The Talisman

the flatcar again. He poked about for nearly an hour – until the sullen colors had faded from the sky and a quarter moon had risen in the east – and brought back six boxes, all marked LENSES .
    ‘Open those,’ he told Richard. ‘Get a count. You’re appointed Keeper of the Clips.’
    ‘Marvellous,’ Richard said in a wan voice. ‘I knew I was getting all that education for something.’
    Jack went back to the flatcar again and pried up the lid of one of the crates marked MACHINE PARTS . While he was doing this he heard a harsh, hoarse cry somewhere off in the darkness, followed by a shrill scream of pain.
    ‘Jack? Jack, you back there?’
    ‘Right here!’ Jack called. He thought it very unwise for the two of them to be yelling back and forth like a couple of washerwomen over a back fence, but Richard’s voice suggested that he was close to panicking.
    ‘You coming back pretty soon?’
    ‘Be right there!’ Jack called, levering faster and harder with the Uzi’s barrel. They were leaving the Blasted Lands behind, but Jack still didn’t want to stand at a stop for too long. It would have been simpler if he could have just carried the box of machine guns back to the engine, but it was too heavy.
    They ain’t heavy, they’re my Uzis , Jack thought, and giggled a little in the dark.
    ‘ Jack? ’ Richard’s voice was high-pitched, frantic.
    ‘Hold your water, chum,’ he said.
    ‘Don’t call me chum,’ Richard said.
    Nails shrieked out of the crate’s lid, and it came up enough for Jack to be able to pull it off. He grabbed two of the grease-guns and was starting back when he saw another box – it was about the size of a portable-TV carton. A fold of the tarp had covered it previously.
    Jack went skittering across the top of the boxcar under the faint moonlight, feeling the breeze blow into his face. It was clean – no taint of rotted perfume, no feeling of corruption, just clean dampness and the unmistakable scent of salt.
    ‘What were you doing?’ Richard scolded. ‘Jack, we have guns! And we have bullets! Why do you want to go back and get more? Something could have climbed up here while you were playing around!’
    ‘More guns because machine-guns have a tendency to overheat,’ Jack said. ‘More bullets because we may have to shoot a lot. I watch TV too, you see.’ He started back toward the flatcar again. He wanted to see what was in that square box.
    Richard grabbed him. Panic turned his hand into a birdlike talon.
    ‘Richard, it’s going to be all right—’
    ‘Something might grab you off!’
    ‘I think we’re almost out of the Bl—’
    ‘Something might grab me off! Jack, don’t leave me alone !’
    Richard burst into tears. He did not turn away from Jack or put his hands to his face; he only stood there, his face twisted, his eyes spouting tears. He looked cruelly naked to Jack just then. Jack folded him into his arms and held him.
    ‘If something gets you and kills you, what happens to me?’ Richard sobbed. ‘How would I ever, ever, get out of this place?’
    I don’t know , Jack thought. I really don’t know .
    2
    So Richard came with him on Jack’s last trip to the travelling ammo dump on the flatcar. This meant boosting him up the ladder and then supporting him along the top of the boxcar and helping him carefully down, as one might help a crippled old lady across a street. Rational Richard was making a mental comeback – but physically he was growing steadily worse.
    Although preservative grease was bleeding out between its boards, the square box was marked FRUIT . Nor was that completely inaccurate, Jack discovered when they got it open. The box was full of pineapples. The exploding kind.
    ‘Holy Hannah,’ Richard whispered.
    ‘Whoever she is,’ Jack agreed. ‘Help me. I think we can each get four or five down our shirts.’
    ‘Why do you want all this firepower?’ Richard asked. ‘Are you expecting to fight an army?’
    ‘Something like that.’
    3
    Richard looked up into the sky as he and Jack were recrossing the top of the boxcar, and a wave of faintness overtook him. Richard tottered and Jack had to grab him to keep him from toppling over the side. He had realized that he could recognize constellations of neither the Northern Hemisphere nor the Southern. Those were alien stars up there . . . but there were patterns, and somewhere in this unknown, unbelievable world, sailors might be navigating by them. It was that thought which brought the