The Lost Train of Thought (17 page)

“How them sneaks, Zeb?”

Zebulon waited for Hopeless to hop out of his saddle, then gave an unimpressed shrug. Too tight.

“Mebbe so, but you ain’t never moved that fast in your life, less’n it was to snatch a bite a’Thought when someone warn’t lookin’.”

The prospector was referring to the twin pair of size 12 Speed Demons that Fixers Blaque and Drane had slipped over the beast of burden’s badly cracking hooves. Several hundred miles of creosote and Nothing had been covered in less than an hour, but now that the travelers had entered the tall crags that lorded over the Middle of Nowhere, it was a slow and steady climb up the one pathway to the top.

“How much farther?” asked the Octogenarian, tilting her hat against the glare.

“Still got a ways to go, ma’am.” Hopeless removed his own hat and wiped the sweat from his wrinkled brow. “These Nowherians is dug in deep.”

Half a dozen yards behind them, a chiseled figure limped up a grassy foothill. “Assuming you actually know where they are.”

“Just keep that there map nice and dry, and ol’ Hopeless’ll take you straight to ’em.”

Jelani Blaque motioned up the mountain, as if to say “after you,” but the retired Fixer was clearly struggling. The leg he’d injured during his last excursion to the Middle was acting up, and the crumbly silt at their feet rendered his walking stick nearly useless. Still, he powered forward without complaint, followed closely by Fixer Hassan, who had barely spoken since the Brainstorm. Wherever his mind was, it wasn’t on this pebble-strewn path as it suddenly reached its end.

“Path picks up again on the other end of this dale!” shouted Hopeless, hopping back in Zebulon’s saddle. “Don’t dilly-dally now, ya hear?”

Toward the back of the line, Becker thought he detected a hint of nervousness in the voice of their guide. The prospector had led them to a valley surrounded by cliffs on all sides, and from the way he gave Zebulon a not-so-gentle knee to the ribs, Hopeless was obviously uncomfortable at being so exposed. But it wasn’t until he emerged through a small glade of eucalyptus that the teenager started to get an inkling of why.

Scattered across the dale were dozens of stone slabs, each about ten feet high and covered with runes and glyphs. Lying naked on top of each, their bones picked clean by vultures and bleached by the Seemsian sun, were the skeletons of the dead.

“They’re called Towers of Silence.” Fixer Blaque appeared over Becker’s shoulder, his voice hushed and solemn. “It’s a Nowherian burial ground.”

Blaque approached the nearest slab and pointed to the pile of personal items someone had placed around the desiccated corpse. There were dried-up flower petals, pieces of jewelry, even an old piece of parchment with the stick-figure drawing of a family on it, clearly made by a child’s hand.

“You have to remember, Becker, Time doesn’t exist out here. So it’s a rare and sad occasion when someone actually dies.”

Becker checked his Time Piece, and just as Fixer Blaque had suggested, the First, Second, and Third hands had all stopped dead. Other than a slight tingle in his scalp, it didn’t feel any different to be in a timeless place, but there was no telling what prolonged exposure would do to his body or mind.

“I ain’t jokin’ around, back there!” Hopeless’s exasperated voice echoed back at them from a few hundred yards ahead. “This ain’t no place to be sightseeing!”

“He’s right,” said Fixer Blaque, scouring the cliffs on all sides. “If the Nowherians catch us here, we’ll be getting towers of our
own.”

As the two picked up their pace to catch the rest of the team, Becker recalled a strange night he’d had once at the IFR library. While doing some research for a paper on what The Seems was like before the World Project, he’d come across an off-handed mention of a mysterious clan that called the Middle of Nowhere home. But the two books in the card catalog whose subject line contained “Nowherian” were checked out, and the one paragraph he finally found in Sitriol B. Flook’s
A
Little About the Middle
had been blacked out “By order of the Powers That Be.”

“What’s the deal with these people, sir?”

“All I can tell you is what I was cleared to discuss by the Second in Command.” Blaque dropped his voice so Hopeless wouldn’t hear. “That at the End of the Day, there was an extended period of conflict between those who were inspired to craft a brand-new World and those who felt it was an abuse of power. This war was long and bloody, and only ended when a truce was declared and a line drawn in the sand between
them.”

They silently passed another tower before Fixer Blaque continued.

“Jackal, Simms, and I were the first emissaries of The Seems to cross that line in a millennia, and it nearly cost us our lives. Truth is, when they had us cornered at the Eternal Springs, Tom and I were ready to give up the Hope. It was only Lisa who
kept us . . .”

The instructor’s voice suddenly caught in his throat.

“I’m sure she’s okay, sir.” Becker still held out hope for Fixer Simms, not to mention Lake and Po. “I’m sure they’re all okay.”

The ground beneath them began to gently slope upward, as the team was finally approaching the other side of the valley.

“As to why the Nowherians stole the train and broke the truce now?” Fixer Blaque cleared his throat. “I haven’t the foggiest i—”

But before he could finish his thought, he snapped his head up toward the hillside to their right.

“Did you hear something?”

Becker listened but didn’t hear a sound until he slapped on his Hearing Aide to discover the audio signature of small stones rolling down the slope.

“I done tol’ you so!” A few yards ahead, Hopeless had heard the noise too, and stopped the rest of the team in their tracks. “Now them freaks is gonna skin us alive!”

“Relax, Hopeless.” Fixer Blaque was calm, but he kept his voice to a whisper. “They rarely monitor this side of the mountain. Let’s just get to higher ground.”

Higher ground was only about a football field away and the squadron of Fixers wasted no time in slaloming their way through the remaining Towers. When they finally reached the continuation of Hopeless’s path, the prospector threw his hat to the ground and kicked up some dust.

“No one ever listens to ole Hopeless, do they, Zeb?”

Zebulon shook his head sadly.
No they don’t, pardner
.

“Well, they better start if they want to make it off this blasted rock alive!”

The team laughed at the old crank’s histrionics, happy to be out of the open field and back in the mountain’s embrace. In fact, only one in their number seemed unmoved by the experience, quietly heading up toward the summit and into the coming
night.

“What’s up with him?” whispered Becker, to no one in particular.

Fixer Blaque pointed back at the grinning skulls that lay motionless on the funeral slabs. “These are not the only ghosts that Hassan has seen in the Middle of Nowhere.”

Shahzad Hassan crested the Peak of Experience and steadied himself for the long and arduous descent. At this altitude the temperature had dropped precipitously, and it was all he could do to keep from being swept to his doom by the blasts of frigid wind. Fortunately, his Extremely Cool Outfit not only shielded him from excess heat, but per its description in the Catalog, “the breakthrough garment is extremely cool in every sense of the word.” With each drop of the thermometer, more synthetic Seemsberian tiger hairs sprouted from the bodysuit’s fabric, cloaking the Fixer in a warm and toasty shell. If only it could do the same for the storm inside his head.

Greg the Journeyman was right when he accused Hassan of lying about what he’d seen in the Brainstorm. When Fixer #19 had been separated from the rest of the team, he’d remained calm and waited for the others to find him. But then the visor on his Head Case had cracked, allowing grains of Scratch to rush in, and he knew it was only a matter of time before something terrible came skulking out of the swirling blue winds.

Hassan never expected it to be a crazed bag of bones, however, cloaked in rags and desperately clutching a tattered old book. Again and again, he rewound the memory, noticing new and terrible details with each viewing: the way the old hermit’s hands shook as he turned the yellowed pages; the shrill insistence that the missing chapter was just around the corner; most of all, the insane gleam in his eyes. Hassan had witnessed such a gleam before, on the face of his father and his father’s father, but to see it again in this of all people was almost too much to bear.

Ahead on the path, perhaps two hundred yards below, something caught the Fixer’s well-trained eye. A flickering of light inside a small black cave, which brought his focus back to the present. Perhaps it was generated by Hope, long rumored to be abundant in this region, but more likely he had stumbled upon a Nowherian outpost, where armed guards waited to ambush all who trespassed upon their territory. Almost welcoming the possibility of confrontation, Hassan crept to the mouth of the cave and took a peek inside.

The source of the light inside was indeed a campfire, which crackled and popped with freshly chopped wood. But if this was an outpost, it had been abandoned long ago—rusty equipment was scattered throughout, along with two moth-eaten sleeping bags.

“Hello?” asked Hassan, briefly regretting his decision to move so far ahead of the team. “Is there anybody—”

“Stay away!”

A woman’s voice, hoarse and with a distinctly British accent, shouted from the back of the cave.

“I don’t care if you’re my sister or my brother or my bloody aunt Ferrah, I will throw you off this mountain if you don’t
leave me alone
!”

The manic intensity in her threat caused Hassan to take another glance over his shoulder, but Becker and the others had yet to reach the summit. He would have to tackle this one alone, and tackle it he would, for this was no Nowherian who crouched like an animal in the darkness.

This was one of their own.

“Fixer Simms?”

No response, save the crackle of burning twigs.

“Fixer Simms, it’s me, Shahzad Hassan.”

He took a few tentative steps inside the cave, just enough to
leave the cold and wind behind.

“Hassan? That’s odd . . .”

This time her voice sounded more worn out than angry or afraid, which the Persian took as an invitation to take a few more steps closer.

“Are you okay, Lisa? The others are right behind me, and if you let me flag them down, we can—”

“No.” A hunched and ragged figure stepped to the edge of the light. “I’m not okay at all.”

The sight of Lisa Simms— one of the most elegant and refined women Hassan had ever met—was jarring to say the least. Her face and neck were badly burned, partially by the sun and partially by what Hassan surmised to be the Nowherians’ secret weapon. The Badge on her chest had melted into an unrecognizable square—but it was the blue powder encrusting the tangles of her long black hair that revealed the true source of her distress.

“The Brainstorm?”

Fixer Simms nodded absently, then crumpled to a seat before the fire.

“You’re the fourth person to show up here since it caught me in the foothills, and they had no idea they were figments of my imagination either.”

“I assure you, Lisa, I am quite real.”

“That’s exactly what Tom Jackal said to me last night.” She sadly wrapped her arms around her knees. “And even though he was the same age as the day we found this cave, it was difficult not to believe him.”

Hassan took another look at the dusty pickaxes and Whariz-its ™ that were strewn about the cavern, and the pieces fell into place.

“This was where the two of you camped during Hope Springs Eternal, isn’t it?”

“We found nothing except disappointment here.” She held up an empty glass jug covered with cobwebs. “And not the kind with a capital
D
.”

As he warmed his icy hands by the fire, Hassan flashed back to a conversation he’d had with Fixer Simms one night at The Flip Side. Her famously frosty demeanor had thawed over one too many Truth Serums, and the story of her secret and all-too-brief romance with Tom Jackal had slipped out. The Welshman had ended it without ever giving an explanation, and despite her beauty and fame, she’d been alone ever since.

“Jackal wasn’t really here, Lisa. It was just the Scratch playing tricks with your head.”

“I know that. But take my word for it, knowing doesn’t make it any easier to deal with.”

“I don’t have to take your word for it.” Hassan remembered the heavy feeling that had been stuck in his chest since they’d left Who Knows Where. “I, too, was caught in the storm last night, and was forced to confront a demon, though not one from my past.”

He shuffled through his Toolkit, then reached across the fire and handed Lisa the photo of a boy with big brown eyes and a crooked smile.

“Who is it?”

“Cyrus, my son. He’ll be eleven in March.”

“Very handsome.”

“He takes after his mother.” Hassan smiled proudly, but it didn’t last long. “In all things but one.”

Hassan started to tell Lisa how he’d done everything he could to shield the boy from the burden of his quest— kept him rooted in cricket and video games and the simple pleasures of childhood— but he stopped himself from lying again. The truth was, he’d watched how Cyrus lit up at the legends of the 13th Chapter, and how crestfallen he became every time Hassan returned empty-handed. And last night, in the big brown eyes and crooked smile of that sad and terrible old hermit, he saw the man his little boy would undoubtedly
become.

“What’s wrong, Hassan?”

“Nothing, nothing. It’s just . . .”

Shahzad Hassan wept not for his people, not even for his own failure to restore them to greatness. He wept for his child, whom he loved like nothing in this world or that.

“There is no shame in crying.” Even though she still wasn’t sure Hassan was flesh and blood and not the fleeting creation of her own Thought, Lisa reached across the fire and grabbed his hands. “This is what happens in the Middle of Nowhere.”