Land Beyond the Map

“You know what this is, McArdle?” he said joyfully, his teeth barely opening to let the words bite out. “A grenade. You shoot me, my hand releases the lever and — blooey! Your head will be blown to mush.”

“You wouldn’t dare! What about you…?”

“Don’t worry about me, McArdle. Worry about yourself. Think of your face hanging in shreds, your eyeballs dangling. Think of your brains spattered against the windshield… Go on, man… think!”

“No… No, Crane… I won’t shoot…” McArdle’s fears were, Crane realized with an insight he found curious, directed more towards preserving his life for a purpose rather than from terror of being blown up.

“You won’t shoot. That’s nice… Very nice…”

“But I won’t give you the map. And you can’t force me.”

“Just drive on, McArdle. Just drive on into the Map Country. That’s all I want.”

McArdle’s sigh of relief sounded genuine. He put the gun down on the seat beside him. Then he said: “Be careful with that grenade. It’s a primitive weapon.”

“Sure it’s primitive. And you know what they say about primitive weapons. They’re dangerous. Drive!”

The car started, jerkily, and McArdle crashed the gears in a way that would have set Polly’s teeth on edge.

“And primitive means of conveyance like this car — they’re dangerous too!” McArdle said savagely. He hadn’t liked that grenade shoved under his ear one little bit.

“This is a pretty high-class piece of automobile merchandise,” Crane said mildly. “It’s only dangerous when there’s a dangerous jerk behind the wheel.”

“Primitive,” McArdle said explosively. “Cheap internal combustion engine spewing filthy fumes, burning up gasoline, the precious heritage of a planet, in extravagant ignorance— not that I care about the way you run your world.” A slow, vicious smile curved his thin lips. He had thought of something that pleased him. “But you’re going into my world, aren’t you, Crane? You’re never going to see your own world again. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“You just keep your mind on driving this primitive conveyance, McArdle. If you tip us over into the ditch I’m likely to let go of this grenade…”

“I’m doing my best,” McArdle fairly snarled back. “How would you make out driving a Roman chariot? Hey?”

“You have a point there.” Crane could clinically recognize the reasons behind this fresh attitude he had fallen into. And not so fresh either, really. He had at last faced up to the unpleasant realization that he had to act as his instincts had once dictated, as he had acted habitually, the old Roland Crane, the one he thought he had buried when he’d shucked off the uniform and the three pips and the submachine gun and the parade-ground voice. And, of course, he was enjoying it all. He was luxuriating in this enforced return to violence. He enjoyed it and he loathed himself for enjoying it, and he thought of Polly and the clanking monster tanks and the lozenges of light and of McArdle and he felt grimly that, unpleasant though it may be, he had a damn good right to enjoy it.

“You seem to know a good bit about the Map Country, McArdle. Suppose you tell me—”

“The Map Country?”

“Oh. You probably don’t call it that. But you know what I mean. What’s your big interest in the place?”

“My business. I tried to warn you, Crane. I told you no good would come if you meddled and went after the map—”

“What are you after, McArdle? Money? Loot? Power?”

McArdle did not exactly laugh; the sound was a harsh, grating, surging of his voice, a serrated bubble of sound in the car. “I belong in what you call the Map Country, Crane. I know it. I understand it. And — / can tame it!”

Fog wreathed outside now, breaking up the silver pre-dawn light, speeding past the windows, floating in streaks up the windshield, gradually shutting down. McArdle slowed the car. “We’re going in, Crane. Sure you don’t want to get out?”

“You can mock till you burst a blood-vessel, McArdle. What’s this about belonging in the Map Country?”

The car crawled through the fog and with half an eye Crane peered ahead, waiting for that coiling chiaroscuro of rippling color to reveal the entrance to the Map Country. The last time he had sat like this Polly had been driving.

McArdle’s ripsaw voice grated: “What happened to your girl friend, Crane? Lose her, did you? Leave her behind in the Map Country? Tasty offering to the Wardens?”

“Shut your filthy mouth!” blazed Crane. Then: “Wardens? What are they?”

“If you went through the veil you’d meet them. They keep the road clean of vermin.”

“You mean the tanks. Well, I figured that’s what they were for. If you know so much tell me what this Amullieh is.”

“You carried it with you and you came out. You’re not carrying it now and you won’t come out. You’ll be taken up by the Loti—” Sadistic satisfaction purred in McArdle’s voice and a sliver of light from the sunshine ahead breaking through fog glanced from the line of his jaw.