The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) (36 page)

Time ran differently
between his world and hers; Jack knew this, had always known this. The same way
he knew his heart was beating, his lungs breathing, his mind forever returning
to thoughts of her. It was fundamental. Sometimes her days would pass in
minutes. And sometimes whole days in the Café could be consumed in mere moments
of her life.

They were not yet in
synch.

If she did what he needed
her to do—what he hoped she would do—they would be. After all, she was the one
who’d first discovered how to fly.

The night was cold, but
he remained in the bed of the truck, hunched over his laptop, the screen glowing
blue-white on his face like the cerulean moon. His fingers clicked across the
keys: sometimes slow, sometimes stopping altogether, and sometimes running
across the board in a fevered pace so consistent and rhythmic as to be mistaken
for the sound of an insect in the night.

Only there were no
insects in the night. The Wasteland was dead, drained,
sterilized
. It
might come back one day, might spontaneously generate the bizarre creatures
that bubbled up from the dust, spiders and insects and dregs of every description,
dangerous animals that lived each off the other like desperate cannibals in the
final days of Rapa Nui, a vicious circle of life that favored only the cruel.
It might all be as it was before—before he squared off against Gusman Kreiger.

Then again, it might not.

Hammerlock had found an
Indian blanket for him along with a thermos of coffee to ward off the cold. The
robot had also built a fire in an old oil drum, a vagabond’s beacon burning
silently in the night. But Jack preferred the dark, lit only by the screen and
the passing moon, constant and full. For the moon, time did not pass here on
the edge of madness. Maybe it passed for no one. Maybe he was simply reliving
the same day over and over, trying to get it right—or simply refusing to let it
go while it was wrong.

Oversight likened the
Wasteland to Purgatory. Not Hell because in Hell you were attended to. In the
Wasteland, you were forgotten. Like time, or the face of the moon, or the
derelict machines that served as mute witnesses while slowly rusting away,
becoming one with the world of dust.

Nothing lasts forever; not
even here.

Sleep crept over him like
a shadow. He caught himself once on the verge of nodding off, and snapped his
head back violently to pour out yet another hard-won paragraph. But it happened
again, head dipping, fingers slowing. A part of him yearned for it; sleep a
sweet reprieve, a chance to dream.

Sometimes he saw Ellen.

Sometimes.

They were no closer in
dreams. No closer to freeing her. No closer to freeing himself.

But the sweetness of the
deception, while short-lived, was its own reward.

Jack’s head tipped
forward, chin nearly on his chest, and the will to resist failed. His fingers
slipped from the keys like things made of rags, and his eyelids became too heavy
and hard to open.

He long ago stopped
seeing what was in front of him.

*     *     *

Ellen read until sunset, stopping long
enough to turn on a light, and twice more to use the bathroom. She had already
finished a pot of Serena’s specially blended tea, and was using up the last of
it on a second.

Nothing lasts forever.

The second pot of tea went down faster
than the first; the distraction meant to keep her from falling asleep had the
opposite effect. She found herself reading and rereading the same page from
The
Sanity’s Edge Saloon
, some passages read four or five times without any
recollection, her eyes losing their ability to focus, mind unable to
concentrate.

Finally she surrendered, turning off the
light and walking in darkness to her bedroom.

Through the open window,
Ellen could still hear activity up on the roof: Jasper’s ongoing project.

It would work. Against
all reason, against all common sense, Jasper’s flying contraption—her Dreamline—would
work. It would work because Jack’s reality was starting to take hold.

There were other
realities than this one, other worlds she had known, remembered only in
disjointed glimpses. There was Jack’s old reality, the one they shared briefly at
the Sanity’s Edge before she understood her feelings for him, before Jack sacrificed
himself to save her. And there were the hazy frames of reality from before
that, long wondrous rides aboard hallucinogenic trains inter-stitched with
black ice come-downs that saw her in rehab, in jail, in an asylum, blood under
her nails—sometimes hers, sometimes not. And of course, this reality, this
strange plane once so normal, so plain, so numbing, which was revealing itself
to be anything but. Her neighbor’s slow-witted grandson was an aerodynamics
savant; her boss an enigma with a shadowy past; an insane garbageman; a dead
shrink concealing secret desires. So many realities, what was one more?

Jack had given up
everything to make sure she was not forgotten, not abandoned to the emptiness
of the Wasteland. No one else cared about her the way he did.

Through the fog of
memories, her distant and hazy past that existed with no more solidity than
passages
read from a
book, there was that single, common thread. If she disappeared tomorrow, scarcely
a handful of people would be left behind who might even acknowledge her absence,
casual acquaintances that knew little if anything about her. They would miss
her out of politeness, but little more. And after a short time, the hole she
left behind would be filled, and she would disappear completely, forgotten in
memory as readily as she was forgotten by reality.

All except for Jack. Jack
would always remember her. He had never forgotten even when she doubted his
existence, started to forget, believed in the façade of this world, this reality.
Jack remained her salvation.

Her apartment sweltered
in the breezeless night, the day’s wind disappearing as if the world had simply
stopped, forgotten to move, or maybe just fallen asleep, everything still and
sticky and grasping. She peeled off her clothes, leaving them where they fell
before dropping naked upon the coolness of the bed. She did not bother with the
sheet; it was too hot. She simply lay there, feeling the thick night air settle
over her.

Sleep came easily; blame
the tea. Sprawled atop the coolness of her bed, she surrendered to the
exhaustion and the dreams and the insistent darkness, its touch feather-light
against her bare skin, soft as an imagined breeze.

Somewhere on the far side
of the river, across a night sea as cold as winter ice, was a café on the edge
of an unbounded desert where night winds blow cool and constant, and dreams exist
for the taking.

*     *     *

From the confines of
Ellen Monroe’s closet, behind a sparse collection of seldom-worn outfits hung
carelessly on wire hangers, Gusman Kreiger emerged, passing silently into the
darkness of Ellen’s bedroom from places darker still.

The staff was the first
thing to appear, a jagged line of blue-white like the briefest flash of
moonlight on chrome, leading him through the dark. It was growing stronger,
once more drawing power. Old as it was, separated from the Nexus and replaced
by Jack with something of the Caretaker’s own devising, it still functioned—not
well, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. The power in the staff grew as the
worlds turned, drawing ever closer to the Nexus and the Caretaker, the point of
convergence when Ellen would learn of her true self and her place in reality,
and finally flee this world in favor of greener pastures offered elsewhere. The
old focal lens he had stolen from Jack’s predecessor—stolen right off the roof
of Algernon’s idiotic saloon before chasing the man into that other reality and
killing him—was again drawing power from the Nexus. It would never again prove
sufficient to brace a Caretaker, but it might be enough to find a way out. All
he needed was for Ellen to lead; a dreamer capable of flying might follow her
while the way lay open between this world and the next.

Soon, he promised
himself. Soon.

He walked easily to
Ellen’s bedside, footsteps as silent as moonlight, movements as gentle as a breeze.
He drew the sheet up over her nakedness, considering her with a light, sardonic
smile. “I gave you a kick-murder assassin, sexual savant, angel of death in
biker leather. And in return, you give me a dream junkie with a sense of
decency.”

He was unconcerned that
she might hear. She was far beyond the reach of his voice. The only one who
might notice him was likely not paying attention; at least, not to the likes of
him: Gusman Kreiger, the last of the Tribe of Dust, the upstart who dared
overthrow the Caretakers and failed. Derelict. Lunatic. Cast Out.

“You know who I mean,
don’t you Jack?” he carried on. “We’ve traded places, you and I. Passed our
souls around to each other like favorite books, shared bottles in discreet
paper sacks. You haven’t forgotten, have you? She was a child born knowing,
raised from the dust and kissed with my knowledge. She could kill you in the
blink of an eye, or love you enough in a single night to last a lifetime. A
dark angel with eyes you couldn’t help but surrender to, even if you didn’t
trust them, and a body that hugged leather like a second skin. She made all of
you pause, made you question your convictions. That was what I sent to you.
That is what you took from me. And what do I get in return? An innocent heart
and a dreamer’s stare, a waif’s body with smallish breasts and mousy hair whose
only functional talent seems to be her unswerving faith in you; a belief in
what has no basis to be believed in.”

He looked upon her,
Ellen’s sleep-tousled hair covering her forehead and hanging over her face,
though too deep in dreams to notice. Kreiger thought the shape of her eyes
pleasing, but more than that, he would not concede. He finally shook his head
in reproach. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you to share?”

The Sanity’s Edge
Saloon
sat at her
bedside. He picked it up, examining it in the darkness. Jack’s book; reality’s
late edition that left him trapped, powerless, a victim of this mind-numbing
world made to suffer all manner of indignities. It was Ellen’s most prized
possession, her only physical link with the Caretaker, cherished as a holy
relic or lost love’s keepsake.

Kreiger looked around,
struck briefly by the sensation that he was being watched, even baited. Was it
possible? He had put down the watchers, skewered them like animals and stolen
their dreams, consuming them to heighten his own awareness. And the avatars
would not concern themselves with the likes of him; a small thing in a small
world, beneath their notice.

But such assurances
failed to allay his fears. He nearly put Jack’s book back where he found it,
afraid it might be a trap he could not yet fathom; once bitten, twice shy. His
hands and legs were laced with scars from his last misstep with the Caretaker.

He paused, stretching out
his senses, listening to the universe, to the rhythm of the sounds buried in
the silence. But no one was watching; no one cared enough to. He was very much
alone, abandoned.

And the need to know
eventually overruled his misgivings.

He eyed the cover, trying
to peer through to the words within. But while he could shred the walls of this
reality, the book thwarted him, too complicated for such methods. Still, it did
concern him. Perhaps Jack left some kind of message in it for him. Maybe that was
the point of the book all along. Maybe it had never been intended for Ellen at
all.

You don’t really
believe that, do you?

He should not pass up the
opportunity to avail himself of Jack’s secrets. The Caretaker would never talk
to him directly, and his signs were vague and largely subjective. Maybe it was
high time he learned how Jack’s mind really worked.

And fuck him if he didn’t
like it. It was his fault for leaving the book in the care of someone like
Ellen Monroe.

Ellen Monroe.

Kreiger reached down and
smoothed the hair away from her eyes—eyes darting furtively beneath closed
lids, locked in dreams; about whom, Kreiger could likely guess.
She has very
pretty eyes.

A soft moan escaped her
as she slept, a thin, charming sound that endeared her to him.

Kreiger jerked back his
hand, retreating as if from a dangerous animal, or an open flame.
Clever,
Jack. Very clever
. He backed away, never taking his eyes from her as he
retreated to the window, perching on the sill as neatly as a raven over the
doorframe, and opened Jack’s book to the moonlight.

And there in the
darkness, he began to read.

And after a time, he
began to understand.