The Waste Lands (Page 158)
Susannah found herself entranced by the bleak horrors unrolling below them, caught in a deadly fascination she could not break . . . and she felt the dark part of her personality, that side of her khef which was Detta Walker, doing more than just watching; that part of her was drink-ing in this view, understanding it, recognizing it. In a way, it was the place Detta had always sought, the physical counterpart of her mad mind and laughing, desolate heart. The empty hills north and east of the West-ern Sea; the shattered woods around the Portal of the Bear; the empty plains northwest of the Send; all these paled in comparison to this fantas-tic, endless vista of desolation. They had come to
The Drawers and entered the waste lands; the poisoned darkness of that shunned place now lay all around them.
BUT THESE LANDS, THOUGH poisoned, were not entirely dead. From time to time the travellers caught sight of figures below them—misshapen things which bore no resemblance to either men or animals—prancing and cavorting in the smouldering wilderness. Most seemed to congregate either around the clusters of cyclopean chimneys thrusting out of the fused earth or at the lips of the fiery crevasses which cut through the landscape. It was impossible to see these whitish, leaping things clearly, and for this they were all grateful. Among the smaller creatures stalked larger ones—pinkish things that looked a little like storks and a little like living camera tripods. They moved slowly, almost thoughtfully, like preachers meditating on the inevi-tability of damnation, pausing every now and then to bend sharply for-ward and apparently pluck something from the ground, as herons bend to seize passing fish. There was something unutterably repulsive about these creatures—Roland felt that as keenly as the others—but it was impossible to say what, exactly, caused that feeling. There was no denying its reality, however; the stork-things were, in their exquisite hatefulness, almost impossible to look at. “This was no nuclear war,” Eddie said. “This . . . this . ..” His thin, horrified voice sounded like that of a child. “NOPE,” Blaine agreed. “IT WAS A LOT WORSE THAN THAT, AND IT’S NOT OVER YET. WE HAVE REACHED THE POINT WHERE I USUALLY POWER UP. HAVE YOU SEEN ENOUGH?” “Yes,” Susannah said. “Oh my God yes.”
“SHAM. I TURN OFF THE VIEWERS, THEN?” That cruel, teas-ing note was hack in Blaine’s voice. On the horizon, a jagged nightmare mountain-range loomed out of the rain; the sterile peaks seemed to bite at the gray sky like fangs. “Do it or don’t do it, but stop playing games,” Roland said. “FOR SOMEONE WHO CAME TO ME BEGGING A RIDE, YOU ARE VERY RUDE,” Blaine said sulkily.
“We earned our ride,” Susannah replied. “We solved your riddle, didn’t we?” “Besides, this is what you were built for,” Eddie chimed in. “To take people places.”
Blaine didn’t respond in words, but the overhead speakers gave out an amplified, catlike hiss of rage that made Eddie wish he had kept his big mouth shut. The air around them began to fill in with curves of color. The dark blue carpet appeared again, blotting out their view of the fum-ing wilderness beneath them. The indirect lighting reappeared and they were once again sitting in the Barony Coach.
A low humming began to vibrate through the walls. The throb of the engines began to cycle up again. Jake felt a gentle, unseen hand push him back into his seat. Oy looked around, whined uneasily, and began to lick Jake’s face. On the screen at the front of the cabin, the green dot—now slightly southeast of the violet circle with the word LUD printed beside it—began to flash faster. “Will we feel it?” Susannah asked uneasily. “When it goes through the soundbarrier?”
Eddie shook his head. “Nope. Relax.”
“I know something,” Jake said suddenly. The others looked around, but Jake was not speaking to them. He was looking at the route-map. Blaine had no face, of course—like Oz the Great and Terrible, he was only a disembodied voice—but the map served as a focusing point. “I know something about you, Blaine.” “IS THAT A FACT, LITTLE TRAILHAND?”
Eddie leaned over, placed his lips against Jake’s ear, and whispered: “Be careful—we don’t think he knows about the other voice.” Jake nodded slightly and pulled away, still looking at the route-map. “I know why you released that gas and killed all the people. I know why you took us, too, and it wasn’t just because we solved your riddle.”
Blaine uttered his abnormal, distracted laugh (that laugh, they were discovering, was much more unpleasant than either his bad imitations or melodramatic and somehow childish threats), but said nothing. Below them, the slo-trans turbines had cycled up to a steady thrum. Even with their view of the outside world cut off, the sensation of speed was very clear. “You’re planning to commit suicide, aren’t you?” Jake held Oy in his arms, slowly stroking him. “And you want to take us with you.” “No!” the voice of Little Blaine moaned. “If you provoke him you’ll drive him to it! Don’t you see—“
Then the small, whispery voice was either cut off or overwhelmed by Blaine’s laughter. The sound was high, shrill, and jagged—the sound of a mortally ill man laughing in a delirium. The lights began to flicker, as if the force of these mechanical gusts of mirth were drawing too much power. Their shadows jumped up and down on the curved walls of the Barony Coach like uneasy phantoms. “SEE YOU LATER, ALLIGATOR,” Blaine said through his wild laughter—his voice, calm as ever, seemed to be on an entirely separate track, further emphasizing his divided mind. “AFTER A WHILE, CROCODILE. DON’T FORGET TO WRITE.” Below Roland’s band of pilgrims, the slo-trans engines throbbed in hard, steady beats. And on the route-map at the front of the carriage, the pulsing green dot had now begun to move perceptibly along the lighted line toward the last stop: Topeka, where Blaine the Mono clearly meant to end all of their lives.