In a way this was the same thing. Caught up in other people's dreams, waiting to find things out. The trouble was that he wasn't sure what the dream was, or who was the dreamer, or whose nightmare it would be when all was done.
He toyed with the idea of waiting in Mixinack for Wayne's report—Bolt even offered to let him stay on the couch in the study of his big old Victorian house. But Mixinack was the place where the treasure box was, and it wasn't the treasure box Quentin wanted to get into at the moment.
What did he want? After dropping off Bolt at his office to pick up his car, Quentin drove south on a road denuded of traffic by the storm. The advisories on the radio begged people to stay off the highways during what they were already calling the "Blizzard of '96." The airports were closed. Quentin wouldn't be catching a flight tonight. He should have looked for a motel and holed up to wait out the storm. Instead he kept driving south. Not because the weather would be better there—word was that the storm would do a better job of shutting down Washington than the budget impasse. The people that the grande dame had known as the Duncans, who were almost certainly Rowena Tyler and her husband and child, lived somewhere in the DC area. And they were the people he had to see. To find out how much of Mrs. Tyler's story was true. To find out what they really wanted of him. And to get some idea of how to extricate himself from all this.
Because he did want to get out. A few days ago, all he wanted was Madeleine. Now all he wanted was his liberty. A man who has loved the perfect lover isn't likely to find a substitute very soon. Rowena could give him that lover back, possibly, but he had a feeling her price for such a service would be too high. So why look for her and her family? Why not drive west until he found some open airport and fly on to California, to Hawaii, to Tokyo or Singapore. He thought of places he had always wanted to see but never took the time for, because there was no one to see them with. Jerusalem. Kilimanjaro. Machu Picchu. The Great Barrier Reef. The Himalayas. Tashkent. Timbuktu. There was no more reason to wait for a companion. Either he would see them alone or not at all.
But was there really anyplace on earth where he could be free of this? Maybe they would give up on him and find someone else to do their bidding. But was that better than having him do it? After all, their next victim might be a man who did have some connection to the world. A husband, a father, someone whose destruction would leave a hole. While Quentin knew that even if this business killed him, what difference would it make? His will had been changed to turn everything over to his parents. They would allow Wayne to follow through with all the existing partnerships, and then they'd do a pretty good job of philanthropy, getting rid of his entire fortune before they died, except for whatever they needed to make sure they finished out their lives in comfort. His death would leave the same hole in the world that a fish leaves when it's pulled wriggling out of the ocean.
So why should he turn this over to somebody else? Quentin was expendable. Be a good soldier, he told himself. March the march, up to the front, take aim, and fire your best shot. Then die if you must. But let it be with a bullet in front, not in the back. Facing the enemy.
Oh, aren't we getting dramatic? He laughed at himself and changed to another radio station as the previous one faded into the white static of the falling snow.
The Jersey Turnpike was closed. He started searching for alternate routes and ended up, about three in the morning, driving the deserted streets of downtown Philadelphia. A policeman pulled him over.
"Don't appreciate the joyriding, mister," said the cop. "Can't you see it's dangerous out here?"
"Got no place to go, Officer," said Quentin. "The airports are snowed in and I want to get back to DC."
"Find a motel and get to sleep."
"Then my car will be covered in snow and I'll be stuck in a city that's closed down tight."
"Better than having us dig you out of a snowbank three days from now, stiff as a board."
"Officer, will it be OK if I promise to find a safe place to bed down, and then just keep driving where I want? Or are you going to follow me and arrest me for trying to get home?"
The policeman looked at him with disgust. "Do what you want." Then he went on back to his patrol car.
Do what I want. Well, that's great advice. But what if the thing I want most in all the world can't be done? Because I want to go home, Officer, and home isn't that apartment in Herndon and it isn't my folks' house in California. Home is where the people who live there need me to come home to them, and worry about me when I'm gone. There's no such place on this earth, no matter how far I drive.
What's so wrong with feeling sorry for myself? Better that than trying to get other people to feel sorry for me. And somebody sure ought to, because my life is definitely in the pitiful range, if it hasn't already dropped on down into disastrous.
Oh, Lizzy, why did you have to go riding that night? Or why couldn't I have gone with you? Why couldn't we have done the transplant the other direction? It was a brain you needed, and mine was OK. You would have done so much better with it than I ever have. Why couldn't they transplant my life into you, so you could live it for me?
"Buck up, Tin," said Lizzy.
She was sitting beside him, shifting her weight in the seat to get comfortable.
"You're a pretty good snow driver. That's something they didn't bother teaching us in driver's ed back in high school."
"Thanks," said Quentin. "Sorry. I didn't mean to call you."
"No sweat. Truth is that I like it when you do. Time doesn't pass out there the way it does for you, so you can't exactly get bored, and there's plenty to do, depending on how you define do, but I gotta say I miss having a body. I never really used it, Tin."
"I was just thinking that myself."
"No, you were thinking that you were as useless as the turd of a dog who just died."
He laughed in spite of himself.
"You were thinking that you're the guy who really needs a hand grenade to land in his foxhole so he can dive on it, save his buddies, and have the President give the Medal of Honor to his parents, along with eight boxes containing his remains."
"Lizzy, is there any way through this thing?"
"There are a thousand ways through this thing, Tin. But they might all end up with you dead."
"Is that so bad? You're doing OK."
"Sure. Death's all right. But not worth going through any extra trouble to get here. You miss everything when you're here, Quentin. Even the pain. Even the despair."
"So is Mrs. Tyler right? Will the treasure box kill me?"
"Treasure box. What you mean is, is the beast real? Well, I didn't know what to call it till just now, diving into your memory to see what the old lady told you about it, but I'd say that's a pretty fair description of the bad thing in that house."
"She put it in the box. It isn't good to let it out."
"I don't know, Tin. As long as it's in that box, it's going to keep trying to suck people in to get the box open. But if it dies, maybe it'll be a while before somebody calls to it. Opens up to it and lets it in."
"Come on, Lizzy. Last time it got sucked into a year-old baby."
"She was lying to you, Tin."
"It wasn't in the baby?"
"Oh, it was, all right. But it didn't just happen along. Didn't just come. She called it."
"Man, that's even worse than what I said to her."
"She didn't realize that's what she was doing. She thought she had this brilliant baby, and so she wanted it to learn everything. She was pushing."