The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) (34 page)

Too many questions, too few answers.

“Kreiger has made it pretty clear.
The barrier will collapse and the Tribe of Dust will lead the dregs against the
Saloon. Nail won’t be able to stop them all. They’ll overrun him first, then
the Saloon. I don’t expect any of us wants to find out what will happen after
that.”

“They’ll make us go out into the
desert,” Lindsay observed sleepily.

Jack nodded. Given a few hours sleep
and some breakfast, he didn’t doubt Lindsay would be as right as rain, but
right now, it was all she could do to keep her eyes open.

“Oversight was okay out there,”
Lindsay said. “Won’t we be all right, too?”

Oversight knelt down, a gentle
expression on her face. “It’s not as easy as that.”

Lindsay regarded her then turned to
Jack. “I don’t want to live in the Wasteland. I don’t like it out there.”

“I know, Lindsay. I don’t want to
live out there either. None of us do.” He saw no reason to mention that with
the exception of Oversight, none of them would live out there for more than a
few days. “The question is where would you like to live if you could live
anywhere? What would you like to be if you could be anything? I have to create
five tickets—five realities—for us. I’d appreciate some input.”

Oversight looked at him with utter
astonishment.

“It’s as easy as that?” Ellen asked.
“We can just
pick
how we want our lives to go?”

“I think so, yes,” Jack said,
regretting the uncertainty in his voice. Was it that simple? Probably not. But
what he needed was some ideas, a place from which to start. His imagination was
a dead engine in need of a jumpstart, and he was terrified of what would happen
if they found that out. Kreiger offered a way out. The Cast Out might be lying,
but Jack offered them nothing and that was the truth. “I don’t want to send any
of you to a place you don’t want to go, if that makes any sense.” He shrugged
helplessly. “I just want some ideas.”

Ellen said nothing; Lindsay looked
ready to fall back asleep. Oversight was
livid
. “Do you have the vaguest
conception of what it is you are doing, Caretaker?” she demanded.

He turned on her, embarrassed and
angry for it. “No! I thought I’d adequately demonstrated that already. I
haven’t had a clue since day one. Before, even. Believe it or not, I thought
the Writer was going to make me a desk clerk in some out-of-the-way motel where
I’d spend most of my time writing because there wasn’t anything else to do but
write and jerk off. Free room. Free board. Free time. That was all I was
looking for because that’s all he promised. He never said anything about this.”

“And why do you believe this is so
different?”

“Because it is! I expected peace and
quiet and no worries. Well this place is definitely not that. Here everything
matters.”

“Everything always matters,
Caretaker. You’re just too stupid not to have noticed that until now.
Everything matters, every second of every minute for as long as we draw breath.
Nothing is a free ride and nothing is wasted … unless you waste it.”

“Would you please stop yelling?”
Ellen asked, exhaustion lending a false sense of calm. “I don’t think it
matters where you send us, Jack, or what we become. You’ll make the right
choice.”

Jack felt himself grow cold, and
shrugged to cover the involuntary shudder. He did not deserve their trust. Who
was he to decide their fates: a disenchanted analyst destined to bottom-feed
for the rest of his life, one of the legion of never-be writers who talked
endlessly about where they wanted to be, and never got there? He wasn’t
qualified to make these decisions. If he had no clue where he wanted to be
himself, who was he to make that determination for others.

Just some false, wannabe god crawling
about on the throne of the universe.

Lindsay had fallen asleep, body
curled up against the wall. He gently touched her arm to waken her. “Lindsay?”

“Hmm?” She looked up through
half-lidded eyes.

“Why don’t you go back to bed? None
of us got too much sleep last night. I’ll take care of everything. Don’t
worry.”

Liar
!

She nodded and hugged his neck as she
prepared to leave, whispering into his ear. “Can I have a dog, Jack?”

He smiled, though she couldn’t see,
and hugged her back. Her body felt small and fragile in his arms. Just a child,
he thought. Who are you to determine her fate?

Who are you?

He let her go, saying: “I’ll see what
I can do, okay?”

“Okay. I know you’ll do good.”

And she believed that. She believed
that, and she believed him because she was a child with a child’s innocence,
and the world was still just.

Who are you?

“Ellen, why don’t you help Lindsay,”
Oversight said quietly. “I need to discuss some things with the Caretaker.”

Ellen rose slowly from the steps,
suspicious. But she started after Lindsay anyway, stopping in front of Jack,
first. “I can’t tell you where to send me, Jack. I never thought about it. I
suppose if I did, I might not be here at all. Direction isn’t exactly something
addicts or lunatics have a lot of, if you know what I mean. But so long as you
do what you think is right, you’ll do the right thing.” She shrugged as if
unsure how well she was explaining herself. “I can’t ask for more than that.
None of us can. Only …”

She faltered, looking not at Jack,
but the Wasteland and the crimson and black tent of the Tribe of Dust.

“What?”

“I was just remembering how when all
five of us went out there the other day, and Kreiger thought I was the
Caretaker and you were my protector.”

He nodded.

“Do you know what a Jack o’ Lantern
is?” Ellen asked after a moment.

“Yeah, a pumpkin with a face carved
in it.” He had endured silly remarks about his name for as long as he could
remember, but still bristled at the association. The long, sleepless night, and
the too-strong coffee that smelled like burnt chocolate and made his hands
shake, his stomach do flip-flops, wasn’t helping either. “Why?”

“Before it was that, it was something
else,” she said. “The jack of lanterns was the man who patrolled the edge of
the darkness, carrying a light along the border between the known and the
unknown, protecting people from the dark and the bad things in it. Do you
understand?”

He considered her remark, the
expression in her eyes, brown and remarkably attractive. “I think so.”

“Good. Because we need you, Jack.
Some of us more than others.” She kissed him quickly on the mouth, a chaste
expression of concern that might have been more than friendship, and turned
away before he could learn for sure, leaving down the stairs without looking
back.

*     *     *

Once Ellen was gone, Oversight turned
on him. “What are you doing, Caretaker?”

“What do you mean?”

“You can’t ask them where they want
to go. You’re not a fucking tour guide, you’re the
Caretaker
.”

“But I don’t know what that means,”
he challenged back. “What am I supposed to do with them? I know what it’s like
to be where you don’t want to be, too far down a road that you can never go
back. I can’t do that. I can’t send them someplace they don’t belong, someplace
they’ll hate? I’ve seen your eyes when Alex talks about the backwater south. I
don’t know why, or what place resembled the Louisiana bayou two thousand years
ago, or whenever it was that Kreiger tried to send you there and failed, but I
know a part of you wants that so bad you can taste it. Can you honestly tell me
you wouldn’t curse a Caretaker to the end of your days if you found yourself
waiting tables in a diner outside of Pittsburgh for the rest of your
existence?”

She shook her head. “No, Jack, I
wouldn’t.”

Her sincerity left him dumbfounded.
“I have five tickets, five opportunities to alter reality, to change people’s
lives. If all I do is deal out the cards, play God after God’s
don’t-question-me fashion, then I might as well let the Wasteland claim all of
us. What difference will it—”

Oversight’s slap left his mouth open,
his left cheek blazing. Coffee slopped from the cup in his hand, scalding the
meat of his thumb though he never noticed.

“Don’t ever say that, Caretaker,” she
warned. “Don’t ever become like them. Everything matters. Nothing is wasted
unless you waste it. You have an opportunity to change reality. If all you do
is seek absolution or appeasement, then you will have wasted that opportunity.
And it will not come again.”

“But I don’t know what to do. When I
try, the ideas … escape, wriggle free. I didn’t ask to be God, and they didn’t
ask me to decide their future.”

Oversight was incredulous, her
expression that of someone trying very hard to explain something to someone who
was extremely slow to learn … or extremely slow to accept. “You don’t have the
right
to question yourself, Caretaker. You don’t have the
luxury
. Where they
are concerned, their best interest—their
only
interest—is whatever you
want it to be. You cannot look to anyone else for your decisions or your
failures. You own them. All that matters is what you do and what you think. Stop
questioning it and just do it.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It is that simple, Caretaker! It has
always been that simple. You’ve accepted the Saloon’s reality. Now you have to
accept its
unreality
as well. Existence is only what you make it,
Caretaker.”

Jack could not look at her, one
question still rolling over and over in his mind, the words losing sense, the
answer never coming.
Who are you?
Not God. Not fate’s avatar. Not the
puppet-master directing the universe from behind the black velvet curtain of
night pricked with holes the ignorant marionettes would call stars. He was
Jack. Only Jack.
Who are you? Who are
you
?

“You’ll never defeat the Tribe of
Dust if you do not first learn the fundamental truths about the Wasteland and
the Nexus,” Oversight said. “You have come to do battle on their plane, in
their world, on their terms, yet you wage war like you were back in your
reality. It means nothing here, Caretaker. Less than nothing. The world from
before was sane and safe and dismal and small. None of those things exist here.
None of them. The Tribe of Dust is populated by inadequate fools and lunatics
and cowards, but until you learn what they already know, what they harnessed
and perfected over their centuries of exile, you will be forever retreating before
them, and the corner you’re backing into is getting closer than you realize. I
have seen into you, Jack. You should be their master, not their fool.”

“But I don’t know how.”

“Yes you do, but you’re afraid to do
it. Jump off the edge, Caretaker.”

“I don’t know what that means,” he
pleaded.

Oversight looked uncertain. “I’ve
cast my lot with you, Caretaker. Your victory condemns me; that you understand
at least, don’t you? Five of you and five tickets. There is no way out for me
now if you succeed.”

“And still you’re here. You don’t
need to tell me your reasons, but you stayed here when you could have left, or
cut my throat and stolen the Jabberwock as an offering to Kreiger. You didn’t,
though. You stayed. So show me what I need to know. Please.”

Oversight looked into his eyes, and
drew her blade. “Remember this well, Caretaker. Kreiger might take me back if I
do as you suggest. I might be allowed to wander purgatory forever to expiate my
sins; clean my soul of the murder of my kin. But if I help you, I condemn
myself to whatever twisted hell Kreiger can imagine, and mark my words, he did
not lose his hold over the Nexus for lack of ingenuity.” She held the blade up
before her, so close she could kiss its edge. “I scorned you, Caretaker,
unfairly perhaps, for not already knowing what it has taken others centuries of
pain to learn. You do not have so much time as all that.”

“Oversight, what are you—”

“Remember this.”

Oversight stuck out her tongue,
delicate and pink, a strangely suggestive gesture—not a child’s petulant game,
but something more grown-up, more sensual—and ran the tip straight up the
blade. Jack tried to speak, to protest, but his voice went dead. He tried to
step back, distance himself from her self-mutilation, but the world was tilting
away beneath him, and he lost his balance.

Oversight reached out suddenly,
grabbing Jack’s face firmly in both hands, the flat of the blade pressing
dangerously against his cheek. Her face lunged for his, the corners of her
mouth, sensuous earth-colored lips, lined with blood.

And she kissed him!

For a single moment, his thoughts ran
rampant. Her lips were warm, her kiss soft. She smelled like Easter chocolate
and vanilla and cinnamon and nutmeg. The coffee cup fell from his fingers, a
dead-weight clunk and splash, wasted coffee, broken mug. He reached out to
steady himself and found her leather-clad hip. In his mind’s eye, he saw the
firm muscles of her waist, the arousing dip of her navel, his fingers caressing
her dusky skin. Her tongue pushed at his lips and he opened them, inviting her
in…