The Waste Lands Read online

  They ducked around a man hanging from an overhead heating-duct and pounded down a flight of steel stairs behind the floating steel ball.

  "Jake!" Roland shouted. "You never let me in at all, did you?"

  Jake shook his head.

  "I didn't think so. It was Blaine."

  They reached the bottom of the stairs and hurried along a narrow corridor toward a hatch with the words ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE printed on it in the spiked letters of the High Speech.

  "Is it Blaine?" Jake asked.

  "Yes--that's as good a name as any."

  "What about the other v--"

  "Hush!" Roland said grimly.

  The steel ball paused in front of the hatchway. The wheel spun and the hatch popped ajar. Roland pulled it open, and they stepped into a huge underground room which stretched away in three directions as far as they could see. It was filled with seemingly endless aisles of control panels and electronic equipment. Most of the panels were still dark and dead, but as Jake and Roland stood inside the door, looking about with wide eyes, they could see pilot-lights coming on and hear machinery cycling up.

  "The Tick-Tock Man said there were thousands of computers," Jake said. "I guess he was right. My God, look!"

  Roland did not understand the word Jake had used and so said nothing. He only watched as row after row of panels lit up. A cloud of sparks and a momentary tongue of green fire jumped from one of the consoles as some ancient piece of equipment malfunctioned.

  Most of the machinery, however, appeared to be up and running just fine. Needles which hadn't moved in centuries suddenly jumped into the green. Huge aluminum cylinders spun, spilling data stored on silicon chips into memory banks which were once more wide awake and ready for input. Digital displays, indicating everything from the mean aquifer water-pressure in the West River Barony to available power amperage in the hibernating Send Basin Nuclear Plant, lit up in brilliant dot-matrices of red and green. Overhead, banks of hanging globes began to flash on, radiating outward in spokes of light. And from below, above, and around them--from everywhere--came the deep bass hum of generators and slo-trans engines awakening from their long sleep.

  Jake had begun to flag badly. Roland swept him into his arms again and chased the steel ball past machines at whose function and intent he could not even guess. Oy ran at his heels. The ball banked left, and the aisle in which they now found themselves ran between banks of TV monitors, thousands of them, stacked in rows like a child's building blocks.

  My dad would love it, Jake thought.

  Some sections of this vast video arcade were still dark, but many of the screens were on. They showed a city in chaos, both above and below. Clumps of Pubes surged pointlessly through the streets, eyes wide, mouths moving soundlessly. Many were leaping from the tall buildings. Jake observed with horror that hundreds more had congregated at the Send Bridge and were throwing themselves into the river. Other screens showed large, cot-filled rooms like dormitories. Some of these rooms were on fire, but the panic-stricken Grays seemed to be setting the fires themselves--torching their own mattresses and furniture for God alone knew what reason.

  One screen showed a barrel-chested giant tossing men and women into what looked like a blood-spattered stamping press. This was bad enough, but there was something worse: the victims were standing in an unguarded line, docilely waiting their turns. The executioner, his yellow scarf pulled tight over his skull and the knotted ends swinging below his ears like pigtails, seized an old woman and held her up, waiting patiently for the stainless steel block of metal to clear the killing floor so he could toss her in. The old woman did not struggle; seemed, in fact, to be smiling.

  "IN THE ROOMS THE PEOPLE COME AND GO," Blaine said, "BUT I DON'T THINK ANY OF THEM ARE TALKING OF MICHELANGELO." He suddenly laughed--strange, tittery laughter that sounded like rats scampering over broken glass. The sound sent chills chasing up Jake's neck. He wanted nothing at all to do with an intelligence that laughed like that . . . but what choice did they have?

  He turned his gaze helplessly back to the monitors . . . and Roland at once turned his head away. He did this gently but firmly. "There's nothing there you need to look at, Jake," he said.

  "But why are they doing it?" Jake asked. He had eaten nothing all day, but he still felt like vomiting. "Why?"

  "Because they're frightened, and Blaine is feeding their fear. But mostly, I think, because they've lived too long in the graveyard of their grandfathers and they're tired of it. And before you pity them, remember how happy they would have been to take you along with them into the clearing where the path ends."

  The steel ball zipped around another corner, leaving the TV screens and electronic monitoring equipment behind. Ahead, a wide ribbon of some synthetic stuff was set into the floor. It gleamed like fresh tar between two narrow strips of chrome steel that dwindled to a point on what was not the far side of this room, but its horizon.

  The ball bounced impatiently above the dark strip, and suddenly the belt--for that was what it was--swept into silent motion, trundling along between its steel facings at jogging speed. The ball made small arcs in the air, urging them to climb on.

  Roland trotted beside the moving strip until he was roughly matching its speed, then did just that. He set Jake down and the three of them--gunslinger, boy, and golden-eyed bumbler--were carried rapidly across this shadowy underground plain where the ancient machines were awakening. The moving strip carried them into an area of what looked like filing cabinets--row after endless row of them. They were dark . . . but not dead. A low, sleepy humming sound came from within them, and Jake could see hairline cracks of bright yellow light shining between the steel panels.

  He suddenly found himself thinking of the Tick-Tock Man.

  There's maybe a hundred thousand of those ever-fucking dipolar computers under the ever-fucking city! I want those computers!

  Well, Jake thought, they're waking up, so I guess you're getting what you wanted, Ticky . . . but if you were here, I'm not sure you'd still want it.

  Then he remembered Tick-Tock's great-grandfather, who'd been brave enough to climb into an airplane from another world and take it into the sky. With that kind of blood running in his veins, Jake supposed, Tick-Tock, far from being frightened to the point of suicide, would have been delighted by this turn of events ... and the more people who killed themselves in terror, the happier he would have been.

  Too late now, Ticky, he thought. Thank God.

  Roland spoke in a soft, wondering voice. "All these boxes . . . I think we're riding through the mind of the thing that calls itself Blaine, Jake. I think we're riding through its mind."

  Jake nodded, and found himself thinking of his Final Essay. "Blaine the Brain is a hell of a pain."

  "Yes."

  Jake looked closely at Roland. "Are we going to come out where I think we're going to come out?"

  "Yes," Roland said. "If we're still following the Path of the Beam, we'll come out in the Cradle."

  Jake nodded. "Roland?"

  "What?"

  "Thanks for coming after me."

  Roland nodded and put an arm around Jake's shoulders.

  Far ahead of them, huge motors rumbled to life. A moment later a heavy grinding sound began and new light--the harsh glow of orange arc-sodiums--flooded down on them. Jake could now see the place where the moving belt stopped. Beyond it was a steep, narrow escalator, leading up into that orange light.

  39

  EDDIE AND SUSANNAH HEARD heavy motors start up almost directly beneath them. A moment later, a wide strip of the marble floor began to pull slowly back, revealing a long lighted slot below. The floor was disappearing in their direction. Eddie seized the handles of Susannah's chair and rolled it rapidly backward along the steel barrier between the monorail platform and the rest of the Cradle. There were several pillars along the course of the growing rectangle of light, and Eddie waited for them to tumble into the hole as the floor upon which they stood disappeared from beneath t
heir bases. It didn't happen. The pillars went on serenely standing, seeming to float on nothing.

  "I see an escalator!" Susannah shouted over the endless, pulsing alarm. She was leaning forward, peering into the hole.

  "Uh-huh," Eddie shouted back. "We got the el station up here, so it must be notions, perfume, and ladies' lingerie down there."

  "What?"

  "Never mind!"

  "Eddie!" Susannah screamed. Delighted surprise burst over her face like a Fourth of July firework. She leaned even further forward, pointing, and Eddie had to grab her to keep her from tumbling out of the chair. "It's Roland! It's both of them!"

  There was a shuddery thump as the slot in the floor opened to its maximum length and stopped. The motors which had driven it along its hidden tracks cut out in a long, dying whine. Eddie ran to the edge of the hole and saw Roland riding on one of the escalator steps. Jake--white-faced, bruised, bloody, but clearly Jake and clearly alive--was standing next to him and leaning on the gunslinger's shoulder. And sitting on the step right behind them, looking up with his bright eyes, was Oy.

  "Roland! Jake!" Eddie shouted. He leaped up, waving his hands over his head, and came down dancing on the edge of the slot. If he had been wearing a hat, he would have thrown it in the air.

  They looked up and waved. Jake was grinning, Eddie saw, and even old long tall and ugly looked as if he might break down and crack a smile before long. Wonders, Eddie thought, would never cease. His heart suddenly felt too big for his chest and he danced faster, waving his arms and whooping, afraid that if he didn't keep moving, his joy and relief might actually cause him to burst. Until this moment he had not realized how positive his heart had become that they would never see Roland and Jake again.

  "Hey, guys! All RIGHT! Far fucking out! Get your asses up here!"

  "Eddie, help me!"

  He turned. Susannah was trying to struggle out of her chair, but a fold of the deerskin trousers she was wearing had gotten caught in the brake mechanism. She was laughing and weeping at the same time, her dark eyes blazing with happiness. Eddie lifted her from the chair so violently that it crashed over on its side. He danced her around in a circle. She clung to his neck with one hand and waved strenuously with the other.

  "Roland! Jake! Get on up here! Shuck your butts, you hear me?"

  When they reached the top, Eddie embraced Roland, pounding him on the back while Susannah covered Jake's upturned, laughing face with kisses. Oy ran around in tight figure eights, barking shrilly.

  "Sugar!" Susannah said. "You all right?"

  "Yes," Jake said. He was still grinning, but tears stood in his eyes. "And glad to be here. You'll never know how glad."

  "I can guess, sugar. You c'n bet on that." She turned to look at Roland. "What'd they do to him? His face look like somebody run over it with a bulldozer."

  "That was mostly Gasher," Roland said. "He won't be bothering Jake again. Or anyone else."

  "What about you, big boy? You all right?"

  Roland nodded, looking about. "So this is the Cradle."

  "Yes," Eddie said. He was peering into the slot. "What's down there?"

  "Machines and madness."

  "Loquacious as ever, I see." Eddie looked at Roland, smiling. "Do you know how happy I am to see you, man? Do you have any idea?"

  "Yes--I think I do." Roland smiled then, thinking of how people changed. There had been a time, and not so long ago, when Eddie had been on the edge of cutting his throat with the gunslinger's own knife.

  The engines below them started up again. The escalator came to a stop. The slot in the floor began to slide closed once more. Jake went to Susannah's overturned chair, and as he was righting it, he caught sight of the smooth pink shape beyond the iron bars. His breath stopped, and the dream he had had after leaving River Crossing returned full force: the vast pink bullet shape slicing across the empty lands of western Missouri toward him and Oy. Two big triangular windows glittering high up in the blank face of that oncoming monster, windows like eyes . . . and now his dream was becoming reality, just as he had known it eventually would.

  It's just an awful choo-choo train, and its name is Blaine the Pain.

  Eddie walked over and slung an arm around Jake's shoulders. "Well, there it is, champ--just as advertised. What do you think of it?"

  "Not too much, actually." This was an understatement of colossal size, but Jake was too drained to do any better.

  "Me, either," Eddie said. "It talks. And it likes riddles."

  Jake nodded.

  Roland had Susannah planted on one hip, and together they were examining the control box with its diamond-pattern of raised number-pads. Jake and Eddie joined them. Eddie found he had to keep looking down at Jake in order to verify that it wasn't just his imagination or wishful thinking; the boy was really here.

  "What now?" he asked Roland.

  Roland slipped his finger lightly over the numbered buttons which made up the diamond shape and shook his head. He didn't know.

  "Because I think the mono's engines are cycling faster," Eddie said. "I mean, it's hard to tell for sure with that alarm blatting, but I think it is . . . and it's a robot, after all. What if it, like, leaves without us?"

  "Blaine!" Susannah shouted. "Blaine, are you--"

  "LISTEN CLOSELY, MY FRIENDS," Blaine's voice boomed. "THERE ARE LARGE STOCKPILES OF CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WARFARE CANNISTERS UNDER THE CITY. I HAVE STARTED A SEQUENCE WHICH WILL CAUSE AN EXPLOSION AND RELEASE THIS GAS. THIS EXPLOSION WILL OCCUR IN TWELVE MINUTES."

  The voice fell silent for a moment, and then the voice of Little Blaine, almost buried by the steady, pulsing whoop of the alarm, came to them: ". . . I was afraid of something like this . . . you must hurry . . ."

  Eddie ignored Little Blaine, who wasn't telling him a damned thing he didn't already know. Of course, they had to hurry, but that fact was running a distant second at the moment. Something much larger occupied most of his mind. "Why?" he asked. "Why in God's name would you do that?"

  "I SHOULD THINK IT OBVIOUS. I CAN'T NUKE THE CITY WITHOUT DESTROYING MYSELF, AS WELL. AND HOW COULD I TAKE YOU WHERE YOU WANT TO GO IF I WERE DESTROYED?"

  "But there are still thousands of people in the city," Eddie said. "You'll kill them."

  "YES," Blaine said calmly. "SEE YOU LATER ALLIGATOR, AFTER A WHILE CROCODILE, DON'T FORGET TO WRITE."

  "Why?" Susannah shouted. "Why, goddam you?"

  "BECAUSE THEY BORE ME. YOU FOUR, HOWEVER, I FIND RATHER INTERESTING. OF COURSE, HOW LONG I CONTINUE TO FIND YOU INTERESTING WILL DEPEND ON HOW GOOD YOUR RIDDLES ARE. AND SPEAKING OF RIDDLES, HADN'T YOU BETTER GET TO WORK SOLVING MINE? YOU HAVE EXACTLY ELEVEN MINUTES AND TWENTY SECONDS BEFORE THE CANNISTERS RUPTURE."

  "Stop it!" Jake yelled over the blatting siren. "It isn't just the city--gas like that could float. anywhere! It could even kill the old people in River Crossing!"

  "TOUGH TITTY, SAID THE KITTY," Blaine responded unfeelingly. "ALTHOUGH I BELIEVE THEY CAN COUNT ON MEASURING OUT THEIR LIVES IN COFFEE-SPOONS FOR A FEW MORE YEARS; THE AUTUMN STORMS HAVE BEGUN, AND THE PREVAILING WINDS WILL CARRY THE GASES AWAY FROM THEM. THE SITUATION OF YOU FOUR IS, HOWEVER, VERY DIFFERENT. YOU BETTER PUT ON YOUR THINKING CAPS, OR IT'S SEE YOU LATER ALLIGATOR, AFTER A WHILE CROCODILE, DON'T FORGET TO WRITE." The voice paused. "ONE PIECE OF ADDITIONAL INPUT: THIS GAS IS NOT PAINLESS."

  "Take it back!" Jake said. "We'll still tell you riddles, won't we, Roland? We'll tell all the riddles you want! Just take it back!"

  Blaine began to laugh. He laughed for a long time, pealing shrieks of electronic mirth into the wide empty space of the Cradle, where it mingled with the monotonous, drilling beat of the alarm.

  "Stop it!" Susannah shouted. "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!"

  Blaine did. A moment later the alarm cut off in mid-blat. The ensuing silence--broken only by the pounding rain--was deafening.

  Now the voice issuing from the speaker was very soft, thoughtful, and utterly without mercy. "YOU NOW HAVE TEN MINUTES," Blaine said
. "LET'S SEE JUST HOW INTERESTING YOU REALLY ARE."

  40

  "ANDREW."

  There is no Andrew here, stranger, he thought. Andrew is long gone; Andrew is no more, as I shall soon be no more.

  "Andrew!" the voice insisted.

  It came from far away. It came from outside the cider-press that had once been his head.

  Once there had been a boy named Andrew, and his father had taken that boy to a park on the far western side of Lud, a park where there had been apple trees and a rusty tin shack that looked like hell and smelled like heaven. In answer to his question, Andrew's father had told him it was called the cider house. Then he gave Andrew a pat on the head, told him not to be afraid, and led him through the blanket-covered doorway.

  There had been more apples--baskets and baskets of them--stacked against the walls inside, and there had also been a scrawny old man named Dewlap, whose muscles writhed beneath his white skin like worms and whose job was to feed the apples, basket by basket, to the loose-jointed, clanking machine which stood in the middle of the room. What came out of the pipe jutting from the far end of the machine was sweet cider. Another man (he no longer remembered what this one's name might have been) stood there, his job to fill jug after jug with the cider. A third man stood behind him, and his job was to clout the jug-filler on the head if there was too much spillage.

  Andrew's father had given him a glass of the foaming cider, and although he had tasted a great many forgotten delicacies during his years in the city, he had never tasted anything finer than that sweet, cold drink. It had been like swallowing a gust of October wind. Yet what he remembered even more clearly than the taste of the cider or the wormy shift and squiggle of Dewlap's muscles as he dumped the baskets was the merciless way the machine reduced the big red-gold apples to liquid. Two dozen rollers had carried them beneath a revolving steel drum with holes punched in it. The apples had first been squeezed and then actually popped, spilling their juices down an inclined trough while a screen caught the seeds and pulp.