Eddie Bear lacked for excitement. In his cage many floors beneath the Nevada desert in Area Fifty-Two, Eddie Bear was having a bit of a snooze. And then things suddenly became exciting for Eddie, or perhaps “alarming” was better the word.
Eddie awoke as hands were laid upon him. Rough were these hands, although not in texture. Rough as in violent and forceful.
“Ow!” went Eddie. “That’s as rude as. Get off me.”
But Eddie was hauled from his cage by the other Jack and flung to a concrete floor.
“There’s no need for that!”
And then the other Jack kicked him.
“Oh!” went Eddie, climbing to his paw pads. “You are so going to get yours when my Jack gets here.”
“No one is going to rescue you.” The other Jack took a big step forward. Eddie took several steps back. “Along the corridor, hurry now.”
Eddie turned and plodded up the corridor. It was one of those all-over-concrete kind of jobbies with bulkhead lights at regular intervals. The number twenty-three[38] was painted on the walls at similarly regular intervals. Eddie assumed, correctly, that this meant that he was on the twenty-third level beneath the ground.
“Where are you taking me?” Eddie asked.
“To meet your maker,” said the other Jack.
“My maker was Mister Anders Anders,” said Eddie, “the kindly, lovable white-haired old Toymaker.”
The other Jack laughed and his laugh all echoed around. “He’ll soon have his work cut out for him,” he said.
“And what does that mean?” Eddie asked.
“In twelve hours from now,” said the other Jack, “Toy City will be wiped from the map. If there is a map with it on. My employer will suck it dry of all life. Lay it to waste. Oh yes.”
“Why?” Eddie asked. “To what purpose?”
“Why?” asked the other Jack. “Because we can. And to what purpose? To further our own ends.”
“Now, I’m only guessing here,” said Eddie, turning and peering up at the other Jack, “but would these ‘own ends’ be of the world-domination persuasion?”
“You’ll know soon enough.” The other Jack nudged Eddie with his shoe. “Now get a move on. To the elevator.”
“Where am I?” asked Eddie. “Tell me where I am.”
“Where are we?” asked Jack. “Exactly.”
He was making good progress, considering he had never driven a car with an internal combustion engine before. He’d almost got the hang of the gears.
Dorothy flinched as Jack changed from second to fourth.
“Exactly?” she said. “We are travelling North on Interstate Fifteen. We just passed Las Vegas, which you would probably have liked, lots of lights and things like that. We are heading towards the Nevada desert.”
“And is that good?” Jack asked. “Only I’m not sure what we should be doing next. The plan was to follow the American Dream. Find the top man. Beat the truth out of him.”
“Perhaps you were over-hasty bringing that meat-cleaver into play. But look on the bright side – at least we got to meet Marilyn Monroe and Sydney Greenstreet. I wish I’d got their autographs. And the names of their agents and –”
“Stop now,” said Jack. “We’ll have to go back to LA. We need the movie script. I’m sure a lot will be explained when we read it.”
“LA is no longer an option,” said Dorothy. “And I don’t know where this leaves my career. I know that it’s expected of starlets to do disreputable things that will later come back to haunt them when they become famous, but I might just have stepped too far over the line this time.”
Jack sighed, changed from fourth to first, changed hastily back again and said, “You do talk some toot at times.”
“Not a bit of it,” said Dorothy. “The people who get to the top in this world do so because they are risk-takers. They thrive upon risk. Every woman or man at the top has a shady past. They’ve all done things that they wouldn’t want their contemporaries to find out about. They wouldn’t want these things to come out once they are famous, but they’re not ashamed that they did these things. They did them because they got a thrill out of them. They did them because they are risk-takers.”
“So what are you saying?” Jack asked, as he performed another interesting gear change. “That it’s all right to do bad things?”
“It’s never right to do bad things. Bad things hurt good people.”
“I don’t mean to be bad,” said Jack.
“You’re not bad,” said Dorothy.
“I am,” said Jack. “I’m selfish. I put myself first.”
“Everyone does that.”
“Eddie doesn’t,” said Jack. “Eddie would risk anything to protect me, I know he would.”
“And you would do the same for him.”
“Of course I would,” said Jack. “But time is running out for Eddie and if I don’t find him soon and take him back to Toy City he will die.”
“You’ll find him,” said Dorothy. “Somehow.”
“Somehow,” thought Eddie, “Jack will find me somehow.”
“Into the elevator,” said the other Jack. “Go on now.”
Eddie entered the elevator. The other Jack joined him, pressed a button, the doors closed, the elevator rose. Eddie Bear fumed. Silently.
And then the doors took to opening and Eddie Bear gazed out.
And wondered at the view that lay before him.
It looked to be a big round room with shiny metal walls. There were all kinds of strange machines in this room. Strange machines with twinkling lights upon them, being attended to by men in white coats who all looked strangely alike.
“Where are we now?” asked Eddie.
“Central operations room,” said the other Jack. “Go on now.”
“I do wish you’d stop saying that. It’s as repetitive as.”
“Go on now.” And the other Jack kicked Eddie.
“But where shall we go now?” Jack asked.
“How about somewhere to eat?” asked Dorothy. “Lunch would be nice.”
“I’m really not hungry.” But Jack’s stomach rumbled.
“We do need a plan of some kind,” said Dorothy.
“Plan?” said Jack. “What we need is a miracle.” Jack hunched over the wheel.
Presently they approached a route-side eatery. It was a Golden Chicken Diner. Jack drove hurriedly past it.
Somewhat later, with the police car making those alarming coughing sounds that cars will make when they are running out of fuel, they approached another eatery: Haley’s Comet Lounge.
“This will do us fine,” said Dorothy.
The car clunked up to a petrol pump.[39]
A tall man with short hair smiled out from the shade of a veranda. He wore a drab grey mechanic’s overall that accentuated his drab greyness and wiped his hands upon an oily rag, which implied an intimate knowledge of automobiles.
“Howdy, officer,” said he as Jack wound down what was left of his window. “Suu-ee, what the Hell happened here?”
“Nothing to concern yourself with,” said Jack.
Dorothy leaned over him. And Jack sniffed her hair. “Fill her up,” said Dorothy, “and check the oil, please, and the suspension.”
“Have to put her up on the ramp for that, ma’am.”
“Fine, please do it.”
Dorothy led Jack off to eat as the drab grey mechanic drove the stolen police car into the garage.[40]
“It’s best out of sight,” said Dorothy to Jack as they entered the eatery.
“Do you have money?” Jack asked as he patted his uniform pockets. “Because I don’t.”
“Leave all the talking to me.”
The eatery was everything that it should have been. Everything in its right place. Long bar along the right-hand wall. Tables to the left with window views of Interstate 15. A great many framed photographs upon the walls, mostly of men in sporting attire holding large fish.
There were some trophies on a shelf behind the bar, silver trophies topped by figures of men in sporting attire holding large fish.
39
This being one of those roadside diners that had a petrol pump in front. Which was quite convenient really.