Land Beyond the Map

They passed very few people. Isolated farmhouses, each ringed with its protective screen of trees, looked somehow forlorn and tattered, as though they stood outposts of humanity, forgotten, and awaiting the final dissolution of the world. Sheep formed white dots on the hillsides, clearly seen, yet so far off they might have been white blood corpuscles in the veins of giants, sleeping through the ages.

The road meant nothing to Crane. The brooding land, the sense of isolation and the broad sweep of the wind, all conveyed no spark of remembrance. He stared through the windshield at the unwinding road, half-conscious of Polly lounging competently behind the wheel, trying to recapture the feelings and impressions of a five year old.

“Nothing, Rolley?” It was the first time she had spoken in miles.

“Not a thing. Sorry.”

“For God’s sake! Don’t keep on being sorry.”

“Sor — all right. Maybe we took another road.”

“Might have. North of the Lough from Belfast. Longer. Have to try it tomorrow.”

“Lunch in Omagh?”

“Check.”

A sort of preparatory friendship had been restored, then.

Later on, Polly said out of the blue: “Just who is McArdle, anyway? I’m after the map because I believe it will lead me to Allan. You want it because of an experience of your childhood. We’re both following this will o’ the wisp on the shakiest of foundations; our whole deductive process can collapse at any minute. But we want the map for a positive reason. Two positive reasons. Why does McArdle want it?”

“Search me,” said Crane. “He seemed to be trying to create the impression he was warning me off for my own good, more in sorrow than in anger. I suggested that if he found it he’d burn it. He didn’t contradict or agree.” Crane could remember in vivid detail the events of that rain-filled night on the wet streets of Belfast, talking to a dark shadow in the darkness. “But his last violent outburst, when he said the map was his, told me quite plainly he meant what he said. He reminded me of a soul in perpetual torment in hell, tantalized by the unattainable and yet knowing that it existed, could be attained, if only people like us did not stand in his way.”

“Frightening.”

“Yes. Yes, Polly, frightening. That map is not for you or for any man of this world. He couldn’t be much clearer than that.”

The car rounded a curve and sped down a long shallow hill.

“If your idea — which you later rejected — did happen to be sound and the map is put into circulation again after people have gone through into the Map Country as victims, then maybe McArdle went through at some time and is searching for the way back.”

“I wish I’d had a look at the fellow. In the rain and darkness he was just a tall spare shadow. The raindrops made a halo around his hat brim.”

“Very pretty — but it doesn’t help.”

“No.”

“Huh — civilization ahead.”

“Omagh. Yes,” Crane said thoughtfully. “Maybe McArdle did go through into the Map Country and maybe he is desperately seeking a way back. If this is true, then I’d be a little sorry for the fellow.”

Polly glanced sideways at him, sharply, her face shrewd and calculating.

“Why sorry for him? What makes you say that?”

Crane could guess easily enough what she was thinking. In that acute brain of hers the idea was growing that perhaps he hadn’t told her the whole story, that he had held out on some vital detail. She half expected that he, too, might be seeking to return to the Map Country for — for what?

“What do you expect us to find there?” he asked with sarcasm too evident in his tone.

“Houris, fountains of wine, the secret of immortality, Aladdin’s lamp or the pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow?”

She had the grace to flush slightly. The car increased speed and rounded a curve faster than Crane liked. He said: “We’re in this together, Polly. Maybe we have different reasons and maybe we don’t see the way ahead in absolutely identical terms. Oh, yes, and I have money and you’re a working girl. But as of now we work as a team. Check?”

She smiled, relaxing. “Check!”

Omagh turned out to be a neat little market town, hilly and subject to flooding. They found a parking place and had a meal. Then the specter that had been gnawing at Crane arose. What, exactly, had he hoped to accomplish by coming here? He had recognized nothing on the road.

McArdle was in Belfast. Polly was fretting. They found a bookshop and asked the question and received the expected answer. No map torn down the center, not at all, not at any price. Then again, the bookseller did not mention McArdle. Crane didn’t know whether that was a good sign or a bad.

Walking back to the car, Crane said with an attempt at confidence: “In a place like this word gets around. If anyone knows of a map torn down the center they’ll come arunning when they scent the money.”

Polly only sniffed.

It looked, and being as kind as possible, as though he had bungled it all again.

Inside the parking lot they halted for a moment beside the Austin. Polly was looking at him, not saying anything, just standing, looking.