Land Beyond the Map

The hypnotic rhythm of walking worked on him more powerfully than the brisking chill in the pre-dawn air, and through his anticipatory fears of what lay ahead a mental drowsiness sluggishly drew the present away into vanishing perspectives, and the memories swimming endlessly in his mind rose seekingly for the light. Why Polly? What did he know of this girl who had erupted into his life one filthy rain-lashed night, clad in short leather coat and slacks, to bring with her a resurrection of a past he had thought his own alone? Who was she? She claimed to be a journalist and was modest about that. As the cousin of Allan Gould she came from a background with which he was unfamiliar, the intellectual, iconoclastic, middle-class new generation unhappy with their positions in life, hating the bomb, half-heartedly believing in free love, posing as authorities and lovers of jazz, proclaiming their rugged individualism against an acute and ever-present comforting awareness of the welfare state that made such postures safe. Maybe that was the world from which she came — but Crane sensed from his own desires of what he wished to be rather than from any external observation that she had left that world, denying its trashy values, keeping what was of value, and had become truly herself.

She had become a person, a fully-rounded personality in her own right, and for that he envied her.

Envied? There were so many emotions tangled in his estimation of Polly Gould that to track down each one of the conflicting skeins would be worthless, would add up to a minus value; all he knew was that she had been trapped in the Map Country and he had to go back and bring her out.

Allan Gould himself had made a break with that background when he’d joined the army; but the girl to whom he had turned, Sharon, typified one aspect of it so clearly as to illuminate Allan’s inability completely to reject his own roots.

Crane had been wrong to be surprised at Allan’s choice of second-best girl friend. A great longing for a comrade to march at his side swept over Crane. Allan, now, tommygun at the ready, bush-hat tipped casually back, smiling, walking at his side as they had marched after the terrorists — that would have made sense, would have made of this expedition a joy — except for the horror of the living lozenge of light that had taken Polly.

It seemed clear to Crane, slogging back to what might be his own certain death, that Polly’s efforts to reach the Map Country and find Allan could mean only that she still loved Allan Gould.

He remembered the occasion when the terrorists’ ambush had worked perfectly and point had gone down screaming and he and Allan had plunged face-first onto the soggy ground with bullets kicking up muddy splashes into their eyes. He’d nailed the first charging fanatic with a snap burst; and then Allan had flung himself sideways and buried his commando knife into the lithe stinking body that dropped catlike onto Crane’s back. Crane had scarcely felt the weight drop away, had time to say: “Thanks, Allan,” when the other terrorist had risen ghostlike at the side of the trail, captured Lee-Enfield centered malevolently on Allan’s back. His automatic pistol had awoken to life it seemed of its own accord and his lumbering charge had carried him across Allan so that the three-o-three took him in the shoulder instead of Allan’s back. The terrorist’s body, chewed as though in a mincer, had toppled away from the blast of lead. Yes, he wasn’t likely to forget incidents like that… And if Polly wanted Allan then Crane saw plainly that he had to find them both, for the sake of his own peace of soul.

A dark figure rose silently from the darkness before him on the road leading into the Map Country. A torch beam licked out, dazzling him. The gleam of a revolver muzzle showed beneath the light.

McArdle said: “And I’ll have the map now, Mister Crane.”

IX

Bemused, Crane held up a hand, trying to shield his face from the prying light, caught off balance.

“Don’t waste my time, Crane. The map, hand it over. And the Amullieh. Be quick about it.”

“I don’t know anything about the map — or this Amullieh thing you mentioned.”

McArdle showed only as a dark shadow behind the torch glow; there was less even of him visible than when Crane had seen him on the rainslicked Belfast street asking his way to the Queen’s Bridge. But that grating, ear-serrating voice was the same.

“The Amullieh you broke from my wrist when your girl friend hit me… And don’t think I’ve forgotten that!”

“The chain — You mean the chain. I’d forgotten about that…” Crane dug it out of his pocket, feeling the leather map wallet brush against his fingers. His hand snagged the chain and he dragged quickly upwards so that McArdle would not suspect anything else of value lay in that pocket. “Here.”