The Talisman

his face and a few strands of Jack’s hair in each of his hands.
    ‘Jason!’ his mother cried – but it was, in its way, an indulgent cry ( Did you see the way he pulled that hair? My, isn’t he strong! ) – ‘Jason, that’s not nice !’
    Jason grinned, unabashed. It was a big, dopey, sunshiney grin, as sweet in its way as the smell of the haystack in which Jack had spent the night. He couldn’t help returning it . . . and while there had been no politics or calculation in his returning grin, he saw he had made a friend of Henry’s wife.
    ‘Sit,’ Jason said, swaying back and forth with the unconscious movement of a veteran sailor. He was still grinning at Jack.
    ‘Huh?’
    ‘Yap.’
    ‘I’m not getting you, Jason.’
    ‘Sit-yap.’
    ‘I’m not—’
    And then Jason, who was husky for a three-year-old, plopped into Jack’s lap, still grinning.
    Sit-yap, oh yeah, I get it , Jack thought, feeling the dull ache from his testicles spreading up into the pit of his stomach.
    ‘Jason, bad !’ his mother called back in that same indulgent, but-isn’t-he-cute voice . . . and Jason, who knew who ruled the roost, grinned his dopey, sweetly charming grin.
    Jack realized that Jason was wet. Very, extremely, indubitably wet.
    Welcome back to the Territories, Jack-O.
    And sitting there with the child in his arms and warm wetness slowly soaking through his clothes, Jack began to laugh, his face turned up to the blue, blue sky.
    3
    A few minutes later Henry’s wife worked her way to where Jack was sitting with the child on his lap and took Jason back.
    ‘Oooh, wet, bad baby,’ she said in her indulgent voice. Doesn’t my Jason wet big! Jack thought, and laughed again. That made Jason laugh, and Mrs Henry laughed with them.
    As she changed Jason, she asked Jack a number of questions – ones he had heard often enough in his own world. But here he would have to be careful. He was a stranger, and there might be hidden trapdoors. He heard his father telling Morgan, . . . a real Stranger, if you see what I mean .
    Jack sensed that the woman’s husband was listening closely. He answered her questions with a careful variation of the Story – not the one he told when he was applying for a job but the one he told when someone who had picked him up thumbing got curious.
    He said he had come from the village of All-Hands’ – Jason’s mother had a vague recollection of hearing of the place, but that was all. Had he really come so far? she wanted to know. Jack told her that he had. And where was he going? He told her (and the silently listening Henry) that he was bound for the village of California. That one she had not heard of, even vaguely, in such stories as the occasional peddler told. Jack was not exactly very surprised . . . but he was grateful that neither of them exclaimed, ‘California? Whoever heard of a village named California? Who are you trying to shuck and jive, boy?’ In the Territories there had to be lots of places – whole areas as well as villages – of which people who lived in their own little areas had never heard. No power poles. No electricity. No movies. No cable TV to tell them how wonderful things were in Malibu or Sarasota. No Territories version of Ma Bell, advertising that a three-minute call to the Outposts after five p.m. cost only $5.83, plus tax, rates may be higher on God-Pounders’ Eve and some other holidays. They live in a mystery , he thought. When you live in a mystery, you don’t question a village simply because you never heard of it. California doesn’t sound any wilder than a place named All-Hands’ .
    Nor did they question. He told them that his father had died the year before, and that his mother was quite ill (he thought of adding that the Queen’s repossession men had come in the middle of the night and taken away their donkey, grinned, and decided that maybe he ought to leave that part out). His mother had given him what money she could (except the word that came out in that strange language wasn’t really money – it was something like sticks ) and had sent him off to the village of California, to stay with his Aunt Helen.
    ‘These are hard times,’ Mrs Henry said, holding Jason, now changed, more closely to her.
    ‘All-Hands’ is near the summer palace, isn’t it, boy?’ It was the first time Henry had spoken since inviting Jack aboard.
    ‘Yes,’ Jack said. ‘That is, fairly near. I mean—’
    ‘You never said what your father died