Land Beyond the Map

“Och, any way. You’re pointed in the right direction. Just move away from here.”

The car started, carrying them quickly out of town.

Crane looked at the hedges and stone walls fleeing past. The boy at his side remained absorbed in the experience of riding in the car. Polly gave her attention to the driving, adjusting her metal outlook into the bargain, too, surmised Crane. Liam lay back, breathing shallowly with a wheezing cough every now and then. Presently he said: “Take the left fork and stop at the crossroad.”

Polly did so. At the crossroads a stone-built house of two stories leaned against the wind. Rain glinted from blue tiles and tall narrow windows. It was growing dark and the rain and wind in the huddle of trees about the houses sounded disturbingly eerie. The old house might have been a witches’ castle gauntly shadowed in an enchanted forest. Crane waited for Liam’s next oracular pronouncement.

“Let’s go inside,” he said casually. “It’s going to be a soft night.”

Crane walked up the pathway to the frowning facade of the house by Polly’s side. He felt no wonder that he should be doing this. He knew only that he must not let Liam get away until the man had parted with the map. For Crane now felt obviously sure that the strange white-haired oldster did possess the map. And the map was a central part of his life.

V

Inside the gaunt rock of a house Crane stood for a moment disoriented, off-balance, bamboozled by that bleak, oak-lashed, iron-bound exterior. Inside he might have been standing in some super-luxurious hotel, with every modern convenience the hand of ingenious sybaritic man could devise for the well-being of indolent millionaires. Modern decor, subdued lighting, central heating, futuristic armchairs that swiveled at a touch and adjusted to the most comfortable positions. Wall-screen television. A bar backed by such a liquor display as might have stocked a whisky-distiller’s convention. Rugs ankle-deep in floating pile. Furniture that had been built by craftsmen to serve a purpose, in impeccable taste and scorning the rigid limitations of style and period.

Polly exclaimed rapturously.

Crane — who was a millionaire anyway even though he forgot it himself on occasion — smiled as he recognized with sympathy the drive of personality that had amassed this remarkable display of luxury. Around the walls large oblongs of emptiness frowned out, the picture lights still in position above them, and in alcoves desolate pedestals stood, their tops bare and shining. Liam dropped into a chair and reached out a hand. On the table attached to the chair’s arm a bottle and glasses appeared through a trap door with a promising click and he poured one each.

“Sit yeselves down, then.” They drank, relishing the thick fiery potency of the stuff.

“Now I see what Sean meant about the money,” Polly said.

Liam lowered his glass gratefully. “Aye. And it’s all gone. Every last penny.”

“But this house—” Polly checked. Her voice trailed. She’d only just then appreciated her own rudeness and Crane smiled again to himself as he saw the color mount in her cheeks.

The tousle-haired boy broke in again to save the situation.

“Ma says they’re not around here, anyway. In a fair flutter, sure she says they were.” The boy’s voice went from subject to subject as though each was as familiar as the other. “She’s after making the dinner now.”

Liam nodded affectionately. “You go and help. Mind now. Attend to your business.”

“Yes, Granfer.” And the youngster vanished through the far door from which appetizing if mysterious scents emerged.

“He’s a scamp…. I feel a dire responsibility for him.” Liam sighed and drank again. “When his father — when his father died, it fairly broke Ma’s heart. That map,” he finished savagely.

Crane leaned forward. “Tell us about the Map Country.”

A relationship had been set up between these three people, the sharing of common experiences, within the space of an hour or two; Crane recognized that the fact went far beyond this past hour and extended to a knowledge of the map’s existence and a desire to possess it — or the knowledge it could bring. For Crane’s whole purpose was undergoing a change. All his original reasons for the search remained intact but the balance of importance had subtly shifted; no longer was he seeking the map for the map’s sake, or for Adele’s; no longer was he merely interested in rescuing Allan Gould. He sensed something else, something greater and more frightening even than he had imagined — in the finding of the map.

What Liam told him, at first, merely awoke old memories.

Forty years ago, when Liam had been a reckless youth full of Irish bounce and living in a land torn by rebellion and war, when Irishman ruthlessly sought out and murdered Irishman, in the time of the Troubles, he’d needed a map for some dark and devious purpose of his own and had turned up the map — The Map — in some odd little corner shop where it had mouldered for decades. Using it, he had stumbled into the Map Country.