A STRONG TOWER
PART 2: ALL ABOARD
The seats on the passenger car were filling rapidly with the members
of the large cast, and as Joimus slipped past Maximus into a window
seat, she looked quickly back at the man sitting quietly with the dog.
A woman, she'd never seen before was asking him if the seat next to him were taken.
"Not at all," he replied, tipping his face toward her, "please feel free."
He looked strikingly like Maximus in form and coloring, even in
facial hair, but a pair of very black sunglasses obscured his eyes.
"Wadsworth," he said quietly to the German Shepherd
lying closely
beside him, blocking access to the seat. "Up, boy."
Instantly the large golden dog with a well-formed black saddle sat
at attention. The woman smiled at him and sidled past, settling
herself beside the large window. Stuffing a backpack under her
seat, she turned back toward him but he was facing straight ahead,
his face quiet, thoughtful, composed. So she studied his profile for
a long moment, liking the lines of it, noting its great similarity to
the General's own. He didn't seem inclined to speak, so she made
the opening gambit, being a very friendly soul herself.
(Marshall Sinclair)
"Hello," she said, "I'm Marcy."
Without yet turning his head, his features began a slow smile, then
very gradually he turned in her direction. "Ah," he replied, "a lovely name."
His accent was Mid-Atlantic American and something in her was pleased to find he was from her own country.
"Philadelphia?" she ventured.
His smile broadened a bit. "Pittsburgh."
"Well," she laughed lightly, "at least I got the state right."
"Marshall," he said, extending his right hand over the arm rest in her general
direction, "Marshall Sinclair."
She took his hand, liking the warm strength of his fingers as they curved around
her own very slender ones. "Hello, Marshall," she said, cocking her head to study
what she could see of his face and feeling rather pleased that she had chosen
this
particular seat.
"Who's THAT?" Max asked, settling next to Max just because he thought
it
would be a grand idea further to confuse epilife. The young woman, Max
Imel, was from New England and had given up her career as a former
oven saleswoman to join the epicast somewhere vaguely south
of Perth.
"I have no idea," she replied, craning her neck a bit to peer round at Marshall. Then when Broch and Bridgid came down the aisle, she inclined her head toward him. "And who might
that be? I saw you with him on the platform."
"Oh, him? Broch-something-or-other. A Scot. From Himself's screenplay."
"Screenplay? Himself has a screenplay?"
Skinner grinned. "Shhhh! Seems to be a secret."
"Not for long," she remarked, watching as Broch passed by. "Not any more."
Himself was the last to board the train, sort of the sinking ship thing in
reverse
but likely due
to his current consternation levels. When he did board, the train was already beginning to strain forward and he stood there at the very end of the passenger car, his eyes scanning his people, as he had come to think of them. Many of the womenfolk looked different to him than they had back in January, but he let that go, knowing it was beyond his control. He continued his scan, wanting to know where Broch was located, but as his eyes moved from seat to seat,
they locked onto the man with the dog and he almost staggered with
the sight.
For a moment he turned his back to the car, facing the door, resting his
forehead
against it,
eyes closed. It couldn't be. It was asking too much of him...waaaay too much. It was patently obvious, though, that she had little regard for his mental well-being or she would never do to him the things she was wont to do. But...this? First Max, then Broch....and now...Marshall? How had she even KNOWN about Marshall? Nothing about him had ever even been written down. Not like the pages upon pages that existed about Broch and all that happened to him during his time as a war correspondent in Afghanistan. HOW could she ever have found out about the blind college professor? Marshall was the part of Himself, existing only in his thoughts, the part that wrote poetry that no one ever saw. Did she have THAT much access
to his brain? It was a truly frightening thought. Sure, she'd said she needed to rekindle the
long-silent epis, but did she have to go so far as to burn him at the stake? He felt an actual, laser-like sizzle of two small points between his shoulder blades and knew that if he turned,
he would find Joimus' eyes on him. Heaving a huge sigh, he shifted his body slightly to the
side, glancing over one light-blue denimed shoulder.
HA! Did she think he didn't see her head whip quickly around toward her
window? Why, though, WHY had she done this to him? Well, nothing to be
done, was there, but to get on
with it. If he stood there like this too long,
the
epi would take up way too much room on the page.
Straightening his shoulders, he hefted up his belt a bit and began his trek
down the aisle, an invisible guillotine awaiting him, no doubt, somewhere
along the way. Stopping near Marshall, he squatted in the aisle and stroked
Wadsworth's head. "Hello, boy," he greeted. "Never thought to meet you in
the flesh...um...fur."
Marshall had turned his head again, an inscrutable smile curving the corners
of his lips. "Himself," he said, barely audibly.
"Marshall," Himself returned. "I'm rather surprised to see you here."
"I would be rather surprised to see myself here, Himself...if I could see."
The smile broadened.
"Why are you here?" Himself asked, a question he'd been asking a lot of
late it seemed.
"Sabbatical," Marshall replied. "Needed a break from teaching."
"So you came all the way to the Nullarbor for this...break?"
Marshall shrugged slightly. "It was where you are. If you'd been back
in Uganda or Arabia,
I'd be there." (See:
A More General Storyline)
Himself sighed. "So you don't really know why...or how...you're here.
Just that you're here?"
"True," Marshall nodded. "But it is nice to be out of your head for a
change."
Himself closed his eyes. He'd been feeling rather out of his head for
some minutes now. Raising his lids, he rested a palm affectionately
on the sleeve of Marshall's tweed jacket. "Will you be...all right?"
He was truly worried about the man's well-being in such a place. He
could prove terribly defenseless in the face of the inexorable and
often deadly machinery that had driven epis ever since that fateful
day near Bellingen when three of his cast had actually died. (See:
A Yook By Any Other Name)
"I'll be fine, Himself. Not to worry." His searching fingers found
Wadsworth's neck. "I've brought my eyes along with me."
Himself blew out a long breath, turning his head so he could see
the backs of Joimus' and Maximus' heads, and Sid's, seated
in front of the General. Thank goodness death in epis had proven
only temporary...so far. But one never knew. Not any more.
"Why ARE we in the Nullarbor?" Marshall asked, and Himself
returned his gaze to the professor.
"Long story...not particularly pleasant," he replied, thinking back
to his untoward and lengthy Russnapping. Who could have known that
the presumed-drowned former Prime Minister had such delusions
of wanting to be all his characters at once? It was a plot that only
the most warped of brains would have come up with, and he wasn't
thinking of Holt's during that thought, either. "But there was a red
spring in the roots of a giant tingle tree south of Perth
and we had to find it in order to undo the effects of Holt's red powder on Cort, Hando, Nash, Steve, and half of Terry."
"Half of Terry?"
"Don't ask," Himself groaned. "Please don't ask."
"Might I ask...which half?"
"Bottom half," annsmac said, leaning over the seat behind Marshall. "Entirely the worst half
of a man to have turned into granite."
"Why was he only...half...granite?" Marshall pursued, intrigued.
"Holt spilled the liquid on the mirrored floor. I could only save enough
to unstatue his top half."
"Ah," Marshall sighed, as though that made all the sense in the world.
He did wonder, though, why the floor was mirrored, but refrained from
asking due to concerns for Himself's continued sanity. (See:
Mirrors
of the Soul)
Loomie, seated in front of Connan and inevitably hearing all the exchange
taking place behind her, tapped Andy on the arm. "Excuse me," she
said, managing to suppress all but a tiny tremor in her voice, "but I think
I'd like to get off the train now."
"Can't," the grinning young dishwasher replied.
"What do you mean....'can't'?"
"Train's moving. Epi's moving. You're trapped."
"Trapped?"
"'Fraid so, Loomie."
"Oh....God!" she moaned, leaning her head against the window. She
should have closed her eyes. Really she should. Maybe then the sight
of the absolutely endless expanse of... nothing ...that flew past her gaze
would not have loomed so menacingly. She had never seen so much
nothing in her life...not even in Texas or Arizona. Australia was
definitely the world champion when it came to giant voids in landscape.
And the Nullarbor, well, it hadn't got its Latin name meaning 'no trees'
for no reason. It stretched on, endless mile after endless mile, flat
and barren, dusty reddish with only a bit of low scrub...and the tracks
of the train. She'd sent the woman a cup with many pictures around its
sides of Himself singing in his pin-stripe suit.
Hadn't that been enough to keep her safe, keep her epifree? Obviously not, for here she was,
a red splotch forming on her forehead as she pressed a bit too hard against the window glass.
Ah, well, at least there would be the excitement of
a stop-over in Cook. From what she understood, it had a population
of two. That's right. One. Two. It held all the thrills of a, um,
leg-stretching. Twice weekly the Indian Pacific stopped there and
the passengers got off and, well, stretched their legs.
She frowned, her forehead still against the glass. She knew the
woman, though. She knew that leg-stretching would only take an epi just so
far. Indeed, in the mind of the epiist, leg-stretching held
more of the connotations of the Spanish Inquisition than a teensy
stop-over in the middle
of Australian nothingness.
Indeed, Joimus, herveryself, was also looking out at the vast
flatness of the Nullarbor and thinking it was getting close to time
to get off the train and head south toward the Great Australian
Bight. For goodness sake, how ELSE were they to avoid the
quarantine check
point or to discover for theirveryselves the 20-pound feral cats and the 85 species of reptiles
that
inhabited the area, not to mention emus, which, of course,
she would never mention.
After all, the Nullarbor was only 77,200 square miles, wasn't
it? A mere trifle to an experienced epi cast! Except for the
deliberately overlooked fact that so many of the wimmenfolk
had been inexplicably transmogrified, of course. She chuckled.
Overlooking could prove to be very interesting, it could. She
would wait....just a bit...before mentioning the caves to anyone.
BACK TO PART 1 OF A STRONG TOWER