Land Beyond the Map

They were saved further argument. Crane glanced at his watch. “If McArdle was still following us he would have been up on us by now. Let’s face it, Polly. We have the map — the half that gives ingress to the Map Country from the east — and McArdle doesn’t. We were following that map and we came here. He won’t.”

“That’s his hard luck.” Polly stared ahead, trying to see over the brow of the hill flanking the curving road. “All right.” She frowned. “But what’s that up ahead?”

Crane looked. At first he thought it was a brewed up tank; then he recognized it as the wreck of a truck.

“That’ll be Colla,” he said flatly.

“Well—” Polly took a breath and started the car. “We’re here. So let’s do some of the things we said we’d do when we started out on this.”

Crane realized, as they rolled forward slowly, that events hadn’t panned out as they’d expected. His whole entry into the Map Country had been as different as he could have imagined. But then, difference, strangeness, the very breath of the unknown — all these were implicit in the present precarious situation. He waited as the car pulled up beside the shattered truck.

Liam had spoken the truth. Three suitcases lay on the splintered wooden floor in the back. They were scratched and blackened, as though subjected to heat, and when they were opened some of the diamonds within must have been burned. But the remaining flashed a stunning sparkle of light in the sunlit air.

“Cripes!” Polly said, flabbergasted.

“Remember, you’re a lady, Polly. And sling the cases into the boot. Remember, they’ll have cost me a cool hundred thousand.”

“Mercenary, blood-sucking capitalist,” Polly said. They both knew the infantile line of back-chat was covering the fear that made them want to drive screaming from this spot.

Crane took one quick look around the cab. There was no sign of Colla.

“Now look, Polly. We can’t go on. It’d be madness. So okay. We’ve found the Map Country.

And it isn’t as we expected. We’re pretty sure we’ll be killed. Let’s get out.”

“What about Allan?”

“He’s been gone five years, Polly. You’ve grown accustomed to thinking of him as dead, Why try to change that now? And, anyway,” Crane finished with a brutal directness that sought to cover the flaws in this new argument, “he is probably dead now. Like Colla.”

A set look of stubbornness fixed itself on Polly’s face and Crane sighed and felt an impending and unpreventable disaster. But to his surprise, she said: “And you?”

“I’ve discovered there is more to worry about in life than a map or map-hunting. So I wanted to reenter the Map Country. I don’t think I can help Adele now. I feel badly about that; but to me it seems an unshakable truth. So I’m here. Now all I want to do is get the hell out of it.”

Polly gave a strangled laugh. “Maybe that’s an impossibility. Maybe we got to hell in it, already.”

“Maybe. Come on—”

“No, Rolley. I’m sorry. Look, you can walk back to the mist line and walk out safely by yourself if you must. But the sun is shining and there is no immediate sign of danger, it all looks quite and peaceful — and I feel rebellious. I came here to find Allan. I can’t turn around now, now I’m almost there, wherever he is, just because—”

“Because you might get killed?”

She made a face. “It’s not quite like that.” She stood beside him in the dust of the road, stirring patterns with her toe. The countryside lay around them, still and peaceful, charming, restful.

“Anyway, I’m going on for a little.”

She looked determined. She was determined.

Remembering his first encounter with her, Crane did not try to argue any more. A leather satchel lay in the dust of the road and he bent to pick it up. Grenades. He remembered Liam speaking of them. Oh, well, he had used them before and had a good throwing arm. He put his arm through the shoulder strap and adjusted the satchel so that it rested comfortably on his left hip. The weight there and the purpose contained in the satchel reminded him with a vivid stab of memory of the regimental grenade-throwing competitions. He’d always managed to do adequately in practice and competition; but the memory of the times he’d used grenades live against those terrorists remained most strongly — his range and accuracy had gone up by over fifty percent then. But he’d never taken to it as he had sharpshooting; effective — but messy — grenades. His fingers were fumbling with the stiff leather of the strap and the corroded metal of the buckle when Polly screamed.

He looked up fast.

A memory of his childhood rushed back. He felt bleakly exposed.

Across the grassland angling towards the road, sprung apparently from nowhere, rushed a shining, fire-breathing, many-armed clanking monster.