The Waste Lands (Page 133)

“Is it dead, do you think? It looks dead.” “It’s not. Sleeping, maybe, but a long way from dead.” “You sure?”

“Were you sure it would be pink?” It wasn’t a question he had to answer, and he didn’t. The face she turned up to him was strained and badly frightened. “It’s sleeping, and you know what? I’m scared to wake it up.” “Well, we’ll wait for the others, then.” She shook her head. “I think we better try to lx- ready for when they get here . . . because I’ve got an idea that they’re going to come on the run. Push me over to that box mounted on the bars. It looks like an intercom. See it?” He did, and pushed her slowly toward it. It was mounted on one side of a closed gate in the center of the barrier which ran the length of the Cradle. The vertical bars of the barrier were made of what looked like stainless steel; those of the gate appeared to be ornamental iron, and their lower ends disappeared into steel-ringed holes in the floor. There was no way either of them was going to wriggle through those bars, either, Eddie saw. The gap between each set was no more than four inches. It would have been a tight squeeze even for Oy.

Pigeons ruffled and cooed overhead. The left wheel of Susannah’s chair squawked monotonously. My kingdom for an oilcan, Eddie thought, and realized he was a lot more than just scared. The last time he had felt this level of terror had been on the day when he and Henry had stood on the sidewalk of Rhinehold Street in Dutch Hill, looking at the slumped ruin of The Mansion. They hadn’t gone in on that day in 1977; they had turned their backs on the haunted house and walked away, and he remembered vowing to himself that he would never, never, ever go back to that place. It was a promise he’d kept, but here he was, in another haunted house, and there was the haunter, right over there— Blaine the Mono, a long low pink shape with one window peering at him like the eye of a dangerous animal who is shamming sleep.

He stirs no more from his berth in the Cradle. . . . He has even stopped speaking in his many voices and laughing. . . . Ardis was the last to go nigh Blaine . . . and when Ardis couldn’t answer what was asked, Blaine slew him with blue fire.

If it speaks to me, I’ll probably go crazy, Eddie thought. The wind gusted outside, and a fine spray of rain flew in through the tall egress slot cut in the side of the building. He saw it strike Blaine’s window and bead up there.

Eddie shuddered suddenly and looked sharply around. “We’re being watched—I can feel it.”

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Push me closer to the gate, Eddie. I want to get a better look at that box.”

“Okay, but don’t touch it. If it’s electrified—” “If Blaine wants to cook us, he will,” Susannah said, looking through the bars at Blaine’s back. “You know it, and I do, too.” And because Eddie knew that was only the truth, he said nothing. The box looked like a combination intercom and burglar alarm. There was a speaker set into the top half, with what looked like a TALK/LISTEN button next to it. Below this were numbers arranged in a shape which made a diamond:

2 4 5 7 8 9 11 12 13 14 16 17 18 19 20 22 23 24 25 26 27 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 73 74 75 76 77 78 80 81 82 83 84 86 87 88 89 91 92 93 95 96 98

Under the diamond were two other buttons with words of the High Speech printed on them: COMMAND and ENTER.

Susannah looked bewildered and doubtful. “What is this thing, do you think? It looks like a gadget in a science fiction movie.” Of course it did, Eddie realized. Susannah had probably seen a home security system or two in her time—she had, after all, lived among the Manhattan rich, even if she had not been very enthusiastically accepted by them—but there was a world of difference between the electronics gear available in her when, 1963, and his own, which was 1987. We’ve never talked much about the differences, either, he thought. I wonder what she’d think if I told her Ronald Reagan was President of the United States when Roland snatched me? Probably that I was crazy.

“It’s a security system,” he said. Then, although his nerves and instincts screamed out against it, he forced himself to reach out with his right hand and thumb the TALK/LISTEN switch.

There was no crackle of electricity; no deadly blue fire went racing up his arm. No sign that the thing was even still connected. Maybe Blaine is dead. Maybe he’s dead, after all. But he didn’t really believe that.

“Hello?” he said, and in his mind’s eye saw tin- unfortunate Ardis, screaming as he- was microwaved by the blue fire dancing all over his face and body, melting his eyes and setting his hair ablaze. “Hello . . . Blaine? Anybody ?” He let go of the button and waited, stiff with tension. Susannah’s hand crept into his, cold and small. There was still no answer, and Eddie—now more reluctant than ever—pushed the button again. “Blaine?”

He let go of the button. Waited. And when there was still no answer, a dangerous giddiness overcame him, as it often did in moments of stress and fear. When that giddiness took him, counting the cost no longer seemed to matter. Nothing mattered. It had been like that when he had outfaced Balazar’s sallow-faced contact man in Nassau, and it was like that now. And if Roland had seen him in the moment this lunatic impa-tience overtook him, he would have seen more than just a resemblance between Eddie and Cuthbert; he would have sworn Eddie was Cuthbert.

He jammed the button in with his thumb and began to bellow into the speaker, adopting a plummy (and completely bogus) British accent. “Hullo, Blaine! Cheerio, old fellow! This is Robin Leach, host of Life-styles of the Rich and Brainless, here to tell you that you have won six billion dollars and a new Ford Escort in the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes!” Pigeons took flight above them in soft, startled explosions of wings. Susannah gasped. Her face wore the dismayed expression of a devout woman who has just heard her husband blaspheme in a cathedral. “Eddie, stop it! Stop it!” Eddie couldn’t stop it. His mouth was smiling, but his eyes glittered with a mixture of fear, hysteria, and frustrated anger. “You and your monorail girlfriend, Patricia, will spend a lux-yoo-rious month in scenic Jimtown, where you’ll drink only the finest wine and eat only the finest virgins! You—” “. . . shhhh . . .”