Special Deliverance

24

She did not get around to telling them. She ate only a little. She did not refuse to talk, but her talk was short and noncommittal. For the first two days, for almost forty-eight hours, she stood upright, tense with listening, paying no attention to her companions of the trail or, indeed, even to herself.

“We’re wasting time,” Jorgenson complained. “We should be moving north. Chaos, if we find Chaos there, whatever it may be, may tell us something. We can’t be stuck here forever.”

“I won’t go north,” shrilled Melissa. “I’m afraid of Chaos.”

“You’re a flighty bitch,” said Jorgenson. “Not even knowing what it is, you are scared of it.”

“This kind of talk,” said Lansing, “is getting us nowhere. Bickering doesn’t help. We should talk, most certainly, but we should not be yelling at one another.”

“We can’t just march off and leave Sandra,” Mary told them. “She was with us from the start. I will not desert her.”

“North is not the only way to go,” said Jurgens. “We have been told we’ll find a condition there called Chaos, but if we continued, we might find something farther west. At the first inn we heard of the cube and city, but nothing else. At the second inn it was the tower and Chaos. The innkeepers are not too generous with their information. We have a map, but it is worthless. It points the way from the city into the badlands, but nothing more. It does not show the second inn or the tower.”

“Perhaps,” said Lansing, “they tell us all they know.”

“That may be right,” Jurgens agreed, “but we can’t rely on them.”

“The point’s well made,” said Jorgenson. “We should go both west and north.”

“I won’t leave Sandra,” Mary said.

“Maybe if we talked with her,” suggested Jorgenson.

“I’ve tried,” said Mary. “I’ve told her we can’t stay here. I’ve told her we can come back again and then she can listen to the tower. I doubt she even hears me.”

“You could stay with her,” said Jorgenson. “The rest of us split up. Two go west, two go north, see what we can find. Agree all of us will be back in four or five days.”

“I don’t think that’s wise,” protested Lansing. “I am against leaving Mary here alone. Even if I were not, I’m inclined to think we should not split up.”

“So far, there’s been no danger. No real threat of physical danger,” said Jorgenson. “It would be safe. Leave Mary here, the rest of us take a quick run out. I can’t bring myself to hold much hope, but there’s always a chance we will turn up something.”

“Maybe we could carry Sandra,” Jurgens suggested. “If we get her away from the music, she might be all right.”

“I suppose we could,” said Lansing, “but the chances are she’d fight us. She’s not in her right mind. Even if she didn’t fight us, if all we had to do was haul her along, she would slow us up. This is bad country. There are long stretches between water. We have water here, but between here and the last water was two days.”

“Before we left we’d fill the canteens,” said Jorgenson. “We’d drink sparingly. We’d be all right. Farther on the water situation may improve.”

“It seems to me that Jorgenson may be right,” said Mary. “We can’t leave Sandra. I’ll stay with her. There seems to be no danger. The land is empty of any kind of life — only the Sniffler, and he is one of us.”

“I will not leave you here alone,” said Lansing.

“We could leave Jurgens,” suggested Jorgenson.

“No,” Mary told him. “Sandra knows me best. I’m the one she always turned to.” She said to Lansing, “All of us can’t stay here. We are wasting time. We must know what is north and west. If there is nothing there, then we’ll know and can make other plans.”

“I won’t go north,” Melissa said. “I simply will not go.”

“Then you and I’ll go west,” said Jorgenson. “Lansing and Jurgens north. We’ll travel light and fast. A few days only and then we’ll be back. By that time Sandra may be herself again.”

“I still have hopes,” said Mary, “that she is learning something, hearing something to which the rest of us are deaf. The answer, or part of the answer, may be here and she the only one to find it.”

“We stay together,” Lansing insisted. “We are not breaking up.”

“You’re being obstinate,” said Jorgenson.

“So I’m being obstinate,” said Lansing.

Before the end of the day, Sandra had abandoned her standing position and fallen to her knees. Every now and then she crawled, hitching herself closer to the singing tower.

“I’m worried about her,” Lansing told Mary.

“So am I,” said Mary, “but she seems to be all right. She talks a little, not much. She says that she must stay. The others of us should go on, she says, but she can’t leave. Leave her some food and water, she told me, and she’ll be all right. She did eat something this evening and drank some water.”

“Does she tell you what is happening?”

“No, she’s not told me that. I asked her and she either wouldn’t or couldn’t tell me. Couldn’t, I would guess. She may not as yet know herself what’s happening.”

“You’re convinced there is a happening, that it’s not just sheer fascination with the music?”

“I can’t be certain, but I think there is a happening.”

“It’s strange,” he said, “that we can gather no significant information from the tower. There’s nothing here, absolutely nothing to put a handle on. Like the cube. The two of them. Nothing from either one of them. Both of them are constructions. Someone built them for a purpose.”

“Jorgenson was talking about that, too. He thinks they are false clues. Constructions to confuse us.”

“The maze syndrome. Running in a maze. A test to sort us out.”

“He doesn’t say so, but that is what he means.”

They were sitting apart from the others, a short distance from the fire. Jurgens stood to one side, doing nothing, simply standing there. The other two were beside the fire, talking to one another occasionally, but mostly sitting silent.

Mary took Lansing by the hand. “We have to make some move,” she told him. “We can’t just sit here, waiting for Sandra. The man back at the first inn talked about winter coming. He said he closed up for the winter. Winter could be dreadful here. Our time may be short. This is already autumn. Maybe deep into autumn.”

He put an arm around her, drew her close. She rested her head on his shoulder.

“I can’t leave you here,” he said. “Not alone. It would tear me up inside to leave you here alone.”

“You have to,” she said.

“I could go north alone. Leave Jurgens here with you.”

“No, I want Jurgens with you. It’s safe here; there may be danger in the north. Don’t you see? It must be done.”

“Yes, I know. It makes sense. But I simply cannot leave you.”

“Edward, you must. We have to know. What we are looking for may be in the north.”

“Or in the west.”

“Yes, that’s true. It may even be here, but we can’t be certain. Sandra is a poor reed to lean upon. There is a chance she’ll come up with something, but only a chance. Nothing to wait around for.”

“You’ll be careful? You’ll stay right here? You’ll take no chances?”

“I promise you,” she said.

In the morning she kissed him good-bye and said to Jurgens, “You take care of him. I’m counting on you to take care of him.”

Jurgens told her, proudly, “We’ll take care of one another.”