The Minstrel Boy grinned mockingly at Billy.
‘You wouldn’t want me to make no kind of mistake now, would you?’
Billy shook his head, and went along with it. He was more than used to the Minstrel Boy baiting him. He was just too weary to rise. The Minstrel Boy, getting no positive response, went on.
‘Of course, I wasn’t hurting myself none. I didn’t go in very deep. I was just getting what you might call a very general picture when POW, it hit me, right in the middle of the brain.’
‘What hit you?’
‘Litz went out.’
‘Went out? You mean it was bombed?’
The Minstrel Boy shook his head.
‘No, not just bombed. The generators went out. Maybe they were blown up, or wrecked, or switched off, or just plain malfunctioned. I don’t know. One thing I know for sure, Litz ain’t there. No more Litz.’
‘That’s terrible.’
The Minstrel Boy shrugged.
‘Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, who can tell? I don’t make judgements any more.’
Billy pushed back his hat and scratched his head.
‘Even if Litz went out, what’s that got to do with the road?’
‘Litz was at the end of this road.’
‘So we’ll have to go some place else.’
‘It’s not quite as easy as that.’
Billy sighed.
‘I might have known that.’
The Minstrel Boy sniffed.
‘Maybe you just might learn one day.’
‘Just tell me the worst.’
‘Okay, you asked for it. It’s like this. Imagine this road is an elastic band stretched through the nothings between Litz and the Inn. When Litz went it was like letting go of one end of the band.’
‘It just snapped back on the Inn?’
‘Right, and the Inn’s generator couldn’t handle the shock so the Inn went out. Just as one shock’s bursting in my brain, BLAM, there’s another one.’
‘All those people at the Inn.’
‘Don’t bring morality into this.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Okay, so imagine again. What happens if you let go of both ends of a taut elastic band?’
‘It flies off in any direction.’
‘Right.’
‘And that’s what happened to the road?’
‘Not really, but it’ll do for you to get a hold on.’
‘So this road’s flying through the nothings?’
The Minstrel Boy grinned sourly.
‘Twisting and whipping like a bitch. A poor wayfinder can’t handle that kind of thing. We only have a special sense, we don’t have no cast iron brain. I thought I might die back there for a while.’
‘I thought you had died.’
‘That’s nice of you.’
Billy frowned.
‘One thing I don’t understand …’
The Minstrel Boy sneered.
‘Just one thing?’
‘How come we didn’t feel any of this?’
‘I sure as hell felt it.’
‘Okay, how come I didn’t feel it?’
‘Because you were part of the road, dummy.’
‘Huh?’
‘You snapped right along with it.’
Billy waved his hand down the road.
‘But it’s still perfectly straight.’
‘Is it?’
Billy looked.
The road in front of them was twisting and lashing in violent loops and spirals. Billy spun round. The road they had come along was also behaving like a trick rope at a rodeo. Billy looked at the Minstrel Boy. He was dumbfounded.
‘How come I didn’t notice that before?’
‘Maybe it’s because you’re an idiot.’
They walked a few paces in silence while Billy tried to assimilate all that the Minstrel Boy had told him. Billy steadily looked at the ground at his feet. He found that the sight of the lashing road made him feel sick. Finally he looked up.
‘I got to ask one more thing.’
‘Ask away.’
‘Why does the piece of road we’re walking on also feel flat and solid and normal?’
The Minstrel Boy looked at him pityingly.
‘Because we’re on it, stupid.’
After that, Billy kept quiet. He and the Minstrel Boy walked side by side, isolated in their own thoughts. The road began to take on strange, surreal features. They passed a huge neon sign. It bore a slogan in a script that Billy had never seen before. They passed others. One said AXOTOTL in huge red letters, another carried a whole list of complex mathematical formulae that flashed on and off in multicoloured lights. They passed one sign that immediately crashed down behind them in a swirl of smoke and a flurry of electrical discharge. The Minstrel Boy didn’t appear to notice.
The Minstrel Boy was himself becoming a little strange. He slouched along with a jerky stiff legged gait. His shoulders were hunched, his hands thrust into his pockets, his hat pulled down and his head sunk in his upturned collar. Every now and then he would suddenly come out with some inexplicable sentence.
‘You are in the mountains where your uncles seek raw glory.’
Billy was jerked from his private thoughts.
‘Huh? What did you say?’
The Minstrel Boy looked up in surprise.
‘I didn’t say a word.’
Billy wondered if it was an elaborate joke, or whether something was still happening to the Minstrel Boy’s brain. They passed more of the towering signs. One read THANK YOU - POODLE. Billy began to fear that they would die on the road. He stopped and planted his hands on his hips.
‘How long are we going to go on like this?’
The Minstrel Boy turned and looked at him.
‘Like what?’
‘Just walking aimlessly.’
‘If I told you how long we’re going to walk you wouldn’t understand. You can’t tell how long we’ve been walking, can you?’
Billy looked sullen.
‘You damn well know I’ve lost my sense of time.’
‘There you are then.’
Billy refused to be fobbed off.
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What you mean is you want me to find us a place to go, right?’
‘I suppose so.’
The Minstrel Boy’s expression turned mean.
‘If you think I’m going to as much as glance in there, you’re mistaken. You saw what happened the last time. You think I’m going to chance that again? Shit! I could get killed. We’re going to find our way out of this by walking.’
Billy set his face in a neutral expression.
‘It’s your decision.’
‘Damn right it’s my decision.’
Again they walked in silence. For a while the road offered no new surprises and diversions. No more signs appeared, and it was just a black ribbon between the grey walls of nothing.
The ends still thrashed and twisted, but Billy was getting used to that. He wasn’t quite sure exactly when the other road appeared.
It curled over their heads in a wide loop. Billy saw that the road was full of people. He shouted and waved. The Minstrel Boy kept on walking. The other road dipped closer. Billy saw that its occupants were not, in fact, human. They were some kind of rodent, as far as Billy could tell, about a metre tall. They stood on their hind legs and had smooth, light brown fur. They wore neatly tailored black jackets and marched along, in step, with an air of purposeful seriousness. Billy continued to shout and wave.
He watched the road as it drifted away and was finally lost from sight. Even when it was gone Billy continued to stare at the last spot it had been visible.
The Minstrel Boy came walking back. He stopped and stared at Billy.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’