“ ‘It joins our talks, it joins our sport, and plays at every game.’ What is it? That’s our question, Blaine—what is it?”
The red light illuminating the COMMAND and ENTER buttons below the diamond of numbers blinked out. There was an endless moment of silence before Blaine spoke again . . . but Eddie was aware that the feeling of electricity crawling all over his skin was diminishing.
“A SHADOW, OF COURSE,” the voice of Blaine responded. “AN EASY ONE . . . BUT NOT BAD. NOT BAD AT ALL.”
The voice coming out of the speaker was animated by a thoughtful quality . . . and something else, as well. Pleasure? Longing? Eddie couldn’t quite decide, but he did know there was something in that voice that reminded him of Little Blaine. He knew something else, as well: Susannah had saved their bacon, at least for the time being. He bent down and kissed her cold, sweaty brow.
“DO YOU KNOW ANY MORE RIDDLES?” Blaine asked.
“Yes, lots,” Susannah said at once. “Our companion, Jake, has a whole book of them.”
“FROM THE NEW YORK PLACE OF WHERE?” Blaine asked, and now the tone of his voice was perfectly clear, at least to Eddie. Blaine might be a machine, but Eddie had been a heroin junkie for six years, and he knew stone greed when he heard it.
“From New York, right,” he said. “But Jake has been taken prisoner. A man named Gasher took him.”
No answer . . . and then the buttons glowed that faint, rosy pink again. “Good so far,” the voice of Little Blaine whispered. “But you must be careful . . . he’s tricky. . . .”
The red lights reappeared at once.
“DID ONE OF YOU SPEAK?” Blaine’s voice was cold and—Eddie could have sworn it was so—suspicious.
He looked at Susannah. Susannah looked back with the wide, frightened eyes of a little girl who has heard something unnameable moving slyly beneath the bed.
“I cleared my throat, Blaine,” Eddie said. He swallowed and armed sweat from his forehead. “I’m . . . shit, tell the truth and shame the devil. I’m scared to death.”
“THAT IS VERY WISE OF YOU. THESE RIDDLES OF WHICH YOU SPEAK—ARE THEY STUPID? I WON’T HAVE MY PATIENCE TRIED WITH STUPID RIDDLES.”
“Most are smart,” Susannah said, but she looked anxiously at Eddie as she said it.
“YOU LIE. YOU DON’T KNOW THE QUALITY OF THESE RIDDLES AT ALL.”
“How can you say—”
“VOICE ANALYSIS. FRICTIVE PATTERNS AND DIPHTHONG STRESS-EMPHASIS PROVIDE A RELIABLE QUOTIENT OF TRUTH/UNTRUTH. PREDICTIVE RELIABILITY IS 97 PER CENT, PLUS OR MINUS .5 PER CENT.” The voice fell silent for a moment, and when it spoke again, it did so in a menacing drawl that Eddie found very familiar. It was the voice of Humphrey Bogart. “I SHUGGEST YOU SHTICK TO WHAT YOU KNOW, SHWEETHEART. THE LAST GUY THAT TRIED SHADING THE TRUTH WITH ME WOUND UP AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEND IN A PAIR OF SHEMENT COWBOY BOOTS.”
“Christ,” Eddie said. “We walked four hundred miles or so to meet the computer version of Rich Little. How can you imitate guys like John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart, Blaine? Guys from our world?”
Nothing.
“Okay, you don’t want to answer that one. How about this one—if a riddle was what you wanted, why didn’t you just say so?”
Again there was no answer, but Eddie discovered that he didn’t really need one. Blaine liked riddles, so he had asked them one. Susannah had solved it. Eddie guessed that if she had failed to do so, the two of them would now look like a couple of giant-economy-size charcoal briquets lying on the floor of the Cradle of Lud.
“Blaine?” Susannah asked uneasily. There was no answer. “Blaine, are you still there?”
“YES. TELL ME ANOTHER ONE.”
“When is a door not a door?” Eddie asked.
“WHEN IT’S AJAR. YOU’LL HAVE TO DO BETTER THAN THAT IF YOU REALLY EXPECT ME TO TAKE YOU SOMEWHERE. CAN YOU DO BETTER THAN THAT?”
“If Roland gets here, I’m sure we can,” Susannah said. “Regardless of how good the riddles in Jake’s book may be, Roland knows hundreds— he actually studied them as a child.” Having said this, she realized she could not conceive of Roland as a child. “Will you take us, Blaine?”
“I MIGHT,” Blaine said, and Eddie was quite sure he heard a dim thread of cruelty running through that voice. “BUT YOU’LL HAVE TO PRIME THE PUMP TO GET ME GOING, AND MY PUMP PRIMES BACKWARD.”