to Chicago. They’re tickets back to reality. So why externalize that as a train and a ticket? I don’t know. I think I know the what, but I don’t know the why.”

  “Kreiger knows why,” Leland said, coming down the stairs.

  “Why do you say that?” Alex asked from behind the bar. “If he really knew what he was doing, he wouldn’t be out in the desert, would he?”

  Leland didn’t miss a beat. “Were you speaking in complex sentences when you were three weeks old? Probably not. So why can you do it now? For the same reason that Kreiger can probably succeed where once he failed. Experience. Kreiger’s been around. He’s learned not to yield to the rules imposed upon him by his surroundings like Jack does. Kreiger makes the rules and the reality in the same step.” Leland turned the corner to the waiting room, adding “That’s the difference.”

  Alex shook his head, the room silent but for the sound of Leland plugging coins into the candy dispenser. Coins slid down into the malfunctioning guts. Buttons were jabbed.

  Then something thumped the machine. “Come on!” Leland grumbled.

  A fist banged the vending machine again. “Come on!”

  The machine replied with a loud whirring, cicadas on a hot July afternoon, and an eerie green light flickered erratically from the waiting room.

  “Give it to me, you son of a bitch!” More fist banging. There was the clunking sound of metal feet rocking up and down on a wooden floor. “Come on!”

  The light flickered angrily, a bright, arrhythmic, gassy green. Leland Quince rocked the machine back and forth, banging it against the wall, hollering: “Give it! Give it!”

  And there was a soft thumping sound, and everything stopped. Leland stepped calmly from the waiting room, breathing hard, staring at a package of Ho-hos with angry satisfaction. He stopped halfway to the stairs, realizing he was the center of attention.

  “Did you want any coffee, Mr. Quince?” Jack offered. Honestly, he didn’t know what else to say.

  Leland Quince only stared back at him, part incomprehension, part thinly veiled hatred. “What I want is to go home.”

  Then the businessman retreated back upstairs.

  UNDER COVER OF DARKNESS

  It was shortly after midnight when Leland Quince slipped away from the Sanity’s Edge Saloon.

  He waited quietly in his room, planning. And while he planned, he studied the room’s antiquated trappings: the hand-carved wood on the bureau, the worn and cracked leather straps on the old steamer trunk, the oil-soaped floorboards. And as he stared at each thing in turn, Leland Quince put himself to the task of selecting from each a flaw. It was his unique talent, how he won; how he always won. All he had to do was find the break in the surface, the chink in the armor. The beautiful headboard had a knot in the wood, ugly and black and shrunken with age, it left a jagged black hole with gobs of yellowed finish caught up in the grooves; sure sign of a carpenter too cheap to scrap bad wood. Someone had carved his initials in the steamer trunk with a jack knife; a fine thing turned over to an ill-behaved child. The wall bowed slightly; poor craftsmanship.

  He could find the flaws in people, as well. Most especially in people. And they always had flaws. It made them easy to manipulate. Faults existed like wounds in the flesh, and for those with the nerve, it was a simple matter to reach a finger into the gory hole and twist while the other danced fits of pain. It was a talent he had exercised over the course of many years, and it served him well.

  The rules had changed dramatically since this morning, but some things remained the same. Leland’s assets were beyond him now: his cadre of lawyers and consultants, his money and credit cards, the host of assistants that swarmed about him until he failed to notice their presence, all gone save the tools he carried in his head. And right now his head was telling him that this was a war, and a war was not something you lost graciously. War was something that you won at all costs, and you won by never forgetting the first and only rule: there are no rules.

  Leland understood this. He wanted to win; would win; had to win!

  Jack might want to win, but he wouldn’t. The young man’s flaw was mediocrity, and while that was good enough back in the world—a suitable quality for any mailroom assistant or filing clerk—this was not the world Jack once knew. Here, mediocrity got you dead, plain and simple. Not just Jack, but everyone with him.

  That Kreiger would win out over
Jack seemed inevitable. The only question was how soon, and who would benefit? A push from this side might secure the favor of the crazed Wastelander, the one who promised anything.

  Anything.

  These critical analyses helped restore equilibrium, and redirect the uneasy shadows looming in his mind, aftershocks of self-doubt and failure. Staring at the blistered windowsill—the finish had been applied on too hot a day, and never properly set into the wood—he made himself believe he had not already succumbed to madness.

  So just after midnight, Leland Quince crept down the stairs and into the main room, unnoticed in the darkness. The two girls were sleeping in the room next to his, and Jack was hiding upstairs, most likely curled up on the floor like a child. He heard the other one snoring softly from the waiting room.

  His eyes wandered over the room, adjusting to the darkness, picking out details. And when he was satisfied that he could navigate the darkness, he walked into the backroom with the sink and the network of pipes, and stepped out through the door.

  Escape was that easy.

  Leland crossed the tracks and marched out into the Wasteland. Only three tents alone on the silent sands, no sign of Kreiger, his monsters, or the other Cast Outs.

  Leland kept walking until he was a dozen steps from the nearest striped tent. And there he stopped. He called out softly, his voice deliberately low, a harsh whisper that would not draw attention from the saloon behind him. “Kreiger?”

  The darkness gave no reply.

  “Kreiger? It’s Leland Quince. I want to discuss your offer.”

  Silence. Under darkness, the desert air turned cold.

  “I’ll come back in the morning,” he suggested, letting himself believe the decision had been mutually agreed upon.

  Turning, he found the darkness behind him crowded with horrifically malformed shapes, a teeming assemblage of monstrous jaws and dead eyes and lanky, water-poor limbs, sinews standing out like tightly wound cables. Wasteland dregs! As motionless as stone, they walled away his retreat, and for the first time that night—perhaps for the first time ever—Leland Quince questioned himself, felt fear grip his entrails like ice, bony fingers reaching for his heart.

  “Mr. Leland Quince, Wall Street’s Wrecking Ball. I expected you somewhat … later.” Leland spun around, found himself face to face with the leader of the Tribe of Dust. “Still, enthusiasm is a trait I feel should be recognized and rewarded. Light?” Kreiger offered.

  A dull orange circle of torchlight flared to life around Leland and the newly appeared Tribe of Dust.

  “Something to eat?” From behind his back, Kreiger produced a tray of hors d’oeuvres. “You must be famished after such a long walk.”

  “I didn’t come here to play games,” Leland said. “Were you serious about your deal? Will you send me anywhere I want to go? No tricks?”

  Gusman Kreiger turned his head thoughtfully, setting the tray down upon a three-legged table that had not been there a moment before. “Mr. Quince, I am always serious. Anywhere you wish; the venue of your choice: business mogul, world leader, god-emperor. I really don’t care. Be the world’s greatest lover or the world’s most notorious villain; it’s all the same to me. Name the stakes and I’ll see to it that it ends up on the table.” Then the sorcerer’s head lowered, shadows darkening his face. “But if I don’t get those tickets, I guarantee the only thing you’ll get out of me is an eternity in a place that will make the deepest pits in the darkest hell your pathetic mind can imagine look like a weekend in Cabo. Do we understand each other, Mr. Quince?”

  Leland looked backwards at the Wasteland dregs gathered on the edge of the light, teeth grinding, claws clicking in anticipation. “Tell your goons to beat it. Call it a demonstration of … goodwill.”

  “As you say, Mr. Quince.” Kreiger tossed a glance at Rebreather and nodded. The tall Cast Out flicked his hand, a gesture incapable of shooing flies or even stirring the air, but somehow able to sink the army of dregs back below the sand as if the dust were no more than water, their bodies no more than smoke.

  “Better?” Kreiger asked.

  “Much.”

  “You understand that I will have the Nexus, with or without your complicity. But your help will make it easier for me, and for that convenience I am willing to reward you to the fullest extent I know how.”

  Leland didn’t doubt Kreiger’s determination, but he still needed to know why, needed to find the weakness in the sorcerer’s tungsten surface. Kreiger knew something, and Leland needed to know what it was, and why it made Jack’s failure certain. “Jack thinks he can beat you. The other Caretakers did.”

  Kreiger offered a grin both sickly and genteel, and from behind his back produced the tall scepter that Leland saw him with that morning. “Jack cannot beat me without this, Mr. Quince.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing much really. Here nothing is much of anything. It’s all just symbolic representations of function. But then, what of reality isn’t, eh, Mr. Quince?” Kreiger chuckled softly before remembering his audience—constructs were oblivious to the subtler aspects of multiple planes of existence. “It’s a lightning rod, Mr. Quince. A lightning rod I stole. Think of it as a key to a clock that needs winding; a key the Caretaker doesn’t even know is missing. The Saloon’s power is not replenishing itself. The barrier Jack created is rapidly draining away what little reserves remain. When it’s exhausted, the barrier will collapse, and I shall march the Tribe of Dust over him as if he were nothing, an illusion, sunlight on a tabletop. His power is slipping away from him with every passing second, and he isn’t even aware of it. The game is fixed, you see, and the house always wins.”

  Quince looked at the lunatic messiah with his white suit and different colored eyes, and wondered why: Why deal? Why not wait Jack out? There was something more, some kind of flaw to Kreiger’s plan. “What if I wanted to be on the winning side?”

  “The tickets, Mr. Quince. I told you, it’s all symbolic. Not just here, but everywhere, along all of the lines. The tickets are symbols of Jack’s control over the reality-making machinery of the universe. Without them, Jack can never master the Nexus, and the power will force him out like it forced out the rest of us. Two millennia surviving in the Wasteland has made me wise, Mr. Quince. I doubt Jack will fair so well. Nothing personal, you understand. It’s just that I want out of the Wasteland, and he’s in my way. But I’m willing to be reasonable. Get me the tickets, and I’ll send all of you back. No malice or ill will. And if you happen to bring me those tickets, then to you goes the one thing which few of us ever get in life.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “A choice, Mr. Quince. The opportunity to go anywhere you want, be anyone you want, do anything you want. Choice is not a birthright. It is the Holy Grail, the rainbow’s end; everyone searches for it, but few actually obtain it. Help me, Mr. Quince, and you earn the right to choose.”

  Still unable to pry the veil of Kreiger’s secrets, Leland now knew the rules of the game, at least. Kreiger, like all Cast Outs, was a prisoner, and there was no escape from this place, not ever. Then something changed. The lightning rod, a tool of the Caretakers and a key of sorts, fell into his possession; how was unimportant and Kreiger would lie about the details anyway. Jack’s power was slowly diminishing, and he wasn’t even aware of it. Kreiger could be trusted because the prize he offered—freedom for those in the saloon—held no value to him. The master of the Nexus would not care for what became of the riders of the tickets. The master of the Nexus was the master of all reality. He wouldn’t care if some had it better than others because whoever held the Nexus had it better then all. Kreiger would keep his word if he helped him, and Kreiger would win whether he helped him or not.

  The decision was obvious.

  “I’ll get you the tickets. You agree to send me wherever I want to go; no exceptions; no conditions.”

  “Agreed.”

  * * *

  Curled on the floor of his office,
Jack dreamed; not the slippery amalgam of pasted realities that was the normative property of dreams, but images like a picture show playing upon the screen of his sleeping mind. It was like the dream he had the night before he boarded the train, the dream in which he saw someone very much like the leader of the Cast Outs.

  And in that dream, that man shot him.

  Now he was walking across a desert, flat and barren, the sand as white as sun-bleached bones and rock hard with the passage of uncounted aeons, the glare of the sun unmerciful. In the distance, a small speck, insignificant except that it was substance in an endless expanse of white, a lonely raft adrift in a vast sea.

  He came up behind it, moving with the swiftness of dreams, and realized it was not something, but someone. Wearing a long, gray coat, Jack mistook him for the Cast Out, Rebreather, but he was too small, too … human. The gray-coated figure sat cross-legged on the sand, hunched over something kept tight in his shadow. Scattered upon the ground were dozens of sucked-out shells, carapaces of large insects apparently eaten. The only sound a clattering like the trembling of manic fingers thrumming the arms of the restraining chair before the current is turned on.

  Jack circled the hunched-over creature slowly, but saw no response, no acknowledgment. The other did not appear to even notice him.

  A Smith-Corona typewriter balanced atop an orange crate, its cast iron case scratched and worn, keys fragmented and chipped, some broken loose and scattered upon the ground. The ribbon spewed from the machine’s mouth like a length of vomited gut, bleached to a dry, faded gray, the center of the fabric pounded until it had nearly split lengthwise. The single sheet of paper in the machine was scrolled back over, taped together into an endless loop and typed over until it was completely black save for the narrow frame of margins. The madman typed regardless, fingers never stopping their frantic abuse of the darkly stained keys, splattered with dried coffee or chocolate perhaps; some bizarre accident that left them stained and gummed with the dark gore.