He had gone only halfway up the rise when he once again
saw the peak of the great tent, rigid in the midst of a rank of narrow fluttering flags. That, he assumed, was his destination.
Another few steps past the blackberry bushes where he’d
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paused the last time (remembering how good they’d been,
Jack popped two of the enormous berries in his mouth) and
he could see the whole of the tent. It was actually a big rambling pavillion, long wings on each side, with gates and a
courtyard. Like the Alhambra, this eccentric structure—a
summer palace, Jack’s instincts told him—stood just above
the ocean. Little bands of people moved through and around
the great pavillion, driven by forces as powerful and invisible as the effect on iron filings of a magnet. The little groups met, divided, poured on again.
Some of the men wore bright, rich-looking clothes, though
many seemed to be dressed much as Jack was. A few women
in long shining white gowns or robes marched through the
courtyard, as purposeful as generals. Outside the gates stood a collection of smaller tents and impromptu-looking wooden
huts; here, too, people moved, eating or buying or talking, though more easily and randomly. Somewhere down in that
busy crowd he would have to find the man with a scar.
But first he looked behind him, down the length of the rut-
ted track, to see what had happened to Funworld.
When he saw two small dark horses pulling plows, perhaps
fifty yards off, he thought that the amusement park had be-
come a farm, but then he noticed the crowd watching the
plowing from the top of the field and understood that this was a contest. Next his eye was taken by the spectacle of a huge red-haired man, stripped to the waist, whirling about like a top. His outstretched hands held some long heavy object. The man abruptly stopped whirling and released the object, which flew a long way before it thudded and bounced on the grass
and revealed itself to be a hammer. Funworld was a fair, not a farm—Jack now saw tables heaped with food, children on
their fathers’ shoulders.
In the midst of the fair, making sure that every strap and
harness was sound, every oven stoked with wood, was there a Speedy Parker? Jack hoped so.
And was his mother still sitting by herself in the Tea and
Jam Shoppe, wondering why she had let him go?
Jack turned back and watched the long cart rattle through
the gates of the summer palace and swing off to the left, separating the people who moved there as a car making a turn off
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Fifth Avenue separates pedestrians on a cross-town street. A moment later he set off after it.
2
He had feared that all the people on the pavillion grounds
would turn toward him staring, instantly sensing his difference from them. Jack carefully kept his eyes lowered when-
ever he could and imitated a boy on a complicated errand—he had been sent out to assemble a list of things; his face showed how he was concentrating to remember them. A shovel, two picks, a ball of twine, a bottle of goose grease . . . But gradually he became aware that none of the adults before the
summer palace paid him any attention at all. They rushed
or dawdled, inspected the merchandise—rugs, iron pots,
bracelets—displayed in the little tents, drank from wooden
mugs, plucked at another’s sleeve to make a comment or start a conversation, argued with the guards at the gate, each
wholly taken up by his own business. Jack’s impersonation
was so unnecessary as to be ridiculous. He straightened up
and began to work his way, moving generally in an irregular half-circle, toward the gate.
He had seen almost immediately that he would not be
able just to stroll through it—the two guards on either side stopped and questioned nearly everyone who tried to reach
the interior of the summer palace. Men had to show their papers, or display badges or seals which gave them access. Jack had only Speedy Parker’s fingerpick, and he didn’t think that would get him past the guards’ inspection. One man just now stepping up to the gate flashed a round silver badge and was waved through; the man following him was stopped. He argued; then the tone of his manner changed, and Jack saw that he was pleading. The guard shook his head and ordered the
man off.
“His men don’t have any trouble getting in,” someone to Jack’s right said, instantly solving the problem of Territories language, and Jack turned his head to see if the man had spoken to him.
But the middle-aged man walking beside him was speak-
ing to another man, also dressed in the plain, simple clothes of most of the men and women outside the palace grounds.
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“They’d better not,” the second man answered. “He’s on his
way—supposed to be here today sometime, I guess.”
Jack fell in behind these two and followed them toward the
gate.
The guards stepped forward as the men neared, and as they
both approached the same guard, the other gestured to the
man nearest him. Jack hung back. He still had not seen
anyone with a scar, nor had he seen any officers. The only soldiers in sight were the guards, both young and countrified—
with their broad red faces above the elaborately pleated and ruffled uniforms, they looked like farmers in fancy dress. The two men Jack had been following must have passed the
guards’ tests, for after a few moments’ conversation the uniformed men stepped back and admitted them. One of the
guards looked sharply at Jack, and Jack turned his head and stepped back.
Unless he found the Captain with the scar, he would never
get inside the palace grounds.
A group of men approached the guard who had stared at
Jack, and immediately began to wrangle. They had an ap-
pointment, it was crucial they be let in, much money de-
pended on it, regrettably they had no papers. The guard shook his head, scraping his chin across his uniform’s white ruff. As Jack watched, still wondering how he could find the Captain, the leader of the little group waved his hands in the air,
pounded his fist into a palm. He had become as red-faced as the guard. At length he began jabbing the guard with his forefinger. The guard’s companion joined him—both guards
looked bored and hostile.
A tall straight man in a uniform subtly different from the
guards’—it might have been the way the uniform was worn,
but it looked as though it might serve in battle as well as in an operetta—noiselessly materialized beside them. He did not
wear a ruff, Jack noticed a second later, and his hat was
peaked instead of three-cornered. He spoke to the guards, and then turned to the leader of the little group. There was no more shouting, no more finger-jabbing. The man spoke quietly. Jack saw the danger ebb out of the group. They shifted on their feet, their shoulders sank. They began to drift away.
The officer watched them go, then turned back to the guards for a final word.
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For the moment while the officer faced in Jack’s direction, in effect shooing the group of men away with his presence,
Jack saw a long pale lightning-bolt of a scar zigzagging from beneath his right eye to just above his jawline.
The officer nodded to the guards and stepped briskly away.
Looking neither to the left nor to the right, he wove through the crowd, apparently headed for whatever lay to the side of the summer palace. Jack took off after him.
“Sir!” he yelled, but the officer marched on through the
slow-moving crowd.
Jack ran around a group of men and women hauling a pig
toward one of the little tents, shot through a gap between two other bands of people approaching the gate, and finally was close enough to the officer to reach out and touch his elbow.
“Captain?”
The officer wheeled around, freezing Jack where he stood.
Up close, the scar seemed thick and separate, a living creature riding on the man’s face. Even unscarred, Jack thought, this man’s face would express a forceful impatience. “What is it, boy?” the man asked.
“Captain, I’m supposed to talk to you—I have to see the
Lady, but I don’t think I can get into the palace. Oh, you’re supposed to see this.” He dug into the roomy pocket of the
unfamiliar pants and closed his fingers around a triangular object.
When he displayed it on his palm, he felt shock boom
through him—what he held in his hand was not a fingerpick