It’s just an awful choo-choo train, and its name is Blaine the Pain.
Eddie walked over and slung an arm around Jake’s shoulders. “Well, there it is, champ—just as advertised. What do you think of it?” “Not too much, actually.” This was an understatement of colossal size, but Jake was too drained to do any better.
“Me, either,” Eddie said. “It talks. And it likes riddles.” Jake nodded.
Roland had Susannah planted on one hip, and together they were examining the control box with its diamond-pattern of raised number-pads. Jake and Eddie joined them. Eddie found he had to keep looking down at Jake in order to verify that it wasn’t just his imagination or wishful thinking; the boy was really here.
“What now?” he asked Roland.
Roland slipped his finger lightly over the numbered buttons which made up the diamond shape and shook his head. He didn’t know. “Because I think the mono’s engines are cycling faster,” Eddie said. “I mean, it’s hard to tell for sure with that alarm blatting, but I think it is … and it’s a robot, after all. What if it, like, leaves without us?” “Blaine!” Susannah shouted. “Blaine, are you—” “LISTEN CLOSELY, MY FRIENDS,” Blaine’s voice boomed. “THERE ARE LARGE STOCKPILES OF CHEMICAL AND BIO-LOGICAL WARFARE CANNISTERS UNDER THE CITY. I HAVE STARTED A SEQUENCE WHICH WILL CAUSE AN EXPLOSION AND RELEASE THIS GAS. THIS EXPLOSION WILL OCCUR IN TWELVE MINUTES.”
The voice fell silent for a moment, and then the voice of Little Blaine, almost buried by the steady, pulsing whoop of the alarm, came to them: “. . . / was afraid of something like this . . . you must hurry …” Eddie ignored Little Blaine, who wasn’t telling him a damned thing he didn’t already know. Of course they had to hurry, but that fact was running a distant second at the moment. Something much larger occu-pied most of his mind. “Why?” he asked. “Why in God’s name would you do that?” “I SHOULD THINK IT OBVIOUS. I CAN’T NUKE THE CITY WITHOUT DESTROYING MYSELF, AS WELL. AND HOW COULD I TAKE YOU WHERE YOU WANT TO GO IF I WERE DESTROYED?” “But there are still thousands of people in the city,” Eddie said. “You’ll kill them.”
“YES,” Blaine said calmly. “SEE YOU LATER ALLIGATOR, AFTER A WHILE CROCODILE, DON’T FORGET TO WRITE.”
“Why?” Susannah shouted. “Why, goddam you?” “BECAUSE THEY BORE ME. YOU FOUR, HOWEVER, I FIND RATHER INTERESTING. OF COURSE, HOW LONG I CONTINUE TO FIND YOU INTERESTING WILL DEPEND ON HOW GOOD YOUR RIDDLES ARE. AND SPEAKING OF RIDDLES, HADN’T YOU BETTER GET TO WORK SOLVING MINE? YOU HAVE EXACTLY ELEVEN MINUTES AND TWENTY SECONDS BEFORE THE CANNISTERS RUPTURE.” “Stop it!” Jake yelled over the blatting siren. “It isn’t just the city— gas like that could float anywhere! It could even kill the old people in River Crossing!”
“TOUGH TITTY, SAID THE KITTY,” Blaine responded unfeel-ingly. “ALTHOUGH I BELIEVE THEY CAN COUNT ON MEASUR-ING OUT THEIR LIVES IN COFFEE-SPOONS FOR A FEW MORE YEARS; THE AUTUMN STORMS HAVE BEGUN, AND THE PRE-VAILING WINDS WILL CARRY THE GASES AWAY FROM THEM. THE SITUATION OF YOU FOUR IS, HOWEVER, VERY DIFFER-ENT. YOU BETTER PUT ON YOUR THINKING CAPS, OR IT’S SEE YOU LATER ALLIGATOR, AFTER A WHILE CROCODILE, DON’T FORGET TO WRITE.” The voice paused. “ONE PIECE OF ADDI-TIONAL INPUT: THIS GAS IS NOT PAINLESS.” “Take it back!” Jake said. “We’ll still tell you riddles, won’t we, Roland? We’ll tell all the riddles you want! Just take it back!” Blaine began to laugh. He laughed for a long time, pealing shrieks of electronic mirth into the wide empty space of the Cradle, where it mingled with the monotonous, drilling beat of the alarm.
“Stop it!” Susannah shouted. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” Blaine did. A moment later the alarm cut off in mid-blat. The ensu-ing silence—broken only by the pounding rain—was deafening. Now the voice issuing from the speaker was very soft, thoughtful, and utterly without mercy. “YOU NOW HAVE TEN MINUTES,” Blaine said. “LET’S SEE JUST HOW INTERESTING YOU REALLY ARE.”
“ANDREW.”
There is no Andrew here, stranger, he thought. Andrew is long gone; Andrew is no more, as I shall soon be no more.
“Andrew!” the voice insisted.
It came from far away. It came from outside the cider-press that had once been his head.
Once there had been a boy named Andrew, and his father had taken that boy to a park on the far western side of Lud, a park where there had been apple trees and a rusty tin shack that looked like hell and smelled like heaven. In answer to his question, Andrew’s father had told him it was called the cider house. Then he gave Andrew a pat on the head, told him not to be afraid, and led him through the blanket-covered doorway.
There had been more apples—baskets and baskets of them—stacked against the walls inside, and there had also been a scrawny old man named Dewlap, whose muscles writhed beneath his white skin like worms and whose job was to feed the apples, basket by basket, to the loose-jointed, clanking machine which stood in the middle of the room. What came out of the pipe jutting from the far end of the machine was sweet cider. Another man (he no longer remembered what this one’s name might have been) stood there, his job to fill jug after jug with the cider. A third man stood behind him, and his job was to clout the jug-filler on the head if there was too much spillage.
Andrew’s father had given him a glass of the foaming cider, and although he had tasted a great many forgotten delicacies during his years in the city, he had never tasted anything finer than that sweet, cold drink. It had been like swallowing a gust of October wind. Yet what he remembered even more clearly than the taste of the cider or the wormy shift and squiggle of Dewlap’s muscles as he dumped the baskets was the merciless way the machine reduced the big red-gold apples to liquid. Two dozen rollers had carried them beneath a revolving steel drum with holes punched in it. The apples had first been squeezed and then actually popped, spilling their juices down an inclined trough while a screen caught the seeds and pulp.