Exit Kingdom

wears on. You would think the world could get no emptier – but in the hours before dawn, you might as well be alone on the earth. Even over the
palaver by the oil lamp, the two consorting figures are onlyaccidental and temporary mates. They speak, truth be told, not to each other but to some haunted version of themselves.
    *
    In the morning, Moses wakes his brother and tells him it’s time to go. They gather what ammo and supplies they can carry from the harlequin’s room.
    You tried to kill us, Moses explains.
    You’ve got a right to it, ain’t you? So take it. People abide.

    What they take isn’t much, since they are accustomed to travelling light. When they have zipped up their satchels, the harlequin stands gazing at them with a sly smile.
    There’s what you took, and then there’s what you should of taken, he says. You overlooked the biggest prizes.
    What prizes? Abraham asks petulantly.
    Something for each of you, the harlequin says and moves to the oppositeside of the room where he shoves aside piles of blueprints and diagrams to reveal a massive metal chest. Moses recognizes
it as a deep freeze, like a refrigerator toppled over onto its back – but since there is no electricity, the thing has become simple storage.
    The harlequin lifts the lid and shuffles around in the contents of the chest until he finds what he’s looking for. He tugs atit for a moment until he manages to pull it free with both
hands. He has trouble lifting it, and as soon as it clears the edge of the chest, he lets it fall with a heavy clank to the ground.
    Made it with my own hands, the harlequin says, but I weren’t mighty enough to lift it, were I? He’s a big one, though.
    He indicates with a nod of the head that he is referring to Moses, so Mosesgoes and takes the object from him.
    It is a brutal-looking weapon – a twisted and carnivalesque instrument of destruction. Constructed on the base of an iron pipe about the length of a great sword, there are blades welded on
every which way. Dagger blades and hatchet blades. Kitchen-knife blades bent at spidery angles. There are blades all the way up and down the shaft of the iron pipe,but an increasing number towards
the end, where a vicious iron spike protrudes from the tip. The grip is simple and inelegant – layers of duct tape wrapped around the base of the pipe.
    It can be used to swipe or cudgel or pierce. But any way it moves, Moses can tell, it will whistle sticky death through its path. He lifts it, feels the tremendous heft of it. A slow weapon,
graceless andnasty. It’s not surprising that the harlequin cannot use it – Moses is barely able to hold it aloft comfortably with all the strength of both arms.
    But he looks closely at it – the colours of the welded metal where the blades come together, the elemental blues and blacks and greens and browns. The distilling of metal into liquid and
then the cohering of liquid into strength.
    There isan awesome ugliness to the thing, and Moses admires it.
    He does not thank the harlequin, for such a gift is beyond the formalities of words. Instead, he accepts it in silence.
    Then the little man is digging around again in the chest and comes up with a smaller object – a cigar box. He places the box on the workbench near by, lifts the lid and sifts through the
objects until he findswhat he’s looking for. This he hands to Abraham.
    What is it? Abraham asks. He holds the thing up to the light. Moses recognizes the object, dimly. He has never been one for computers, neither in the new world nor in the old, but this thing he
recognizes as a something you plug into a computer port. It looks like nothing to speak of – a rectangle of plastic, smaller than a matchbox, witha sliver of metal poking out of it.
    It’s magic, ain’t it? the harlequin says in response to Abraham’s question. Here there ain’t no grid, no spark, no electric. So it ain’t no use to me. But find you
a working machine to plug that doohickey into, and it’ll journey you whole new places, won’t it?
    Uh-huh, Abraham says, unenthused. Hey, you don’t happen to have another of them killer swords,do you?
    This strikes the harlequin as funny, and he laughs his cackling laugh, shaking his head and waving his finger in the air as though to indicate that he needs a moment.
    Killer swords, he says under his breath, smiling.
    Hey, buddy, Abraham says, slipping the plastic object into his pocket, you’re all right, you know that? What’s your