The Talisman

of breath, but not enough. Not nearly enough. Jack was panting like a dog on a hot summer day, his eyes frantic as he searched the stormy blackness for Sloat. ‘But I’ll not hold it against you, Jacky. Now, let’s see. What were we talking about? Oh yes. Your mother . . .’
    A little warble . . . a little fade . . . and then a stone came whistling out of the darkness on the right and struck Jack’s temple. He whirled, but Sloat was gone again, skipping nimbly back into the snow.
    ‘She’d wrap those long legs around me until I howled for mercy!’ Sloat declared from behind Jack and to the right. ‘ OWWWWOOOOOO !’
    Don’t let him get you don’t let him psych you out don’t –
    But he couldn’t help it. It was his mother this dirty man was talking about; his mother .
    ‘You stop it! You shut up!’
    Sloat was in front of him now – so close Jack should have been able to see him clearly in spite of the swirling snow, but there was only a glimmer, like a face seen underwater at night. Another stone zoomed out of the dark and struck Jack in the back of the head. He staggered forward and nearly tripped over Richard again – a Richard who was rapidly disappearing under a mantle of snow.
    He saw stars . . . and understood what was happening.
    Sloat’s flipping! Flipping . . . moving . . . flipping back!
    Jack turned in an unsteady circle, like a man beset with a hundred enemies instead of just one. Lightning-fire licked out of the dark in a narrow greenish-blue ray. He reached toward it with the Talisman, hoping to deflect it back at Sloat. Too late. It winked out.
    Then how come I don’t see him over there? Over there in the Territories?
    The answer came to him in a dazzling flash . . . and as if in response, the Talisman flashed a gorgeous fan of white light – it cut the snowy light like the headlamp of a locomotive.
    I don’t see him over there, don’t respond to him over there, because I’m NOT over there! Jason’s gone . . . and I’m single-natured! Sloat’s flipping onto a beach where there’s no one but Morgan of Orris and a dead or dying man named Parkus – Richard isn’t there either, because Morgan of Orris’s son, Rushton, died a long time ago and Richard’s single-natured, too! When I flipped before, the Talisman was there . . . but Richard wasn’t! Morgan’s flipping . . . moving . . . flipping back . . . trying to freak me out . . .
    ‘Hoo-hoo! Jacky-boy!’
    The left.
    ‘Over here!’
    The right.
    But Jack wasn’t listening for the place anymore. He was looking into the Talisman, waiting for the downbeat. The most important downbeat of his life.
    From behind. This time he would come from behind.
    The Talisman flashed out, a strong lamp in the snow.
    Jack pivoted . . . and as he pivoted he flipped into the Territories, into bright sunlight. And there was Morgan of Orris, big as life and twice as ugly. For a moment he didn’t realize Jack had tumbled to the trick; he was limping rapidly around to a place which would be behind Jack when he flipped back into the American Territories. There was a nasty little-boy grin on his face. His cloak popped and billowed behind him. His left boot dragged, and Jack saw the sand was covered with those dragging hashmarks all around him. Morgan had been running around him in a harrying circle, all the while goading Jack with obscene lies about his mother, throwing stones, and flipping back and forth.
    Jack shouted:
    ‘ I SEE YOU !’ at the top of his lungs.
    Morgan stared around at him in utter stunned shock, one hand curled around that silver rod.
    ‘SEE YOU!’ Jack shouted again. ‘Should we go around one more time, Bloat?’
    Morgan of Orris flicked the end of the rod at him, his face altering in a second from that rubbery simpleminded expression of shock to a much more characteristic look of craft – of a clever man quickly seeing all the possibilities in a situation. His eyes narrowed. Jack almost, in that second when Morgan of Orris looked down his lethal silver rod at him and narrowed his eyes into gunsights, flipped back into the American Territories, and that would have killed him. But an instant before prudence or panic caused him in effect to jump in front of a moving truck, the same insight that had told him that Morgan was flipping between worlds saved him again – Jack had learned the ways of his adversary. He held his ground, again waiting for that almost mystical downbeat. For a fraction of a second Jack Sawyer held