The Daydreams were real, and Jacky somehow shared them
with his father. That was half his joy.
2
“Let me just get some things straight,” Uncle Morgan said,
and Jacky saw the word straight as a pair of lines knotting around each other like snakes. “They have magic like we have physics, right? We’re talking about an agrarian monarchy, using magic instead of science.”
“Sure,” Phil Sawyer said.
“And presumably they’ve gone on like that for centuries.
Their lives have never changed very much.”
“Except for political upheavals, that’s right.”
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Then Uncle Morgan’s voice tightened, and the excitement
he tried to conceal cracked little whips within his consonants.
“Well, forget about the political stuff. Suppose we think about us for a change. You’ll say—and I’d agree with you, Phil—
that we’ve done pretty well out of the Territories already, and that we’d have to be careful about how we introduce changes there. I have no problems at all with that position. I feel the same way myself.”
Jacky could feel his father’s silence.
“Okay,” Sloat continued. “Let’s go with the concept that,
within a situation basically advantageous to ourselves, we can spread the benefits around to anybody on our side. We don’t sacrifice the advantage, but we’re not greedy about the bounty it brings. We owe these people, Phil. Look what they’ve done for us. I think we could put ourselves into a really synergistic situation over there. Our energy can feed their energy and
come up with stuff we’ve never even thought of, Phil. And we end up looking generous, which we are—but which also
doesn’t hurt us.” He would be frowning forward, the palms of his hands pressed together. “Of course I don’t have a total window on this situation, you know that, but I think the synergy alone is worth the price of admission, to tell you the truth. But Phil—can you imagine how much fucking clout
we’d swing if we gave them electricity? If we got modern
weapons to the right guys over there? Do you have any idea? I think it’d be awesome. Awesome.” The damp, squashy sound of his clapping hands. “I don’t want to catch you unprepared or anything, but I thought it might be time for us to think along those lines—to think, Territories-wise, about increasing our involvement.”
Phil Sawyer still said nothing. Uncle Morgan slapped his
hands together again. Finally Phil Sawyer said, in a noncommittal voice, “You want to think about increasing our involvement.”
“I think it’s the way to go. And I can give you chapter and verse, Phil, but I shouldn’t have to. You can probably remember as well I can what it was like before we started going there together. Hey, maybe we could have made it all on our own,
and maybe we would have, but as for me, I’m grateful not to be representing a couple of broken-down strippers and Little Timmy Tiptoe anymore.”
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“Hold on,” Jack’s father said.
“Airplanes,” Uncle Morgan said. “Think airplanes.”
“Hold on, hold on there, Morgan, I have a lot of ideas that apparently have yet to occur to you.”
“I’m always ready for new ideas,” Morgan said, and his
voice was smoky again.
“Okay. I think we have to be careful about what we do over
there, partner. I think anything major—any real changes we
bring about—just might turn around and bite our asses back
here. Everything has consequences, and some of those conse-
quences might be on the uncomfortable side.”
“Like what?” Uncle Morgan asked.
“Like war.”
“That’s nuts, Phil. We’ve never seen anything . . . unless
you mean Bledsoe. . . .”
“I do mean Bledsoe. Was that a coincidence?”
Bledsoe? Jack wondered. He had heard the name before; but it was vague.
“Well, that’s a long way from war, to put it mildly, and I
don’t concede the connection anyhow.”
“All right. Do you remember hearing about how a Stranger
assassinated the old King over there—a long time ago? You
ever hear about that?”
“Yeah, I suppose,” Uncle Morgan said, and Jack heard
again the falseness in his voice.
His father’s chair squeaked—he was taking his feet off his
desk, leaning forward. “The assassination touched off a minor war over there. The followers of the old King had to put down a rebellion led by a couple of disgruntled nobles. These guys saw their chance to take over and run things—seize lands, im-pound property, throw their enemies in jail, make themselves rich.”
“Hey, be fair,” Morgan broke in. “I heard about this stuff, too. They also wanted to bring some kind of political order to a crazy inefficient system—sometimes you have to be tough,
starting out. I can see that.”
“And it’s not for us to make judgments about their politics, I agree. But here’s my point. That little war over there lasted about three weeks. When it was over, maybe a hundred people had been killed. Fewer, probably. Did anyone ever tell you
when that war began? What year it was? What day?”
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“No,” Uncle Morgan muttered in a sulky voice.
“It was the first of September, 1939. Over here, it was the day Germany invaded Poland.” His father stopped talking,
and Jacky, clutching his black toy taxi behind the couch,
yawned silently but hugely.
“That’s screwball,” Uncle Morgan finally said. “Their war started ours? Do you really believe that?”
“I do believe that,” Jack’s father said. “I believe a three-week squabble over there in some way sparked off a war here that lasted six years and killed millions of people. Yes.”
“Well . . .” Uncle Morgan said, and Jack could see him be-
ginning to huff and blow.
“There’s more. I’ve talked to lots of people over there
about this, and the feeling I get is that the stranger who assassinated the King was a real Stranger, if you see what I mean.
Those who saw him got the feeling that he was uncomfortable with Territories clothes. He acted like he was unsure of local customs—he didn’t understand the money right away.”
“Ah.”
“Yes. If they hadn’t torn him to pieces right after he stuck a knife into the King, we could be sure about this, but I’m sure anyhow that he was—”
“Like us.”
“Like us. That’s right. A visitor. Morgan, I don’t think we can mess around too much over there. Because we simply
don’t know what the effects will be. To tell you the truth, I think we’re affected all the time by things that go on in the Territories. And should I tell you another crazy thing?”
“Why not?” Sloat answered.
“That’s not the only other world out there.”
3
“Bullshit,” Sloat said.
“I mean it. I’ve had the feeling, once or twice when I was
there, that I was near to somewhere else—the Territories’ Territories.”
Yes, Jack thought, that’s right, it has to be, the Daydreams’
Daydreams, someplace even more beautiful, and on the other side of that is the Daydreams’ Daydreams’ Daydreams, and on the other side of that is another place, another world nicer
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still. . . . He realized for the first time that he had become very sleepy.
The Daydreams’ Daydreams
And then he was almost immediately asleep, the heavy lit-
tle taxi in his lap, his whole body simultaneously weighty
with sleep, anchored to the strip of wooden floor, and so blissfully light.
The conversation must have continued—there must have
been much that Jacky missed. He rose and fell, heavy and
light, through the second whole side of Daddy Plays the Horn, and during that time Morgan Sloat must at first have argued—gently, but with what squeezings of his fists, what
contortions of his forehead!—for his plan; then he must have allowed himself to seem persuadable, then finally persuaded by his partner’s doubts. At the end of this conversation, which returned to the twelve-year-old Jacky Sawyer in the dangerous borderland between Oatley, New York, and a nameless
Territories village, Morgan Sloat had allowed himself to seem not only persuaded but positively grateful for the lessons.
When Jack woke up, the first thing he heard was his father
asking, “Hey, did Jack disappear or something?” and the second thing was Uncle Morgan saying, “Hell, I guess you’re
right, Phil. You have a way of seeing right to the heart of things, you’re great the way you do that.”
“Where the hell is Jack?” his father said, and Jack stirred behind the couch, really waking up now. The black taxi thudded to the floor.
“Aha,” Uncle Morgan said. “Little pitchers and big ears,
peut-être? ”
“You behind there, kiddo?” his father said. Noises of chairs pushing back across the wooden floor, of men standing up.
He said, “Oooh,” and slowly lifted the taxi back into his lap. His legs felt stiff and uncomfortable—when he stood,
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