Halfway through the second burger he - Sloat as well as Orris - began to feel sick. Suddenly the fried onions had seemed too strong, too cloying; suddenly the smell of car exhaust was everywhere. His arms had suddenly begun to itch madly. He pulled off the coat of the double-breasted suit (the second thick-shake, this one mocha, fell unheeded to one side, dribbling ice cream across the Ford's seat) and looked at his arms. Ugly red blotches with red centers were growing there, and spreading. His stomach lurched, he leaned out the window, and even as he puked into the tray that was fixed there, he had felt Orris fleeing from him, going back into his own world . . .
'Can I help you, sir?'
'Hmmmm?' Startled out of his reverie, Sloat looked around. A tall blond boy, obviously an upperclassman, was standing there. He was dressed prep - an impeccable blue flannel blazer worn over an open-collared shirt and a pair of faded Levi's.
He brushed hair out of his eyes which had that same dazed, dreaming look. 'I'm Etheridge, sir. I just wondered if I could help you. You looked . . . lost.'
Sloat smiled. He thought of saying - but did not - No, that's how you look, my friend. Everything was all right. The Sawyer brat was still on the loose, but Sloat knew where he was going and that meant that Jacky was on a chain. It was invisible, but it was still a chain.
'Lost in the past, that's all,' he said. 'Old times. I'm not a stranger here, Mr. Etheridge, if that's what you're worried about. My son's a student. Richard Sloat.'
Etheridge's eyes grew even dreamier for a moment - puzzled, lost. Then they cleared. 'Sure. Richard!' he exclaimed.
'I'll be going up to see the headmaster in a bit. I just wanted to have a poke around first.'
'Well, I guess that's fine.' Etheridge looked at his watch. 'I have table-duty this morning, so if you're sure you're okay . . .'
'I'm sure.'
Etheridge gave him a nod, a rather vague smile, and started off.
Sloat watched him go, and then he surveyed the ground between Nelson House and here. Noted the broken window again. A straight shot. It was fair - more than fair - to assume that, somewhere between Nelson House and this octagonal brick building, the two boys had Migrated into the Territories. If he liked, he could follow them. Just step inside - there was no lock on the door - and disappear. Reappear wherever Orris's body happened to be at this moment. It would be somewhere close; perhaps even, in fact, in front of the depot-keeper himself. No nonsense about Migrating to a spot which might be a hundred miles away from the point of interest in Territories geography and no way to cover the intervening distance but by wagon or, worse, what his father had called shanks' mare.
The boys would already have gone on, in all likelihood. Into the Blasted Lands. If so, the Blasted Lands would finish them. And Sunlight Gardener's Twinner, Osmond, would be more than capable of squeezing out all the information that Anders knew. Osmond and his horrid son. No need to Migrate at all.
Except maybe for a look-see. For the pleasure and refreshment of becoming Orris again, if only for a few seconds.
And to Make Sure, of course. His entire life, from childhood onward, had been an exercise in Making Sure.
He looked around once to assure himself that Etheridge had not lingered; then he opened the door of The Depot and went inside.
The smell was stale, dark, and incredibly nostalgic - the smell of old makeup and canvas flats. For a moment he had the crazy idea that he had done something even more incredible than Migrating; he felt that he might have travelled back through time to those undergraduate days when he and Phil Sawyer had been theater-mad college students.
Then his eyes adjusted to the dimness and he saw the unfamiliar, almost mawkish props - a plaster bust of Pallas for a production of The Raven, an extravagantly gilt birdcage, a bookcase full of false bindings - and remembered that he was in the Thayer School excuse for a 'little theater.'
He paused for a moment, breathing deeply of the dust; he turned his eyes up to one dusty sunray falling through a small window. The light wavered and was suddenly a deeper gold, the color of lamplight. He was in the Territories. Just like that, he was in the Territories. There was a moment of almost staggering exhilaration at the speed of the change. Usually there was a pause, a sense of sideslipping from one place to another. This caesura seemed to be in direct proportion to the distance between the physical bodies of his two selves, Sloat and Orris. Once, when he had Migrated from Japan, where he was negotiating a deal with the Shaw brothers for a terrible novel about Hollywood stars menaced by a crazed ninja, the pause had gone on so long that he had feared he might be lost forever somewhere in the empty, senseless purgatory that exists between the worlds. But this time they had been close . . . so close! It was like those few times, he thought
(Orris thought)
when a man and woman achieve orgasm at the exact same instant and die in sex together.
The smell of dried paint and canvas was replaced with the light, pleasant smell of Territories burning-oil. The lamp on the table was guttering low, sending out dark membranes of smoke. To his left a table was set, the remains of a meal congealing on the rough plates. Three plates.