“Probably.”
There was something very familiar about Mr. World’s voice—which was a strange thing to think, he’d been working for him directly for two years now, spoken to him every day, of course there was something familiar about his voice.
“They’ll be far away by now.”
“Should we send people down to the rez to intercept them?”
“Not worth the aggravation. Too many jurisdictional issues, and there are only so many strings we can pull in a morning. We have plenty of time. Just get back here. I’ve got my hands full at this end trying to organize the policy meeting.”
“Trouble?”
“It’s a pissing contest. I’ve proposed that we have it out here. The techies want it in Austin, or maybe San Jose, the players want it in Hollywood, the intangibles want it on Wall Street. Everybody wants it in their own back yard. Nobody’s going to give.”
“You need me to do anything?”
“Not yet. I’ll growl at some of them, stroke others. You know the routine.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Carry on, Town.”
The connection is broken.
Town thinks he should have had a SWAT team to pick off that fucking Winnebago, or land-mines on the road, or a tactical friggin’ nukuler device, that would have showed those bastards they meant business. It was like Mr. World had once said to him, We are writing the future in Letters of Fire, and Mr. Town thinks that Jesus Christ if he doesn’t piss now he’ll lose a kidney, it’ll just burst, and it was like his pop had said when they were on long journeys, when Town was a kid, out on the interstate, his pop would always say, “My back teeth are afloat,” and Mr. Town could hear that voice even now, that sharp Yankee accent saying, “I got to take a leak soon. My back teeth are afloat”…
…and it was then that Shadow felt a hand opening his own hand, prising it open one finger at a time, off the thighbone it was clutching. He no longer needed to urinate; that was someone else. He was standing under the stars on a glassy rock plain, and the bone was down on the ground beside the other bones.
Wednesday made the signal for silence again. Then he began to walk, and Shadow followed.
There was a creak from the mechanical spider, and Wednesday froze. Shadow stopped and waited with him. Green lights flickered and ran up and along its side in clusters. Shadow tried not to breathe too loudly.
He thought about what had just happened. It had been like looking through a window into someone else’s mind. And then he thought, Mr. World. It was me who thought his voice sounded familiar. That was my thought, not Town’s. That was why that seemed so strange. He tried to identify the voice in his mind, to put it into the category in which it belonged, but it eluded him.
It’ll come to me, thought Shadow. Sooner or later, it’ll come to me.
The green lights went blue, then red, then faded to a dull red, and the spider settled down on its metallic haunches. Wednesday began to walk forward, a lonely figure beneath the stars, in a broad-brimmed hat, his frayed dark cloak gusting randomly in the nowhere wind, his staff tapping on the glassy rock floor.
When the metallic spider was only a distant glint in the starlight, far back on the plain, Wednesday said, “It should be safe to speak, now.”
“Where are we?”
“Behind the scenes,” said Wednesday.
“Sorry?”
“Think of it as being behind the scenes. Like in a theatre or something. I just pulled us out of the audience and now we’re walking about backstage. It’s a shortcut.”
“When I touched that bone. I was in the mind of a guy named Town. He’s with that spookshow. He hates us.”
“Yes.”
“He’s got a boss named Mister World. He reminds me of someone, but I don’t know who. I was looking into Town’s head—or maybe I was in his head. I’m not certain.”
“Do they know where we’re headed?”
“I think they’re calling off the hunt right now. They didn’t want to follow us to the reservation. Are we going to a reservation?”
“Maybe.” Wednesday leaned on his staff for a moment, then continued to walk.
“What was that spider thing?”
“A pattern manifestation. A search engine.”
“Are they dangerous?”
“You only get to be my age by assuming the worst.”
Shadow smiled. “And how old would that be?”
“Old as my tongue,” said Wednesday. “And a few months older than my teeth.”
“You play your cards so close to your chest,” said Shadow, “that I’m not even sure that they’re really cards at all.”
Wednesday only grunted.
Each hill they came to was harder to climb.
Shadow began to feel headachy. There was a pounding quality to the starlight, something that resonated with the pulse in his temples and his chest. At the bottom of the next hill he stumbled, opened his mouth to say something and, without warning, he vomited.
Wednesday reached into an inside pocket, and produced a small hip flask. “Take a sip of this,” he said. “Only a sip.”
The liquid was pungent, and it evaporated in his mouth like a good brandy, although it did not taste like alcohol. Wednesday took the flask away, and pocketed it. “It’s not good for the audience to find themselves walking about backstage. That’s why you’re feeling sick. We need to hurry to get you out of here.”
They walked faster—Wednesday at a solid trudge, Shadow stumbling from time to time, but feeling better for the drink, which left his mouth tasting of orange peel, of rosemary oil and peppermint and cloves.
Wednesday took his arm. “There,” he said, pointing to two identical hillocks of frozen rock-glass to their left. “Walk between those two mounds. Walk beside me.”
They walked, and the cold air and bright daylight smashed into Shadow’s face at the same time. He stopped, closed his eyes, dazzled and light-blinded, then, shading his eyes with his hand, he opened them once more.
They were standing halfway up a gentle hill. The mist had gone, the day was sunny and chill, the sky was a perfect blue. At the bottom of the hill was a gravel road, and a red station wagon bounced along it like a child’s toy car. A gust of wood smoke stung Shadow’s face, making his eyes tear. The smoke came from a building nearby, which looked as if someone had picked up a mobile home and dropped it on the side of the hill thirty years ago. It was much repaired, patched, and, in places, added onto: Shadow was certain that the galvanized tin chimney, from which the wood smoke was coming, was not part of the original structure.
As they reached the door it opened, and a middle-aged man with dark skin, sharp eyes and a mouth like a knife-slash looked down at them and said, “Eyah, I heard that there were two white men on their way to see me. Two whites in a Winnebago. And I heard that they got lost, like white men always get lost if they don’t put up their signs everywhere. And now look at these two sorry beasts at the door. You know you’re on Lakota land?” His hair was gray, and long.
“Since when were you Lakota, you old fraud?” said Wednesday. He was wearing a coat and a flap-eared cap, and already it seemed to Shadow unlikely that only a few moments ago under the stars he had been wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a tattered cloak. “So, Whiskey Jack. You sad bastard. I’m starving, and my friend here just threw up his breakfast. Are you going to invite us in?”