'Look! The roof of the hotel!'
Morgan saw that all of the weathercocks and roof ornaments - beaten brass shapes which spun at exactly the same speed whether the wind was perfectly calm or howling up a hurricane - had stopped moving. At the same instant the earth rippled briefly under their feet and then was still again. It was as if a subterranean beast of enormous size had shrugged in its hibernal sleep. Morgan would almost have believed he had imagined it if it had not been for the widening of Gardener's bloodshot eyes. I'll bet you wish you never left Indiana, Gard, Morgan thought. No earthquakes in Indiana, right?
Silent light flashed in all of the Agincourt's windows again.
'What does it mean, Morgan?' Gardener asked hoarsely. His insane fury over the loss of his son had for the first time moderated into fear for himself, Morgan saw. That was a bore, but he could be whipped back into his previous frenzy again, if necessary. It was just that Morgan hated to have to waste energy on anything at this point that didn't bear directly on the problem of ridding the world - all the worlds - of Jack Sawyer, who had begun as a pest and who had developed into the most monstrous problem of Sloat's life.
Gardener's pack-set squawked.
'Red Squad Leader Four to the Sunlight Man! Come in, Sunlight Man!'
'Sunlight Man here, Red Squad Leader Four,' Gardener snapped. 'What's up?'
In quick succession Gardener took four gabbling, excited reports that were all exactly the same. There was no intelligence the two of them hadn't seen and felt for themselves - flashes of light, weathercocks at a standstill, something that might have been a ground-tremblor or possibly an earthquake preshock - but Gardener labored with sharp-eyed enthusiasm over each report just the same, asking sharp questions, snapping 'Over!' at the end of each transmission, sometimes breaking in with 'Say again' or 'Roger.' Sloat thought he was acting like a bit player in a disaster movie.
But if it eased him, that was fine with Sloat. It saved him from having to answer Gardener's question . . . and now that he thought about it, he supposed it was just possible that Gardener didn't want his question answered, and that was why he was going through this rigmarole with the radio.
The Guardians were dead, or out of commission. That was why the weathercocks had stopped, and that's what the flashes of light meant. Jack didn't have the Talisman . . . at least, not yet. If he got that, things in Point Venuti would really shake, rattle, and roll. And Sloat now thought that Jack would get it . . . that he had always been meant to get it. This did not frighten him, however.
His hand reached up and touched the key around his neck.
Gardener had run out of overs and rogers and ten-fours. He reshouldered the pack-set and looked at Morgan with wide, frightened eyes. Before he could say a word, Morgan put gentle hands on Gardener's shoulders. If he could feel love for anyone other than his poor dead son, he felt love - of a twisted variety, most certainly - for this man. They went back a long way, both as Morgan of Orris and Osmond and as Morgan Sloat and Robert 'Sunlight' Gardener.
It had been with a rifle much like the one now slung over Gardener's shoulder that Gardener had shot Phil Sawyer in Utah.
'Listen, Gard,' he said calmly. 'We are going to win.'
'Are you sure of that?' Gardener whispered. 'I think he's killed the Guardians, Morgan. I know that sounds crazy, but I realy think - ' He stopped, mouth trembling infirmly, lips sheened with a thin membrane of spittle.
'We are going to win,' Morgan repeated in that same calm voice, and he meant it. There was a sense of clear predestination in him. He had waited many years for this; his resolve had been true; it remained true now. Jack would come out with the Talisman in his arms. It was a thing of immense power . . . but it was fragile.
He looked at the scoped Weatherbee, which could drop a charging rhino, and then he touched the key that brought the lightning.
'We're well equipped to deal with him when he comes out,' Morgan said, and added, 'In either world. Just as long as you keep your courage, Gard. As long as you stick right by me.'
The trembling lips firmed a bit. 'Morgan, of course I'll - '
'Remember who killed your son,' Morgan said softly.
At the same instant that Jack Sawyer had jammed the burning coin into the forehead of a monstrosity in the Territories, Reuel Gardener, who had been afflicted with relatively harmless petit mal epileptic seizures ever since the age of six (the same age at which Osmond's son had begun to show signs of what was called Blasted Lands Sickness), apparently suffered a grand mal seizure in the back of a Wolf-driven Cadillac on I-70, westbound to California from Illinois.
He had died, purple and strangling, in Sunlight Gardener's arms.
Gardener's eyes now began to bulge.
'Remember,' Morgan repeated softly.