The Talisman

with sharp-eyed enthusiasm over each report just the same, asking sharp questions, snapping ‘Over!’ at the end of each transmission, sometimes breaking in with ‘Say again’ or ‘Roger.’ Sloat thought he was acting like a bit player in a disaster movie.
    But if it eased him, that was fine with Sloat. It saved him from having to answer Gardener’s question . . . and now that he thought about it, he supposed it was just possible that Gardener didn’t want his question answered, and that was why he was going through this rigmarole with the radio.
    The Guardians were dead, or out of commission. That was why the weathercocks had stopped, and that’s what the flashes of light meant. Jack didn’t have the Talisman . . . at least, not yet. If he got that, things in Point Venuti would really shake, rattle, and roll. And Sloat now thought that Jack would get it . . . that he had always been meant to get it. This did not frighten him, however.
    His hand reached up and touched the key around his neck.
    Gardener had run out of overs and rogers and ten-fours . He reshouldered the pack-set and looked at Morgan with wide, frightened eyes. Before he could say a word, Morgan put gentle hands on Gardener’s shoulders. If he could feel love for anyone other than his poor dead son, he felt love – of a twisted variety, most certainly – for this man. They went back a long way, both as Morgan of Orris and Osmond and as Morgan Sloat and Robert ‘Sunlight’ Gardener.
    It had been with a rifle much like the one now slung over Gardener’s shoulder that Gardener had shot Phil Sawyer in Utah.
    ‘Listen, Gard,’ he said calmly. ‘We are going to win.’
    ‘Are you sure of that?’ Gardener whispered. ‘I think he’s killed the Guardians, Morgan. I know that sounds crazy, but I really think—’ He stopped, mouth trembling infirmly, lips sheened with a thin membrane of spittle.
    ‘We are going to win,’ Morgan repeated in that same calm voice, and he meant it. There was a sense of clear predestination in him. He had waited many years for this; his resolve had been true; it remained true now. Jack would come out with the Talisman in his arms. It was a thing of immense power . . . but it was fragile.
    He looked at the scoped Weatherbee, which could drop a charging rhino, and then he touched the key that brought the lightning.
    ‘We’re well equipped to deal with him when he comes out,’ Morgan said, and added, ‘In either world. Just as long as you keep your courage, Gard. As long as you stick right by me.’
    The trembling lips firmed a bit. ‘Morgan, of course I’ll—’
    ‘Remember who killed your son,’ Morgan said softly.
    At the same instant that Jack Sawyer had jammed the burning coin into the forehead of a monstrosity in the Territories, Reuel Gardener, who had been afflicted with relatively harmless petit mal epileptic seizures ever since the age of six (the same age at which Osmond’s son had begun to show signs of what was called Blasted Lands Sickness), apparently suffered a grand mal seizure in the back of a Wolf-driven Cadillac on I-70, westbound to California from Illinois.
    He had died, purple and strangling, in Sunlight Gardener’s arms.
    Gardener’s eyes now began to bulge.
    ‘Remember,’ Morgan repeated softly.
    ‘Bad,’ Gardener whispered. ‘All boys. Axiomatic. That boy in particular.’
    ‘Right!’ Morgan agreed. ‘Hold that thought! We can stop him, but I want to make damn sure that he can only come out of the hotel on dry land.’
    He led Gardener down to the rock where he had been watching Parker. Flies – bloated albino flies – had begun to light on the dead nigger, Morgan observed. That was just as fine as paint with him. If there had been a Variety magazine for flies, Morgan would gladly have bought space, advertising Parker’s location. Come one, come all. They would lay their eggs in the folds of his decaying flesh, and the man who had scarred his Twinner’s thighs would give birth to maggots. That was fine indeed.
    He pointed out toward the dock.
    ‘The raft’s under there,’ he said. ‘It looks like a horse, Christ knows why. It’s in the shadows, I know. But you were always a hell of a shot. If you can pick it up, Gard, put a couple of bullets in it. Sink the fucking thing.’
    Gardener unshouldered the rifle and peered into the scope. For a long time the muzzle of the big gun wandered minutely back and forth.
    ‘I see it,’ Gardener whispered in a gloating