THE ROSE

IT BEGAN TO OPEN before his eyes. It disclosed a dark scarlet furnace, petal 
upon secret petal, each blazing with its own secret fury. Jake had never seen 
anything so beautiful, so intensely and utterly alive. Now, as he stretched one 
grime-streaked hand out toward this won­der, the voices began to sing his own 
name . . . and a dreadful, deadly fear began to steal in toward the center of 
his heart. It was as cold as black ice and as heavy as stone.
There was something wrong here. He could feel it pulsing in dis­cord, like a 
deep and ugly scratch across some formerly priceless work of art. . . . Then the 
heart of the rose opened before him, exposing a bright yellow dazzle of light. 
... It was a sun: a vast forge blazing at the center of this rose growing in the 
alien grass.
The fear returned, only now it had become outright terror. It's right, he 
thought incoherently, everything here is right, but it could go wrong. ...


















THE WASTE LANDS
STEPHEN KING

THE DARK TOWER III

ILLUSTRATED BY NED DAMERON

A PLUME BOOK











PLUME Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcom Avenue,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 
Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England 
Published by Plume, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin 
Boots USA Inc.
First Plume Printing, January, 1992 
Copyright © 1991 by Stephen King
Illustrations © 1991 by Ned Dameron
All rights reserved. The Waste Lands previously appeared in a limited edition 
published by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc.
"Velcro Fly" written by Billy Gibbons, Frank Beard and Dusty Hill copyright © 
1985 by Hamstein Music Co. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Paint it Black written by Mick Jogger and Keith Richards copyright © 1966 by 
ABKCO Music, Inc. All rights
reserved. Used by permission.
Excerpts from "The Waste Land" in Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T. S. Eliot, 
copyright 1936 by Harcourt Brace JooanoKich, Inc., copyright © 1964, 1963 by T. 
S. Eliot, reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Excerpt from "Hand in Glove" by Robert Aickman used by permission of the 
author's agent, the Kirby
McCauley Literary Agency.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
King, Stephen, 1947-
The waste lands / Stephen King : illustrated by Ned Dameron.
p.       cm.  --  (The Dark tower : 3) ISBN 0-452-26740-4
I. Title. II. Series: King, Stephen, 1947-       Dark tower : 3.
PS3561.1483W37   1992
813'.54 -- dc20                                                                 
91-32460
                                                                                
               CIP
Printed in the United States of America Set in New Caledonia
Designed by Steven N. Stathakis
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this 
publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, 
or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, 
photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of 
both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are 
the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any 
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales w entirely 
coincidental.
BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR 
SERVICES. FOR
INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN BOOKS USA INC., 
375 HUDSON
STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YOHK 10014.












This third volume of the tale is gratefully dedicated to my son OWEN PHILIP 
KING: Khef, Ka, and Ka-tet.















CONTENTS

ARGUMENT 1

BOOK ONE   JAKE: FEAR IN A HANDFUL OF DUST
I. BEAR AND BONE
II. KEY AND ROSE
III. DOOR AND DEMON

BOOK TWO    LUD: A HEAP OF BROKEN IMAGES
IV. TOWN AND KA-TET
V. BRIDGE AND CITY
VI. RIDDLE AND WASTE LANDS 391

ILLUSTRATIONS
MIR EMBRACED THE TREE
"HOLD ME STILL, ROLAND" 
THE DARK TOWER
KEY AND ROSE
"CHARLIE THE CHOO-CHOO"
THE PLASTER MAN ROARED
ROLAND KNELT BEFORE HER
"BETTER DUCK, DEARIE!"
HE FIRED . . .
BLAINE THE MONO
CRUISED ON LEATHER WINGS
PRANCING AND CAVORTING




ARGUMENT


The Waste Lands is the third volume of a longer tale inspired by and to some 
degree dependent upon Robert Browning's narrative poem "Childe Roland to the 
Dark Tower Came."
The first volume, The Gunslinger, tells how Roland, the last gun-slinger in a 
world which has "moved on," pursues and finally catches the man in black, a 
sorcerer named Walter who falsely claimed the friendship of Roland's father in 
the days when the unity of Mid-World still held. Catching this half-human 
spell-caster is not Roland's ultimate goal but only another landmark along the 
road to the powerful and mysterious Dark Tower, which stands at the nexus of 
time.
Who, exactly, is Roland? What was his world like before it moved on? What is the 
Tower and why does he pursue it? We have only frag­mentary answers. Roland is 
clearly a land of knight, one of those charged with holding (or possibly 
redeeming) a world Roland remembers as being "filled with love and light." Just 
how closely Roland's memory resembles the way that world actually was is very 
much open to question, however.
We do know that he was forced to an early trial of manhood after discovering 
that his mother had become the mistress of Marten, a much greater sorcerer than 
Walter; we know that Marten orchestrated Roland's discovery of his mother's 
affair, expecting Roland to fail his test of manhood and be "sent West" into the 
wastes; we know that Roland laid Marten's plans at nines by passing the test.
We also know that the gunslinger's world is related to our own in some strange 
but fundamental way, and that passage between the worlds is sometimes possible.
At a way station on a long-deserted coach-road running through the desert, 
Roland meets a boy named Jake who died in our world, a boy who was, in fact, 
pushed from a mid-Manhattan street corner and into the path of an oncoming car. 
Jake Chambers died with the man in black -- Walter -- peering down at him, and awoke 
in Roland's world.
Before they reach the man in black, Jake dies again . . . this time because the 
gunslinger, faced with the second most agonizing choice of his life, elects to 
sacrifice this symbolic son. Given a choice between the Tower and the child, 
Roland chooses the Tower. Jake's last words to the gunslinger before plunging 
into the abyss are: "Go, then -- there are other worlds than these."
The final confrontation between Roland and Walter occurs in a dusty Golgotha of 
decaying bones. The man in black tells Roland's future with a deck of Tarot 
cards. Three very strange cards -- The Prisoner, The Lady of the Shadows, and Death 
("but not for you, gunslinger") -- are called especially to Roland's attention.
The second volume, The Drawing of the Three, begins on the edge of the Western 
Sea not long after Roland's confrontation with Walter has ended. An exhausted 
gunslinger awakes in the middle of the night to discover that the incoming tide 
has brought a horde of crawling, carnivo­rous creatures -- "lobstrosities" -- with it. 
Before he can escape their lim­ited range, Roland has been seriously wounded by 
these creatures, losing the first two fingers of his right hand to them. He is 
also poisoned by the venom of the lobstrosities, and as the gunslinger resumes 
his journey north along the edge of the Western Sea, he is sickening . . . 
perhaps dying.
He encounters three doors standing freely upon the beach. Each door opens -- for 
Roland and Roland alone -- upon our world; upon the city where Jake lived, in fact. 
Roland visits New York at three points along our time continuum, both in an 
effort to save his own life and to draw the three who must accompany him on his 
road to the Tower.
Eddie Dean is The Prisoner, a heroin addict from the New York of the late 1980s. 
Roland steps through the door on the beach of his world and into Eddie Dean's 
mind as Eddie, serving a man named Enrico Balazar as a cocaine mule, lands at 
JFK airport. In the course of their harrowing adventures together, Roland is 
able to obtain a limited quantity of penicillin and to bring Eddie Dean back to 
his own world. Eddie, a junkie who discovers he has been kidnapped to a world 
where there is no junk (or Popeye's fried chicken, for that matter), is less 
than overjoyed to be there.
The second door leads Roland to The Lady of the Shadows -- actually two women in 
one body. This time Roland finds himself in the New York of the early 1960s and 
face to face with a young wheelchair-bound civil-rights activist named Odetta 
Holmes. The woman hidden inside Odetta is the crafty and hate-filled Detta 
Walker. When this double woman is pulled into Roland's world, the results are 
volatile for Eddie and the rapidly sickening gunslinger. Odetta believes that 
what's happening to her is either a dream or a delusion; Detta, a much more 
brutally direct intellect, simply dedicates herself to the task of killing 
Roland and Eddie whom she sees as torturing white devils.
Jack Mort, a serial killer hiding behind the third door (the New York of the 
mid-1970s), is Death. Mort has twice caused great changes in the life of Odetta 
Holmes/Detta Walker, although neither of them knows it. Mort, whose modus 
operandi is to either push his victims or drop some­thing on them from above, 
has done both to Odetta during the course of his mad (but oh so careful) career. 
When Odetta was a child, he dropped a brick on her head, sending the little girl 
into a coma and also occasioning the birth of Detta Walker, Odetta's hidden 
sister. Years later, in 1959, Mort encounters Odetta again and pushes her into 
the path of an oncoming subway train in Greenwich Village. Odetta survives Mort 
again, but at a price: the oncoming train severed both legs at the knee. Only 
the presence of a heroic young doctor (and, perhaps, the ugly but indomitable 
spirit of Detta Walker) saves her life ... or so it would seem. To Roland's eye, 
these interrelationships suggest a power greater than mere coincidence; he 
believes the titanic forces, which surround the Dark Tower, have begun to gather 
once again.
Roland learns that Mort may stand at the heart of another mystery as well, one 
which is also a potentially mind-destroying paradox. For the victim Mort is 
stalking at the time the gunslinger steps into his life is none other than Jake, 
the boy Roland met at the way station and lost under the mountains. Roland has 
never had any cause to doubt Jake's story of how he died in our world, or any 
cause to question who Jake's murderer was -- Walter, of course. Jake saw him 
dressed as a priest as the crowd gathered around the spot where he lay dying, 
and Roland has never doubted the description.
Nor does he doubt it now; Walter was there, oh yes, no doubt about that. But 
suppose it was Jack Mort, not Walter, who pushed Jake into the path of the 
oncoming Cadillac? Is such a thing possible? Roland can't say, not for sure, but 
if that is the case, where is Jake now? Dead? Alive?
Caught somewhere in time? And if Jake Chambers is still alive and well in his 
own world of Manhattan in the mid-1970s, how is it that Roland still remembers 
him?
Despite this confusing and possibly dangerous development, the test of the 
doors -- and the drawing of the three -- ends in success for Roland. Eddie Dean 
accepts his place in Roland's world because he has fallen in love with The Lady 
of the Shadows. Detta Walker and Odetta Holmes, the other two of Roland's three, 
are driven together into one personality combining elements of both Detta and 
Odetta when the gunslinger is finally able to force the two personalities to 
acknowledge each other. This hybrid is able to accept and return Eddie's love. 
Odetta Susannah Holmes and Detta Susannah Walker thus become a new woman, a 
third woman: Susannah Dean.
Jack Mort dies beneath the wheels of the same subway -- that fabled A-train -- which 
took Odetta's legs fifteen or sixteen years before. No great loss there.
And for the first time in untold years, Roland of Gilead is no longer alone in 
his quest for the Dark Tower. Cuthbert and Alain, his lost companions of yore, 
have been replaced by Eddie and Susannah . . . but the gunslinger has a way of 
being bad medicine for his friends. Very bad medicine, indeed.
The Waste Lands takes up the story of these three pilgrims on the face of 
Mid-World some months after the confrontation by the final door on the beach. 
They have moved some fair way inland. The period of rest is ending, and a period 
of learning has begun. Susannah is learning to shoot . . . Eddie is learning to 
carve . . . and the gunslinger is learning how it feels to lose one's mind, a 
piece at a time.
(One further note: My New York readers will know that I have taken certain 
geographical liberties with the city. For these I hope I may be forgiven.)


A heap of broken images, where the sun heats.
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow in the morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
-- T. S. ELIOT "The Waste Land"


If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk 
Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents 
Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents 
In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to balk 
All hope of greenness? 'tis a brute must walk 
Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.
-- ROBERT BROWNING "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"


"What river is it?" enquired Millicent idly. 
"It's only a stream. Well, perhaps a little more than that. 
It's called the Waste." 
"Is it really?" 
"Yes," said Winifred, "it is."
-- ROBERT AICKMAN "Hand in Glove"































BOOK ONE
JAKE
FEAR IN A HANDFUL OF DUST





I • BEAR AND BONE




















I BEAR AND BONE

1
IT WAS HER THIRD time with live ammunition . . . and her first time on the draw 
from the holster Roland had rigged for her.
They had plenty of live rounds; Roland had brought back better than three 
hundred from the world where Eddie and Susannah Dean had lived their lives up 
until the time of their drawing. But having ammu­nition in plenty did not mean 
it could be wasted; quite the contrary, in fact. The gods frowned upon wastrels. 
Roland had been raised, first by his father and then by Cort, his greatest 
teacher, to believe this, and so he still believed. Those gods might not punish 
at once, but sooner or later the penance would have to be paid . . . and the 
longer the wait, the greater the weight.
At first there had been no need for live ammunition, anyway. Roland had been 
shooting for more years than the beautiful brown-skinned woman in the wheelchair 
would believe. He had corrected her at first simply by watching her aim and 
dry-fire at the targets he had set up. She learned fast. Both she and Eddie 
learned fast.
As he had suspected, both were born gunslingers.
Today Roland and Susannah had come to a clearing less than a mile from the camp 
in the woods which had been home to them for almost two months now. The days had 
passed with their own sweet similarity. The gunslinger's body healed itself 
while Eddie and Susannah learned the things the gunslinger had to teach them: 
how to shoot, to hunt, to gut and clean what they had killed; how to first 
stretch, then tan and cure the hides of those kills; how to use as much as it 
was possible to use so that no part of the animal was wasted; how to find north 
by Old Star or south by Old Mother; how to listen to the forest in which they 
now found themselves, sixty miles or more northeast of the Western Sea. Today 
Eddie had stayed behind, and the gunslinger was not put out of countenance by 
this. The lessons which are remembered the longest, Roland knew, are always the 
ones that are self-taught.
But what had always been the most important lesson was still most important: how 
to shoot and how to hit what you shot at every time. How to kill.
The edges of this clearing had been formed by dark, sweet-smelling fir trees 
that curved around it in a ragged semicircle. To the south, the ground broke off 
and dropped three hundred feet in a series of crumbling shale ledges and 
fractured cliffs, like a giant's set of stairs. A clear stream ran out of the 
woods and across the center of the clearing, first bubbling through a deep 
channel in the spongy earth and friable stone, then pour­ing across the 
splintery rock floor which sloped down to the place where the land dropped away.
The water descended the steps in a series of waterfalls and made any number of 
pretty, wavering rainbows. Beyond the edge of the drop-off was a magnificent 
deep valley, choked with more firs and a few great old elm trees which refused 
to be crowded out. These latter towered green and lush, trees which might have 
been old when the land from which Roland had come was yet young; he could see no 
sign that the valley had ever burned, although he supposed it must have drawn 
light­ning at some time or other. Nor would lightning have been the only danger. 
There had been people in this forest in some distant time; Roland had come 
across their leavings on several occasions over the past weeks. They were 
primitive artifacts, for the most part, but they included shards of pottery 
which could only have been cast in fire. And fire was evil stuff that delighted 
in escaping the hands which created it.
Above this picturebook scene arched a blameless blue sky in which a few crows 
circled some miles off, crying in their old, rusty voices. They seemed restless, 
as if a storm were on the way, but Roland had sniffed the air and there was no 
rain in it.
A boulder stood to the left of the stream. Roland had set up six chips of stone 
on top of it. Each one was heavily flecked with mica, and they glittered like 
lenses in the warm afternoon light.
"Last chance," the gunslinger said. "If that holster's uncomfortable -- even tin- 
slightest bit -- tell me now. We didn't come here to waste ammunition."
She cocked a sardonic eye at him, und for a moment he could see Detta Walker in 
there. It was like ha/y sunlight winking off a bar of steel. "What would you do 
if it was uncomfortable and I didn't tell you? If I missed all six of those itty 
bitty things? Whop me upside the head like that old teacher of yours used to 
do?"
The gunslinger smiled. He had done more smiling these last five weeks than he 
had done in the five years which had come before them. "I can't do that, and you 
know it. We were children, for one thing --  children who hadn't been through our 
rites of manhood yet. You may slap a child to correct him, or her, but -- "
"In my world, whoppin' the kiddies is also frowned on by the better class of 
people," Susannah said dryly.
Roland shrugged. It was hard for him to imagine that sort of world --  did not the 
Great Book say "Spare not the birch so you spoil not the child"? -- but he didn't 
believe Susannah was lying. "Your world has not moved on," he said. "Many things 
are different there. Did I not see for myself that it is so?"
"I guess you did."
"In any case, you and Eddie are not children. It would be wrong for me to treat 
you as if you were. And if tests were needed, you both passed them."
Although he did not say so, he was thinking of how it had ended on the beach, 
when she had blown three of the lumbering lobstrosities to hell before they 
could peel him and Eddie to the bone. He saw her answering smile and thought she 
might be remembering the same thing.
"So what you goan do if I shoot fo' shit?"
"I'll look at you. I think that's all I'll need to do."
She thought this over, then nodded. "Might be."
She tested the gunbelt again. It was slung across her bosom almost like a 
shoulder-holster (an arrangement Roland thought of as a docker's clutch) and 
looked simple enough, but it had taken many weeks of trial and error -- and a great 
deal of tailoring -- to get it just right. The belt and the revolver which cocked 
its eroded sandalwood grip out of the ancient oiled holster had once been the 
gunslinger's; the holster had hung on his right hip. He had spent much of the 
last five weeks coming to realize it was never going to hang there again. Thanks 
to the lobstrosi­ties, he was strictly a lefthanded gun now.
"So how is it?" he asked again.
This time she laughed up at him. "Roland, this ole gunbelt's as com'fable as 
it's ever gonna be. Now do. you want me to shoot or are we just going to sit and 
listen to crowmusic from over yonder?"
He felt tension worming sharp little fingers under his skin now, and he supposed 
Cort had felt much the same at times like this under his gruff, bluff exterior. 
I le wanted her to be good ... needed her to be good. But to show how badly he 
wanted and needed -- that could lead to disaster.
"Tell me your lesson again, Susannah."
She sighed in mock exasperation . . . but as she spoke her smile faded and her 
dark, beautiful face became solemn. And from her lips he heard the old catechism 
again, made new in her mouth. He had never expected to hear these words from a 
woman. How natural they sounded . . . yet how strange and dangerous, as well.
" 'I do not aim with my hand; she who aims with her hand has forgotten the face 
of her father.
" 'I aim with my eye.
" 'I do not shoot with my hand; she who shoots with her hand has forgotten the 
face of her father.
" 'I shoot with my mind.
" 'I do not kill with my gun -- ' "
She broke off and pointed at the mica-shiny stones on the boulder.
"I'm not going to kill anything anyhow -- they're just itty bitty rocks."
Her expression -- a little haughty, a little naughty -- suggested that she expected 
Roland to be exasperated with her, perhaps even angry. Roland, however, had been 
where she was now; he had not forgotten that apprentice gunslingers were 
fractious and high-spirited, nervy and apt to bite exactly at the wrong moment . 
. . and he had discovered an unexpected capacity in himself. He could teach. 
More, he liked to teach, and he found himself wondering, from time to time, if 
that had been true of Cort, as well. He guessed that it had been.
Now more crows began to call raucously, these from the forest behind them. Some 
part of Roland's mind registered the fact that the new cries were agitated 
rather than merely quarrelsome; these birds sounded as if they had been scared 
up and away from whatever they had been feeding on. He had more important things 
to think about than whatever it was that had scared a bunch of crows, however, 
so he simply filed the information away and refocused his concentration on 
Susannah. To do otherwise with a 'prentice was to ask for a second, less playful 
bite. And who would be to blame for that? Who but the teacher? For was he not 
training her to bite? Training both of them to bite? Wasn't that what a 
gunslinger was, when you stripped off the few stern lines of ritual and stilled 
the few iron grace-notes of catechism? Wasn't he (or she) only a human hawk, 
trained to bite on command?
"No," he said. "They're not rocks."
She raised her eyebrows a little and began to smile again. Now that she saw he 
wasn't going to explode at her as he sometimes did when she was slow or 
fractious (or at least not yet), her eyes again took on the mocking sun-on-steel 
glint he associated with Detta Walker. "They ain't?" The teasing in her voice 
was still good - nut u red, but he thought it would turn mean if he let it. She 
was tense, keyed up, her claws already halfway out of their sheaths.
"No, they ain't," he said, returning her mockery. His own smile began to return, 
but it was hard and humorless. "Susannah, do you remember the honk mahfahs?"
Her smile began to fade.
"The honk mahfahs in Oxford Town?"
Her smile was gone.
"Do you remember what the honk mahfahs did to you and your friends?"
"That wasn't me," she said. "That was another woman." Her eyes had taken on a 
dull, sullen cast. He hated that look, but he also liked it just fine. It was 
the right look, the one that said the kindling was burning well and soon the 
bigger logs would start to catch.
"Yes. It was. Like it or not, it was Odetta Susannah Holmes, daugh­ter of Sarah 
Walker Holmes. Not you as you are, but you as you were. Remember the fire-hoses, 
Susannah? Remember the gold teeth, how you saw them when they used the hoses on 
you and your friends in Oxford? How you saw them twinkle when they laughed?"
She had told them these things, and many others, over many long nights as the 
campfire burned low. The gunslinger hadn't understood everything, but he had 
listened carefully, just the same. And remem­bered. Pain was a tool, after all. 
Sometimes it was the best tool.
"What's wrong with you, Roland? Why you want to go recallin that trash in my 
mind?"
Now the sullen eyes glinted at him dangerously; they reminded him of Alain's 
eyes when good-natured Alain was finally roused.
"Yonder stones are those men," Roland said softly. "The men who locked you in a 
cell and left you to foul yourself. The men with the clubs and the dogs. The men 
who called you a nigger cunt."
He pointed at them, moving his finger from left to right.
"There's the one who pinched your breast and laughed. There's the one who said 
he better check and see if you had something stuffed up your ass. There's the 
one who called you a chimpanzee in a five-hundred-dollar dress. That's the one 
that kept running his billyclub over the spokes of your wheelchair until you 
thought the sound would send you mad. There's the one who called your friend 
Leon pinko-fag. And the one on the end, Susannah, is Jack Mort.
"There. Those stones. Those men."
She was breathing rapidly now, her bosom rising and falling in swift little 
jerks beneath the gunslinger's gunbelt with its heavy freight of bul­lets. Her 
eyes had left him; they were looking at the mica-flecked chips of stone. Behind 
them and at some distance, a tree splintered and fell over. More crows called in 
the sky. Deep in the game which was no longer a game, neither of them noticed.
"Oh yeah?" she breathed. "That so?"
"It is. Now say your lesson, Susannah Dean, and be true." -   This time the 
words fell from her lips like small chunks of ice. Her right hand trembled 
lightly on the arm of her wheelchair like an idling engine.
" 'I do not aim with my hand; she who aims with her hand has forgotten the face 
of her father.
" 'I aim with my eye.' "
"Good."
" 'I do not shoot with my hand; she who shoots with her hand has forgotten the 
face of her father.
" 'I shoot with my mind.' "
"So it has ever been, Susannah Dean."
" 'I do not kill with my gun; she who kills with her gun has forgotten the face 
of her father.
" 'I kill with my heart.' "
"Then KILL them, for your father's sake!" Roland shouted. "KILL THEM ALL!"
Her right hand was a blur between the arm of the chair and the butt of Roland's 
sixgun. It was out in a second, her left hand descending, fanning at the hammer 
in flutters almost as swift and delicate as the wing of a hummingbird. Six flat 
cracks pealed off across the valley, and five of the six chips of stone set atop 
the boulder blinked out of existence.
For a moment neither of them spoke -- did not even breathe, it seemed -- as the echoes 
rolled back and forth, dimming. Even the crows were silent, at least for the 
time being.
The gunslinger broke the silence with four toneless yet oddly emphatic words: 
"It is very well."
Susannah looked at the gun in her hand as if she had never seen it before. A 
tendril of smoke rose from the barrel, perfectly straight in the windless 
silence. Then, slowly, she returned it to the holster below her bosom.
"Good, but not perfect," she said at last. "I missed one."
"Did you?" He walked over to the boulder and picked up the remaining chip of 
stone. He glanced at it, then tossed it to her.
She caught it with her left; her right stayed near the bolstered gun, he saw 
with approval. She shot better and more naturally than Eddie, but had not 
learned this particular lesson as swiftly as Eddie had done.
If she had been with them during the shootout at Balazar's nightclub, she might 
have. Now, Roland saw, she was at last learning that, too. She looked at the 
stone and saw the notch, barely a sixteenth of an inch deep, in its upper 
corner.
"You only clipped it," Roland said, returning to her, "but in a shooting scrape, 
sometimes that's all you wed. If you clip a fellow, throw his aim off ..." He 
paused. "Why an- you looking at me that way?"
"You don't know, do you? You really don't?"
"No. Your mind is often closed to me, Susannah."
There was no defensiveness in his voice, and Susannah shook her head in 
exasperation. The rapid turn-and-turn-about dance of her person­ality sometimes 
unnerved him; his seeming inability to say anything other than exactly what was 
on his mind never failed to do the same to her. He was the most literal man she 
had ever met.
"All right," she said, "I'll tell you why I'm looking at you that way, Roland. 
Because what you did was a mean trick. You said you wouldn't slap me, couldn't 
slap me, even if I cut up rough . . . but either you lied or you're very stupid, 
and I know you ain't stupid. People don't always slap with their hands, as every 
man and woman of my race could testify. We have a little rhyme where I come 
from: 'Sticks and stones will break my bones -- ' "
" ' -- yet taunts shall never wound me,' " Roland finished.
"Well, that's not exactly the way we say it, but I guess it's close enough. It's 
bullshit no matter how you say it. They don't call what you did a tongue-lashing 
for nothing. Your words hurt me, Roland -- are you gonna stand there and say you 
didn't know they would?"
She sat in her chair, looking up at him with bright, stern curiosity, and Roland 
thought -- not for the first time -- that the honk mahfahs of Susannah's land must 
have been either very brave or very stupid to cross her, wheelchair or no 
wheelchair. And, having walked among them, he didn't think bravery was the 
answer.
"I did not think or care about your hurt," he said patiently. "I saw you show 
your teeth and knew you meant to bite, so I put a stick in your jaws. And it 
worked . . . didn't it?"
Her expression was now one of hurt astonishment. "You bastardl"
Instead of replying, he took the gun from her holster, fumbled the cylinder open 
with the remaining two fingers on his right hand, and began to reload the 
chambers with his left hand.
"Of all the high-handed, arrogant -- "
"You needed to bite," he said in that same patient tone. "Had you not, you would 
have shot all wrong -- with your hand and your gun instead of your eye and mind and 
heart. Was that a trick? Was it arrogant? I think not. I think. Susannah, that 
you were the one with arrogance in her heart. I think you were the one with a 
mind to get up to tricks. That doesn't distress me. Quite the opposite. A 
gunslinger without teeth is no gunslinger."
"Damn it, I'm not a gunslinger!"
He ignored that; he could afford to. If she was no gunslinger, then he was a 
billy-bumbler. "If we were playing a game, I might have behaved differently. But 
this is no game. It ..."
His good hand went to his forehead for a moment and paused there, fingers tented 
just above the left temple. The tips of the fingers, she saw, were trembling 
minutely.
"Roland, what's ailing you?" she asked quietly.
The hand lowered slowly. He rolled the cylinder back into place and replaced die 
revolver in the holster she wore. "Nothing."
"Yes there is. I've seen it. Eddie has, too. It started almost as soon as we 
left the beach. It's something wrong, and it's getting worse."
"There is nothing wrong," he repeated.
She put her hands out and took his. Her anger was gone, at least for the time 
being. She looked earnestly up into his eyes. "Eddie and I . . . this isn't our 
world, Roland. Without you, we'd die here. We'd have your guns, and we can shoot 
them, you've taught us to do that well enough, but we'd die just the same. We 
... we depend on you. So tell me what's wrong. Let me try to help. Let us try to 
help."
He had never been a man who understood himself deeply or cared to; the concept 
of self-consciousness (let alone self-analysis) was alien to him. His way was to 
act -- to quickly consult his own interior, utterly mysterious workings, and then 
act. Of them all, he had been the most perfectly made, a man whose deeply 
romantic core was encased in a brutally simple box which consisted of instinct 
and pragmatism. He took one of those quick looks inside now and decided to tell 
her everything. There was something wrong with him, oh yes. Yes indeed. 
Something wrong with his mind, something as simple as his nature and as strange 
as the weird, wandering life into which that nature had impelled him.
He opened his mouth to say I'll tell you what's wrong, Susannah, and I'll do it 
in just three words. I'm going insane. But before he could begin, another tree 
fell in the forest -- it went with a huge, grinding crash. This treefall was 
closer, and this time they were not deeply engaged in a test of wills 
masquerading as a lesson. Both heard it, both heard the agitated cawing of the 
crows which followed it, and both registered the fact that the tree had fallen 
close to their camp.
Susannah had looked in the direction of the sound but now her eyes, wide and 
dismayed, returned to the gunslinger's face. "Eddie!" she said.
A cry rose from the deep green fastness of the woods in back of them -- a vast cry 
of rage. Another tree went, and then another. They fell in what sounded like a 
hail of mortar-fin-, Dry wood, the gunslinger thought. Dead trees.
"Eddie!" This time she screamed it. "Whatever it is, it's near Eddie!" Her hands 
flew to the wheels of her chair and began the laborious job of turning it 
around.
"No time for that." Roland seized her under her arms and pulled her free. He had 
carried her before when the going was too rough for her wheelchair -- both men 
had -- but she was still amazed by his uncanny, ruthless speed. At one moment she 
was in her wheelchair, an item which had been purchased in New York City's 
finest medical supply house in the fall of 1962. At the next she was balanced 
precariously on Roland's shoulders like a cheerleader, her muscular thighs 
gripping the sides of his neck, his palms over his head and pressing into the 
small of her back. He began to run with her, his sprung boots slapping the 
needle-strewn earth between the ruts left by her wheelchair.
"Odetta!" he cried, reverting in this moment of stress to the name by which he 
had first known her. "Don't lose the gun! For your father's sake!"
He was sprinting between the trees now. Shadow-lace and bright chains of 
sun-dapple ran across them in moving mosaics as Roland length­ened his stride. 
They were going downhill now. Susannah raised her left hand to ward off a branch 
that wanted to slap her from the gunslinger's shoulders. At the same moment she 
dropped her right hand to the butt of his ancient revolver, cradling it.
A mile, she thought. How long to run a mile? How long with him going flat-out 
like this? Not long, if he can keep his feet on these slippery needles . . . but 
maybe too long. Let him be all right, Lord -- let my Eddie be all right.
As if in answer, she heard the unseen beast loose its cry again. That vast voice 
was like thunder. Like doom.

2
HE WAS THE LARGEST creature in the forest which had once been known as the Great 
West Woods, and he was the oldest. Many of the huge old elms which Roland had 
noticed in the valley below had been little more than twigs sprouting from the 
ground when the bear came out of the dim unknown reaches of Out-World like a 
brutal, wandering king.
Once, the Old People had lived in the West Woods (it was their leavings which 
Roland had found from time to time during the last weeks), and they had gone in 
fear of the colossal, undying bear. They had tried to kill him when they first 
discovered they were not alone in the new territory to which they had come, but 
although their arrows enraged him, they did no serious damage. And he was not 
confused about the source of his torment, as were the other beasts of the 
forest --  even the predatory bushcats which denned and littered in the sandhills 
to the west. No; he knew where the arrows came from, this bear. Knew. And for 
every arrow which found its mark in the flesh below his shaggy pelt, he took 
three, four, perhaps as many as half a dozen of the Old People. Children if he 
could get them; women if he could not. Their warriors he disdained, and this was 
the final humiliation.
Eventually, as his real nature became clear to them, their efforts to kill him 
ceased. He was, of course, a demon incarnate -- or the shadow of a god. They called 
him Mir, which to these people meant "the world beneath the world." He stood 
seventy feet high, and after eighteen or more centuries of undisputed rule in 
the West Woods, he was dying. Perhaps the instrument of his death had at first 
been a microscopic organism in something he had eaten or drunk; perhaps it was 
old age; more likely a combination of both. The cause didn't matter; the 
ultimate result -- a rapidly multiplying colony of parasites foraging within his 
fabu­lous brain -- did. After years of calculating, brutal sanity, Mir had run mad.
The bear had known men were in his woods again; he ruled the forest and although 
it was vast, nothing of importance which happened there escaped his attention 
for long. He had drawn away from the new­comers, not because he was afraid but 
because he had no business with them, nor they with him. Then the parasites had 
begun their work, and as his madness increased he became sure that it was the 
Old People again, that the trap-setters and forest-burners had returned and 
would soon set about their old, stupid mischief once more. Only as he lay in his 
final den some thirty miles from the place of the newcomers, sicker with each 
day's dawning than he had been at sunset the night before, had he come to 
believe that the Old People had finally found some mischief which worked: 
poison.
He came this time not to take revenge for some petty wound but to stamp them out 
entirely before their poison could finish having its way with him . . . and as 
he travelled, all thought ceased. What was left was red rage, the rusty buzz of 
the thing on top of his head -- the turning thing between his ears which had once 
done its work in smooth silence --  and an eerily enhanced sense of smell which led 
him unerringly toward the camp of the three pilgrims.
The bear, whose real name was not Mir but something else entirely, made his way 
through the forest like a moving building, a shaggy tower with reddish-brown 
eyes. Those eyes glowed with fever and madness.
His huge head, now wearing a garland of broken brunches and fir­needles, swung 
ceaselessly from side to side. Every now and then he would sneeze in a muffled 
explosion of sound -- Ali-CHOW! -- and clouds of squirming white parasites would be 
discharged from his dripping nos­trils. His paws, armed with curved talons three 
feet in length, tore at the trees. He walked upright, sinking deep tracks in the 
soft black soil under the trees. He reeked of fresh balsam and old, sour shit.
The thing on top of his head whirred and squealed, squealed and whirred.
The course of the bear remained almost constant: a straight line which would 
lead him to the camp of those who had dared return to his forest, who had dared 
fill his head with dark green agony. Old People or New People, they would die. 
When he came to a dead tree, he some­times left the straight path long enough to 
push it down. The dry, explo­sive roar of its fall pleased him; when the tree 
had finally collapsed its rotten length on the forest floor or come to rest 
against one of its mates, the bear would push on through slanting bars of 
sunlight turned misty with floating motes of sawdust.

3
Two DAYS BEFORE, EDDIE Dean had begun carving again -- the first time he'd tried to 
carve anything since the age of twelve. He remembered that he had enjoyed doing 
it, and he believed he must have been good at it, as well. He couldn't remember 
that part, not for sure, but there was at least one clear indication that it was 
so: Henry, his older brother, had hated to see him doing it.
Oh lookit the sissy, Henry would say. Whatcha makin today, sissy? A dollhouse? A 
pisspot for your itty-bitty teeny peenie? Ohhh . . . ain't that CUTE?
Henry would never come right out and tell Eddie not to do some­thing; would 
never just walk up to him and say, would you mind quitting that, bro? See, it's 
pretty good, and when you do something that's pretty good, it makes me nervous. 
Because, you see, I'm the one that's supposed to be pretty good at stuff around 
here. Me. Henry Dean. So what I think I'll do, brother o' mine, is just sort of 
rag on you about certain things. I won't come right out and say, "Don't do that, 
it's makin me nervous," because that might make me sound, you know, a little 
fucked up in the head. But I can rag on you, because that's part of what big 
brothers do, right? All part of the image. I'll rag on you and tease you and 
make fun of you until you just . . . fucking . . . QUIT IT! Okay?
Well, it wasn't okay, not really, but in the Dean household, things usually went 
the way Henry wanted them to go. And until very recently, that had seemed 
right -- not okay but right. There was a small but crucial difference there, if you 
could but dig it. There were two reasons why it seemed right. One was an on-top 
reason; the other was an underneath reason.
The on-top reason was because Henry had to Watch Out for Eddie when Mrs. Dean 
was at work. He had to Watch Out all the time, because once there had been a 
Dean sister, if you could but dig it. She would have been four years older than 
Eddie and four years younger than Henry if she had lived, but that was the 
thing, you see, because she hadn't lived. She had been run over by a drunk 
driver when Eddie was two. She had been watching a game of hopscotch on the 
sidewalk when it happened.
As a lad, Eddie had sometimes thought of his sister while listening to Mel Alien 
doing the play-by-play on The Yankee Baseball Network. Someone would really 
pound one and Mel would bellow, "Holy cow, he got all of that one! SEEYA LATER!" 
Well, the drunk had gotten all of Gloria Dean, holy cow, seeya later. Gloria was 
now in that great upper deck in the sky, and it had not happened because she was 
unlucky or because the State of New York had decided not to jerk the jerk's 
license after his third OUI or even because God had bent down to pick up a 
peanut; it had happened (as Mrs. Dean frequently told her sons) because there 
had been no one around to Watch Out for Gloria.
Henry's job was to make sure nothing like that ever happened to Eddie. That was 
his job and he did it, but it wasn't easy. Henry and Mrs. Dean agreed on that, 
if nothing else. Both of them frequently reminded Eddie of just how much Henry 
had sacrificed to keep Eddie safe from drunk drivers and muggers and junkies and 
possibly even malevolent aliens who might be cruising around in the general 
vicinity of the upper deck, aliens who might decide to come down from their UFOs 
on nuclear-powered jet-skis at any time in order to kidnap little kids like 
Eddie Dean. So it was wrong to make Henry more nervous than this terrible 
responsibility had already made him. If Eddie was doing something that did make 
Henry more nervous, Eddie ought to cease doing that thing immediately. It was a 
way of paying Henry back for all the time Henry had spent Watching Out for 
Eddie. When you thought about it that way, you saw that doing things better than 
Henry could do them was very unfair.
Then there was the underneath reason. That reason (the world beneath the world, 
one might say) was more powerful, because it could never be stated: Eddie could 
not allow himself to be better than Henry at much of anything, because Henry 
was, for the most part, good for nothing . . . except Watching Out for Eddie, of 
course.

Henry taught Eddie how to play basketball in the playground near the apartment 
building where they lived -- this was in a cement suburb where the towers of 
Manhattan stood against the horizon like a dream and the welfare check was king. 
Eddie was eight years younger than Henry and much smaller, but he was also much 
faster. He had a natural feel for the game; once he got on the cracked, hilly 
cement of the court with the ball in his hands, the moves seemed to sizzle in 
his nerve-endings. He was faster, but that was no big deal. The big deal was 
this: he was better than Henry. If he hadn't known it from the results of the 
pick-up games in which they sometimes played, he would have known it from 
Henry's thunderous looks and the hard punches to the upper arm Henry often dealt 
out on their way home afterwards. These punches were supposedly Henry's little 
jokes -- "Two for flinching!" Henry would cry cheerily, and then whap-whap! Into 
Eddie's bicep with one knuckle extended -- but they didn't feel like jokes. They 
felt like warnings. They felt like Henry's way of saying You better not fake me 
out and make me look stupid when you drive for the basket, bro; you better 
remember that I'm Watching Out for You.
The same was true with reading . . . baseball . . . Ring-a-Levio . . . math . . 
. even jump-rope, which was a girl's game. That he was better at these things, 
or could be better, was a secret that had to be kept at all costs. Because Eddie 
was the younger brother. Because Henry was Watching Out for him. But the most 
important part of the underneath reason was also the simplest: these things had 
to be kept secret because Henry was Eddie's big brother, and Eddie adored him.

4
Two DAYS AGO, WHILE Susannah was skinning out a rabbit and Roland was starting 
supper, Eddie had been in the forest just south of camp. He had seen a funny 
spur of wood jutting out of a fresh stump. A weird, feeling -- he supposed it was 
the one people called déjà vu -- swept over him, and he found himself staring 
fixedly at the spur, which looked like a badly shaped doorknob. He was distantly 
aware that his mouth had gone dry.
After several seconds, he realized he was looking at the spur sticking out of 
the stump but thinking about the courtyard behind the building where he and 
Henry had lived -- thinking about the feel of the warm cement under his ass and the 
whopping smells of garbage from the dumpster around the corner in the alley. In 
this memory he had a chunk of wood in his left hand and a paring knife from the 
drawer by the sink in his right. The chunk of wood jutting from the stump had 
called up the memory of that brief period when he had fallen violently in love 
with wood-carving. It was just that the memory was buried so deep he hadn't 
realized, at first, what it was.
What he had loved most about carving was the seeing part, which happened even 
before you began. Sometimes you saw a car or a truck. Sometimes a dog or cat. 
Once, he remembered, it had been the face of an idol -- one of the spooky Easter 
Island monoliths he had seen in an issue of National Geographic at school. That 
had turned out to be a good one. The game was to find out how much of that thing 
you could get out of the wood without breaking it. You could never get it all, 
but if you were very careful, you could sometimes get quite a lot.
There was something inside the boss on the side of the stump. He thought he 
might be able to release quite a lot of it with Roland's knife --  it was the 
sharpest, handiest tool he had ever used.
Something inside the wood, waiting patiently for someone -- someone like him! -- to 
come along and let it out. To set it free.
Oh lookit the sissy! Whatcha makin today, sissy? A dollhouse? A pisspot for your 
itty-bitty teeny peenie? A slingshot, so you can pretend to hunt rabbits, just 
like the big boys? Awwww . . . ain't that CUTE?
He felt a burst of shame, a sense of wrongness; that strong sense of secrets 
that must be kept at any cost, and then he remembered -- again --  that Henry Dean, 
who had in his later years become the great sage and eminent junkie, was dead. 
This realization had still not lost its power to surprise; it kept hitting him 
in different ways, sometimes with sorrow, sometimes with guilt, sometimes with 
anger. On this day, two days before the great bear came charging out of the 
green corridors of the woods, it had hit him in the most surprising way of all. 
He had felt relief, and a soaring joy.
He was free.
Eddie had borrowed Roland's knife. He used it to cut carefully around the 
jutting boss of wood, then brought it back and sat beneath a tree with it, 
turning it this way and that. He was not looking at it; he was looking into it.
Susannah had finished with her rabbit. The meat went into the pot over the fire; 
the skin she stretched between two sticks, tying it with hanks of rawhide from 
Roland's purse. Later on, after the evening meal, Eddie would begin scraping it 
clean. She used her hands and arms, slipping effortlessly over to where Eddie 
was sitting with his back propped against the tall old pine. At the campfire, 
Roland was crumbling some arcane -- and no doubt delicious -- woods-herb into the pot. 
"What's doing, Eddie?"
Eddie had found himself restraining an absurd urge to hide the boss of wood 
behind his back. "Nothing," he said. "Thought I might, you know, curve 
something." He paused, then added: "I'm not very good, though." He sounded as if 
he might be trying to reassure her of this fact.
She had looked at him, puzzled. For a moment she seemed on the verge of saying 
something, then simply shrugged and left him alone. She had no idea why Eddie 
seemed ashamed to be passing a little time in whittling -- her father had done it 
all the time -- but if it was something that needed to be talked about, she 
supposed Eddie would get to it in his own time.
He knew the guilty feelings were stupid and pointless, but he also knew he felt 
more comfortable doing this work when Roland and Susan­nah were out of camp. Old 
habits, it seemed, sometimes died hard. Beating heroin was child's play compared 
to beating your childhood.
When they were away, hunting or shooting or keeping Roland's peculiar form of 
school, Eddie found himself able to turn to his piece of wood with surprising 
skill and increasing pleasure. The shape was in there, all right; he had been 
right about that. It was a simple one, and Roland's knife was setting it free 
with an eerie ease. Eddie thought he was going to get almost all of it, and that 
meant the slingshot might actually turn out to be a practical weapon. Not much 
compared to Roland's big revolvers, maybe, but something he had made himself, 
just the same. His. And this idea pleased him very much.
When the first crows rose in the air, cawing affrightedly, he did not hear. He 
was already thinking -- hoping -- that he might see a tree with a bow trapped in it 
before too long.

5
HE HEARD THE BEAR approaching before Roland and Susannah did, but not much 
before -- he was lost in that high daze of concentration which accompanies the 
creative impulse at its sweetest and most powerful. He had suppressed these 
impulses for most of his life, and now this one held him wholly in its grip. 
Eddie was a willing prisoner.
He was pulled from his daze not by the sound of falling trees but by the rapid 
thunder of a .45 from the south. He looked up, smiling, and brushed hair from 
his forehead with a sawdusty hand. In that moment, sitting with his back against 
a tall pine in the clearing which had become home, his face crisscrossed with 
opposing beams of green-gold forest light, he looked handsome indeed -- a young man 
with unruly dark hair which constantly tried to spill across his high forehead, 
a young man with a strong, mobile mouth and hazel eyes.
For a moment his eyes shifted to Roland's other gun, hanging by its belt from a 
nearby branch, and he found himself wondering how long it had been since Roland 
had gone anywhere without at least one of his fabulous weapons hanging by his 
side. That question led to two others.
How old was he, this man who had plucked Eddie and Susannah from their world and 
their whens? And, more important, what was wrong with him?
Susannah had promised to broach that subject ... if she shot well and didn't get 
Roland's back hair up, that was. Eddie didn't think Roland would tell her -- not at 
first -- but it was time to let old long tall and ugly know that they knew 
something was wrong.
"There'll be water if God wills it," Eddie said. He turned back to his carving 
with a little smile playing on his lips. They had both begun to pick up Roland's 
little sayings . . . and he theirs. It was almost as if they were halves of die 
same -- 
Then a tree fell close by in the forest, and Eddie was on his feet in a second, 
the half-carved slingshot in one hand, Roland's knife in the other. He stared 
across the clearing in the direction of die sound, heart thumping, all his 
senses finally alert. Something was coming. Now he could hear it, trampling its 
heedless way through the underbrush, and he marvelled bitterly that this 
realization had come so late. Far back in his mind, a small voice told him this 
was what he got. This was what he got for doing something better than Henry, for 
making Henry nervous.
Another tree fell with a ratcheting, coughing crash. Looking down a ragged aisle 
between the tall firs, Eddie saw a cloud of sawdust rise in the still air. The 
creature responsible for that cloud suddenly bellowed --  a raging, gut-freezing 
sound.
It was one huge motherfucker, whatever it was.
He dropped the chunk of wood, then flipped Roland's knife at a tree fifteen feet 
to his left. It somersaulted twice in the air and then stuck halfway to the hilt 
in the wood, quivering. He grabbed Roland's .45 from the place where it hung and 
cocked it.
Stand or run?
But he discovered he no longer had the luxury of that question. The thing was 
fast as well as huge, and it was now too late to run. A gigantic shape began to 
disclose itself in that aisle of trees north of the clearing, a shape which 
towered above all but the tallest trees. It was lumbering directly toward him, 
and as its eyes fixed upon Eddie Dean, it gave voice to another of those cries.
"Oh man, I'm fucked," Eddie whispered as another tree bent, cracked like a 
mortar, then crashed to the forest floor in a cloud of dust and dead needles. 
Now it was lumbering straight toward the clearing where he stood, a bear die 
size of King Kong. Its footfalls made the ground shake.
What will you do, Eddie? Roland suddenly asked. Think! It's the only advantage 
you have over yon beast. What will you do?
He didn't think he could kill it. Maybe with a bazooka, hut probably not with 
the gunslinger's .45. He could run, but had an idea that the oncoming beast 
might be pretty fast when it wanted to be. He guessed the chances of ending up 
as jam between the great bear s toes might be as high as fifty-fifty.
So which one was it going to be? Stand here and start shooting or run like his 
hair was on fire and his ass was catching?
It occurred to him that there was a third choice. He could climb.
He turned toward the tree against which he had been leaning. It was a huge, 
hoary pine, easily the tallest tree in this part of the woods. The first branch 
spread out over the forest floor in a feathery green fan about eight feet up. 
Eddie dropped the revolver's hammer and then jammed the gun into the waistband 
of his pants. He leaped for the branch, grabbed it, and did a frantic chin-up. 
Behind him, the bear gave voice to another bellow as it burst into the clearing.
The bear would have had him just the same, would have left Eddie Dean's guts 
hanging in gaudy strings from the lowest branches of the pine, if another of 
those sneezing fits had not come on it at that moment. It kicked the ashy 
remains of the campfire into a black cloud and then stood almost doubled over, 
huge front paws on its huge thighs, looking for a moment like an old man in a 
fur coat, an old man with a cold. It sneezed again and again -- AH-CHOW! AH-CHOW! 
AH-CHOW! -- and clouds of parasites blew out of its muzzle. Hot urine flowed in a 
stream between its legs and hissed out the campfire's scattered embers.
Eddie did not waste the few crucial extra moments he had been given. He went up 
the tree like a monkey on a stick, pausing only once to make sure the 
gunslinger's revolver was still seated firmly in the waist­band of his pants. He 
was in terror, already half convinced that he was going to die (what else could 
he expect, now that Henry wasn't around to Watch Out for him?), but a crazy 
laughter raved through his head just the same. Been treed, he thought. How bout 
that, sports fans? Been treed by Bearzilla.
The creature raised its head again, the thing turning between its ears catching 
winks and flashes of sunlight as it did so, then charged Eddie's tree. It 
reached high with one paw and slashed forward, meaning to knock Eddie loose like 
a pinecone. The paw tore through the branch he was standing on just as he lunged 
upward to the next. That paw tore through one of his shoes as well, pulling it 
from his foot and sending it flying in two ragged pieces.
That's okay, Eddie thought. You can have em both, Br'er Bear, if you want. 
Goddam things were worn out, anyway.
The bear roared and lashed at the tree, cutting deep wounds in its ancient bark, 
wounds which bled clear, resinous sap. Eddie kept on yanking himself up. The 
branches were thinning now, and when he risked a glance down he stared directly 
into the bear's muddy eyes. Below its cocked head, the clearing had become a 
target with the scattered smudge of campfire as its bullseye.
"Missed me, you hairy motherf -- " Eddie began, and then the bear, its head still 
cocked back to look at him, sneezed. Eddie was immediately drenched in hot snot 
that was filled with thousands of small white worms. They wriggled frantically 
on his shirt, his forearms, his throat and face.
Eddie screamed in mingled surprise and revulsion. He began to brush at his eyes 
and mouth, lost his balance, and just managed to hook an arm around the branch 
beside him in time. He held on and raked at his skin, wiping off as much of the 
wormy phlegm as he could. The bear roared and hit the tree again. The pine 
rocked like a mast in a gale . . . but the fresh claw-marks which appeared were 
at least seven feet below the branch on which Eddie's feet were planted.
The worms were dying, he realized -- must have begun dying as soon as they left the 
infected swamps inside the monster's body. It made him feel a little better, and 
he began to climb again. He stopped twelve feet further up, daring to go no 
higher. The trunk of the pine, easily eight feet in diameter at its base, was 
now no more than eighteen inches through the middle. He had distributed his 
weight on two branches, but he could feel both of them bending springily beneath 
him. He had a crow's nest view of the forest and foothills to the west now, 
spread out below him in an undulating carpet. Under other circumstances, it 
would have been a view to relish.
Top of the world, Ma, he thought. He looked down into the bear's upturned face 
again, and for a moment all-coherent thought was driven from his mind by simple 
amazement.
There was something growing out of the bear's skull, and to Eddie it looked like 
a small radar-dish.
The gadget turned jerkily, kicking up flashes of sun as it did, and Eddie could 
hear it screaming thinly. He had owned a few old cars in his time -- the kind that 
sat in the used-car lots with the words HANDYMAN'S SPECIAL soaped on the 
windshields -- and he thought the sound coming from that gadget was the sound of 
bearings which will freeze up if they are not replaced soon.
The bear uttered a long, purring growl. Yellowish foam, thick with worms, 
squeezed between its paws in curdled gobbets. If he had never looked into the 
face of utter lunacy (and he supposed he had, having been eyeball to eyeball 
with that world-class bitch Detta Walker on more than one occasion), Eddie was 
looking into it now . . . but that face was, thankfully, a good thirty feet 
below him, and at their highest reach those killing talons were fifteen feet 
under the soles of his feet. And, unlike the trees upon which the bear had 
vented its spleen as it approached the clearing, this one was not dead.
"Mexican standoff, honey, Eddie panted.  He wiped sweat from his forehead with 
one sap-sticky hand and flicked the mess down into the bugbear's face.
Then the creature the Old People had called Mir embraced the tree with its great 
forepaws and began to shake it. Eddie grabbed the trunk and held on for dear 
life; eyes squeezed into grim slits, as the pine began to sway back and forth 
like a pendulum.

6
ROLAND HALTED AT THE EDGE of the clearing. Susannah, perched on his shoulders, 
stared unbelievingly across the open space. The creature stood at the base of 
the tree where Eddie had been when the two of them left the clearing forty-five 
minutes ago. She could see only chunks and sections of its body through the 
screen of branches and dark green needles. Roland's other gunbelt lay beside one 
of the monster's feet. The holster, she saw, was empty.
"My God," she murmured.
The bear screamed like a distraught woman and began shaking the tree. The 
branches lashed as if in a high wind. Her eyes skated upward and she saw a dark 
form near the top. Eddie was hugging the trunk as the tree rocked and rolled. As 
she watched, one of his hands slipped and flailed wildly for purchase.
"What do we do?" she screamed down at Roland. "It's goan shake him loose! What 
do we do?"
Roland tried to think about it, but that queer sensation had returned again -- it 
was always with him now, but stress seemed to make it worse. He felt like two 
men existing inside one skull. Each man had his own set of memories, and when 
they began to argue, each insisting that his memories were the true ones, the 
gunslinger felt as if he were being ripped in two. He made a desperate effort to 
reconcile these two halves and succeeded ... at least for the moment.
"It's one of the Twelve!" he shouted. "One of the Guardians! Must be! But I 
thought they were -- "
The bear bellowed up at Eddie again. Now it began to slap at the tree like a 
punchy fighter. Branches snapped and fell around its feet in a tangle.
"What?" Susannah screamed. "What's the rest?"
Roland closed his eyes. Inside his head, a voice shouted, The boy's name was 
Jake! Another voice shouted back, There WAS no boy! There WAS no boy, and you 
know it!
Get away, both of you! he snarled, and then called out aloud: "Shoot it! Shoot 
it in the ass, Susannah! It'll turn and charge! When it does, look for something 
on its head! It -- "
The bear squalled again. It gave up slapping the tree and went back to shaking 
it. Ominous popping, grinding sounds were now coming from the upper part of the 
trunk.
When he could be heard again, Roland shouted: "I think it looks like a hat! A 
little steel hat! Shoot it, Susannah! And don't miss!"
Terror suddenly filled her -- terror and another emotion, one she would never have 
expected: crushing loneliness.
"No! I'll miss! You do it, Roland!" She began to fumble his revolver out of the 
belt she wore, meaning to give it to him.
"Can't!" Roland shouted. "The angle's bad! You have to do it, Susan­nah! This is 
the real test, and you'd better pass it!"
"Roland -- "
"It means to snap the top of the tree off!" he roared at her. "Can't you see 
that?"
She looked at the revolver in her hand. Looked across the clearing, at the 
gigantic bear obscured in the clouds and sprays of green needles. Looked at 
Eddie, swaying back and forth like a metronome. Eddie proba­bly had Roland's 
other gun, but Susannah could see no way he could use it without being shaken 
from his perch like an over-ripe plum. Also, he might not shoot at the right 
thing.
She raised the revolver. Her stomach was thick with dread. "Hold me still, 
Roland," she said. "If you don't -- "
"Don't worry about me!"
She fired twice, squeezing the shots as Roland had taught her. The heavy reports 
cut across the sound of the bear shaking the tree like the cracks of a bullwhip. 
She saw both bullets strike home in the left cheek of the bear's rump, less than 
two inches apart.
It shrieked in surprise, pain, and outrage. One of its huge front paws came out 
of the dense screen of branches and needles and slapped at the hurt place. The 
hand came away dripping scarlet and rose back out of sight. Susannah could 
imagine it up there, examining its bloody palm. Then there was a rushing, 
rustling, snapping sound as the bear turned, bending down at the same time, 
dropping to all fours in order to achieve maximum speed. For the first time she 
saw its face, and her heart quailed. Its muzzle was lathered with foam; its huge 
eyes glared like lamps. Its shaggy head swung to the left . . . back to the 
right . . . and centered upon Roland, who stood with his legs apart and Susannah 
Dean balanced on his shoulders.
With a shattering roar, the bear charged.

7
SAY YOUR LESSON, Susannah Dean, and be true.
The bear came at them in a rumbling lope; it was like watching a runaway factory 
machine over which someone had thrown a huge, moth-eaten rug.
It looks like a hat! A little steel hat!
She saw it ... but it didn't look like a hat to her. It looked like a 
radar-dish -- a much smaller version of the kind she had seen in Movie Tone 
newsreel stories about how the DEW-line was keeping everyone safe from a Russian 
sneak attack. It was bigger than the pebbles she had shot off the boulder 
earlier, but the distance was greater. Sun and shadow ran across it in deceiving 
dapples.
I do not aim with my hand; she who aims with her hand has forgotten the face of 
her father.
I can't do it!
I do not shoot with my hand; she who shoots with her hand has forgotten the face 
of her father.
I'll miss! I know I'll miss!
I do not kill with my gun; she who kills with her gun -- 
"Shoot it!" Roland roared. "Susannah, shoot it!"
With the trigger as yet unpulled, she saw the bullet go home, guided from muzzle 
to target by nothing more or less than her heart's fierce desire that it should 
fly true. All fear fell away. What was left was a feeling of deep coldness and 
she had time to think: This is what he feels. My God -- how does he stand it?
"I kill with my heart, motherfucker," she said, and the gunslinger's revolver 
roared in her hand.


8
THE SILVERY THING SPUN on a steel rod planted in the bear's skull. Susannah's 
bullet struck it dead center and the radar-dish blew into a hundred glittering 
fragments. The pole itself was suddenly engulfed in a burst of crackling blue 
fire which reached out in a net and seemed to grasp the sides of the bear's face 
for a moment.
It rose on its rear legs with a whistling howl of agony, its front paws boxing 
aimlessly at the air. It turned in a wide, staggering circle and began to flap 
its arms, as if it had decided to fly away. It tried to roar again but what came 
out instead was a weird warbling sound like an air-raid siren.
"It is very well." Roland sounded exhausted. "A good shot, fair and true."
"Should I shoot it again?" she asked uncertainly. The bear was still blundering 
around in its mad circle but now its body had begun to tilt sidewards and 
inwards. It struck a small tree, rebounded, almost fell over, and then began to 
circle again.
"No need," Roland said. She felt his hands grip her waist and lift her. A moment 
later she was sitting on the ground with her thighs folded beneath her. Eddie 
was slowly and shakily descending the pine, but she didn't see him. She could 
not take her eyes from the bear.
She had seen the whales at the Seaquarium near Mystic, Connecti­cut, and 
believed they had been bigger than this -- much bigger, proba­bly -- but this was 
certainly the largest land creature she had ever seen. And it was clearly dying. 
Its roars had become liquid bubbling sounds, and although its eyes were open, it 
seemed blind. It flailed aimlessly about the camp, knocking over a rack of 
curing hides, stamping flat the little shelter she shared with Eddie, caroming 
off trees. She could see the steel post rising from its head. Tendrils of smoke 
were rising around it, as if her shot had ignited its brains.
Eddie reached the lowest branch of the tree which had saved his life and sat 
shakily astride it. "Holy Mary Mother of God, he said. "I'm looking right at it 
and I still don t beli -- "
The bear wheeled back toward him. Eddie leaped nimbly from the tree and streaked 
toward Susannah and Roland. The bear took no notice, it marched drunkenly to the 
pine which had been Eddie's refuge, tried to grasp it, failed, and sank to its 
knees. Now they could hear other sounds coming from inside it, sounds that made 
Eddie think of some huge truck engine stripping its gears.
A spasm convulsed it, bowed its back. Its front claws rose and gored madly at 
its own face. Worm-infested blood flew and splattered. Then it fell over, making 
the ground tremble with its fall, and lay still. After all its strange 
centuries, the bear the Old People had called Mir -- the world beneath the 
world -- was dead.


9
EDDIE PICKED SUSANNAH UP, held her with his sticky hands locked together at the 
small of her back, and kissed her deeply. He reeked of sweat and pine-tar. She 
touched his cheeks, his neck; she ran her hands through his wet hair. She felt 
an insane urge to touch him everywhere until she was absolutely sure of his 
reality.
"It almost had me," he said. "It was like being on some crazy carni­val ride. 
What a shot! Jesus, Suze -- what a shot!'
"I hope I never have to do anything like that again," she said . . .but a small 
voice at the center of her demurred. That voice suggested that she could not 
wait to do something like that again. And it was cold, that voice. Cold.
"What was -- " he began, turning toward Roland, but Roland was no longer standing 
there. He was walking slowly toward the bear, which now lay on the ground with 
its shaggy knees up. From within it came a series of muffled gasps and gurgles 
as its strange guts continued to slowly run down.
Roland saw his knife planted deep in a tree near the scarred veteran that had 
saved Eddie's life. He pulled it free and wiped it clean on the soft deerskin 
shirt which had replaced the tatters he had been wearing when the three of them 
had left the beach. He stood by the bear, looking down at it with an expression 
of pity and wonder.
Hello, stranger, he thought. Hello, old friend. I never believed in you, not 
really. I believe Alain did, and I know that Cuthbert did --  Cuthbert believed in 
everything -- but I was the hardheaded one. I thought you were only a tale for 
children . . . another wind which blew around in my old nurse's hollow head 
before finally escaping her jab­bering mouth. But you were here all along, 
another refugee of the old times, like the pump at the way station and the old 
machines under the mountains. Are the Slow Mutants who worshipped those broken 
remnants the final descendents of the people who once lived in this forest and 
finally fled your wrath? I don't know, will never know . . . but it feels right. 
Yes. And then I came with my friends -- my deadly new friends, who are becoming so 
much like my deadly old friends. We came, weaving our magic circle around us and 
around everything we touch, strand by poi­sonous strand, and now here you lie, 
at our feet. The world has moved on again, and this time, old friend, it's you 
who have been left behind.
The monster's body still radiated a deep, sick heat. Parasites were leaving its 
mouth and tattered nostrils in hordes, but they died almost at once. Waxy-white 
piles of them were growing on either side of the bear's head.
Eddie approached slowly. He had shifted Susannah over to one hip, carrying her 
as a mother might carry a baby. "What was it, Roland? Do you know?"
"He called it a Guardian, I think," Susannah said.
"Yes." Roland's voice was slow with amazement. "I thought they were all gone, 
must all be gone ... if they ever existed outside of the old wives' tales in the 
first place."
"Whatever it was, it was one crazy mother," Eddie said.
Roland smiled a little. "If you'd lived two or three thousand years, you'd be 
one crazy mother, too."
"Two or three thousand . . . Christ!"
Susannah said, "Is it a bear? Really? And what's that?" She was pointing at what 
appeared to be a square metal tag set high on one of the bear's thick rear legs. 
It was almost overgrown with tough tangles of hair, but the afternoon sun had 
pricked out a single starpoint of light on its stainless steel surface, 
revealing it.
Eddie knelt and reached hesitantly toward the tag, aware that strange muffled 
clicks and clacks were still coming from deep inside the fallen giant. He looked 
at Roland.
"Go ahead," the gunslinger told him. "It's finished."
Eddie pushed a clump of hair aside and leaned closer. Words had been stamped 
into the metal. They were quite badly eroded, but he found that with a little 
effort he could read them.

NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LTD.
Granite City Northeast Corridor
Design 4 GUARDIAN
Serial # AA 24123 CX 755431297 L 14
Type/Species BEAR
SHARDIK
**NR**SUBNUCLEAR CELLS MUST NOT BE REPLACED**NR**

"Holy Jesus, this thing is a robot," Eddie said softly.
"It can't be," Susannah said. "When I shot it, it bled."
"Maybe so, but your ordinary, garden-variety bear doesn't have a radar-dish 
growing out of its head. And, so far as I know, your ordinary, garden-variety 
bear doesn't live to be two or three th -- " He broke off suddenly, looking at 
Roland. When he spoke again, his voice was revolted. "Roland, what are you 
doing?"
Roland did not reply; did not need to reply. What he was doing --  gouging out one 
of the bear's eyes with his knife -- was perfectly obvious. The surgery was quick, 
neat, and precise. When it was completed he bal­anced an oozing brown ball of 
jelly on the blade of his knife for a moment and then flicked it aside. A few 
more worms made their way out of the staring hole, tried to squirm their way 
down the bear's muzzle, and died.
The gunslinger leaned over the eyesocket of Shardik, the great Guardian bear, 
and peered inside. "Come and look, both of you," he said. "I'll show you a 
wonder of the latter days."
"Put me down, Eddie," Susannah said.
He did so, and she moved swiftly on her hands and upper thighs to where the 
gunslinger was hunkered down over the bear's wide, slack face. Eddie joined 
them, looking between their shoul­ders. The three of them gazed in rapt silence 
for nearly a full minute; the only noise came from the crows which still circled 
and scolded in the sky.
Blood oozed from the socket in a few thick, dying trickles. Yet it was not just 
blood, Eddie saw. There was also a clear fluid which gave off an identifiable 
scent -- bananas. And, embedded in the delicate criss­cross of tendons which shaped 
the socket, he saw a webwork of what looked like strings. Beyond them, at the 
back of the socket, was a red spark, blinking on and off. It illuminated a tiny 
square board marked with silvery squiggles of what could only be solder.
"It isn't a bear, it's a fucking Sony Walkman," he muttered.
Susannah looked around at him. "What?"
"Nothing." Eddie glanced at Roland. "Do you think it's safe to reach in?"
Roland shrugged. "I think so. If there was a demon in this creature, it's fled."
Eddie reached in with his little finger; nerves set to draw back if he felt even 
a tickle of electricity. He touched the cooling meat inside the eyesocket, which 
was nearly the size of a baseball, and then one of those strings. Except it 
wasn't a string; it was a gossamer-thin strand of steel. He withdrew his finger 
and saw the tiny red spark blink once more before going out forever.
"Shardik," Eddie murmured. "I know that name, but I can't place it. Does it mean 
anything to you, Suze?"
She shook her head.
"The thing is . . ." Eddie laughed helplessly. "I associate it with rabbits. 
Isn't that nuts?"
Roland stood up. His knees popped like gunshots. "We'll have to move camp," he 
said. "The ground here is spoiled. The other clearing, the one where we go to 
shoot, will -- "
He took two trembling steps and then collapsed to his knees, palms pressed to 
the sides of his sagging head.


10
EDDIE AND SUSANNAH EXCHANGED a single frightened glance and then Eddie leaped to 
Roland's side. "What is it? Roland, what's wrong?"
"There was a boy," the gunslinger said in a distant, muttering voice. And then, 
in the very next breath, "There wasn't a boy."
"Roland?" Susannah asked. She came to him, slipped an arm around his shoulders, 
felt him trembling. "Roland, what is it?"
"The boy," Roland said, looking at her with floating, dazed eyes. "It's the boy. 
Always the boy."
"What boy?" Eddie yelled frantically. "What boy?"
"Go then," Roland said, "there are other worlds than these." And fainted.


11
THAT NIGHT THE THREE of them sat around a huge bonfire Eddie and Susannah had 
built in the clearing Eddie called "the shooting gallery." It would have been a 
bad place to camp in the wintertime, open to the valley as it was, but for now 
it was fine. Eddie guessed that here in Roland's world it was still late summer.
The black vault of the sky arched overhead, speckled by what seemed to be whole 
galaxies. Almost straight ahead to the south, across the river of darkness that 
was the valley, Eddie could see Old Mother rising above the distant, unseen 
horizon. He glanced at Roland, who sat huddled by the fire with three skins 
wrapped around his shoulders despite the warmth of the night and the heat of the 
fire. There was an untouched plate of food by his side and a bone cradled in his 
hands. Eddie glanced back at the sky and thought of a story the gunslinger had 
told him and Susannah on one of the long days they had spent moving away from 
the beach, through the foothills, and finally into these deep woods where they 
had found a temporary refuge.
Before time began, Roland said, Old Star and Old Mother had been young and 
passionate newlyweds. Then one day there had been a terrible argument. Old 
Mother (who in those long-ago days had been known by her real name, which was 
Lydia) had caught Old Star (whose real name was Apon) hanging about a beautiful 
young woman named Cassiopeia. They'd had a real bang-up fight, those two, a 
hair-pulling, eye-gouging, crockery-throwing fight. One of those thrown bits of 
crockery had become the earth; a smaller shard the moon, a coal from their 
kitchen stove had become the sun. In the end, the gods had stepped in so Apon 
and Lydia might not, in their anger, destroy the universe before it was fairly 
begun. Cassiopeia, the saucy jade who caused the trouble in the first place 
("Yeah, right -- it's always the woman," Susannah had said at this point), had been 
banished to a rocking-chair made of stars forever and ever. Yet not even this 
had solved the problem. Lydia had been willing to try again, but Apon was 
stiffnecked and full of pride ("Yeah, always blame the man," Eddie had grunted 
at this point). So they had parted, and now they look at each other in mingled 
hatred and longing from across the star-strewn wreckage of their divorce. Apon 
and Lydia are three billion years gone, the gunslinger told them; they have 
become Old Star and Old Mother, the north and south, each pining for the other 
but both now too proud to beg for reconciliation . . . and Cassiopeia sits off 
to the side in her chair, rocking and laughing at them both.
Eddie was startled by a soft touch on his arm. It was Susannah. "Come on," she 
said. "We've got to make him talk."
Eddie carried her to the campfire and put her down carefully on Roland's right 
side. He sat on Roland's left. Roland looked first at Susan­nah, then at Eddie.
"How close you both sit to me," he remarked. "Like lovers ... or warders in a 
gaol."
"It's time for you to do some talking." Susannah's voice was low, clear, and 
musical. "If we're your companions, Roland -- and it seems like we are, like it or 
not -- it's time you started treating us as companions. Tell us what's wrong ..."
"... and what we can do about it," Eddie finished.
Roland sighed deeply. "I don't know how to begin," he said. "It's been so long 
since I've had companions ... or a tale to tell ..."
"Start with the bear," Eddie said.
Susannah leaned forward and touched the jawbone Roland held in his hands. It 
frightened her, but she touched it anyway. "And finish with this."
"Yes." Roland lifted the bone to eye-level and looked at it for a moment before 
dropping it back into his lap. "We'll have to speak of this, won't we? It's the 
center of the thing."
But the bear came first.


12
"THIS IS THE STORY I was told when I was a child," Roland said. "When everything 
was new, the Great Old Ones -- they weren't gods, but people who had almost the 
knowledge of gods -- created Twelve Guardians to stand watch at the twelve portals 
which lead in and out of the world. Sometimes I heard that these portals were 
natural things, like the constel­lations we see in the sky or the bottomless 
crack in the earth we called Dragon's Grave, because of the great burst of steam 
they gave off every thirty or forty days. But other people -- one I remember in 
particular, the head cook in my father's castle, a man named Hax -- said they were 
not natural, that they had been created by the Great Old Ones themselves, in the 
days before they hanged themselves with pride like a noose and disappeared from 
the earth. Hax used to say that the creation of the Twelve Guardians was the 
last act of the Great Old Ones, their attempt to atone for the great wrongs they 
had done to each other, and to the earth itself."
"Portals," Eddie mused. "Doors, you mean. We're back to those again. Do these 
doors that lead in and out of the world open on the world Suze and I came from? 
Like the ones we found along the beach?"
"I don't know," Roland said. "For every thing I do know, there are a hundred 
things I don't. You -- both of you -- will have to reconcile your­selves to that fact. 
The world has moved on, we say. When it did, it went like a great receding wave, 
leaving only wreckage behind . . . wreckage that sometimes looks like a map."
"Well, make a guess!" Eddie exclaimed, and the raw eagerness in his voice told 
the gunslinger that Eddie had not given up the idea of returning to his own 
world -- and Susannah's -- even now. Not entirely.
"Leave him be, Eddie," Susannah said. "The man don't guess."
"Not true -- sometimes the man does," Roland said, surprising them both. "When 
guessing's the only thing left, sometimes he does. The answer is no. I don't 
think -- I don't guess -- that these portals are much like the doors on the beach. I 
don't guess they go to a where or when that we would recognize. I think the 
doors on the beach -- the ones that led into the world you both came from -- were like 
the pivot at the center of a child's teeterboard. Do you know what that is?"
"Seesaw?" Susannah asked, and tipped her hand back and forth to demonstrate.
"Yes!" Roland agreed, looking pleased. "Just so. On one end of this sawsee-"
"Seesaw," Eddie said, smiling a little.
"Yes. On one end, my ka. On the other, that of the man in black --  Walter. The 
doors were the center, creations of the tension between two opposing destinies. 
These other portals are things far greater than Walter, or me, or the little 
fellowship we three have made."
"Are you saying," Susannah asked hesitantly, "that the portals where these 
Guardians stand watch are outside ka? Beyond ka?"
"I'm saying that I believe so." He offered his own brief smile, a thin sickle in 
the firelight. "That I guess so."
He was silent a moment, then he picked up a stick of his own. He brushed away 
the carpet of pine needles and used the stick to draw in the dirt beneath:


"Here is the world as I was told it existed when I was a child. The Xs are the 
portals standing in a ring at its eternal edge. If one drew six lines, 
connecting these portals in pairs -- so -- "




He looked up. "Do you see where the lines cross in the center?"
Eddie felt gooseflesh crawl up his back and down his arms. His mouth was 
suddenly dry. "Is that it, Roland? Is that -- ?"
Roland nodded. His long, lined face was grave. "At this nexus lies the Great 
Portal, the so-called Thirteenth Gate which rules not just this world but all 
worlds."
He tapped the center of the circle.
"Here is the Dark Tower for which I've searched my whole life.''


13
THE GUNSLINGER RESUMED: "At each of the twelve lesser portals the Great Old Ones 
set a Guardian. In my childhood I could have named them all in the rimes my 
nursemaid -- and Hax the cook -- taught to me . . . but my childhood was long ago. 
There was the Bear, of course, and the Fish . . . the Lion . . . the Bat. And 
the Turtle -- he was an important one . . ."
The gunslinger looked up into the starry sky, his brow creased in deep thought. 
Then an amazingly sunny smile broke across his features and he recited:

"See the TURTLE of enormous girth!
On his shell he holds the earth.
His thought is slow but always kind;
He holds us all within his mind.
On his back all vows are made;
He sees the truth but mayn't aid.
He loves the land and loves the sea,
And even loves a child like me."

Roland uttered a small, bemused laugh. "Hax taught that to me, singing it as he 
stirred the frosting for some cake and gave me little nips of the sweet from the 
edge of his spoon. Amazing what we remember, isn't it? Anyway, as I grew older, 
I came to believe that the Guardians didn't really exist -- that they were symbols 
rather than substance. It seems that I was wrong."
"I called it a robot," Eddie said, "but that's not what it really was. 
Susannah's right -- the only thing robots bleed when you shoot them is Quaker State 
10-40. I think it was what people of my world call a cyborg, Roland -- a creature 
that's part machine and part flesh and blood. There was a movie I saw . . . we 
told you about movies, didn't we?" '
Smiling a little, Roland nodded.
"Well, this movie was called Robocop, and the guy in it wasn't a lot different 
from the bear Susannah killed. How did you know where she should shoot it?"
"That I remembered from the old tales as Hax told them," he said. "If it had 
been up to my nursemaid, Eddie, you'd be in the belly of the bear now. Do they 
sometimes tell puzzled children in your world to put on their thinking caps?"
"Yes,'  Susannah said. "They sure do."
"It's said here, as well, and the saying comes from the story of the Guardians. 
Each supposedly carried an extra brain on the outside of its head. In a hat." He 
looked at them with his dreadfully haunted eyes and smiled again. "It didn t 
look much like a hat, did it?"
"No," Eddie said, "but the story was close enough to save our bacon."
"I think now that I've been looking for one of the Guardians ever since I began 
my quest," Roland said. "When we find the portal this Shardik guarded -- and that 
should only be a matter of following its back-trail -- we will finally have a 
course to follow. We must set the portal to our backs and then simply move 
straight ahead. At the center of the circle . . . the Tower."
Eddie opened his mouth to say. All right, let's talk about this Tower. Finally, 
once and for all, let's talk about it -- what it is, what it means, and, most 
important of all, what happens to us when we get there. But no sound came out, 
and after a moment he closed his mouth again. This wasn't the time -- not now, with 
Roland in such obvious pain. Not now, with only the spark of their campfire to 
keep the night at bay.
"So now we come to the other part," Roland said heavily. "I have finally found 
my course -- after all the long years I have found my course -- but at the same time I 
seem to be losing my sanity. I can feel it crumbling away beneath my feet, like 
a steep embankment which has been loosened by rain. This is my punishment for 
letting a boy who never existed fall to his death. And that is also ka."
"Who is this boy, Roland?" Susannah asked.
Roland glanced at Eddie. "Do you know?"
Eddie shook his head.
"But I spoke of him," Roland said. "In fact, I raved of him, when the infection 
was at its worst and I was near dying." The gunslinger's voice suddenly rose 
half an octave, and his imitation of Eddie's voice was so good that Susannah 
felt a coil of superstitious fright. " 'If you don't shut up about that goddam 
kid, Roland, I'll gag you with your own shirt! I'm sick of hearing about him!' 
Do you remember saying that, Eddie?"
Eddie thought it over carefully. Roland had spoken of a thousand things as the 
two of them made their tortuous way up the beach from the door marked THE 
PRISONER to the one marked THE LADY OF THE SHADOWS, and he had mentioned what 
seemed like a thousand names in his fever-heated monologues -- Alain, Cort, Jamie 
de Curry, Cuthbert (this one more often than all the others), Hax, Martin (or 
per­haps it was Marten, like the animal), Walter, Susan, even a guy with the 
unlikely name of Zoltan. Eddie had gotten very tired of hearing about these 
people he had never met (and didn't care to meet), but of course Eddie had had a 
few problems of his own at that time, heroin withdrawal and cosmic jet-lag being 
only two of them. And, if he was to be fair, he guessed Roland had gotten as 
tired of Eddie's own Fractured Fairy Tales -- the ones about how he and Henry had 
grown up together and turned into junkies together -- as Eddie had of Roland's.
But he couldn't remember ever telling Roland he would gag him with his own shirt 
if he didn't stop talking about some kid.
"Nothing comes to you?" Roland asked. "Nothing at all?"
Was there something? Some far-off tickle, like the feeling of déjà vu he'd 
gotten when he saw the slingshot hiding inside the chunk of wood jutting out of 
the stump? Eddie tried to find that tickle, but it was gone. He decided it had 
never been there in the first place; he only wanted it to be there, because 
Roland was hurting so badly.
"No," he said. "Sorry, man."
"But I did tell you." Roland's tone was calm, but urgency ran and pulsed beneath 
it like a scarlet thread. "The boy's name was Jake. I sacrificed him -- killed 
him -- in order that I might finally catch up with Walter and make him talk. I 
killed him under the mountains."
On this point Eddie could be more positive. "Well, maybe that's what happened, 
but it's not what you said happened. You said you went under the mountains 
alone, on some land of crazy handcar. You talked about that a lot while we were 
coming up the beach, Roland. About how scary it was to be alone."
"I remember. But I also remember telling you about the boy, and how he fell from 
the trestle into the chasm. And it's the distance between those two memories 
that is pulling my mind apart."
"I don't understand any of this," Susannah said worriedly.
"I think," Roland said, "that I'm just beginning to."
He threw more wood on the fire, sending thick sheaves of red sparks spiralling 
up into the dark sky, and then settled back between them. "I'll tell you a story 
that's true," he said, "and then I'll tell you a story that isn't true . . . but 
should be.
"I bought a mule in Pricetown, and when I finally got to lull, the last town 
before the desert, it was still fresh . . ."


14
So THE GUNSLINGER EMBARKED on the most recent part of his long tale. Eddie had 
heard isolated fragments of the story, but he listened in utter fascination, as 
did Susannah, for whom it was completely new. He told them about the bar with 
the endless game of Watch Me going on in the corner, the piano player named 
Sheb, the woman named Allie with the scar on her forehead . . . and about Nort, 
the weed-eater who had died and then been brought back to some sort of tenebrous 
life by the man in black. He told them about Sylvia Pittston, that avatar of 
religious insanity, and about the final apocalyptic slaughter, in which he, 
Roland the Gunslinger, had killed every man, woman, and child in town.
"Holy crispy crap!" Eddie said in a low, shaky voice. "Now I know why you were 
so low on shells, Roland."
"Be quiet!" Susannah snapped. "Let him finish!"
Roland went on, telling his story as stolidly as he had crossed the desert after 
passing the hut of the last Dweller, a young man whose wild, strawberry-colored 
hair had reached almost to his waist. He told them about how his mule had 
finally died. He even told them about how the Dweller's pet bird, Zoltan, had 
eaten the mule's eyes.
He told them about the long desert days and the short desert nights which had 
come next, and how he had followed the cool remains of Walter's campfires, and 
how he had come at last, reeling and dying of dehydration, to the way station.
"It was empty. It had been empty, I think, since the days when yonder great bear 
was still a newly made thing. I stayed a night and pushed on. That's what 
happened . . . but now I'll tell you another story."
"The one that isn't true but should be?" Susannah asked.
Roland nodded. "In this made-up story -- this fable -- a gunslinger named Roland met a 
boy named Jake at the way station. This boy was from your world, from your city 
of New York, and from a when some­place between Eddie's 1987 and Odetta Holmes's 
1963."
Eddie was leaning forward eagerly. "Is there a door in this story, Roland? A 
door marked THE BOY, or something like that?"
Roland shook his head. "The boy's doorway was death. He was on his way to school 
when a man -- a man I believed to be Walter -- pushed him into the street, where he 
was run over by a car. He heard this man say something like 'Get out of the way, 
let me through, I'm a priest.' Jake saw this man -- just for an instant -- and then he 
was in my world."
The gunslinger paused, looking into the fire.
"Now I want to leave this story of the boy who was never there and go back to 
what really happened for a minute. All right?"
Eddie and Susannah exchanged a puzzled glance and then Eddie made an "after you, 
my dear Alphonse" gesture with his hand.
"As I have said, the way station was deserted. There was, however, a pump that 
still worked. It was at the back of the stable where the coach-horses were kept. 
I followed my ears to it, but I would have found it even if it had been 
completely silent. I swelled the water, you see. After enough time in the 
desert, when you are on the edge of dying from thirst, you can really do that. I 
drank and then slept. When I woke, I drank again. I wanted to push on at 
once -- the need to do that was like a fever. The medicine you brought me from your 
world -- the astin -- is wonderful stuff, Eddie, but there are fevers beyond the power 
of any medicine to cure, and this was one of them. I knew my body needed rest, 
but it still took every ounce of my willpower to stay there even one night. In 
the morning I felt rested, and so I refilled my waterskins and pushed on. I took 
nothing from that place but water. That's the most important part of what really 
happened."
Susannah spoke in her most reasonable, pleasant, and Odetta Holmes -- like voice. 
"All right, that's what really happened. You refilled your waterskins and went 
on. Now tell us the rest of what didn't happen, Roland."
The gunslinger put the jawbone in his lap for a moment, curled his hands into 
fists, and rubbed his eyes with them -- a curiously childlike gesture. Then he 
grasped the jawbone again, as if for courage, and went on.
"I hypnotized the boy who wasn't there," he said. "I did it with one of my 
shells. It's a trick I've known for years, and I learned it from a very unlikely 
source -- Marten, my father's court magician. The boy was a good subject. While he 
was tranced, he told me the circumstances of his death, as I've told them to 
you. When I'd gotten as much of his story as I felt I could without upsetting or 
actually hurting him, I gave him a command that he should not remember anything 
about his dying when he woke up again."
"Who'd want to?" Eddie muttered.
Roland nodded. "Who, indeed? The boy passed from his trance directly into a 
natural sleep. I also slept. When we woke, I told the boy that I meant to catch 
the man in black. He knew who I meant; Walter had also stopped at the way 
station. Jake was afraid and hid from him. I'm sure Walter knew he was there, 
but it suited his purpose to pretend he didn't. He left the boy behind like a 
set trap.
"I asked him if there was anything to eat there. It seemed to me there must be. 
He looked healthy enough, and the desert climate is wonderful when it comes to 
preserving things. He had a little dried meat, and he said there was a cellar. 
He hadn't explored that, because he was afraid." The gunslinger looked at them 
grimly. "He was right to be afraid. I found food . . . and I also found a 
Speaking Demon."
Eddie looked down at the jawbone with widening eyes. Orange fire­light danced on 
its ancient curves and hoodoo teeth. "Speaking Demon? Do you mean that thing?"
"No," he said. "Yes. Both. Listen and you shall understand."
He told them about the inhuman groans he'd heard coming from the earth beyond 
the cellar; how he had seen sand running from between two of the old blocks 
which made up the cellar walls. He told them of approaching the hole that was 
appearing there as Jake screamed for him to come up.
He had commanded the demon to speak . . . and so the demon had, in the voice of 
Allie, the woman with the scar on her forehead, the woman who had kept the bar 
in Tull. Go slow past the Drawers, gun­slinger. While you travel with the boy, 
the man in black travels with your soul in his pocket.
"The Drawers?" Susannah asked, startled.
"Yes." Roland looked at her closely. "That means something to you, doesn't it?"
"Yes . . . and no."
She spoke with great hesitation. Some of it, Roland divined, was simple 
reluctance to speak of things which were painful to her. He thought most of it, 
however, was a desire not to confuse issues which were already confused by 
saying more than she actually knew. He admired that. He admired her.
"Say what you can be sure of," he said. "No more than that."
"All right. The Drawers was a place Detta Walker knew about. A place Detta 
thought about. It's a slang term, one she picked up from listening to the 
grownups when they sat out on the porch and drank beer and talked about the old 
days. It means a place that's spoiled, or useless, or both. There was something 
in the Drawers -- in the idea of the Draw­ers -- that called to Detta. Don't ask me 
what; I might have known once, but I don't anymore. And don't want to.
"Detta stole my Aunt Blue's china plate -- the one my folks gave her for a wedding 
present -- and took it to the Drawers -- her Drawers -- to break it. That place was a 
gravel-pit filled with trash. A dumping-ground. Later on, she sometimes picked 
up boys at roadhouses."
Susannah dropped her head for a moment, her lips pressed tightly together. Then 
she looked up again and went on.
"White boys. And when they took her back to their cars in the parking lot, she 
cock-teased them and then ran off. Those parking lots . . . they were the 
Drawers, too. It was a dangerous game, but she was young enough, quick enough, 
and mean enough to play it to the hilt and enjoy it. Later, in New York, she'd 
go on shoplifting expeditions . . . you know about that. Both of you. Always to 
the fancy stores -- Macy's, Gimbel's, Bloomingdale's -- and steal trinkets. And when 
she made up her mind to go on one of those sprees, she'd think: I'm goan to the 
Drawers today. Goan steal me some shitfum de white folks. Goan steal me sumpin 
forspecial and den break dot sumbitch."
She paused, lips trembling, looking into the fire. When she looked around again, 
Roland and Eddie saw tears standing in her eyes.
"I'm crying, but don't let that fool you. I remember doing those things, and I 
remember enjoying them. I guess I'm crying because I know I'd do it all again, 
if the circumstances were right."
Roland seemed to have regained some of his old serenity, his weird equilibrium. 
"We have a proverb in my country, Susannah: 'The wise thief always prospers.'"
"I don't see nothing wise about stealing a bunch of paste jewelry," she said 
sharply.
"Were you ever caught?"
"No -- "
He spread his hands as if to say, there you have it.
"So for Detta Walker, the Drawers were bad places?" Eddie asked. "Is that right? 
Because it doesn't exactly feel right."
"Bad and good at the same time. They were powerful places, places where she . . 
. she reinvented herself; I suppose you could say . . . hut they were lost 
places, too. And this is all off the subject of Roland's ghost-boy, isn't it?"
"Maybe not," Roland said. "We had Drawers as well, you see, in my world. It was 
slang for us, too, and the meanings are very similar."
"What did it mean to you and your friends?" Eddie asked.
"That varied slightly from place to place and situation to situation. It might 
mean a trash-midden. It might mean a whorehouse or a place where men came to 
gamble or chew devil-weed. But the most common' meaning that I know is also the 
simplest."
He looked at them both.
"The Drawers are places of desolation," he said. "The Drawers are the waste 
lands."


15
THIS TIME SUSANNAH THREW more wood on the fire. In the south, Old Mother blazed 
on brilliantly, not flickering. She knew from her school studies what that 
meant: it was a planet, not a star. Venus? She wondered. Or is the solar system 
of which this world is a part as different as everything else?
Again that feeling of unreality -- the feeling that all this must surely be a 
dream -- washed over her.
"Go on," she said. "What happened after the voice warned you about the Drawers 
and the little boy?"
"I punched my hand into the hole the sand had come from, as I was taught to do 
if such a thing ever happened to me. What I plucked forth was a jawbone . . . 
but not this one. The jawbone I took from the wall of the way station was much 
larger; from one of the Great Old Ones, I have almost no doubt."
"What happened to it?" Susannah asked quietly.
"One night I gave it to the boy," Roland said. The fire painted his cheeks with 
hot orange highlights and dancing shadows. "As a protec­tion -- a kind of talisman. 
Later I felt it had served its purpose and threw it away."
"So whose jawbone you got there, Roland?" Eddie asked.
Roland held it up, looked at it long and thoughtfully, and let it drop back. 
"Later, after Jake . . . after he died ... I caught up with the men I had been 
chasing."
"With Walter," Susannah said.
"Yes. We held palaver; he and I ... long palaver. I fell asleep at some point, 
and when I woke up, Walter was dead. A hundred years dead at least, and probably 
more. There was nothing left of him but bones, which was fitting enough, since 
we were in a place of bones."
"Yeah, it must have been a pretty long palaver, all right," Eddie said dryly.
Susannah frowned slightly at this, but Roland only nodded. "Long and long," he 
said, looking into the fire.
"You came to in the morning and reached the Western Sea that very evening," 
Eddie said. "That night the lobstrosities came, right?"
Roland nodded again. "Yes. But before I left the place where Walter and I had 
spoken ... or dreamed ... or whatever it was we did ... I took this from the 
skull of his skeleton." He lifted the bone and the orange light again skated off 
the teeth.
Walter's jawbone, Eddie thought, and felt a little chill work through him. The 
jawbone of the man in black. Remember this, Eddie my boy, the next time you get 
to thinking Roland's maybe just another one of the guys. He's been carrying it 
around with him all this time like some kind of a ... a cannibal's trophy. 
Jee-sus.
"I remember what I thought when I took it," Roland said. "I remem­ber very well; 
it is the only memory I have of that time which hasn't doubled on me. I thought, 
'It was bad luck to throw away what I found when I found the boy. This will 
replace it.' Only then I heard Walter's laughter -- his mean, tittery laughter. I 
heard his voice, too."
"What did he say?" Susannah asked.
" 'Too late, gunslinger,'" Roland said. "That's what he said. 'Too late -- your 
luck will be bad from now until the end of eternity -- that is your ka.' "


16
"ALL RIGHT," EDDIE SAID at last. "I understand the basic paradox. Your, memory 
is divided -- "
"Not divided. Doubled."
"All right; it's almost the same thing, isn't it?" Eddie grasped a twig and made 
his own little drawing in the sand:





He tapped the line on the left. "This is your memory of the time before you got 
to the way station -- a single track."
"Yes."
He tapped the line on the right. "And after you came out on the far side of the 
mountains in the place of bones . . . the place where Walter was waiting for 
you. Also a single track."
"Yes."
Now Eddie first indicated the middle area and then drew a rough circle around 
it.





"That's what you've got to do, Roland -- close this double track off. Build a 
stockade around it in your mind and then forget it. Because it doesn't mean 
anything, it doesn't change anything, it's gone, it's done -- "
"But it isn't." Roland held up the bone. "If my memories of the boy Jake are 
false -- and I know they are -- how can I have this? I took it to replace the one I 
threw away . . . but the one I threw away came from the cellar of the way 
station, and along the track I know is true, / never went down cellar! I never 
spoke with the demon! I moved on alone, with fresh water and nothing else!"
"Roland, listen to me," Eddie said earnestly. "If that jawbone you're holding 
was the one from the way station, that would be one thing. But isn't it possible 
that if you hallucinated that whole thing -- the way station, the kid, the Speaking 
Demon -- then maybe you took Walter's jawbone because -- "
"It was no hallucination," Roland said. He looked at them both with his faded 
blue bombardier's eyes and then did something neither expected . . . something 
Eddie would have sworn Roland did not know he meant to do himself.
He threw the jawbone into the fire.


17
FOR A MOMENT IT only lay there, a white relic bent in a ghostly half-grin. Then 
it suddenly blazed red, washing the clearing with dazzling scarlet light. Eddie 
and Susannah cried out and threw their hands up to shield their eyes from that 
burning shape.
The bone began to change. Not to melt, but to change. The teeth which leaned out 
of it like gravestones began to draw together in clumps.
The mild curve of the upper arc straightened, then snubbed down at the tip.
Eddie's hands fell into his lap and he stared at the bone which was no longer a 
bone with gape-jawed wonder. It was now the color of burn­ing steel. The teeth 
had become three inverted V's, the middle one larger than those on the ends. And 
suddenly Eddie saw what it wanted to become, just as he had seen the slingshot 
in the wood of the stump.
He thought it was a key.
You must remember the shape, he thought feverishly. You must, you must.
His eyes traced it desperately -- three V's, the one in the center larger and 
deeper than the two on the end. Three notches . .. and the one closest the end 
had a squiggle, the shallow shape of a lower-case s .. .
Then the shape in the flames changed again. The bone which had become something 
like a key drew inward, concentrating itself into bright, overlapping petals and 
folds as dark and velvety as a moonless summer midnight. For a moment Eddie saw 
a rose -- a triumphant rose that might have bloomed in the dawn of this world's 
first day, a thing of depthless, timeless beauty. His eye saw, and his heart was 
opened. It was as if all love and life had suddenly risen from Roland's dead 
artifact; it was there in the fire, burning out in triumph and some wonderful, 
inchoate defiance, declaring that despair was a mirage and death a dream.
The rose! he thought incoherently. First the key, then the rose! Behold! Behold 
the opening of the way to the Tower!
There was a thick cough from the fire. A fan of sparks twisted outwards. 
Susannah screamed and rolled away, beating at the orange flecks on her dress as 
the flames gushed upward toward the starry sky. Eddie didn't move. He sat 
transfixed in his vision, held in a cradle of wonder which was both gorgeous and 
terrible, unmindful of the sparks which danced across his skin. Then the flames 
sank back.
The bone was gone.
The key was gone.
The rose was gone.
Remember, he thought. Remember the rose . . . and remember the shape of the key.
Susannah was sobbing with shock and terror, but he ignored her for the moment 
and found the stick with which he and Roland had both drawn. And in the dirt he 
made this shape with a shaking hand:



18
"WHY DID YOU DO it?" Susannah asked at last. "Why, for God's sake --  and what was 
it?"
Fifteen minutes had gone by. The fire had been allowed to burn low; the 
scattered embers had either been stamped out or had gone out on their own. Eddie 
sat with his arms about his wife: Susannah sat before him, with her back against 
his chest. Roland was off to one side, knees hugged to his chest, looking 
moodily into the orange-red coals. So far as Eddie could tell, neither of them 
had seen the bone change. They had both seen it glowing superhot, and Roland had 
seen it explode (or had it imploded? to Eddie that seemed closer to what he had 
seen), but that was all. Or so he believed; Roland, however, sometimes kept his 
own counsel, and when he decided to play his cards close to the vest, he played 
them very close indeed, Eddie knew that from bitter experience. He thought of 
telling them what he had seen -- or thought he had seen -- ­and decided to play his 
own cards tight and close-up, at least for the time being.
Of the jawbone itself there was no sign -- not even a splinter.
"I did it because a voice spoke in my mind and told me I must," Roland said. "It 
was the voice of my father; of all my fathers. When one hears such a voice, not 
to obey -- and at once -- is unthinkable. So I was taught. As to what it was, I can't 
say . . . not now, at least. I only know that the bone has spoken its final 
word. I have carried it all this way to hear it."
Or to see it, Eddie thought, and again: Remember. Remember the rose. And 
remember the shape of the key.
"It almost flash-fried us!" She sounded both tired and exasperated.
Roland shook his head. "I think it was more like the sort of firework the barons 
used to sometimes shoot into the sky at their year-end parties. Bright and 
startling, but not dangerous."
Eddie had an idea. "The doubling in your mind, Roland -- is it gone? Did it leave 
when the bone exploded, or whatever it did?"
He was almost convinced that it had; in the movies he'd seen, such rough 
shock-therapy almost always worked. But Roland shook his head.
Susannah shifted in Eddie's arms. "You said you were beginning to understand."
Roland nodded. "I think so, yes. If I'm right, I fear for Jake. Wher­ever he is, 
whenever he is, I fear for him."
"What do you mean?" Eddie asked.
Roland got up, went to his roll of hides, and began to spread them out. "Enough 
stories and excitement for one night. It's time to sleep. In the morning we'll 
follow the bear's backtrail and see if we can find the portal he was set to 
guard. I'll tell you what I know and what I believe has happened -- what I believe 
is happening still -- along the way."
With that he wrapped himself in an old blanket and a new deerskin, rolled away 
from the fire, and would say no more.
Eddie and Susannah lay down together. When they were sure the gunslinger must be 
asleep, they made love. Roland heard them going about it as he lay wakeful and 
heard their quiet after-love talk. Most of it was about him. He lay quietly, 
open eyes looking into the darkness long after their talk had ceased and their 
breathing had evened out into a single easy note.
It was, he thought, fine to be young and in love. Even in the grave­yard which 
this world had become, it was fine.
Enjoy it while you can, he thought, because there is more death ahead. We have 
come to a stream of blood. That it will lead us to a river of the same stuff I 
have no doubt. And, further along, to an ocean. In this world the graves yawn 
and none of the dead rest easy.
As dawn began to come up in the east, he closed his eyes. Slept briefly. And 
dreamed of Jake.


19
EDDIE ALSO DREAMED -- DREAMED he was back in New York, walking along Second Avenue 
with a book in his hand.
In this dream it was spring. The air was warm, the city was blooming, and 
homesickness sobbed within him like a muscle with a fishhook caught deep within 
it. Enjoy this dream, and make it go on as long as you can, he thought. Savor it 
. . . because this is as close to New York as you're going to get. You can't go 
home, Eddie. That part's done.
He looked down at the book and was utterly unsurprised to find it was You Can't 
Go Home Again, by Thomas Wolfe. Stamped into the dark red cover were three 
shapes; key, rose, and door. He stopped for a moment, flipped the book open, and 
read the first line. The man in black fled across the desert, Wolfe had written, 
and the gunslinger followed.
Eddie closed it and walked on. It was about nine in the morning, he judged, 
maybe nine-thirty, and traffic on Second Avenue was light. Taxis honked and wove 
their way from lane to lane with spring sunshine twinkling off their windshields 
and bright yellow paintjobs. A bum on the corner of Second and Fifty-second 
asked him for a handout and Eddie tossed the book with the red cover into his 
lap. He observed (also without surprise) that the bum was Enrico Balazar. He was 
sitting cross-legged in front of a magic shop. HOUSE OF CARDS, the sign in the 
window read, and the display inside showed a tower which had been built of Tarot 
cards. Standing on top was a model of King Kong. There was a tiny radar-dish 
growing out of the great ape's head.
Eddie walked on, lazing his way downtown, the street-signs floating past him. He 
knew where he was going as soon as he saw it: a small shop on the corner of 
Second and Forty-sixth.
Yeah, he thought. A feeling of great relief swept through him. This is the 
place. The very place. The window was full of hanging meats and cheeses. TOM AND 
GERRY'S ARTISTIC DELI, the sign read. PARTY PLATTERS OUR SPECIALTY!
As he stood looking in, someone else he knew came around the corner. It was Jack 
Andolini, wearing a three-piece suit the color of vanilla ice cream and carrying 
a black cane in his left hand. Half of his face was gone, lopped off by the 
claws of the lobstrosities.
Go on in, Eddie, Jack said as he passed. After all, there are other worlds than 
these and that fuckin train rolls through all of them.
I can't, Eddie replied. The door is locked. He didn't know how he knew this, but 
he did; knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Dad-a-chum, dud-a-chee, not to worry, you've got the key, Jack said, not looking 
back. Eddie looked down and saw he did have a key; a primitive-looking thing 
with three notches like inverted Vs.
That little s-shape at the end of the last notch is the secret, he thought. He 
stepped under the awning of Tom and Gerry's Artistic Deli and inserted the key 
in the lock. It turned easily. He opened the door and stepped through into a 
huge open field. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the traffic on Second 
Avenue hurrying by, and then the door slammed shut and fell over. There was 
nothing behind it. Nothing at all. He turned back to survey his new 
surroundings, and what he saw filled him with terror at first. The field was a 
deep scarlet, as if some titanic battle had been fought here and the ground had 
been drenched with so much blood that it could not all be absorbed.
Then he realized that it was not blood he was looking at, but roses.
That feeling of mingled joy and triumph surged through him again, swelling his 
heart until he felt it might burst within him. He raised his clenched fists high 
over his head in a gesture of victory . . . and then froze that way.
The field stretched on for miles, climbing a gentle slope of land, and standing 
at the horizon was the Dark Tower. It was a pillar of dumb stone rising so high 
into the sky that he could barely discern its tip. Its base, surrounded by red, 
shouting roses, was formidable, titanic with weight and size, yet the Tower 
became oddly graceful as it rose and tapered. The stone of which it had been 
made was not black, as he had imagined it would be, but soot-colored. Narrow, 
slitted windows marched about it in a rising spiral; below the windows ran an 
almost endless flight of stone stairs, circling up and up. The Tower was a dark 
gray exclamation point planted in the earth and rising above the field of 
blood-red roses. The sky arched above it was blue, but filled with puffy white 
clouds like sailing ships. They flowed above and around the top of the Dark 
Tower in an endless stream.
How gorgeous it is! Eddie marvelled. How gorgeous and strange! But his feeling 
of joy and triumph had departed; he was left with a sense of deep malaise and 
impending doom. He looked about him and realized with sudden horror that he was 
standing in the shadow of the Tower. No, not just standing in it; buried alive 
in it.
He cried out but his cry was lost in the golden blast of some tremen­dous horn. 
It came from the top of the Tower, and seemed to fill the world. As that note of 
warning held and drew out over the field where he stood, blackness welled from 
the windows which girdled the Tower. It overspilled them and spread across the 
sky in flaggy streams which came together and formed a growing blotch of 
darkness. It did not look like a cloud; it looked like a tumor hanging over the 
earth. The sky was blotted out. And, he saw, it was not a cloud or a tumor but a 
shape, some tenebrous, cyclopean shape racing toward the place where he stood. 
It would do no good to run from that beast coalescing in the sky above the field 
of roses; it would catch him, clutch him, and bear him away. Into the Dark Tower 
it would bear him, and the world of light would see him no more.
Rents formed in the darkness and terrible inhuman eyes, each easily the size of 
the bear Shardik which lay dead in the forest, peered down at him. They were 
red -- red as roses, red as blood.
Jack Andolini's dead voice hammered in his ears: A thousand worlds, Eddie -- ten 
thousand! -- and that train rolls through every one. If you can get it started. And 
if you do get it started, your troubles are only begin­ning, because this device 
is a real bastard to shut down.
Jack's voice had become mechanical, chanting. A real bastard to shut down, Eddie 
boy, you better believe it, this bastard is -- 
" -- SHUTTING DOWN! SHUTDOWN WILL BE COMPLETE IN ONE HOUR AND SIX MINUTES!"
In his dream, Eddie threw his hands up to shield his eyes ...


20
. . . AND WOKE, SITTING BOLT upright beside the dead campfire. He was looking at 
the world from between his own spread fingers. And still that voice rolled on 
and on, the voice of some heartless SWAT Squad com­mander bellowing through a 
bullhorn.
"THERE IS NO DANGER! REPEAT, THERE IS NO DANGER! FIVE SUBNUCLEAR CELLS ARE 
DORMANT, TWO SUBNUCLEAR CELLS ARE NOW IN SHUTDOWN PHASE, ONE SUBNUCLEAR CELL IS 
OPERATING AT TWO PER CENT CAPACITY. THESE CELLS ARE OF NO VALUE! REPEAT, THESE 
CELLS ARE OF NO VALUE! REPORT LOCATION TO NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LIMITED! 
CALL 1-900-44! THE CODE WORD FOR THIS DEVICE IS 'SHARDIK.' REWARD IS OFFERED! 
REPEAT, REWARD ZS OFFERED!"
The voice fell silent. Eddie saw Roland standing at the edge of the clearing, 
holding Susannah in the crook of one arm. They were staring toward the sound of 
the voice, and as the recorded announcement began again, Eddie was finally able 
to shake off the chill remnants of his nightmare. He got up and joined Roland 
and Susannah, wondering how many centuries it had been since that announcement, 
pro­grammed to broadcast only in the event of a total system breakdown, had been 
recorded.
"THIS DEVICE IS SHUTTING DOWN! SHUTDOWN WILL BE COMPLETE IN ONE HOUR AND FIVE 
MINUTES! THERE IS NO DANGER! REPEAT -- "
Eddie touched Susannah's arm and she looked around. "How long has this been 
going on?"
"About fifteen minutes. You were dead to the w -- " She broke off. "Eddie, you look 
terrible! Are you sick?"
"No. I just had a bad dream."
Roland was studying him in a way that made Eddie feel uncomfort­able. "Sometimes 
there's truth in dreams, Eddie. What was yours?"
He thought for a moment, then shook his head. "I don't remember."
"You know, I doubt that."
Eddie shrugged and favored Roland with a thin smile. "Doubt away, then -- be my 
guest. And how are you this morning, Roland?"
"The same," Roland said. His faded blue eyes still conned Eddie's face.
"Stop it," Susannah said. Her voice was brisk, but Eddie caught an undertone of 
nervousness. "Both of you. I got better things to do than watch you two dance 
around and kick each other's shins like a couple of little kids playin Two for 
Flinching. Specially this morning, with that dead bear trying to yell down the 
whole world."
The gunslinger nodded, but kept his eyes on Eddie. "All right . . . but are you 
sure there's nothing you want to tell me, Eddie?"
He thought about it then -- really thought about telling. What he had seen in the 
fire, what he had seen in his dream. He decided against it. Perhaps it was only 
the memory of the rose in the fire, and the roses 


which had blanketed that dream-field in such fabulous profusion. Me knew he 
could not tell these things as his eyes had seen them and his heart had felt 
them; he could only cheapen them. And, at least for the time being, he wanted to 
ponder these things alone.
But remember, he told himself again . . . except the voice in his mind didn't 
sound much like his own. It seemed deeper, older -- the voice of a stranger. 
Remember the rose . . . and the shape of the key.
"I will," he murmured.
"You will what?" Roland asked.
"Tell," Eddie said. "If anything comes up that seems, you know, really 
important, I'll tell you. Both of you. Right now there isn't. So if we're going 
somewhere, Shane, old buddy, let's saddle up."
"Shane? Who is this Shane?"
"I'll tell you that some other time, too. Meantime, let's go."
They packed the gear they had brought with them from the old campsite and headed 
back, Susannah riding in her wheelchair again. Eddie had an idea she wouldn't be 
riding in it for long.


21
ONCE, BEFORE EDDIE HAD become too interested in the subject of heroin to be 
interested in much else, he and a couple of friends had driven over to New 
Jersey to see a couple of speed-metal groups --  Anthrax and Megadeth -- in concert at 
the Meadowlands. He believed that Anthrax had been slightly louder than the 
repeating announcement coming from the fallen bear, but he wasn't a hundred per 
cent sure. Roland stopped them while they were still half a mile from the 
clearing in the woods and tore six small scaps of cloth from his old shirt. They 
stuffed them in their ears and then went on. Even the cloth didn't do much to 
deaden the steady blast of sound.
"THIS DEVICE IS SHUTTING DOWN!" the bear blared as they stepped into the 
clearing again. It lay as it had lain, at the foot of the tree Eddie had 
climbed, a fallen Colossus with its legs apart and its knees in the air, like a 
furry female giant who had died trying to give birth. "SHUTDOWN WILL BE COMPLETE 
IN FORTY-SEVEN MINUTES! THERE IS NO DANGER -- "
Yes, there is, Eddie thought, picking up the scattered hides which had not been 
shredded in either the bear's attack or its flailing death-throes. Plenty of 
danger. To my fucking ears. He picked up Roland's gunbelt and silently handed it 
over. The chunk of wood he had been working on lay nearby; he grabbed it and 
tucked it into the pocket in the hack of Susannah's wheelchair as the gunslinger 
slowly buckled the wide leather belt around his waist and cinched the rawhide 
tiedown.
" -- IN SHUTDOWN PHASE, ONE SUBNUCLEAR CELL OPERATING AT ONE PER CENT CAPACITY. 
THESE CELLS -- "
Susannah followed Eddie, holding in her lap a carry-all bag she had sewn 
herself. As Eddie handed her the hides, she stuffed them into the bag. When all 
of them were stored away, Roland tapped Eddie on the arm and handed him a 
shoulderpack. What it contained mostly was deer-meat, heavily salted from a 
natural lick Roland had found about three miles up the little creek. The 
gunslinger had already donned a similar pack. His purse -- restocked and once again 
bulging with all sorts of odds and ends -- hung from his other shoulder.
A strange, home-made harness with a seat of stitched deerskin dan­gled from a 
nearby branch. Roland plucked it off, studied it for a moment, and then draped 
it over his back and knotted the straps below his chest. Susannah made a sour 
face at diis, and Roland saw it. He did not try to speak -- this close to the bear, 
he couldn't have made himself heard even by shouting at the top of his voice -- but 
he shrugged sympatheti­cally and spread his hands: You know well need it.
She shrugged back. / know . . . but that doesn't mean I like it.
The gunslinger pointed across the clearing. A pair of leaning, splin­tered 
spruce trees marked the place where Shardik, who had once been known as Mir in 
these parts, had entered the clearing.
Eddie leaned toward Susannah, made a circle with his thumb and forefinger, then 
raised his eyebrows interrogatively. Okay?
She nodded, then pressed the heels of her palms against her ears. Okay -- but let's 
get out of here before I go deaf.
The three of them moved across the clearing, Eddie pushing Susan­nah, who held 
the bag of hides in her lap. The pocket in the back of her wheelchair was 
stuffed with other items; die piece of wood with the slingshot still mostly 
hidden inside it was only one of them.
From behind them the bear continued to roar out its final communi­cation to the 
world, telling them shutdown would be complete in forty minutes. Eddie couldn't 
wait. The broken spruces leaned in toward each other, forming a rude gate, and 
Eddie thought: This is where the quest for Roland's Dark Tower really begins, at 
least for us.
He thought of his dream again -- the spiraling windows issuing their unfurling 
flags of darkness, flags which spread over the field of roses like a stain -- and 
as they passed beneath the leaning trees, a deep shudder gripped him.


22
THEY WERE ABLE TO use the wheelchair longer than Roland had expected. The firs 
of this forest were very old, and their spreading branches had created a deep 
carpet of needles which discouraged most undergrowth. Susannah's arms were 
strong -- stronger than Eddie's, although Roland did not think that would be true 
much longer -- and she wheeled herself along easily over the level, shady forest 
floor. When they came to one of the trees the bear had pushed over, Roland 
lifted her out of the chair and Eddie boosted it over the obstacle.
From behind them, only a little deadened by distance, the bear told them, at the 
top of its mechanical voice, that the capacity of its last operating nuclear 
subcell was now negligible.
"I hope you keep that damn harness lying empty over your shoulders all day!" 
Susannah shouted at the gunslinger.
Roland agreed, but less than fifteen minutes later the land began to slope 
downward and this old section of the forest began to be invaded with smaller, 
younger trees: birch, alder, and a few stunted maples scrab­bling grimly in the 
soil for purchase. The carpet of needles thinned and the wheels of Susannah's 
chair began to catch in the low, tough bushes which grew in the alleys between 
the trees. Their thin branches boinged and rattled in the stainless steel 
spokes. Eddie threw his weight against the handles and they were able to go on 
for another quarter of a mile that way. Then the slope began to grow more steep, 
and the ground underfoot became mushy.
"Time for a pig-back, lady," Roland said.
"Let's try the chair a little longer, what do you say? Going might get easier -- "
Roland shook his head. "If you try that hill, you'll . . . what did you call it, 
Eddie? ... do a dugout?"
Eddie shook his head, grinning. "It's called doing a doughnut, Roland. A term 
from my misspent sidewalk-surfing days."
"Whatever you call it, it means landing on your head. Come on, Susannah. Up you 
come."
"I hate being a cripple," Susannah said crossly, but allowed Eddie to hoist her 
out of the chair and worked with him to seat herself firmly in the harness 
Roland wore on his back. Once she was in place, she touched the butt of Roland's 
pistol. "Y'all want this baby?" she asked Eddie.
He shook his head. "You're faster. And you know it, too."
She grunted and adjusted the belt, settling the gunbutt so it was easily 
accessible to her right hand. "I'm slowing you boys down and I know that . . . 
but if we ever make it to some good old two-lane blacktop, I'll leave the both 
of you kneelin in the blocks."
"I don't doubt it," Roland said . . . and then cocked his head. The woods had 
fallen silent.
"Br'er Bear has finally given up," Susannah said. "Praise God."
"I thought it still had seven minutes to go," Eddie said.
Roland adjusted the straps of the harness. "Its clock must have started running 
a little slow during the last five or six hundred years."
"You really think it was that old, Roland?"
Roland nodded. "At least. And now it's passed . . . the last of the Twelve 
Guardians, for all we know."
"Yeah, ask me if I give a shit," Eddie replied, and Susannah laughed.
"Are you comfortable?" Roland asked her.
"No. My butt hurts already, but go on. Just try not to drop me."
Roland nodded and started down the slope. Eddie followed, pushing the empty 
chair and trying not to bang it too badly on the rocks which had begun to jut 
out of the ground like big white knuckles. Now that the bear had finally shut 
up, he thought the forest seemed much too quiet -- it almost made him feel like a 
character in one of those hokey old jungle movies about cannibals and giant 
apes.


23
THE BEAR'S BACKTRAIL WAS easy to find but tougher to follow. Five miles or so 
out of the clearing, it led them through a low, boggy area that was not quite a 
swamp. By the time the ground began to rise and firm up a little again, Roland's 
faded jeans were soaked to the knees and he was breathing in long, steady rasps. 
Still, he was in slightly better shape than Eddie, who had found wrestling 
Susannah's wheelchair through the muck and standing water hard going.
"Time to rest and eat something," Roland said.
"Oh boy, gimme eats," Eddie puffed. He helped Susannah out of the harness and 
set her down on the bole of a fallen tree with claw-marks slashed into its trunk 
in long diagonal grooves. Then he half-sat, half-collapsed next to her.
"You got my wheelchair pretty muddy, white boy," Susannah said. "It's all goan 
be in my repote."
He cocked an eyebrow at her. "Next carwash we come to, I'll push you through 
myself. I'll even Turtle-wax the goddamn thing. Okay?"
She smiled. "You got a date, handsome."
Eddie had one of Roland's waterskins cinched around his waist. He tapped it. 
"Okay?"
"Yes," Roland said. "Not too much now; a little more for all of us before we set 
out again. That way no one takes a cramp."
"Roland, Eagle Scout of Oz," Eddie said, and giggled as he unslung the 
waterskin.
"What is this Oz?"
"A make-believe place in a movie," Susannah said.
"Oz was a lot more than that. My brother Henry used to read me the stories once 
in a while. I'll tell you one some night, Roland."
"That would be fine," the gunslinger replied seriously. "I am hungry to know 
more of your world."
"Oz isn't our world, though. Like Susannah said, it's a make-believe place -- "
Roland handed them chunks of meat which had been wrapped in broad leaves of some 
sort. "The quickest way to learn about a new place is to know what it dreams of. 
I would hear of this Oz."
"Okay, that's a date, too. Suze can tell you the one about Dorothy and Toto and 
the Tin Woodman, and I'll tell you all the rest." He bit into his piece of meat 
and rolled his eyes approvingly. It had taken the flavor of the leaves in which 
it had been rolled, and was delicious. Eddie wolfed his ration, stomach gurgling 
busily all the while. Now that he was getting his breath back, he felt 
good -- great, in fact. His body was growing a solid sheath of muscle, and every 
part of it felt at peace with every other part.
Don't worry, he thought. Everything will be arguing again by tonight. I think 
he's gonna push on until I'm ready to drop in my tracks.
Susannah ate more delicately, chasing every second or third bite with a little 
sip of water, turning the meat in her hands, eating from the outside in. "Finish 
what you started last night," she invited Roland. "You said you thought you 
understood these conflicting memories of yours."
Roland nodded. "Yes. I think both memories are true. One is a little truer than 
the other, but that does not negate the truth of that other."
"Makes no sense to me," Eddie said. "Either this boy Jake was at the way station 
or he wasn't, Roland."
"It is a paradox -- something that is and isn't at the same time. Until it's 
resolved, I will continue divided. That's bad enough, but the basic split is 
widening. I can feel that happening. It is ... unspeakable."
"What do you think caused it?" Susannah asked.
"I told you the boy was pushed in front of a car. Pushed. Now, who do we know 
who liked to push people in front of things?"
Understanding dawned in her face. "Jack Mort. Do you mean he was the one who 
pushed this boy into the street?"
"Yes."
"But you said the man in black did it," Eddie objected. "Your buddy Walter. You 
said that the boy saw him -- a man who looked like a priest. Didn't the kid even 
hear him say he was? 'Let me through, I'm a priest,' something like that?"
"Oh, Walter was there. They were both there, and they both pushed Jake."
"Somebody bring the Thorazine and the strait-jacket," Eddie called. "Roland just 
went over the high side."
Roland paid no attention to this; he was coming to understand that Eddie's jokes 
and clowning were his way of dealing with stress. Cuthbert had not been much 
different ... as Susannah was, in her way, not so different from Alain. "What 
exasperates me about all of this," he said, "is that I should have known. I was 
in Jack Mort, after all, and I had access to his thoughts, just as I had access 
to yours, Eddie, and yours, Susannah. I saw Jake while I was in Mort. I saw him 
through Mort's eyes, and I knew Mort planned to push him. Not only that; I 
stopped him from doing it. All I had to do was enter his body. Not that he knew 
that was what it was; he was concentrating so hard on what he planned to do that 
he actually thought I was a fly landing on his neck."
Eddie began to understand. "If Jake wasn't pushed into the street, he never 
died. And if he never died, he never came into this world. And if he never came 
into this world, you never met him at the way station. Right?"
"Right. The thought even crossed my mind that if Jack Mort meant to kill the 
boy, I would have to stand aside and let him do it. To avoid creating the very 
paradox that is tearing me apart. But I couldn't do that. I ... I ..."
"You couldn't kill this kid twice, could you?" Eddie asked softly. "Every time I 
just about make up my mind that you're as mechanical as that bear, you surprise 
me with something that actually seems human. Goddam."
"Quit it, Eddie," Susannah said.
Eddie took a look at the gunslinger's slightly lowered face and gri­maced. 
"Sorry, Roland. My mother used to say that my mouth had a bad habit of running 
away with my mind."
"It's all right. I had a friend who was the same way."
"Cuthbert?"
Roland nodded. He looked at his diminished right hand for a long moment, then 
clenched it into a painful fist, sighed, and looked up at them again. Somewhere, 
deeper in the forest, a lark sang sweetly.
"Here is what I believe. If I had not entered Jack Mort when I did, he still 
wouldn't have pushed Jake that day. Not then. Why not? Ka-tet. Simply that. For 
the first time since the last of the friends with whom I set forth on this quest 
died, I have found myself once again at the center of ka-tet."
"Quartet?" Eddie asked doubtfully.
The gunslinger shook his head. "Ka -- the word you think of as 'des­tiny,' Eddie, 
although the actual meaning is much more complex and hard to define, as is 
almost always the case with words of the High Speech. And tet, which means a 
group of people with the same interests and goals. We three are a tet, for 
instance. Ka-tet, is the place where many lives are joined by fate."
"Like in The Bridge of San Luis Rey," Susannah murmured.
"What's that?" Roland asked.
"A story about some people who die together when the bridge they're crossing 
collapses. It's famous in our world."
Roland nodded his understanding. "In this case, ka-tet bound Jake, Walter, Jack 
Mort, and me. There was no trap, as I first suspected when I realized who Jack 
Mort meant to be his next victim, because ka-tet cannot be changed or bent to 
the will of any one person. But ka-tet can be seen, known, and understood. 
Walter saw, and Walter knew." The gunslinger struck his thigh with his fist and 
exclaimed bitterly, "How he must have been laughing inside when I finally caught 
up to him!"
"Let's go back to what would have happened if you hadn't messed up Jack Mort's 
plans on the day he was following Jake," Eddie said. "You're saying that if you 
hadn't stopped Mort, someone or something else would have. Is that right?"
"Yes -- because it wasn't the right day for Jake to die. It was close to the right 
day, but not the right day. I felt that, too. Perhaps, just before he did it, 
Mort would have seen someone watching him. Or a perfect stranger would have 
intervened. Or -- "
"Or a cop," Susannah said. "He might have seen a cop in the wrong place and at 
the wrong time."
"Yes. The exact reason -- the agent of ka-tet -- doesn't matter. I know from firsthand 
experience that Mort was as wily as an old fox. If he sensed any slightest thing 
wrong, he would have called it off and waited for another day.
"I know something else, as well. He hunted in disguise. On the day he dropped 
the brick on Detta Holmes's head, he was wearing a knitted cap and an old 
sweater several sizes too big for him. He wanted to look like a winebibber, 
because he pushed the brick from a building where a large number of sots kept 
their dens. You see?"
They nodded.
"On the day, years later, when he pushed you in front of the train, Susannah, he 
was dressed as a construction worker. He was wearing a big yellow helmet he 
thought of as a 'hardhat' and a fake moustache. On the day when he actually 
would have pushed Jake into traffic, causing his death, he would have been 
dressed as a priest."
"Jesus," Susannah nearly whispered. "The man who pushed him in New York was Jack 
Mort, and the man he saw at the way station was this fella you were 
chasing -- Walter."
"Yes."
"And the little boy thought they were the same man because they were both 
wearing the same kind of black robe?"
Roland nodded. "There was even a physical resemblance between Walter land Jack 
Mort. Not as if they were brothers, I don't mean that, but both were tall men 
with dark hair and very pale complexions. And given the fact that Jake was dying 
when he got his only good look at Mort and was in a strange place and scared 
almost witless when he got his only good look at Walter, I think his mistake was 
both understandable and forgivable. If there's a horse's ass in this picture, 
it's me, for not realizing the truth sooner."
"Would Mort have known he was being used?" Eddie asked. Think­ing back to his 
own experiences and wild thoughts when Roland had invaded his mind, he didn't 
see how Mort could not know . . . but Roland was shaking his head.
"Walter would have been extremely subtle. Mort would have thought the priest 
disguise his own idea ... or so I believe. He would not have recognized the 
voice of an intruder -- of Walter -- whispering deep within his mind, telling him what 
to do."
"Jack Mort," Eddie marvelled. "It was Jack Mort all the time."
"Yes . . . with assistance from Walter. And so I ended up saving Jake's life 
after all. When I made Mort jump from the subway platform in front of the train, 
I changed everything."
Susannah asked, "If this Walter was able to enter our world --  through his own 
private door, maybe -- whenever he wanted, couldn't he have used someone else to 
push your little boy? If he could sug­gest to Mort that he dress up like a 
priest, then he could make somebody else do it ... What, Eddie? Why are you 
shaking your head?"
"Because I don't think Walter would want that to happen. What Walter wanted is 
what is happening ... for Roland to be losing his mind, bit by bit. Isn't that 
right?"
The gunslinger nodded.
"Walter couldn't have done it that way even if he had wanted to," Eddie added, 
"because he was dead long before Roland found the doors on the beach. When 
Roland went through that last one and into Jack Mort's head, ole Walt's 
messin-around days were done."
Susannah thought about this, then nodded her head. "I see ... I think. This 
time-travel business is some confusing shit, isn't it?"
Roland began to pick up his goods and strap them back into place. "Time we were 
moving on."
Eddie stood up and shrugged into his pack. "You can take comfort from one thing, 
at least," he told Roland. "You -- or this ka-tet business --  were able to save the 
kid after all."
Roland had been knotting the harness-strings at his chest. Now he looked up, and 
the blazing clarity of his eyes made Eddie flinch backward. "Have I?" he asked 
harshly. "Have I really? I'm going insane an inch at a time, trying to live with 
two versions of the same reality. I had hoped at first that one or the other 
would begin to fade away, but that's not happening. In fact, the exact opposite 
is happening: those two realities are growing louder and louder in my head, 
clamoring at each other like opposing factions which must soon go to war. So 
tell me this, Eddie: How do you suppose Jake feels? How do you suppose it feels 
to know you are dead in one world and alive in another?"
The lark sang again, but none of them noticed. Eddie stared into the faded blue 
eyes blazing out of Roland's pale face and could not think of a thing to say.


24
THEY CAMPED ABOUT FIFTEEN miles due east of the dead bear that night, slept the 
sleep of the completely exhausted (even Roland slept the night through, although 
his dreams were nightmare carnival-rides), and were up the next morning at 
sunrise. Eddie kindled a small fire without speaking, and glanced at Susannah as 
a pistol-shot rang out in the woods nearby.
"Breakfast," she said.
Roland returned three minutes later with a hide slung over one shoulder. On it 
lay the freshly gutted corpse of a rabbit. Susannah cooked it. They ate and 
moved on.
Eddie kept trying to imagine what it would be like to have a memory of your own 
death. On that one he kept coming up short.


25
SHORTLY AFTER NOON THEY entered an area where most of the trees had been pulled 
over and the bushes mashed flat -- it looked as though a cyclone had touched down 
here many years before, creating a wide and dismal alley of destruction.
"We're close to the place we want to find," Roland said. "He pulled down 
everything to clear the sightlines. Our friend the bear wanted no surprises. He 
was big, but not complacent."
"Has it left us any surprises?" Eddie asked.
"He may have done so." Roland smiled a little and touched Eddie on the shoulder. 
"But there's this -- they'll be old surprises."
Their progress through this zone of destruction was slow. Most of the fallen 
trees were very old -- many had almost rejoined the soil from which they had 
sprung -- but they still made enough of a tangle to create a formidable obstacle 
course. It would have been difficult enough if all three of them had been 
able-bodied; with Susannah strapped to the gunslinger's back in her harness, it 
became an exercise in aggravation and endurance.
The flattened trees and jumbles of underbrush served to obscure the bear's 
backtrail, and that also worked to slow their speed. Until mid­day they had 
followed claw-marks as clear as trail-blazes on the trees. Here, however, near 
its starting point, the bear's rage had not been full-blown, and these handy 
signs of its passage disappeared. Roland moved slowly, looking for droppings in 
the bushes and tufts of hair on the tree-trunks over which the bear had climbed. 
It took all afternoon to cross three miles of this decayed jumble.
Eddie had just decided they were going to lose the light and would have to camp 
in these creepy surroundings when they came to a thin skirt of alders. Beyond 
it, he could hear a stream babbling noisily over a bed of stones. Behind them, 
the setting sun was radiating spokes of sullen red light across the jumbled 
ground they had just crossed, turning the fallen trees into crisscrossing black 
shapes like Chinese ideograms.
Roland called a halt and eased Susannah down. He stretched his back, twisting it 
this way and that with his hands on his hips.
"That it for the night?" Eddie asked.
Roland shook his head. "Give Eddie your gun, Susannah."
She did as he said, looking at him questioningly.
"Come on, Eddie. The place we want is on the other side of those trees. We'll 
have a look. We might do a little work, as well."
"What makes you think -- "
"Open your ears."
Eddie listened and realized he heard machinery. He further realized that he had 
been hearing it for some time now. "I don't want to leave Susannah."
"We're not going far and she has a good loud voice. Besides, if there's danger, 
it's ahead -- we'll be between it and her."
Eddie looked down at Susannah.
"Go on -- just make sure you're back soon." She looked back the way they had come 
with thoughtful eyes. "I don't know if there's ha ants here or not, but it feels 
like there are."
"We'll be back before dark," Roland promised. He started toward the screen of 
alders, and after a moment, Eddie followed him.


26
FIFTEEN YARDS INTO THE trees, Eddie realized that they were following a path, 
one the bear had probably made for itself over the years. The alders bent above 
them in a tunnel. The sounds were louder now, and he began to sort them out. One 
was a low, deep, humming noise. He could feel it in his feet -- a faint vibration, 
as if some large piece of machinery was running in the earth. Above it, closer 
and more urgent, were crisscrossing sounds like bright scratches -- squeals, 
squeaks, chitterings.
Roland placed his mouth against Eddie's ear and said, "I think there's little 
danger if we're quiet."
They moved on another five yards and then Roland stopped again. He drew his gun 
and used the barrel to brush aside a branch which hung heavy with sunset-tinted 
leaves. Eddie looked through this small opening and into the clearing where the 
bear had lived for so long -- the base of operations from which he had set forth on 
his many expeditions of pillage and terror.
There was no undergrowth here; the ground had been beaten bald long since. A 
stream emerged from the base of a rock wall about fifty feet high and ran 
through the arrowhead-shaped clearing. On their side of the stream, backed up 
against the wall, was a metal box about nine feet high. Its roof was curved, and 
it reminded Eddie of a subway entrance. The front was painted in diagonal yellow 
and black stripes. The earth which floored the clearing was not black, like the 
topsoil in the forest, but a strange powdery gray. It was littered with bones, 
and after a moment Eddie realized that what he had taken for gray soil was more 
bones, bones so old they were crumbling back to dust.
Things were moving in the dirt -- the things making the squealing, chittering 
noises. Four . . . no, five of them. Small metal devices, the largest about the 
size of a Collie pup. They were robots, Eddie realized, or something like 
robots. They were similar to each other and to the bear they had undoubtedly 
served in one way only -- atop each of them, a tiny radar-dish turned rapidly.
More thinking caps, Eddie thought. My God, what kind of world is this, anyway?
The largest of these devices looked a little like the Tonka tractor Eddie had 
gotten for his sixth or seventh birthday; its treads churned up tiny gray clouds 
of bone-dust as it rolled along. Another looked like a stainless steel rat. A 
third appeared to be a snake constructed of jointed steel segments -- it writhed 
and humped its way along. They formed a rough circle on the far side of the 
stream, going around and around on a deep course they had carved in the ground. 
Looking at them made Eddie think of cartoons he had seen in the stacks of old 
Saturday Evening Post magazines his mother had for some reason saved and stored 
in the front hall of their apartment. In the cartoons, worried, 
cigarette-smoking men paced ruts in the carpet while they waited for their wives 
to give birth.
As his eyes grew used to the simple geography of the clearing, Eddie saw that 
there were a great many more than five of these assorted freaks. There were at 
least a dozen others that he could see and probably more hidden behind the bony 
remains of the bear's old kills. The difference was that the others weren't 
moving. The members of the bear's mechani­cal retinue had died, one by one, over 
the long years until just this little group of five were left .. . and they did 
not sound very healthy, with their squeaks and squalls and rusty chitterings. 
The snake in particular had a hesitant, crippled look as it followed the 
mechanical rat around and around the circle. Every now and then the device which 
followed the snake -- a steel block that walked on stubby mechanical legs -- would 
catch up with it and give the snake a nudge, as if telling it to hurry the fuck 
up.
Eddie wondered what their job had been. Surely not protection; the bear had been 
built to protect itself, and Eddie guessed that if old Shardik had come upon the 
three of them while still in its prime, it would have chewed them up and spat 
them out in short order. Perhaps these little robots had been its maintenance 
crew, or scouts, or messen­gers. He guessed that they could be dangerous, but 
only in their own defense ... or their master's. They did not seem warlike.
There was, in fact, something pitiful about them. Most of the crew was now 
defunct, their master was gone, and Eddie believed they knew it somehow. It was 
not menace they projected but a strange, inhuman sadness. Old and almost worn 
out, they paced and rolled and wriggled their anxious way around the worry-track 
they had dug in this godforsaken clearing, and it almost seemed to Eddie that he 
could read the confused run of their thoughts; Oh dear, oh dear, what now? What 
is our purpose, now that He is gone? And who will take care of us, now that He 
is gone? Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear . . .
Eddie felt a tug on the back of his leg and came very close to screaming in fear 
and surprise. He wheeled, cocking Roland's gun, and saw Susannah looking up at 
him with wide eyes. Eddie let out a long breath and dropped the hammer carefully 
back to its resting position. He knelt, put his hands on Susannah's shoulders, 
kissed her cheek, then whispered in her ear: "I came really close to putting a 
bullet in your silly head -- what are you doing here?"
"Wanted to see," she whispered back, looking not even slightly abashed. Her eyes 
shifted to Roland as he also hunkered beside her. "Besides, it was spooky back 
there by myself."
She had sustained a number of small scratches crawling after them through the 
brush, but Roland had to admit to himself that she could be as quiet as a ghost 
when she wanted to be; he hadn't heard a thing. He took a rag (the last remnant 
of his old shirt) from his back pocket and wiped the little trickles of blood 
from her arms. He examined his work for a moment and then dabbed at a small nick 
on her forehead as well. "Have your look, then," he said. His voice was hardly 
more than the movement of his lips. "I guess you earned it."
He used one hand to open a sightline at her level in the hock and greenberry 
bushes, then waited while she stared raptly into the clearing. At last she 
pulled back and Roland allowed the bushes to close again.
"I feel sorry for them," she whispered. "Isn't that crazy?"
"Not at all," Roland whispered back. "They are creatures of great sadness, I 
think, in their own strange way. Eddie is going to put them out of their 
misery."
Eddie began to shake his head at once.
"Yes, you are . . . unless you want to hunker here in what you call 'the 
toolies' all night. Go for the hats. The little twirling things."
"What if I miss?" Eddie whispered at him furiously.
Roland shrugged.
Eddie stood up and reluctantly cocked the gunslinger's revolver again. He looked 
through the bushes at the circling servomechanisms, going around and around in 
their lonely, useless orbit. It'll be like shoot­ing puppies, he thought glumly. 
Then he saw one of them -- it was the thing that looked like a walking box -- extrude 
an ugly-looking pincer device from its middle and clamp it for a moment on the 
snake. The snake made a surprised buzzing sound and leaped ahead. The walking 
box withdrew its pincer.
Well . . . maybe not exactly like shooting puppies, Eddie decided. He glanced at 
Roland again. Roland looked back expressionlessly, arms folded across his chest.
You pick some goddam strange times to keep school, buddy.
Eddie thought of Susannah, first shooting the bear in the ass, then blowing its 
sensor device to smithereens as it bore down on her and Roland, and felt a 
little ashamed of himself. And there was more: part of him wanted to go for it, 
just as part of him had wanted to go up against Balazar and his crew of 
plug-uglies in The Leaning Tower. The compulsion was probably sick, but that 
didn't change its basic attraction: Let's see who walks away . . let's just see.
Yeah, that was pretty sick, all right.
Pretend it's just a shooting gallery, and you want to win your honey a stuffed 
dog, he thought. Or a stuffed bear. He drew a bead on the walking box and then 
looked around impatiently when Roland touched his shoulder.
"Say your lesson, Eddie. And be true."
Eddie hissed impatiently through his teeth, angry at the distraction, but 
Roland's eyes didn't flinch and so he drew a deep breath and tried to clear 
everything from his mind: the squeaks and squalls of equipment that had been 
running too long, the aches and pains in his body, the knowledge that Susannah 
was here, propped up on the heels of her hands, watching, the further knowledge 
that she was closest to the ground, and if he missed one of the gadgets out 
there, she would be the handiest target if it decided to retaliate.
" 'I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the 
face of his father.' "
That was a joke, he thought; he wouldn't know his old man if he passed him on 
the street. But he could feel the words doing their work, clearing his mind and 
settling his nerves. He didn't know if he was the stuff of which gunslingers 
were made -- the idea seemed fabulously unlikely to him, even though he knew he had 
managed to hold up his end pretty well during the shootout at Balazar's 
nightclub -- but he did know that part of him liked the coldness that fell over him 
when he spoke the words of the old, old catechism the gunslinger had taught 
them; the coldness and the way things seemed to stand forth with their own 
breathless clarity. There was another part of him which understood that this was 
just another deadly drug, not much different from the heroin which had killed 
Henry and almost killed him, but that did not alter the thin, tight pleasure of 
the moment. It drummed in him like taut cables vibrating in a high wind.
" 'I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgot­ten the face 
of his father.
" 'I aim with my eye.
" 'I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face 
of his father.' "
Then, without knowing he meant to do it, he stepped out of the trees and spoke 
to the trundling robots on the far side of the clearing:
" 'I kill with my heart.'"
They stopped their endless circling. One of them let out a high buzz that might 
have been alarm or a warning. The radar-dishes, each no bigger than half a 
Hershey bar, turned toward the sound of his voice.
Eddie begun to fire.
The sensors exploded like day pigeons, one after the other. Pity was gone from 
Eddie's heart; there was only that coldness, and the knowledge that he would not 
stop, could not stop, until the job was done.
Thunder filled the twilit clearing and bounced back from the splint­ery rock 
wall at its wide end. The steel snake did two cartwheels and lay twitching in 
the dust. The biggest mechanism -- the one that had reminded Eddie of his childhood 
Tonka tractor -- tried to flee. Eddie blew its radar-dish to kingdom come as it 
made a herky-jerky run at the side of the rut. It fell on its squarish nose with 
thin blue flames squirting out of the steel sockets which held its glass eyes.
The only sensor he missed was the one on the stainless steel rat; that shot 
caromed off its metal back with a high mosquito whine. It surged out of the rut, 
made a half-circle around the box-shaped thing which had been following the 
snake, and charged across the clearing at surprising speed. It was making an 
angry clittering sound, and as it closed the distance, Eddie could see it had a 
mouth lined with long, sharp points. They did not look like teeth; they looked 
like sewing-machine needles, blurring up and down. No, he guessed these things 
were really not much like puppies, after all.
"Take it, Roland!" he shouted desperately, but when he snatched a quick look 
around he saw that Roland was still standing with his arms crossed on his chest, 
his expression serene and distant. He might have been thinking of chess problems 
or old love-letters.
The dish on the rat's back suddenly locked down. It changed direc­tion slightly 
and buzzed straight toward Susannah Dean.
One bullet left, Eddie thought. If I miss, it'll take her face off.
Instead of shooting, he stepped forward and kicked the rat as hard as he could. 
He had replaced his shoes with a pair of deerskin moccasins, and he felt the 
jolt all the way up to his knee. The rat gave a rusty, ratcheting squeal, 
tumbled over and over in the dirt, and came to rest on its back. Eddie could see 
what looked like a dozen stubby mechanical legs pistoning up and down. Each was 
tipped with a sharp steel claw. These claws twirled around and around on gimbals 
the size of pencil-erasers.
A steel rod poked out of the robot's midsection and flipped the gadget upright 
again. Eddie brought Roland's revolver down, ignoring a momentary impulse to 
steady it with his free hand. That might be the way cops in his own world were 
taught to shoot, but it wasn't the way it was done here. When you forget the gun 
is there, when it feels like you're shooting with your finger, Roland had told 
them, then you'll be some­where near home.
Eddie pulled the trigger. The tiny radar-dish, which had begun to turn again in 
an effort to find the enemies, disappeared in a blue Hash. The rat made a choked 
noise -- Chop! -- and fell dead on its side.
Eddie turned with his heart jackhammering in his chest. He couldn't remember 
being this furious since he realized that Roland meant to keep him in his world 
until his goddamned Tower was won or lost. . . probably until they were all 
worm-chow, in other words.
He levelled the empty gun at Roland's heart and spoke in a thick voice he hardly 
recognized as his own. "If there was a round left in this, you could stop 
worrying about your fucking Tower right now."
"Stop it, Eddie!" Susannah said sharply.
He looked at her. "It was going for you, Susannah, and it meant to turn you into 
ground chuck."
"But it didn't get me. You got it, Eddie. You got it."
"No thanks to him." Eddie made as if to re-holster the gun and then realized, to 
his further disgust, that he had nothing to put it in. Susannah was wearing the 
holster. "Him and his lessons. Him and his goddam lessons." He turned to Roland. 
"I tell you, for two cents -- "
Roland's mildly interested expression suddenly changed. His eyes shifted to a 
point over Eddie's left shoulder. "DOWN!" he shouted.
Eddie didn't ask questions. His rage and confusion were wiped from his mind 
immediately. He dropped, and as he did, he saw the gunslinger's left hand blur 
down to his side. My God, he thought, still falling, he CAN'T be that fast, no 
one can be that fast, I'm not bad but Susannah makes me look slow and he makes 
Susannah look like a turtle trying to walk uphill on a piece of glass -- 
Something passed just over his head, something that squealed at him in 
mechanical rage and pulled out a tuft of his hair. Then the gunslinger was 
shooting from the hip, three fast shots like thunder-cracks, and the squealing 
stopped. A creature which looked to Eddie like a large mechan­ical bat thudded 
to earth between the place where Eddie now lay and the one where Susannah knelt 
beside Roland. One of its jointed, rust-speckled wings thumped the ground once, 
weakly, as if angry at the missed chance, and then became still.
Roland crossed to Eddie, walking easy in his old sprung boots. He extended a 
hand. Eddie took it and let Roland help him to his feet. The wind had been 
knocked out of him and he found he couldn't talk. Proba­bly just as well . . . 
seems like every time I open my mouth I stick my goddam foot into it.
"Eddie! You all right?" Susannah was crossing the clearing to where he stood 
with his head bent and his hands planted on his upper thighs, trying to breathe.
"Yeah." The word came out in a croak. He straightened up with an effort. "Just 
got a little haircut."
"It was in a tree," Roland said mildly. "1 didn't see it myself, at first. The 
light gets tricky this time of day. He paused and then went on in that same mild 
voice: "She was never in any danger, Eddie."
Eddie nodded his head. Roland, he now realized, could almost have eaten a 
hamburger and drunk a milkshake before beginning his draw. He was that fast.
"All right. Let's just say I disapprove of your teaching techniques, okay? I'm 
not going to apologize, though, so if you're waiting for one, you can stop now."
Roland bent, picked Susannah up, and began to brush her off. He did this with a 
kind of impartial affection, like a mother brushing off her toddler after she 
has taken one of her necessary tumbles in the dust of the back yard. "Your 
apology is not expected or necessary," he said. "Susannah and I had a 
conversation similar to this one two days ago. Didn't we, Susannah?"
She nodded. "Roland's of the opinion that apprentice gunslingers who won't bite 
the hand that feeds them from time to time need a good lack in the slats."
Eddie looked around at the wreckage and slowly began to beat the bone-dust out 
of his pants and shirt. "What if I told you I don't want to be a gunslinger, 
Roland old buddy?"
"I'd say that what you want doesn't much matter." Roland was look­ing at the 
metal kiosk which stood against the rock wall, and seemed to have lost interest 
in the conversation. Eddie had seen this before. When the conversation turned to 
questions of should-be, could-be, or oughtta-be, Roland almost always lost 
interest.
"Ka?" Eddie asked, with a trace of his old bitterness.
"That's right. Ka." Roland walked over to the kiosk and passed a hand along the 
yellow and black stripes which ran down its front. "We have found one of the 
twelve portals which ring the edge of the world . . . one of the six paths to 
the Dark Tower.
"And that is also ka."


27
EDDIE WENT BACK FOR Susannah's wheelchair. No one had to ask him to do this; he 
wanted some time alone, to get himself back under control. Now that the shooting 
was over, every muscle in his body seemed to have picked up its own little 
thrumming tremor. He did not want either of them to see him this way -- not because 
they might misread it as fear, but because one or both might know it for what it 
really was: excitement overload. He had liked it. Even when you added in the bat 
which had almost scalped him, he had liked it.
That's bullshit, buddy. And you know it.
The trouble was, he didn't know it. He had come face to face with something 
Susannah had found out for herself after shooting the bear: he could talk about 
how he didn't want to be a gunslinger, how he didn't want to be tramping around 
this crazy world where the three of them seemed to be the only human life, that 
what he really wanted more than anything else was to be standing on the corner 
of Broadway and Forty-second Street, popping his fingers, munching a chili-dog, 
and listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival blast out of his Walkman earphones 
as he watched the girls go by, those ultimately sexy New York girls with their 
pouty go-to-hell mouths and their long legs in short skirts. He could talk about 
those things until he was blue in the face, but his heart knew other things. It 
knew that he had enjoyed blowing the electronic menag­erie back to glory, at 
least while the game was on and Roland's gun was his own private hand-held 
thunderstorm. He had enjoyed kicking the robot rat, even though it had hurt his 
foot and even though he had been scared shitless. In some weird way, that 
part -- the being scared part --  actually seemed to add to the enjoyment.
All that was bad enough, but his heart knew something even worse: that if a door 
leading back to New York appeared in front of him right now, he might not walk 
through it. Not, at least, until he had seen the Dark Tower for himself. He was 
beginning to believe that Roland's illness was a communicable disease.
As he wrestled Susannah's chair through the tangle of junk-alders, cursing the 
branches that whipped at his face and tried to poke his eyes out, Eddie found 
himself able to admit at least some of these things, and the admission cooled 
his blood a little. / want to see if it looks the way it did in my dream, he 
thought. To see something like that. . . that would be really fantastic.
And another voice spoke up inside. I'll bet his other friends -- the ones with the 
names that sound like they came straight from the Round Table in King Arthur's 
court -- I'll bet they felt the same way, Eddie. And they're all dead. Every one of 
them.
He recognized that voice, like it or not. It belonged to Henry, and that made it 
a hard voice not to hear.


28
ROLAND, WITH SUSANNAH BALANCED on his right hip, was standing in front of the 
metal box that looked like a subway entrance closed for the night. Eddie left 
the wheelchair at the edge of the clearing and walked over. As he did, the 
steady humming noise and the vibration under his feet became louder. The 
machinery making the noise, he realized, was either inside the box or under it. 
It seemed that he heard it not with his ears but somewhere deep inside his head, 
and in the hollows of his gut.
"So this is one of the twelve portals. Where does it go, Roland? Disney World?"
Roland shook his head. "I don't know where it goes. Maybe nowhere ... or 
everywhere. There's a lot about my world I don't know -- surely you both have 
realized that. And there are things I used to know which have changed."
"Because the world has moved on?"
"Yes." Roland glanced at him. "Here, that is not a figure of speech. The world 
really is moving on, and it goes ever faster. At the same time, things are 
wearing out . . . falling apart . . ." He kicked die mechanical corpse of the 
walking box to illustrate his point.
Eddie thought of the rough diagram of the portals which Roland had drawn in the 
dirt. "Is this the edge of the world?" he asked, almost timidly. "I mean, it 
doesn't look much different than anyplace else." He laughed a little. "If 
there's a drop-off, I don't see it."
Roland shook his head. "It's not that kind of edge. It's the place where one of 
the Beams starts. Or so I was taught."
"Beams?" Susannah asked. "What Beams?"
"The Great Old Ones didn't make the world, but they did re-make it. Some 
tale-tellers say the Beams saved it; others say they are the seeds of the 
world's destruction. The Great Old Ones created the Beams. They are lines of 
some sort... lines which bind . . . and hold . . ."
"Are you talking about magnetism?" Susannah asked cautiously.
His whole face lit up, transforming its harsh planes and furrows into something 
new and amazing, and for a moment Eddie knew how Roland would look if he 
actually did reach his Tower.
"Yes! Not just magnetism, but that is a part of it ... and gravity . . . and the 
proper alignment of space, size, and dimension. The Beams are the forces which 
bind these things together."
"Welcome to physics in the nuthouse," Eddie said in a low voice.
Susannah ignored this. "And the Dark Tower? Is it some kind of generator? A 
central power-source for these Beams?"
"I don't know."
"But you do know that this is point A," Eddie said. "If we walked long enough in 
a straight line, we'd come to another portal -- call it point C -- on the other edge 
of the world. But before we did, we'd come to point B. The center-point. The 
Dark Tower."
The gunslinger nodded.
"How long a trip is it? Do you know?"
"No. But I know it's very far, and that the distance grows with every day that 
passes."
Eddie had bent to examine the walking box. Now he straightened up and stared at 
Roland. "That can't be." He sounded like a man trying to explain to a small 
child that there really isn't a boogeyman living in his closet, that there can't 
be because there isn't any such thing as the boogeyman, not really. "Worlds 
don't grow, Roland."
"Don't they? When I was a boy, Eddie, there were maps. I remem­ber one in 
particular. It was called The Greater Kingdoms of the Western Earth. It showed 
my land, which was called by the name Gilead. It showed the Downland Baronies, 
which were overrun by riot and civil war in the year after I won my guns, and 
the hills, and the desert, and the mountains, and the Western Sea. It was a long 
distance from Gilead to the Western Sea -- a thousand miles or more -- but it had 
taken me over twenty years to cross that distance."
"That's impossible," Susannah said quickly, fearfully. "Even if you walked the 
whole distance it couldn't take twenty years."
"Well, you have to allow for stops to write postcards and drink beer," Eddie 
said, but they both ignored him.
"I didn't walk but rode most of the distance on horseback," Roland said. "I 
was -- slowed up, shall we say? -- every now and then, but for most of that time I was 
moving. Moving away from John Farson, who led the revolt which toppled the world 
I grew up in and who wanted my head on a pole in his courtyard -- he had good 
reason to want that, I suppose, since I and my compatriots were responsible for 
the deaths of a great many of his followers -- and because I stole something he 
held very dear."
"What, Roland?" Eddie asked curiously.
Roland shook his head. "That's a story for another day ... or maybe never. For 
now, think not of that but of this: I've come many thousands of miles. Because 
the world is growing."
"A thing like that just can't happen," Eddie reiterated, but he was badly 
shaken, all the same. "There'd be earthquakes . . . floods . . . tidal waves ... 
I don't know what all ..."
"Look!" Roland said furiously. "Just look around you! What do you see? A world 
that is slowing down like a child's top even as it speeds up and moves on in 
some other way none of us understand. Look at your kills, Eddie! Look at your 
kills, for your father's sake!"
He took two strides toward the stream, picked up the steel snake, examined it 
briefly, and tossed it to Eddie, who caught it with his left hand. The snake 
broke in two pieces as he did so.
"You see? It's exhausted. All the creatures we found here were exhausted. If we 
hadn't come, they would have died before long, anyway. Just as the hear would 
have died."
"The bear had some sort of disease," Susannah said.
The gunslinger nodded. "Parasites which attacked the natural parts of its body. 
But why did they never attack it before?"
Susannah did not reply.
Eddie was examining the snake. Unlike the bear, it appeared to be a totally 
artificial construction, a thing of metal, circuits, and yards (or maybe miles) 
of gossamer-thin wire. Yet he could see flecks of rust, not just on the surface 
of the half-snake he still held, but in its guts as well. And there was a patch 
of wetness where either oil had leaked out or water had seeped in. This moisture 
had rotted away some of the wires, and a greenish stuff that looked like moss 
had grown over several of the thumbnail-sized circuit boards.
Eddie turned the snake over. A steel plate proclaimed it to be the work of North 
Central Positronics, Ltd. There was a serial number, but no name. Probably too 
unimportant to name, he thought. Just a sophisti­cated mechanical Roto-Rooter 
designed to give old Br'er Bear an enema every once In a while, keep him 
regular, or something equally disgusting.
He dropped the snake and wiped his hands on his pants.
Roland had picked up the tractor-gadget. He yanked at one of the treads. It came 
off easily, showering a cloud of rust down between his boots. He tossed it 
aside.
"Everything in the world is either coming to rest or falling to pieces," he said 
flatly. "At the same time, the forces which interlock and give the world its 
coherence -- in time and size as well as in space -- are weakening. We knew that even 
as children, but we had no idea what the time of the end would be like. How 
could we? Yet now I am living in those times, and I don't believe they affect my 
world alone. They affect yours, Eddie and Susannah; they may affect a billion 
others. The Beams are breaking down. I don't know if that's a cause or only 
another symptom, but I know it's true. Come! Draw close! Listen!"
As Eddie approached the metal box with its alternating diagonal slashes of 
yellow and black, a strong and unpleasant memory seized him -- for the first time 
in years he found himself thinking of a crumbling Victorian wreck in Dutch Hill, 
about a mile away from the neighborhood he and Henry had grown up. This wreck, 
which was known as The Mansion to the neighborhood kids, occupied a plot of 
weedy, untended lawn on Rhinehold Street. Eddie guessed that practically all the 
kids in the borough had heard spooky stories about The Mansion. The house stood 
slumped beneath its steep roofs, seeming to glare at passersby from the deep 
shadows thrown by its eaves. The windows were gone, of course -- kids can throw 
rocks through windows without getting too close to a place -- hut it had not been 
spray-painted, and it had not become a make-out spot or a shooting gallery. 
Oddest of all was the simple fact of its continued existence: no one had set it 
on fire to collect the insurance or just to see it bum. The kids said it was 
haunted, of course, and as Eddie stood on the sidewalk with Henry one day, 
looking at it (they had made the pilgrimage specifically to see this object of 
fabulous rumor, although Henry had told their mother they were only going for 
Hoodsie Rockets at Dahlberg's with some of his friends), it had seemed that it 
really might be haunted. Hadn't he felt some strong and unfriendly force seeping 
from that old Victorian's shadowy windows, windows that seemed to look at him 
with the fixed stare of a dangerous lunatic? Hadn't he felt some subtle wind 
stirring the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck? Hadn't he had the clear 
intuition that if he stepped inside that place, the door would slam and lock 
behind him and the walls would begin to close in, grinding the bones of dead 
mice to powder, wanting to crush his bones the same way?
Haunting. Haunted.
He felt that same old sense of mystery and danger now, as he approached the 
metal box. Gooseflesh began to ripple up his legs and down his arms; the hair on 
the back of his neck bushed out and became rough, overlapping hackles. He felt 
that same subtle wind blowing past him, although the leaves on the trees which 
ringed the clearing were perfectly still.
Yet he walked toward the door anyway (for that was what it was, of course, 
another door, although this one was locked and always would be against the likes 
of him), not stopping until his ear was pressed against it.
It was as if he had dropped a tab of really strong acid half an hour ago and it 
was just beginning to come on heavy. Strange colors flowed across the darkness 
behind his eyeballs. He seemed to hear voices mur­muring up to him from long 
hallways like stone throats, halls which were lit with guttering electric 
torches. Once these flambeaux of the modern age had thrown a bright glare across 
everything, but now they were only sullen cores of blue light. He sensed 
emptiness . . . desertion . . . desola­tion . . . death.
The machinery rumbled on and on, but wasn't there a rough under­tone to the 
sound? A land of desperate thudding beneath the hum, like the arrhythmia of a 
diseased heart? A feeling that the machinery produc­ing this sound, although far 
more sophisticated even than that within the bear had been, was somehow falling 
out of tune with itself?
"All is silent in the halls of the dead," Eddie heard himself whisper in a 
falling, fainting voice. "All is forgotten in the stone halls of the dead. 
Behold the stairways which stand in darkness; behold the rooms of ruin.
These are the halls of the dead where the spiders spin and the great circuits 
tall quiet, one by one."
Roland pulled him roughly back, and Eddie looked at him with dazed eyes.
"That's enough," Roland said.
"Whatever they put in there isn't doing so well, is it?" Eddie heard himself 
ask. His trembling voice seemed to come from far away. He could still feel the 
power coming out of that box. It called to him.
"No. Nothing in my world is doing so well these days."
"If you boys are planning to camp here for the night, you'll have to do without 
the pleasure of my company," Susannah said. Her face was a white blur in the 
ashy aftermath of twilight. "I'm going over yonder. I don't like the way that 
thing makes me feel."
"We'll all camp over yonder," Roland said. "Let's go."
"What a good idea," Eddie said. As they moved away from the box, the sound of 
the machinery began to dim. Eddie felt its hold on him weakening, although it 
still called to him, invited him to explore the half-lit hallways, the standing 
stairways, the rooms of ruin where the spiders spun and the control panels were 
going dark, one by one.


29
IN His DREAM THAT night, Eddie again went walking down Second Ave­nue toward Tom 
and Gerry's Artistic Deli on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth. He passed a 
record store and the Rolling Stones boomed from the speakers:

"I see a red door and I want to paint it black,
No colours anymore, I want them to turn black,
I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes,
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes ..."

He walked on, passing a store called Reflections of You between Forty-ninth and 
Forty-eighth. He saw himself in one of the mirrors hang­ing in the display 
window. He thought he looked better than he had in years -- hair a little too long, 
but otherwise tanned and fit. The clothes, though . . . uh-uh, man. Square-bear 
shit all the way. Blue blazer, white shirt, dark red tie, gray dress pants ... 
he had never owned a yuppie-from-hell outfit like that in his life.
Someone was shaking him.
Eddie tried to burrow deeper into the dream. He didn't want to wake up now. Not 
before he got to the deli and used his key to go through the door and into the 
field of roses. He wanted to see it all again -- the endless blanket of red, the 
overarching blue sky where those great white cloud-ships sailed, and the Dark 
Tower. He was afraid of the darkness which lived within that eldritch column, 
waiting to eat anyone who got too close, but he wanted to see it again just the 
same. Needed to see it.
The hand, however, would not stop shaking. The dream began to darken, and the 
smells of car exhaust along Second Avenue became the smell of woodsmoke -- thin 
now, because the fire was almost out.
It was Susannah. She looked scared. Eddie sat up and put an arm around her. They 
had camped on the far side of the alder grove, within earshot of the stream 
babbling through the bone-littered clearing. On the other side of the glowing 
embers which had been their campfire, Roland lay asleep. His sleep was not easy. 
He had cast aside his single blanket and lay with his knees drawn up almost to 
his chest. With his boots off, his feet looked white and narrow and defenseless. 
The great toe of the right foot was gone, victim of the lobster-thing which had 
also snatched away part of his right hand.
He was moaning some slurred phrase over and over again. After a few repetitions, 
Eddie realized it was the phrase he had spoken before keeling over in the 
clearing where Susannah had shot the bear: Go, then -- there are other worlds than 
these. He would fall silent for a moment, then call out the boy's name: "Jake! 
Where are you? Jake!"
The desolation and despair in his voice filled Eddie with horror. His arms stole 
around Susannah and he pulled her tight against him. He could feel her 
shivering, although the night was warm.
The gunslinger rolled over. Starlight fell into his open eyes.
"Jake, where are you?" he called to the night. "Come back!"
"Oh Jesus -- he's off again. What should we do, Suze?"
"I don't know. I just knew I couldn't listen to it anymore by myself. He sounds 
so far away. So far away from everything."
"Go, then," the gunslinger murmured, rolling back onto his side and drawing his 
knees up once more, "there are other worlds than these." He was silent for a 
moment. Then his chest hitched and he loosed the boy's name in a long, 
bloodcurdling cry. In the woods behind them, some large bird flew away in a dry 
whirr of wings toward some less exciting part of the world.
"Do you have any ideas?" Susannah asked. Her eyes were wide and wet with tears. 
"Maybe we should wake him up?"
"I don't know." Eddie saw the gunslinger's revolver, the one he wore on his left 
hip. It had been placed, in its holster, on a neatly folded square of hide 
within easy reach of the place where Roland lay. "I don't think I dare," he 
added at last.
"It's driving him crazy."
Eddie nodded.
"What do we do about it? Eddie, what do we do?"
Eddie didn't know. An antibiotic had stopped the infection caused by the bite of 
the lobster-thing; now Roland was burning with infection again, but Eddie didn't 
think there was an antibiotic in the world that would cure what was wrong with 
him this time.
"I don't know. Lie down with me, Suze."
Eddie threw a hide over both of them, and after a while her trembling quieted.
"If he goes insane, he may hurt us," she said.
"Don't I know it." This unpleasant idea had occurred to him in terms of the 
bear -- its red, hate-filled eyes (and had there not been bewilderment as well, 
lurking deep in those red depths?) and its deadly slashing claws. Eddie's eyes 
moved to the revolver, lying so close to the gunslinger's good left hand, and he 
remembered again how fast Roland had been when he'd seen the mechanical bat 
swooping down toward them. So fast his hand had seemed to disappear. If the 
gunslinger went mad, and if he and Susannah became the focus of that madness, 
they would have no chance. No chance at all.
He pressed his face into the warm hollow of Susannah's neck and closed his eyes.
Not long after, Roland ceased his babbling. Eddie raised his head and looked 
over. The gunslinger appeared to be sleeping naturally again. Eddie looked at 
Susannah and saw that she had also gone to sleep. He lay down beside her, gently 
kissed the swell of her breast, and closed his own eyes.
Not you, buddy; you're gonna be awake a long, long time.
But they had been on the move for two days and Eddie was bone-tired. He drifted 
off ... drifted down.
Back to the dream, he thought as he went. I want to go back to Second Avenue . . 
. back to Tom and Gerry's. That's what I want.
The dream did not return that night, however.


30
THEY ATE A QUICK breakfast as the sun came up, repacked and redistrib­uted the 
gear, and then returned to the wedge-shaped clearing. It didn't look quite so 
spooky in the clear light of morning, but all three of them were still at pains 
to keep well away from the metal box with its warning slashes of black and 
yellow. If Roland had any recollection of the bad dreams which had haunted him 
in the night, he gave no sign. He had gone about the morning chores as he always 
did, in thoughtful, stolid silence.
"How do you plan to keep to a straight-line course from here?" Susannah asked 
the gunslinger.
"If the legends are right, that should be no problem. Do you remem­ber when you 
asked about magnetism?"
She nodded.
He rummaged deep into his purse and at last emerged with a small square of old, 
supple leather. Threaded through it was a long silver needle.
"A compass!" Eddie said. "You really are an Eagle Scout!"
Roland shook his head. "Not a compass. I know what they are, of course, but 
these days I keep my directions by the sun and stars, and even now they serve me 
quite well."
"Even now?" Susannah asked, a trifle uneasily.
He nodded. "The directions of the world are also in drift."
"Christ," Eddie said. He tried to imagine a world where true north was slipping 
slyly off to the east or west and gave up almost at once. It made him feel a 
little ill; the way looking down from the top of a high building had always made 
him feel a little ill.
"This is just a needle, but it is steel and it should serve our purpose as well 
as a compass. The Beam is our course now, and the needle will show it." He 
rummaged in his purse again and came out with a poorly made pottery cup. A crack 
ran down one side. Roland had mended this artifact, which he had found at the 
old campsite, with pine-gum. Now he went to the stream, dipped the cup into it, 
and brought it back to where Susannah sat in her wheelchair. He put the cup down 
carefully on the wheelchair's arm, and when the surface of the water inside was 
calm, he dropped the needle in. It sank to the bottom and rested there.
"Wow!" Eddie said. "Great! I'd fall at your feet in wonder, Roland, but I don't 
want to spoil the crease in my pants."
"I'm not finished. Hold the cup steady, Susannah."
She did, and Roland pushed her slowly across the clearing. When she was about 
twelve feet in front of the door, he turned the chair carefully so she was 
facing away from it.
"Eddie!" she cried. "Look at this!"
He bent over the pottery cup, marginally aware that water was already oozing 
through Roland's makeshift seal. The needle was rising slowly to the surface. It 
reached it and bobbed there as serenely as a cork would have done. Its direction 
lay in a straight line from the portal behind them and into the old, tangled 
forest ahead. "Holy shit -- a floating needle. Now I really have seen everything."
"Hold the cup, Susannah."
She held it steady as Roland pushed the wheelchair further into the clearing, at 
right angles to the box. The needle lost its steady point, bobbed randomly for a 
moment, then sank to the bottom of the cup again. When Roland pulled the chair 
backward to its former spot, it rose once more and pointed the way.
"If we had iron filings and a sheet of paper," the gunslinger said, "we could 
scatter the filings on the paper's surface and watch them draw together into a 
line which would point that same course."
"Will that happen even when we leave the Portal?" Eddie asked.
Roland nodded. "Nor is that all. We can actually see the Beam."
Susannah looked over her shoulder. Her elbow bumped the cup a little as she did. 
The needle swung aimlessly as the water inside sloshed . . . and then settled 
firmly back in its original direction.
"Not that way," Roland said. "Look down, both of you -- Eddie at your feet, 
Susannah into your lap."
They did as he asked.
"When I tell you to look up, look straight ahead, in the direction the needle 
points. Don't look at any one thing; let your eye see whatever it will. Now -- look 
up!"
They did. For a moment Eddie saw nothing but the woods. He tried to make his 
eyes relax . . . and suddenly it was there, the way the shape of the slingshot 
had been there, inside the knob of wood, and he knew why Roland had told them 
not to look at any one thing. The effect of the Beam was everywhere along its 
course, but it was subtle. The needles of the pines and spruces pointed that 
way. The greenberry bushes grew slightly slanted, and the slant lay in the 
direction of the Beam. Not all the trees the bear had pushed down to clear its 
sightlines had fallen along that camouflaged path -- which ran southeast, if Eddie 
had his direc­tions right -- but most had, as if the force coming out of the box 
had pushed them that way as they tottered. The clearest evidence was in the way 
the shadows lay on the ground. With the sun coming up in the east they all 
pointed west, of course, but as Eddie looked southeast, he saw a rough 
herringbone pattern that existed only along the line which the needle in the cup 
had pointed out.
"I might see something" Susannah said doubtfully, "but -- "
"Look at the shadows! The shadows, Suze!"
Eddie saw her eyes widen as it all fell into place for her. "My God! It's there! 
Right there! It's like when someone has a natural part in their hair!"
Now that Eddie had seen it, he could not unsee it; a dim aisle driving through 
the untidy tangle which surrounded the clearing, a straight-edge course that was 
the way of the Beam. He was suddenly aware of how huge the force flowing around 
him (and probably right through him, like X-rays) must be, and had to control an 
urge to step away, either to the right or left. "Say, Roland, this won't make me 
sterile, will it?"
Roland shrugged, smiling faintly.
"It's like a riverbed," Susannah marvelled. "A riverbed so over­grown you can 
barely see it ... but it's still there. The pattern of shadows will never change 
as long as we stay inside the path of the Beam, will it?"
"No," Roland said. "They'll change direction as the sun moves across the sky, of 
course, but we'll always be able to see the course of the Beam. You must 
remember that it has been flowing along this same path for thousands -- perhaps 
tens of thousands -- of years. Look up, you two, into the sky!"
They did, and saw that the thin cirrus clouds had also picked up that 
herringbone pattern along the course of the Beam . . . and those clouds within 
the alley of its power were flowing faster than those to either side. They were 
being pushed southeast. Being pushed in the direction of the Dark Tower.
"You see? Even the clouds must obey."
A small flock of birds coursed toward them. As they reached the path of the 
Beam, they were all deflected toward the southeast for a moment. Although Eddie 
clearly saw this happen, his eyes could hardly credit it. When the birds had 
crossed the narrow corridor of the Beam's influence, they resumed their former 
course.
"Well," Eddie said, "I suppose we ought to get going. A journey of a thousand 
miles begins with a single step, and all that shit."
"Wait a minute." Susannah was looking at Roland. "It isn't just a thousand 
miles, is it? Not anymore. How far are we talking about, Roland? Five thousand 
miles? Ten?"
"I can't say. It will be very far."
"Well, how in the hell we ever goan get there, with you two pushing me in this 
goddam wheelchair? We'll be lucky to make three miles a day through yonder 
Drawers, and you know it."
"The way has been opened," Roland said patiently, "and that's enough for now. 
The time may come, Susannah Dean, when we travel faster than you would like."
"Oh yeah?" She looked at him truculently, and both men could see Detta Walker 
dancing a dangerous hornpipe in her eyes again. "You got a race-car lined up? If 
you do, it might be nice if we had a damn road to run it on!"
"The land and the way we travel on it will change. It always does."
Susannah flapped a hand at the gunslinger; go on with you, it said. "You sound 
like my old mamma, sayin God will provide."
"Hasn't He?" Roland asked gravely.
She looked at him for a moment in silent surprise, then threw her head back and 
laughed at the sky. "Wt-11, I guess that depends on how you look at it. All I 
can say is that if this is providin, Roland, I'd hate to see what'd happen if He 
decided to let us go hungry."
"Come on, let's do it," Eddie said. "I want to get out of this place. I don't 
like it." And that was true, but that wasn't all. He also felt a deep eagerness 
to set his feet upon that concealed path, that highway in hiding. Every step was 
a step closer to the field of roses and the Tower which dominated it. He 
realized -- not without some wonder -- that he meant to see that Tower ... or die 
trying.
Congratulations, Roland, he thought. You've done it. I'm one of the converted. 
Someone say hallelujah.
"There's one other thing before we go." Roland bent and untied the rawhide lace 
around his left thigh. Then he slowly began to unbuckle his gunbelt.
"What's this jive?" Eddie asked.
Roland pulled the gunbelt free and held it out to him. "You know why I'm doing 
this," he said calmly.
"Put it back on, man!" Eddie felt a terrible stew of conflicting emo­tions 
roiling inside him; could feel his fingers trembling even inside his clenched 
fists. "What do you think you're doing?"
"Losing my mind an inch at a time. Until the wound inside me closes -- if it ever 
does -- I am not fit to wear this. And you know it."
"Take it, Eddie," Susannah said quietly.
"If you hadn't been wearing this goddamn thing last night, when that bat came at 
me, I'd be gone from the nose up this morning!"
The gunslinger replied by continuing to hold his remaining gun out to Eddie. The 
posture of his body said he was prepared to stand that way all day, if that was 
what it took.
"All right!" Eddie cried. "Goddammit, all right!"
He snatched the gunbelt from Roland's hand and buckled it about his own waist in 
a series of rough gestures. He should have been relieved, he supposed -- hadn't he 
looked at this gun, lying so close to Roland's hand in the middle of the night, 
and thought about what might happen if Roland really did go over the high side? 
Hadn't he and Susannah both thought about it? But there was no relief. Only fear 
and guilt and a strange, aching sadness far too deep for tears.
He looked so strange without his guns.
So wrong.
"Okay? Now that the numb-fuck apprentices have the guns and the master's 
unarmed, can we please go? If something big comes out of the bush at us, Roland, 
you can always throw your knife at it."
"Oh, that," he murmured. "I almost forgot." He took the knife from his purse and 
held it out, hilt first, to Eddie.
"This is ridiculous!" Eddie shouted.
"Life is ridiculous."
"Yeah, put it on a postcard and send it to the fucking Reader's Digest." Eddie 
jammed the knife into his belt and then looked defiantly at Roland. "Now can we 
go?"
"There is one more thing," Roland said.
"Weeping, creeping Jesus!"
The smile touched Roland's mouth again. "Just joking," he said.
Eddie's mouth dropped open. Beside him, Susannah began to laugh again. The sound 
rose, as musical as bells, in the morning stillness.


31
IT TOOK THEM MOST of the morning to clear the zone of destruction with which the 
great bear had protected itself, but the going was a little easier along the 
path of the Beam, and once they had put the deadfalls and tangles of underbrush 
behind them, deep forest took over again and they were able to move at better 
speed. The brook which had emerged from the rock wall in the clearing ran busily 
along to their right. It had been joined by several smaller streamlets, and its 
sound was deeper now. There were more animals here -- they heard them moving 
through the woods, going about their daily round -- and twice they saw small groups 
of deer. One of them, a buck with a noble rack of antlers on its upraised and 
questioning head, looked to be at least three hundred pounds. The brook bent 
away from their path as they began to climb again. And, as the afternoon began 
to slant down toward evening, Eddie saw something.
"Could we stop here? Rest a minute?"
"What is it?" Susannah asked.
"Yes," Roland said. "We can stop."
Suddenly Eddie felt Henry's presence again, like a weight settling on his 
shoulders. Oh lookit the sissy. Does the sissy see something in the twee? Does 
the sissy want to carve something? Does he? Ohhhh, ain't that CUTE?
"We don't have to stop. I mean, no big deal. I just -- "
" -- saw something," Roland finished for him. "Whatever it is, stop running your 
everlasting mouth and get it."
"It's really nothing." Eddie felt warm blood mount into his face. He tried to 
look away from the ash tree which had caught his eye.
"But it is. It's something you need, and that's a long way from nothing. If you 
need it, Eddie, we need it. What we don't need is a man who can't let go of the 
useless baggage of his memories."
The warm blood turned hot. Eddie stood with his flaming face pointed at his 
moccasins for a moment longer, feeling as if Roland had looked directly into his 
confused heart with his faded blue bombardier's eyes.
"Eddie?" Susannah asked curiously. "What is it, dear?"
Her voice gave him the courage he needed. He walked to the slim, straight ash, 
pulling Roland's knife from his belt.
"Maybe nothing," he muttered, and then forced himself to add: "Maybe a lot. If I 
don't fuck it up, maybe quite a lot."
"The ash is a noble tree, and full of power," Roland remarked from behind him, 
but Eddie barely heard. Henry's sneering, hectoring voice was gone; his shame 
was gone with it. He thought only of the one branch that had caught his eye. It 
thickened and bulged slightly as it ran into the trunk. It was this oddly shaped 
thickness that Eddie wanted.
He thought the shape of the key was buried within it -- the key he had seen briefly 
in the fire before the burning remains of the jawbone had changed again and the 
rose had appeared. Three inverted V's, the center V both deeper and wider than 
the other two. And the little s-shape at the end. That was the secret.
A breath of his dream recurred: Dad-a-chum, dud-a-chee, not to worry, you've got 
the key.
Maybe, he thought. But this time I'll have to get all of it. I think that this 
time ninety per cent just won't do.
Working with great care, he cut the branch from the tree and then trimmed the 
narrow end. He was left with a fat chunk of ash about nine inches long. It felt 
heavy and vital in his hand, very much alive and willing enough to give up its 
secret shape ... to a man skillful enough to tease it out, that was.
Was he that man? And did it matter?
Eddie Dean thought the answer to both questions was yes.
The gunslinger's good left hand closed over Eddie's right hand. "I think you 
know a secret."
"Maybe I do."
"Can you tell?"
He shook his head. "Better not to, I think. Not yet."
Roland thought this over, then nodded. "All right. I want to ask you one 
question, and then we'll drop the subject. Have you perhaps seen some way into 
the heart of my . . . my problem?"
Eddie thought: And that's as dose as he'll ever come to showing the desperation 
that's eating him alive.
"I don't know. Right now I can't tell for sure. But I hope so, man. I really, 
really do."
Roland nodded again and released Eddie's hand. "I thank you. We still have two 
hours of good daylight -- why don't we make use of them?"
"Fine by me."
They moved on. Roland pushed Susannah and Eddie walked ahead of them, holding 
the chunk of wood with the key buried in it. It seemed to throb with its own 
warmth, secret and powerful.


32
THAT NIGHT, AFTER SUPPER was eaten, Eddie took the gunslinger's knife from his 
belt and began to carve. The knife was amazingly sharp, and seemed never to lose 
its edge. Eddie worked slowly and carefully in the firelight, turning the chunk 
of ash this way and that in his hands, watching the curls of fine-grained wood 
rise ahead of his long, sure strokes.
Susannah lay down, laced her hands behind her head, and looked Up at the stars 
wheeling slowly across the black sky.
At the edge of the campsite, Roland stood beyond the glow of the fire and 
listened as the voices of madness rose once more in his aching, confused mind.
There was a boy.
There was no boy.
Was.
Wasn't.
Was -- 
He closed his eyes, cupped his aching forehead in one cold hand, and wondered 
how long it would be until he simply snapped like an overwound bowstring.
Oh Jake, he thought. Where are you? Where are you?
And above the three of them, Old Star and Old Mother rose into their appointed 
places and stared at each other across the starry ruins of their ancient broken 
marriage.






















II • KEY AND ROSE







II
KEY AND ROSE

1
FOR THREE WEEKS JOHN "Jake" Chambers fought bravely against the madness rising 
inside him. During that time he felt like the last man aboard a foundering ocean 
liner, working the bilge-pumps for dear life, trying to keep the ship afloat 
until the storm ended, the skies cleared, and help could arrive . . . help from 
somewhere. Help from anywhere. On May 31st, 1977, four days before school ended 
for the summer, he finally faced up to the fact that no help was going to come. 
It was time to give up; time to let the storm carry him away.
The straw that broke the camel's back was his Final Essay in English Comp.
John Chambers, who was Jake to the three or four boys who were almost his 
friends (if his father had known this little factoid, he undoubt­edly would have 
hit the roof), was finishing his first year at The Piper School. Although he was 
eleven and in the sixth grade, he was small for his age, and people meeting him 
for the first time often thought he was much younger. In fact, he had sometimes 
been mistaken for a girl until a year or so ago, when he had made such a fuss 
about having his hair cut short that his mother had finally relented and allowed 
it. With his father, of course, there had been no problem about the haircut. His 
father had just grinned his hard, stainless steel grin and said, The kid wants 
to look like a Marine, Laurie. Good for him.
To his father, he was never Jake and rarely John. To his father, he was usually 
just "the kid."
The Piper School, his father had explained to him the summer before (the 
Bicentennial Summer, that had been -- all bunting and flags and New York Harbor 
filled with Tall Ships), was, quite simply, The Best Damned School In The 
Country For A Boy Your Age. The fact that Jake had been accepted there had 
nothing to do with money, Elmer Chambers explained . . . almost insisted.  He 
had been savagely proud of this fact, although, even at ten, Jake had suspected 
it might not be a true fact, that it might really be a bunch of bullshit his 
father had turned into a fact so he could casually drop it into the conversation 
at lunch or over cocktails: My kid? Oh, he's going to Piper. Best Damned School 
In The Country For A Boy His Age. Money won't buy you into that school, you 
know; for Piper, it's brains or nothing.
Jake was perfectly aware that in the fierce furnace of Elmer Cham­bers's mind, 
the gross carbon of wish and opinion was often blasted into the hard diamonds 
which he called facts. ... or, in more informal circumstances, "factoids." His 
favorite phrase, spoken often and with rev­erence, was the fact is, and he used 
it every chance he got.
The fact is, money doesn't get anyone into The Piper School, his father had told 
him during that Bicentennial Summer, the summer of blue skies and bunting and 
Tall Ships, a summer which seemed golden in Jake's mem­ory because he had not 
yet begun to lose his mind and all he had to worry about was whether or not he 
could cut the mustard at The Piper School, which sounded like a nest for newly 
hatched geniuses. The only thing that gets you into a place like Piper is what 
you've got up here. Elmer Chambers had reached over his desk and tapped the 
center of his son's forehead with a hard, nicotine-stained finger. Get me, kid?
Jake had nodded. It wasn't necessary to talk to his father, because his father 
treated everyone -- including his wife -- the way he treated his underlings at the TV 
network where he was in charge of programming and an acknowledged master of The 
Kill. All you had to do was listen, nod in the right places, and after a while 
he let you go.
Good, his father said, lighting one of the eighty Camel cigarettes he smoked 
each and every day. We understand each other, then. You're going to have to work 
your buttsky off, but you can cut it. They never would have sent us this if you 
couldn't. He picked up the letter of acceptance from The Piper School and 
rattled it. There was a kind of savage triumph in the gesture, as if the letter 
was an animal he had killed in the jungle, an animal he would now skin and eat. 
So work hard. Make your grades. Make your mother and me proud of you. If you end 
the year with an A average in your courses. there's a trip to Disney World in it 
for you. That's something to shoot for, right, kiddo?
Jake had made his grades -- A's in everything (until the last three weeks, that 
was). He had, presumably, made his mother and father proud of him, although they 
were around so little that it was hard to tell. Usually there was nobody around 
when he came home from school except for Greta Shaw -- the housekeeper -- and so he 
ended up showing his A papers to her. After that, they migrated to a dark corner 
of his room. Sometimes Jake looked through them and wondered if they meant 
any­thing. He wanted them to, but he had serious doubts.
Jake didn't think he would be going to Disney World this summer, A average or no 
A average.
He thought the nuthouse was a much better possibility.
As he walked in through the double doors of The Piper School at 8:45 on the 
morning of May 31st, a terrible vision came to him. He saw his father in his 
office at 70 Rockefeller Plaza, leaning over his desk with a Camel jutting from 
the corner of his mouth, talking to one of his underlings as blue smoke wreathed 
his head. All of New York was spread out behind and below his father, its thump 
and hustle silenced by two layers of Thermopane glass.
The fact is, money doesn't get anyone into Sunnyvale Sanitarium, his father was 
telling the underling in a tone of grim satisfaction. He reached out and tapped 
the underling's forehead. The only thing that gets you into a place like that is 
when something big-time goes wrong up here in the attic. That's what happened to 
the kid. But he's working his goddam buttsky off. Makes the best fucking baskets 
in the place, they tell me. And when they let him out -- if they ever do -- there's a 
trip in it for him. A trip to -- 
" -- the way station," Jake muttered, then touched his forehead with a hand that 
wanted to tremble. The voices were coming back. The yelling, conflicting voices 
which were driving him mad.
You're dead, Jake. You were run over by a car and you're dead.
Don't be stupid! Look -- see that poster? REMEMBER THE CLASS ONE PICNIC, it says. 
Do you think they have Class Picnics in the afterlife?
I don't know. But I know you were run over by a car.
No!
Yes. It happened on May 9th, at 8:25 AM You died less than a minute later.
No! No! No!
"John?"
He looked around, badly startled. Mr. Bissette, his French teacher, was standing 
there, looking a little concerned. Behind him, the rest of the student body was 
streaming into the Common Room for the morning assembly. There was very little 
skylarking, and no yelling at all. Presumably these other students, like Jake 
himself, had been told by their parents how lucky they were to be attending 
Piper, where money didn't matter (although tuition was $22,000 a year), only 
your brains. Presumably many of them had been promised trips this summer if 
their grades were good enough. Presumably the parents of the lucky trip-winners 
would even go along in some cases. Presumably -- 
"John, are you okay?" Mr. Bissette asked.
"Sure," Jake said. "Fine. I overslept a little this morning. Not awake yet, I 
guess."
Mr. Bissette's face relaxed and he smiled. "Happens to the best of us."
Not to my dad. The master of The Kill never oversleeps.
"Are you ready for your French final?" Mr. Bissette asked. "Voulez-vous faire 
I'examen cet apres-midi?"
"I think so," Jake said. In truth he didn't know if he was ready for the exam or 
not. He couldn't even remember if he had studied for the French final or not. 
These days nothing seemed to matter much except for the voices in his head.
"I want to tell you again how much I enjoyed having you this year, John. I 
wanted to tell your folks, too, but they missed Parents' Night -- "
"They're pretty busy," Jake said.
Mr. Bissette nodded. "Well, I have enjoyed you. I just wanted to say so ... and 
that I'm looking forward to having you back for French II next year."
"Thanks," Jake said, and wondered what Mr. Bissette would say if he added, But I 
don't think I'll be taking French II next year, unless I can get a 
correspondence course delivered to my postal box at good old Sunnyvale.
Joanne Franks, the school secretary, appeared in the doorway of the Common Room 
with her small silver-plated bell in her hand. At The Piper School, all bells 
were rung by hand. Jake supposed that if you were a parent, that was one of its 
charms. Memories of the Little Red Schoolhouse and all that. He hated it 
himself. The sound of that bell seemed to go right through his head -- 
I can't hold on much longer, he thought despairingly. I'm sorry, but I'm losing 
it. I'm really, really losing it.
Mr. Bissette had caught sight of Ms. Franks. He turned away, then turned back 
again. "Is everything all right, John? You've seemed preoccupied these last few 
weeks. Troubled. Is something on your mind?"
Jake was almost undone by the kindness in Mr. Bissette's voice, but then he 
imagined how Mr. Bissette would look if he said: Yes. Something is on my mind. 
One hell of a nasty little factoid. I died, you see, and I went into another 
world. And then I died again. You're going to say that stuff like that doesn't 
happen, and of course you're right, and part of my mind knows you're right, but 
most of my mind knows that you're wrong. It did happen. I did die.
If he said something like that, Mr. Bissette would be on the phone to Elmer 
Chambers at once, and Jake thought that Sunnyvale Sanitarium would probably look 
like a rest-cure after all the stuff his father would have to say on the subject 
of lads who started having crazy notions just before Finals Week. Kids who did 
things that couldn't be discussed over lunch or cocktails. Kids Who Let Down The 
Side.
Jake forced himself to smile at Mr. Bissette. "I'm a little worried about exams, 
that's all."
Mr. Bissette winked. "You'll do fine."
Ms. Franks began to ring the Assembly Bell. Each peal stabbed into Jake's ears 
and then seemed to flash across his brain like a small rocket.
"Come on," Mr. Bissette said. "We'll be late. Can't be late on the first day of 
Finals Week, can we?"
They went in past Ms. Franks and her clashing bell. Mr. Bissette headed toward 
the row of seats called Faculty Choir. There were lots of cute names like that 
at Piper School; the auditorium was the Com­mon Room, lunch-hour was Outs, 
seventh- and eighth-graders were Upper Boys and Girls, and, of course, the 
folding chairs over by the piano (which Ms. Franks would soon begin to pound as 
mercilessly as she rang her silver bell) was Faculty Choir. All part of the 
tradition, Jake supposed. If you were a parent who knew your kid had Outs in the 
Common Room at noon instead of just slopping up Tuna Surprise in the caff, you 
relaxed into the assurance that everything was A-OK in the education department.
He slipped into a seat at the rear of the room and let the morn­ing's 
announcements wash over him. The terror ran endlessly on in his mind, making him 
feel like a rat trapped on an exercise wheel. And when he tried to look ahead to 
some better, brighter time, he could see only darkness.
The ship was his sanity, and it was sinking.
Mr. Harley, the headmaster, approached the podium and imparted a brief exordium 
about the importance of Finals Week, and how the grades they received would 
constitute another step upon The Great Road of Life. He told them that the 
school was depending on them, he was depending on them, and their parents were 
depending on them. Me did not tell them that the entire free world was depending 
on them, but he strongly implied that this might be so. He finished by telling 
them that bells would be suspended during Finals Week (the first and only piece 
of good news Jake had received that morning).
Ms. Franks, who had assumed her seat at the piano, struck an invocatory chord. 
The student body, seventy boys and fifty girls, each turned out in a neat and 
sober way that bespoke their parents' taste and financial stability, rose as one 
and began to sing the school song. Jake mouthed the words and thought about the 
place where he had awakened after dying. At first he had believed himself to be 
in hell . . . and when the man in the black hooded robe came along, he had been 
sure of it.
Then, of course, the other man had come along. A man Jake had almost come to 
love.
But he let me fall. He killed me.
He could feel prickly sweat breaking out on the back of his neck and between his 
shoulderblades.

"So we hail the halls of Piper,
Hold its banner high;
Hail to thee, our alma mater,
Piper, do or die!"

God, what a shitty song, Jake thought, and it suddenly occurred to him that his 
father would love it.


2
PERIOD ONE WAS ENGLISH Comp, the only class where there was no final. Their 
assignment had been to write a Final Essay at home. This was to be a typed 
document between fifteen hundred and four thousand words long. The subject Ms. 
Avery had assigned was My Understanding of Truth. The Final Essay would count as 
twenty-five per cent of their final grade for the semester.
Jake came in and took his seat in the third row. There were only eleven pupils 
in all. Jake remembered Orientation Day last September, when Mr. Harley had told 
them that Piper had The Highest Teacher To Student Ratio Of Any Fine Private 
Middle School In The East. He had popped his fist repeatedly on the lectern at 
the front of the Common Room to emphasize this point. Jake hadn't been terribly 
impressed, but he had passed the information along to his lather. He thought his 
father would be impressed, and he had not been wrong.
He unzipped his bookbag and carefully removed the blue folder which contained 
his Final Essay. He laid it on his desk, meaning to give it a final look-over, 
when his eye was caught by the door at the left side of the room. It led, he 
knew, to the cloakroom, and it was closed today because it was seventy degrees 
in New York and no one had a coat which needed storage. Nothing back there 
except a lot of brass coathooks in a line on the wall and a long rubber mat on 
the floor for boots. A few boxes of school supplies -- chalk, blue-books and 
such -- were stored in the far corner.
No big deal.
All the same, Jake rose from his seat, leaving the folder unopened on the desk, 
and walked across to the door. He could hear his classmates murmuring quietly 
together, and the riffle of pages as they checked their own Final Essays for 
that crucial misplaced modifier or fuzzy phrase, but these sounds seemed far 
away.
It was the door which held his attention.
In the last ten days or so, as the voices in his head grew louder and louder, 
Jake had become more and more fascinated with doors -- all kinds of doors. He must 
have opened the one between his bedroom and the upstairs hallway five hundred 
times in just the last week, and the one between his bedroom and the bathroom a 
thousand. Each time he did it, he felt a tight ball of hope and anticipation in 
his chest, as if the answer to all of his problems lay somewhere behind this 
door or that one and he would surely find it ... eventually. But each time it 
was only the hall, or the bathroom, or the front walk, or whatever.
Last Thursday he had come home from school, thrown himself on his bed, and had 
fallen asleep -- sleep, it seemed, was the only refuge which remained to him. 
Except when he'd awakened forty-five minutes later, he had been standing in the 
bathroom doorway, peering dazedly in at nothing more exciting than the toilet 
and the basin. Luckily, no one had seen him.
Now, as he approached the cloakroom door, he felt that same daz­zling burst of 
hope, a certainty that the door would not open on a shad­owy closet containing 
only the persistent smells of winter -- flannel, rubber, and wet wool -- but on some 
other world where he could be whale again. Hot, dazzling light would fall across 
the classroom floor in a widening triangle, and he would see birds circling in a 
faded blue sky the color of
(his eyes)
old jeans. A desert wind would blow his hair back and dry the nervous sweat on 
his brow.
He would step through this door and be healed.
Jake turned the knob and opened the door. Inside was only darkness and a row of 
gleaming brass hooks. One long-forgotten mitten lay near the stacked piles of 
blue-books in the corner.
His heart sank, and suddenly Jake felt like simply creeping into that dark room 
with its bitter smells of winter and chalkdust. He could move the mitten and sit 
in the corner under the coathooks. He could sit on the rubber mat where you were 
supposed to put your boots in the winter­time. He could sit there, put his thumb 
in his mouth, pull his knees tight against his chest, close his eyes, and . . . 
and . . .
And just give up.
This idea -- the relief of this idea -- was incredibly attractive. It would be an end 
to the terror and confusion and dislocation. That last was somehow the worst; 
that persistent feeling that his whole life had turned into a funhouse 
mirror-maze.
Yet there was deep steel in Jake Chambers as surely as there was deep steel in 
Eddie and Susannah. Now it flashed out its dour blue lighthouse gleam in the 
darkness. There would be no giving up. What­ever was loose inside him might tear 
his sanity away from him in the end, but he would give it no quarter in the 
meantime. Be damned if he would.
Never! he thought fiercely. Never! Nev -- 
"When you've finished your inventory of the school-supplies in the cloakroom, 
John, perhaps you'd care to join us," Ms. Avery said from behind him in her dry, 
cultured voice.
There was a small gust of giggles as Jake turned away from the cloakroom. Ms. 
Avery was standing behind her desk with her long fingers tented lightly on the 
blotter, looking at him out of her calm, intelligent face. She was wearing her 
blue suit today, and her hair was pulled back in its usual bun. Nathaniel 
Hawthorne looked over her shoulder, frowning at Jake from his place on the wall.
"Sorry," Jake muttered, and closed the door. He was immediately seized by a 
strong impulse to open it again, to double-check, to see if this time that other 
world, with its hot sun and desert vistas, was there.
Instead he walked back to his seat. Petra Jesserling looked at him with merry, 
dancing eyes. "Take me in there with you next time," she whispered. "Then you'll 
have something to look at."
Jake smiled in a distracted way and slipped into his seat.
"Thank you, John," Ms. Avery said in her endlessly calm voice. "Now, before you 
pass in your Final Essays -- which I am sure will all be very fine, very neat, very 
specific -- I should like to pass out the English Department's Short List of 
recommended summer reading. I will have a word to say about several of these 
excellent books -- "
As she spoke she gave a small stack of mimeographed sheets to David Surrey. 
David began to hand them out, and Jake opened his folder to take a final look at 
what he had written on the topic My Understanding of Truth. He was genuinely 
interested in this, because he could no more remember writing his Final Essay, 
than he could remember studying for his French final.
He looked at the title page with puzzlement and growing unease. MY UNDERSTANDING 
OF TRUTH, By John Chambers, was neatly typed and centered on the sheet, and that 
was all right, but he had for some reason pasted two photographs below it. One 
was of a door -- he thought it might be the one at Number 10, Downing Street, in 
London -- and the other was of an Amtrak train. They were color shots, undoubtedly 
culled from some magazine.
Why did I do that? And when did I do it?
He turned the page and stared down at the first page of his Final Essay, unable 
to believe or understand what he was seeing. Then, as understanding began to 
trickle through his shock, he felt an escalating sense of horror. It had finally 
happened; he had finally lost enough of his mind so that other people would be 
able to tell.

3
MY UNDERSTANDING OF TRUTH
By John Chambers
"I will show you fear in a handful of dust."
 -- T. S. "BUTCH" ELIOT
"My first thought was, he lied in every word."
 -- ROBERT "SUNDANCE" BROWNING

The gunslinger is the truth.
Roland is the truth.
The Prisoner is the truth.
The Lady of Shadows is the truth.
The Prisoner and the Lady are married. That is the truth.
The way station is the truth.
The Speaking Demon is the truth.
We went under the mountains and that is the truth.
There were monsters under the mountain. That is the truth. 
One of them had an Amoco gas pump between his legs
and was pretending it was his penis. That is the truth.
Roland let me die. That is the truth. 
I still love him. 
That is the truth.

"And it is so very important that you all read The Lord of the Flies," Ms. Avery 
was saying in her clear but somehow pale voice. "And when you do, you must ask 
yourselves certain questions. A good novel is often like a series of riddles 
within riddles, and this is a very good novel -- one of the best written in the 
second half of the twentieth century. So ask yourselves first what the symbolic 
significance of the conch shell might be. Second -- "
Far away. Far, far away. Jake turned to the second page of his Final Essay with 
a trembling hand, leaving a dark smear of sweat on the first page.

When is a door not a door? When it's a jar, and that is the truth.
Blaine is the truth. 
Blaine is the truth. 
What has four wheels and flies? A garbage truck, and that is the truth. 
Blaine is the truth. 
You have to watch Blaine all the time, Blaine is a pain, and that is the truth. 
I'm pretty sure that Blaine is dangerous, and that is the truth. 
What is black and white and red all over? A blushing zebra, and that is the
   truth. 
Blaine is the truth.
I want to go back and that is the truth. 
I have to go back and that is the truth. 
I'll go crazy if I don't go back and that is the truth. 
I can't go home again unless I find a stone a rose a door and that is the truth. 

Choo-choo, and that is the truth. 
Choo-choo. Choo-choo. 
Choo-choo. Choo-choo. Choo-choo. 
Choo-choo. Choo-choo. Choo-choo. Choo-choo. 
I am afraid. That is the truth. 
Choo-choo.

Jake looked up slowly. His heart was beating so hard that he saw a bright light 
like the afterimage of a flashbulb dancing in front of his eyes, a light that 
pulsed in and out with each titanic thud of his heart.
He saw Ms. Avery handing his Final Essay to his mother and father. Mr. Bissette 
was standing (reside Ms. Avery, looking grave. He heard Ms. Avery say in her 
clear, pale voice: Your son is seriously ill. If you need proof, just look at 
this Final Essay.
John hasn't been himself for the last three weeks or so, Mr. Bissette added. He 
seems frightened some of the time and dazed all of the time . . . not quite 
there, if you see what I mean. Je pense que John est fou . . . comprenez-vous?
Ms. Avery again: Do you perhaps keep certain mood-altering pre­scription drugs 
in the house where John might have access to them?
Jake didn't know about mood-altering drugs, but he knew his father kept several 
grams of cocaine in the bottom drawer of his study desk. His father would 
undoubtedly think he had been into it.
"Now let me say a word about Catch-22," Ms. Avery said from the front of the 
room. "This is a very challenging book for sixth- and seventh-grade students, 
but you will nonetheless find it entirely enchanting, if you open your minds to 
its special charm. You may think of this novel, if you like, as a comedy of the 
surreal."
I don't need to read something like that, Jake thought. I'm living something 
like that, and it's no comedy.
He turned over to the last page of his Final Essay. There were no words on it. 
Instead he had pasted another picture to the paper. It was a photograph of the 
Leaning Tower of Pisa. He had used a crayon to scribble it black. The dark, waxy 
lines looped and swooped in lunatic coils.
He could remember doing none of this.
Absolutely none of it.
Now he heard his father saying to Mr. Bissette: Fou. Yes, he's defi­nitely fou. 
A kid who'd fuck up his chance at a school like Piper HAS to be fou, wouldn't 
you say? Well . . . I can handle this. Handling things is my job. Sunnyvale's 
the answer. He needs to spend some time in Sunnyvale, making baskets and getting 
his shit back together. Don't you worry about our kid, folks; he can run . . . 
but he can't hide.
Would they actually send him away to the nuthatch if it started to seem that his 
elevator no longer went all the way to the top floor? Jake thought the answer to 
that was a big you bet. No way his father was going to put up with a loony 
around the house. The name of the place they put him in might not be Sunnyvale, 
but there would be bars on the windows and there would be young men in white 
coats and crepe-soled shoes prowling the halls. The young men would have big 
muscles and watchful eyes and access to hypodermic needles full of artificial 
sleep.
They'll tell everybody I went away, Jake thought. The arguing voices in his head 
were temporarily stilled by a rising tide of panic. They'll say I'm spending the 
year with my aunt and uncle in Modesto ... or in Sweden as an exchange student 
... or repairing satellites in outer space. My mother won't like it. . . she'll 
cry . . . but she'll go along. She has her boyfriends, and besides, she always 
goes along with what he decides. She . . . they . . . me . . .
He felt a shriek welling up his throat and pressed his lips tightly together to 
hold it in. He looked down again at the wild black scribbles snarled across the 
photograph of the Leaning Tower and thought: / have to get out of here. I have 
to get out right now.
He raised his hand.
"Yes, John, what is it?" Ms. Avery was looking at him with the expression of 
mild exasperation she reserved for students who interrupted her in mid-lecture.
"I'd like to step out for a moment, if I may," Jake said.
This was another example of Piper-speak. Piper students did not ever have to 
"take a leak" or "tap a kidney" or, God forbid, "drop a load." The unspoken 
assumption was that Piper students were too perfect to create waste byproducts 
in their tastefully silent glides through life. Once in a while someone 
requested permission to "step out for a moment," and that was all.
Ms. Avery sighed. "Must you, John?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"All right. Return as soon as possible."
"Yes, Ms. Avery."
He closed the folder as he got up, took hold of it, then reluctantly let go 
again. No good. Ms. Avery would wonder why he was taking his Final Essay to the 
toilet with him. He should have removed the damning pages from the folder and 
stuffed them in his pocket before asking for permission to step out. Too late 
now.
Jake walked down the aisle toward the door, leaving his folder on the desk and 
his bookbag lying beneath it.
"Hope everything comes out all right, Chambers," David Surrey whispered, and 
snickered into his hand.
"Still your restless lips, David," Ms. Avery said, clearly exasperated now, and 
the whole class laughed.
Jake reached the door leading to the hall, and as he grasped the knob, that 
feeling of hope and surety rose in him again: This is it -- really it. I'll open 
the door and the desert sun will shine in. I'll feel that dry wind on my face. 
I'll step through and never see this classroom again.
He opened the door and it was only the hallway on the other side, but he was 
right about one thing just the same: he never saw Ms. Avery's classroom again.


4
HE WALKED SLOWLY DOWN the dim, wood-panelled corridor, sweating lightly. He 
walked past classroom doors he would have felt compelled to open if not for the 
clear glass windows set in each one. He looked into Mr. Bissette's French II 
class and Mr. Knopf's Introduction to Geometry class. In both rooms the pupils 
sat with pencils in hand and heads bowed over open blue-books. He looked into 
Mr. Harley's Spoken Arts class and saw Stan Dorfman -- one of those acquaintances 
who were not quite friends -- beginning his Final Speech. Stan looked scared to 
death, but Jake could have told Stan he didn't have the slightest idea what 
fear --  real fear -- was all about..
I died.
No. I didn't.
Did too.
Did not.
Did.
Didn't.
He came to a door marked GIRLS. He pushed it open, expecting to see a bright 
desert sky and a blue haze of mountains on the horizon. Instead he saw Belinda 
Stevens standing at one of the sinks, looking into the mirror above the basin 
and squeezing a pimple on her forehead.
"Jesus Christ, do you mind?" she asked.
"Sorry. Wrong door. I thought it was the desert."
"What?"
But he had already let the door go and it was swinging shut on its pneumatic 
elbow. He passed the drinking fountain and opened the door marked BOYS. This was 
it, he knew it, was sure of it, this was the door which would take him back -- 
Three urinals gleamed spotlessly under the fluorescent lights. A tap dripped 
solemnly into a sink. That was all.
Jake let the door close. He walked on down the hall, his heels making firm 
little clicks on the tiles. He glanced into the office before passing it and saw 
only Ms. Franks. She was talking on the telephone, swinging back and forth in 
her swivel chair and playing with a lock of her hair. The silver-plated bell 
stood on the desk beside her. Jake waited until she swivelled away from the door 
and then hurried past. Thirty seconds later he was emerging into the bright 
sunshine of a morning in late May.
I've gone truant, he thought. Even his distraction did not keep him from being 
amazed at this unexpected development. When I don't come back from the bathroom 
in five minutes or so, Ms. Avery will send somebody to check . . . and then 
they'll know. They'll all know that I've left school, gone truant.
He thought of the folder lying on his desk.
They'll read it and they'll think I'm crazy. Fou. Sure they will. Of course. 
Because I am.
Then another voice spoke. It was, he thought, the voice of the man with the 
bombardier's eyes, the man who wore the two big guns slung low on his hips. The 
voice was cold . . . but not without comfort.
No, Jake, Roland said. You're not crazy. You're lost and scared, but you're not 
crazy and need fear neither your shadow in the morning striding behind you nor 
your shadow at evening rising to meet you. Yow have to find your way back home, 
that's all.
"But where do I go?" Jake whispered. He stood on the sidewalk of Fifty-sixth 
Street between Park and Madison, watching the traffic bolt past. A city bus 
snored by, laying a thin trail of acrid blue diesel smoke. "Where do I go? 
Where's the fucking door?"
But the voice of the gunslinger had fallen silent.
Jake turned left, in the direction of the East River, and began to walk blindly 
forward. He had no idea where he was going -- no idea at all. He could only hope 
his feet would carry him to the right place . . . as they had carried him to the 
wrong one not long ago.


5
IT HAD HAPPENED THREE weeks earlier.
One could not say It all began three weeks earlier, because that gave the 
impression that there had been some sort of progression, and that wasn't right. 
There had been a progression to the voices, to the violence with which each 
insisted on its own particular version of reality, but the rest of it had 
happened all at once.
He left home at eight o'clock to walk to school -- he always walked when the 
weather was good, and the weather this May had been abso­lutely fine. His father 
had left for the Network, his mother was still in bed, and Mrs. Greta Shaw was 
in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading her New York Post.
"Goodbye, Greta," he said. "I'm going to school now."
She raised a hand to him without looking up from the paper. "Have a good day, 
Johnny."
All according to routine. Just another day in the life.
And so it had been for the next fifteen hundred seconds. Then everything had 
changed forever.
He idled along, bookbag in one hand, lunch sack in the other, looking in the 
windows. Seven hundred and twenty seconds from the end of his life as he had 
always known it, he paused to look in the window of Brendio's, where mannequins 
dressed in fur coats and Edwardian suits stood in stiff poses of conversation. 
He was thinking only of going bowling that afternoon after school. His average 
was 158, great for a kid who was only eleven. His ambition was to some day be a 
bowler on the pro tour (and if his father had known this little factoid, he also 
would have hit the roof).
Closing in now -- closing in on the moment when his sanity would be suddenly 
eclipsed.
He crossed Thirty-ninth and there were four hundred seconds left. Had to wait 
for the WALK light at Forty-first and there were two hundred and seventy. Paused 
to look in the novelty shop on the corner of Fifth and Forty-second and there 
were a hundred and ninety. And now, with just over three minutes left in his 
ordinary life, Jake Cham­bers walked beneath the unseen umbrella of that force 
which Roland called ka-tet.
An odd, uneasy feeling began to creep over him. At first he thought it was a 
feeling of being watched, and then he realized it wasn't that at all ... or not 
precisely that. He felt that he had been here before; that he was reliving a 
dream he had mostly forgotten. He waited for the feeling to pass, but it didn't. 
It grew stronger, and now began to mix with a sensation he reluctantly 
recognized as terror.
Up ahead, on the near corner of Fifth and Forty-third, a black man in a Panama 
hat was setting up a pretzel-and-soda cart.
He's the one that yells "Oh my God, he's kilt!" Jake thought.
Approaching the far corner was a fat lady with a Bloomingdale's bag in her hand.
She'll drop the bag. Drop the bag and put her hands to her mouth and scream. The 
bag will split open. There's a doll inside the bag. It's wrapped in a red towel. 
I'll see this from the street. From where I'll be lying in the street with my 
blood soaking into my pants and spreading around me in a pool.
Behind the fat woman was a tall man in a gray nailhead worsted suit. He was 
carrying a briefcase.
He's the one who vomits on his shoes. He's the one who drops his briefcase and 
throws up on his shoes. What's happening to me?
Yet his feet carried him numbly forward toward the intersection, where people 
were crossing in a brisk, steady stream. Somewhere behind him, closing in, was a 
killer priest. He knew this, just as he knew that the priest's hands would in a 
moment be outstretched to push . . . but he could not look around. It was like 
being locked in a nightmare where things simply had to take their course.
Fifty-three seconds left now. Ahead of him, the pretzel vendor was opening a 
hatch in the side of his cart.
He's going to take out a bottle of Yoo-Hoo, Jake thought. Not a can but a 
bottle. He'll shake it up and drink it all at once.
The pretzel vendor brought out a bottle of Yoo-Hoo, shook it vigor­ously, and 
spun off the cap.
Forty seconds left.
Now the light will change.
White WALK went out. Red DONT WALK began to flash rapidly on and off. And 
somewhere, less than half a block away, a big blue Cadillac was now rolling 
toward the intersection of Fifth and Forty-third. Jake knew this, just as he 
knew the driver was a fat man wearing a hat almost the exact same blue shade as 
his car.
I'm going to die!
He wanted to scream this aloud to the people walking heedlessly all around him, 
but his jaws were locked shut. His feet swept him serenely onward toward the 
intersection. The DONT WALK sign stopped flashing and shone out its solid red 
warning. The pretzel vendor tossed his empty Yoo-Hoo bottle into the wire trash 
basket on the corner. The fat lady stood on the corner across the street from 
Jake, holding her shopping bag by the handles. The man in the nailhead suit was 
directly behind her. Now there were eighteen seconds left.
Time for the toy truck to go by, Jake thought.
Ahead of him a van with a picture of a happy jumping-jack and the words TOOKER'S 
WHOLESALE TOYS printed on the side swept through the intersection, jolting up 
and down in the potholes. Behind him, Jake knew, the man in the black robe was 
beginning to move faster, closing the gap, now reaching out with his long hands. 
Yet he could not look around, as you couldn't look around in dreams when 
something awful was gaining on you.
Run! And if you can't run, sit down and grab hold of a No Parking sign! Don't 
just let it happen!
But he was powerless to stop it from happening. Ahead, on the edge of the curb, 
was a young woman in a white sweater and a black skirt. To her left was a young 
Chicano guy with a boombox. A Donna Summer disco tune was just ending. The next 
song, Jake knew, would be "Dr. Love," by Kiss.
They're going to move apart -- 
Even as the thought came, the woman moved a step to her right. The Chicano guy 
moved a step to his left, creating a gap between them. Jake's traitor feet swept 
him into the gap. Nine seconds now.
Down the street, bright May sunshine twinkled on a Cadillac hood ornament. It 
was, Jake knew, a 1976 Sedan de Ville. Six seconds. The Caddy was speeding up. 
The light was getting ready to change and the man driving the de Ville, the fat 
man in the blue hat with the feather stuck jauntily in the brim, meant to scat 
through the intersection before it could. Three seconds. Behind Jake, the man in 
black was lunging forward. On the young man's boombox, "Love to Love You, Baby" 
ended and "Dr. Love" began.
Two.
The Cadillac changed to the lane nearest Jake's side of the street and charged 
down on the intersection, its killer grille snarling.
One.
Jake's breath stopped in his throat.
None.
"Uh!" Jake cried as the hands struck him firmly in the back, pushing him, 
pushing him into the street, pushing him out of his life -- 
Except there were no hands.
He reeled forward nevertheless, hands flailing at the air, his mouth a dark O of 
dismay. The Chicano guy with the boombox reached out, grabbed Jake's arm, and 
hauled him backward. "Look out, little hero," he said. "That traffic turn you 
into bratwurst."
The Cadillac floated by. Jake caught a glimpse of the fat man in the blue hat 
peering out through the windshield, and then it was gone.
That was when it happened; that was when he split down the middle and became two 
boys. One lay dying in the street. The other stood here on the corner, watching 
in dumb, stricken amazement as DONT WALK turned to WALK again and people began 
to cross around him just as if nothing had happened ... as, indeed, nothing had.
I'm alive! half of his mind rejoiced, screaming with relief.
Dead! the other half screamed back. Dead in the street! They're all gathering 
around me, and the man in black who pushed me is saying, "I am a priest. Let me 
through."
Waves of faintness rushed through him and turned his thoughts to billowing 
parachute silk. He saw the fat lady approaching, and as she passed, Jake looked 
into her bag. He saw the bright blue eyes of a doll peeping above the edge of a 
red towel, just as he had known he would. Then she was gone. The pretzel vendor 
was not yelling Oh my God, he's kilt; he was continuing to set up for the day's 
business while he whistled the Donna Summer tune that had been playing on the 
Chicano guy's radio.
Jake turned around, looking wildly for the priest who was not a priest. He 
wasn't there.
Jake moaned.
Snap out of it! What's wrong with you?
He didn't know. He only knew he was supposed to be lying in the street right 
now, getting ready to die while the fat woman screamed and the guy in the 
nailhead worsted suit threw up and the man in black pushed through the gathering 
crowd.
And in part of his mind, that did seem to be happening.
The faintness began to return. Jake suddenly dropped his lunch sack to the 
pavement and slapped himself across the face as hard as he could. A woman on her 
way to work gave him a queer look. Jake ignored her. He left his lunch lying on 
the sidewalk and plunged into the intersection, also ignoring the red DONT WALK 
light, which had begun to stutter on and off again. It didn't matter now. Death 
had approached . . . and then passed by without a second glance. It hadn't been 
meant to happen that way, and on the deepest level of his exis­tence he knew 
that, but it had.
Maybe now he would live forever.
The thought made him feel like screaming all over again.


6
His HEAD HAD CLEARED a little by the time he got to school, and his mind had 
gone to work trying to convince him that nothing was wrong, really nothing at 
all. Maybe something a little weird had happened, some sort of psychic flash, a 
momentary peek into one possible future, but so what? No big deal, right? The 
idea was actually sort of cool -- the kind of thing they were always printing in 
the weird supermarket newspapers Greta Shaw liked to read when she was sure 
Jake's mother wasn't around -- papers like the National Enquirer and Inside View. 
Except, of course, in those papers the psychic flash was always a kind of 
tactical nuclear strike -- a woman who dreamed of a plane crash and changed her 
reservations, or a guy who dreamed his brother was being held prisoner in a 
Chinese fortune cookie factory and it turned out to be true. When your psychic 
flash consisted of knowing that a Kiss song was going to play next on the radio, 
that a fat lady had a doll wrapped in a red towel in her Bloomingdale's bag, and 
that a pretzel vendor was going to drink a bottle of Yoo-Hoo instead of a can, 
how big a deal could it be?
Forget it, he advised himself. It's over.
A great idea, except by period three he knew it wasn't over; it was just 
beginning. He sat in pre-algebra, watching Mr. Knopf solving simple equations on 
the board, and realized with dawning horror that a whole new set of memories was 
surfacing in his mind. It was like watching strange objects float slowly toward 
the surface of a muddy lake.
I'm in a place I don't know, he thought. I mean, I will know it -- or would have 
known it if the Cadillac had hit me. It's the way station -- but the part of me 
that's there doesn't know that yet. That part only knows it's in the desert 
someplace, and there are no people. I've been crying, because I'm scared. I'm 
scared that this might be hell.
By three o'clock, when he arrived at Mid-Town Lanes, he knew he had found the 
pump in the stables and had gotten a drink of water. The water was very cold and 
tasted strongly of minerals. Soon he would go inside and find a small supply of 
dried beef in a room which had once been a kitchen. He knew this as clearly and 
surely as he'd known the pretzel vendor would select a bottle of Yoo-Hoo, and 
that the doll peek­ing out of the Bloomingdale's bag had blue eyes.
It was like being able to remember forward in time.
He bowled only two strings -- the first a 96, the second an 87. Timmy looked at his 
sheet when he turned it in at the counter and shook his head. "You're having an 
off-day today, champ," he said.
"You don't know the half of it," Jake said.
Timmy took a closer look. "You okay? You look really pale."
"I think I might be coming down with a bug." This didn't feel like a lie, 
either. He was sure as hell coming down with something.
"Go home and go to bed," Timmy advised. "Drink lots of clear liquids -- gin, vodka, 
stuff like that."
Jake smiled dutifully. "Maybe I will."
He walked slowly home. All of New York was spread out around him, New York at 
its most seductive -- a late-afternoon street serenade with a musician on every 
corner, all the trees in bloom, and everyone apparently in a good mood. Jake saw 
all this, but he also saw behind it: saw himself cowering in the shadows of the 
kitchen as the man in black drank like a grinning dog from the stable pump, saw 
himself sobbing with relief as he -- or it -- moved on without discovering him, saw 
himself falling deeply asleep as the sun went down and the stars began to come 
out like chips of ice in the harsh purple desert sky.
He let himself into the duplex apartment with his key and walked into the 
kitchen to get something to eat. He wasn't hungry, but it was, habit. He was 
headed for the refrigerator when his eye happened on the pantry door and he 
stopped. He realized suddenly that the way station --  and all the rest of that 
strange other world where he now belonged --  was behind that door. All he had to 
do was push through it and rejoin the Jake that already existed there. The queer 
doubling in his mind would end; the voices, endlessly arguing the question of 
whether or not he had been dead since 8:25 that morning, would fall silent.
Jake pushed open the pantry door with both hands, his face already breaking into 
a sunny, relieved smile . . . and then froze as Mrs. Shaw, who was standing on a 
step-stool at the back of the pantry, screamed. The can of tomato paste she had 
been holding dropped out of her hand and fell to the floor. She tottered on the 
stool and Jake rushed forward to steady her before she could join the tomato 
paste.
"Moses in the bullrushes!" she gasped, fluttering a hand rapidly against the 
front of her housedress. "You scared the bejabbers out of me, Johnny!"
"I'm sorry," he said. He really was, but he was also bitterly disap­pointed. It 
had only been the pantry, after all. He had been so sure -- 
"What are you doing, creeping around here, anyway? This is your bowling day! I 
didn't expect you for at least another hour! I haven't even made your snack yet, 
so don't be expecting it."
"That's okay. I'm not very hungry, anyway." He bent down and picked up the can 
she had dropped.
"Wouldn't know it from the way you came bustin in here," she grumbled.
"I thought I heard a mouse or something. I guess it was just you."
"I guess it was." She descended the step-stool and took the can from him. "You 
look like you're comin down with the flu or something, Johnny." She pressed her 
hand against his forehead. "You don't feel hot, but that doesn't always mean 
much."
"I think I'm just tired," Jake said, and thought: If only that was all it was. 
"Maybe I'll just have a soda and watch TV for a while."
She grunted. "You got any papers you want to show me? If you do, make it fast. 
I'm behind on supper."
"Nothing today," he said. He left the pantry, got a soda, then went into the 
living room. He turned on Hollywood Squares and watched vacantly as the voices 
argued and the new memories of that dusty other world continued to surface.


7
His MOTHER AND FATHER didn't notice anything was wrong with him --  his father 
didn't even get in until 9:30 -- and that was fine by Jake. He went to bed at ten 
and lay awake in the darkness, listening to the city outside his window: brakes, 
horns, wailing sirens.

You died.
I didn't, though. I'm right here, safe in my own bed.
That doesn't matter. You died, and you know it.
The hell of it was, he knew both things.
I don't know which voice is true, but I know I can't go on like this. So just 
quit it, both of you. Stop arguing and leave me alone. Okay? Please?

But they wouldn't. Couldn't, apparently. And it came to Jake that he ought to 
get up -- right now -- and open the door to the bathroom. The other world would be 
there. The way station would be there and the rest of him would be there, too, 
huddled under an ancient blanket in the stable, trying to sleep and wondering 
what in hell had happened.
I can tell him, Jake thought excitedly. He threw back the covers, suddenly 
knowing that the door beside his bookcase no longer led into the bathroom but to 
a world that smelled of heat and purple sage and fear in a handful of dust, a 
world that now lay under the shadowing wing of night. I can tell him, but I 
won't have to . . . because I'll be IN him . . . I'll BE him!
He raced across his darkened room, almost laughing with relief, and shoved open 
the door. And -- 
And it was his bathroom. Just his bathroom, with the framed Marvin Gaye poster 
on the wall and the shapes of the Venetian blinds lying on the tiled floor in 
bars of light and shadow.
He stood there for a long time, trying to swallow his disappointment. It 
wouldn't go. And it was bitter.
Bitter.


8
THE THREE WEEKS BETWEEN then and now stretched like a grim, blighted terrain in 
Jake's memory -- a nightmare wasteland where there had been no peace, no rest, no 
respite from pain. He had watched, like a helpless prisoner watching the sack of 
a city he had once ruled, as his mind buckled under the steadily increasing 
pressure of the phantom voices and memories. He had hoped the memories would 
stop when he reached the point in them where the man named Roland had allowed 
him to drop into the chasm under the mountains, but they didn't. Instead they 
simply recycled and began to play themselves over again, like a tape set to 
repeat and repeat until it either breaks or someone comes along, and shuts it 
off.
His perceptions of his more-or-less real life as a boy in New York City grew 
increasingly spotty as this terrible schism grew deeper. He could remember going 
to school, and to the movies on the weekend, and out to Sunday brunch with his 
parents a week ago (or had it been two?), but he remembered these things the way 
a man who has suffered malaria may remember the deepest, darkest phase of his 
illness: people became shadows, voices seemed to echo and overlap each other, 
and even such a simple act as eating a sandwich or obtaining a Coke from the 
machine in the gymnasium became a struggle. Jake had pushed through those days 
in a fugue of yelling voices and doubled memories. His obsession with doors -- all 
kinds of doors -- deepened; his hope that the gunslinger's world might lie behind 
one of them never quite died. Nor was that so strange, since it was the only 
hope he had.
But as of today the game was over. He'd never had a chance of winning anyway, 
not really. He had given up. He had gone truant. Jake walked blindly east along 
the gridwork of streets, head down, with no idea of where he was going or what 
he would do when he got there.


9
AFTER WALKING FOR A while, he began to come out of this unhappy daze and take 
some notice of his surroundings. He was standing on the corner of Lexington 
Avenue and. Fifty-fourth Street with no memory at all of how he had come to be 
there. He noticed for the first time that it was an absolutely gorgeous morning. 
May 9th, the day this madness had started, had been pretty, but today was ten 
times better -- that day, perhaps, when spring looks around herself and sees summer 
standing nearby, strong and handsome and with a cocky grin on his tanned face. 
The sun shone brightly off the glass walls of the midtown buildings; the shadow 
of each pedestrian was black and crisp. The sky overhead was a clear and 
blameless blue, dotted here and there with plump foul-weather clouds.
Down the street, two businessmen in expensive, well-cut suits were standing at a 
board wall which had been erected around a construction site. They were laughing 
and passing something back and forth. Jake walked in their direction, curious, 
and as he drew closer he saw that the two businessmen were playing tic-tac-toe 
on the wall, using an expensive Mark Cross pen to draw the grids and make the 
X's and O's. Jake thought this was a complete gas. As he approached, one of them 
made an O in the upper right-hand corner of the grid and then slashed a diagonal 
line through the middle.
"Skunked again!" his friend said. Then this man, who looked like a high-powered 
executive or lawyer or big-time stockbroker, took the Mark Cross pen and drew 
another grid.
The first businessman, the winner, glanced to his left and saw Jake. He smiled. 
"Some day, huh, kid?"
"It sure is," Jake said, delighted to find he meant every word.
"Too nice for school, huh?"
This time Jake actually laughed. Piper School, where you had Outs instead of 
lunch and where you sometimes stepped out but never had to take a crap, suddenly 
seemed far away and not at all important. "You know it."
"You want a game? Billy here couldn't beat me at this when we were in the fifth 
grade, and he still can't.'
"Leave the kid alone," the second businessman said, holding out the Mark Cross 
pen. "This time you're history." He winked at Jake, and Jake amazed himself by 
winking back. He walked on, leaving the men to their game. The sense that 
something totally wonderful was going to happen --  had perhaps already begun to 
happen -- continued to grow, and his feet no longer seemed to be quite touching the 
pavement.
The WALK light on the corner came on, and he began to cross Lexington Avenue. He 
stopped in the middle of the street so suddenly that a messenger-boy on a 
ten-speed bike almost ran him down. It was a beautiful spring day -- agreed. But 
that wasn't why he felt so good, so suddenly aware of everything that was going 
on around him, so sure that some great thing was about to occur.
The voices had stopped.
They weren't gone for good -- he somehow knew this -- but for the time being they had 
stopped. Why?
Jake suddenly thought of two men arguing in a room. They sit facing each other 
over a table, jawing at each other with increasing bitterness. After a while 
they begin to lean toward each other, thrusting their faces pugnaciously 
forward, bathing each other with a fine mist of outraged spittle. Soon they will 
come to blows. But before that can happen, they hear a steady thumping noise -- the 
sound of a bass drum -- and then a jaunty flourish of brass. The two men stop 
arguing and look at each other, puzzled.
What's that? one asks.
Dunno, the other replies. Sounds like a parade.
They rush to the window and it is a parade -- a uniformed band marching in 
lock-step with the sun blazing off their horns, pretty majo­rettes twirling 
batons and strutting their long, tanned legs, convertibles decked with flowers 
and filled with waving celebrities.
The two men stare out the window, their quarrel forgotten. They will undoubtedly 
return to it, but for the time being they stand together like the best of 
friends, shoulder to shoulder, watching as the parade goes by -- 


10
A HORN BLARED, STARTLING Jake out of this story, which was as vivid as a 
powerful dream. He realized he was still standing in the middle of Lexington, 
and the light had changed. He looked around wildly, expecting to see the blue 
Cadillac bearing down on him, but the guy who had tooted his horn was sitting 
behind the wheel of a yellow Mustang convert­ible and grinning at him. It was as 
if everyone in New York had gotten a whiff of happy-gas today.
Jake waved at the guy and sprinted to the other side of the street. The guy in 
the Mustang twirled a finger around his ear to indicate that Jake was crazy, 
then waved back and drove on.
For a moment Jake simply stood on the far corner, face turned up to the May 
sunshine, smiling, digging the day. He supposed prisoners condemned to die in 
the electric chair must feel this way when they learn they have been granted a 
temporary reprieve.
The voices were still.
The question was, what was the parade which had temporarily diverted their 
attention? Was it just the uncommon beauty of this spring morning?
Jake didn't think that was all. He didn't think so because that sensa­tion of 
knowing was creeping over him and through him again, the one which had taken 
possession of him three weeks ago, as he approached the corner of Fifth and 
Forty-sixth. But on May 9th, it had been a feeling of impending doom. Today it 
was a feeling of radiance, a sense of goodness and anticipation. It was as if 
... as if ...
White. This was the word that came to him, and it clanged in his mind with clear 
and unquestionable lightness.
"It's the White!" he exclaimed aloud. "The coming of the White!"
He walked on down Fifty-fourth Street, and as he reached the cor­ner of Second 
and Fifty-fourth, he once more passed under the umbrella of ka-tet.


11
HE TURNED RIGHT, THEN stopped, turned, and retraced his steps to the corner. He 
needed to walk down Second Avenue now, yes, that was unquestionably correct, but 
this was the wrong side again. When the light changed, he hurried across the 
street and turned right again. That feeling, that sense of
(Whiteness)
rightness, grew steadily stronger. He felt half-mad with joy and relief. He was 
going to be okay. This time there was no mistake. He felt sure that he would 
soon begin to see people he recognized, as he had recognized the fat lady and 
the pretzel vendor, and they would be doing things he remembered in advance.
Instead, he came to the bookstore.


12
THE MANHATTAN RESTAURANT OF THE MIND, the sign painted in the window read. Jake 
went to the d(x>r. There was a chalkboard hung there; it looked like the kind 
you saw on the wall in diners and lunchrooms.

TODAY'S SPECIALS
From Florida! Fresh-Broiled John D. MacDonald Hardcovers 3 for $2.50 Paperbacks 
9 for $5.00
From Mississippi! Pan-Fried William Faulkner Hardcovers Market Price Vintage 
Library Paperbacks 75$ each
From California! Hard-Boiled Raymond Chandler Hardcovers Market Price Paperbacks 
7 for $5.00
FEED YOUR NEED TO READ

Jake went in, aware that he had, for the first time in three weeks, opened a 
door without hoping madly to find another world on the other side. A bell 
jingled overhead. The mild, spicy smell of old books hit him, and the smell was 
somehow like coming home.
The restaurant motif continued inside. Although the walls were lined with 
shelves of books, a fountain-style counter bisected the room. On Jake's side of 
the counter were a number of small tables with wire-backed Malt Shoppe chairs. 
Each table had been arranged to display the day's specials: Travis McGee novels 
by John D. Mac-Donald, Philip Marlowe novels by Raymond Chandler, Snopes novels 
by William Faulkner. A small sign on the Faulkner table said: Some rare 1st eds 
available -- pls ask. Another sign, this one on the counter, read simply: BROWSE! A 
couple of customers were doing just that. They sat at the counter, drinking 
coffee and reading. Jake thought this was without a doubt the best bookstore 
he'd ever been in.
The question was, why was he here? Was it luck, or was it part of that soft, 
insistent feeling that he was following a trail -- a land of force-beam -- that had 
been left for him to find?
He glanced at the display on a small table to his left and knew the answer.


13
IT WAS A DISPLAY of children's books. There wasn't much room on the table, so 
there were only about a dozen of them -- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The 
Hobbit, Tom Sawyer, things like that. Jake had been attracted by a storybook 
obviously meant for very young children. On the bright green cover was an 
anthropomorphic locomotive puffing its way up a hill. Its cowcatcher (which was 
bright pink) wore a happy grin and its headlight was a cheerful eye which seemed 
to invite Jake Cham­bers to come inside and read all about it. Charlie the 
Choo-Choo, the title proclaimed, Story and Pictures by Beryl Evans. Jake's mind 
flashed back to his Final Essay, with the picture of the Amtrak train on the 
title-page and the words choo-choo written over and over again inside.
He grabbed the book and clutched it tightly, as if it might fly away if he 
relaxed his grip. And as he looked down at the cover, Jake found that he did not 
trust the smile on Charlie the Choo-Choo's face. YOM look happy, but I think 
that's just the mask you wear, he thought. I don't think you're happy at all. 
And I don't think Charlie's your real name, either.
These were crazy thoughts to be having, undoubtedly crazy, but they did not feel 
crazy. They felt sane. They felt true.
Standing next to the place where Charlie the Choo-Choo had been was a tattered 
paperback. The cover was quite badly torn and had been mended with Scotch tape 
now yellow with age. The picture showed a puzzled-looking boy and girl with a 
forest of question-marks over their heads. The title of this book was 
Riddle-De-Dum! Brain-Twisters and Puzzles for Everyone! No author was credited.
Jake tucked Charlie the Choo-Choo under his arm and picked up the riddle book. 
He opened it at random and saw this:
When is a door not a door?
"When it's a jar," Jake muttered. He could feel sweat popping out on his 
forehead . . . his arms ... all over his body.
"When it's ajar!"
"Find something, son?" a mild voice inquired.
Jake turned around and saw a fat guy in an open-throated white shirt standing at 
the end of the counter. His hands were stuffed in the pockets of his old 
gabardine slacks. A pair of half-glasses were pushed up on the bright dome of 
his bald head.
"Yes," Jake said feverishly. "These two. Are they for sale?"
"Everything you see is for sale," the fat guy said. "The building itself would 
be for sale, if I owned it. Alas, I only lease." He held out his hand for the 
books and for a moment Jake balked. Then, reluctantly, he handed them over. Part 
of him expected the fat guy to flee with them, and if he did -- if he gave the 
slightest indication ol trying it --  Jake meant to tackle him, rip the books out 
of his hands, and boogie. He needed those books.
"Okay, let's see what yon got," the fat man said. "By the way, I'm Tower. Calvin 
Tower." He stuck out his hand.
Jake's eyes widened, and he took an involuntary step backward. "What?"
The fat guy looked at him with some interest. "Calvin Tower. Which word is 
profanity in your language, O Hyperborean Wanderer?"
"Huh?"
"I just mean you look like someone goosed you, kid."
"Oh. Sorry." He clasped Mr. Tower's large, soft hand, hoping the man wouldn't 
pursue it. The name had given him a jump, but he didn't know why. "I'm Jake 
Chambers."
Calvin Tower shook his hand. "Good handle, pard. Sounds like the footloose hero 
in a Western novel -- the guy who blows into Black Fork, Arizona, cleans up the 
town, and then travels on. Something by Wayne D. Overholser, maybe. Except you 
don't look footloose, Jake. You look like you decided the day was a little too 
nice to spend in school."
"Oh ... no. We finished up last Friday."
Tower grinned. "Uh-huh. I bet. And you've gotta have these two items, huh? It's 
sort of funny, what people have to have. Now you -- I would have pegged you as a 
Robert Howard land of kid from the jump, looking for a good deal on one of those 
nice old Donald M. Grant editions -- the ones with the Roy Krenkel paintings. 
Dripping swords, mighty thews, and Conan the Barbarian hacking his way through 
the Stygian hordes."
"That sounds pretty good, actually. These are for . . . uh, for my little 
brother. It's his birthday next week."
Calvin Tower used his thumb to flip his glasses down onto his nose and had a 
closer look at Jake. "Really? You look like an only child to me. An only child 
if I ever saw one, enjoying a day of French leave as Mistress May trembles in 
her green gown just outside the bosky dell of June."
"Come again?"
"Never mind. Spring always puts me in a William Cowper-ish mood. People are 
weird but interesting, Tex -- am I right?"
"I guess so," Jake said cautiously. He couldn't decide if he liked this odd man 
or not.
One of the counter-browsers spun on his stool. He was holding a cup of coffee in 
one hand and a bartered paperback copy of The Plague in the other. "Quit pulling 
the kid's chain and sell him the books, Cal," he said. "We've still got time to 
finish this game of chess before the end of the world, if you hurry up."
"Hurry is antithetical to my nature," Cal said, hut he opened Charlie the 
Choo-Choo and peered at the price pencilled on the flyleaf. "A fairly common 
book, but this copy's in unusually fine condition. Little kids usually rack the 
hell out of the ones they like. I should get twelve dollars for it -- "
"Goddam thief," the man who was reading The Plague said, and the other browser 
laughed. Calvin Tower paid no notice.
" -- but I can't bear to dock you that much on a day like this. Seven bucks and 
it's yours. Plus tax, of course. The riddle book you can have for free. Consider 
it my gift to a boy wise enough to saddle up and light out for the territories 
on the last real day of spring."
Jake dug out his wallet and opened it anxiously, afraid he had left the house 
with only three or four dollars. He was in luck, however. He had a five and 
three ones. He held the money out to Tower, who folded the bills casually into 
one pocket and made change out of the other.
"Don't hurry off, Jake. Now that you're here, come on over to the counter and 
have a cup of coffee. Your eyes will widen with amazement as I cut Aaron 
Deepneau's spavined old Kiev Defense to ribbons."
"Don't you wish," said the man who was reading The Plague -- Aaron Deepneau, 
presumably.
"I'd like to, but I can't. I ... there's someplace I have to be."
"Okay. As long as it's not back to school."
Jake grinned. "No -- not school. That way lies madness."
Tower laughed out loud and flipped his glasses up to the top of his head again. 
"Not bad! Not bad at all! Maybe the younger generation isn't going to hell after 
all, Aaron -- what do you think?"
"Oh, they're going to hell, all right," Aaron said. "This boy's just an 
exception to the rule. Maybe."
"Don't mind that cynical old fart," Calvin Tower said. "Motor on, O Hyperborean 
Wanderer. I wish I were ten or eleven again, with a beautiful day like this 
ahead of me."
"Thanks for the books," Jake said.
"No problem. That's what we're here for. Come on back sometime."
"I'd like to."
"Well, you know where we are."
Yes, Jake thought. Now if I only knew where I am.


14
HE STOPPED JUST OUTSIDE the bookstore and flipped open the riddle book again, 
this time to page one, where there was a short uncredited introduction.
"Riddles are perhaps the oldest of all the games people still play today," it 
began. "The gods and goddesses of Greek myth teased each other with riddles, and 
they were employed as teaching tools in ancient Rome. The Bible contains several 
good riddles. One of the most famous of these was told by Samson on the day he 
was married to Delilah:

'Out of the eater came forth meat,
and out of the strong came forth sweetness!'

"He asked this riddle of several young men who attended his wedding, confident 
that they wouldn't be able to guess the answer. The young men, however,' got 
Delilah aside and she whispered the answer to them. Samson was furious, and had 
the young men put to death for cheating -- in the old days, you see, riddles were 
taken much more seriously than they are today!
"By the way, the answer to Samson's riddle -- and all the other rid­dles in this 
book -- can be found in the section at the back. We only ask that you give each 
puzzler a fair chance before you peek!"
Jake turned to the back of the book, somehow knowing what he would find even 
before he got there. Beyond the page marked ANSWERS there was nothing but a few 
torn fragments and the back cover. The section had been ripped out.
He stood there for a moment, thinking. Then, on an impulse that didn't really 
feel like an impulse at all, Jake walked back inside The Manhattan Restaurant of 
the Mind.
Calvin Tower looked up from the chessboard. "Change your mind about that cup of 
coffee, O Hyperborean Wanderer?"
"No. I wanted to ask you if you know the answer to a riddle."
"Fire away," Tower invited, and moved a pawn.
"Samson told it. The strong guy in the Bible? It goes like this -- "
" 'Out of the eater came forth meat,' " said Aaron Deepneau, swing­ing around 
again to look at Jake, " 'and out of the strong came forth sweetness.' That the 
one?"
"Yeah, it is," Jake said. "How'd you know -- "
"Oh, I've been around the block a time or two. Listen to this." He threw his 
head back and sang in a full, melodious voice:

" 'Samson and a lion got in attack, 
And Samson climbed up on the lion's back. 
Well, you've read about lion killin men with their paws, 
But Samson put his hands round the lion's jaws! 
He rode that lion 'til the beast fell dead, 
And the bees made honey in the lion's head.'"

Aaron winked and then laughed at Jake's surprised expression. "That answer your 
question, friend?"
Jake's eyes were wide. "Wow! Good song! Where'd you hear it?"
"Oh, Aaron knows them all," Tower said. "He was hanging around Bleecker Street 
back before Bob Dylan knew how to blow more than open G on his Hohner. At least, 
if you believe him."
"It's an old spiritual," Aaron said to Jake, and then to Tower: "By the way, 
you're in check, fatso."
"Not for long," Tower said. He moved his bishop. Aaron promptly bagged it. Tower 
muttered something under his breath. To Jake it sounded suspiciously like 
fuckwad.
"So the answer is a lion," Jake said.
Aaron shook his head. "Only half the answer. Samson's Riddle is a double, my 
friend. The other half of the answer is honey. Get it?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Okay, now try this one." Aaron closed his eyes for a moment and then recited,

"What can run but never walks,
Has a mouth but never talks,
Has a bed but never sleeps,
Has a head but never weeps?"

"Smartass," Tower growled at Aaron.
Jake thought it over, then shook his head. He could have worried it longer -- he 
found this business of riddles both fascinating and charm­ing -- but he had a 
strong feeling that he ought to be moving on from here, that he had other 
business on Second Avenue this morning.
"I give up."
"No, you don't," Aaron said. "That's what you do with modern rid­dles. But a 
real riddle isn't just a joke, kiddo -- it's a puzzle. Turn it over in your head. 
If you still can't get it, make it an excuse to come back another day. If you 
need another excuse, fatso here does make a pretty good cup of joe."
"Okay," Jake said. "Thanks. I will."
But as he left, a certainty stole over him: he would never enter The Manhattan 
Restaurant of the Mind again.















15
JAKE WALKED SLOWLY DOWN Second Avenue, holding his new purchases in his left 
hand. At first he tried to think about the riddle -- what did have a bed but never 
slept? -- but little by little the question was driven from his mind by an 
increasing sense of anticipation. His senses seemed more acute than ever before 
in his life; he saw billions of coruscating sparks in the pavement, smelled a 
thousand mixed aromas in every breath he took, and seemed to hear other sounds, 
secret sounds, within each of the sounds he heard. He wondered if this was the 
way dogs felt before thunderstorms or earthquakes, and felt almost sure that it 
was. Yet the sensation that the impending event was not bad but good, that it 
would balance out the terrible thing which had happened to him three weeks ago, 
continued to grow.
And now, as he drew close to the place where the course would be set, that 
knowing-in-advance fell upon him once again.
A bum is going to ask me for a handout, and I'll give him the change Mr, Tower 
gave me. And there's a record store. The door's open to let in the fresh air and 
I'll hear a Stones song playing when I pass. And I'm going to see my own 
reflection in a bunch of mirrors.
Traffic on Second Avenue was still light. Taxis honked and wove their way amid 
the slower-moving cars and trucks. Spring sunshine twin­kled off their 
windshields and bright yellow hides. While he was waiting for a light to change, 
Jake saw the bum on the far corner of Second and Fifty-second. He was sitting 
against the brick wall of a small restaurant, and as Jake approached him, he saw 
that the name of the restaurant was Chew Chew Mama's.
Choo-choo, Jake thought. And that's the truth.
"Godda-quarder?" the bum asked tiredly, and Jake dropped his change from the 
bookstore into the bum's lap without even looking around. Now he could hear the 
Rolling Stones, right on schedule:

"I see a red door and I want to paint it black, 
No colours anymore, I want them to turn black ..."

As he passed, he saw -- also without surprise -- that the name of the store was Tower 
of Power Records.
Towers were selling cheap today, it seemed.
Jake walked on, the street-signs floating past in a kind of dream-daze. Between 
Forty-ninth and Forty-eighth he passed a store called Reflections of You. He 
turned his head and caught sight of a dozen Jakes in the mirrors, as he had 
known he would -- a dozen boys who were small for their age, a do/en boys dressed 
in neat school clothes: blue blazers, white shirts, dark red ties, gray dress 
pants. Piper School didn't have an official uniform, but this was as close to 
the unofficial one as you could get.
Piper seemed long ago and far away now.
Suddenly Jake realized where he was going. This knowledge rose in his mind like 
sweet, refreshing water from an underground spring. It's a delicatessen, he 
thought. That's what it looks like, anyway. It's really something else -- a doorway 
to another world. The world. His world. The right world.
He began to run, looking ahead eagerly. The light at Forty-seventh was against 
him but he ignored it, leaping from the curb and racing nimbly between the broad 
white lines of the crosswalk with just a per­functory glance to the left. A 
plumbing van stopped short with a squeal of tires as Jake flashed in front of 
it.
"Hey! Whaddaya-whaddaya?" the driver yelled, but Jake ignored him.
Only one more block.
He began to sprint all-out now. His tie fluttered behind his left shoulder; his 
hair had blown back from his forehead; his school loafers hammered the sidewalk. 
He ignored the stares -- some amused, some merely curious -- of the passersby as he 
had ignored the van driver's out­raged shout.
Up here -- up here on the corner. Next to the stationery store.
Here came a UPS man in dark brown fatigues, pushing a dolly loaded with 
packages. Jake hurdled it like a long-jumper, arms up. The tail of his white 
shirt pulled free of his pants and flapped beneath his blazer like the hem of a 
slip. He came down and almost collided with a baby-carriage being pushed by a 
young Puerto Rican woman. Jake hooked around the pram like a halfback who has 
spotted a hole in the line and is bound for glory. "Where's the fire, handsome?" 
the young woman asked, but Jake ignored her, too. He dashed past The Paper 
Patch, with its window-display of pens and notebooks and desk calculators.
The door! he thought ecstatically. I'm going to see it! And am I going to stop? 
No, way, Jose! I'm going to go straight through it, and if it's locked, I'll 
flatten it right in front of m -- 
Then he saw what was at the corner of Second and Forty-sixth and stopped after 
all -- skidded to a halt, in fact, on the heels of his loafers. He stood there in 
the middle of the sidewalk, hands clenched, his breath rasping harshly in and 
out of his lungs, his hair falling back onto his forehead in sweaty clumps.
"No," he almost whimpered. "No!" But his near-frantic negation did not change 
what he saw, which was nothing at all. There was nothing to see but a short 
board fence and a littered, weedy lot beyond it.
The building which had stood there had been demolished.


16
JAKE STOOD OUTSIDE THE fence without moving for almost two minutes, surveying 
the vacant lot with dull eyes. One comer of his mouth twitched randomly. He 
could feel his hope, his absolute certainty, draining out of him. The feeling 
which was replacing it was the deepest, bitterest despair he had ever known.
Just another false alarm, he thought when the shock had abated enough so he 
could think anything at all. Another false alarm, blind alley, dry well. Now the 
voices will start up again, and when they do, I think I'm going to start 
screaming. And that's okay. Because I'm tired of tough­ing this thing out. I'm 
tired of going crazy. If this is what going crazy is like, then I just want to 
hurry up and get there so somebody will take me to the hospital and give me 
something that'll knock me out. I give up. This is the end of the line -- I'm 
through.
But the voices did not come back -- at least, not yet. And as he began to think 
about what he was seeing, he realized that the lot wasn't com­pletely empty, 
after all. Standing in the middle of the trash-littered, weedy waste ground was 
a sign.

MILLS CONSTRUCTION AND SOMBRA REAL ESTATE
ASSOCIATES ARE CONTINUING TO REMAKE THE FACE OF
MANHATTAN!
COMING SOON TO THIS LOCATION:
TURTLE BAY LUXURY CONDOMINIUMS!
CALL 555-6712 FOR INFORMATION!
YOU WILL BE SO GLAD YOU DID!

Coming soon? Maybe . . . but Jake had his doubts. The letters on the sign were 
faded and it was sagging a little. At least one graffiti artist, BANCO SKANK by 
name, had left his mark across the artist's drawing of the Turtle Bay Luxury 
Condominiums in bright blue spray-paint. Jake wondered if the project had been 
postponed or if it had maybe just gone belly-up. He remembered hearing his 
father talking on the telephone to his business advisor not two weeks ago, 
yelling at the man to stay away from any more condo investments. "I don't care 
how good the tax-picture looks!" he'd nearly screamed (this was, so far as Jake 
could tell, his father's normal tone of voice when dis­cussing business 
matters -- the coke in the desk drawer might have had something to do with that). 
"When they're offering a goddamn TV set just so you'll come down and look at a 
blueprint, something's wrong!"
The board fence surrounding the lot was chin-high to Jake. It had been plastered 
with handbills -- Olivia Newton-John at Radio City, a group called G. Gordon Liddy 
and the Grots at a club in the East Village, a film called War of the Zombies 
which had come and gone earlier that spring. NO TRESPASSING signs had also been 
nailed up at intervals along the fence, but most of them had been papered over 
by ambitious bill-posters. A little way farther along, another graffito had been 
spray-painted on the fence -- this one in what had once undoubtedly been a bright 
red but which had now faded to the dusky pink of late-summer roses. Jake 
whispered the words aloud, his eyes wide and fascinated:

"See the TURTLE of enormous girth!
On his shell he holds the earth
If you want to run and play,
Come along the BEAM today."

Jake supposed the source of this strange little poem (if not its meaning) was 
clear enough. This part of Manhattan's East Side was known, after all, as Turtle 
Bay. But that didn't explain the gooseflesh which was now running up the center 
of his back in a rough stripe, or his clear sense that he had found another 
road-sign along some fabulous hidden highway.
Jake unbuttoned his shirt and stuck his two newly purchased books inside. Then 
he looked around, saw no one paying attention to him, and grabbed the top of the 
fence. He boosted himself up, swung a leg over, and dropped down on the other 
side. His left foot landed on a loose pile of bricks that promptly slid out from 
under him. His ankle buckled under his weight and bright pain lanced up his leg. 
He fell with a thud and cried out in mingled hurt and surprise as more bricks 
dug into his ribcage like thick, rude fists.
He simply lay where he was for a moment, waiting to get his breath back. He 
didn't think he was badly hurt, but he'd twisted his ankle and it would probably 
swell. He'd be walking with a limp by the time he got home. He'd just have to 
grin and bear it, though; he sure didn't have cab-fare.
You don't really plan to go home, do you? They'll eat you alive.
Well, maybe they would and maybe they wouldn't. So far as he could see, he 
didn't have much choice in the matter. And that was for later. Right now he was 
going to explore this lot which had drawn him as surely as a magnet draws steel 
shavings. That feeling of power was still all around him, he realized, and 
stronger than ever. He didn't think this was just a vacant lot. Something was 
going on here, some-tiling big. He could feel it thrumming in the air, like 
loose volts escaping from the biggest power-plant in the world.
As he got up, Jake saw that he had actually fallen lucky. Close by was a nasty 
jumble of broken glass. If he'd fallen into that, he might have cut himself very 
badly.
That used to be the show window, Jake thought. When the deli was still here, you 
could stand on the sidewalk and look in at all the meats and cheeses. They used 
to hang them on strings. He didn't know how he knew this, but he did-knew it 
beyond a shadow of a doubt.
He looked around thoughtfully and then walked a little farther into the lot. 
Near the middle, lying on the ground and half-buried in a lush growth of spring 
weeds, was another sign. Jake knelt beside it, pulled it upright, and brushed 
the dirt away. The letters were faded, but he could still make them out:

TOM AND GERRY'S ARTISTIC DELI
PARTY PLATTERS OUR SPECIALTY!

And below it, spray-painted in that same red-fading-to-pink, was this puzzling 
sentence: HE HOLDS US ALL WITHIN HIS MIND.
This is the place, Jake thought. Oh yes.
He let the sign fall back, stood up, and walked deeper into the lot, moving 
slowly, looking at everything. As he moved, that sensation of power grew. 
Everything he saw -- the weeds, the broken glass, the clumps of bricks -- seemed to 
stand forth with a kind of exclamatory force. Even the potato chip bags seemed 
beautiful, and the sun had turned a discarded beer-bottle into a cylinder of 
brown fire.
Jake was very aware of his own breathing, and of the sunlight falling upon 
everything like a weight of gold. He suddenly understood that he was standing on 
the edge of a great mystery, and he felt a shudder -- half terror and half 
wonder -- work through him.
It's all here. Everything. Everything is still here.
The weeds brushed at his pants; burdocks stuck to his socks. The breeze blew a 
Ring-Ding wrapper in front of him; the sun reflected off it and for a moment the 
wrapper was filled with a beautiful, terrible inner glow.
"Everything is still here," he repeated to himself, unaware that his face was 
filling with its own inner glow. "Everything."
He was hearing a sound -- had been hearing it ever since he entered the lot, in 
fact. It was a wonderful high humming, inexpressibly lonely and inexpressibly 
lovely. It might have been the sound of a high wind on a deserted plain, except 
it was alive. It was, he thought, the sound of a thousand voices singing some 
great open chord. He looked down and realized there were faces in the tangled 
weeds and low bushes and heaps of bricks. Faces.
"What are you?" Jake whispered. "Who are you?" There was no answer, but he 
seemed to hear, beneath the choir, the sound of hoof-beats on the dusty earth, 
and gunfire, and angels calling hosannahs from the shadows. The faces in the 
wreckage seemed to turn as he passed. They seemed to follow his progress, but no 
evil intent did they bear. He could see Forty-sixth Street, and the edge of the 
U.N. Building on the other side of First Avenue, but the buildings did not 
matter -- New York did not matter. It had become as pale as window-glass.
The humming grew. Now it was not a thousand voices but a million, an open funnel 
of voices rising from the deepest well of the universe. He caught names in that 
group voice, but could not have said what they were. One might have been Marten. 
One might have been Cuthbert. Another might have been Roland -- Roland of Gilead.
There were names; there was a babble of conversation that might have been ten 
thousand entwined stories; but above all was that gor­geous, swelling hum, a 
vibration that wanted to fill his head with bright white light. It was, Jake 
realized with a joy so overwhelming that it threatened to burst him to pieces, 
the voice of Yes; the voice of White; the voice of Always. It was a great chorus 
of affirmation, and it sang in the empty lot. It sang for him.
Then, lying in a cluster of scrubby burdock plants, Jake saw the key . . . and 
beyond that, the rose.


17
His LEGS BETRAYED HIM and he fell to his knees. He was vaguely aware that he was 
weeping, even more vaguely aware that he had wet his pants a little. He crawled 
forward on his knees and reached toward the key lying in the snarl of burdocks. 
Its simple shape was one he seemed to have seen in his dreams:

He thought: The little s-shape at the end -- that's the secret.
As he closed his hand around the key, the voices rose in a harmonic shout of 
triumph. Jake's own cry was lost in the voice of that choir, lie saw the key 
flash white within his fingers, and felt a tremendous jolt of power run up his 
arm. It was as if he had grasped a live high-tension wire, but there was no 
pain.
He opened Charlie the Choo-Choo and put the key inside. Then his eyes fixed upon 
the rose again, and he realized that it was the real key --  the key to everything. 
He crawled toward it, his face a flaming corona of light, his eyes blazing wells 
of blue fire.
The rose was growing from a clump of alien purple grass.
As Jake neared this clump of alien grass, the rose began to open before his 
eyes. It disclosed a dark scarlet furnace, petal upon secret petal, each burning 
with its own secret fury. He had never seen anything so intensely and utterly 
alive in his whole life.
And now, as he stretched one grimy hand out toward this wonder, the voices began 
to sing his own name . . . and deadly fear began to steal in toward the center 
of his heart. It was as cold as ice and as heavy as stone.
There was something wrong. He could feel a pulsing discord, like a deep and ugly 
scratch across some priceless work of art or a deadly fever smoldering beneath 
the chilly skin of an invalid's brow.
It was something like a worm. An invading worm. And a shape. One which lurks 
just beyond the next turn of the road.
Then the heart of the rose opened for him, exposing a yellow dazzle of light, 
and all thought was swept away on a wave of wonder. Jake thought for a moment 
that what he was seeing was only pollen which had been invested with the 
supernatural glow which lived at the heart of every object in this deserted 
clearing -- he thought it even though he had never heard of pollen within a rose. 
He leaned closer and saw that the concentrated circle of blazing yellow was not 
pollen at all. It was a sun: a vast forge burning at the center of this rose 
growing in the purple grass.
The fear returned, only now it had become outright terror. It's right, he 
thought, everything here is right, but it could go wrong -- has started going wrong 
already, I think. I'm being allowed to feel as much of that wrongness as I can 
bear . . . but what is it? And what can I do?
It was something like a worm.
He could feel it beating like a sick and dirty heart, warring with the serene 
beauty of the rose, screaming harsh profanities against the choir of voices 
which had so soothed and lifted him.
He leaned closer to the rose and saw that its core was not just one sun but many 
. . . perhaps all suns contained within a ferocious yet fragile shell.
But it's wrong. It's all in danger.
Knowing it would almost surely mean his death to touch that glowing microcosm 
Init helpless to stop himself, Jake reached forward. There was no curiosity or 
terror in this gesture; only a great, inarticulate need to protect the rose.


18
WHEN HE CAME BACK to himself, he was at first only aware that a great deal of 
time had passed and his head hurt like hell.
What happened? Was I mugged?
He rolled over and sat up. Another blast of pain went through his head. He 
raised a hand to his left temple, and his fingers came away sticky with blood. 
He looked down and saw a brick poking out of the weeds. Its rounded comer was 
too red.
If it had been sharp, I'd probably be dead or in a coma.
He looked at his wrist and was surprised to find he was still wearing his watch. 
It was a Seiko, not terribly expensive, but in this city you didn't snooze in 
vacant lots without losing your stuff. Expensive or not, someone would be more 
than happy to relieve you of it. This time he had been lucky, it seemed.
It was quarter past four in the afternoon. He had been lying here, dead to the 
world, for at least five hours. His father probably had the cops out looking for 
him by now, but that didn't seem to matter much. It seemed to Jake that he had 
walked out of Piper School about a thou­sand years ago.
Jake walked half the distance to the fence between the vacant lot and the Second 
Avenue sidewalk, then stopped.
What exactly had happened to him?
Little by little, the memories came back. Hopping the fence. Slip­ping and 
twisting his ankle. He reached down, touched it, and winced. Yes -- that much had 
happened, all right. Then what?
Something magical.
He groped for that something like an old man groping his way across a shadowy 
room. Everything had been full of its own light. Everything --  even the empty 
wrappers and discarded beer-bottles. There had been voices -- they had been singing 
and telling thousands of overlapping stories.
"And faces," he muttered. This memory made him look around apprehensively. He 
saw no faces. The piles of bricks were just piles of bricks, and the tangles of 
weeds were just tangles of weeds. There were no faces, but -- 
-- but they were here. It wasn't your imagination.
He believed that. He couldn't capture the essence of the memory, its quality of 
beauty and transcendence, but it seemed perfectly real. It was just that his 
memory of those moments before he had passed out seemed like photographs taken 
on the best day of your life. You can remember what that day was like -- sort of, 
anyway -- but the pictures are flat and almost powerless.
Jake looked around the desolate lot, now filling up with the violet shadows of 
late afternoon, and thought: / want you back. God, I want you back the way you 
were.
Then he saw the rose, growing in its clump of purple grass, very close to the 
place where he had fallen. His heart leaped into his throat. Jake blundered back 
toward it, unmindful of the beats of pain each step sent up from his ankle. He 
dropped to his knees in front of it like a worshipper at an altar. He leaned 
forward, eyes wide.
It's just a rose. Just a rose after all. And the grass -- 
The grass wasn't purple after all, he saw. There were splatters of purple on the 
blades, yes, but the color beneath was a perfectly normal green. He looked a 
little further and saw splashes of blue on another clump of weeds. To his right, 
a straggling burdock bush bore traces of both red and yellow. And beyond the 
burdocks was a little pile of dis­carded paint-cans. Glidden Spread Satin, the 
labels said.
That's all it was. Just splatters of paint. Only with your head all messed up 
the way it was, you thought you were seeing -- 
That was bullshit.
He knew what he had seen then, and what he was seeing now. "Camouflage," he 
whispered. "It was all right here. Everything was. And ... it still is."
Now that his head was clearing, he could again feel the steady, harmonic power 
that this place held. The choir was still here, its voice just as musical, 
although now dim and distant. He looked at a pile of bricks and old broken 
chunks of plaster and saw a barely discernible face hiding within it. It was the 
face of a woman with a scar on her forehead.
"Allie?" Jake murmured. "Isn't your name Allie?"
There was no answer. The face was gone. He was only looking at an unlovely pile 
of bricks and plaster again.
He looked back at the rose. It was, he saw, not the dark red that lives at the 
heart of a blazing furnace, but a dusty, mottled pink. It was very beautiful, 
but not perfect. Some of the petals had curled back; the outer edges of these 
were brown and dead. It wasn't the sort of cultivated flower he had seen in 
florists' shops; he supposed it was a wild rose.
"You're very beautiful," he said, and once more stretched his hand out to touch 
it.
Although there was no breeze, the rose nodded toward him. For just a moment the 
pads of his fingers touched its surface, smooth and velvety and marvellously 
alive, and all around him the voice of the choir seemed to swell.
"Are you sick, rose?"
There was no answer, of course. When his fingers left the faded pink bowl of the 
flower, it nodded back to its original position, growing out of the 
paint-splattered weeds in its quiet, forgotten splendor.
Do roses bloom at this time of year? Jake wondered. Wild ones? Why would a wild 
rose grow in a vacant lot, anyway? And if there's one, how come there aren't 
more?
He remained on his hands and knees a little longer, then realized he could stay 
here looking at the rose for the rest of the afternoon (or maybe the rest of his 
life) and not come any closer to solving its mystery. He had seen it plain for a 
moment, as he had seen everything else in this forgotten, trash-littered corner 
of the city; he had seen it with its mask off and its camouflage tossed aside. 
He wanted to see that again, but wanting would not make it so.
It was time to go home.
He saw the two books he'd bought at The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind lying 
nearby. As he picked them up, a bright silver object slipped from the pages of 
Charlie the Choo-Choo and fell into a scruffy patch of weeds. Jake bent, 
favoring his hurt ankle, and picked it up. As he did so, the choir seemed to 
sigh and swell, then fell back to its almost inaudible hum.
"So that part was real, too," he murmured. He ran the ball of his thumb over the 
blunt protruding points of the key and into those primi­tive V-shaped notches. 
He sent it skating over the mild s-curves at the end of the third notch. Then he 
tucked it deep into the right front pocket of his pants and began to limp back 
toward the fence.
He had reached it and was preparing to scramble over the top when a terrible 
thought suddenly seized his mind.
The rose! What if somebody comes in here and picks it?
A little moan of horror escaped him. He turned back and after a moment his eyes 
picked it out, although it was deep in the shadow of a neighboring building 
now -- a tiny pink shape in the dimness, vulnerable, beautiful, and alone.
I can't leave it -- I have to guard it!
But a voice spoke up in his mind, a voice that was surely that of the man he had 
met at the way station in that strange other life. No one will pick it. Nor will 
any vandal crush it beneath his heel because his dull eyes cannot abide the 
sight of its beauty. That is not the danger. It can protect itself from such 
things as those.
A sense of deep relief swept through Jake.
Can I come here again and look at it? he asked the phantom voice.
When I'm low, or if the voices come hack and start their argument again? Can I 
come back and look at it and have some peace?
The voice did not answer, and after a few moments of listening, Jake decided it 
was gone. He tucked Charlie the Choo-Choo and Riddle-De-Dum! into the waistband 
of his pants -- which, he saw, were streaked with dirt and dotted with clinging 
burdocks -- and then grabbed the board fence. He boosted himself up, swung over the 
top, and dropped onto the sidewalk of Second Avenue again, being careful to land 
on his good foot.
Traffic on the Avenue -- both pedestrian and vehicular -- was much heavier now as 
people made their way home for the night. A few passersby looked at the dirty 
boy in the torn blazer and untucked, flapping shirt as he jumped awkwardly down 
from the fence, but not many. New Yorkers are used to the sight of people doing 
peculiar things.
He stood there a moment, feeling a sense of loss and realizing some­thing else, 
as well -- the arguing voices were still absent. That, at least, was something.
He glanced at the board fence; and the verse of spray-painted dog­gerel seemed 
to leap out at him, perhaps because the paint was the same color as the rose.
"See the TURTLE of enormous girth" Jake muttered. "On his shell he holds the 
earth." He shivered. "What a day! Boy!"
He turned and began to limp slowly in the direction of home.


19
THE DOORMAN MUST HAVE buzzed up as soon as Jake entered the lobby, because his 
father was standing outside the elevator when it opened on the fifth floor. 
Elmer Chambers was wearing faded jeans and cowboy boots that improved his 
five-ten to a rootin, tootin six feet. His black, crewcut hair bolted up from 
his head; for as long as Jake could remem­ber, his father had looked like a man 
who had just suffered some tremen­dous, galvanizing shock. As soon as Jake 
stepped out of the elevator, Chambers seized him by the arm.
"Look at you!" His father's eyes flicked up and down, taking in Jake's dirty 
face and hands, the blood drying on his cheek and temple, the dusty pants, the 
torn blazer, and the burdock that clung to his tie like some peculiar clip. "Get 
in here! Where the hell have you been? Your mother's just about off her fucking 
gourd!"
Without giving Jake a chance to answer, he dragged him through the apartment 
door. Jake saw Greta Shaw standing in the archway between the dining room and 
the kitchen. She gave him a look of guarded sympathy, then disappeared before 
the eyes of "the mister" could chance upon her.
Jake's mother was sitting in her rocker. She got to her feet when she saw Jake, 
but she did not leap to her feet; neither did she pelt across to the foyer so 
she could cover him with kisses and invective. As she came toward him, Jake 
assessed her eyes and guessed she'd had at least three Valium since noon. Maybe 
four. Both of his parents were firm believers in better living through 
chemistry.
"You're bleeding! Where have you been?" She made this inquiry in her cultured 
Vassar voice, pronouncing been so it rhymed with seen. She might have been 
greeting an acquaintance who had been involved in a minor traffic accident.
"Out," he said.
His father gave him a rough shake. Jake wasn't prepared for it. He stumbled and 
came down on his bad ankle. The pain flared again, and he was suddenly furious. 
Jake didn't think his father was pissed because he had disappeared from school, 
leaving only his mad composition behind; his father was pissed because Jake had 
had the temerity to fuck up his own precious schedule.
To this point in his life, Jake had been aware of only three feelings about his 
father: puzzlement, fear, and a species of weak, confused love. Now a fourth and 
fifth surfaced. One was anger; the other was disgust. Mixed in with these 
unpleasant feelings was that sense of homesickness. It was the largest thing 
inside him right now, weaving through everything else like smoke. He looked at 
his father's flushed cheeks and screaming haircut and wished he was back in the 
vacant lot, looking at the rose and listening to the choir. This is not my 
place, he thought. Not anymore. I have work to do. If only I knew what it was.
"Let go of me," he said.
"What did you say to me?" His father's blue eyes widened. They were very 
bloodshot tonight. Jake guessed he had been dipping heavily into his supply of 
magic powder, and that probably made this a bad time to cross him, but Jake 
realized he intended to cross him just the same. He would not be shaken like a 
mouse in the jaws of a sadistic tomcat. Not tonight. Maybe not ever again. He 
suddenly realized that a large part of his anger stemmed from one simple fact: 
he could not talk to them about what had happened -- what was still happening. They 
had closed all the doors.
But I have a key, he thought, and touched its shape through the fabric of his 
pants. And the rest of that strange verse occurred to him: If you want to run 
and play, /Come along the BEAM today.
"I said let go of me," he repeated. "I've got a sprained ankle and you're 
hurting it."
"I'll hurt more than your ankle if you don't -- "
Sudden strength seemed to How into Jake. He seized the hand clamped on his arm 
just below the shoulder and shoved it violently away. His father's mouth dropped 
open.
"I don't work for you," Jake said. "I'm your son, remember? If you forgot, check 
the picture on your desk."
His father's upper lip pulled back from his perfectly capped teeth in a snarl 
that was two parts surprise and one part fury. "Don't you talk to me like that, 
mister -- where in the hell is your respect?"
"I don't know. Maybe I lost it on the way home."
"You spend the whole goddamn day absent without leave and then you stand there 
running your fat, disrespectful mouth -- "
"Stop it! Stop it, both of you!" Jake's mother cried. She sounded near tears in 
spite of the tranquilizers perking through her system.
Jake's father reached for Jake's arm again, then changed his mind. The 
surprising force with which his son had torn his hand away a moment ago might 
have had something to do with it. Or perhaps it was only the look in Jake's 
eyes. "I want to know where you've been."
"Out. I told you that. And that's all I'm going to tell you."
"Fuck that! Your headmaster called, your French teacher actually came here, and 
they both had beaucoup questions for you! So do I, and I want some answers!"
"Your clothes are dirty," his mother observed, and then added tim­idly: "Were 
you mugged, Johnny? Did you play hookey and get mugged?"
"Of course he wasn't mugged," Elmer Chambers snarled. "Still wearing his watch, 
isn't he?"
"But there's blood on his head."
"It's okay, Mom. I just bumped it."
"But -- "
"I'm going to go to bed. I'm very, very tired. If you want to talk about this in 
the morning, okay. Maybe we'll all be able to make some sense then. But for now, 
I don't have a thing to say."
His father took a step after him, reaching out.
"No, Elmer!" Jake's mother almost screamed.
Chambers ignored her. He grabbed Jake by the back of the blazer. "Don't you just 
walk away from me -- " he began, and then Jake whirled, tearing the blazer out of 
his hand. The seam under the right arm, already strained, let go with a rough 
purring sound.
His father saw those blazing eyes and stepped away. The rage on his face was 
doused by something that looked like terror. That blaze was not metaphorical; 
Jake's eyes actually seemed to be on fire. His mother gave voice to a 
strengthless little scream, clapped one hand to her mouth, took two large, 
stumbling steps backward, and dropped into her rocking chair with a small thud.
"Leave. . me . . . alone," Jake said.
"What's happened to you?" his father asked, and now his tone was almost 
plaintive. "What in the hell's happened to you? You bug out of school without a 
word to anyone on the first day of exams, you come back filthy from head to toe 
. . . and you act as if you've gone crazy."
Well, there it was -- you act as if you've gone crazy. What he'd been afraid of 
ever since the voices started three weeks ago. The Dread Accu­sation. Only now 
that it was out, Jake found it didn't frighten him much at all, perhaps because 
he had finally put the issue to rest in his own mind. Yes, something had 
happened to him. Was still happening. But no -- he had not gone crazy. At least, 
not yet.
"We'll talk about it in the morning," he repeated. He walked across the dining 
room, and this time his father didn't try to stop him. He had almost reached the 
hall when his mother's voice, worried, stopped him: "Johnny . . . are you all 
right?"
And what should he answer? Yes? No? Both of the above? Neither of the above? But 
the voices had stopped, and that was something. That was, in fact, quite a lot.
"Better," he said at last. He went down to his room and closed the door firmly 
behind him. The sound of the door snicking firmly shut between him and all the 
rest of the round world filled him with tremen­dous relief.


20
HE STOOD BY THE door for a little while, listening. His mother's voice was only 
a murmur, his father's voice a little louder.
His mother said something about blood, and a doctor.
His father said the kid was fine; the only thing wrong with the kid was the junk 
coming out of his mouth, and he would fix that.
His mother said something about calming down.
His father said he was calm.
His mother said -- 
He said, she said, blah, blah, blah. Jake still loved them -- he was pretty sure he 
did, anyway -- but other stuff had happened now, and these things had made it 
necessary that still other things must occur.
Why? Because something was wrong with the rose. And maybe because he wanted to 
run and play . . . and see his eyes again, as blue as the sky above the way 
station had been.
Jake walked slowly over to his desk, removing his blazer as he went. It was 
pretty wasted -- one sleeve torn almost completely off, the lining hanging like a 
limp sail. He slung it over the back of his chair, then sat down and put the 
books on his desk. He had been sleeping very badly over the last week and a 
half, hut he thought tonight he would sleep well. He couldn't remember ever 
being so tired. When he woke up in the morning, perhaps he would know what to 
do.
There was a light knock at the door, and Jake turned warily in that direction.
"It's Mrs. Shaw, John. May I come in for a minute?"
He smiled. Mrs. Shaw -- of course it was. His parents had drafted her as an 
intermediary. Or perhaps translator might be a better word.
You go see him, his mother would have said. Hell tell you what's wrong with him. 
I'm his mother and this man with the bloodshot eyes and the runny nose is his 
father and you're only the housekeeper, but he'll tell you what he wouldn't tell 
us. Because you see more of him than either of us, and maybe you speak his 
language.
She'll have a tray, Jake thought, and when he opened the door he was smiling.
Mrs. Shaw did indeed have a tray. There were two sandwiches on it, a wedge of 
apple pie, and a glass of chocolate milk. She was looking at Jake with mild 
anxiety, as if she thought he might lunge forward and try to bite her. Jake 
looked over her shoulder, but there was no sign of his parents. He imagined them 
sitting in the living room, listening anxiously.
"I thought you might like something to eat," Mrs. Shaw said.
"Yes, thanks." In fact, he was ravenously hungry; he hadn't eaten since 
breakfast. He stood aside and Mrs. Shaw came in (giving him another apprehensive 
look as she passed) and put the tray on the desk.
"Oh, look at this," she said, picking up Charlie the Choo-Choo. "I had this one 
when I was a little girl. Did you buy this today, Johnny?"
"Yes. Did my parents ask you to find out what I'd been up to?"
She nodded. No acting, no put-on. It was just a chore, like taking out the 
trash. You can tell me if you want to, her face said, or you can keep still. I 
like you, Johnny, but it's really nothing to me, one way or the other. I just 
work here, and it's already an hour past my regular quitting time.
He was not offended by what her face had to say; on the contrary, he was further 
calmed by it. Mrs. Shaw was another acquaintance who was not quite a friend . . 
. but he thought she might be a little closer to a friend than any of the kids 
at school were, and much closer than either his mother or father. Mrs. Shaw was 
honest, at least. She didn't dance. It all went on the bill at the end of the 
month, and she always cut the crusts off the sandwiches.
Jake picked up a sandwich and took a large bite. Bologna and cheese, his 
favorite. That was another thing in Mrs. Shaw's favor -- she knew all his 
favorites. His mother was still under the impression that he liked corn on the 
cob and hated Brussels sprouts.
"Please tell them I'm fine," he said, "and tell my father I'm sorry that I was 
rude to him."
He wasn't, but all his father really wanted was that apology. Once Mrs. Shaw 
conveyed it to him, he would relax and begin to tell himself the old lie -- he had 
done his fatherly duty and all was well, all was well, and all manner of things 
were well.
"I've been studying very hard for my exams," he said, chewing as he talked, "and 
it all came down on me this morning, I guess. I sort of froze. It seemed like I 
had to get out or I'd suffocate." He touched the dried crust of blood on his 
forehead. "As for this, please tell my mother it's really nothing. I didn't get 
mugged or anything; it was just a stupid accident. There was a UPS guy pushing a 
hand-truck, and I walked right into it. The cut's no big deal. I'm not having 
double vision or anything, and even the headache's gone now."
She nodded. "I can see how it must have been -- a high-powered school like that and 
all. You just got a little spooked. No shame in that, Johnny. But you really 
haven't seemed like yourself this last couple of weeks."
"I think I'll be okay now. I might have to re-do my Final Essay in English, 
but-"
"Oh!" Mrs. Shaw said. A startled looked crossed her face. She put Charlie the 
Choo-Choo back down on Jake's desk. "I almost forgot! Your French teacher left 
something for you. I'll just get it."
She left the room. Jake hoped he hadn't worried Mr. Bissette, who was a pretty 
good guy, but he supposed he must have, since Bissette had actually made a 
personal appearance. Jake had an idea that personal appearances were pretty rare 
for Piper School teachers. He wondered what Mr. Bissette had left. His best 
guess was an invitation to talk with Mr. Hotchkiss, the school shrink. That 
would have scared him this morn­ing, but not tonight.
Tonight only the rose seemed to matter.
He tore into his second sandwich. Mrs. Shaw had left the door open, and he could 
hear her talking with his parents. They both sounded a little more cooled out 
now. Jake drank his milk, then grabbed the plate with the apple pie on it. A few 
moments later Mrs. Shaw came back. She was carrying a very familiar blue folder.
Jake found that not all of his dread had left him after all. They would all know 
by now, of course, students and faculty alike, and it was too late to do 
anything about it, but that didn't mean he liked all of them knowing he had 
flipped his lid. That they were talking about him.
A small envelope had been paper-clipped to the front of the folder.
Jake pulled it free and looked up at Mrs. Shaw as he opened it. "How are my 
folks doing now?" he asked.
She allowed herself a brief smile. "Your father wanted me to ask why you didn't 
just tell him you had Exam Fever. He said he had it himself once or twice when 
he was a boy."
Jake was struck by this; his father had never been the sort of man to indulge in 
reminiscences which began, You know, when I was a kid . . . Jake tried to 
imagine his father as a boy with a bad case of Exam Fever and found he couldn't 
quite do it -- the best he could manage was the unpleasant image of a pugnacious 
dwarf in a Piper sweatshirt, a dwarf in custom-tooled cowboy boots, a dwarf with 
short black hair bolting up from his forehead.
The note was from Mr. Bissette.

Dear John,
Bonnie Avery told me that you left early. She's very concerned about you, and so 
am I, although we have both seen this sort of thing before, especially during 
Exam Week. Please come and see me first thing tomorrow, okay? Any problems you 
have can be worked out. If you're feeling pressured by exams -- and 1 want to 
repeat that it happens all the time -- a postponement can be arranged. Our first 
concern is your welfare. Call me this evening, if you like; you can reach me at 
555-7661. Ill be up until midnight.
Remember that we all like you very much, and are on your side.
A votre sante'
Len Bissette

Jake felt like crying. The concern was stated, and that was wonderful, but there 
were other things, unstated things, in the note that were even more 
wonderful -- warmth, caring, and an effort (however misconceived) to understand and 
console.
Mr. Bissette had drawn a small arrow at the bottom of the note. Jake turned it 
over and read this:
By the way, Bonnie asked me to send this along -- congratulations!!
Congratulations? What in the hell did that mean?
He flipped open the folder. A sheet of paper had been clipped to the first page 
of his Final Essay. It was headed FROM THE DESK OF BONITA AVERY, and Jake read 
the spiky, fountain-penned lines with grow­ing amazement.

John,
Leonard will undoubtedly voice the concern we all feel -- he is awfully good at 
that -- so let me confine myself to your Final Essay, which I read and graded 
during my free period. It is stun­ningly original, and superior to any student 
work I have read in the last few years. Your use of incremental repetition (". . 
. and that is the truth") is inspired, but of course incremental repetition is 
really just a trick. The real worth of the composition is in its symbolic 
quality, first stated by the images of the train and the door on the title page 
and carried through splendidly within. This reaches its logical conclusion with 
the picture of the "black tower," which I take as your statement that 
conventional ambitions are not only false but dangerous.
I do not pretend to understand all the symbolism (e.g., "Lady of Shadows," 
"gunslinger") but it seems clear that you yourself are "The Prisoner" (of 
school, society, etc.) and that the educational system is "The Speaking Demon." 
Is it possible that both "Roland" and "the gunslinger" are the same authority 
figure -- your father, perhaps? I became so intrigued by this possibility that 1 
looked up his name in your records. I note it is Elmer, but I further note that 
his middle initial is R.
I find this extremely provocative. Or is this name a double symbol, drawn both 
from your father and from Robert Brow­ning's poem "Childe Roland to the Dark 
Tower Came"? This is not a question I would ask most students, but of course I 
know how omnivorously you read!
At any rate, I am extremely impressed. Younger students are often attracted to 
so-called "stream-of-consciousness" writing, but are rarely able to control it. 
You have done an outstanding job of merging s-of-c with symbolic language.
Bravo!
Drop by as soon as you're "back at it" -- I want to discuss possible publication of 
this piece in the first issue of next year's student literary magazine.
B. Avery
P. S. If you left school today because you had sudden doubts about my ability to 
understand a Final Essay of such unexpected richness, I hope I have assuaged 
them.

Jake pulled the sheet off the clip, revealing the title page of his stunningly 
original and richly symbolic Final Essay. Written and circled there in the red 
ink of Ms. Avery's marking pen was the notation A +. Below this she had written 
EXCELLENT JOB!!!
Jake began to laugh.
The whole day -- the long, scary, confusing, exhilarating, terrify­ing, mysterious 
day -- was condensed in great, roaring sobs of laughter. He slumped in his chair, 
head thrown hack, hands clutching his belly, tears streaming down his face. He 
laughed himself hoarse. He would almost stop and then some line from Ms. Avery's 
well-meaning cri­tique would catch his eye and he would be off to the races 
again. He didn't see his father come to the door, look in at him with puzzled, 
wary eyes, and then leave again, shaking his head.
At last he did become aware that Mrs. Shaw was still sitting on his bed, looking 
at him with an expression of friendly detachment tinctured with faint curiosity. 
He tried to speak, but the laughter pealed out again before he could.
I gotta stop, he thought. I gotta stop or it's gonna kill me. I'll have a stroke 
or a heart attack, or something.
Then he thought, 7 wonder what she made of "choo-choo, choo-choo?," and he began 
to laugh wildly again.
At last the spasms began to taper off to giggles. He wiped his arm across his 
streaming eyes and said, "I'm sorry, Mrs. Shaw -- it's just that . . . well ... I 
got an A-plus on my Final Essay. It was all very . . . very rich . . . and very 
sym . . . sym . . ."
But he couldn't finish. He doubled up with laughter again, hold­ing his 
throbbing belly.
Mrs. Shaw got up, smiling. "That's very nice, John. I'm happy it's all turned 
out so well, and I'm sure your folks will be, too. I'm awfully late -- I think I'll 
ask the doorman to call me a cab. Goodnight, and sleep well."
"Goodnight, Mrs. Shaw," Jake said, controlling himself with an effort. "And 
thanks."
As soon as she was gone, he began to laugh again.


21
DURING THE NEXT HALF hour he had separate visits from both parents. They had 
indeed calmed down, and the A + grade on Jake's Final Essay seemed to calm them 
further. Jake received them with his French text open on the desk before him, 
but he hadn't really looked at it, nor did he have any intention of looking at 
it. He was only waiting for them to be gone so he could study the two books he 
had bought earlier that day. He had an idea that the real Final Exams were still 
waiting just over the horizon, and he wanted desperately to pass.
His father poked his head into Jake's room around quarter of ten, about twenty 
minutes after Jake's mother had concluded her own short, vague visit. Elmer 
Chambers was holding a cigarette in one hand and a glass of Scotch in the other. 
He seemed not only calmer but almost zonked. Jake wondered briefly and 
indifferently if he had been hitting his mother's Valium supply.
"Are you okay, kid?"
"Yes." He was once again the small, neat boy who was always com­pletely in 
control of himself. The eyes he turned to his father were not blazing but 
opaque.
"I wanted to say I'm sorry about before." His father was not a man who made many 
apologies, and he did it badly. Jake found himself feeling a little sorry for 
him.
"It's all right."
"Hard day," his father said. He gestured with the empty glass. "Why don't we 
just forget it happened?" He spoke as if this great and logical idea had just 
come to him.
"I already have."
"Good." His father sounded relieved. "Time for you to get some sleep, isn't it? 
You'll have some explaining to do and some tests to take tomorrow."
"I guess so," Jake said. "Is Mom okay?"
"Fine. Fine. I'm going in the study. Got a lot of paperwork tonight."
"Dad?"
His father looked back at him warily.
"What's your middle name?"
Something in his father's face told Jake that he had looked at the Final Essay 
grade but hadn't bothered to read either the paper itself or Ms. Avery's 
critique.
"I don't have one," he said. "Just an initial, like Harry S Truman. Except 
mine's an R. What brought that on?"
"Just curious," Jake said.
He managed to hold onto his composure until his father was gone . . . but as 
soon as the door was closed, he ran to his bed and stuffed his face into his 
pillow to muffle another bout of wild laughter.


22
WHEN HE WAS SURE he was over the current fit (although an occasional snicker 
still rumbled up his throat like an aftershock) and his father would be safely 
locked away in his study with his cigarettes, his Scotch, his papers, and his 
little bottle of white powder, Jake went back to his desk, turned on the study 
lamp, and opened Charlie the Choo-Choo. He glanced briefly at the copyright page 
and saw it had originally been published in 1942; his copy was from the fourth 
printing. He looked at the back, but there was no information at all about Beryl 
Evans, the book's author.
Jake turned back to the beginning, looked at the picture of a grin­ning, 
blonde-haired man sitting in the cab of a steam locomotive, consid­ered the 
proud grin on the man's face, and then began to read.
Bob Brooks was an engineer for the Mid-World Railway Company, on the St. Louis 
to Topeka run. Engineer Bob was the best trainman The Mid-World Railway Company 
ever had, and Charlie was the best train!
Charlie was a 402 Big Boy Steam Locomotive, and Engineer Bob was the only man 
who had ever been allowed to sit in his peak-seat and pull the whistle. Everyone 
knew the WHOOO-OOOO of Charlie's whistle, and whenever they heard it echoing 
across the flat Kan­sas countryside, they said, "There goes Charlie and 
Engi­neer Bob, the fastest team between St. Louis and Topeka!"
Boys and girls ran into their yards to watch Charlie and Engineer Bob go by. 
Engineer Bob would smile and wave. The children would smile and wave back.
Engineer Bob had a special secret. He was the only one who knew. Charlie the 
Choo-Choo was really, really alive. One day while they were making the run 
between Topeka and St. Louis, Engineer Bob heard singing, very soft and low.
"Who is in the cab with me?" Engineer Bob said sternly.
"You need to see a shrink, Engineer Bob," Jake murmured, and turned the page. 
Here was a picture of Bob bending over to look beneath, Charlie the Choo-Choo's 
automatic firebox. Jake wondered who was driv­ing the train and watching out for 
cows (not to mention boys and girls) on the tracks while Bob was checking for 
stowaways, and guessed that Beryl Evans hadn't known a lot about trains.
"Don't worry," said a small, gruff voice. "It is only I."
"Who's I?" Engineer Bob asked. He spoke in his big­gest, sternest voice, because 
he still thought someone was playing a joke on him.
"Charlie," said the small, gruff voice.
"Hardy har-har!" said Engineer Bob. "Trains can't talk! I may not know much, but 
I know that! If you're Charlie, I suppose you can blow your own whistle!"
"Of course," said the small, gruff voice, and just then the whistle made its big 
noise, rolling out across the Mis­souri plains: WHOOO-OOOO!
"Goodness!" said Engineer Bob. "It really is you!"
"I told you," said Charlie the Choo-Choo.
"How come I never knew you were alive before?" asked Engineer Bob. "Why didn't 
you ever talk to me before?"
Then Charlie sang this song to Engineer Bob in his small, gruff voice.

Don't ask me silly questions,
I won't play silly games.
I'm just a simple choo-choo train
And I'll always be the same.

I only want to race along
Beneath the bright blue sky,
And be a happy choo-choo train
Until the day I die.

"Will you talk to me some more when we're making our run?" asked Engineer Bob. 
"I'd like that."
"I would, too," said Charlie. "I love you, Engineer Bob."
"I love you too, Charlie," said Engineer Bob, and then he blew the whistle 
himself, just to show how happy he was.
WHOOO-OOO! It was the biggest and best Charlie had ever whistled, and everyone 
who heard it came out to see.

The picture which illustrated this last was similar to the one on the cover of 
the book. In the previous pictures (they were rough drawings which reminded Jake 
of the pictures in his favorite kindergarten book, Mike Mulligan and His Steam 
Shovel), the locomotive had been just a locomotive -- cheery, undoubtedly 
interesting to the '40s-era boys who had been this book's intended audience, but 
still only a piece of machin­ery. In this picture, however, it had clearly human 
features, and this gave Jake a deep chill despite Charlie's smile and the rather 
heavy-handed cuteness of the story.
He didn't trust that smile.
He turned to his Final Essay and scanned down the lines. I'm pretty sure Blame 
is dangerous, he read, and that is the truth.
He closed the folder, tapped his fingers on it thoughtfully for a few moments, 
then returned to Charlie the Choo-Choo.

Engineer Bob and Charlie spent many happy days together and talked of many 
things. Engineer Bob lived alone, and Charlie was the first real friend he'd had 
since his wife died, long ago, in New York.
Then one day, when Charlie and Engineer Bob returned to the roundhouse in St. 
Louis, they found a new diesel locomotive in Charlie's berth. And what a diesel 
locomotive it was! 5,000 horsepower! Stainless steel cou­plers! Traction motors 
from the Utica Engine Works in Utica, New York! And sitting on top, behind the 
genera­tor, were three bright yellow radiator cooling fans.
"What is this?" Engineer Bob asked in a worried voice, but Charlie only sang his 
song in his smallest, gruffest voice:

Don't ask me silly questions, 
I won't play silly games. 
I'm just a simple choo-choo train 
And I'll always be the same.

I only want to race along 
Beneath the bright blue sky, 
And be a happy choo-choo train 
Until the day I die.

Mr. Briggs, the Roundhouse Manager, came over.
"That is a beautiful diesel locomotive," said Engineer Bob, "but you will have 
to move it out of Charlie's berth, Mr. Briggs. Charlie needs a lube job this 
very afternoon."
"Charlie won't be needing any more lube jobs, Engi­neer Bob," said Mr. Briggs 
sadly. "This is his replace­ment -- a brand-new Burlington Zephyr diesel loco. 
Once, Charlie was the best locomotive in the world, but now he is old and his 
boiler leaks. I am afraid the time has come for Charlie to retire."
"Nonsense!" Engineer Bob was mad! "Charlie is still full of zip and zowie! I 
will telegraph the head office of The Mid-World Railway Company! I will 
telegraph the President, Mr. Raymond Martin, myself! I know him, because he once 
gave me a Good Service Award, and afterwards Charlie and I took his little 
daughter for a ride. I let her pull the lanyard, and Charlie whistled his 
loudest for her!"
"I am sorry, Bob," said Mr. Briggs, 'Taut it was Mr. Martin himself who ordered 
the new diesel loco."
It was true. And so Charlie the Choo-Choo was shunted off to a siding in the 
furthest corner of Mid-World's St. Louis yard to rust in the weeds. Now the 
HONNNK! HONNNK! of the Burlington Zephyr was heard on the St. Louis to Topeka 
run, and Charlie's blew no more. A family of mice nested in the seat where 
Engi­neer Bob once sat so proudly, watching the countryside speed past; a family 
of swallows nested in his smoke­stack. Charlie was lonely and very sad. He 
missed the steel tracks and bright blue skies and wide open spaces. Sometimes, 
late at night, he thought of these things and cried dark, oily tears. This 
rusted his fine Stratham head­light, but he didn't care, because now the 
Stratham head­light was old, and it was always dark.
Mr. Martin, the President of The Mid-World Railway Company, wrote and offered to 
put Engineer Bob in the peak-seat of the new Burlington Zephyr. "It is a fine 
loco, Engineer Bob," said Mr. Martin, "chock-full of zip and zowie, and you 
should be the one to pilot it! Of all the Engineers who work for Mid-World, you 
are the best. And my daughter Susannah has never forgotten that you let her pull 
old Charlie's whistle."
But Engineer Bob said that if he couldn't pilot Char­lie, his days as a trainman 
were done. "I wouldn't under­stand such a fine new diesel loco," said Engineer 
Bob, "and it wouldn't understand me."
He was given a job cleaning the engines in the St. Louis yards, and Engineer Bob 
became Wiper Bob. Some­times the other engineers who drove the fine new diesels 
would laugh at him. "Look at that old fool!" they said. "He cannot understand 
that the world has moved on!"
Sometimes, late at night, Engineer Bob would go to the far side of the rail 
yard, where Charlie the Choo-Choo stood on the rusty rails of the lonely siding 
which had become his home. Weeds had twined in his wheels; his headlight was 
rusty and dark. Engineer Bob always talked to Charlie, but Charlie replied less 
and less. Many nights he would not talk at all.
One night, a terrible idea came into Engineer Bob's head. "Charlie, are you 
dying?" he asked, and in his smallest, gruffest voice, Charlie replied:

Don't ask me silly questions, 
I won't play silly games, 
I'm just a simple choo-choo train 
And I'll always be the same.

Now that I can't race along 
Beneath the bright blue sky 
I guess that I'll just sit right here 
Until I finally die.

Jake looked at the picture accompanying this not-exactly-unexpected turn of 
events for a long time. Rough drawing it might be, but it was still definitely a 
three-handkerchief job. Charlie looked old, beaten, and forgotten. Engineer Bob 
looked like he had lost his last friend . . . which, according to the story, he 
had. Jake could imagine children all over America blatting their heads off at 
this point, and it occurred to him that there were a lot of stories for lads 
with stuff like this in them, stuff that threw acid all over your emotions. 
Hansel and Gretel being turned out into the forest, Bambi's mother getting 
scragged by a hunter, the death of Old Yeller. It was easy to hurt little kids, 
easy to make them cry, and this seemed to bring out a strangely sadistic streak 
in many story-tellers . . . including, it seemed, Beryl Evans.
But, Jake found, he was not saddened by Charlie's relegation to the weedy 
wastelands at the outer edge of the Mid-World trainyards in St. Louis. Quite the 
opposite. Good, he thought. That's the place for him. That's the place, because 
he's dangerous. Let him rot there, and don't trust that tear in his eye -- they say 
crocodiles cry, too.
He read the rest rapidly. It had a happy ending, of course, although it was 
undoubtedly that moment of despair on the edge of the trainyards which children 
remembered long after the happy ending had slipped their minds.
Mr. Martin, the President of The Mid-World Railway Company, came to St. Louis to 
check on the operation. His plan was to ride the Burlington Zephyr to Topeka, 
where his daughter was giving her first piano recital, that very afternoon. Only 
the Zephyr wouldn't start. There was water in the diesel fuel, it seemed.
(Were you the one who watered the diesel, Engineer Bob? Jake wondered. I bet it 
was, you sly dog, you!)
All the other trains were out on their runs! What to do?
Someone tugged Mr. Martin's arm. It was Wiper Bob, only he no longer looked like 
an engine-wiper. He had taken off his oil-stained dungarees and put on a clean 
pair of overalls. On his head was his old pillowtick engi­neer's cap.
"Charlie's is right over there, on that siding," he said. "Charlie will make the 
run to Topeka, Mr. Martin. Charlie will get you there in time for your 
daughter's piano recital."
"That old steamer?" scoffed Mr. Briggs. "Charlie would still be fifty miles out 
of Topeka at sundown!"
"Charlie can do it," Engineer Bob insisted. "Without a train to pull, I know he 
can! I have been cleaning his engine and his boiler in my spare time, you see."
"We'll give it a try," said Mr. Martin. "I would be sorry to miss Susannah's 
first recital!"
Charlie was all ready to go; Engineer Bob had filled his tender with fresh coal, 
and the firebox was so hot its sides were red. He helped Mr. Martin up into the 
cab and backed Charlie off the rusty, forgotten siding and onto the main track 
for the first time in years. Then, as he engaged Forward First, he pulled on the 
lanyard and Charlie gave his old brave cry: WHOOO-OOOOO!
All over St. Louis the children heard that cry, and ran out into their yards to 
watch the rusty old steam loco pass. "Look!" they cried. "It's Charlie! Charlie 
the Choo-Choo is back! Hurrah!" They all waved, and as Charlie steamed out of 
town, gathering speed, he blew his own whistle, just as he had in the old days: 
WHOOOO-OOOOOOO!
Clickety-clack went Charlie's wheels!
Chuffa-chuffa went the smoke from Charlie's stack!
Brump-brump went the conveyor as it fed coal into the firebox!
Talk about zip! Talk about zowie! Golly gee, gosh, and wowie! Charlie had never 
gone so fast before! The countryside went whizzing by in a blur! They passed the 
cars on Route 41 as if they were standing still!
"Hoptedoodle!" cried Mr. Martin, waving his hat in the air. "This is some 
locomotive, Bob! I don't know why we ever retired it! How do you keep the 
coal-conveyor loaded at this speed?"
Engineer Bob only smiled, because he knew Charlie was feeding himself. And, 
beneath the clickety-clack and the chuffa-chuffa and the brump-hrump, he could 
hear Charlie singing his old song in his low, gruff voice:

Don't ask me silly questions, 
I won't play silly games, 
I'm just a simple choo-choo train 
And I'll always be the same.

I only want to race along 
Beneath the bright blue sky, 
And be a happy choo-choo train 
Until the day I die.

Charlie got Mr. Martin to his daughter's piano recital on time (of course), and 
Susannah was just tickled pink to see her old friend Charlie again (of course), 
and they all went back to St. Louis together with Susannah yanking hell out of 
the train-whistle the whole way. Mr. Martin got Charlie and Engineer Bob a gig 
pulling kids around the brand-new Mid-World Amusement Park and Fun Fair in 
California, and

you will find them there to this day, pulling laughing children hither and 
thither in that world of lights and music and good, wholesome fun. Engineer 
Bob's hair is white, and Charlie doesn't talk as much as he once did, but both 
of them still have plenty of zip and zowie, and every now and then the children 
hear Charlie singing his old song in his soft, gruff voice.

THE END

"Don't ask me silly questions, I won't play silly games," Jake mut­tered, 
looking at the final picture. It showed Charlie the Choo-Choo pulling two 
bunting-decked passenger cars filled with happy children from the roller coaster 
to the Ferns wheel. Engineer Bob sat in the cab, pulling the whistle-cord and 
looking as happy as a pig in shit. Jake sup­posed Engineer Bob's smile was 
supposed to convey supreme happiness, but to him it looked like the grin of a 
lunatic. Charlie and Engineer Bob both looked like lunatics . . . and the more 
Jake looked at the kids, the more he thought that their expressions looked like 
grimaces of terror. Let us off this train, those faces seemed to say. Please, 
just let us off this train alive.
And be a happy choo-choo train until the day I die.
Jake closed the book and looked at it thoughtfully. Then he opened it again and 
began to leaf through the pages, circling certain words and phrases that seemed 
to call out to him.
The Mid-World Railway Company . . . Engineer Bob . . . a small, gruff voice . . 
. WHOO-OOOO . . . the first real friend he'd had since his wife died, long ago, 
in New York . . . Mr. Martin . . . the world has moved on ... Susannah . . .
He put his pen down. Why did these words and phrases call to him? The one about 
New York seemed obvious enough, but what about the others? For that matter, why 
this book? That he had been meant to buy it was beyond question. If he hadn't 
had the money in his pocket, he felt sure he would have simply grabbed it and 
bolted from the store. But why? He felt like a compass needle. The needle knows 
nothing about magnetic north; it only knows it must point in a certain 
direction, like it or not.
The only thing Jake knew for sure was that he was very, very tired, and if he 
didn't crawl into bed soon, he was going to fall asleep at his desk. He took off 
his shirt, then gazed down at the front of Charlie the Choo-Choo again.
That smile. He just didn't trust that smile.
Not a bit.


23
SLEEP DIDN'T COME AS soon as Jake had hoped. The voices began to argue again 
about whether he was alive or dead, and they kept him awake. At last he sat up 
in bed with his eyes closed and his fisted hands planted against his temples.
Quit! he screamed at them. Just quit! You were gone all day, be gone again!
I would if he'd just admit I'm dead, one of the voices said sulkily.
I would if he'd just take a for God's sake look around and admit I'm clearly 
alive, the other snapped back.
He was going to scream right out loud. There was no way to hold it back; he 
could feel it coming up his throat like vomit. He opened his eyes, saw his pants 
lying over the seat of his desk chair, and an idea occurred to him. He got out 
of bed, went to the chair, and felt in the right front pocket of the pants.
The silver key was still there, and the moment his fingers closed around it, the 
voices ceased.
Tell him, he thought, with no idea who the thought was for. Tell him to grab the 
key. The key makes the voices go.
He went back to bed and was asleep with the key clasped loosely in his hand 
three minutes after his head hit the pillow.





























III • DOOR AND DEMON











•Ill•
DOOR AND DEMON


1
EDDIE WAS ALMOST ASLEEP when a voice spoke clearly in his ear: Tell him to grab 
the key. The key makes the voices go.
He sat bolt upright, looking around wildly. Susannah was sound asleep beside 
him; that voice had not been hers.
Nor anyone else's, it seemed. They had been moving through the woods and along 
the path of the Beam for eight days now, and this evening they had camped in the 
deep cleft of a pocket valley. Close by on the left, a large stream roared 
brashly past, headed in the same direc­tion as they were: southeast. To the 
right, firs rose up a steep slope of land. There were no intruders here; only 
Susannah asleep and Roland awake. He sat huddled beneath his blanket at the edge 
of the stream's cut, staring out into the darkness.
Tell him to grab the key. The key makes the voices go.
Eddie hesitated for only a moment. Roland's sanity was in the bal­ance now, the 
balance was tipping the wrong way, and the worst part of it was this: no one 
knew it better than the man himself. At this point, Eddie was prepared to clutch 
at any straw.
He had been using a folded square of deerskin as a pillow. He reached beneath it 
and removed a bundle wrapped in a piece of hide. He walked over to Roland, and 
was disturbed to see that the gunslinger did not notice him until he was less 
than four steps from his unprotected back. There had been a time -- and it was not 
so long ago -- when Roland would have known Eddie was awake even before Eddie sat 
up. He would have heard the change in his breathing.
He was more alert than this back on the beach, when he was half-dead from the 
lobster-thing's bite, Eddie thought grimly.
Roland at last turned his head and glanced at him. His eyes were bright with 
pain and weariness, but Eddie recognized these things as no more than a surface 
glitter. Beneath it, he sensed a growing confusion that would almost surely 
become madness if it continued to develop unchecked. Pity tugged at Eddie's 
heart.
"Can't sleep?" Roland asked. His voice was slow, almost drugged.
"I almost was, and then I woke up," Eddie said. "Listen -- "
"I think I'm getting ready to die." Roland looked at Eddie. The bright shine 
left his eyes, and now looking into them was like staring into a pair of deep, 
dark wells that seemed to have no bottom. Eddie shud­dered, more because of that 
empty stare than because of what Roland had said. "And do you know what I hope 
lies in the clearing where the path ends, Eddie?"
"Roland -- "
"Silence," Roland said. He exhaled a dusty sigh. "Just silence. That will be 
enough. An end to ... this."
He planted his fists against his temples, and Eddie thought: I've seen someone 
else do that, and not long ago. But who? Where?
It was ridiculous of course; he had seen no one but Roland and Susannah for 
almost two months now. But it felt true, all the same.
"Roland, I've been making something," Eddie said.
Roland nodded. A ghost of a smile touched his lips. "I know. What is it? Are you 
finally ready to tell?"
"I think it might be part of this ka-tet thing."
The vacant look left Roland's eyes. He gazed at Eddie thoughtfully but said 
nothing.
"Look." Eddie began to unfold the piece of hide.
That won't do any good! Henry's voice suddenly brayed. It was so loud that Eddie 
actually flinched a little. It's just a stupid piece of wood-carving! He'll take 
one look and laugh at it! He'll laugh at you! "Oh, lookit this!" he'll say. "Did 
the sissy carve something?"
"Shut up," Eddie muttered.
The gunslinger raised his eyebrows.
"Not you."
Roland nodded, unsurprised. "Your brother comes to you often, doesn't he, 
Eddie?"
For a moment Eddie only stared at him, his carving still hidden in the hide 
square. Then he smiled. It was not a very pleasant smile. "Not as often as he 
used to, Roland. Thank Christ for small favors."
"Yes," Roland said. "Too many voices weigh heavy on a man's heart . . . What is 
it, Eddie? Show me, please."
Eddie held up the chunk of ash. The key, almost complete, emerged from it like 
the head of a woman from the prow of a sailing ship ... or the hilt of a sword 
from a chunk of stone. Eddie didn't know how close he had come to duplicating 
the key-shape he had seen in the fire (and never would, he supposed, unless he 
found the right lock in which to try it), but he thought it was close. Of one 
thing he was quite sure: it was the best carving he had ever done. By far.
"By the gods, Eddie, it's beautiful!" Roland said. The apathy was gone from his 
voice; he spoke in a tone of surprised reverence Eddie had never heard before. 
"Is it done? It's not, is it?"
"No -- not quite." He ran his thumb into the third notch, and then over the s-shape 
at the end of the last notch. "There's a little more to do on this notch, and 
the curve at the end isn't right yet. I don't know how I know that, but I do."
"This is your secret." It wasn't a question.
"Yes. Now if only I knew what it meant."
Roland looked around. Eddie followed his gaze and saw Susannah. He found some 
relief in the fact that Roland had heard her first.
"What you boys doin up so late? Chewin the fat?" She saw the wooden key in 
Eddie's hand and nodded. "I wondered when you were going to get around to 
showing that off. It's good, you know. I don't know what it's for, but it's 
damned good."
"You don't have any idea what door it might open?" Roland asked Eddie. "That was 
not part of your khef?"
"No -- but it might be good for something even though it isn't done." He held the 
key out to Roland. "I want you to keep it for me."
Roland didn't move to take it. He regarded Eddie closely. "Why?"
"Because . . . well. . . because I think someone told me you should."
"Who?"
Your boy, Eddie thought suddenly, and as soon as the thought came he knew it was 
true. It was your goddamned boy. But he didn't want to say so. He didn't want to 
mention the boy's name at all. It might just set Roland off again.
"I don't know. But I think you ought to give it a try."
Roland reached slowly for the key. As his fingers touched it, a bright glimmer 
seemed to flash down its barrel, but it was gone so quickly that Eddie could not 
be sure he had seen it. It might have been only starlight.
Roland's hand closed over the key growing out of the branch. For a moment his 
face showed nothing. Then his brow furrowed and his head cocked in a listening 
gesture.
"What is it?" Susannah asked. "Do you hear -- "
"Shhhh!" The puzzlement on Roland's face was slowly being replaced with wonder. 
He looked from Eddie to Susannah and then back to Eddie. His eyes were filling 
with some great emotion, as a pitcher fills with water when it is dipped in a 
spring.
"Roland?" Eddie asked uneasily. "Are you all right?"
Roland whispered something. Eddie couldn't hear what it was.
Susannah looked scared. She glanced frantically at Eddie, as if to ask, What did 
you do to him?
Eddie took one of her hands in both of his own. "I think it's all right."
Roland's hand was clamped so tightly on the chunk of wood that Eddie was 
momentarily afraid he might snap it in two, but the wood was strong and Eddie 
had carved thick. The gunslinger's throat bulged; his Adam's apple rose and fell 
as he struggled with speech. And suddenly he yelled at the sky in a fair, strong 
voice:
"GONE! THE VOICES ARE GONE!"
He looked back at them, and Eddie saw something he had never expected to see in 
his life -- not even if that life stretched over a thousand years.
Roland of Gilead was weeping.


2
THE GUNSLINGER SLEPT SOUNDLY and dreamlessly that night for the first time in 
months, and he slept with the not-quite finished key clenched tightly in his 
hand.


3
IN ANOTHER WORLD, BUT beneath the shadow of the same ka-tet, Jake Chambers was 
having the most vivid dream of his life.
He was walking through the tangled remains of an ancient forest --  a dead zone of 
fallen trees and scruffy, aggravating bushes that bit his ankles and tried to 
steal his sneakers. He came to a thin belt of younger trees (alders, he thought, 
or perhaps beeches -- he was a city boy, and the only thing he knew for sure about 
trees was that some had leaves and some had needles) and discovered a path 
through them. He made his way along this, moving a little faster. There was a 
clearing of some sort up ahead.
He stopped once before reaching it, when he spied some sort of stone marker to 
his right. He left the path to look at it. There were letters carved into it, 
but they were so eroded he couldn't make them out. At last he closed his eyes 
(he had never done this in a dream before) and let his fingers trace each 
letter, like a blind boy reading Braille. Each formed in the darkness behind his 
lids until they made a sentence which stood forth in an outline of blue light:

TRAVELLER, BEYOND LIES MID-WORLD.

Sleeping in his bed, Jake drew his knees up against his chest. The hand holding 
the key was under his pillow, and now his fingers tightened their grip on it.
Mid-World, he thought, of course. St. Louis and Topeka and Oz and the World's 
Fair and Charlie the Choo-Choo.
He opened his dreaming eyes and pressed on. The clearing behind the trees was 
paved with old cracked asphalt. A faded yellow circle had been painted in the 
middle. Jake realized it was a playground basketball court even before he saw 
the boy at the far end, standing at the foul line and shooting baskets with a 
dusty old Wilson ball. They popped in one after another, falling neatly through 
the netless hole. The basket jutted out from something that looked like a subway 
kiosk which had been shut up for the night. Its closed door was painted in 
alternating diagonal stripes of yellow and black. From behind it -- or perhaps from 
below it -- Jake could hear the steady rumble of powerful machinery. The sound was 
somehow disturbing. Scary.
Don't step on the robots, the boy shooting the baskets said without turning 
around. I guess they're all dead, but I wouldn't take any chances, if I were 
you.
Jake looked around and saw a number of shattered mechanical devices lying 
around. One looked like a rat or mouse, another like a bat. A mechanical snake 
lay in two rusty pieces almost at his feet.
ARE you me? Jake asked, taking a step closer to die boy at the basket, but even 
before he turned around, Jake knew that wasn't the case. The boy was bigger than 
Jake, and at least thirteen. His hair was darker, and when he looked at Jake, he 
saw that the stranger's eyes were hazel. His own were blue.
What do you think? the strange boy asked, and bounce-passed the ball to Jake.
No, of course not, Jake said. He spoke apologetically. It's just that I've been 
cut in two for the last three weeks or so. He dipped and shot from mid-court. 
The ball arched high and dropped silently through the hoop. He was delighted . . 
. but he discovered he was also afraid of what this strange boy might have to 
tell him.
I know, the boy said. It's been a bitch for you, hasn't it? He was wearing faded 
madras shorts and a yellow t-shirt that said NEVER A DULL MOMENT IN MID-WORLD. 
He had tied a green bandanna around his forehead to keep his hair out of his 
eyes. And things are going to get worse before they get better.
What is this place? Jake asked. And who are you?
It's the Portal of the Bear . . . but it's also Brooklyn.
That didn't seem to make sense, and yet somehow it did. Jake told himself that 
things always seemed that way in dreams, but this didn't really feel like a 
dream.
As for me, I don't matter much, the boy said. He hooked the basket­ball over his 
shoulder. It rose, then dropped smoothly through the hoop. I'm supposed to guide 
you, that's all. I'll take you where you need to go, and I'll show you what you 
need to see, but you have to be careful because I won't know you. And strangers 
make Henry nervous. He can get mean when he's nervous, and he's bigger than you.
Who's Henry? Jake asked.
Never mind. Just don't let him notice you. All you have to do is hang out . . . 
and follow us. Then, when we leave . . .
The boy looked at Jake. There was both pity and fear in his eyes. Jake suddenly 
realized that the boy was starting to fade -- lie could see the yellow and black 
slashes on the box right through the boy's yellow t-shirt.
How will I find you? Jake was suddenly terrified that the boy would melt away 
completely before he could say everything Jake needed to hear.
No problem, the boy said. His voice had taken on a queer, chiming echo. Just 
take the subway to Co-Op City. You'll find me.
No, I won't! Jake cried. Co-Op City's huge! There must be a hundred thousand 
people living there!
Now the boy was just a milky outline. Only his hazel eyes were still completely 
there, like the Cheshire cat's grin in Alice. They regarded Jake with compassion 
and anxiety. No problem-o, he said. You found the key and the rose, didn't you? 
You'll find me the same way. This afternoon, Jake. Around three o'clock should 
be good. You'll have to be careful, and you'll have to be quick. He paused, a 
ghostly boy with an old basketball lying near one transparent foot. I have to go 
now . . . but it was good to meet you. You seem like a nice kid, and I'm riot 
surprised he loves you. Remember, there's danger, though. He careful . . . and 
he quick.
Wait! Jake yelled, and run across the basketball court toward the disappearing 
boy. One of his feet struck a shattered robot that looked like a child's toy 
tractor. He stumbled and fell to his knees, shredding his pants. He ignored the 
thin burn of pain. Wait! You have to tell me what all this is about! You have to 
tell me why these things are happening to me!
Because of the Beam, the boy who was now only a pair of floating eyes replied, 
and because of the Tower. In the end, all things, even the Beams, serve the Dark 
Tower. Did you think you would be any different?
Jake flailed and stumbled to his feet. Will I find him? Will I find the 
gunslinger?
I don't know, the boy answered. His voice now seemed to come from a million 
miles away. I only know you must try. About that you have no choice.
The boy was gone. The basketball court in the woods was empty. The only sound 
was that faint rumble of machinery, and Jake didn't like it. There was something 
wrong with that sound, and he thought that what was wrong with the machinery was 
affecting the rose, or vice-versa. It was all hooked together somehow.
He picked up the old, scuffed-up basketball and shot. It went neatly through the 
hoop . . . and disappeared.
A river, the strange boy's voice sighed. It was like a puff of breeze. It came 
from nowhere and everywhere. The answer is a river.


4
JAKE WOKE IN THE first milky light of dawn, looking up at the ceiling of his 
room. He was thinking of the guy in The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind -- Aaron 
Deepneau, who'd been hanging around on Bleecker Street back when Bob Dylan only 
knew how to blow open G on his Hohner. Aaron Deepneau had given Jake a riddle.

What can run but never walks, 
Has a mouth but never talks, 
Has a bed but never sleeps, 
Has a head but never weeps?

Now he knew the answer. A river ran; a river had a mouth; a river had a bed; a 
river had a head. The boy had told him the answer. The boy in the dream.
And suddenly he thought of something else Deepneau had said: That's only half 
the answer. Samson's riddle is a double, my friend.
Jake glanced at his bedside clock and saw it was twenty past six. It was time to 
get moving if he wanted to be out of here before his parents woke up. There 
would be no school for him today; Jake thought that maybe, as far as he was 
concerned, school had been cancelled forever.
He threw back the bedclothes, swung his feet out onto the floor, and saw that 
there were scrapes on both knees. Fresh scrapes. He had bruised his left side 
yesterday when he slipped on the bricks and fell, and he had banged his head 
when he fainted near the rose, but nothing had happened to his knees.
"That happened in the dream," Jake whispered, and found he wasn't surprised at 
all. He began to dress swiftly.


5
IN THE BACK OF his closet, under a jumble of old laceless sneakers and a heap of 
Spiderman comic books, he found the packsack he had worn to grammar school. No 
one would be caught dead with a packsack at Piper -- how too, too common, my 
death -- and as Jake grabbed it, he felt a wave of powerful nostalgia for those old 
days when life had seemed so simple.
He stuffed a clean shirt, a clean pair of jeans, some underwear and socks into 
it, then added Riddle-De-Dum! and Charlie the Choo-Choo. He had put the key on 
his desk before foraging in the closet for his old pack, and the voices came 
back at once, but they were distant and muted. Besides, he felt sure he could 
make them go away completely by holding the key again, and that eased his mind.
Okay, he thought, looking into the pack. Even with the books added, there was 
plenty of room left. What else?
For a moment he thought there was nothing else . . . and then he knew.


6
His FATHER'S STUDY SMELLED of cigarettes and ambition.
It was dominated by a huge teakwood desk. Across the room, set into a wall 
otherwise lined with books, were three Mitsubishi television monitors. Each was 
tuned to one of the rival networks, and at night, when his father was in here, 
each played out its progression of prime-time images with the sound off.
The curtains were drawn, and Jake had to turn on the desk lamp in order to see. 
He felt nervous just being in here, even wearing sneakers. If his father should 
wake up and come in (and it was possible; no matter how late he went to bed or 
how much he drank, Elmer Chambers was a light sleeper and an early riser), he 
would be angry. At the very least it would make a clean getaway much tougher. 
The sooner he was out of here, the better Jake would feel.
The desk was locked, but his father had never made any secret of where he kept 
the key. Jake slid his fingers under the blotter and hooked it out. He opened 
the third drawer, reached past the hanging files, and touched cold metal.
A board creaked in the hall and he froze. Several seconds passed. When the creak 
didn't come again, Jake pulled out the weapon his father kept for "home 
defense" -- a .44 Ruger automatic. His father had shown this weapon to Jake with 
great pride on the day he had bought it -- two years ago, that had been. He had 
been totally deaf to his wife's nervous demands that he put it away before 
someone got hurt.
Jake found the button on the side that released the clip. It fell out into his 
hand with a metallic snak! sound that seemed very loud in the quiet apartment. 
He glanced nervously toward the door again, then turned his attention to the 
clip. It was fully loaded. He started to slide it back into the gun, and then 
took it out again. Keeping a loaded gun in a locked desk drawer was one thing; 
carrying one around New York City was quite another.
He stuffed the automatic down to the bottom of his pack, then felt behind the 
hanging files again. This time he brought out a box of shells, about half-full. 
He remembered his father had done some target shooting at the police range on 
First Avenue before losing interest.
The board creaked again. Jake wanted to get out of here.
He removed one of the shirts he'd packed, laid it on his father's desk, and 
rolled up the clip and the box of .44 slugs in it. Then he replaced it in the 
pack and used the buckles to snug down the flap. He was about to leave when his 
eye fixed on the little pile of stationery sitting beside his father's In/Out 
tray. The reflectorized Ray-Ban sunglasses his father liked to wear were folded 
on top of the stationery. He took a sheet of paper, and, after a moment's 
thought, the sunglasses as well. He slipped the shades into his breast pocket. 
Then he removed the slim gold pen from its stand, and wrote Dear Dad and Mom 
beneath the letterhead.
He stopped, frowning at the salutation. What went below it? What, exactly, did 
he have to say? That he loved them? It was true, but it wasn't enough -- there were 
all sorts of other unpleasant truths stuck through that central one, like steel 
needles jabbed into a ball of yarn.
That he would miss them? He didn't know if that was true or not, which was sort 
of horrible. That he hoped they would miss him?
He suddenly realized what the problem was. If he were planning to be gone just 
today, he would be able to write something. But he felt a near-certainty that it 
wasn't just today, or this week, or this month, or this summer. He had an idea 
that when he walked out of the apartment this time, it would be for good.
He almost crumpled the sheet of paper, then changed his mind. He wrote: Please 
take care of yourselves. Love, J. That was pretty limp, but at least it was 
something.
Fine. Now will you stop pressing your luck and get out of here?
He did.
The apartment was almost dead still. He tiptoed across the living room, hearing 
only the sounds of his parents' breathing: his mother's soft little snores, his 
father's more nasal respiration, where every indrawn breath ended in a slim high 
whistle. The refrigerator kicked on as he reached the entryway and he froze for 
a moment, his heart thumping hard in his chest. Then he was at the door. He 
unlocked it as quietly as he could, then stepped out and pulled it gently shut 
behind him.
A stone seemed to roll off his heart as the latch snicked, and a strong sense of 
anticipation seized him. He didn't know what lay ahead, and he had reason to 
believe it would be dangerous, but he was eleven years old -- too young to deny the 
exotic delight which suddenly filled him. There was a highway ahead -- a hidden 
highway leading deep into some unknown land. There were secrets which might 
disclose themselves to him if he was clever . . . and if he was lucky. He had 
left his home in the long light of dawn, and what lay ahead was some great 
adventure.
If I stand, if I can be true, I'll see the rose, he thought as he pushed the 
button for the elevator. I know it . . . and I'll see him, too.
This thought filled him with an eagerness so great it was almost ecstasy.
Three minutes later he stepped out from beneath the awning which shaded the 
entrance to the building where he had lived all his life. He paused for a 
moment, then turned left. This decision did not feel random, and it wasn't. He 
was moving southeast, along the path of the Beam, resuming his own interrupted 
quest for the Dark Tower.


7
TWO DAYS AFTER EDDIE had given Roland his unfinished key, the three 
travellers -- hot, sweaty, tired, and out of sorts -- pushed through a particu­larly 
tenacious tangle of bushes and second-growth trees and discovered what first 
appeared to be two faint paths, running in tandem beneath the interlacing 
branches of the old trees crowding close on either side. After a few moments of 
study, Eddie decided they weren't just paths but the remains of a long-abandoned 
road. Bushes and stunted trees grew like untidy quills along what had been its 
crown. The grassy indentations were wheelruts, and either of them was wide 
enough to accommodate Susannah's wheelchair.
"Hallelujah!" he cried. "Let's drink to it!"
Roland nodded and unslung the waterskin he wore around his waist. He first 
handed it up to Susannah, who was riding in her sling on his back. Eddie's key, 
now looped around Roland's neck on a piece of raw­hide, shifted beneath his 
shirt with each movement. She took a swallow and passed the skin to Eddie. He 
drank and then began to unfold her chair. Eddie had come to hate this bulky, 
balky contraption; it was like an iron anchor, always holding them back. Except 
for a broken spoke or two, it was still in fine condition. Eddie had days when 
he thought the goddam thing would outlast all of them. Now, however, it might be 
useful ... for a while, at least.
Eddie helped Susannah out of the harness and placed her in the chair. She put 
her hands against the small of her back, stretched, and grimaced with pleasure. 
Both Eddie and Roland heard the small crackle her spine made as it stretched.
Up ahead, a large creature that looked like a badger crossed with a raccoon 
ambled out of the woods. It looked at them with its large, gold-rimmed eyes, 
twitched its sharp, whiskery snout as if to say Huh! Big deal!, then strolled 
the rest of the way across the road and disappeared again. Before it did, Eddie 
noted its tail -- long and closely coiled, it looked like a fur-covered bedspring.
"What was that, Roland?"
"A billy-bumbler."
"No good to eat?"
Roland shook his head. "Tough. Sour. I'd rather eat dog."
"Have you?" Susannah asked. "Eaten dog, I mean?"
Roland nodded, but did not elaborate. Eddie found himself thinking of a line 
from an old Paul Newman movie: That's right, lady -- eaten em and lived like one.
Birds sang cheerily in the trees. A light breeze blew along the road. Eddie and 
Susannah turned their faces up to it gratefully, then looked at each other and 
smiled. Eddie was struck again by his grati­tude for her -- it was scary to have 
someone to love, but it was also very fine.
"Who made this road?" Eddie asked.
"People who have been gone a long time," Roland said.
"The same ones who made the cups and dishes we found?" Susan­nah asked.
"No -- not them. This used to be a coach-road, I imagine, and if it's still here, 
after all these years of neglect, it must have been a great one indeed . . . 
perhaps the Great Road. If we dug down, I imagine we'd find the gravel 
undersurface, and maybe the drainage system, as well. As long as we're here, 
let's have a bite to eat."
"Food!" Eddie cried. "Bring it on! Chicken Florentine! Polynesian shrimp! Veal 
lightly sautéed with mushrooms and -- "
Susannah elbowed him. "Quit it, white boy."
"I can't help it if I've got a vivid imagination," Eddie said cheerfully.
Roland slipped his purse off his shoulder, hunkered down, and began to put 
together a small noon meal of dried meat wrapped in olive-colored leaves. Eddie 
and Susannah had discovered that these leaves tasted a little like spinach, only 
much stronger.
Eddie wheeled Susannah over to him and Roland handed her three of what Eddie 
called "gunslinger burritos." She began to eat.
When Eddie turned back, Roland was holding out three of the wrapped pieces of 
meat to him -- and something else, as well. It was the chunk of ash with the key 
growing out of it. Roland had taken it off the rawhide string, which now lay in 
an open loop around his neck.
"Hey, you need that, don't you?" Eddie asked.
"When I take it off, the voices return, but they're very distant," Roland said. 
"I can deal with them. Actually, I hear them even when I'm wearing it -- like the 
voices of men who are speaking low over the next hill. I think that's because 
the key is yet unfinished. You haven't worked on it since you gave it to me."
"Well . . . you were wearing it, and I didn't want to ..."
Roland said nothing, but his faded blue eyes regarded Eddie with their patient 
teacher's look.
"All right," Eddie said, "I'm afraid of fucking it up. Satisfied?"
"According to your brother, you fucked everything up ... isn't that right?" 
Susannah asked.
"Susannah Dean, Girl Psychologist. You missed your calling, sweetheart."
Susannah wasn't offended by the sarcasm. She lifted the waterskin with her 
elbow, like a redneck tipping a jug, and drank deeply. "It's true, though, isn't 
it?"
Eddie, who realized he hadn't finished the slingshot, either -- not yet, at 
least -- shrugged.
"You have to finish it," Roland said mildly. "I think the time is coming when 
you'll have to put it to use."
Eddie started to speak, then closed his mouth. It sounded easy when you said it 
right out like that, but neither of them really understood the bottom line. The 
bottom line was this: seventy per cent or eighty or even ninety-eight and a half 
just wouldn't do. Not this time. And if he did screw up, he couldn't just toss 
the thing over his shoulder and walk away. For one thing, he hadn't seen another 
ash-tree since the day he had cut this particular piece of wood. But mostly the 
thing that was fucking him up was just this: it was all or nothing. If he messed 
up even a little, the key wouldn't turn when they needed it to turn. And he was 
increasingly nervous about that little squiggle at the end. It looked simple, 
but if the curves weren't exactly right . . .
It won't work the way it is now, though; that much you do know.
He sighed, looking at the key. Yes, that much he did know. He would have to try 
to finish it. His fear of failure would make it even harder than it maybe had to 
be, but he would have to swallow the fear and try anyway. Maybe he could even 
bring it off. God knew he had brought off a lot in the weeks since Roland had 
entered his mind on a Delta jet bound into JFK Airport. That he was still alive 
and sane was an accomplishment in itself.
Eddie handed the key back to Roland. "Wear it for now," he said. "I'll go back 
to work when we stop for the night."
"Promise?"
"Yeah."
Roland nodded, took the key, and began to re-knot the rawhide string. He worked 
slowly, but Eddie did not fail to notice how dexterously die remaining fingers 
on his right hand moved. The man was nothing if not adaptable.
"Something is going to happen, isn't it?" Susannah asked suddenly.
Eddie glanced up at her. "What makes you say so?"
"I sleep with you, Eddie, and I know you dream every night now. Sometimes you 
talk, too. They don't seem like nightmares, exactly, but it's pretty clear that 
something is going on inside your head."
"Yes. Something is. I just don't know what."
"Dreams are powerful," Roland remarked. "You don't remember the ones you're 
having at all?"
Eddie hesitated. "A little, but they're confused. I'm a kid again, I know that 
much. It's after school. Henry and I are shooting hoops at the old Markey Avenue 
playground, where the Juvenile Court Building is now. I want Henry to take me to 
see a place over in Dutch Hill. An old house. The kids used to call it The 
Mansion, and everyone said it was haunted. Maybe it even was. It was creepy, I 
know that much. Real creepy."
Eddie shook his head, remembering.
"I thought of The Mansion for the first time in years when we were in the bear's 
clearing, and I put my head close to that weird box. I dunno -- maybe that's why 
I'm having the dream."
"But you don't think so," Susannah said.
"No. I think whatever's happening is a lot more complicated than just 
remembering stuff."
"Did you and your brother actually go to this place?" Roland asked.
"Yeah -- I talked him into it."
"And did something happen?"
"No. But it was scary. We stood there and looked at it for a little while, and 
Henry teased me -- saving he was going to make me go in and pick up a souvenir, 
stuff like that -- but I knew he didn't really mean it. He was as scared of the 
place as I was."
"And that's it?" Susannah asked. "You just dream of going to this place? The 
Mansion?"
"There's a little more than that. Someone comes . . . and then just land of 
hangs out. I notice him in the dream, but just a little . . . like out of the 
corner of my eye, you know? Only I know we're supposed to pretend we don't know 
each other."
"Was this someone really there that day?" Roland asked. He was watching Eddie 
intently, "Or is he only a player in this dream?"
"That was a long time ago. I couldn't have been more than thirteen. How could I 
remember a thing like that for sure?"
Roland said nothing.
"Okay," Eddie said at last. "Yeah. I think he was there that day. A kid who was 
either carrying a gym-bag or wearing a backpack, I can't remember which. And 
sunglasses that were too big for his face. The ones with the mirror lenses."
"Who was this person?" Roland asked.
Eddie was silent for a long time. He was holding the last of his burritos a la 
Roland in one hand, but he had lost his appetite. "I think it's the kid you met 
at the way station," he said at last. "I think your old friend Jake was hanging 
around, watching me and Henry on the afternoon we went over to Dutch Hill. I 
think he followed us. Because he hears the voices, just like you, Roland. And 
because he's sharing my dreams, and I'm sharing his. I think that what I 
remember is what's happening now, in Jake's when. The kid is trying to come back 
here. And if the key isn't done when he makes his move -- or if it's done 
wrong -- he's probably going to die."
Roland said, "Maybe he has a key of his own. Is that possible?"
"Yeah, I think it is," Eddie said, "but it isn't enough." He sighed and stuck 
the last burrito in his pocket for later. "And I don't think he knows that."


8
THEY MOVED ALONG, ROLAND and Eddie trading off on Susannah's wheelchair. They 
picked the left-hand wheelrut. The chair bumped and pitched, and every now and 
then Eddie and Roland had to lift it over the cobbles which stuck out of the 
dirt here and there like old teeth. They were still making faster, easier time 
than they had in a week, how­ever. The ground was rising, and when Eddie looked 
over his shoulder he could see the forest sloping away in what looked like a 
series of gentle steps. Far to the northwest, he could see a ribbon of water 
spilling over a fractured rock face. It was, he realized with wonder, the place 
they had dubbed "the shooting gallery." Now it was almost lost behind them in 
the haze of this dreaming summer afternoon.
"Whoa down, boy!" Susannah called sharply. Eddie faced forward again just in 
time to keep from pushing the wheelchair into Roland. The gunslinger had stopped 
and was peering into the tangled bushes at the left of the road.
"You keep that up, I'm gonna revoke your driver's license," Susannah said 
waspily.
Eddie ignored her. He was following Roland's gaze. "What is it?"
"One way to find out." He turned, hoisted Susannah from her chair, ~and planted 
her on his hip. "Let's all take a look."
"Put me down, big boy -- I can make my way. Easier'n you boys, if you really want 
to know."
As Roland gently lowered her to the grassy wheelrut, Eddie peered into the 
woods. The late light threw overlapping crosses of shadow, but he thought he saw 
what had caught Roland's eye. It was a tall gray stone, almost completely hidden 
in a shag of vines and creepers.
Susannah slipped into the woods at the side of the road with eely sinuousness. 
Roland and Eddie followed.
"It's a marker, isn't it?" Susannah was propped on her hands study­ing die 
rectangular chunk of rock. It had once been straight, but now it leaned 
drunkenly to the right, like an old gravestone.
"Yes. Give me my knife, Eddie."
Eddie handed it over, then hunkered next to Susannah as the gun­slinger cut away 
the vines. As they fell, he could see eroded letters carved into the stone, and 
he knew what they said before Roland had uncovered even half of the inscription:

TRAVELLER, BEYOND LIES MID-WORLD.


9
"WHAT DOES IT MEAN?" Susannah asked at last. Her voice was soft and awestruck; 
her eyes ceaselessly measured the gray stone plinth.
"It means that we're nearing the end of this first stage." Roland's face was 
solemn and thoughtful as he handed his knife back to Eddie. "I think that we'll 
keep to this old coach-road now -- or rather, it will keep to us. It has taken up 
the path of the Beam. The woods will end soon. I expect a great change."
"What is Mid-World?" Eddie asked.
"One of the large kingdoms which dominated the earth in the times before these. 
A kingdom of hope and knowledge and light -- the sort of things we were trying to 
hold onto in my land before the darkness over­took us, as well. Some day if 
there's time, I'll tell you all the old stories . . . the ones I know, at least. 
They form a large tapestry, one which is beautiful but very sad.
"According to the old tales, a great city once stood at the edge of 
Mid-World -- perhaps as great as your city of New York. It will be in ruins now, if 
it still exists at all. But there may be people ... or monsters ... or both. 
We'll have to be on our guard."
He reached out his two-fingered right hand and touched the inscrip­tion. 
"Mid-World," he said in a low, meditative voice. "Who would have thought . . ." 
He trailed off.
"Well, there's no help for it, is there?" Eddie asked.
The gunslinger shook his head. "No help."
"Ka," Susannah said suddenly, and they both looked at her.


10
THERE WERE TWO HOURS of daylight left, and so they moved on. The road continued 
southeast, along the path of the Beam, and two other overgrown roads -- smaller 
ones -- joined the one they were following. Along one side of the second were the 
mossy, tumbled remains of what must have once been an immense rock wall. Nearby, 
a dozen fat billy-bumblers sat upon the ruins, watching the pilgrims with their 
odd gold-ringed eyes. To Eddie they looked like a jury with hanging on its mind.
The road continued to grow wider and more clearly defined. Twice they passed the 
shells of long-deserted buildings. The second one, Roland said, might have been 
a windmill. Susannah said it looked haunted. "I wouldn't be surprised," the 
gunslinger replied. His matter-of-fact tone chilled both of them.
When darkness forced a halt, the trees were thinning and the breeze which had 
chased around tin-in all day became a light, warm wind. Ahead, the land 
continued to rise.
"We'll come to the top of the ridge in a day or two," Roland said. "Then we'll 
see."
"See what?" Susannah asked, but Roland only shrugged.
That night Eddie began to carve again, but with no real feeling of inspiration. 
The confidence and happiness he'd felt as the key first began to take shape had 
left him. His fingers felt clumsy and stupid. For the first time in months he 
thought longingly of how good it would be to have some heroin. Not a lot; he 
felt sure that a nickel bag and a rolled-up dollar bill would send him flying 
through this little carving project in no time flat.
"What are you smiling about, Eddie?" Roland asked. He was sitting on the other 
side of the campfire; the low, wind-driven flames danced capriciously between 
them.
"Was I smiling?"
"Yes."
"I was just thinking about how stupid some people can be -- you put them in a room 
with six doors, they'll still walk into the walls. And then have the nerve to 
bitch about it."
"If you're afraid of what might be on the other side of the doors, maybe 
bouncing off the walls seems safer," Susannah said.
Eddie nodded. "Maybe so."
He worked slowly, trying to see the shapes in the wood -- that little s-shape in 
particular. He discovered it had become very dim.
Please, God, help me not to fuck this up, he thought, but he was terribly afraid 
that he had already begun to do just that. At last he gave up, returned the key 
(which he had barely changed at all) to the gun-slinger, and curled up beneath 
one of the hides. Five minutes later, the dream about the boy and the old Markey 
Avenue playground had begun to unspool again.


11
JAKE STEPPED OUT OF his apartment building at about quarter of seven, which left 
him with over eight hours to kill. He considered taking the train out to 
Brooklyn right away, then decided it was a bad idea. A kid out of school was apt 
to attract more attention in the hinterlands than in the heart of a big city, 
and if he really had to search for the place and the boy he was supposed to meet 
there, he was cooked already.
No problem-o, the boy in the yellow T-shirt and green bandanna had said. You 
found the key and the rose, didn't you? You'll find me the same way.
Except Jake could no longer remember just how he had found the key and the rose. 
He could only remember the joy and the sense of surety which had filled his 
heart and head. He would just have to hope that would happen again. In the 
meantime, he'd keep moving. That was the best way to keep from being noticed in 
New York.
He walked most of the way to First Avenue, then headed back the way he had come, 
only sliding uptown little by little as he followed the pattern of the WALK 
lights (perhaps knowing, on some deep level, that even they served the Beam). 
Around ten o'clock he found himself in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 
on Fifth Avenue. He was hot, tired, and depressed. He wanted a soda, but he 
thought he ought to hold onto what little money he had for as long as he could. 
He'd taken every cent out of the box he kept by his bed, but it only amounted to 
eight dollars, give or take a few cents.
A group of school-kids were lining up for a tour. Public school, Jake was almost 
sure -- they were dressed as casually as he was. No blazers from Paul Stuart, no 
ties, no jumpers, no simple little skirts that cost a hundred and twenty-five 
bucks at places like Miss So Pretty or Tweenity. This crowd was Kmart all the 
way. On impulse, Jake stood at the end of the line and followed them into the 
museum.
The tour took an hour and fifteen minutes. Jake enjoyed it. The museum was 
quiet. Even better, it was air-conditioned. And the pictures were nice. He was 
particularly fascinated by a small group of Frederick Remington's Old West 
paintings and a large picture by Thomas Hart Benton that showed a steam 
locomotive charging across the great plains toward Chicago while beefy farmers 
in bib overalls and straw hats stood in their fields and watched. He wasn't 
noticed by either of the teachers with the group until the very end. Then a 
pretty black woman in a severe blue suit tapped him on the shoulder and asked 
who he was.
Jake hadn't seen her coming, and for a moment his mind froze. Without thinking 
about what he was doing, he reached into his pocket and closed his hand around 
the silver key. His mind cleared immediately, and he felt calm again.
"My group is upstairs," he said, smiling guiltily. "We're supposed to be looking 
at a bunch of modern art, but I like the stuff down here a lot better, because 
they're real pictures. So I sort of ... you know . . ."
"Snuck away?" the teacher suggested. The comers of her lips twitched in a 
suppressed smile.
"Well, I'd rather think of it as French leave." These words simply popped out of 
his mouth.
The students now staring at Jake only looked puzzled, but this time the teacher 
actually laughed. "Either yon don't know or have forgotten," she said, "but in 
the French Foreign Legion they used to shoot deserters. I suggest you rejoin 
your class at once, young man."
"Yes, ma'am. Thank you. They'll be almost done now, anyway."
"What school is it?"
"Markey Academy," Jake said. This also just popped out.
He went upstairs, listening to the disembodied echo of foot-falls and low voices 
in the great space of the rotunda and wondering why he had said that. He had 
never heard of a place called Markey Academy in his life.


12
HE WAITED AWHILE IN the upstairs lobby, then noticed a guard looking at him with 
growing curiosity and decided it wouldn't be wise to wait any longer -- he would 
just have to hope the class he had joined briefly was gone.
He looked at his wristwatch, put an expression on his face that he hoped looked 
like Gosh! Look how late it's getting!, and trotted back downstairs. The 
class -- and the pretty black teacher who had laughed at the idea of French 
leave -- was gone, and Jake decided it might be a good idea to get gone himself. He 
would walk awhile longer -- slowly, in deference to the heat -- and catch a subway.
He stopped at a hot-dog stand on the comer of Broadway and Forty-second, trading 
in a little of his meager cash supply for a sweet sausage and a Nehi. He sat on 
the steps of a bank building to eat his lunch, and that turned out to be a bad 
mistake.
A cop came walking toward him, twirling his nightstick in a complex series of 
maneuvers. He seemed to be paying attention to nothing but this, but when he 
came abreast of Jake he abruptly shoved his stick back into his loop and turned 
to him.
"Say-hey, big guy," he said. "No school today?"
Jake had been wolfing his sausage, but the last bite abruptly stuck in his 
throat. This was a lousy piece of luck ... if luck was all it was. They were in 
Times Square, sleaze capital of America; there were push­ers, junkies, whores, 
and chicken-chasers everywhere . .. but this cop was ignoring them in favor of 
him.
Jake swallowed with an effort, then said, "It's finals week at my school. I only 
had one test today. Then I could leave." He paused, not liking the bright, 
searching look in the cop's eyes. "I had permission," he concluded uneasily.
"Uh-huh. Can I see some ID?"
Juke's heart sank. Had his mother and father already called the cops? He 
supposed that, after yesterday's adventure, that was pretty likely. Under 
ordinary circumstances, the NYPD wouldn't take much notice of another missing 
kid, especially one that had been gone only half a day, but his father was a big 
deal at the Network, and he prided himself on the number of strings he could 
pull. Jake doubted if this cop had his picture . . . but he might very well have 
his name.
"Well," Jake said reluctantly, "I've got my student discount card from Mid-World 
Lanes, but that's about all."
"Mid-World Lanes? Never heard of it. Where's that? Queens?"
"Mid-Town, I mean," Jake thought. God, this was going north instead of south . . 
. and fast. "You know? On Thirty-third?"
"Uh-huh. That'll do fine." The cop held out his hand.
A black man with dreadlocks spilling over the shoulders of his canary-yellow 
suit glanced over. "Bussim, ossifer!" this apparition said cheerfully. "Bussiz 
lil whitebread ass! Do yo duty, now!"
"Shut up and get in the wind, Eli," the cop said without looking around.
Eli laughed, exposing several gold teeth, and moved along.
"Why don't you ask him for some ID?" Jake asked.
"Because right now I'm asking you. Snap it up, son."
The cop either had his name or had sensed something wrong about him -- which wasn't 
so surprising, maybe, since he was the only white in the area who wasn't 
obviously trolling. Either way, it came to the same: sitting down here to eat 
his lunch had been dumb. But his feet had hurt, and he'd been hungry, 
dammit -- hungry.
You're not going to stop me, Jake thought. / can't let you stop me. There's 
someone I'm supposed to meet this afternoon in Brooklyn . . . and I'm going to 
be there.
Instead of reaching for his wallet, he reached into his front pocket and brought 
out the key. He held it up to the policeman; the late-morning sunshine bounced 
little coins of reflected light onto the man's cheeks and forehead. His eyes 
widened.
"Heyy!" he breathed. "What you got there, kid?"
He reached for it, and Jake pulled the key back a little. The reflected circles 
of light danced hypnotically on the cop's face. "You don't need to take it," 
Jake said. "You can read my name without doing that, can't you?"
"Yes, sure."
The curiosity had left the cop's face. He looked only at the key. His gaze was 
wide and fixed, but not quite empty. Jake read both amazement and unexpected 
happiness in his look. That's me, Jake thought, just spread­ing joy and goodwill 
wherever I go. The question is, what do I do now?
A young woman (probably not u librarian, judging from the green silk hotpants 
and see-through blouse she was wearing) came wiggle-wob­bling up the sidewalk on 
a pair of purple fuck-me shoes with three-inch heels. She glanced first at the 
cop, then at Jake to see what the cop was looking at. When she got a good look, 
she stopped cold. One of her hands drifted up and touched her throat. A man 
bumped into her and told her to watch where the damn-hell she was going. The 
young woman who was probably not a librarian took no notice whatever. Now Jake 
saw that four or five other people had stopped as well. All were staring at the 
key. They were gathering as people sometimes will around a very good 
three-card-monte dealer plying his trade on a streetcorner.
You're doing a great job of being inconspicuous, he thought. Oh yeah. He glanced 
over the cop's shoulder, and his eye caught a sign on the far side of the 
street. Denby's Discount Drug, it said.
"My name's Tom Denby," he told the cop. "It says so right here on my discount 
bowling card -- right?"
"Right, right," the cop breathed. He had lost all interest in Jake; he was only 
interested in the key. The little coins of reflected light bounced and spun on 
his face.
"And you're not looking for anybody named Tom Denby, are you?"
"No," the cop said. "Never heard of him."
Now there were at least half a dozen people gathered around the cop, all of them 
staring with silent wonder at the silver key in Jake's hand.
"So I can go, can't I?"
"Huh? Oh! Oh, sure -- go, for your father's sake!"
"Thanks," Jake said, but for a moment he wasn't sure how to go. He was hemmed in 
by a silent crowd of zombies, and more were joining it all the time. They were 
only coming to see what the deal was, he realized, but the ones who saw the key 
just stopped dead and stared.
He got to his feet and backed slowly up the wide bank steps, holding the key out 
in front of him like a lion-tamer with a chair. When he got to the wide concrete 
plaza at the top, he stuffed it back into his pants pockets, turned, and fled.
He stopped just once on the far side of the plaza, and looked back. The small 
group of people around the place where he had been standing was coming slowly 
back to life. They looked around at each other with dazed expressions, then 
walked on. The cop glanced vacantly to his left, to his right, and then straight 
up at the sky, as if trying to remember how he had gotten here and what he had 
been meaning to do. Jake had seen enough. It was time to find a subway station 
and get his ass over to Brooklyn before anything else weird could happen.


13
AT QUARTER OF TWO that afternoon he walked slowly up the steps of the subway 
station and stood on the corner of Castle and Brooklyn Ave­nues, looking at the 
sandstone towers of Co-Op City. He waited for that feeling of sureness and 
direction -- that feeling that was like being able to remember forward in time -- to 
overtake him. It didn't come. Nothing came. He was just a kid standing on a hot 
Brooklyn streetcorner with his short shadow lying at his feet like a tired pet.
Well, I'm here . . , now what do I do?
Jake discovered he didn't have the slightest idea.


14
ROLAND'S SMALL BAND OF travellers reached the crest of the long, gentle hill 
they had been climbing and stood looking southeast. For a long time none of them 
spoke. Susannah opened her mouth twice, then closed it again. For the first time 
in her life as a woman, she was completely speechless.
Before them, an almost endless plain dozed in the long golden light of a 
summer's afternoon. The grass was lush, emerald green, and very high. Groves of 
trees with long, slender trunks and wide, spreading tops dotted the plain. 
Susannah had once seen similar trees, she thought, in a travelogue film about 
Australia.
The road they had been following swooped down the far side of the hill and then 
ran straight as a string into the southeast, a bright white lane cutting through 
the grass. To the west, some miles off, she could see a herd of large animals 
grazing peacefully. They looked like buffalo. To the east, the last of the 
forest made a curved peninsula into the grassland. This incursion was a dark, 
tangled shape that looked like a forearm with a cocked fist at the end.
That was the direction, she realized, in which all the creeks and streams they 
had encountered had been flowing. They were tributaries of the vast river that 
emerged from that jutting arm of forest and flowed, placid and dreaming under 
the summer sun, toward the eastern edge of the world. It was wide, that 
river -- perhaps two miles from bank to bank.
And she could see the city.
It lay dead ahead, a misty collection of spires and towers rising above the far 
edge of the horizon. Those airy ramparts might have been a hundred miles away, 
or two hundred, or four hundred. The air of this world seemed to be totally 
clear, and that made judging distances a fool's game. All she knew for sure was 
that the sight of those dim towers filled her with silent wonder . . . and a 
drop, aching homesickness for New York. She thought, I believe I'd do most 
anything just to see the Manhat­tan skyline from the Triborough Bridge again.
Then she had to smile, because that wasn't the truth. The truth was that she 
wouldn't trade Roland's world for anything. Its silent mystery and empty spaces 
were intoxicating. And her lover was here. In New York -- the New York of her own 
time, at least -- they would have been objects of scorn and anger, the butt of 
every idiot's crude, cruel jokes: a black woman of twenty-six and her whitebread 
lover who was three years younger and who had a tendency to talk like dis and 
dat when he got excited. Her whitebread lover who had been carrying a heavy 
monkey on his back only eight months before. Here, there was no one to jeer or 
laugh. Here, no one was pointing a finger. Here, there were only Roland, Eddie, 
and herself, the world's last three gunslingers.
She took Eddie's hand and felt it close over hers, warm and reassuring.
Roland pointed. "That must be the Send River," he said in a low voice. "I never 
thought to see it in my life . . . wasn't even sure it was real, like the 
Guardians."
"It's so lovely," Susannah murmured. She was unable to take her eyes from the 
vast landscape before her, dreaming richly in the cradle of summer. She found 
her eyes tracing the shadows of the trees, which trailed across the plain for 
what seemed miles as the sun sank toward the horizon. "It's the way our Great 
Plains must have looked before they were settled -- even before the Indians came." 
She raised her free hand and pointed toward the place where the Great Road 
narrowed to a point. "There's your city," she said. "Isn't it?"
"Yes."
"It looks okay," Eddie said. "Is that possible, Roland? Could it still be pretty 
much intact. Did the old-timers build that well?"
"Anything is possible in these times," Roland said, but he sounded doubtful. 
"You shouldn't get your hopes up, though, Eddie."
"Huh? No." But Eddie's hopes were up. That dimly sketched skyline had awakened 
homesickness in Susannah's heart; in Eddie's it kindled a sudden blaze of 
supposition. If the city was still there -- and it clearly was -- it might still be 
populated, and maybe not just by the subhuman things Roland had met under the 
mountains, either. The city-dwellers might be
(Americans, Eddie's subconscious whispered)
intelligent and helpful; they might, in fact, spell the difference between 
success and failure for the quest of the pilgrims ... or even between life and 
death. In Eddie's mind a vision (partly cribbed from movies like The Last 
Starfighter and The Dark Crystal) gleamed brightly: a council of gnarled but 
dignified City Elders who would serve them a whopping meal drawn from the 
unspoiled stores of the city (or perhaps from special gardens cradled within 
environmental bubbles) and who would, as he and Roland and Susannah ate 
themselves silly, explain exactly what lay ahead and what it all meant. Their 
parting gift to the wayfarers would be an AAA-approved Tour Guide map with the 
best route to the Dark Tower marked in red.
Eddie did not know the phrase deus ex machina, but he knew -- had now grown up 
enough to know -- that such wise and kindly folk lived mostly in comic books and 
B-movies. The idea was intoxicating, all the same: an enclave of civilization in 
this dangerous, mostly empty world; wise old elf-men who would tell them just 
what the fuck it was they were supposed to be doing. And the fabulous shapes of 
the city disclosed in that hazy skyline made the idea seem at least possible. 
Even if the city was totally deserted, the population wiped out by some long-ago 
plague or outbreak of chemical warfare, it might still serve them as a kind of 
giant toolbox -- a huge Army-Navy Surplus Store where they could outfit themselves 
for the hard passages Eddie was sure must lie ahead. Besides, he was a city boy, 
born and bred, and the sight of all those tall towers just naturally got him up.
"All right!" he said, almost laughing out loud in his excitement. "Hey-ho, let's 
go! Bring on those wise fuckin elves!"
Susannah looked at him, puzzled but smiling. "What you ravin about, white boy?"
"Nothing. Never mind. I just want to get moving. What do you say, Roland? Want 
to -- "
But something on Roland's face or just beneath it -- some lost, dreaming 
thing -- caused him to fall silent and put one arm around Susan­nah's shoulders, as 
if to protect her.


15
AFTER ONE BRIEF, DISMISSIVE glance at the city skyline, Roland's gaze had been 
caught by something a good deal closer to their current posi­tion, something 
that filled him with disquiet and foreboding. He had seen such things before, 
and the last time he'd come across one, Jake had been with him. He remembered 
how they had finally come out of the desert, the trail of the man in black 
leading them through the foothills and toward the mountains. Hard going, it had 
been, but at least there had been water again. And grass.
One night he had awakened to find Jake gone. He had heard stran­gled, desperate 
cries coming from a willow-grove hard by a narrow trickle of stream. By the time 
he had fought his way through to the clearing at the center of the grove, the 
boy's cries had ceased. Roland had found him standing in a place exactly like 
the one which lay below and ahead. A place of stones; a place of sacrifice; a 
place where an Oracle lived . . . and spoke when it was forced to ... and killed 
whenever it could.
"Roland?" Eddie asked. "What is it? What's wrong?"
"Do you see that?" Roland pointed. "It's a speaking ring. The shapes you see are 
tall standing stones." He found himself staring at Eddie, whom he had first met 
in the frightening but wonderful air-carriage of that strange other world where 
the gunslingers wore blue uniforms and there was an endless supply of sugar, 
paper, and wonderful drugs like astin. Some strange expression -- some 
foreknowledge -- was dawning on Eddie's face. The bright hope which had lit his 
eyes as he surveyed the city whiffed out, leaving him with a look both gray and 
bleak. It was the expression of a man studying the gallows on which he will soon 
be hanged.
First Jake, and now Eddie, the gunslinger thought. The wheel which turns our 
lives is remorseless; always it comes around to the same place again.
"Oh shit," Eddie said. His voice was dry and scared. "I think that's the place 
where the kid is going to try and come through."
The gunslinger nodded. "Very likely. They're thin places, and they're also 
attractive places. I followed him to such a place once before. The Oracle that 
kept there came very close to killing him."
"How do you know this?" Susannah asked Eddie. "Was it a dream?"
He only shook his head. "I don't know. But the minute Roland pointed that 
goddamn place out . . ." He broke off and looked at the gunslinger. "We have to 
get there, just as fast as we can." Eddie sounded both frantic and fearful.
"Is it going to happen today?" Roland asked. "Tonight?"
Eddie shook his head again, and licked his lips. "I don't know that, either. Not 
for sure. Tonight? I don't think so. Time ... it isn't the same over here as it 
is where the kid is. It goes slower in his where and when. Maybe tomorrow." He 
had been battling panic, but now it broke free. He turned and grabbed Roland's 
shirt with his cold, sweating fingers. "But I'm supposed to finish the key, and 
I haven't, and I'm supposed to do something else, and I don't have a clue about 
what it is. And if the kid dies, it'll be my fault!"
The gunslinger locked his own hands over Eddie's and pulled them away from his 
shirt. "Get control of yourself."
"Roland, don't you understand -- "
"I understand that whining and puling won't solve your problem. I understand 
that you have forgotten the face of your father."
"Quit that bullshit! I don't care dick about my father!" Eddie shouted 
hysterically, and Roland hit him across the face. His hand made a sound like a 
breaking branch.
Eddie's head rocked back; his eyes widened with shock. He stared at the 
gunslinger, then slowly raised his hand to touch the reddening handprint on his 
cheek. "You bastard!" he whispered. His hand dropped to the butt of the revolver 
he still wore on his left hip. Susannah tried to put her own hands over it; 
Eddie pushed them away.
And now I must teach again, Roland thought, only this time I teach for my own 
life, I think, as well as for his.
Somewhere in the distance a crow hailed its harsh cry into the stillness, and 
Roland thought for a moment of his hawk, David. Now Eddie was his hawk . . . and 
like David, he would not scruple to tear out his eye if he gave so much as a 
single inch.
Or his throat.
"Will you shoot me? Is that how you'd have it end, Eddie?"
"Man, I'm so fucking tired of your jive," Eddie said. His eyes were blurred with 
tears and fury.
"You haven't finished the key, but not because you are afraid to finish. You're 
afraid of finding you can't finish. You're afraid to go down to where the stones 
stand, but not because you're afraid of what may come once you enter the circle. 
You're afraid of what may not come. You're not afraid of the great world, Eddie, 
but of the small one inside yourself. You haven't forgotten the face of your 
father. So do it. Shoot me if you dare. I'm tired of watching you blubber."
"Stop it!" Susannah screamed at him. "Can't you see he'll do it? Can't you see 
you're forcing him to do it?"
Roland cut his eyes toward her. "I'm forcing him to decide." He looked back at 
Eddie, and his deeply lined face was stem. "You have come from the shadow of the 
heroin and the shadow of your brother, my friend. Come from the shadow of 
yourself, if you dare. Come now. Come out or shoot me and have done with it."
For a moment he thought Eddie was going to do just that, and it would all end 
right here, on this high ridge, beneath a cloudless summer sky with the spires 
of the city glimmering on the horizon like blue ghosts. Then Eddie's cheek began 
to twitch. The firm line of his lips softened and began to tremble. His hand 
fell from the sandalwood butt of Roland's gun. His chest hitched once ... twice 
. . . three times. His mouth opened and all his despair and terror came out in 
one groaning cry as he blun­dered toward the gunslinger.
"I'm afraid, you numb fuck! Don't you understand that? Roland, I'm afraid!"
His feet tangled together, He fell forward. Roland caught him and held him 
close, smelling the sweat and dirt on his skin, smelling his tears and terror.
The gunslinger embraced him for a moment, then turned him toward Susannah. Eddie 
dropped to his knees beside her chair, his head hanging wearily. She put a hand 
on the back of his neck, pressing his head against her thigh, and said bitterly 
to Roland, "Sometimes I hate you, big white man."
Roland placed the heels of his hands against his forehead and pressed hard. 
"Sometimes I hate myself."
"Don't ever stop you, though, do it?"
Roland didn't reply. He looked at Eddie, who lay with his cheek pressed against 
Susannah's thigh and his eyes tightly shut. His face was a study in misery. 
Roland fought away the dragging weariness that made him want to leave the rest 
of this charming discussion for another day. If Eddie was right, there was no 
other day. Jake was almost ready to make his move. Eddie had been chosen to 
midwife the boy into this world. If he wasn't prepared to do that, Jake would 
die at the point of entry, as surely as an infant must strangle if the 
mother-root is tangled about its neck when the contractions begin,
"Stand up, Eddie."
For a moment he thought Eddie would simply go on crouching there and hiding his 
face against the woman's leg. If so, everything was lost . . . and that was ka, 
too. Then, slowly, Eddie got to his feet. He stood there with everything -- hands, 
shoulders, head, hair -- hanging, not good, but he was up, and that was a start.
"Look at me."
Susannah stirred uneasily, but this time she said nothing.
Slowly, Eddie raised his head and brushed the hair out of his eyes with a 
trembling hand.
"This is for you. I was wrong to take it at all, no matter how deep my pain." 
Roland curled his hand around the rawhide strip and yanked, snapping it. He held 
the key out to Eddie. Eddie reached for it like a man in a dream, but Roland did 
not immediately open his hand. "Will you try to do what needs to be done?"
"Yes." His voice was almost inaudible.
"Do you have something to tell me?"
"I'm sorry I'm afraid." There was something terrible in Eddie's voice, something 
which hurt Roland's heart, and he supposed, he knew what it was: here was the 
last of Eddie's childhood, expiring painfully among the three of them. It could 
not be seen, but Roland could hear its weakening cries. He tried to make himself 
deaf to them.
Something else I've done in the name of the Tower. My score grows ever longer, 
and the day when it will all have to be totted up, like a long­time drunkard's 
bill in an alehouse, draws ever nearer. How will I ever pay?
"I don't want your apology, least of all for being afraid," he said.
"Without fear, what would we be? Mad dogs with foam on our muzzles and shit 
drying on our hocks."
"What do you want, then?" Eddie cried. "You've taken everything else  --  
everything I have to give! No, not even that, because in the end, I gave it to 
you! So what else do you want from me?"
Roland held the key which was their half of Jake Chambers's salva­tion locked in 
his fist and said nothing. His eyes held Eddie's, and the sun shone on the green 
expanse of plain and the blue-gray reach of the Send River, and somewhere in the 
distance the crow hailed again across the golden leagues of this fading summer 
afternoon.
After a while, understanding began to dawn in Eddie Dean's eyes.
Roland nodded.
"I have forgotten the face . . ." Eddie paused. Dipped his head. Swallowed. 
Looked up at the gunslinger once more. The thing which had been dying among them 
had moved on now  --  Roland knew it. That thing was gone. Just like that. Here, on 
this sunny wind-swept ridge at the edge of everything, it had gone forever. "I 
have forgotten the face of my father, gunslinger . . . and I cry your pardon."
Roland opened his hand and returned the small burden of the key to him who ka 
had decreed must carry it. "Speak not so, gunslinger," he said in the High 
Speech. "Your father sees you very well . . . loves you very well . . . and so 
do I."
Eddie closed his own hand over the key and turned away with his tears still 
drying on his face. "Let's go," he said, and they began to move down the long 
hill toward the plain which stretched beyond.


16
JAKE WALKED SLOWLY ALONG Castle Avenue, past pizza shops and bars and bodegas 
where old women with suspicious faces poked the potatoes and squeezed the 
tomatoes. The straps of his pack had chafed the skin beneath his arms, and his 
feet hurt. He passed beneath a digital ther­mometer which announced it was 
eighty-five. It felt more like a hundred and five to Jake.
Up ahead, a police car turned onto the Avenue. Jake at once became extremely 
interested in a display of gardening supplies in the window of a hardware store. 
He watched the reflection of the blue-and-white pass in the window and didn't 
move until it was gone.
Hey, Jake, old buddy -- where, exactly, are you going?
He hadn't the slightest idea. He felt positive that the boy he was looking 
for -- the boy in the green bandanna and the yellow T-shirt that said NEVER A DULL 
MOMENT IN MID-WORLD -- was somewhere close by, but so what? To Jake he was still 
nothing but a needle hiding in the haystack which was Brooklyn.
He passed an alley which had been decorated with a tangle of spray-painted 
graffiti. Mostly they were names -- EL TIANTE 91, SPEEDY GONZALES, MOTORVAN 
MIKE -- but a few mottos and words to the wise had been dropped in here and there, 
and Jake's eyes fixed on two of these.

A ROSE IS A ROSE IS A ROSE

had been written across the bricks in spray-paint which had weathered to the 
same dusky-pink shade of the rose which grew in the vacant lot where Tom and 
Gerry's Artistic Deli had once stood. Below it, in a blue so dark it was almost 
black, someone had spray-painted this oddity:

I CRY YOUR PARDON.

What does that mean? Jake wondered. He didn't know -- something from the Bible, 
maybe -- but it held like the eye of a snake is reputed to hold a bird. At last he 
walked on, slowly and thoughtfully. It was almost two-thirty, and his shadow was 
beginning to grow longer.
Just ahead, he saw an old man walking down the street, keeping to the shade as 
much as possible and leaning on a gnarled cane. Behind the thick glasses he 
wore, his brown eyes swam like oversized eggs.
"I cry your pardon, sir," Jake said without thinking or even really hearing 
himself.
The old man turned to look at him, blinking in surprise and fear. "Liff me 
alone, boy," he said. He raised his walking-stick and brandished it clumsily in 
Jake's direction.
"Would you know if there's a place called Markey Academy anyplace around here, 
sir?" This was utter desperation, but it was the only thing he could think to 
ask.
The old man slowly lowered his stick -- it was the sir that had done it. He looked 
at Jake with the slightly lunatic interest of the old and almost senile. "How 
come you not in school, boy?"
Jake smiled wearily. This one was getting very old. "Finals Week. I came down 
here to look up an old friend of mine who goes to Markey Academy, that's all. 
Sorry to have bothered you."
He stepped around the old man (hoping he wouldn't decide to whop him one across 
the ass with his cane just for good luck) and was almost down to the corner when 
the old man yelled: "Boy! Boyyyyy!"
Jake turned around.
"There is no Markey Akidimy down here," the old man said. "Twen­ty-two years I'm 
living here, so I should know. Markey Avenue, yes, but no Markey Akidimy."
Jake's stomach cramped with sudden excitement. He took a step back toward the 
old, man, who at once raised his cane into a defensive position again. Jake 
stopped at once, leaving a twenty-foot safety zone between them. "Where's Markey 
Avenue, sir? Can you tell me that?"
"Of gorse," the old man said. "Didn't I just say I'm livink here twenty-two 
years? Two blogs down. Turn left at the Majestic Theatre. But I'm tellink you 
now, there iss no Markey Akidimy."
"Thank you, sir! Thank you!"
Jake turned around and looked up Castle Avenue. Yes -- he could see the 
unmistakable shape of a movie marquee jutting out over the sidewalk a couple of 
blocks up. He started to run toward it, then decided that might attract 
attention and slowed down to a fast walk.
The old man watched him go. "Sir!" he said to himself in a tone of mild 
amazement. "Sir, yet!"
He chuckled rustily and moved on.


17
ROLAND'S BAND STOPPED AT dusk. The gunslinger dug a shallow pit and lit a fire. 
They didn't need it for cooking purposes, but they needed it, nonetheless. Eddie 
needed it. If he was going to finish his carving, he would need light to work 
by.
The gunslinger looked around and saw Susannah, a dark silhouette against the 
fading aquamarine sky, but he didn't see Eddie.
"Where is he?" he asked.
"Down the road apiece. You leave him alone now, Roland -- you've done enough."
Roland nodded, bent over the firepit, and struck at a piece of flint with a worn 
steel bar. Soon the kindling he had gathered was blazing. He added small sticks, 
one by one, and waited for Eddie to return.


18
HALF A MILE BACK the way they had come, Eddie sat cross-legged in the middle of 
the Great Road with his unfinished key in one hand, watching the sky. He glanced 
down the road, saw the spark of the fire, and knew exactly what Roland was doing 
. . . and why. Then he turned his gaze to the sky again. He had never felt so 
lonely or so afraid.
The sky was huge -- he could not remember ever seeing so much uninterrupted space, 
so much pure emptiness. It made him feel very small, and he supposed there was 
nothing at all wrong with that. In the scheme of things, he was very small.
The boy was close now. He thought he knew where Jake was and what he was about 
to do, and it filled him with silent wonder. Susannah had come from 1963. Eddie 
had come from 1987. Between them . . . Jake. Trying to come over. Trying to be 
born.
I met him, Eddie thought. I must have met him, and I think I remember. . . sort 
of. It was just before Henry went into the Army, right? He was taking courses at 
Brooklyn Vocational Institute, and he was heav­ily into black -- black jeans, black 
motorcycle boots with steel caps, black T-shirts with the sleeves rolled up. 
Henry's James Dean look. Smoking Area Chic. I used to think that, but I never 
said it out loud, because I didn't want him pissed at me.
He realized that what he had been waiting for had happened while he was 
thinking: Old Star had come out. In fifteen minutes, maybe less, it would be 
joined by a whole galaxy of alien jewelry, but for now it gleamed alone in the 
ungathered darkness.
Eddie slowly held up the key until Old Star gleamed within its wide central 
notch. And then he recited the old formula of his world, the one his mother had 
taught him as she knelt beside him at the bedroom window, both of them looking 
out at the evening star which rode the oncoming darkness above the rooftops and 
fire-escapes of Brooklyn: "Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight; 
wish I may, wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight."
Old Star glowed in the notch of the key, a diamond caught in ash.
"Help me find some guts," Eddie said. "That's my wish. Help me find the guts to 
try and finish this damned thing."
He sat there a moment longer, then got to his feet and walked slowly back to 
camp. He sat down as close to the fire as he could get, took the gunslinger's 
knife without a word to either him or Susannah, and began to work. Tiny, curling 
slivers of wood rolled up from the s-shape at the end of the key. Eddie worked 
fast, turning the key this way and that, occasionally closing his eyes and 
letting his thumb slip along the mild curves. He tried not to think about what 
might happen if the shape were to go wrong -- that would freeze him for sure.
Roland and Susannah sat behind him, watching silently. At last Eddie put the 
knife aside. His face was running with sweat. "This kid of yours," he said. 
"This Jake. He must be a gutty brat."
"He was brave under the mountains," Roland said. "He was afraid, but never gave 
an inch."
"I wish I could be that way."
Roland shrugged. "At Balazar's you fought well even though they had taken your 
clothes. It's very hard for a man to fight naked, but you did it."
Eddie tried to remember the shootout in the nightclub, but it was just a blur in 
his mind -- smoke, noise, and light shining through one wall in confused, 
intersecting rays. He thought that wall had been torn apart by automatic-weapons 
fire, but couldn't remember for sure.
He held the key up so its notches were sharply outlined against the flames. He 
held it that way for a long time, looking mostly at the s-shape. It looked 
exactly as he remembered it from his dream and from the momentary vision he had 
seen in the fire . . . but it didn't feel exactly right. Almost, but not quite.
That's just Henry again. That's just all those years of never being quite good 
enough. You did it, buddy -- it's just that the Henry inside doesn't want to admit 
it.
He dropped the key onto the square of hide and folded the edges carefully around 
it. "I'm done. I don't know if it's right or not, but I guess it's as right as I 
can make it." He felt oddly empty now that he no longer had the key to work 
on -- purposeless and directionless.
"Do you want something to eat, Eddie?" Susannah asked quietly.
There's your purpose, he thought. There's your direction. Sitting right over 
there, with her hands folded in her lap. All the purpose and direction you'll 
ever -- 
But now something else rose in his mind -- it came all at once. Not a dream . . . 
not a vision ...
No, not either of those. It's a memory. It's happening again -- you're remembering 
forward in time.
"I have to do something else first," he said, and got up.
On the far side of the fire, Roland had stacked some odd lots of scavenged wood. 
Eddie hunted through them and found a dry stick about two feet long and four 
inches or so through the middle. He took it, returning to his place by the fire, 
and picked up Roland's knife again. This time he worked faster because he was 
simply sharpening the stick, turning it into something that looked like a small 
tent-peg.
"Can we get moving before daybreak?" he asked the gunslinger. "I think we should 
get to that circle as soon as we can."
"Yes. Sooner, if we must. I don't want to move in the dark -- a speaking ring is an 
unsafe place to be at night -- but if we have to, we have to."
"From the look on your face, big boy, I doubt if those stone circles are very 
safe any time," Susannah said.
Eddie put the knife aside again. The dirt Roland had taken out of the shallow 
hole he'd made for the campfire was piled up by Eddie's right foot. Now he used 
the sharp end of the stick to carve a question-mark shape in the dirt. The shape 
was crisp and clear.
"Okay," he said, brushing it away. "All done."
"Have something to eat, then," Susannah said.
Eddie tried, but he wasn't very hungry. When he finally went to sleep, nestled 
against Susannah's warmth, his rest was dreamless but very thin. Until the 
gunslinger shook him awake at four in the morning, he heard the wind racing 
endlessly over the plain below them, and it seemed to him that he went with it, 
flying high into the night, away from these cares, while Old Star and Old Mother 
rode serenely above him, painting his cheeks with frost.


19
"IT'S TIME," ROLAND SAID.
Eddie sat up. Susannah sat up beside him, rubbing her palms over her face. As 
Eddie's head cleared, his mind was filled with urgency. "Yes. Let's go, and 
fast."
"He's getting close, isn't he?"
"Very close." Eddie got to his feet, grasped Susannah around the waist, and 
boosted her into her chair.
She was looking at him anxiously. "Do we still have enough time to get there?"
Eddie nodded. "Barely."
Three minutes later they were headed down the Great Road again. It glimmered 
ahead of them like a ghost. And an hour after that, as the first light of dawn 
began to touch the sky in the east, a rhythmic sound began far ahead of them.
The sound of drums, Roland thought.
Machinery, Eddie thought. Some huge piece of machinery.
It's a heart, Susannah thought. Some huge, diseased, beating heart .. . and it's 
in that city, where we have to go.
Two hours later, the sound stopped as suddenly as it had begun. White, 
featureless clouds had begun to fill the sky above them, first veiling the early 
sun, then blotting it out. The circle of standing stones lay less than five 
miles ahead now, gleaming in the shadowless light like the teeth of a fallen 
monster.


20
SPAGHETTI WEEK AT THE MAJESTIC!

the battered, dispirited marquee jutting over the corner of Brooklyn and Markey 
Avenues proclaimed.

2 SERGIO LEONE CLASSIX!
A FISTFUL OF $$ PLUS GOOD BAD & UGLY!
99 Cents ALL SHOWS

A gum-chewing cutie with rollers in her blonde hair sat in the box office 
listening to Led Zep on her transistor and reading one of the tabloids of which 
Mrs. Shaw was so fond. To her left, in the theater's remaining display case, 
there was a poster showing Glint Eastwood.
Jake knew he should get moving -- three o'clock was almost here --  but he paused a 
moment anyway, staring at the poster behind the dirty, cracked glass. Eastwood 
was wearing a Mexican serape. A cigar was clamped in his teeth. He had thrown 
one side of the serape back over his shoulder to free his gun. His eyes were a 
pale, faded blue. Bombar­dier's eyes.
It's not him, Jake thought, but it's almost him. It's the eyes, mostly .. . the 
eyes are almost the same.
"You let me drop," he said to the man in the old poster, the man who was not 
Roland. "You let me die. What happens this time?"
"Hey, kid," the blonde ticket-seller called, making Jake start. "You gonna come 
in or just stand there and talk to yourself?"
"Not me," Jake said. "I've already seen those two."
He got moving again, turning left on Markey Avenue.
Once again he waited for the feeling of remembering forward to seize him, but it 
didn't come. This was just a hot, sunny street lined with sandstone-colored 
apartment buildings that looked like prison cellblocks to Jake. A few young 
women were walking along, pushing baby-carriages in pairs and talking 
desultorily, but the street was otherwise deserted. It was unseasonably hot for 
May -- too hot to stroll.
What am I looking for? What?




From behind him came a burst of raucous male laughter. It was followed by an 
outraged female shriek: "You give that back\"
Jake jumped, thinking the owner of the voice must mean him.
"Give it back, Henry! I'm not kidding!"
Jake turned and saw two boys, one at least eighteen and the other a lot younger 
. . . twelve or thirteen. At the sight of this second boy, Jake's heart did 
something that felt like a loop-the-loop in his chest. The lad was wearing green 
corduroys instead of madras shorts, but the yellow T-shirt was the same, and he 
had a battered old basketball under one arm. Although his back was to Jake, Jake 
knew he had found the boy from last night's dream.


21
THE GIRL WAS THE gum-chewing cutie from the ticket-booth. The older of the two 
boys -- who looked almost old enough to be called a man --  had her newspaper in his 
hands. She grabbed for it. The newspaper-grabber -- he was wearing denims and a 
black T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up -- held it over his head and grinned.
"Jump for it, Maryanne! Jump, girl, jump!"
She stared at him with angry eyes, her cheeks flushed. "Give it to me!" she 
said. "Quit fooling around and give it back! Bastard!"
"Oooo wisten to dat, Eddie!" the old kid said. "Bad wang-gwidge! Naughty, 
naughty!" He waved the newspaper just out of the blonde tick­et-seller's grasp, 
grinning, and Jake suddenly understood. These two were walking home from school 
together -- although they probably didn't go to the same one, if he was right about 
the difference in their ages -- and the bigger boy had gone over to the box office, 
pretending he had something interesting to tell the blonde. Then he had reached 
through the slot at the bottom and snatched her paper.
The big boy's face was one that Jake had seen before; it was the face of a kid 
who would think it the height of hilarity to douse a cat's tail with lighter 
fluid or feed a bread-ball with a fishhook planted in the middle to a hungry 
dog. The sort of lad who sat in the back of the room and snapped bra-straps and 
then said "Who me?" with a big, dumb look of surprise on his face when someone 
finally complained. There weren't many lads like him at Piper, but there were a 
few. Jake supposed there were a few in every school. They dressed better at 
Piper, but the face was the same. He guessed that in the old days, people would 
have said it was the face of a boy who was born to be hung.
Maryanne jumped for her newspaper, which the old boy in the black pants had 
rolled into a tube. He pulled it out of her reach just before she could grab it, 
then whacked her on the head with it, the way you might whack a dog for piddling 
on the carpet. She was beginning to cry now -- mostly from humiliation, Jake 
guessed. Her face was now so red it was almost glowing. "Keep it, then!" she 
yelled at him. "I know you can't read, but you can look at the pictures, at 
least!"
She began to turn away.
"Give it back, why don't you?" the younger boy -- Jake's boy -- said softly.
The old boy held out the newspaper tube. The girl snatched it from him, and even 
from his place thirty feet farther down the street, Jake heard it rip. "You're a 
turd, Henry Dean!" she cried. "A real turd!"
"Hey, what's the big deal?" Henry sounded genuinely injured. "It was just a 
joke. Besides, it only ripped in one place -- you can still read it, for Chrissake. 
Lighten up a little, why don'tcha?"
And that was right, too, Jake thought. Guys like this Henry always pushed even 
the most unfunny joke two steps too far ... then looked wounded and 
misunderstood when someone yelled at them. And it was always Wassa matter? and 
it was Can'tcha take a joke? and it was Why don'tcha lighten up a little?
What are you doing with him, kid? Jake wondered. If you're on my side, what are 
you doing with a jerk like that?
But as the younger lad turned around and they started to walk down the street 
again, Jake knew. The old boy's features were heavier, and his complexion was 
badly pitted with acne, but otherwise the resemblance was striking. The two boys 
were brothers.


22
JAKE TURNED AWAY AND began to idle up the sidewalk ahead of the two boys. He 
reached into his breast pocket with a shaky hand, pulled out his father's 
sunglasses, and managed to fumble them onto his face.
Voices swelled behind him, as if someone was gradually turning up the volume on 
a radio.
"You shouldn't have ranked on her that bad, Henry. It was mean."
"She loves it, Eddie." Henry's voice was complacent, worldly-wise. "When you get 
a little older, you'll understand."
"She was cryin."
"Prob'ly got the rag on," Henry said in a philosophical tone.
They were very close now. Jake shrank against the side of the build­ing. His 
head was down, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his jeans. He didn't 
know why it seemed so vitally important that he not be noticed, but it did. 
Henry didn't matter, one way or the other, but -- 
The younger one, isn't supposed to remember me, he thought. I don't know why, 
exactly, but he's not.
They passed him without so much as a glance, the one Henry had called Eddie 
walking on the outside, dribbling the basketball along the gutter.
"You gotta admit she looked funny," Henry was saying. "Ole Be-Bop Maryanne, 
jumpin for her newspaper. Woof! Woof!"
Eddie looked up at his brother with an expression that wanted to be reproachful 
. . . and then he gave up and dissolved into laughter. Jake saw the 
unconditional love in that upturned face and guessed that Eddie would forgive a 
lot in his big brother before giving it up as a bad job.
"So are we going?" Eddie asked now. "You said we could. After school."
"I said maybe. I dunno if I wanna walk all the way over there. Mom'll be home, 
by now, too. Maybe we just oughtta forget it. Go upstairs and watch some tube."
They were now ten feet ahead of Jake and pulling away.
"Ah, come on! You said!"
Beyond the building the two boys were currently passing was a chainlink fence 
with an open gate in it. Beyond it, Jake saw, was the playground of which he had 
dreamed last night ... a version of it, any­way. It wasn't surrounded by trees, 
and there was no odd subway kiosk with diagonal slashes of yellow and black 
across the front, but the cracked concrete was the same. So were the faded 
yellow foul lines.
"Well . . . maybe. I dunno." Jake realized Henry was teasing again. Eddie 
didn't, though; he was too anxious about wherever it was he wanted to go. "Let's 
shoot some hoops while I think it over."
He stole the ball from his younger brother, dribbled clumsily onto the 
playground, and went for a lay-up that hit high on the backboard and bounced 
back without even touching the rim of the hoop. Henry was good at stealing 
newspapers from teenage girls, Jake thought, but on the basketball court he 
sucked the big one.
Eddie walked in through the gate, unbuttoned his corduroy pants, and slipped 
them down. Beneath them were the faded madras shorts he had been wearing in 
Jake's dream.
"Oh, is he wearing his shortie panties?" Henry said. "Ain't they cuuute?" He 
waited until his brother balanced himself on one leg to pull off his cords, then 
flung the basketball at him. Eddie managed to bat it away, probably saving 
himself a bloody nose, but he lost his balance and fell clumsily to the 
concrete. He didn't cut himself, but he could have done so, Jake saw; a great 
deal of broken glass glittered in the sun along the chainlink.
"Come on, Henry, quit it," he said, but with no real reproach. Jake guessed I 
Henry had been pulling shit like this on him so long that Eddie only noticed it 
when Henry pulled it on someone else -- someone like the blonde ticket-seller.
"Turn on, Henwy, twit it."
Eddie got to his feet and trotted out onto the court. The ball had struck the 
chainlink fence and bounced back to Henry. Henry now tried to dribble past his 
younger brother. Eddie's hand went out, lightning-quick but oddly delicate, and 
stole the ball. He easily ducked under Henry's outstretched, flailing arm and 
went for the basket. Henry dogged him, frowning thunderously, but he might as 
well have been taking a nap. Eddie went up, knees bent, feet neatly cocked, and 
laid the ball in. Henry grabbed it and dribbled out to the stripe.
Shouldn't have done that, Eddie, Jake thought. He was standing just beyond the 
place where the fence ended, watching the two boys. This seemed safe enough, at 
least for the moment. He was wearing his dad's sunglasses, and the two boys were 
so involved in what they were doing that they wouldn't have noticed if President 
Carter had strolled up to watch. Jake doubted if Henry knew who President Carter 
was, anyway.
He expected Henry to foul his brother, perhaps heavily, as a payback for the 
steal, but he had underestimated Eddie's guile. Henry offered a head-fake that 
wouldn't have fooled Jake's mother, but Eddie appeared to fall for it. Henry 
broke past him and drove for the basket, gaily travel­ling the ball most of the 
way. Jake was quite sure Eddie could have caught him easily and stolen the ball 
again, but instead of doing so, the lad hung back. Henry laid it up -- clumsily -- and 
the ball bounced off the rim again. Eddie grabbed it ... and then let it squirt 
through his fingers. Henry snatched it, turned, and put it through the netless 
hoop.
"One-up," Henry panted. "Play to twelve?"
"Sure."
Jake had seen enough. It would be close, but in the end Henry would win. Eddie 
would see to it. It would do more than save him from getting lumped up; it would 
put Henry in a good mood, making him more agreeable to whatever it was Eddie 
wanted to do.
Hey Moose -- I think your little brother has been playing you like a violin for a 
long time now, and you don't have the slightest idea, do you?
He drew back until the apartment building which stood at the north end of the 
court cut off his view of the Dean brothers, and their view of him. He leaned 
against the wall and listened to the thump of the ball on the court. Soon Henry 
was puffing like Charlie the Choo-Choo going up a steep hill. He would be a 
smoker, of course; guys like Henry were always smokers.
The game took almost ten minutes, and by the time Henry claimed victory, the 
street was filled up with other home-going kids. A few gave Jake curious glances 
as they passed by.
"Good game, Henry," Eddie said.
"Not bad," Henry panted. "You're still falling for the old head-fake."
Sure he is, Jake thought. I think he'll go on falling for it until he's gained 
about eighty pounds. Then you might get a surprise.
"I guess I am. Hey, Henry, can't we please go look at the place?"
"Yeah, why not? Let's do it."
"All right\" Eddie yelled. There was the smacking sound of flesh on flesh; 
probably Eddie giving his brother a high-five. "Boss!"
"You go on up to the apartment. Tell Mom we'll be in by four-thirty, quarter of 
five. But don't say anything about The Mansion. She'd have a shit-fit. She 
thinks it's haunted, too."
"You want me to tell her we're going over Dewey's?"
Silence as Henry considered this. "Naw. She might call Mrs. Bunkowski. Tell her 
. . . tell her we're goin down to Dahlie's to get Hoodsie Rockets. She'll 
believe that. Ask her for a coupla bucks, too."
"She won't give me any money. Not two days before payday."
"Bullshit. You can get it out of her. Go on, now."
"Okay." But Jake didn't hear Eddie moving. "Henry?"
"What?" Impatiently.
"Is The Mansion haunted, do you think?"
Jake sidled a little closer to the playground. He didn't want to be noticed, but 
he strongly felt that he needed to hear this.
"Naw. There ain't no real haunted houses -- just in the fuckin movies."
"Oh." There was unmistakable relief in Eddie's voice.
"But if there ever was one," Henry resumed (perhaps he didn't want his little 
brother feeling too relieved, Jake thought), "it'd be The Mansion. I heard that 
a couple of years ago, two kids from Norwood Street went in there to bump uglies 
and the cops found em with their throats cut and all the blood drained out of 
their bodies. But there wasn't any blood on em or around em. Get it? The blood 
was all gone."
"You shittin me?" Eddie breathed.
"Nope. But that wasn't the worst thing."
"What was?"
"Their hair was dead white," Henry said. The voice that drifted to Jake was 
solemn. He had an idea that Henry wasn't teasing this time, that this time he 
believed every word he was saying. (He also doubted that Henry had brains enough 
to make such a story up.) "Both of em. And their eyes were wide open and 
staring, like they saw the most gross-awful thing in the world."
"Aw, gimme a break," Eddie said, but his voice was soft, awed.
"You still wanna go?"
"Sure. As long as we don't . . . you know, hafta get too close."
"Then go see Mom. And try to get a couple of bucks out of her. I need 
cigarettes. Take the fuckin ball up, too."
Jake drifted backward and stepped into the nearest apartment build­ing entryway 
just as Eddie came out through the playground gate.
To his horror, the boy in the yellow T-shirt turned in Jake's direc­tion. Holy 
crow! he thought, dismayed. What if this is his building?
It was. Jake just had time to turn around and began to scan the names beside the 
rank of buzzers before Eddie Dean brushed past him, so close that Jake could 
smell the sweat he had worked up on the basket­ball court. He half-sensed, 
half-saw the curious glance the boy tossed in his direction. Then Eddie was in 
the lobby and headed for the elevators with his school-pants bundled under one 
arm and the scuffed basketball under the other.
Jake's heart was thudding heavily in his chest. Shadowing people was a lot 
harder in real life than it was in the detective novels he some­times read. He 
crossed the street and stood between two apartment buildings half a block up. 
From here he could see both the entrance to the Dean brothers' building and the 
playground. The playground was filling up now, mostly with little kids. Henry 
leaned against the chainlink, smoking a cigarette and trying to look full of 
teenage angst. Every now and then he would stick out a foot as one of the little 
kids bolted toward him at an all-out run, and before Eddie returned, he had 
succeeded in tripping three of them. The last of these went sprawling 
full-length, smacking his face on the concrete, and ran wailing up the street 
with a bloody forehead. Henry flicked his cigarette butt after him and laughed 
cheerfully.
Just an all-around fun guy, Jake thought.
After that, the little lads wised up and began giving him a wide berth. Henry 
strolled out of the playground and down the street to the apartment building 
Eddie had entered five minutes before. As he reached it, the door opened and 
Eddie came out. He had changed into a pair of jeans and a fresh T-shirt; he had 
also tied a green bandanna, the same one he had been wearing in Jake's dream, 
around his forehead. He was waving a couple of dollar bills triumphantly. Henry 
snatched them, then asked Eddie something. Eddie nodded, and the two boys set 
off.
Keeping half a block between himself and them, Jake followed.


23
THEY STOOD IN THE high grass at the edge of the Great Road, looking at the 
speaking ring.
Stonehenge, Susannah thought, and shuddered. That's what it looks like. 
Stonehenge.
Although the thick grass which covered the plain grew around the bases of the 
tall gray monoliths, the circle they enclosed was bare earth, littered here and 
there with white things.
"What are those?" she asked in a low voice. "Chips of stone?"
"Look again," Roland said.
She did, and saw that they were bones. The bones of small animals, maybe. She 
hoped.
Eddie switched the sharpened stick to his left hand, dried the palm of his right 
against his shirt, and then switched it back again. He opened his mouth, but no 
sound came from his dry throat. He cleared it and tried again. "I think I'm 
supposed to go in and draw something in the dirt."
Roland nodded. "Now?"
"Soon." He looked into Roland's face. "There's something here, isn't there? 
Something we can't see."
"It's not here right now," Roland said. "At least, I don't think it is. But it 
will come. Our khef -- our life-force -- will draw it. And, of course, it will be 
jealous of its place. Give me my gun back, Eddie."
Eddie unbuckled the belt and handed it over. Then he turned back to the circle 
of twenty-foot-high stones. Something lived in there, all right. He could smell 
it, a stench that made him think of damp plaster and moldering sofas and ancient 
mattresses rotting beneath half-liquid coats of mildew. It was familiar, that 
smell.
The Mansion -- I smelled it there. The day I talked Henry into taking me over to 
see The Mansion on Rhinehold Street, in Dutch Hill.
Roland buckled his gunbelt, then bent to knot the tiedown. He looked up at 
Susannah as he did it. "We may need Detta Walker," he said. "Is she around?"
"That bitch always around." Susannah wrinkled her nose.
"Good. One of us is going to have to protect Eddie while he does what he's 
supposed to do. The other is going to be so much useless baggage. This is a 
demon's place. Demons are not human, but they are male and female, just the 
same. Sex is both their weapon and their weakness. No matter what the sex of the 
demon may be, it will go for Eddie. To protect its place. To keep its place from 
being used by an outsider. Do you understand?"
Susannah nodded. Eddie appeared not to be listening. He had tucked the square of 
hide containing the key into his shirt and now he was staring into the speaking 
ring as if hypnotized.
"There's no time to say this in a gentle or refined way," Roland told her. "One 
of us will -- "
"One of us gonna have to fuck it to keep it off Eddie," Susannah interrupted. 
"This the sort of thing can't ever turn down a free fuck. That's what you're 
gettin at, isn't it?"
Roland nodded.
Her eyes gleamed. They were the eyes of Detta Walker now, both wise and unkind, 
shining with hard amusement, and her voice slid steadily deeper into the bogus 
Southern plantation drawl which was Delta's trade­mark. "If it's a girl demon, 
you git it. But if it's a boy demon, it's mine. That about it?"
Roland nodded.
"What about if it swings both ways? What about that, big boy?"
Roland's lips twitched in the barest suggestion of a smile. "Then we'll take it 
together. Just remember -- "
Beside them, in a fainting, distant voice, Eddie murmured: "Not all is silent in 
the halls of the dead. Behold, the sleeper wakes." He turned his haunted, 
terrified eyes on Roland. "There's a monster."
"The demon -- "
"No. A monster. Something between the doors -- between the worlds. Something that 
waits. And it's opening its eyes."
Susannah cast a frightened glance at Roland.
"Stand, Eddie," Roland said. "Be true."
Eddie drew a deep breath. "I'll stand until it knocks me down," he said. "I have 
to go in now. It's starting to happen."
"We all goin in," Susannah said. She arched her back and slipped out of her 
wheelchair. "Any demon want to fuck wit' me he goan find out he's fuckin wit' 
the finest. I th'ow him a fuck he ain't never goan fgit."
As they passed between two of the tall stones and into the speaking circle, it 
began to rain.


24
As SOON AS JAKE saw the place, he understood two things: first, that he had seen 
it before, in dreams so terrible his conscious mind would not let him remember 
them; second, that it was a place of death and murder and madness. He was 
standing on the far corner of Rhinehold Street and Brooklyn Avenue, seventy 
yards from Henry and Eddie Dean, but even from where he was he could feel The 
Mansion ignoring them and reaching for him with its eager invisible hands, lie 
thought there were talons at the ends of those hands. Sharp ones.
It wants me, and I can't run away. It's death to go in ... but it's madness not 
to. Because somewhere inside that place is a locked door. I have the key that 
will open it, and the only salvation I can hope for is on the other side.
He stared at The Mansion, a house that almost screamed abnormal­ity, with a 
sinking heart. It stood in the center of its weedy, rioting yard like a tumor.
The Dean brothers had walked across nine blocks of Brooklyn, mov­ing slowly 
under the hot afternoon sun, and had finally entered a section of town which had 
to be Dutch Hill, given the names on the shops and stores. Now they stood 
halfway down the block, in front of The Mansion. It looked as if it had been 
deserted for years, yet it had suffered remark­ably little vandalism. And once, 
Jake thought, it really had been a man­sion -- the home, perhaps, of a wealthy 
merchant and his large family. In those long-gone days it must have been white, 
but now it was a dirty gray no-color. The windows had been knocked out and the 
peeling picket fence which surrounded it had been spray-painted, but the house 
itself was still intact.
It slumped in the hot light, a ramshackle slate-roofed revenant grow­ing out of 
a hummocky trash-littered yard, somehow making Jake think of a dangerous dog 
which pretended to be asleep. Its steep roof overhung the front porch like a 
beetling brow. The boards of the porch were splintery and warped. Shutters which 
might once have been green leaned askew beside the glassless windows; ancient 
curtains still hung in some of these, dangling like strips of dead skin. To the 
left, an elderly trellis leaned away from die building, now held up not by nails 
but only by die nameless and somehow filthy clusters of vine which crawled over 
it. There was a sign on the lawn and another on die door. From where Jake stood, 
he could read neither of them.
The house was alive. He knew this, could feel its awareness reaching out from 
the boards and the slumping roof, could feel it pouring in rivers from the black 
sockets of its windows. The idea of approaching that terrible place filled him 
with dismay; the idea of actually going inside filled him with inarticulate 
horror. Yet he would have to. He could hear a low, slumbrous buzzing in his 
ears -- the sound of a beehive on a hot summer day -- and for a moment he was afraid 
he might faint. He closed his eyes . . . and his voice filled his head.
You must come, Jake. This is the path of the Beam, the way of the Tower, and the 
time of your Drawing. Be true; stand; come to me.
The fear didn't pass, but that terrible sense of impending panic did. He opened 
his eyes again and saw that he was not the only one who had sensed the power and 
awakening sentience of the place. Eddie was trying to pull away from the fence. 
He turned toward Jake, who could see Eddie's eyes, wide and uneasy beneath his 
green head-band. His big brother grabbed him and pushed him toward the rusty 
gate, but the gesture was too half-hearted to be much of a tease; however 
thick-headed he might be, Henry liked The Mansion no better than Eddie did.
They drew away a little and stood looking at the place for a while. Jake could 
not make out what they were saying to each other, but the tone of their voices 
was awed and uneasy. Jake suddenly remembered Eddie speaking in his dream: 
Remember there's danger, though. Be care­ful . . . and be quick.
Suddenly the real Eddie, the one across the street, raised his voice enough so 
that Jake could make out the words. "Can we go home now, Henry? Please? I don't 
like it." His tone was pleading.
"Fuckin little sissy," Henry said, but Jake thought he heard relief as well as 
indulgence in Henry's voice. "Come on."
They turned away from the ruined house crouching high-shouldered behind its 
sagging fence and approached the street. Jake backed up, then turned and looked 
into the window of the dispirited little hole-in-the-wall shop called Dutch Hill 
Used Appliances. He watched Henry and Eddie, dim and ghostly reflections 
superimposed on an ancient Hoover vacuum cleaner, cross Rhinehold Street.
"Are you sure it's not really haunted?" Eddie asked as they stepped onto the 
sidewalk on Jake's side.
"Well, I tell you what," Henry said. "Now that I been out here again, I'm really 
not so sure."
They passed directly behind Jake without looking at him. "Would you go in 
there?" Eddie asked.
"Not for a million dollars," Henry replied promptly.
They rounded the corner. Jake stepped away from the window and peeped after 
them. They were headed back the way they had come, close together on the 
sidewalk, Henry hulking along in his steel-toed shit-kickers, his shoulders 
already slumped like those of a much older man, Eddie walking beside him with 
neat, unconscious grace. Their shadows, long and trailing out into the street 
now, mingled amicably together.
They're going home, Jake thought, and felt a wave of loneliness so strong that 
he felt it would crush him. Going to eat supper and do homework and argue over 
which TV shows to watch and then go to bed. Henry may be a bullying shit, but 
they've got a life, those two, one that makes sense . . . and they're going back 
to it. I wonder if they have any idea of how lucky they are. Eddie might, I 
suppose.
Jake turned, adjusted the straps of his pack, and crossed Rhinehold Street.


25
SUSANNAH SENSED MOVEMENT IN the empty grassland beyond the circle of standing 
stones: a sighing, whispering rush.
"Something comin," she said tautly. "Comin fast."
"Be careful," Eddie said, "but keep it off me. You understand? Keep it off me."
"I hear you, Eddie. You just do your own thing."
Eddie nodded. He knelt in the center of the ring, holding the sharp­ened stick 
out in front of him as if assessing its point. Then he lowered it and drew a 
dark straight line in the dirt. "Roland, watch out for her. . ."
"I will if I can, Eddie."
". . . but keep it off me. Jake's coming. Crazy little mother's really coming."
Susannah could now see the grasses due north of the speaking ring parting in a 
long dark line, creating a furrow that lanced straight at the circle of stones.
"Get ready," Roland said. "It'll go for Eddie. One of us will have to ambush 
it."
Susannah reared up on her haunches like a snake coming out of a Hindu fakir's 
basket. Her hands, rolled into hard brown fists, were held at the sides of her 
face. Her eyes blazed. "I'm ready," she said and then shouted: "Come on, big 
boy! You come on right now! Run like it's yo birfday!"
The rain began to fall harder as the demon which lived here re-entered its 
circle in a booming rush. Susannah had just time to sense thick and merciless 
masculinity -- it came to her as an eyewatering smell of gin and juniper -- and then 
it shot toward the center of the circle. She closed her eyes and reached for it, 
not with her arms or her mind but with all the female force which lived at the 
core of her: Hey, big boy! Where you goan? D'pussy be ovah heah!
It whirled. She felt its surprise . . . and then its raw hunger, as full and 
urgent as a pulsing artery. It leaped upon her like a rapist springing from the 
mouth of an alley.
Susannah howled and rocked backward, cords standing out on her neck. The dress 
she wore first flattened against her breasts and belly, and then began to tear 
itself to shreds. She could hear a pointless, direc­tionless panting, as if the 
air itself had decided to rut with her.
"Suze!" Eddie shouted, and began to get to his feet.
"No!" she screamed back. "Do it! I got this sumbitch right where . . . right 
where I want him! Go on, Eddie! Bring the kid! Bring -- " Coldness battered at the 
tender flesh between her legs. She grunted, fell backward . . then supported 
herself with one hand and thrust defiantly forward and upward. "Bring him 
through!"
Eddie looked uncertainly at Roland, who nodded. Eddie glanced at Susannah again, 
his eyes full of dark pain and darker fear, and then deliberately turned his 
back on both of them and fell to his knees again. He reached forward with the 
sharpened stick which had become a make­shift pencil, ignoring the cold rain 
falling on his arms and the back of his neck. The stick began to move, making 
lines and angles, creating a shape Roland knew at once.
It was a door.


26
JAKE REACHED OUT, PUT his hands on the splintery gate, and pushed. It swung 
slowly open on screaming, rust-clotted hinges. Ahead of him was an uneven brick 
path. Beyond the path was the porch. Beyond the porch was the door. It had been 
boarded shut.
He walked slowly toward the house, heart telegraphing fast dots and dashes in 
his throat. Weeds had grown up between the buckled bricks. He could hear them 
rustling against his bluejeans. All his senses seemed to have been turned up two 
notches. You're not really going in there, are you? a panic-stricken voice in 
his head asked.
And the answer that occurred to him seemed both totally nuts and perfectly 
reasonable: All things serve the Beam.
The sign on the lawn read

ABSOLUTELY NO TRESPASSING UNDER PENALTY OF LAW!

The yellowing, rust-stained square of paper nailed to one of the boards 
crisscrossing the front door was more succinct:

BY ORDER OF NYC HOUSING AUTHORITY THIS PROPERTY CONDEMNED

Jake paused at the foot of the steps, looking up at the door. He had heard 
voices in the vacant lot and now he could hear them again . . . but this was a 
choir of the damned, a babble of insane threats and equally insane promises. Yet 
he thought it was all one voice. The voice of the house; the voice of some 
monstrous doorkeeper, roused from its long unpeaceful sleep.
He thought briefly of his father's Ruger, even considered pulling it out of his 
pack, but what good would it do? Behind him, traffic passed back and forth on 
Rhinehold Street and a woman was yelling for her daughter to stop holding hands 
with that boy and bring in the wash, but here was another world, one ruled by 
some bleak being over whom guns could have no power.
Be true, Jake -- stand.
"Okay," he said in a low, shaky voice. "Okay, I'll try. But you better not drop 
me again."
Slowly, he began to mount the porch steps.


27
THE BOARDS WHICH BARRED the door were old and rotten, the nails rusty. Jake 
grabbed hold of the top set at the point where they crossed each other and 
yanked. They came free with a squall that was the gate all over again. He tossed 
them over the porch rail and into an ancient flowerbed where only witchgrass and 
dogweed grew. He bent, grasped the lower crossing . . . and paused for a moment.
A hollow sound came through the door; the sound of some animal slobbering 
hungrily from deep inside a concrete pipe. Jake felt a sick sheen of sweat begin 
to break out on his cheeks and forehead. He was so frightened that he no longer 
felt precisely real; he seemed to have become a character in someone else's bad 
dream.
The evil choir, the evil presence, was behind this door. The sound of it seeped 
out like syrup.
He yanked at die lower boards. They came free easily.
Of course. It wants me to come in. It's hungry, and I'm supposed to be the main 
course.
A snatch of poetry occurred to him suddenly, something Ms. Avery had read to 
them. It was supposed to be about the plight of modern man, who was cut off from 
all his roots and traditions, but to Jake it suddenly seemed that the man who 
had written that poem must have seen this house: / will show you something 
different from either/Your shadow in the morning striding behind you/Or your 
shadow at evening rising to meet you;/I will show you . . .
"I'll show you fear in a handful of dust," Jake muttered, and put his hand on 
the doorknob. And as he did, that clear sense of relief and surety flooded him 
again, the feeling that this was it, this time the door would open on that other 
world, he would see a sky untouched by smog and industrial smoke, and, on the 
far horizon, not the mountains but the hazy blue spires of some gorgeous unknown 
city.
He closed his fingers around the silver key in his pocket, hoping the door was 
locked so he could use it. It wasn't. The hinges screamed and flakes of rust 
sifted down from their slowly revolving cylinders as the door opened. The smell 
of decay struck Jake like a physical blow: wet wood, spongy plaster, rotting 
laths, ancient stuffing. Below these smells was another -- the smell of some 
beast's lair. Ahead was a dank, shadowy hallway. To the left, a staircase 
pitched and yawed its crazy way into the upper shadows. Its collapsed banister 
lay splintered on the hallway floor, but Jake was not foolish enough to think it 
was just splinters he was looking at. There were bones in that litter, as 
well -- the bones of small animals. Some did not look precisely like animal bones, 
and these Jake would not look at overlong; he knew he would never summon the 
courage to go further if he did. He paused on the threshold, screwing himself up 
to take the first step. He heard a faint, muffled sound, very hard and very 
rapid, and realized it was his own teeth chattering in his head.
Why doesn't someone stop me? he thought wildly. Why doesn't some­body passing on 
the sidewalk shout "Hey, you! You're not supposed to be in there -- can'tcha read?"
But he knew why. Pedestrians stuck mostly to the other side of this street, and 
those who came near this house did not linger.
Even if someone did happen to look, they wouldn't see me, because I'm not really 
here. For better or worse, I've already left my world behind. I've started to 
cross over. His world is somewhere ahead. This ...
This was the hell between.
Jake stepped into the corridor, and although he screamed when the door swung 
shut behind him with the sound of a mausoleum door being slammed, he wasn't 
surprised.
Down deep, he wasn't surprised at all.


28
ONCE UPON A TIME there had been a young woman named Detta Walker who liked to 
frequent the honky-tonks and roadhouses along Ridgeline Road outside of Nutley 
and on Route 88 down by the power-lines, out­side of Amhigh. She had had legs in 
those days, and, as the song says, she knew how to use them. She would wear some 
tight cheap dress that looked like silk but wasn't and dance with the white boys 
while the band played all those ofay party tunes like "Double Shot of My Baby's 
Love" and "The Hippy-Hippy Shake." Eventually she would cut one of the honkeys 
out of the pack and let him lead her back to his car in the parking lot. There 
she would make out with him (one of the world's great soul-kissers was Detta 
Walker, and no slouch with the old fingernails, either) until he was just about 
insane . . . and then she'd shut him down. What happened next? Well, that was 
the question, wasn't it? That was the game. Some of them wept and begged -- ^all 
right, but not great. Some of them raved and roared, which was better.
And although she had been slapped upside the head, punched in the eye, spat 
upon, and once kicked in the ass so hard she had gone sprawling in the gravel 
parking lot of The Red Windmill, she had never been raped. They had all gone 
home with the blue balls, every damned ofay one of them. Which meant, in Detta 
Walker's book, that she was the reigning champion, the undefeated queen. Of 
what? Of them. Of all those crewcut, button-down, tightass honkey motherfuckers.
Until now.
There was no way to withstand the demon who lived in the speaking ring. No 
doorhandles to grab, no car to tumble out of, no building to run back into, no 
cheek to slap, no face to claw, no balls to kick if the ofay sumbitch was slow 
getting the message.
The demon was on her . . . and then, in a flash, it -- he -- was in her.
She could feel it -- him -- pressing her backward, even though she could not see 
it -- him. She could not see its -- his -- hands, but she could see their work as her 
dress tore violently open in several places. Then, suddenly, pain. It felt as 
though she were being ripped open down there, and in her agony and surprise she 
screamed. Eddie looked around, his eyes narrowing.
"I'm all right!" she yelled. "Go on, Eddie, forget about me! I'm all right!"
But she wasn't. For the first time since Detta had strode onto the sexual 
battlefield at the age of thirteen, she was losing. A horrid, engorged coldness 
plunged into her; it was like being fucked with an icicle.
Dimly, she saw Eddie turn away and begin drawing in the dirt again, his 
expression of warm concern fading back into the terrible, concen­trated coldness 
she sometimes felt in him and saw on his face. Well, that was all right, wasn't 
it? She had told him to go on, to forget her, to do what he needed to do in 
order to bring the boy over. This was her part of Jake's drawing and she had no 
right to hate either of the men, who had not twisted her arm -- or anything else -- to 
make her do it, but as the coldness froze her and Eddie turned away from her, 
she hated them both; could, in fact, have torn their honkey balls off.
Then Roland was with her, his strong hands were on her shoulders and although he 
didn't speak, she heard him: Don't fight. You can't win if you fight -- you can 
only die. Sex is its weapon, Susannah, but it's also its weakness.
Yes. It was always their weakness. The only difference was that this time she 
was going to have to give a little more -- but maybe that was all right. Maybe in 
the end, she would be able to make this invisible honkey demon pay a little 
more.
She forced herself to relax her thighs. Immediately they spread apart, pushing 
long, curved fans in the dirt. She threw her head back into the rain which was 
now pelting down and sensed its face lolling just over hers, eager eyes drinking 
in every contorted grimace which passed over her face.
She reached up with one hand, as if to slap . . . and instead, slid it around 
the nape of her demon rapist's neck. It was like cupping a palmful of solid 
smoke. And did she feel it twitch backward, surprised at her caress? She tilted 
her pelvis upward, using her grip on the invisible neck to create the leverage. 
At the same time she spread her legs even wider, splitting what remained of her 
dress up the side-seams. God, it was huge!
"Come on," she panted. "You ain't gonna rape me. You ain't. You want t'fuck me? 
I fuck you. I give you a fuckin like you ain't nevah had! Fuck you to death!"
She felt the engorgement within her tremble; felt the demon try, at least 
momentarily, to draw back and regroup.
"Unh-unh, honey," she croaked. She squeezed her thighs inward, pinning it. "De 
fun jus' startin'." She began to flex her butt, humping at the invisible 
presence. She reached up with her free hand, interlaced all ten fingers, and 
allowed herself to fall backward with her hips cocked, her straining arms 
seeming to hold nothing. She tossed her sweat-damp hair out of her eyes; her 
lips split in a sharklike grin.
Let me go! a voice cried out in her mind. But at the same time she could feel 
the owner of the voice responding in spite of itself.
"No way, sugar. You wanted it ... now you goan get it." She thrust upward, 
holding on, concentrating fiercely on the freezing cold inside her. "I'm goan 
melt that icicle, sugar, and when it's gone, what you goan do then?" Her lips 
rose and fell, rose and fell. She squeezed her thighs mercilessly together, 
closed her eyes, clawed more deeply into the unseen neck, and prayed that Eddie 
would be quick.
She didn't know how long she could do this.


29
THE PROBLEM, JAKE THOUGHT, was simple: somewhere in this dank, terrible place 
was a locked door. The right door. All he had to do was find it. But it was 
hard, because he could feel the presence in the house gathering. The sound of 
those dissonant, gabbling voices was beginning to merge into one sound -- a low, 
grating whisper.
And it was approaching.
A door stood open to the right. Beside it, thumbtacked to the wall, was a faded 
daguerreotype which showed a hanged man dangling like a piece of rotten fruit 
from a dead tree. Beyond it was a room that had once been a kitchen. The stove 
was gone, but an ancient icebox -- the land with the circular refrigeration drum on 
top -- stood on the far side of the hilly, faded linoleum. Its door gaped open. 
Black, smelly stuff was caked inside and had trickled down to form a 
long-congealed puddle on the floor. The kitchen cabinets stood open. In one he 
saw what was probably the world's oldest can of Snow's Clam Fry-Ettes. Poking 
out of another was the head of a dead rat. Its eyes were white and seemingly in 
motion, and after a moment Jake realized that the empty sockets were filled with 
squirming maggots.
Something fell into his hair with a flabby thump. Jake screamed in surprise, 
reached for it, and grasped something that felt like a soft, bris­tle-covered 
rubber ball. He pulled it free and saw it was a spider, its bloated body the 
color of a fresh bruise. Its eyes regarded him with stupid malevolence. Jake 
threw it against the wall. It broke open and splattered there, legs twitching 
feebly.
Another one dropped onto his neck. Jake felt a sudden painful bite just below 
the place where his hair stopped. He ran backward into the hall, tripped over 
the fallen banister, fell heavily, and felt the spider pop. Its innards -- wet, 
feverish, and slippery -- slid between his shoulder-blades like warm egg-yoke. Now 
he could see other spiders in the kitchen doorway. Some hung on almost invisible 
silken threads like obscene plumb-bobs; others simply dropped on the floor in a 
series of muddy plops and scuttered eagerly over to greet him.
Jake flailed to his feet, still screaming. He felt something in his mind, 
something that felt like a frayed rope, starting to give way. He supposed it was 
his sanity, and at that realization, Jake's considerable courage finally broke. 
He could bear this no longer, no matter what the stake. He bolted, meaning to 
flee if he still could, and realized too late that he had turned the wrong way 
and was running deeper into The Mansion instead of back toward the porch.
He lunged into a space too big to be a parlor or living room; it seemed to be a 
ballroom. Elves with strange, sly smiles on their faces capered on the 
wallpaper, peering at Jake from beneath peaked green caps. A mouldy couch was 
pushed against one wall. In the center of the warped wooden floor was a 
splintered chandelier, its rusty chain lying in snarls among the spilled glass 
beads and dusty teardrop pendants. Jake skirted the wreck, snatching one 
terrified glance back over his shoulder. He saw no spiders; if not for the 
nastiness still trickling down his back, he might have believed he had imagined 
them.
He looked forward again and came to a sudden, skidding halt. Ahead, a pair of 
French doors stood half-open on their recessed tracks. Another hallway stretched 
beyond. At the end of this second corridor stood a closed door with a golden 
knob. Written across the door -- or perhaps carved into it -- were two words:

THE BOY

Below the doorknob was a filigreed silver plate and a keyhole.
I found it! Jake thought fiercely. I finally found it! That's it! That's the 
door!
From behind him a low groaning noise began, as if the house was beginning to 
tear itself apart. Jake turned and looked back across the ballroom. The wall on 
the far side of the room had begun to swell outward, pushing the ancient couch 
ahead of it. The old wallpaper shud­dered; the elves began to ripple and dance. 
In places the paper simply snapped upward in long curls, like windowshades which 
have been released too suddenly. The plaster bulged forward in a pregnant curve. 
From beneath it, Jake could hear dry snapping sounds as the lathing broke, 
rearranging itself into some new, as-yet-hidden shape. And still the sound 
increased. Only it was no longer precisely a groan; now it sounded like a snarl.
He stared, hypnotized, unable to pull his eyes away.
The plaster didn't crack and then vomit outward in chunks; it seemed to have 
become plastic, and as the wall continued to bulge, making an irregular white 
bubble-shape from which scraps and draggles of wallpaper still hung, the surface 
began to mold itself into hills and curves and valleys. Suddenly Jake realized 
he was looking at a huge plastic face that was pushing itself out of the wall. 
It was like looking at someone who has walked headfirst into a wet sheet.
There was a loud snap as a chunk of broken lath tore free of the rippling wall. 
It became the jagged pupil of one eye. Below it, the wall writhed into a 
snarling mouth filled with jagged teeth. Jake could see fragments of wallpaper 
clinging to its lips and gums.
One plaster hand tore free of the wall, trailing an unravelling brace­let of 
rotted electrical wire. It grasped the sofa and threw it aside, leaving ghostly 
white fingermarks on its dark surface. More lathing burst free as the plaster 
fingers flexed. They created sharp, splintery claws. Now the face was all the 
way out of the wall and staring at Jake with its one wooden eye. Above it, in 
the center of its forehead, one wallpaper elf still danced. It looked like a 
weird tattoo. There was a wrenching sound as the thing began to slide forward. 
The hall doorway tore out and became a hunched shoulder. The thing's one free 
hand clawed across the floor, spraying glass droplets from the fallen 
chandelier.
Jake's paralysis broke. He turned, lunged through the French doors, and pelted 
down the second length of hallway with his pack bouncing and his right hand 
groping for the key in his pocket. His heart was a runaway factory machine in 
his chest. Behind him, the thing which was crawling out of The Mansion's 
woodwork bellowed at him, and although there were no words, Jake knew what it 
was saying; it was telling him to stand still, telling him that it was useless 
to run, telling him there was no escape. The whole house now seemed alive; the 
air resounded with splintering wood and squalling beams. The humming, insane 
voice of the doorkeeper was everywhere.
Jake's hand closed on the key. As he brought it out, one of the notches caught 
in the pocket. His fingers, wet with sweat, slipped. The key fell to the floor, 
bounced, dropped through a crack between two warped boards, and disappeared.


30
"HE'S IN TROUBLE!" SUSANNAH heard Eddie shout, but the sound of his voice was 
distant. She had plenty of trouble herself . . . but she thought she might be 
doing okay, just the same.
I'm goan melt that icicle, sugar, she had told the demon. I'm goan melt it, and 
when it's gone, what you goan do then?
She hadn't melted it, exactly, but she had changed it. The thing inside her was 
certainly giving her no pleasure, but at least the terrible pain had subsided 
and it was no longer cold. It was trapped, unable to disengage. Nor was she 
holding it in with her body, exactly. Roland had said sex was its weakness as 
well as its weapon, and he had been right, as usual. It had taken her, but she 
had also taken it, and now it was as if each of them had a finger stuck in one 
of those fiendish Chinese tubes, where yanking only sticks you tighter.
She hung onto one idea for dear life; had to, because all other conscious 
thought had vanished. She had to hold this sobbing, frightened, vicious thing in 
the snare of its own helpless lust. It wriggled and thrust and convulsed within 
her, screaming to be let go at the same time it used her body with greedy, 
helpless intensity, but she would not let it go free.
And what's gonna happen when I finally do let go? she wondered desperately. 
What's it gonna do to pay me back?
She didn't know.


31
THE RAIN WAS FALLING in sheets, threatening to turn the circle within the stones 
into a sea of mud. "Hold something over the door!" Eddie shouted. "Don't let the 
rain wash it out!"
Roland snatched a glance at Susannah and saw she was still strug­gling with the 
demon. Her eyes were half-shut, her mouth pulled down in a harsh grimace. He 
could not see or hear the demon, but he could sense its angry, frightened 
thrashings.
Eddie turned his streaming face toward him. "Did you hear me?" he shouted. "Get 
something over the goddam door, and do it NOW!"
Roland yanked one of their hides from his pack and held a corner in each hand. 
Then he stretched his arms out and leaned over Eddie, creating a makeshift tent. 
The tip of Eddie's homemade pencil was caked with mud. He wiped it across his 
arm, leaving a smear the color of bitter chocolate, then wrapped his fist around 
the stick again and bent over his drawing. It was not exactly the same size as 
the door on Jake's side of the barrier -- the ratio was perhaps .75:1 -- but it would 
be big enough for Jake to come through . . . if the keys worked.
If he even has a key, isn't that what you mean? he asked himself. Suppose he's 
dropped it . . . or that house made him drop it?
He drew a plate under the circle which represented the doorknob, hesitated, and 
then squiggled the familiar shape of a keyhole within it:

He hesitated. There was one more thing, but what? It was hard to think of, 
because it felt as if there were a tornado roaring through his head, a tornado 
with random thoughts flipping around inside it instead of uprooted barns and 
privies and chicken-houses.
"Come on, sugah!" Susannah cried from behind him. "You weakenin on me! Wassa 
matta? I thought you was some kind of hot-shit studboy!"
Boy. That was it.
Carefully, he wrote THE BOY across the top panel of the door with the tip of his 
stick. At the instant he finished the Y, the drawing changed. The circle of 
rain-darkened earth he had drawn suddenly darkened even more . . . and pushed up 
from the ground, becoming a dark, gleaming knob. And instead of brown, wet earth 
within the shape of the keyhole, he could see dim light.
Behind him, Susannah shrieked at the demon again, urging it on, but now she 
sounded as if she were tiring. This had to end, and soon.
Eddie bent forward from the waist like a Muslim saluting Allah, and put his eye 
to the keyhole he had drawn. He looked through it into his own world, into that 
house which he and Henry had gone to see in May of 1977, unaware (except he, 
Eddie, had not been unaware; no, not totally unaware, even then) that a boy from 
another part of the city was following them.
He saw a hallway. Jake was down on his hands and knees, tugging frantically at a 
board. Something was coming for him. Eddie could see it, but at the same time he 
could not -- it was as if part of his brain refused to see it, as if seeing would 
lead to comprehension and comprehension to madness.
"Hurry up, Jake!" he screamed into the keyhole. "For Christ's sake, move it!"
Above the speaking ring, thunder ripped the sky like cannon-fire and the rain 
turned to hail.


32
FOR A MOMENT AFTER the key fell, Jake only stood where he was, staring down at 
the narrow crack between the boards.
Incredibly, he felt sleepy.
That shouldn't have happened, he thought. It's one thing too much. I can't go on 
with this, not one minute, not one single second longer. I'm going to curl up 
against that door instead. I'm going to go to sleep, right away, all at once, 
and when it grabs me and pulls me toward its mouth, I'll never wake up.
Then the thing coming out of the wall grunted, and when Jake looked up, his urge 
to give in vanished in a single stroke of terror. Now it was all the way out of 
the wall, a giant plaster head with one broken wooden eye and one reaching 
plaster hand. Chunks of lathing stood out on its skull in random hackles, like a 
child's drawing of hair. It saw Jake and opened its mouth, revealing jagged 
wooden teeth. It grunted again. Plaster-dust drifted out of its yawning mouth 
like cigar smoke.
Jake fell to his knees and peered into the crack. The key was a small brave 
shimmer of silvery light down there in the dark, but the crack was far too 
narrow to admit his fingers. He seized one of the boards and yanked with all his 
might. The nails which held it groaned ... but held.
There was a jangling crash. He looked down the hallway and saw the hand, which 
was bigger than his whole body, seize the fallen chandelier and throw it aside. 
The rusty chain which had once held it suspended rose like a bullwhip and then 
came down with a heavy crump. A dead lamp on a rusty chain rattled above Jake, 
dirty glass chattering against ancient brass.
The doorkeeper's head, attached only to its single hunched shoulder and reaching 
arm, slid forward above the floor. Behind it, the remains of the wall collapsed 
in a cloud of dust. A moment later the fragments humped up and became the 
creature's twisted, bony back.
The doorkeeper saw Jake looking and seemed to grin. As it did, splinters of wood 
poked out of its wrinkling cheeks. It dragged itself forward through the 
dust-hazed ballroom, mouth opening and closing. Its great hand groped amid the 
ruins, feeling for purchase, and ripped one of the French doors at the end of 
the hall from its track.
Jake screamed breathlessly and began to wrench at the board again. It wouldn't 
come, but the gunslinger's voice did:
"The other one, Jake! Try the other one!"
He let go of the board he had been yanking at and grabbed the one on the other 
side of the crack. As he did, another voice spoke. He heard this one not in his 
head but with his ears, and understood it was coming from the other side of the 
door -- the door he had been looking for ever since the day he hadn't been run over 
in the street.
"Hurry up, Jake! For Christ's sake, hurry up!"
When he yanked this other board, it came free so easily that he almost tumbled 
over backward.


33
Two WOMEN WERE STANDING in the doorway of the used appliance shop across the 
street from The Mansion. The older was the proprietor; the younger had been her 
only customer when the sounds of crashing walls and breaking beams began. Now, 
without knowing they were doing it, they linked arms about each other's waists 
and stood that way, trembling like children who hear a noise in the dark.
Up the street, a trio of boys on their way to the Dutch Hill Little League field 
stood gaping at the house, their Red Ball Flyer wagon filled with baseball 
equipment forgotten behind them. A delivery driver nosed his van into the curb 
and got out to look. The patrons of Henry's Corner Market and the Dutch Hill Pub 
came straggling up the street, looking around wildly.
Now the ground began to tremble, and a fan of fine cracks started to spread 
across Rhinehold Street.
"Is it an earthquake?" the delivery van driver shouted at the women standing 
outside the appliance shop, hut instead of waiting for an answer he jumped hack 
behind the wheel of his van and drove away rapidly, swerving to the wrong side 
of the street to keep away from the ruined house which was the epicenter of this 
convulsion.
The entire house seemed to be bowing inward. Boards splintered, jumped off its 
face, and rained down into the yard. Dirty gray-black waterfalls of slate 
shingles poured down from the eaves. There was an earsplitting bang and a long, 
zigzagging crack shot down the center of The Mansion. The door disappeared into 
it and then the whole house began to swallow itself from the outside in.
The younger woman suddenly broke the older one's grip. "I'm get­ting out of 
here," she said, and began to run up the street without looking back.


34
A HOT, STRANGE WIND began to sigh down the hallway, blowing Jake's sweaty hair 
back from his brow as his fingers closed over the silver key. He now understood 
on some instinctive level what this place was, and what was happening. The 
doorkeeper was not just in the house, it was the house: every board, every 
shingle, every windowsill, every eave. And now it was pushing forward, becoming 
some crazily jumbled representa­tion of its true shape as it did. It meant to 
catch him before he could use the key. Beyond the giant white head and the 
crooked, hulking shoul­der, he could see boards and shingles and wire and bits 
of glass -- even the front door and the broken banister -- flying up the main hall and 
into the ballroom, joining the form which bulked there, creating more and more 
of the misshapen plaster-man that was even now groping toward him with its 
freakish hand.
Jake yanked his own hand out of the hole in the floor and saw it was covered 
with huge trundling beetles. He slapped it against the wall to knock them off, 
and cried out as the wall first opened and then tried to close around his wrist. 
He yanked his hand free just in time, whirled, and jammed the silver key into 
the hole in the plate.
The plaster-man roared again, but its voice was momentarily drowned out by a 
harmonic shout which Jake recognized: he had heard it in the vacant lot, but it 
had been quiet then, perhaps dreaming. Now it was an unequivocal cry of triumph. 
That sense of certainty -- over­whelming, inarguable -- filled him again, and this 
time he felt sure there would be no disappointment. He heard all the affirmation 
he needed in that voice. It was the voice of the rose.
The dim light in the hallway was blotted out as the plaster hand tore away the 
other French door and squeezed into the corridor. The face socked itself into 
the opening above the hand, peering at Jake. The plas­ter fingers crawled toward 
him like the legs of a huge spider.
Jake turned the key and felt a sudden surge of power rush up his arm. He heard a 
heavy, muffled thump as the locked bolt inside with­drew. He seized the knob, 
turned it, and yanked the door open. It swung wide. Jake cried out in confused 
horror as he saw what lay behind.
The doorway was blocked with earth, from top to bottom and side to side. Roots 
poked out like bunches of wire. Worms, seeming as con­fused as Jake was himself, 
crawled hither and thither on the door-shaped pack of dirt. Some dived back into 
it; others only went on crawling about, as if wondering where the earth which 
had been below them a moment ago had gone. One dropped onto Jake's sneaker.
The keyhole shape remained for a moment, shedding a spot of misty white light on 
Jake's shirt. Beyond it -- so close, so out of reach -- he could hear rain and a 
muffled boom of thunder across an open sky. Then the keyhole shape was also 
blotted out, and gigantic plaster fingers curled around Jake's lower leg.


35
EDDIE DID NOT FEEL the sting of the hail as Roland dropped the hide, got to his 
feet, and ran to where Susannah lay.
The gunslinger grabbed her beneath the arms and dragged her -- as gently and 
carefully as he could -- across to where Eddie crouched. "Let it go when I tell 
you, Susannah!" Roland shouted. "Do you understand? When I tell you!"
Eddie saw and heard none of this. He heard only Jake, screaming faintly on the 
other side of the door.
The time had come to use the key.
He pulled it out of his shirt and slid it into the keyhole he had drawn. He 
tried to turn it. The key would not turn. Not so much as a millimeter. Eddie 
lifted his face to the pelting hail, oblivious to the iceballs which struck his 
forehead and cheeks and lips, leaving welts and red blotches.
"NO!" he howled. "OH GOD, PLEASE! NO!"
But there was no answer from God; only another crash of thunder and a streak of 
lightning across a sky now filled with racing clouds.


36
JAKE LUNGED UPWARD, CRABBED the chain of the lamp which hung above him, and 
ripped free of the doorkeeper's clutching fingers. He swung backward, used the 
packed earth in the doorway to push off, and then swung forward again like 
Tarzan on a vine. He raised his legs and kicked out at the clutching fingers as 
he closed on them. Plaster exploded in chunks, revealing a crudely jointed 
skeleton of lathing beneath. The plaster-man roared, a sound of intermingled 
hunger and rage. Beneath that cry, Jake could hear the whole house collapsing, 
like the one in that story of Edgar Allan Poe.
He pendulumed back on the chain, struck the wall of packed earth which blocked 
the doorway, then swung forward again. The hand reached up for him and he kicked 
at it wildly, legs scissoring. He felt a stab of pain in his foot as those 
wooden fingers clutched. When he swung back again, he was minus a sneaker.
He tried for a higher grip on the chain, found it, and began to shinny up toward 
the ceiling. There was a muffled, creaking thud above him. Fine plaster dust had 
begun to sift down on his upturned, sweating face. The ceiling had begun to sag; 
the lamp-chain was pulling out of it a link at a time. There was a thick 
crunching sound from the end of the hallway as the plaster-man finally pushed 
its hungry face through the opening.
Jake swung helplessly back toward that face, screaming.


37
EDDIE'S TERROR AND PANIC suddenly fell away. The cloak of coldness dropped over 
him -- a cloak Roland of Gilead had worn many times. It was the only armor the true 
gunslinger possessed . . . and all such a one needed. At the same moment, a 
voice spoke in his mind. He had been haunted by such voices over the last three 
months; his mother's voice, Roland's voice, and, of course, Henry's. But this 
one, he recognized with relief, was his own, and it was at last calm and 
rational and courageous.
You saw the shape of the key in the fire, you saw it again in the wood, and both 
times you saw it perfectly. Later on, you put a blindfold of fear over your 
eyes. Take it off. Take it off and look again. It may not be too late, even now.
He was faintly aware that the gunslinger was staring at him grimly; faintly 
aware that Susannah was shrieking at the demon in a fading but still defiant 
voice; faintly aware that, on the other side of the door, Jake was screaming in 
terror -- or was it now agony?
Eddie ignored them all. He pulled the wooden key out of the key-hole he had 
drawn, out of the door which was now real, and looked at it fixedly, trying to 
recapture the innocent delight he had sometimes known as a child -- the delight of 
seeing a coherent shape hidden in senselessness. And there it was, the place 
he'd gone wrong, so clearly visible he couldn't understand how he'd missed it in 
the first place. I really must have been wearing a blindfold, he thought. It was 
the s-shape at the end of the key, of course. The second curve was a bit too 
fat. Just a tiny bit.
"Knife," he said, and held out his hand like a surgeon in an operating room. 
Roland slapped it into his palm without a word.
Eddie gripped the top of the blade between the thumb and first finger of his 
right hand. He bent over the key, unmindful of the hail which pelted his 
unprotected neck, and the shape in the wood stood out more clearly -- stood out 
with its own lovely and undeniable reality.
He scraped.
Once.
Delicately.
A single sliver of ash, so thin it was almost transparent, curled up from the 
belly of the s-shape at the end of the key.
On the other side of the door, Jake Chambers shrieked again.


38
THE CHAIN LET GO with a rattling crash and Jake fell heavily, landing on his 
knees. The doorkeeper roared in triumph. The plaster hand seized Jake about his 
hips and began to drag him down the hall. He stuck his legs out in front of him 
and planted his feet, but it did no good. He felt splinters and rust-blunted 
nails digging into his skin as the hand tightened its grip and continued to drag 
him forward.
The face appeared to be stuck just inside the entrance to the hallway like a 
cork in a bottle. The pressure it had exerted to get in that far had squeezed 
the rudimentary features into a new shape, that of some mon­strous, malformed 
troll. The mouth yawned open to receive him. Jake groped madly for the key, 
wanting to use it as some last-ditch talisman, but of course he had left it in 
the door.
'"You son of a bitch!" he screamed, and threw himself backward with all his 
strength, bowing his back like an Olympic diver, unmindful of the broken boards 
which dug into him like a belt of nails. He felt his jeans slide down on his 
hips, and the grip of the hand slipped momentarily.
Jake lunged again. The hand clenched brutally, but Jake's jeans slid down to his 
knees and his back slammed to the floor, with the pack to cushion the blow. The 
hand loosened, perhaps wanting to secure a firmer grip upon its prey. Jake was 
able to draw his knees up a little, and when the hand tightened again, Jake 
drove his legs forward. The hand yanked backward at the same time, and what Jake 
had hoped for happened: his jeans (and his remaining sneaker) were peeled from 
his body, leaving him free again, at least for the moment. He saw the hand 
rotate on his wrist of boards and disintegrating plaster and jam his dungarees 
into his mouth. Then he was crawling back toward the blocked doorway on his 
hands and knees, oblivious of the glass fragments from the fallen lamp, wanting 
only to get his key again.
He had almost reached the door when the hand closed over his naked legs and 
began to pull him back once more.


39
THE SHAPE WAS THERE now, finally all there.
Eddie put the key back into the keyhole and applied pressure. For a moment there 
was resistance . . . and then it revolved beneath his hand. He heard the locking 
mechanism turn, heard the bar pull back, felt the key crack in two the moment it 
had served its purpose. He grasped the dark, polished knob with both hands and 
pulled. There was a sense of great weight wheeling on an unseen pivot. A feeling 
that his arm had been gifted with boundless strength. And a clear knowledge that 
two worlds had suddenly come in contact, and a way had been opened between them.
He felt a moment of dizziness and disorientation, and as he looked through the 
doorway he realized why: although he was looking down -- vertically -- he was seeing 
horizontally. It was like a strange optical illusion created with prisms and 
mirrors. Then he saw Jake being pulled backward down the glass- and 
plaster-littered hallway, elbows dragging, calves pinned-together by a giant 
hand. And he saw the monstrous mouth which awaited him, fuming some white fog 
that might have been either smoke or dust.
"Roland!" Eddie shouted. "Roland, it's got h -- "
Then he was knocked aside.


40
SUSANNAH WAS AWARE OF being hauled up and whirled around. The world was a 
carousel blur: standing stones, gray sky, hailstone-littered ground... and a 
rectangular hole that looked like a trapdoor in the ground. Screams drifted up 
from it. Within her, the demon raved and struggled, wanting only to escape but 
helpless to do so until she allowed it.
"Now!" Roland was shouting. "Let it go now, Susannah! For your father's sake, 
let it go NOW!"
And she did.
She had (with Detta's help) constructed* a trap for it in her mind, something 
like a net of woven rushes, and now she cut them. She felt the demon fly back 
from her at once, and there was an instant of terrible hollowness, terrible 
emptiness. These feelings were at once overshadowed by relief and a grim sense 
of nastiness and defilement.
As its invisible weight fell away, she glimpsed it -- an inhuman shape like a 
manta-ray with huge, curling wings and something that looked like a cruel baling 
hook curving out and up from beneath. She saw/sensed the thing flash above the 
open hole in the ground. Saw Eddie looking up with wide eyes. Saw Roland spread 
his arms wide to catch the demon.
The gunslinger staggered back, almost knocked off his feet by the unseen weight 
of the demon. Then he rocked forward again with an armload of nothing.
Clutching it, he jumped through the doorway and was gone.


41
SUDDEN WHITE LIGHT FLOODED the hallway of The Mansion; hailstones struck the 
walls and bounced up from the broken boards of the floor. Jake heard confused 
shouts, then saw the gunslinger come through. He seemed to leap through, as if 
he had come from above. His arms were held far out in front of him, the tips of 
the fingers locked.
Jake felt his feet slide into the doorkeeper's mouth.
"Roland!" he shrieked. "Roland, help me!"
The gunslinger's hands parted and his arms were immediately thrown wide. He 
staggered backward. Jake felt serrated teeth touch his skin, ready to tear flesh 
and grind bone, and then something huge rushed over his head like a gust of 
wind. A moment later the teeth were gone. The hand which had pinned his legs 
together relaxed. He heard an unearthly shriek of pain and surprise begin to 
issue from the doorkeeper's dusty throat, and then it was muffled, crammed back.
Roland grabbed Jake and hauled him to his feet.
"You came!" Jake shouted. "You really came!"
"I came, yes. By the grace of the gods and the courage of my friends, I came."
As the doorkeeper roared again, Jake burst into tears of relief and terror. Now 
the house sounded like a ship foundering in a heavy sea. Chunks of wood and 
plaster fell all around them. Roland swept Jake into his arms and ran for the 
door. The plaster hand, groping wildly, struck one of his booted feet and spun 
him into the wall, which again tried to bite. Roland pushed forward, turned, and 
drew his gun. He fired twice into the aimlessly thrashing hand, vaporizing one 
of the crude plaster fingers. Behind them, the face of the doorkeeper had gone 
from white to a dingy purplish-black, as if it were choking on 
something -- something which had been fleeing so rapidly that it had entered the 
monster's mouth and jammed in its gullet before it realized what it was doing.
Roland turned again and ran through the doorway. Although there was now no 
visible barrier, he was stopped cold for a moment, as if an unseen meshwork had 
been drawn across the chair.
Then he felt Eddie's hands in his hair and he was yanked not for­ward but 
upward.


42
THEY EMERGED INTO WET air and slackening hail like babies being born. Eddie was 
the midwife, as die gunslinger had told him he must be. He was sprawled forward 
on his chest and belly, his arms out of sight in the doorway, his hands 
clutching fistfuls of Roland's hair.
"Suze! Help me!"
She wriggled forward, reached through, and groped a hand under Roland's chin. He 
came up to her with his head cocked backward and his lips parted in a snarl of 
pain and effort.
Eddie felt a tearing sensation and one of his hands came free holding a thick 
lock of the gunslinger's gray-streaked hair. "He's slipping!"
"This motherfucker . . . ain't . . . nowhere!" Susannah gasped, and gave a 
terrific wrench, as if she meant to snap Roland's neck.
Two small hands shot out of the doorway in the center of the circle and clutched 
one of the edges. Freed of Jake's weight, Roland got an elbow up, and a moment 
later he was boosting himself out. As he did it, Eddie grabbed Jake's wrists and 
hauled him up.
Jake rolled onto his back and lay there, panting.
Eddie turned to Susannah, took her in his arms, and began to rain kisses on her 
forehead, cheeks, and neck. He was laughing and crying at the same time. She 
clung to him, breathing hard . . . but there was a small, satisfied smile on her 
lips and one hand slipped over Eddie's wet hair in slow, contented strokes.
From below them came a cauldron of black sounds: squeals, grunts, thuds, 
crashes.
Roland crawled away from the hole with his head down. His hair stood up in a 
wild wad. Threads of blood trickled down his cheeks. "Shut it!" he gasped at 
Eddie. "Shut it, for your father's sake!"
Eddie got the door moving, and those vast, unseen hinges did the rest. The door 
fell with a gigantic, toneless bang, cutting off all sound from below. As Eddie 
watched, the lines that had marked its edges faded back to smudged marks in the 
dirt. The doorknob lost its dimension and was once more only a circle he'd drawn 
with a stick. Where the keyhole had been there was only a crude shape with a 
chunk of wood sticking out of it, like the hilt of a sword from a stone.
Susannah went to Jake and pulled him gently to a sitting position. "You all 
right, sugar?"
He looked at her dazedly. "Yes, I think so. Where is he? The gunslinger? There's 
something I have to ask him."
"I'm here, Jake," Roland said. He got to his feet, drunk-walked over to Jake, 
and hunkered beside him. He touched the boy's smooth cheek almost unbelievingly.
"You won't let me drop this time?"
"No," Roland said. "Not this time, not ever again." But in the deep­est darkness 
of his heart, he thought of the Tower and wondered.


43
THE HAIL CHANGED TO a hard, driving rain, but Eddie could see gleams of blue sky 
behind the unravelling clouds in the north. The storm was going to end soon, but 
in the meantime, they were going to get drenched.
He found he didn't mind. He could not remember when he had felt so calm, so at 
peace with himself, so utterly drained. This mad adven­ture wasn't over yet -- he 
suspected, in fact, that it had barely begun --  but today they had won a big one.
"Su/e?" He pushed her hair away from her face and looked into her dark eyes. 
"Are you okay? Did it hurt you?"
"Hurt me a little, but I'm okay. I think that bitch Detta Walker is still the 
undefeated Roadhouse Champeen, demon or no demon."
"What's that mean?"
She grinned impishly. "Not much, not anymore . . . thank God. How about you, 
Eddie? All right?"
Eddie listened for Henry's voice and didn't hear it. He had an idea that Henry's 
voice might be gone for good. "Even better than that," he said, and, laughing, 
folded her into his arms again. Over her shoulder he could see what was left of 
the door: only a few faint lines and angles. Soon the rain would wash those 
away, too.


44
"WHAT's YOUR NAME?" JAKE asked the woman whose legs stopped just above the knee. 
He was suddenly aware that he had lost his pants in his struggle to escape the 
doorkeeper, and he pulled the tail of his shirt down over his underwear. There 
wasn't very much left of her dress, either, as far as that went.
"Susannah Dean," she said. "I already know your name."
"Susannah," Jake said thoughtfully. "I don't suppose your father owns a railroad 
company, does he?"
She looked astonished for a moment, then threw her head back and laughed. "Why, 
no, sugar! He was a dentist who went and invented a few things and got rich. 
What makes you ask a thing like that?"
Jake didn't answer. He had turned his attention to Eddie. The terror had already 
left his face, and his eyes had regained that cool, assessing look which Roland 
remembered so well from the way station.
"Hi, Jake," Eddie said. "Good to see you, man."
"Hi," Jake said. "I met you earlier today, but you were a lot younger then."
"I was a lot younger ten minutes ago. Are you okay?"
"Yes," Jake said. "Some scratches, that's all." He looked around. "You haven't 
found the train yet." This was not a question.
Eddie and Susannah exchanged puzzled looks, but Roland only shook his head. "No 
train."
"Are your voices gone?"
Roland nodded. "All gone. Yours?"
"Gone. I'm all together again. We both are."
They looked at the same instant, with the same impulse. As Roland swept Jake 
into his arms, the boy's unnatural self-possession broke and he began to cry -- it 
was the exhausted, relieved weeping of a child who has been lost long, suffered 
much, and is finally safe again. As Roland's arms closed about his waist, Jake's 
own arms slipped about the gunslinger's neck and gripped like hoops of steel.
"I'll never leave you again," Roland said, and now his own tears came. "I swear 
to you on the names of all my fathers: I'll never leave you again."
Yet his heart, that silent, watchful, lifelong prisoner of ka, received the 
words of this promise not just with wonder but with doubt.


















BOOK TWO
LUD


A HEAP OF BROKEN IMAGES












IV-TOWN AND KA-TET









IV
TOWN AND KA-TET


1
FOUR DAYS AFTER EDDIE had yanked him through the doorway between worlds, minus 
his original pair of pants and his sneakers but still in possession of his pack 
and his life, Jake awoke with something warm and wet nuzzling at his face.
If he had come around to such a sensation on any of the three previous mornings, 
he undoubtedly would have wakened his companions with his screams, for he had 
been feverish and his sleep had been haunted by nightmares of the plaster-man. 
In these dreams his pants did not slide free, the doorkeeper kept its grip, and 
it tucked him into its unspeakable mouth, where its teeth came down like the 
bars guarding a castle keep. Jake awoke from these dreams shuddering and moaning 
helplessly.
The fever had been caused by the spider-bite on the back of his neck. When 
Roland examined it on the second day and found it worse instead of better, he 
had conferred briefly with Eddie and had then given Jake a pink pill. "You'll 
want to take four of these every day for at least a week," he said.
Jake had gazed at it doubtfully. "What is it?"
"Cheflet," Roland said, then looked disgustedly at Eddie. "You tell him. I still 
can't say it."
"Keflex. You can trust it, Jake; it came from a government-approved pharmacy in 
good old New York. Roland swallowed a bunch of it, and he's as healthy as a 
horse. Looks a little like one, too, as you can see."
Jake was astonished. "How did you get medicine in New York?"
"That's a long story," the gunslinger said. "You'll hear all of it in time, but 
for now just take the pill."
Jake did. The response was both quick and satisfying. The angry red swelling 
around the bite began to fade in twenty-four hours, and now the fever was gone 
as well.
The warm thing nuzzled again and Jake sat up with a jerk, his eyes flying open.
The creature which had been licking his cheek took two hasty steps backward. It 
was a billy-bumbler, but Jake didn't know that; he had never seen one before 
now. It was skinnier than the ones Roland's party had seen earlier, and its 
black- and gray-striped fur was matted and mangy. There was a clot of old dried 
blood on one flank. Its gold-ringed black eyes looked at Jake anxiously; its 
hindquarters switched hopefully back and forth. Jake relaxed. He supposed there 
were exceptions to the rule, but he had an idea that something wagging its 
tail -- or trying to -- was probably not too dangerous.
It was just past first light, probably around five-thirty in the morning. Jake 
could peg it no closer than that because his digital Seiko no longer worked ... 
or rather, was working in an extremely eccentric way. When he had first glanced 
at it after coming through, the Seiko claimed it was 98:71:65, a time which did 
not, so far as Jake knew, exist. A longer look showed him that the watch was now 
running backward. If it had been doing this at a steady rate, he supposed it 
might still have been of some use, but it wasn't. It would unwind its numbers at 
what seemed like the right speed for awhile (Jake verified this by saying the 
word "Mississippi" between each number), and then the readout would either stop 
entirely for ten or twenty seconds -- making him think the watch had finally given 
up the ghost -- or a bunch of numbers would blur by all at once.
He had mentioned this odd behavior to Roland and had shown him the watch, 
thinking it would amaze him, but Roland examined it closely for only a moment or 
two before nodding in a dismissive way and telling Jake it was an interesting 
clock, but as a rule no timepiece did very good work these days. So the Seiko 
was useless, but Jake still found himself loath to throw it away . . . because, 
he supposed, it was a piece of his old life, and there were only a few of those 
left.
Right now the Seiko claimed it was sixty-two minutes past forty on a Wednesday, 
Thursday, and Saturday in both December and March.
The morning was extremely foggy; beyond a radius of fifty or sixty feet, the 
world simply disappeared. If this day was like the previous three, the sun would 
show up as a faint white circle in another two hours or so, and by nine-thirty 
the day would be clear and hot. Jake looked around and saw his travelling 
companions (he didn't quite dare call them friends, at least not yet) asleep 
beneath their hide blankets -- Roland close by, Eddie and Susannah a larger hump on 
the far side of the dead campfire.
He once more turned his attention to the animal which had awak­ened him. It 
looked like a combination raccoon and woodchuck, with a dash of dachshund thrown 
in for good measure.
"How you doin, boy?" he asked softly.
"Oy!" the billy-bumbler replied at once, still looking at him anx­iously. Its 
voice was low and deep, almost a bark; the voice of an English footballer with a 
bad cold in his throat.
Jake recoiled, surprised. The billy-bumbler, startled by the quick movement, 
took several further steps backward, seemed about to flee, and then held its 
ground. Its hindquarters wagged back and forth more strenuously than ever, and 
its gold-black eyes continued to regard Jake nervously. The whiskers on its 
snout trembled.
"This one remembers men," a voice remarked at Jake's shoulder. He looked around 
and saw Roland squatting just behind him with his forearms resting on his thighs 
and his long hands dangling between his knees. He was looking at the animal with 
a great deal more interest than he had shown in Jake's watch.
"What is it?" Jake asked softly. He did not want to startle it away; he was 
enchanted. "Its eyes are beautiful!"
"Billy-bumbler," Roland said.
"Umber!" the creature ejaculated, and retreated another step.
"It talks!"
"Not really. Bumblers just repeat what they hear -- or used to. I haven't heard one 
do it in years. This fellow looks almost starved. Proba­bly came to forage."
"He was licking my face. Can I feed it?"
"We'll never get rid of it if you do," Roland said, then smiled a little and 
snapped his fingers. "Hey! Billy!"
The creature mimicked the sound of the snapping fingers somehow; it sounded as 
if it were clucking its tongue against the roof of its mouth. "Ay!" it called in 
its hoarse voice. "Ay, Illy!" Now its ragged hindquarters were positively 
gagging back and forth.
"Go ahead and give it a bite. I knew an old groom once who said a good bumbler 
is good luck. This looks like a good one."
"Yes," Jake agreed. "It does."
"Once they were tame, and every barony had half a dozen roaming around the 
castle or manor-house. They weren't good for much except amusing the children 
and keeping the rat population down. They can be quite faithful -- or were in the 
old days -- although I never heard of one that would remain as loyal as a good dog. 
The wild ones are scavengers. Not dangerous, but a pain in the ass."
"Ass!" cried the bumbler. Its anxious eyes continued to flick back and forth 
between Jake and the gunslinger.
Jake reached into his pack, slowly, afraid to startle the creature, and drew out 
the remains of a gunslinger burrito. He tossed it toward the billy-bumbler. The 
bumbler flinched back and then turned with a small, childlike cry, exposing its 
furry corkscrew tail. Jake felt sure it would run, but it stopped, looking 
doubtfully back over its shoulder.
"Come on," Jake said. "Eat it, boy."
"Oy," the bumbler muttered, but it didn't move.
"Give it time," Roland said. "It'll come, I think."
The bumbler stretched forward, revealing a long and surprisingly graceful neck. 
Its slender black nose twitched as it sniffed the food. At last it trotted 
forward, and Jake noticed it was limping a little. The bum­bler sniffed the 
burrito, then used one paw to separate the chunk of deermeat from the leaf. It 
carried out this operation with a delicacy that was oddly solemn. Once the meat 
was clear of the leaf, the bumbler wolfed it in a single bite, then looked up at 
Jake. "Oy!" it said, and when Jake laughed, it shrank away again.
"That's a skinny one," Eddie said sleepily from behind them. At the sound of his 
voice, the bumbler immediately turned and was gone into the mist.
"You scared it away!" Jake accused.
"Jeez, I'm sorry," Eddie said. He ran a hand through his sleep-corkscrewed hair. 
"If I'd known it was one of your close personal friends, Jake, I would have 
dragged out the goddam coffee-cake."
Roland clapped Jake briefly on the shoulder. "It'll be back."
"Are you sure?"
"If something doesn't kill it, yes. We fed it, didn't we?"
Before Jake could reply, the sound of the drums began again. This was the third 
morning they had heard them, and twice the sound had come to them as afternoon 
slipped down toward evening: a faint, toneless thudding from the direction of 
the city. The sound was clearer this morn­ing, if no more comprehensible. Jake 
hated it. It was as if, somewhere out in that thick and featureless blanket of 
morning mist, the heart of some big animal was beating.
"You still don't have any idea what that is, Roland?" Susannah asked. She had 
slipped on her shift, tied back her hair, and was now folding the blankets 
beneath which she and Eddie had slept.
"No. But I'm sure vve'll find out."
"How reassuring," Eddie said sourly.
Roland got to his feet. "Come on. Let's not waste the day."


2
THE FOG BEGAN TO unravel after they had been on the road for an hour or so. They 
took turns pushing Susannah's chair, and it jolted unhappily along, for the road 
was now mined with large, rough cobblestones. By midmorning the day was fair, 
hot, and cloudless; the city skyline stood out clearly on the southeastern 
horizon. To Jake it didn't look much different from the skyline of New York, 
although he thought these build­ings might not be as high. If the place had 
fallen apart, as most things in Roland's world apparently had, you certainly 
couldn't tell it from here. Like Eddie, Jake had begun to entertain the unspoken 
hope that they might find help there ... or at least a good hot meal.
To their left, thirty or forty miles away, they could see the broad sweep of the 
Send River. Birds circled above it in large flocks. Every now and then one would 
fold its wings and drop like a stone, probably on a fishing expedition. The road 
and the river were moving slowly toward one another, although the junction point 
could not yet be seen.
They could see more buildings ahead. Most looked like farms, and all appeared 
deserted. Some of them had fallen down, but these wrecks seemed to be the work 
of time rather than violence, furthering Eddie's and Jake's hopes of what they 
might find in the city -- hopes each had kept strictly within himself, lest the 
others scoff. Small herds of shaggy beasts grazed their way across the plains. 
They kept well away from the road except to cross, and this they did quickly, at 
a gallop, like packs of small children afraid of traffic. They looked like bison 
to Jake . . . except he saw several which had two heads. He mentioned this to 
the gunslinger and Roland nodded.
"Muties."
"Like under the mountains?" Jake heard the fear in his own voice and knew the 
gunslinger must, also, but he was helpless to keep it out. He remembered that 
endless nightmare journey on the handcart very well.
"I think that here the mutant strains are being bred out. The things we found 
under the mountains were still getting worse."
"What about up there?" Jake pointed toward the city. "Will there be mutants 
there, or -- " He found it was as close as he could come to voicing his hope.
Roland shrugged. "I don't know, Jake. I'd tell you if I did."
They were passing an empty building -- almost surely a farmhouse --  that had been 
partially burnt. But that amid have been lighting, Jake thought, and wondered 
which it was he was trying to do -- explain to himself or fool himself.
Roland, perhaps reading his mind, put an arm around Jake's shoul­ders. "No use 
even trying to guess, Jake," he said. "Whatever happened here happened long 
ago." He pointed. "That over there was probably a corral. Now it's just a few 
sticks poking out of the grass."
"The world has moved on, right?"
Roland nodded.
"What about the people? Did they go to the city, do you think?"
"Some may have," Roland said. "Some are still around."
"What?" Susannah jerked around to look at him, startled.
Roland nodded. "We've been watched the last couple of days. There aren't a lot 
of folk denning in these old buildings, but there are some. There'll be more as 
we get closer to civilization." He paused. "Or what used to be civilization."
"How do you know they're there?" Jake asked.
"Smelled them. Seen a few gardens hidden behind banks of weeds grown purposely 
to hide the crops. And at least one working windmill way back in a grove of 
trees. Mostly, though, it's just a feeling . . . like shade on your face instead 
of sunshine. It'll come to you three in time, I imagine."
"Do you think they're dangerous?" Susannah asked. They were approaching a large, 
ramshackle building that might once have been a storage shed or an abandoned 
country market, and she eyed it uneasily, her hand dropping to the butt of the 
gun she wore on her chest.
"Will a strange dog bite?" the gunslinger countered.
"What's that mean?" Eddie asked. "I hate it when you start up with your Zen 
Buddhist shit, Roland."
"It means I don't know," Roland said. "Who is this man Zen Bud­dhist? Is he wise 
like me?"
Eddie looked at Roland for a long, long time before deciding the gunslinger was 
making one of his rare jokes. "Ah, get outta here," he said. He saw one corner 
of Roland's mouth twitch before he turned away. As Eddie started to push 
Susannah's chair again, something else caught his eye. "Hey, Jake!" he called. 
"I think you made a friend!"
Jake looked around, and a big grin overspread his face. Forty yards to the rear, 
the scrawny billy-bumbler was limping industriously after them, sniffing at the 
weeds which grew between the crumbling cobbles of the Great Road.


3
SOME HOURS LATER ROLAND called a halt and told them to be ready.
"For what?" Eddie asked.
Roland glanced at him. "Anything."
It was perhaps three o'clock in the afternoon. They were standing at a point 
where the Great Road crested a long, rolling drumlin which ran diagonally across 
the plain like a wrinkle in the world's biggest bed­spread. Below and beyond, 
the road ran through the first real town they had seen. It looked deserted, but 
Eddie had not forgotten the conversa­tion that morning. Roland's question -- Will a 
strange dog bite? -- no longer seemed quite so Zenny.
"Jake?"
"What?"
Eddie nodded to the butt of the Ruger, which protruded from the waistband of 
Jake's bluejeans -- the extra pair he had tucked into his pack before leaving home. 
"Do you want me to carry that?"
Jake glanced at Roland. The gunslinger only shrugged, as if to say It's your 
choice.
"Okay." Jake handed it over. He unshouldered his pack, rummaged through it, and 
brought out the loaded clip. He could remember reaching behind the hanging files 
in one of his father's desk drawers to get it, but all that seemed to have 
occurred a long, long time ago. These days, thinking about his life in New York 
and his career as a student at Piper was like looking into the wrong end of a 
telescope.
Eddie took the clip, examined it, rammed it home, checked the safety, then stuck 
the Ruger in his own belt.
"Listen closely and heed me well," Roland said. "If there are people, they'll 
likely be old and much more frightened of us than we are of them. The younger 
folk will be long gone. It's unlikely that those left will have firearms -- in 
fact, ours may be the first guns many of them have ever seen, except maybe for a 
picture or two in the old books. Make no threatening gestures. And the childhood 
rule is a good one: speak only when spoken to."
"What about bows and arrows?" Susannah asked.
"Yes, they may have those. Spears and clubs, as well."
"Don't forget rocks," Eddie said bleakly, looking down at the cluster of wooden 
buildings. The place looked like a ghost-town, but who knew for sure? "And if 
they're hard up for rocks, there's always the cobbles from the road."
"Yes, there's always something," Roland agreed. "But we'll start no trouble 
ourselves -- is that clear?"
They nodded.
"Maybe it would be easier to detour around." Susannah said.
Roland nodded, eyes never leaving the simple geography ahead. Another road 
crossed the Great Road at the center of the town, making the dilapidated 
buildings look like a target centered in the telescopic sight of a high-powered 
rifle. "It would, but we won't. Detouring's a bad habit that's easy to get into. 
It's always better to go straight on, unless there's a good visible reason not 
to. I see no reason not to here. And if there are people, well, that might be a 
good thing. We could do with a little palaver."
Susannah reflected that Roland seemed different now, and she didn't think it was 
simply because the voices in his mind had ceased. This is the way he was when he 
still had wars to fight and men to lead and his old friends around him, she 
thought. How he was before the world moved on and he moved on with it, chasing 
that man Walter. This is how he was before the Big Empty turned him inward on 
himself and made him strange.
"They might know what those drum sounds are," Jake suggested.
Roland nodded again. "Anything they know -- particularly about the city -- would come 
in handy, but there's no need to think ahead too much about people who may not 
even be there."
"Tell you what," Susannah said, "I wouldn't come out if I saw us. Four people, 
three of them armed? We probably look like a gang of those old-time outlaws in 
your stories, Roland -- what do you call them?"
"Harriers." His left hand dropped to the sandalwood grip of his remaining 
revolver and he pulled it a little way out of the holster. "But no harrier ever 
born carried one of these, and if there are old-timers in yon village, they'll 
know it. Let's go."
Jake glanced behind them and saw the bumbler lying in the road with his muzzle 
between his short front paws, watching them closely. "Oy!" Jake called.
"Oy!" the bumbler echoed, and scrambled to its feet at once.
They started down the shallow knoll toward the town with Oy trot­ting along 
behind them.


4
Two BUILDINGS ON THE outskirts had been burned; the rest of the town appeared 
dusty but intact. They passed an abandoned livery stable on the left, a building 
that might have been a market on the right, and then they were in the town 
proper -- such as it was. There were perhaps a dozen rickety buildings standing on 
either side of the road. Alleys ran between some of them. The other road, this 
one a dirt track mostly overgrown with plains grass, ran northeast to southwest.
Susannah looked at its northeast arm and thought: Once there were barges on the 
river, and somewhere down that road there was a landing, and probably another 
shacky little town, mostly saloons and cribs, built up around it. That was the 
last point of trade before the barges went on down to the city. The wagons came 
through this place going to that place and then back again. How long ago was 
that?
She didn't know -- but a long time, from the look of this place.
Somewhere a rusty hinge squalled monotonously. Somewhere else one shutter 
clapped lonesomely to and fro in the plains wind.
There were hitching rails, most of them broken, in front of the buildings. Once 
there had been board sidewalks, but now most of the boards were gone and grass 
grew up through the holes where they had been. The signs on the buildings were 
faded, but some were still read­able, written in a bastardized form of English 
which was, she supposed, what Roland called the low speech. FOOD AND GRAIN, one 
said, and she guessed that might mean feed and grain. On the false front next to 
it, below a crude drawing of a plains-buffalo lying in the grass, were the words 
REST EAT DRINK. Under the sign, batwing doors hung crookedly, moving a little in 
the wind.
"Is that a saloon?" She didn't know exactly why she was whispering, only that 
she couldn't have spoken in a normal tone of voice. It would have been like 
playing "Clinch Mountain Breakdown" on the banjo at a funeral.
"It was," Roland said. He didn't whisper, but his voice was low-pitched and 
thoughtful. Jake was walking close by his side, looking around nervously. Behind 
them, Oy had closed up his distance to ten yards. He trotted quickly, head 
swinging from side to side like a pendulum as he examined the buildings.
Now Susannah began to feel it: that sensation of being watched. It was exactly 
as Roland had said it would be, a feeling sunshine had been replaced by shade.
"There are people, aren't there?" she whispered.
Roland nodded.
Standing on the northeast corner of the crossroads was a building with another 
sign she recognized: HOSTEL, it said, and COTTS. Except for a church with a 
tilted steeple up ahead, it was the tallest building in town -- three stories. She 
glanced up in time to see a white blur, surely a face, draw away from one of the 
glassless windows. Suddenly she wanted to get out of here. Roland was setting a 
slow, deliberate pace, however, and she supposed she knew why. Hurrying might 
give the watchers the impression that they were scared .. . and that they could 
be taken. All the same -- 
At the crossroads the intersecting streets widened out, creating a town square 
which had been overrun by grass and weeds. In the center was an eroded stone 
marker. Above it, a metal box hung on a sagging length of rusty cable.
Roland, with Jake by his side, walked toward the marker. Eddie pushed Susannah's 
chair after. Grass whispered in its spokes and the wind tickled a lock of hair 
against her cheek. Further along the street, the shutter banged and the hinge 
squealed. She shivered and brushed the hair away.
"I wish he'd hurry up," Eddie said in a low voice. "This place gives me the 
creeps."
Susannah nodded. She looked around the square and again she could almost see how 
it must have been on market-day -- the sidewalks thronged with people, a few of 
them town ladies with their baskets over their arms, most of them waggoners and 
roughly-dressed bargemen (she did not know why she was so sure of the barges and 
bargemen, but she was); the wagons passing through the town square, the ones on 
the unpaved road raising choking clouds of yellow dust as the drivers flogged 
their carthorses
(oxen they were oxen)
along. She could see those carts, dusty swatches of canvas tied down over bales 
of cloth on some and pyramids of tarred barrels on others; could see the oxen, 
double-yoked and straining patiently, flicking their ears at the flies buzzing 
around their huge heads; could hear voices, and laughter, and the piano in the 
saloon pounding out a lively tune like "Buffalo Gals" or "Darlin' Katy."
It's as if I lived here in another life, she thought.
The gunslinger bent over the inscription on the marker. "Great Road," he read. 
"Lud, one hundred and sixty wheels."
"Wheels?" Jake asked.
"An old form of measurement."
"Have you heard of Lud?" Eddie asked.
"Perhaps," the gunslinger said. "When I was very small."
"It rhymes with crud," Eddie said. "Maybe not such a good sign."
Jake was examining the east side of the stone. "River Road. It's written funny, 
but that's what it says."
Eddie looked at the west side of the marker. "It says Jimtown, forty wheels. 
Isn't that the birthplace of Wayne Newton, Roland?"
Roland looked at him blankly.
"Shet ma mouf," Eddie said, and rolled his eyes.
On the southwest corner of the square was the town's only stone building -- a 
squat, dusty cube with rusty bars on the windows. Combina­tion county jail and 
courthouse, Susannah thought. She had seen similar ones down south; add a few 
slant parking spaces in front and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. 
Something had been daubed across the facade of the building in fading yellow 
paint. She could read it, and although she couldn't understand it, it made her 
more anxious than ever to get out of this town. PUBES DIE, it said.
"Roland!" When she had his attention, she pointed at the graffito. "What does 
that mean?"
He read it, then shook his head. "Don't know."
She looked around again. The square now seemed smaller, and the buildings seemed 
to be leaning over them. "Can we get out of here?"
"Soon." He bent down and pried a small chunk of cobble out of the roadbed. He 
bounced it thoughtfully in his left hand as he looked up at the metal box which 
hung over the marker. He cocked his arm and Susannah realized, an instant too 
late, what he meant to do.
"No, Roland!" she cried, then cringed back at the sound of her own horrified 
voice.
He took no notice of her but fired the stone upward. His aim was as true as 
ever, and it struck the box dead center with a hollow, metallic bang. There was 
a whir of clockwork from within, and a rusty green flag unfolded from a slot in 
the side. When it locked in place, a bell rang briskly. Written in large black 
letters on the side of the flag was the word GO.
"I'll be damned," Eddie said. "It's a Keystone Kops traffic-light. If you hit it 
again, does it say STOP?"
"We have company," Roland said quietly, and pointed toward the building Susannah 
thought of as the county courthouse. A man and a woman had emerged from it and 
were descending the stone steps. You win the kewpie doll, Roland, Susannah 
thought. They're older n God, the both of em.
The man was wearing bib overalls and a huge straw sombrero. The woman walked 
with one hand clamped on his naked sunburned shoulder. She wore homespun and a 
poke bonnet, and as they drew closer to the marker, Susannah saw she was blind, 
and that the accident which had taken her sight must have been exceedingly 
horrible. Where her eyes had been there were now only two shallow sockets filled 
with scar-tissue. She looked both terrified and confused.
"Be they harriers, Si?" she cried in a cracked, quavering voice. "You'll have us 
killed yet, I'll warrant!"
"Shut up, Mercy," he replied. Like the woman, he spoke with a thick accent 
Susannah could barely understand. "They ain't harriers, not these. There's a 
Pube with em, I told you that -- ain't no harrier ever been travellin' with a 
Pube."
Blind or not, she tried to pull away from him. He cursed and caught her arm. 
"Quit it, Mercy! Quit it, I say! You'll fall down and do y'self evil, dammit!"
"We mean you no harm," the gunslinger called. He used the High Speech, and at 
the sound of it the man's eyes lit up with incredulity. The woman turned back, 
swinging her blind face in their direction.
"A gunslinger!" the man cried. His voice cracked and wavered with excitement. " 
'Fore God! I knew it were! I knew!"
He began to run across the square toward them, pulling the woman after. She 
stumbled along helplessly, and Susannah waited for the inevita­ble moment when 
she must fall. But the man fell first, going heavily to his knees, and she 
sprawled painfully beside him on the cobbles of the Great Road.


5
JAKE FELT SOMETHING FURRY against his ankle and looked down. Oy was crouched 
beside him, looking more anxious than ever. Jake reached down and cautiously 
stroked his head, as much to receive comfort as to give it. Its fur was silky, 
incredibly soft. For a moment he thought the bumbler was going to run, but it 
only looked up at him, licked his hand, and then looked back at the two new 
people. The man was trying to help the woman to her feet and not succeeding very 
well. Her head craned this way and that in avid confusion.
The man named Si had cut his palms on the cobblestones, but he took no notice. 
He gave up trying to help the woman, swept off his sombrero, and held it over 
his chest. To Jake the hat looked as big as a bushel basket. "We bid ye welcome, 
gunslinger!" he cried. "Welcome indeed! I thought all your land had perished 
from the earth, so I did!"
"I thank you for your welcome," Roland said in the High Speech. He put his hands 
gently on the blind woman's upper arms. She cringed for a moment, then relaxed 
and allowed him to help her up. "Put on your hat, old-timer. The sun is hot."
He did, then just stood there, looking at Roland with shining eyes. After a 
moment or two, Jake realized what that shine was. Si was crying.
"A gunslinger! I told you, Mercy! I seen the shooting-iron and told you!"
"No harriers?" she asked, as if unable to believe it. "Are you sure they ain't 
harriers, Si?"
Roland turned to Eddie. "Make sure of the safety and then give her Jake's gun."
Eddie pulled the Ruger from his waistband, checked the safety, and then put it 
gingerly in the blind woman's hands. She gasped, almost dropped it, then ran her 
hands over it wonderingly. She turned the empty sockets where her eyes had been 
up to the man. "A gun!" she whispered. "My sainted hat!"
"Ay, some kind," the old man replied dismissively, taking it from her and giving 
it back to Eddie, "but the gunslinger's got a real one, and there's a woman got 
another. She's got a brown skin, too, like my da' said the people of Garlan 
had."
Oy gave his shrill, whistling bark. Jake turned and saw more people coming up 
the street -- five or six in all. Like Si and Mercy, they were all old, and one of 
them, a woman hobbling over a cane like a witch in a fairy-tale, looked 
positively ancient. As they neared, Jake realized that two of the men were 
identical twins. Long white hair spilled over the shoulders of their patched 
homespun shirts. Their skin was as white as fine linen, and their eyes were 
pink. Albinos, he thought.
The crone appeared to be their leader. She hobbled toward Roland's party on her 
cane, staring at them with gimlet eyes as green as emeralds. Her toothless mouth 
was tucked deeply into itself. The hem of the old shawl she wore fluttered in 
the prairie breeze. Her eyes settled upon Roland.
"Hail, gunslinger! Well met!" She spoke the High Speech herself, and, like Eddie 
and Susannah, Jake understood the words perfectly, although he guessed they 
would have been gibberish to him in his own world. "Welcome to River Crossing!"
The gunslinger had removed his own hat, and now he bowed to her, tapping his 
throat three times, rapidly, with his diminished right hand. "Thankee-sai, Old 
Mother."
She cackled freely at this and Eddie suddenly realized Roland had at the same 
time made a joke and paid a compliment. The thought which had already occurred 
to Susannah now came to him: This is how he was . . . and this is what he did. 
Part of it, anyway.
"Gunslinger ye may be, but below your clothes you're but another foolish man," 
she said, lapsing into low speech.
Roland bowed again. "Beauty has always made me foolish, mother."
This time she positively cawed laughter. Oy shrank against Jake's leg. One of 
the albino twins rushed forward to catch the ancient as she rocked backward 
within her dusty cracked shoes. She caught her balance on her own, however, and 
made an imperious shooing gesture with one hand. The albino retreated.
"Be ye on a quest, gunslinger?" Her green eyes gleamed shrewdly at him; the 
puckered pocket of her mouth worked in and out.
"Ay," Roland said. "We go in search of the Dark Tower."
The others only looked puzzled, but the old woman recoiled and forked the sign 
of the evil eye -- not at them, Jake realized, but to the southeast, along the path 
of the Beam.
"I'm sorry to hear it!" she cried. "For no one who ever went in search of that 
black dog ever came back! So said my grandfather, and his grandfather before 
him! Not ary one!"
"Ka," the gunslinger said patiently, as if this explained everything . . . and, 
Jake was coming to realize, to Roland it did.
"Ay," she agreed, "black dog ka! Well-a-well; ye'll do as ye're called, and live 
along your path, and die when it comes to the clearing in the trees. Will ye 
break bread with us before you push on, gunslinger? You and your band of 
knights?"
Roland bowed again. "It has been long and long since we have broken bread in 
company other than our own, Old Mother. We cannot stay long, but yes -- we'll eat 
your food with thanks and pleasure."
The old woman turned to the others. She spoke in a cracked and ringing voice -- yet 
it was the words she spoke and not the tone in which they were spoken that sent 
chills racing down Jake's back: "Behold ye, the return of the White! After evil 
ways and evil days, the White comes again! Be of good heart and hold up your 
heads, for ye have lived to see the wheel of ka begin to turn once more!"


6
THE OLD WOMAN, WHOSE name was Aunt Talitha, led them through the town square and 
to the church with the leaning spire -- it was The Church of the Blood Everlasting, 
according to the faded board on the run-to-riot lawn. Written over the words, in 
green paint that had faded to a ghost, was another message: DEATH TO GRAYS.
She led them through the ruined church, hobbling rapidly along the center aisle 
past the splintered and overturned pews, down a short flight of stairs, and into 
a kitchen so different from the ruin above that Susan­nah blinked in surprise. 
Here everything was neat as a pin. The wooden floor was very old, but it had 
been faithfully oiled and glowed with its own serene inner light. The black 
cookstove took up one whole corner. It was immaculate, and the wood stacked in 
the brick alcove next to it looked both well-chosen and well-seasoned.
Their party had been joined by three more senior citizens, two women and a man 
who limped along on a crutch and a wooden leg. Two of the women went to the 
cupboards and began to make themselves busy; a third opened the belly of the 
stove and struck a long sulphur match to the wood already laid neatly within; a 
fourth opened another door and went down a short set of narrow steps into what 
looked like a cold-pantry. Aunt Talitha, meanwhile, led the rest of them into a 
spacious entry at the rear of the church building. She waved her cane at two 
trestle tables which had been stored there under a clean but ragged dropcoth, 
and the two elderly albinos immediately went over and began to wrestle with one 
of them.
"Come on, Jake," Eddie said. "Let's lend a hand."
"Nawp!" Aunt Talitha said briskly. "We may be old, but we don't need comp'ny to 
lend a hand! Not yet, youngster!"
"Leave them be," Roland said.
"Old fools'll rupture themselves," Eddie muttered, but he followed the others, 
leaving the old men to their chosen table.
Susannah gasped as Eddie lifted her from her chair and carried her through the 
back door. This wasn't a lawn but a showplace, with beds of flowers blazing like 
torches in the soft green grass. She saw some she recognized -- marigolds and 
zinnias and phlox -- but many others were strange to her. As she watched, a 
horsefly landed on a bright blue petal . . . which at once folded over it and 
rolled up tight.
"Wow!" Eddie said, staring around. "Busch Gardens!"
Si said, "This is the one place we keep the way it was in the old days, before 
the world moved on. And we keep it hidden from those who ride through -- Pubes, 
Grays, harriers. They'd bum it if they knew . . . and kill us for keeping such a 
place. They hate anything nice -- all of em. It's the one thing all those bastards 
have in common."
The blind woman tugged his arm to shush him.
"No riders these days," the old man with the wooden leg said. "Not for a long 
time now. They keep closer in to the city. Guess they find all they need to keep 
em well right there."
The albino twins struggled out with the table. One of the old women followed 
them, urging them to hurry up and get the hell out of her way. She held a 
stoneware pitcher in each hand.
"Sit ye down, gunslinger!" Aunt Talitha cried, sweeping her hand at the grass. 
"Sit ye down, all!"
Susannah could smell a hundred conflicting perfumes. They made her feel dazed 
and unreal, as if this was a dream she was having. She could hardly believe this 
strange little pocket of Eden, carefully hidden behind the crumbling facade of 
the dead town.
Another woman came out with a tray of glasses. They were mismatched but 
spotless, twinkling in the sun like fine crystal. She held the tray out first to 
Roland, then to Aunt Talitha, Eddie, Susannah, and Jake at the last. As each 
took a glass, the first woman poured a dark golden liquid into it.
Roland leaned over to Jake, who was sitting tailor-fashion near an oval bed of 
bright green flowers with Oy at his side. He murmured: "Drink only enough to be 
polite, Jake, or we'll be carrying you out of town -- this is graf -- strong 
apple-beer."
Jake nodded.
Talitha held up her glass, and when Roland followed suit, Eddie, Susannah, and 
Jake did the same.
"What about the others?" Eddie whispered to Roland.
"They'll be served after the voluntary. Now be quiet."
"Will ye set us on with a word, gunslinger?" Aunt Talitha asked.
The gunslinger got to his feet, his glass upraised in his hand. He lowered his 
head, as if in thought. The few remaining residents of River Crossing watched 
him respectfully and, Jake thought, a little fearfully. At last he raised his 
head again. "Will you drink to the earth, and to the days which have passed upon 
it?" he asked. His voice was hoarse,' trembling with emotion. "Will you drink to 
the fullness which was, and to friends who have passed on? Will you drink to 
good company, well met? Will these things set us on, Old Mother?"
She was weeping, Jake saw, but her face broke into a smile of radiant happiness 
all the same . . . and for a moment she was almost young. Jake looked at her 
with wonder and sudden, dawning happiness. For the first time since Eddie had 
hauled him through the door, he felt the shadow of the doorkeeper truly leave 
his heart.
"Ay, gunslinger!" she said. "Fair spoken! They'll set us on by the league, so 
they shall!" She tilted her glass up and drank it at a draught. When the glass 
was empty, Roland emptied his own. Eddie and Susannah also drank, although less 
deeply.
Jake tasted his own drink, and was surprised to find he liked it --  the brew was 
not bitter, as he had expected, but both sweet and tart, like cider. He could 
feel the effects almost at once, however, and he put the glass carefully aside. 
Oy sniffed at it, then drew back, and dropped his muzzle on Jake's ankle.
Around them, the little company of old people -- the last residents of River 
Crossing -- were applauding. Most, like Aunt Talitha, were weeping openly. And now 
other glasses -- not so fine but wholly serviceable -- were passed around. The party 
began, and a fine party it was on that long summer's afternoon beneath the wide 
prairie sky.


7
EDDIE THOUGHT THE MEAL, he ate that day was the best he had had since the mythic 
birthday feasts of his childhood, when his mother had made it her business to 
serve everything he liked -- meatloaf and roasted potatoes and corn on the cob and 
devil's food cake with vanilla ice cream on the side.
The sheer variety of the edibles put before them -- especially after the months 
they had spent eating nothing but lobster meat, deer meat, and the few bitter 
greens which Roland pronounced safe -- undoubtedly had something to do with the 
pleasure he took in the food, but Eddie didn't think that was the sole answer; 
he noticed that the kid was packing it away by the plateful (and feeding a chunk 
of something to the bumbler crouched at his feet every couple of minutes), and 
Jake hadn't been here a week yet.
There were bowls of stew (chunks of buffalo meat floating in a rich brown gravy 
loaded with vegetables), platters of fresh biscuits, crocks of sweet white 
butter, and bowls of leaves that looked like spinach but weren't . . . exactly. 
Eddie had never been crazy about greens, but at the first taste of these, some 
deprived part of him awoke and cried for them. He ate well of everything, but 
his need for the green stuff approached greed, and he saw Susannah was also 
helping herself to them again and again. Among the four of them, the travellers 
emptied three bowls of the leaves.
The dinner dishes were swept away by the old women and the albino twins. They 
returned with chunks of cake piled high on two thick white plates and a bowl of 
whipped cream. The cake gave off a sweetly fragrant smell that made Eddie feel 
as if he had died and gone to heaven.
"Only buffaler cream," Aunt Talitha said dismissively. "No more cows -- last one 
croaked thirty year ago. Buffaler cream ain't no prize­winner, but better'n 
nothin, by Daisy!"
The cake turned out to be loaded with blueberries. Eddie thought it beat by a 
country mile any cake he'd ever had. He finished three pieces, leaned back, and 
belched ringingly before he could clap a hand over his mouth. He looked around 
guiltily.
Mercy, the blind woman, cackled. "I heard that! Someone be thankin' the cook, 
Auntie!"
"Ay," Aunt Talitha said, laughing herself. "So he do."
The two women who had served the food were returning yet again. One carried a 
steaming jug; the other had a number of thick ceramic cups balanced precariously 
on her tray.
Aunt Talitha was sitting at the head of the table with Roland by her right hand. 
Now he leaned over and murmured something in her ear. She listened, her smile 
fading a little, then nodded.
"Si, Bill, and Till," she said. "You three stay. We are going to have us a 
little palaver with this gunslinger and his friends, on account of they mean to 
move along this very afternoon. The rest of you take your coffee in the kitchen 
and so cut down the babble. Mind you make your manners before you go!"
Bill and Till, the albino twins, remained sitting at the foot of the table. The 
others formed a line and moved slowly past the travellers. Each of them shook 
hands with Eddie and Susannah, then kissed Jake on the cheek. The boy accepted 
this with good grace, but Eddie could see he was both surprised and embarrassed.
When they reached Roland, they knelt before him and touched the sandalwood butt 
of the revolver which jutted from the holster he wore on his left hip. He put 
his hands on their shoulders and kissed their old brows. Mercy was the last; she 
flung her arms around Roland's waist and baptized his cheek with a wet, ringing 
kiss.
"Gods bless and keep ye, gunslinger! If only I could see ye!"
"Mind your manners, Mercy!" Aunt Talitha said sharply, but Roland ignored her 
and bent over the blind woman.
He took her hands gently but firmly in his own, and raised them to his face. 
"See me with these, beauty," he said, and closed his eyes as her fingers, 
wrinkled and misshapen with arthritis, patted gently over his brow, his cheeks, 
his lips and chin.
"Ay, gunslinger!" she breathed, lifting the sightless sockets of her eyes to his 
faded blue ones. "I see you very well! 'Tis a good face, but full of sadness and 
care. I fear for you and yours."
"Yet we are well met, are we not?" he asked, and planted a gentle kiss on the 
smooth, worn skin of her forehead.
"Ay -- so we are. So we are. Thank'ee for your kiss, gunslinger. From my heart I 
thank'ee."
"Go on, Mercy," Aunt Talitha said in a gentler voice. "Get your coffee."
Mercy rose to her feet. The old man with the crutch and peg leg guided her hand 
to the waistband of his pants. She seized it and, with a final salute to Roland 
and his band, allowed him to lead her away.
Eddie wiped at his eyes, which were wet. "Who blinded her?" he asked hoarsely.
"Harriers," Aunt Talitha said. "Did it with a branding-iron, they did. Said it 
was because she was looking at em pert. Twenty-five years agone, that was. Drink 
your coffee, now, all of you! It's nasty when it's hot, but it ain't nothin but 
roadmud once it's cold."
Eddie lifted the cup to his mouth and sipped experimentally. He wouldn't have 
gone so fur us to call it roadmud, hut it wasn't exactly Blue Mountain Blend, 
either.
Susannah tasted hers and looked amazed. "Why, this is chicory!" Talitha glanced 
at her. "I know it not. Dockey is all I know, and dockey-coffee's all we've had 
since I had the woman's curse -- and that curse was lifted from me long, long ago."
"How old are you, ma'am?" Jake asked suddenly.
Aunt Talitha looked at him, surprised, then cackled. "In truth, lad, I 
disremember. I recall sitting in this same place and having a party to celebrate 
my eighty, but there were over fifty people settin out on this lawn that day, 
and Mercy still had her eyes." Her own eyes dropped to the humbler lying at 
Jake's feet. Oy didn't remove his muzzle from Jake's ankle, but he raised his 
gold-ringed eyes to gaze at her. "A billy-bumbler, by Daisy! It's been long and 
long since I've seen a humbler in company with people . . . seems they have lost 
the memory of the days when they walked with men."
One of the albino twins bent down to pat Oy. Oy pulled away from him.
"Once they used to herd sheep," Bill (or perhaps it was Till) said to Jake. "Did 
ye know that, youngster?"
Jake shook his head.
"Do he talk?" the albino asked. "Some did, in the old days."
"Yes, he does." He looked down at the humbler, who had returned his head to 
Jake's ankle as soon as the strange hand left his general area. "Say your name, 
Oy."
Oy only looked up at him.
"Oy!" Jake urged, but Oy was silent. Jake looked at Aunt Talitha and the twins, 
mildly chagrined. "Well, he does . . . but I guess he only does it when he wants 
to."
"That boy doesn't look as if he belongs here," Aunt Talitha said to Roland. "His 
clothes are strange . . . and his eyes are strange, as well."
"He hasn't been here long." Roland smiled at Jake, and Jake smiled uncertainly 
back. "In a month or two, no one will be able to see his strangeness."
"Ay? I wonder, so I do. And where does he come from?"
"Far from here," the gunslinger said. "Very far."
She nodded. "And when will he go back?"   ^
"Never," Jake said. "This is my home now."
"Gods pity you, then," she said, "for the sun is going down on the world. It's 
going down forever."
At that Susannah stirred uneasily; one hand went to her belly, as if her stomach 
was upset.
"Suze?" Eddie asked. "You all right?"
She tried to smile, but it was a weak effort; her normal confidence and 
self-possession seemed to have temporarily deserted her. "Yes, of course. A 
goose walked over my grave, that's all."
Aunt Talitha gave her a long, assessing look that seemed to make Susannah 
uncomfortable . . . and then smiled. " 'A goose on my grave' --  ha! I haven't 
heard that one in donkey's years."
"My dad used to say it all the time." Susannah smiled at Eddie -- a stronger smile 
this time. "And anyway, whatever it was is gone now. I'm fine."
"What do you know about the city, and the lands between here and there?" Roland 
asked, picking up his coffee cup and sipping. "Are there harriers? And who are 
these others? These Grays and Pubes?"
Aunt Talitha sighed deeply.


8
"YE'D HEAR MUCH, GUNSLINGER, and we know but little. One thing I do know is 
this: the city's an evil place, especially for this youngster. Any youngster. Is 
there any way you can steer around it as you go your course?"
Roland looked up and observed the now familiar shape of the clouds as they 
flowed along the path of the Beam. In this wide plains sky, that shape, like a 
river in the sky, was impossible to miss.
"Perhaps," he said at last, but his voice was oddly reluctant. "I suppose we 
could skirt around Lud to the southwest and pick up the Beam on the far side."
"It's the Beam ye follow," she said. "Ay, I thought so."
Eddie found his own consideration of the city colored by the steadily 
strengthening hope that when and if they got there, they would find 
help -- abandoned goodies which would aid them in their quest, or maybe even some 
people who could tell them a little more about the Dark Tower and what they were 
supposed to do when they got there. The ones called the Grays, for instance -- they 
sounded like the sort of wise old elves he kept imagining.
The drums were creepy, true enough, reminding him of a hundred low-budget jungle 
epics (mostly watched on TV with Henry by his side and a bowl of popcorn between 
them) where the fabulous lost cities the explorers had come looking for were in 
ruins and the natives had degen­erated into tribes of blood-thirsty cannibals, 
but Eddie found it impossible to believe something like that could have happened 
in a city that looked, at least from a distance, so much like New York. If there 
were not wise old elves or abandoned goodies, there would surely be books, at 
least; he had listened to Roland talk about how rare paper was here, hut every 
city Eddie had ever been in was absolutely drowning in books. They might even 
find some working transportation; the equivalent of a Land Rover would be nice. 
That was probably just a silly dream, but when you had thousands of miles of 
unknown territory to cover, a few silly dreams were undoubtedly in order, if 
only to keep your spirits up. And weren't those things at least possible, damn 
it?
He opened his mouth to say some of these things, but Jake spoke before he could.
"I don't think we can go around," he said, then blushed a little when they all 
turned to look at him. Oy shifted at his feet.
"No?" Aunt Talitha said. "And why do ye think that, pray tell?"
"Do you know about trains?" Jake asked.
There was a long silence. Bill and Till exchanged an uneasy glance. Aunt Talitha 
only looked at Jake steadily. Jake did not drop his eyes.
"I heard of one," she said. "Mayhap even saw it. Over there." She pointed in the 
direction of the Send. "Long ago, when I was but a child and the world hadn't 
moved on ... or at least not s'far's it has now. Is it Blaine ye speak of, boy?"
Jake's eyes flashed in surprise and recognition. "Yes! Blaine!" Roland was 
studying Jake closely.
"And how would ye know of Blaine the Mono?" Aunt Talitha asked.
"Mono?" Jake looked blank.
"Ay, so it was called. How would you know of that old lay?"
Jake looked helplessly at Roland, then back at Aunt Talitha. "I don't know how I 
know."
And that's the truth, Eddie thought suddenly, but it's not all the truth. He 
knows more than he wants to tell here . . . and I think he's scared.
"This is our business, I think," Roland said in a dry, brisk administra­tor's 
voice. "You must let us work it out for ourselves, Old Mother."
"Ay," she agreed quickly. "You'll keep your own counsel. Best that such as us 
not know."
"What of the city?" Roland prompted. "What do you know of Lud?"
"Little now, but what we know, ye shall hear." And she poured herself another 
cup of coffee.


9
IT WAS THE TWINS, Bill and Till, who actually did most of the talking, one 
taking up the tale smoothly whenever the other left off. Every now and then Aunt 
Talitha would add something or correct something, and the twins would wait 
respectfully until they were sure she was done. Si didn't speak at all -- merely 
sat with his untouched coffee in front of him, plucking at the pieces of straw 
which bristled up from the wide brim of his sombrero.
They knew little, indeed, Roland realized quickly, even about the history of 
their own town (nor did this surprise him; in these latter days, memories faded 
rapidly and all but the most recent past seemed not to exist), but what they did 
know was disturbing. Roland was not surprised by this, either.
In the days of their great-great-grandparents, River Crossing had been much the 
town Susannah had imagined: a trade-stop at the Great Road, modestly prosperous, 
a place where goods were sometimes sold but more often exchanged. It had been at 
least nominally part of River Barony, although even then such things as Baronies 
and Estates o' Land had been passing.
There had been buffalo-hunters in those days, although the trade had been dying 
out; the herds were small and badly mutated. The meat of these mutant beasts was 
not poison, but it had been rank and bitter. Yet River Crossing, located between 
a place they simply called The Land­ing and the village of Jimtown, had been a 
place of some note. It was on the Great Road and only six days travel from the 
city by land and three by barge. "Unless the river were low," one of the twins 
said. "Then it took longer, and my gran'da said there was times when there was 
barges grounded all the way upriver to Tom's Neck."
The old people knew nothing of the city's original residents, of course, or the 
technologies they had used to build the towers and turrets; these were the Great 
Old Ones, and their history had been lost in the furthest reaches of the past 
even when Aunt Talitha's great-great-grandfa­ther had been a boy.
"The buildings are still standing," Eddie said. "I wonder if the machines the 
Great Golden Oldies used to build them still run."
"Mayhap," one of the twins said. "If so, young fella, there don't be ary man or 
woman that lives there now who'd still know how to run em ... or so I believe, 
so I do."
"Nay," his brother said argumentatively, "I doubt the old ways are entirely lost 
to the Grays 'n Pubes, even now." He looked at Eddie. "Our da' said there was 
once electric candles in the city. There are those who say they mought still 
burn."
"Imagine that," Eddie replied wonderingly, and Susannah pinched his leg, hard, 
under the table.
"Yes," the other twin said. He spoke seriously, unaware of Eddie's sarcasm. "You 
pushed a button and they came on -- bright, heatless can­dles with ary wicks or 
reservoirs for oil. And I've heard it said that once, in the old days, Quick, 
the outlaw prince, actually Hew up into the sky in a mechanical bird. But one of 
its wings broke and he died in a great fall, like Icarus."
Susannah's mouth dropped open. "You know the story of Icarus?"
"Ay, lady," he said, clearly surprised she should find this strange. "He of the 
beeswax wings."
"Children's stories, both of them," Aunt Talitha said with a sniff. "I know the 
story of the endless lights is true, for I saw them with my own eyes when I was 
but a green girl, and they may still glow from time to time, ay; there are those 
I trust who say they've seen diem on clear nights, although it's been long years 
since I have myself. But no man ever flew, not even the Great Old Ones."
Nonetheless, there were strange machines in the city, built to do peculiar and 
sometimes dangerous things. Many of them might still run, but the elderly twins 
reckoned that none now in the city knew how to start them up, for they hadn't 
been heard in years.
Maybe that could change, though, Eddie thought, his eyes gleaming. If, that is, 
an enterprising, travel-minded young man with a little knowl­edge of strange 
machinery and endless lights came along. It could be just a matter of finding 
the ON switches. I mean, it really could be that simple. Or maybe they just blew 
a bunch of fuses -- think of that, friends and neighbors! Just replace half a dozen 
400-amp Busses and light the whole place up like a Reno Saturday night!
Susannah elbowed him and asked, in a low voice, what was so funny. Eddie shook 
his head and put a finger to his lips, earning an irritated look from the love 
of his life. The albinos, meanwhile, were continuing their story, handing its 
thread back and forth with the unconscious ease which probably nothing but 
lifetime twinship can provide.
Four or five generations ago, they said, the city had still been quite heavily 
populated and reasonably civilized, although the residents drove wagons and 
buckboards along the wide boulevards the Great Old Ones had constructed for 
their fabulous horseless vehicles. The city-dwellers were artisans and what the 
twins called "manufactories," and trade both on the river and over it had been 
brisk.
"Over it?" Roland asked.
"The bridge over the Send still stands," Aunt Talitha said, "or did twenty year 
ago."
"Ay, old Bill Muffin and his boy saw it not ten year agone," Si agreed, making 
his first contribution to the conversation.
"What sort of bridge?" the gunslinger asked.
"A great thing of steel cables," one of the twins said. "It stands in the sky 
like the web of some great spider." He added shyly: "I should like to see it 
again before I die."
"Probably fallen in by now," Aunt Talitha said dismissively, "and good riddance. 
Devil's work." She turned to the twins. "Tell them what's happened since, and 
why the city's so dangerous now -- apart from any haunts that may den there, that 
is, and I'll warrant there's a power of em. These folks want to get on, and the 
sun's on the wester."


10
THE REST OF THE story was but another version of a tale Roland of Gilead had 
heard many times and had, in some measure, lived through himself. It was 
fragmentary and incomplete, undoubtedly shot through with myth and 
misinformation, its linear progress distorted by the odd changes -- both temporal 
and directional -- which were now taking place in the world, and it could be summed 
up in a single compound sentence: Once there was a world we knew, but that world 
has moved on.
These old people of River Crossing knew of Gilead no more than Roland knew of 
the River Barony, and the name of John Parson, the man who had brought ruin and 
anarchy on Roland's land, meant nothing to them, but all stories of the old 
world's passing were similar . . . too similar, Roland thought, to be 
coincidence.
A great civil war -- perhaps in Garlan, perhaps in a more distant land called 
Porla -- had erupted three, perhaps even four hundred years ago. Its ripples had 
spread slowly outward, pushing anarchy and dissension ahead of them. Few if any 
kingdoms had been able to stand against those slow waves, and anarchy had come 
to this part of the world as surely as night follows sunset. At one time, whole 
armies had been on the roads, sometimes in advance, sometimes in retreat, always 
confused and without long-term goals. As time passed, they crumbled into smaller 
groups, and these degenerated into roving bands of harriers. Trade faltered, 
then broke down entirely. Travel went from a matter of inconvenience to one of 
danger. In the end, it became almost impossible. Communication with the city 
thinned steadily and had all but ceased a hundred and twenty years ago.
Like a hundred other towns Roland had ridden through -- first with Cuthbert and the 
other gunslingers cast out of Gilead, then alone, in pursuit of the man in 
black -- River Crossing had been cut off and thrown on its own resources.
At this point Si roused himself, and his voice captured the travellers at once. 
He spoke in the hoarse, cadenced tones of a lifelong teller of tales -- one of 
those divine fools born to merge memory and mendacity into dreams as airily 
gorgeous as cobwebs strung with drops of dew.
"We last sent tribute to the Barony castle in the time of my greatgran'da," he 
said. "Twenty-six men went with a wagon of hides -- there was no hard coin anymore 
by then, o' course, and 'twas the best they could do. It was a long and 
dangerous journey of almost eighty wheels, and six died on the way. Half fell to 
harriers bound for the war in the city; the other half died either of disease or 
devilgrass.
"When they finally arrived, they found the castle deserted but for the rooks and 
black-birds. The walls had been broken; weeds o'ergrew the Court o' State. There 
had been a great slaughter on the fields to the west; it were white with bones 
and red with rusty armor, so my da's gran'da said, and the voices of demons 
cried out like the east wind from the jawbones o' those who'd fallen there. The 
village beyond the castle had been burned to the ground and a thousand or more 
skulls were posted along the walls of the keep. Our folk left their bounty o' 
hides without the shattered barbican gate -- for none would venture inside that 
place of ghosts and moaning voices -- and began the homeward way again. Ten more 
fell on that journey, so that of the six-and-twenty who left only ten returned, 
my great-gran'da one of them . . . but he picked up a ring­worm on his neck and 
bosom that never left until the day he died. It were the radiation sickness, or 
so they said. After that, gunslinger, none left the town. We were on our own."
They grew used to the depredations of the harriers, Si continued in his cracked 
but melodious voice. Watches were posted; when bands of riders were seen 
approaching -- almost always moving southeast along the Great Road and the path of 
the Beam, going to the war which raged endlessly in Lud -- the townspeople hid in a 
large shelter they had dug beneath the church. Casual damages to the town were 
not repaired, lest they make those roving bands curious. Most were beyond 
curiosity; they only rode through at a gallop, bows or battle-axes slung over 
their shoul­ders, bound for the killing-zones.
"What war is it that you speak of?" Roland asked.
"Yes," Eddie said, "and what about that drumming sound?"
The twins again exchanged a quick, almost superstitious glance.
"We know not of the god-drums," Si told them. "Ary word or watch. The war of the 
city, now ..."
The war had originally been the harriers and outlaws against a loose 
confederation of artisans and "manufactories" who lived in the city. The 
residents had decided to fight instead of allowing the harriers to loot them, 
burn their shops, and then turn the survivors out into the Big Empty, where they 
would almost certainly die. And for some years they had successfully defended 
Lud against the vicious but badly organized groups of raiders which tried to 
storm across the bridge or invade by boat and barge.
"The city-folk used the old weapons," one of the twins said, "and though their 
numbers were small, the harriers could not stand against such things with their 
bows and maces and battle-axes."
"Do you mean the city-people used guns?" Eddie asked.
One of the albinos nodded. "Ay, guns, but not just guns. There were things that 
hurled the firebangs over a mile or more. Explosions like dynamite, only more 
powerful. The outlaws -- who are now the Grays, as you must ken -- could do nothing 
but lay siege beyond the river, and that was what they did."
Lud became, in effect, the last fortress-refuge of the latter world. The 
brightest and most able travelled there from the surrounding coun­tryside by 
ones and twos. When it came to intelligence tests, sneaking through the tangled 
encampments and front lines of the besiegers was the newcomers' final exam. Most 
came unarmed across the no-man's-land of the bridge, and those who made it that 
far were let through. Some were found wanting and sent packing again, of course, 
but those who had a trade or a skill (or brains enough to learn one) were 
allowed to stay. Farming skills were particularly prized; according to the 
stories, every large park in Lud had been turned into a vegetable garden. With 
the countryside cut off, it was grow food in the city or starve amid the glass 
towers and metal alleys. The Great Old Ones were gone, their machines were a 
mystery, and the silent wonders which remained were inedible.
Little by little, the character of the war began to change. The bal­ance of 
power had shifted to the besieging Grays -- so called because they were, on 
average, much older than the city-dwellers. Those latter were also growing 
older, of course. They were still known as Pubes, but in most cases their 
puberty was long behind them. And they eventually either forgot how the old 
weapons worked or used them up.
"Probably both," Roland grunted.
Some ninety years ago -- within the lifetimes of Si and Aunt Talitha --  a final band 
of outlaws had appeared, one so large that the outriders had gone galloping 
through River Crossing at dawn and the drogues did not pass until almost 
sundown. It was the last army these parts had ever seen, and it was led by a 
warrior prince named David Quick -- the same fellow who supposedly later fell to 
his death from the sky. He had orga­nized the raggle-taggle remnants of the 
outlaw bands which still hung about the city, killing anyone who showed 
opposition to his plans. Quick's army of Grays used neither boat nor bridge to 
attempt entry into the city, but instead built a pontoon bridge twelve miles 
below it and attacked on the flank.
"Since then the war has guttered like a chimney-fire," Aunt Talitha finished. 
"We hear reports every now and then from someone who has managed to leave, ay, 
so we do. These come a little more often now, for the bridge, they say, is 
undefended and I think the fire is almost out. Within the city, the Pubes and 
Grays squabble over the remaining spoils, only I reckon that the descendents of 
the harriers who followed Quick over the pontoon bridge are the real Pubes now, 
although they are still called Grays. The descendents of the original 
city-dwellers must now be almost as old as we are, although there are still some 
younkers who go to be among them, drawn by the old stories and the lure of the 
knowl­edge which may still remain there.
"These two sides still keep up their old enmity, gunslinger, and both would 
desire this young man you call Eddie. If the dark-skinned woman is fertile, they 
would not kill her even though her legs are short-ended; they would keep her to 
bear children, for children are fewer now, and although the old sicknesses are 
passing, some are still born strange."
At this, Susannah stirred, seemed about to say something, then only drank the 
last of her coffee and settled back into her former listening position.
"But if they would desire the young man and woman, gunslinger, I think they 
would lust for the boy."
Jake bent and began to stroke Oy's fur again. Roland saw his face and knew what 
he was thinking: it was the passage under the mountains all over again, just 
another version of the Slow Mutants.
"You they'd just as soon kill," Aunt Talitha said, "for you are a gunslinger, a 
man out of his own time and place, neither fish nor fowl, and no use to either 
side. But a boy can be taken, used, schooled to remember some things and to 
forget all the others. They've all forgotten whatever it was they had to fight 
about in the first place; the world has moved on since then. Now they just fight 
to the sound of them awful drumbeats, some few still young, most of them old 
enough for the rocking chair, like us here, all of them stupid grots who only 
live to kill and kill to live." She paused. "Now that you've heard us old 
cullies to the end, are ye sure it would not be best to go around, and leave 
them to their business?"
Before Roland could reply, Jake spoke up in a clear, firm voice. "Tell what you 
know about Blaine the Mono," he said. "Tell about Blaine and Engineer Bob."


11
"ENGINEER WHO?" EDDIE ASKED, but Jake only went on looking at the old people.
"Track lies over yonder," Si answered at last. He pointed toward the river. "One 
track only, set up high on a colyum of man-made stone, such as the Old Ones used 
to make their streets and walls."
"A monorail!" Susannah exclaimed. "Blaine the Monorail!"
"Blaine is a pain," Jake muttered.
Roland glanced at him but said nothing.
"Does this train run now?" Eddie asked Si.
Si shook his head slowly. His face was troubled and uneasy. "No, young sir -- but 
in my lifetime and Auntie's, it did. When we were green and the war of the city 
still went forrad briskly. We'd hear it before we saw it -- a low humming noise, a 
sound like ye sometimes hear when a bad summer storm's on the way -- one that's 
full of lightning."
"Ay," Aunt Talitha said. Her face was lost and dreaming.
"Then it'd come -- Blaine the Mono, twinkling in the sun, with a nose like one of 
the bullets in your revolver, gunslinger. Maybe two wheels long. I know that 
sounds like it couldn't be, and maybe it wasn't (we were green, ye must 
remember, and that makes a difference), but I still think it was, for when it 
came, it seemed to run along the whole horizon. Fast, low, and gone before you 
could even see it proper!
"Sometimes, on days when the weather were foul and the air low, it'd shriek like 
a harpy as it came out of the west. Sometimes it'd come in the night with a long 
white light spread out before it, and that shriek would wake all of us. It were 
like the trumpet they say will raise the dead from their graves at the end of 
the world, so it was."
"Tell em about the bang, Si!" Bill or Till said in a voice which trembled with 
awe. "Tell em about the godless bang what always came after!"
"Ay, I was just getting to that," Si answered with a touch of annoy­ance. "After 
it passed by, there would be quiet for a few seconds . . . sometimes as long as 
a minute, maybe . . . and then there'd come an explosion that rattled die boards 
and knocked cups off the shelves and sometimes even broke the glass in the 
window-panes. But never did anyone see ary flash nor fire. It was like an 
explosion in the world of spirits."
Eddie tapped Susannah on the shoulder, and when she turned to him he mouthed two 
words: Sonic boom. It was nuts -- no train he had ever heard of travelled faster 
than the speed of sound -- but it was also the only thing that made sense.
She nodded and turned back to Si.
"It's the only one of the machines the Great Old Ones made that I've ever seen 
running with my own eyes," he said in a soft voice, "and if it weren't the 
devil's work, there be no devil. The last time I saw it was the spring I married 
Mercy, and that must have been sixty year agone."
"Seventy," Aunt Talitha said with authority.
"And this train went into the city," Rolund said. "From back the way we came . . 
. from the west . . . from the forest."
"Ay," a new voice said unexpectedly, "but there was another . . . one that went 
out from the city .. . and mayhap that one still runs."





12
THEY TURNED. MERCY STOOD by a bed of flowers between the back of the church and 
the table where they sat. She was walking slowly toward the sound of their 
voices, with her hands spread out before her.
Si got clumsily to his feet, hurried to her as best he could, and took her hand. 
She slipped an arm about his waist and they stood there looking like the world's 
oldest wedding couple.
"Auntie told you to take your coffee inside!" he said.
"Finished my coffee long ago," Mercy said. "It's a bitter brew and I hate it. 
Besides -- I wanted to hear the palaver." She raised a trembling finger and pointed 
it in Roland's direction. "I wanted to hear his voice. It's fair and light, so 
it is."
"I cry your pardon, Auntie," Si said, looking at the ancient woman a little 
fearfully. "She was never one to mind, and the years have made her no better."
Aunt Talitha glanced at Roland. He nodded, almost imperceptibly. "Let her come 
forward and join us," she said.
Si led her over to the table, scolding all the while. Mercy only looked over his 
shoulder with her sightless eyes, her mouth set in an intractable line.
When Si had gotten her seated, Aunt Talitha leaned forward on her forearms and 
said, "Now do you have something to say, old sister-sai, or were you just 
beating your gums?"
"I hear what I hear. My ears are as sharp as they ever were, Tali­tha -- sharper!"
Roland's hand dropped to his belt for a moment. When he brought it back to the 
table, he was holding a cartridge in his fingers. He tossed it to Susannah, who 
caught it. "Do you, sai?" he asked.
"Well enough," she said, turning in his direction, "to know that you just threw 
something. To your woman, I think -- the one with the brown skin. Something small. 
What was it, gunslinger? A biscuit?"
"Close enough," he said, smiling. "You hear as well as you say. Now tell us what 
you meant."
"There is another mono," she said, "unless 'tis the same one, running a 
different course. Either way, a different course was run by some mono . . . 
until seven or eight year ago, anyways. I used to hear it leaving the city and 
going out into the waste lands beyond."
"Dungheap!" one of the albino twins ejaculated. "Nothing goes to the waste 
lands! Nothing can live there!"
She turned her face to him. "Is a train alive, Till Tudbury?" she asked. "Does a 
machine fall sick with sores and puking?"
Well, Eddie thought of saying, there was this bear . . .
He thought it over a little more and decided it might be better to keep his 
silence.
"We would have heard it," the other twin was insisting hotly. "A noise like the 
one Si always tells of -- "
"This one didn't make no bang," she admitted, "but I heard that other sound, 
that humming noise like the one you hear sometimes after lightning has struck 
somewhere close. When the wind was strong, blowing out from the city, I heard 
it." She thrust out her chin and added: "I did hear the bang once, too. From 
far, far out. The night Big Charlie Wind came and almost blew the steeple off 
the church. Must have been two hundred wheels from here. Maybe two hundred and 
fifty."
"Bulldink!" the twin cried. "You been chewing the weed!"
"I'll chew on you, Bill Tudbury, if you don't shut up your honkin. You've no 
business sayin bulldink to a lady, either. Why -- "
"Stop it, Mercy!" Si hissed, but Eddie was barely listening to this exchange of 
rural pleasantries. What the blind woman had said made sense to him. Of course 
there would be no sonic boom, not from a train which started its run in Lud; he 
couldn't remember exactly what the speed of sound was, but he thought it was 
somewhere in the neighbor­hood of six hundred and fifty miles an hour. A train 
starting from a dead stop would take some time getting up to that speed, and by 
the time it reached it, it would be out of earshot . . . unless the listening 
conditions happened to be just right, as Mercy claimed they had been on the 
night when the Big Charlie Wind -- whatever that was -- had come.
And there were possibilities here. Blaine the Mono was no Land Rover, but maybe 
. . . maybe ...
"You haven't heard the sound of this other train for seven or eight years, sai?" 
Roland asked. "Are you sure it wasn't much longer?"
"Couldn't have been," she said, "for the last time was the year old Bill Muffin 
took blood-sick. Poor Bill!"
"That's almost ten year agone," Aunt Talitha said, and her voice was queerly 
gentle.
"Why did you never say you heard such a thing?" Si asked. He looked at the 
gunslinger. "You can't believe everything she says, lord --  always longing to be 
in the middle of the stage is my Mercy."
"Why, you old slumgullion!" she cried, and slapped his arm. "I didn't say 
because I didn't want to o'ertop the story you're so proud of, but now that it 
matters what I heard, I'm bound to tell!"
"I believe you, sai," Roland said, "but are you sure you haven't heard the 
sounds of the mono since then?"
"Nay, not since then. I imagine it's finally reached the end of its path."
"I wonder," Roland said. "Indeed, I wonder very much." He looked down at the 
table, brooding, suddenly far away from all of them,
Choo-choo, Jake thought, and shivered.


13
HALF AN HOUR LATER they were in the town square again, Susannah in her 
wheelchair, Jake adjusting the straps of his pack while Oy sat at his heel, 
watching him attentively. Only the town elders had attended the dinner-party in 
the little Eden behind the Church of the Blood Everlast­ing, it seemed, because 
when they returned to the square, another dozen people were waiting. They 
glanced at Susannah and looked a bit longer at Jake (his youth apparently more 
interesting to them than her dark skin), but it was clearly Roland they had come 
to see; their wondering eyes were full of ancient awe.
He's a living remnant of a past they only know from stories, Susan­nah thought. 
They look at him the way religious people would look at one of the saints -- Peter 
or Paul or Matthew -- if he decided to drop by the Saturday night bean supper and 
tell them stories of how it was, traipsing around the Sea of Galilee with Jesus 
the Carpenter.
The ritual which had ended the meal was now repeated, only this time everyone 
left in River Crossing participated. They shuffled forward in a line, shaking 
hands with Eddie and Susannah, kissing Jake on the cheek or forehead, then 
kneeling in front of Roland for his touch and his blessing. Mercy threw her arms 
about him and pressed her blind face against his stomach. Roland hugged her back 
and thanked her for her news.
"Will ye not stay the night with us, gunslinger? Sunset comes on apace, and it's 
been long since you and yours spent the night beneath a roof, I'll warrant."
"It has been, but it's best we go on. Thankee-sai."
"Will ye come again if ye may, gunslinger?"
"Yes," Roland said, but Eddie did not need to look into his strange friend's 
face to know the chances were small. "If we can."
"Ay." She Imaged him a final time, then passed on with her hand resting on Si's 
sunburned shoulder. "Fare ye well."
Aunt Talitha came last. When she began to kneel, Roland caught her by the 
shoulders. "No, sai. You shall not do." And before Eddie's amazed eyes, Roland 
knelt before her in the dust of the town square. "Will you bless me, Old Mother? 
Will you bless all of us as we go our course?"
"Ay," she said. There was no surprise in her voice, no tears in her eyes, but 
her voice throbbed with deep feeling, all the same. "I see your heart is true, 
gunslinger, and that you hold to the old ways of your kind; ay, you hold to them 
very well. I bless you and yours and will pray that no harm will come to you. 
Now take this, if you will." She reached into the bodice of her faded dress and 
removed a silver cross at the end of a fine-link silver chain. She took it off
Now it was Roland's turn to be surprised. "Are you sure? I did not come to take 
what belongs to you and yours, Old Mother."
"I'm sure as sure can be. I've worn this day and night for over a hundred years, 
gunslinger. Now you shall wear it, and lay it at the foot of the Dark Tower, and 
speak the name of Talitha Unwin at the far end of the earth." She slipped the 
chain over his head. The cross dropped into the open neck of his deerskin shirt 
as if it belonged there. "Go now. We have broken bread, we have held palaver, we 
have your blessing, and you have ours. Go your course in safety. Stand and be 
true." Her voice trembled and broke on the last word.
Roland rose to his feet, then bowed and tapped his throat three times. 
"Thankee-sai."
She bowed back, but did not speak. Now there were tears coursing down her 
cheeks.
"Ready?" Roland asked.
Eddie nodded. He did not trust himself to speak.
"All right," Roland said. "Let's go."
They walked down what remained of the town's high street, Jake pushing 
Susannah's wheelchair. As they passed the last building (TRADE & CHANGE, the 
faded sign read), he looked back. The old people were still gathered about the 
stone marker, a forlorn cluster of humanity in the middle of this wide, empty 
plain. Jake raised his hand. Up to this point he had managed to hold himself in, 
but when several of the old folks -- Si, Bill, and Till among them -- raised their own 
hands in return, Jake burst into tears himself.
Eddie put an arm around his shoulders. "Just keep walking, sport," he said in an 
uneasy voice. "That's the only way to do it."
"They're so old!" Jake sobbed. "How can we just leave them like this? It's not 
right!"
"It's ka," Eddie said without thinking.
"Is it? Well ka suh-suh-sucks!"
"Yeah, hard," Eddie agreed . . . but he kept walking. So did Jake, and he didn't 
look back again. He was afraid they would still be there, standing at the center 
of their forgotten town, watching until Roland and his friends were out of view. 
And he would have been right.


14
THEY HAD MADE LESS than seven miles before the sky began to darken and sunset 
colored the western horizon blaze orange. There was a grove of Susannah's 
eucalyptus trees nearby; Jake and Eddie foraged there for wood.
"I just don't see why we didn't stay," Jake said. "The blind lady invited us, 
and we didn't get very far, anyway. I'm still so full I'm practi­cally 
waddling."
Eddie smiled. "Me, too. And I can tell you something else: your good friend 
Edward Cantor Dean is looking forward to a long and lei­surely squat in this 
grove of trees first thing tomorrow morning. You wouldn't believe how tired I am 
of eating deermeat and crapping rabbit-turds. If you'd told me a year ago that a 
good dump would be the high point of my day, I would have laughed in your face."
"Is your middle name really Cantor?"
"Yes, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't spread it around."
"I won't. Why didn't we stay, Eddie?"
Eddie sighed. "Because we would have found out they needed firewood."
"Huh?"
"And after we got the firewood, we would've found they also needed fresh meat, 
because they served us the last of what they had. And we'd be real creeps not to 
replace what we ate, right? Especially when we're packing guns and the best they 
can probably do is a bunch of bows and arrows fifty or a hundred years old. So 
we would have gone hunting for them. By then it would be night again, and when 
we got up the next day, Susannah would be saying we ought to at least make a few 
repairs before we moved on -- oh, not to the front of the town, that'd be 
danger­ous, but maybe in the hotel or wherever it is they live. Only a few days, 
and what's a few days, right?"
Roland materialized out of the gloom. He moved as quietly as ever, but he looked 
tired and preoccupied. "I thought maybe you two fell into a quickpit," he said.
"Nope. I've just been telling Jake the facts as I see them."
"So what would have been wrong with that?" Jake- asked. "This Dark Tower thingy 
has been wherever it is for a long time, right? It's not going anywhere, is it?"
"A few days, then a few more, then a few more." Eddie looked at the branch he 
had just picked up and threw it aside disgustedly. I'm starting to sound just 
like him, he thought. And yet he knew that he was only speaking the truth. 
"Maybe we'd see that their spring is getting silted up, and it wouldn't be 
polite to go until we'd dug it out for them. But why stop there when we could 
take another couple of weeks and build a jackleg waterwheel, right? They're old, 
and have no more foot." He glanced at Roland, and his voice was tinged with 
reproach. "I tell you what -- when I think of Bill and Till there stalking a herd 
of wild buffalo, I get the shivers."
"They've been doing it a long time," Roland said, "and I imagine they could show 
us a thing or two. They'll manage. Meantime, let's get that wood -- it's going to 
be a chilly night."
But Jake wasn't done with it yet. He was looking closely -- almost sternly -- at 
Eddie. "You're saying we could never do enough for them, aren't you?"
Eddie stuck out his lower lip and blew hair off his forehead. "Not exactly. I'm 
saving it would never be any easier to leave than it was today. Harder, maybe, 
but no easier."
"It still doesn't seem right."
They reached the place that would become, once the fire was lit, just another 
campsite on the road to the Dark Tower. Susannah had eased herself out of her 
chair and was lying on her back with her hands behind her head, looking up at 
the stars. Now she sat up and began to arrange the wood in the way Roland had 
shown her months ago.
"Right is what all this is about," Roland said. "But if you look too long at the 
small rights, Jake -- the ones that lie close at hand --  it's easy to lose sight of 
the big ones that stand farther off. Things are out of joint -- going wrong and 
getting worse. We see it all around us, but the answers are still ahead. While 
we were helping the twenty or thirty people left in River Crossing, twenty or 
thirty thousand more might be suffering or dying somewhere else. And if there is 
any place in the universe where these things can be set right, it's at the Dark 
Tower."
"Why? How?" Jake asked. "What is this Tower, anyway?"
Roland squatted beside the fire Susannah had built, produced his flint and 
steel, and began to flash sparks into the kindling. Soon small flames were 
growing amid the twigs and dried handfuls of grass. "I can't answer those 
questions," he said. "I wish I could."
That, Eddie thought, was an exceedingly clever reply. Roland had said I can't 
answer . . . but that wasn't the same thing as I don't know. Far from it.


15
SUPPER CONSISTED OF WATER and greens. They were all still recovering from the 
heavy meal they'd eaten in River Crossing; even Oy refused the scraps Jake 
offered him after the first one or two.
"How come you wouldn't talk back there?" Jake scolded the bum-bier. "You made me 
look like an idiot!"
"Id-yit!" Oy said, and put his muzzle on Jake's ankle.
"He's talking better all the time," Roland remarked. "He's even starting to 
sound like you, Jake."
"Ake," Oy agreed, not lifting his muzzle. Jake was fascinated by the gold rings 
in Oy's eyes; in the flickering light of the fire, they seemed to revolve 
slowly.
"But he wouldn't talk to the old people."
"Bumblers are choosy about that sort of thing," Roland said. "They're odd 
creatures. If I had to guess, I'd say this one was driven away by its own pack."
"Why do you think so?"
Roland pointed at Oy's flank. Jake had cleaned off the blood (Oy hadn't enjoyed 
this, but had stood for it) and the bite was healing, although the bumbler still 
limped a little. "I'd bet an eagle that's the bite of another bumbler."
"But why would his own pack -- "
"Maybe they got tired of his chatter," Eddie said. He had lain down beside 
Susannah and put an arm about her shoulders.
"Maybe they did," Roland said, "especially if he was the only one of them who 
was still trying to talk. The others might have decided he was too bright -- or too 
uppity -- for their taste. Animals don't know as much about jealousy as people, but 
they're not ignorant of it, either."
The object of this discussion closed his eyes and appeared to go to sleep . . . 
but Jake noticed his ears began twitching when the talk resumed.
"How bright are they?" Jake asked.
Roland shrugged. "The old groom I told you about -- the one who said a good bumbler 
is good luck -- swore he had one in his youth that could add. He said it told sums 
either by scratching on the stable floor or pushing stones together with its 
muzzle." He grinned. It lit his whole face, chasing away the gloomy shadows 
which had lain there ever since they left River Crossing. "Of course, grooms and 
fishermen are born to lie."
A companionable silence fell among them, and Jake could feel drowsiness stealing 
over him. He thought he would sleep soon, and that was fine by him. Then the 
drums began, coming out of the southeast in rhythmic pulses, and he sat back up. 
They listened without speaking.
"That's a rock and roll backbeat," Eddie said suddenly. "I know it is. Take away 
the guitars and that's what you've got left. In fact, it sounds quite a lot like 
Z.Z. Top."
"Z.Z. who?" Susannah asked.
Eddie grinned. "They didn't exist in your when," he said. "I mean, they probably 
did, but in '63 they would have been just a bunch of kids going to school down 
in Texas." He listened. "I'll be goddamned if that doesn't sound just like the 
backbeat to something like 'Sharp-Dressed Man' or 'Velcro Fly.' "
" Velcro Fly'?" Jake said. "That's a stupid name for a song."
"Pretty funny, though," Eddie said. "You missed it by ten years or so, sport."
"We'd better roll over," Roland said. "Morning comes early."
"I can't sleep with that shit going on," Eddie said. He hesitated, then said 
something which had been on his mind ever since the morning when they had pulled 
Jake, whitefaced and shrieking, through the door­way and into this world. "Don't 
you think it's about time we exchanged stories, Roland? We might find out we 
know more than we think."
"Yes, it's almost time for that. But not in the dark." Roland rolled onto his 
side, pulled up a blanket, and appeared to go to sleep.
"Jesus," Eddie said. "Just like that." He blew a disgusted little whistle 
between his teeth.
"He's right," Susannah said. "Come on, Eddie -- go to sleep."
He grinned and kissed the tip of her nose. "Yes, Mummy."
Five minutes later he and Susannah were dead to the world, drums or no drums. 
Jake found that his own sleepiness had stolen away, how­ever. He lay looking up 
at die strange stars and listening to that steady, rhythmic throbbing coming out 
of the darkness. Maybe it was the Pubes, boogying madly to a song called "Velcro 
Fly" while they worked them­selves into a sacrificial killing frenzy.
He thought of Blaine the Mono, a train so fast that it travelled across the 
huge, haunted world trailing a sonic boom behind it, and that led him naturally 
enough to thoughts of Charlie the Choo-Choo, who had been retired to a forgotten 
siding when the new Burlington Zephyr arrived, rendering him obsolete. He 
thought of the expression on Char­lie's face, the one that was supposed to be 
cheery and pleasant but somehow wasn't. He thought about The Mid-World Railway 
Company, and the empty lands between St. Louis and Topeka. He thought about how 
Charlie had been all ready to go when Mr. Martin needed him, and how Charlie 
could blow his own whistle and feed his own firebox. He wondered again if 
Engineer Bob had sabotaged the Burlington Zephyr in order to give his beloved 
Charlie a second chance.
At last -- and as suddenly as it had begun -- the rhythmic drumming stopped, and Jake 
drifted off to sleep.


16
HE DREAMED, BUT NOT of the plaster-man.
He dreamed instead that he was standing on a stretch of blacktop highway 
somewhere in the Big Empty of western Missouri. Oy was with him. Railroad 
warning signals -- white X-shapes with red lights in their centers -- flanked the 
road. The lights were flashing and bells were ringing.
Now a humming noise began to rise out of the southeast getting steadily louder. 
It sounded like lightning in a bottle.
Here it comes, he told Oy.
Urns! Oy agreed.
And suddenly a vast pink shape two wheels long was slicing across the plain 
toward them. It was low and bullet-shaped, and when Jake saw it, a terrible fear 
filled his heart. The two big windows flashing in the sun at the front of the 
train looked like eyes.
Don't ask it silly questions, Jake told Oy. It won't play silly games. It's just 
an awful choo-choo train, and its name is Blaine the Pain.
Suddenly Oy leaped onto the tracks and crouched there with his ears flattened 
back. His golden eyes were blazing. His teeth were bared in a desperate snarl.
No! Jake screamed. No, Oy!
But Oy paid no attention. The pink bullet was bearing down on the1 tiny, defiant 
shape of the billy-bumbler now, and that humming seemed to be crawling all over 
Jake's skin, making his nose bleed and shattering the fillings in his teeth.
He leaped for Oy, Blaine the Mono (or was it Charlie the Choo-Choo?) bore down 
on them, and he woke up suddenly, shivering, bathed in sweat. The night seemed 
to be pressing down upon him like a physical weight. He rolled over and felt 
frantically for Oy. For a terrible moment he thought the bumbler was gone, and 
then his fingers found the silky fur. Oy uttered a squeak and looked at him with 
sleepy curiosity.
"That's all right," Jake whispered in a dry voice. "There's no train. It was 
just a dream. Go back to sleep, boy."
"Oy," the humbler agreed, and closed his eyes again.
Jake rolled over on his back and lay looking up at the stars. Blaine is more 
than a pain, he thought. It's dangerous. Very dangerous.
Yes, perhaps.
No perhaps about it! his mind insisted frantically.
All right, Blaine was a pain -- given. But his Final Essay had had something else 
to say on the subject of Blaine, hadn't it?
Blaine is the truth. Blaine is the truth. Blaine is the truth.
"Oh Jeez, what a mess," Jake whispered. He closed his eyes and was asleep again 
in seconds. This time his sleep was dreamless.


17
AROUND NOON THE NEXT day they reached the top of another drumlin and saw the 
bridge for the first time. It crossed the Send at a point where the river 
narrowed, bent due south, and passed in front of the city.
"Holy Jesus," Eddie said softly. "Does that look familiar to you, Suze?"
"Yes."
"Jake?"
"Yes -- it looks like the George Washington Bridge."
"It sure does," Eddie agreed.
"But what's the GWB doing in Missouri?" Jake asked.
Eddie looked at him. "Say what, sport?"
Jake looked confused. "Mid-World, I mean. You know."
Eddie was looking at him harder than ever. "How do you know this is Mid-World? 
You weren't with us when we came to that marker."
Jake stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked down at his mocca­sins. 
"Dreamed it," he said briefly. "You don't think I booked this trip with my dad's 
travel-agent, do you?"
Roland touched Eddie's shoulder. "Let it alone for now." Eddie glanced briefly 
at Roland and nodded.
They stood looking at the bridge a little longer. They'd had time to get used to 
the city skyline, but this was something new. It dreamed in the distance, a 
faint shape sketched against the blue midmorning sky. Roland could make out four 
sets of impossibly tall metal towers -- one set at each end of the bridge and two 
in the middle. Between them, gigantic cables swooped through the air in long 
arcs. Between these arcs and the base of the bridge were many vertical 
lines -- either more cables or metal beams, he could not tell which. But he also 
saw gaps, and realized after a long time that the bridge was no longer perfectly 
level.
"Yonder bridge is going to be in the river soon, I think," Roland said.
"Well, maybe," Eddie said reluctantly, "but it doesn't really look that bad to 
me."
Roland sighed. "Don't hope for too much, Eddie."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Eddie heard the touchiness in his voice, but it 
was too late to do anything about it now.
"It means that I want you to believe your eyes, Eddie -- that's all. There was a 
saying when I was growing up: 'Only a fool believes he's dreaming before he 
wakes up.' Do you understand?"
Eddie felt a sarcastic reply on his tongue and banished it after a brief 
struggle. It was just that Roland had a way -- it was unintentional, he was sure, 
but that didn't make it any easier to deal with -- of making him feel like such a 
kid.
"I guess I do," he said at last. "It means the same thing as my mother's 
favorite saying."
"And what was that?"
"Hope for the best and expect the worst," Eddie said sourly.
Roland's face lightened in a smile. "I think I like your mother's saying 
better."
"But it is still standing!" Eddie burst out. "I agree it's not in such fantastic 
shape -- probably nobody's done a really thorough maintenance check on it for a 
thousand years or so -- but it is still there. The whole city is! Is it so wrong to 
hope we might find some things that'll help us there? Or some people that'll 
feed us and talk to us, like the old folks back in River Crossing, instead of 
shooting at us? Is it so wrong to hope our luck might be turning?"
In the silence which followed, Eddie realized with embarrassment that he had 
been making a speech.
"No." There was a kindness in Roland's voice -- that kindness which always 
surprised Eddie when it came. "It's never wrong to hope." He looked around at 
Eddie and the others like a man coming out of a deep dream. "We're done 
travelling for today. It's time we had our own pala­ver, I think, and it's going 
to take awhile."
The gunslinger left the road and walked into the high grass without looking 
back. After a moment, the other three followed.


18
UNTIL THEY MET THE old people in River Crossing, Susannah had seen Roland 
strictly in terms of television shows she rarely watched: Cheyenne, The 
Rifleman, and, of course, the archetype of them all, Gunsmoke. That was one she 
had sometimes listened to on tin- radio with her father before it came on TV 
(she thought of how foreign the idea of radio drama would be to Eddie and Jake 
and smiled -- Roland's was not the only world which had moved on). She could still 
remember what the narrator said at the beginning of every one of those radio 
playlets: "It makes a man watchful . . . and a little lonely."
Until River Crossing, that had summed Roland up perfectly for her. He was not 
broad-shouldered, as Marshal Dillon had been, nor anywhere near as tall, and his 
face seemed to her more that of a tired poet than a wild-west lawman, but she 
had still seen him as an existential version of that make-believe Kansas peace 
officer, whose only mission in life (other than an occasional drink in The 
Longbranch with his friends Doc and Kitty) had been to Clean Up Dodge.
Now she understood that Roland had once been much more than a cop riding a 
Daliesque range at the end of the world. He had been a diplomat; a mediator; 
perhaps even a teacher. Most of all, he had been a soldier of what these people 
called "the white," by which she guessed they meant the civilizing forces that 
kept people from killing each other enough of the time to allow some sort of 
progress. In his time he had been more wandering knight-errant than bounty 
hunter. And in many ways, this still was his time; the people of River Crossing 
had certainly thought so. Why else would they have knelt in the dust to receive 
his blessing?
In light of this new perception, Susannah could see how cleverly the gunslinger 
had managed them since that awful morning in the speaking ring, Each time they 
had begun a line of conversation which would lead to the comparing of notes -- and 
what could be more natural, given the cataclysmic and inexplicable "drawing" 
each of them had experienced? --  Roland had been there, stepping in quickly and 
turning the conversation into other channels so smoothly that none of them (even 
she, who had spent almost four years up to her neck in the civil-rights 
movement) had noticed what he was doing.
Susannah thought she understood why -- he had done it in order to give Jake time to 
heal. But understanding his motives didn't change her own feelings -- astonishment, 
amusement, chagrin -- about how neatly he had handled them. She remembered 
something Andrew, her chauffeur, had said shortly before Roland had drawn her 
into this world. Something about President Kennedy being the last gunslinger of 
the western world. She had scoffed then, but now she thought she understood. 
There was a lot more JFK than Matt Dillon in Roland. She suspected that Roland 
possessed little of Kennedy's imagination, but when it came to romance . . . 
dedication . . . charisma . . .
And guile, she thought. Don't forget guile.
She surprised herself by suddenly bursting into laughter.
Roland had seated himself cross-legged. Now he turned toward her, raising his 
eyebrows. "Something funny?"
"Very. Tell me something -- how many languages can you speak?"
The gunslinger thought it over. "Five," he said at last. "I used to speak the 
Sellian dialects fairly well, but I believe I've forgotten every­thing but the 
curses."
Susannah laughed again. It was a cheerful, delighted sound. "You a fox, Roland," 
she said. "Indeed you are."
Jake looked interested. "Say a swear in Strelleran," he said.
"Sellian," Roland corrected. He thought a minute, then said some­thing very fast 
and greasy -- to Eddie it sounded a little as if he was gargling with some very 
thick liquid. Week-old coffee, say. Roland grinned as he said it.
Jake grinned back. "What does it mean?"
Roland put an arm around the boy's shoulders for a moment. "That we have a lot 
of things to talk about."


19
"WE ARE KA-TET," ROLAND began, "which means a group of people bound together by 
fate. The philosophers of my land said a ka-tet could only be broken by death or 
treachery. My great teacher, Cort, said that since death and treachery are also 
spokes on the wheel of ka, such a binding can never be broken. As the years pass 
and I see more, I come more and more to Cort's way of looking at it.
"Each member of a ka-tet is like a piece in a puzzle. Taken by itself, each 
piece is a mystery, but when they are put together, they make a picture ... or 
part of a picture. It may take a great many ka-tets to finish one picture. You 
mustn't be surprised if you discover your lives have been touching in ways you 
haven't seen until now. For one thing, each of you three is capable of knowing 
each other's thoughts -- "
"What?" Eddie cried.
"It's true. You share your thoughts so naturally that you haven't even been 
aware it's happening, but it has been. It's easier for me to see, no doubt, 
because I am not a full member of this ka-tet -- possibly because I am not from 
your world -- and so cannot take part completely in the thought-sharing ability. 
But I can send. Susannah ... do you remember when we were in the circle?"
"Yes. You told me to let the demon go when you told me. But you didn't say that 
out loud."
"Eddie ... do you remember when we were in the bear's clearing, and the 
mechanical bat came at you?"
"Yes. You told me to get down."
"He never opened his mouth, Eddie," Susannah said.
"Yes, you did! You yelled! I heard you, man!"
"I yelled, all right, but I did it with my mind." The gunslinger turned to Jake. 
"Do you remember? In the house?"
"When the board I was pulling on wouldn't come up, you told me to pull on the 
other one. But if you can't read my mind, Roland, how did you know what land of 
trouble I was in?"
"I saw. I heard nothing, but I saw -- just a little, as if through a dirty window." 
His eyes surveyed them. "This closeness and sharing of minds is called khef, a 
word that means many other things in the original tongue of the Old World -- water, 
birth, and life-force are only three of them. Be aware of it. For now, that's 
all I want."
"Can you be aware of something you don't believe in?" Eddie asked.
Roland smiled. "Just keep an open mind."
"That I can do."
"Roland?" It was Jake. "Do you think Oy might be part of our ka-tet?"
Susannah smiled. Roland didn't. "I'm not prepared to even guess right now, but 
I'll tell you this, Jake -- I've been thinking about your furry friend a good deal. 
Ka does not rule all, and coincidences still happen . . . but the sudden 
appearance of a billy-bumbler that still remembers people doesn't seem 
completely coincidental to me."
He glanced around at them.
"I'll begin. Eddie will speak next, taking up from the place where I leave off. 
Then Susannah. Jake, you'll speak last. All right?"
They nodded.
"Fine," Roland said. "We are ka-tet -- one from many. Let the pala­ver begin."


20
THE TALK WENT ON until sundown, stopping only long enough for them to eat a cold 
meal, and by the time it was over, Eddie felt as if he had gone twelve hard 
rounds with Sugar Ray Leonard. He no longer doubted that they had been "sharing 
khef," as Roland put it; he and Jake actually seemed to have been living each 
other's life in their dreams, as if they were two halves of the same whole.
Roland began with what had happened under the mountains, where Jake's first life 
in this world had ended. He told of his own palaver with the man in black, and 
Walter's veiled words about a Beast and someone he called the Ageless Stranger. 
He told of the strange, daunting dream which had come to him, a dream in which 
the whole universe had been swallowed in a beam of fantastic white light. And 
how, at the end of that dream, there had been a single blade of purple grass.
Eddie glanced sideways at Jake and was stunned by the knowledge --  the 
recognition -- in the boy's eyes.


21
ROLAND HAD BABBLED PARTS of this story to Eddie in his time of delir­ium, but it 
was entirely new to Susannah, and she listened with wide eyes. As Roland 
repeated the things Walter had told him, she caught glints of her own world, 
like reflections in a smashed mirror: automobiles, cancer, rockets to the moon, 
artificial insemination. She had no idea who the Beast might be, but she 
recognized the name of the Ageless Stranger as a variation upon the name of 
Merlin, the magician who had supposedly orchestrated the career of King Arthur. 
Curiouser and curiouser.
Roland told of how he had awakened to find Walter long years dead -- time had 
somehow slipped forward, perhaps a hundred years, per­haps five hundred. Jake 
listened in fascinated silence as the gunslinger told of reaching the edge of 
the Western Sea, of how he had lost two of the fingers on his right hand, and 
how he had drawn Eddie and Susannah before encountering Jack Mort, the dark 
third.
The gunslinger motioned to Eddie, who took up the tale with the coming of the 
great bear.
"Shardik?" Jake interjected. "But that's the name of a book! A book in our 
world! It was written by the man who wrote that famous book about the rabbits -- "
"Richard Adams!" Eddie shouted. "And the book about the bunnies was Watership 
Down! I knew I knew that name! But how can that be, Roland? How is it that the 
people in your world know about things in ours?"
"There are doors, aren't there?" Roland responded. "Haven't we seen four of them 
already? Do you think they never existed before, or never will again?"
"But -- "
"All of us have seen the leavings of your world in mine, and when I was in your 
city of New York, I saw the marks of my world in yours. I saw gunslingers. Most 
were lax and slow, but they were gunslingers all the same, clearly members of 
their own ancient ka-tet."
"Roland, they were just cops. You ran rings around them."
"Not the last one. When Jack Mort and I were in the underground railway station, 
that one almost took me down. Except for blind luck --  Mort's flint-and-steel -- he 
would have done. That one ... I saw his eyes. He knew the face of his father. I 
believe he knew it very well. And then ... do you remember the name of Balazar's 
nightclub?"
"Sure," Eddie said uneasily. "The Leaning Tower. But it could have been 
coincidence; you yourself said ka doesn't rule everything."
Roland nodded. "You really are like Cuthbert -- I remember some­thing he said when 
we were boys. We were planning a midnight lark in the cemetery, but Alain 
wouldn't go. He said he was afraid of offending the shades of his fathers and 
mothers. Cuthbert laughed at him. He said he wouldn't believe in ghosts until he 
caught one in his teeth."
"Good for him!" Eddie exclaimed. "Bravo!"
Roland smiled. "I thought you'd like that. At any rate, let's leave this ghost 
for now. Go on with your story."
Eddie told of the vision which had come to him when Roland threw the jawbone 
into the fire -- the vision of the key and the rose. He told of his dream, and how 
he had walked through the door of Tom and Gerry's Artistic Deli and into the 
field of roses which was dominated by the tall, soot-colored Tower. He told of 
the blackness which had issued from its windows, forming a shape in the sky 
overhead, speaking directly to Jake now, because Jake was listening with hungry 
concentration and growing wonder. He tried to convey some sense of the 
exaltation and terror which had permeated the dream, and saw from their 
eyes -- Jake's most of all --  that he was either doing a better job of that than he 
could have hoped for ... or that they'd had dreams of their own.
He told of following Shardik's backtrail to the Portal of the Bear, and how, 
when he put his head against it, he'd found himself remember­ing the day he had 
talked his brother into taking him to Dutch Hill, so he could see The Mansion. 
He told about die cup and the needle, and how the pointing needle had become 
unnecessary once they realized they could see the Beam at work in everything it 
touched, even the birds in the sky.
Susannah took up the tale at this point. As she spoke, telling of how Eddie had 
begun to carve his own version of the key, Jake lay back, laced his hands 
together behind his head, and watched the clouds run slowly toward the city on 
their straight southeasterly course. The orderly shape they made showed the 
presence of the Beam as clearly as smoke leaving a chimney shows die direction 
of the wind.
She finished with the story of how they had finally hauled Jake into this world, 
closing the split track of his and Roland's memories as sud­denly and as 
completely as Eddie had closed the door in the speaking ring. The only fact she 
left out was really not a fact at all -- at least, not yet. She'd had no morning 
sickness, after all, and a single missed period meant nothing by itself. As 
Roland himself might have said, that was a tale best left for another day.
Yet as she finished, she found herself wishing she could forget what Aunt 
Talitha had said when Jake told her this was his home now: Gods pity you, then, 
for the sun is going down on this world. It's going down forever.
"And now it's your turn, Jake," Roland said.
Jake sat up and looked toward Lud, where the windows of the west-em towers 
reflected back the late afternoon light in golden sheets. "It's all crazy," he 
murmured, "but it almost makes sense. Like a dream when you wake up."
"Maybe we can help you make sense of it," Susannah said.
"Maybe you can. At least you can help me think about the train. I'm tired of 
trying to make sense of Blaine by myself." He sighed. "You know what Roland went 
through, living two lives at the same time, so I can skip that part. I'm not 
sure I could ever explain how it felt, anyway, and I don't want to. It was 
gross. I guess I better start with my Final Essay, because that's when I finally 
stopped thinking that the whole thing might just go away." He looked around at 
them somberly. "That was when I gave up."


22
JAKE TALKED THE SUN down.
He told them everything he could remember, beginning with My Understanding of 
Truth and ending with the monstrous doorkeeper which had literally come out of 
the woodwork to attack him. The other three listened without a single 
interruption.
When he was finished, Roland turned to Eddie, his eyes bright with a mixture of 
emotions Eddie initially took for wonder. Then he realized he was looking at 
powerful excitement . . . and deep fear. His mouth went dry. Because if Roland 
was afraid -- 
"Do you still doubt that our worlds overlap each other, Eddie?"
He shook his head. "Of course not. I walked down the same street, and I did it 
in his clothes! But . . . Jake, can I see that book? Charlie the Choo-Choo?"
Jake reached for his pack, but Roland stayed his hand. "Not yet," he said. "Go 
back to the vacant lot, Jake. Tell that part once more. Try to remember 
everything."
"Maybe you should hypnotize me," Jake said hesitantly. "Like you did before, at 
the way station."
Roland shook his head. "There's no need. What happened to you in that lot was 
the most important thing ever to happen in your life, Jake. In all our lives. 
You can remember everything."
So Jake went through it again. It was clear to all of them that his experience 
in the vacant lot where Tom and Gerry's once had stood was the secret heart of 
the ka-tet they shared. In Eddie's dream, the Artistic Deli had still been 
standing; in Jake's reality it had been torn down, but in both cases it was a 
place of enormous, talismanic power. Nor did Roland doubt that the vacant lot 
with its broken bricks and shattered glass was another version of what Susannah 
knew as the Drawers and the place he had seen at the end of his vision in the 
place of bones.
As he told this part of his story for the second time, speaking very slowly now, 
Jake found that what the gunslinger had said was true: he could remember 
everything. His recall improved until he almost seemed to be reliving the 
experience. He told them of the sign which said that a building called Turtle 
Bay Condominiums was slated to stand on the spot where Tom and Gerry's had once 
stood. He even remembered the little poem which had been spray-painted on the 
fence, and recited it for them:

"See the TURTLE of enormous girth! 
On his shell he holds the earth. 
If you want to run and play, 
Come along the BEAM today."

Susannah murmured, "His thought is slow but always kind; He holds us all within 
his mind . . . isn't that how it went, Roland?"
"What?" Jake asked. "How what went?"
"A poem I learned as a child," Roland said. "It's another connection, one that 
really tells us something, although I'm not sure it's anything we need to know . 
. . still, one never knows when a little understanding may come in handy."
"Twelve portals connected by six Beams," Eddie said. "We started at the Bear. 
We're only going as far as the middle -- to the Tower -- but if we went all the way to 
the other end, we'd come to the Portal of the Turtle, wouldn't we?"
Roland nodded. "I'm sure we would."
"Portal of the Turtle," Jake said thoughtfully, rolling the words in his mouth, 
seeming to taste them. Then he finished by telling them again about the gorgeous 
voice of the choir, his realization that there were faces and stories and 
histories everywhere, and his growing belief that he had stumbled on something 
very like the core of all existence. Last of all, he told them again about 
finding the key and seeing the rose. In the totality of his recall, Jake began 
to weep, although he seemed unaware of it.
"When it opened," he said, "I saw the middle was the brightest yellow you ever 
saw in your life. At first I thought it was pollen and it only looked bright 
because everything in that lot looked bright. Even looking at the old 
candy-wrappers and beer-bottles was like looking at the greatest paintings you 
ever saw. Only then I realized it was a sun. I know it sounds crazy, but that's 
what it was. Only it was more than one. It was -- "
"It was all suns," Roland murmured. "It was everything real." "Yes! And it was 
right -- but it was wrong, too. I can't explain how it was wrong, but it was. It 
was like two heartbeats, one inside of the other, and the one inside had a 
disease. Or an infection. And then I fainted."


23
"You SAW THE SAME thing at the end of your dream, Roland, didn't you?" Susannah 
asked. Her voice was soft with awe. "The blade of grass you saw near the end of 
it ... you thought that blade was purple because it was splattered with paint."
"You don't understand," Jake said. "It really was purple. When I was seeing it 
the way it really was, it was purple. Like no grass I ever saw before. The paint 
was just camouflage. The way the doorkeeper camouflaged itself to look like an 
old deserted house."
The sun had reached the horizon. Roland asked Jake if he would now show them 
Charlie the Choo-Choo and then read it to them. Jake handed the book around. 
Both Eddie and Susannah looked at the cover for a long time.
"I had this book when I was a little lad," Eddie said at last. He spoke in the 
flat tones of utter surety. "Then we moved from Queens to Brooklyn -- I wasn't even 
four years old -- and I lost it. But I remember the picture on the cover. And I 
felt the same way you do, Jake. I didn't like it. I didn't trust it."
Susannah raised her eyes to look at Eddie. "I had it, too -- how could I ever 
forget the little girl with my name . . . although of course it was my middle 
name back in those days. And I felt the same way about the train. I didn't like 
it and I didn't trust it." She tapped the front of the book with her finger 
before passing it on to Roland. "I thought that smile was a great big fake."
Roland gave it only a cursory glance before returning his eyes to Susannah. "Did 
you lose yours, too?"
"Yes."
"And I'll bet I know when," Eddie said.
Susannah nodded. "I'll bet you do. It was after that man dropped the brick on my 
head. I had it when we went north to my Aunt Blue's wedding. I had it on the 
train. I remember, because I kept asking my dad if Charlie the Choo-Choo was 
pulling us. I didn't want it to be Charlie, because we were supposed to go to 
Elizabeth, New Jersey, and I thought Charlie might take us anywhere. Didn't he 
end up pulling folks around a toy village or something like that, Jake?"
"An amusement park."
"Yes, of course it was. There's a picture of him hauling kids around that place 
at the end, isn't there? They're all smiling and laughing, except I always 
thought they looked like they were screaming to be let off."
"Yes!" Jake cried. "Yes, that's right! That's just right!"
"I thought Charlie might take us to his place -- wherever he lived --  instead of to 
my Aunt's wedding, and never let us go home again."
"You can't go home again," Eddie muttered, and ran his hands ner­vously through 
his hair.
"All the time we were on that train I wouldn't let go of the book. I even 
remember thinking, 'If he tries to steal us, I'll rip out his pages until he 
quits.' But of course we arrived right where we were supposed to, and on time, 
too. Daddy even took me up front, so I could see the engine. It was a diesel, 
not a steam engine, and I remember that made me happy. Then, after the wedding, 
that man Mort dropped the brick on me and I was in a coma for a long time. I 
never saw Charlie the Choo-Choo after that. Not until now." She hesitated, then 
added: "This could be my copy, for all I know -- or Eddie's."
"Yeah, and probably is," Eddie said. His face was pale and solemn . . . and then 
he grinned like a lad. " 'See the TURTLE, ain't he keen? All things serve the 
fuckin Beam.' "
Roland glanced west. "The sun's going down. Read the story before we lose the 
light, Jake."
Jake turned to the first page, showed them the picture of Engineer Bob in 
Charlie's cab, and began: " 'Bob Brooks was an engineer for The Mid-World 
Railway Company, on the St. Louis to Topeka run…..' "


24
" '. . . AND EVERY NOW AND then the children hear him singing his old song in 
his soft, gruff voice,' " Jake finished. He showed them the last picture -- the 
happy children who might actually have been screaming --  and then closed the book. 
The sun had gone down; the sky was purple.
"Well, it's not a perfect fit," Eddie said, "more like a dream where the water 
sometimes runs uphill -- but it fits well enough to scare me silly. This is 
Mid-World -- Charlie's territory. Only his name over here isn't Charlie at all. 
Over here it's Blaine the Mono."
Roland was looking at Jake. "What do you think?" he asked. "Should we go around 
the city? Stay away from this train?"
Jake thought it over, head down, hands working distractedly through Oy's thick, 
silky fur. "I'd like to," he said at last, "but if I've got this stuff about ka 
right, I don't think we're supposed to."
Roland nodded. "If it's ka, questions of what we're supposed to or not supposed 
to do aren't even in it; if we tried to go around, we'd find circumstances 
forcing us back. In such cases it's better to give in to the inevitable promptly 
instead of putting it off. What do you think, Eddie?"
Eddie thought as long and as carefully as Jake had done. He didn't want anything 
to do with a talking train that ran by itself, and whether you called it Charlie 
the Choo-Choo or Blaine the Mono, everything Jake had told them and read them 
suggested that it might be a very nasty piece of work. But they had a tremendous 
distance to cross, and some­where, at the end of it, was the thing they had come 
to find. And with that thought, Eddie was amazed to discover he knew exactly 
what he thought, and what he wanted. He raised his head and for almost the first 
time since he had come to this world, he fixed Roland's faded blue eyes firmly 
with his hazel ones.
"I want to stand in that field of roses, and I want to see the Tower that stands 
there. I don't know what comes next. Mourners please omit flowers, probably, and 
for all of us. But I don't care. I want to stand there. I guess I don't care if 
Blaine's the devil and the train runs through hell itself on the way to the 
Tower. I vote we go."
Roland nodded and turned to Susannah.
"Well, I didn't have any dreams about the Dark Tower," she said, "so I can deal 
with the question on that level -- the level of desire, I suppose you'd say. But 
I've come to believe in ka, and I'm not so numb that I can't feel it when 
someone starts rapping on my head with his knuckles and saying, 'That way, 
idiot.' What about you, Roland? What do you think?"
"I think there's been enough talk for one day, and it's time to let it go until 
tomorrow."
"What about Riddle-De-Dum! -- " Jake asked, "do you want to look at that?"
"There'll be time enough for that another day," Roland said. "Let's get some 
sleep."


25
BUT THE GUNSLINGER LAY long awake, and when the rhythmic drum­ming began again, 
he got up and walked back to the road. He stood looking toward the bridge and 
the city. He was every inch the diplomat Susannah had suspected, and he had 
known the train was the next step on the road they must travel almost from the 
moment he had heard of it ... but he'd felt it would be unwise to say so. Eddie 
in particular hated to feel pushed; when he sensed that was being done, he 
simply lowered his head, planted his feet, made his silly jokes, and balked like 
a mule. This time he wanted what Roland wanted, but he was still apt to say day 
if Roland said night, and night if Roland said day. It was safer to walk softly, 
and surer to ask instead of telling.
He turned to go back . . . and his hand dropped to his gun as he saw a dark 
shape standing on the edge of the road, looking at him. He didn't draw, but it 
was a near thing.
"I wondered if you'd be able to sleep after that little performance," Eddie 
said. "Guess the answer's no."
"I didn't hear you at all, Eddie. You're learning . .. only this time you almost 
got a bullet in the gut for your pains."
"You didn't hear me because you have a lot on your mind." Eddie joined him, and 
even by starlight, Roland saw he hadn't fooled Eddie a bit. His respect for 
Eddie continued to grow. It was Cuthbert Eddie reminded him of, but in many ways 
he had already surpassed Cuthbert.
If I underestimate him, Roland thought, I'm apt to come away with a bloody paw. 
And if I let him down, or do something that looks to him like a double-cross, 
he'll probably try to kill me.
"What's on your mind, Eddie?"
"You. Us. I want you to know something. I guess until tonight I just assumed 
that you knew already. Now I'm not so sure."
"Tell me, then." He thought again: How like Cuthbert he is!
"We're with you because we have to be -- that's your goddamned ka. But we're also 
with you because we want to be. I know that's true of me and Susannah, and I'm 
pretty sure it's true of Jake, too. You've got a good brain, me old khef-mate, 
but I think you must keep it in a bomb­shelter, because it's bitchin hard to get 
through sometimes. I want to see it, Roland. Can you dig what I'm telling you? I 
want to see the Tower." He looked closely into Roland's face, apparently did not 
see what he'd hoped to find there, and raised his hands in exasperation. "What I 
mean is I want you to let go of my ears."
"Let go of your ears?"
"Yeah. Because you don't have to drag me anymore. I'm coming of my own accord. 
We're coming of our own accord. If you died in your sleep tonight, we'd bury you 
and then go on. We probably wouldn't last long, but we'd die in the path of the 
Beam. Now do you understand?"
"Yes. Now I do."
"You say you understand me, and I think you do ... but do you believe me, as 
well?"
Of course, he thought. Where else do you have to go, Eddie, in this world that's 
so strange to you? And what else could you do? You'd make a piss-poor farmer.
But that was mean and unfair, and he knew it. Denigrating free will by confusing 
it with ka was worse than blasphemy; it was tiresome and stupid. "Yes," he said. 
"I believe you. Upon my soul, I do."
"Then stop behaving like we're a bunch of sheep and you're the shepherd walking 
along behind us, waving a crook to make sure we don't trot our stupid selves off 
the road and into a quicksand bog. Open your mind to us. If we're going to die 
in the city or on that train, I want to die knowing I was more than a marker on 
your game-board."
Roland felt anger heat his cheeks, but he had never been much good at 
self-deception. He wasn't angry because Eddie was wrong but because Eddie had 
seen through him. Roland had watched him come steadily forward, leaving his 
prison further and further behind -- and Susannah, too, for she had also been 
imprisoned -- and yet his heart had never quite accepted the evidence of his 
senses. His heart apparently wanted to go on seeing them as different, lesser 
creatures.
Roland drew in deep air. "Gunslinger, I cry your pardon."
Eddie nodded. "We're running into a whole hurricane of trouble here ... I feel 
it, and I'm scared to death. But it's not your trouble, it's our trouble. Okay?"
"Yes."
"How bad do you think it can get in the city?"
"I don't know. I only know that we have to try and protect Jake, because the old 
auntie said both sides would want him. Some of it depends on how long it takes 
us to find this train. A lot more depends on what happens when we find it. If we 
had two more in our party, I'd put Jake in a moving box with guns on every side 
of him. Since we don't, we'll move in column -- me first, Jake pushing Susannah 
behind, and you on drogue."
"How much trouble, Roland? Make a guess."
"I can't."
"I think you can. You don't know the city, but you know how the people in your 
world have been behaving since things started to fall apart. How much trouble?"
Roland turned toward the steady sound of the drumbeats and thought it over. 
"Maybe not too much. I'd guess the fighting men who are still there are old and 
demoralized. It may he that yon have the straight of it, and some will even 
offer to help us on our way, as the River Crossing ka-tet did. Mayhap we won't 
see them at all -- they'll see MS, see we're packing iron, and just put their heads 
down and let us go our way. If that fails, I'm hoping that they'll scatter like 
rats if we gun a few."
"And if they decide to make a fight of it?"
Roland smiled grimly. "Then, Eddie, we'll all remember the faces of our 
fathers."
Eddie's eyes gleamed in the darkness, and Roland was once more reminded forcibly 
of Cuthbert -- Cuthbert who had once said he would believe in ghosts when he could 
catch one in his teeth, Cuthbert with whom he had once scattered breadcrumbs 
beneath the hangman's gibbet.
"Have I answered all your questions?"
"Nope -- but I think you played straight with me this time."
"Then goodnight, Eddie."
"Goodnight."
Eddie turned and walked away. Roland watched him go. Now that he was listening, 
he could hear him . . . but just barely. He started back himself, then turned 
toward the darkness where the city of Lud was.
He's what the old woman called a Pube. She said both sides would want him.
You won't let me drop this time?
No. Not this time, not ever again.
But he knew something none of the others did. Perhaps, after the talk he'd just 
had with Eddie, he should tell them . . . yet he thought he would keep the 
knowledge to himself a little while longer.
In the old tongue which had once been his world's lingua franca, most words, 
like khef and ka, had many meanings. The word char, how­ever -- char as in Charlie 
the Choo-Choo -- had only one.
Char meant death.






V 
BRIDGE AND
CITY




V
BRIDGE AND CITY


1
THEY CAME UPON THE downed airplane three days later.
Jake pointed it out first at midmorning -- a flash of light about ten miles away, 
as if a mirror lay in the grass. As they drew closer, they saw a large dark 
object at the side of the Great Road.
"It looks like a dead bird," Roland said. "A big one."
"That's no bird," Eddie said. "That's an airplane. I'm pretty sure the glare is 
sunlight bouncing off the canopy."
An hour later they stood silently at the edge of the road, looking at the 
ancient wreck. Three plump crows stood on the tattered skin of the fuselage, 
staring insolently at the newcomers. Jake pried a cobble from the edge of the 
road and shied it at them. The crows lumbered into the air, cawing indignantly.
One wing had broken off in the crash and lay thirty yards away, a shadow like a 
diving board in the tall grass. The rest of the plane was pretty much intact. 
The canopy had cracked in a starburst pattern where the pilot's head had struck 
it. There was a large, rust-colored stain there.
Oy trotted over to where three rusty propeller blades rose from the grass, 
sniffed at them, then returned hastily to Jake.
The man in the cockpit was u dust-dry mummy wearing a padded leather vest and a 
helmet with a spike on top. His lips were gone, his teeth exposed in a final 
desperate grimace. Fingers which had once been as large as sausages but were now 
only skin-covered bones clutched the wheel. His skull was caved in where it had 
hit the canopy, and Roland guessed that the greenish-gray scales which coated 
the left side of his face were all that remained of his brains. The dead man's 
head was tilted back, as if he had been sure, even at the moment of his death, 
that he could regain the sky again. The plane's remaining wing still jutted from 
the encroaching grass. On it was a fading insignia which depicted a fist holding 
a thunderbolt.
"Looks like Aunt Talitha was wrong and the old albino man had the right of it, 
after all," Susannah said in an awed voice. "That must be David Quick, the 
outlaw prince. Look at the size of him, Roland -- they must have had to grease him 
to get him into the cockpit!"
Roland nodded. The heat and the years had wasted the man in the mechanical bird 
to no more than a skeleton wrapped in dry hide, but he could still see how broad 
the shoulders had been, and the misshapen head was massive. "So fell Lord 
Perth," he said, "and the countryside did shake with that thunder."
Jake looked at him questioningly.
"It's from an old poem. Lord Perth was a giant who went forth to war with a 
thousand men, but he was still in his own country when a little boy threw a 
stone at him and hit him in the knee. He stumbled, the weight of his armor bore 
him down, and he broke his neck in the fall."
Jake said, "Like our story of David and Goliath."
"There was no fire," Eddie said. "I bet he just ran out of gas and tried a 
dead-stick landing on the road. He might have been an outlaw and a barbarian, 
but he had a yard of guts."
Roland nodded, and looked at Jake. "You all right with this?"
"Yes. If the guy was still, you know, runny, I might not be." Jake looked from 
the dead man in the airplane to the city. Lud was much closer and clearer now, 
and although they could see many broken win­dows in the towers, he, like Eddie, 
had not entirely given up hope of finding some sort of help there. "I bet things 
sort of fell apart in the city once he was gone."
"I think you'd win that bet," Roland said.
"You know something?" Jake was studying the plane again. "The people who built 
that city might have made their own airplanes, but I'm pretty sure this is one 
of ours. I did a school paper on air combat when I was in the fifth grade, and I 
think I recognize it. Roland, can I take a closer look?"
Roland nodded. "I'll go with you."
Together they walked over to the plane with the high grass swishing at their 
pants. "Look," Jake said. "See the machine-gun under the wing? That's an 
air-cooled German model, and this is a Focke-Wulf from just before World War II. 
I'm sure it is. So what's it doing here?"
"Lots of planes disappear," Eddie said. "Take the Bermuda Triangle, for 
instance. That's a place over one of our oceans, Roland. It's supposed to be 
jinxed. Maybe it's a great big doorway between our worlds -- one that's almost 
always open." Eddie hunched his shoulders and essayed a bad Rod Serling 
imitation. "Fasten your seatbelts and prepare for turbu­lence: you're flying 
into . . . the Roland Zone!"
Jake and Roland, who were now standing beneath the plane's remaining wing, 
ignored him.
"Boost me up, Roland."
Roland shook his head. "That wing looks solid, but it's not -- this thing has been 
here a long time, Jake. You'd fall."
"Make a step, then."
Eddie said, "I'll do it, Roland."
Roland studied his diminished right hand for a moment, shrugged, then laced his 
hands together. "This'll do. He's light."
Jake shook off his moccasin and then stepped lightly into the stirrup Roland had 
made. Oy began to bark shrilly, though whether in excitement or alarm, Roland 
couldn't tell.
Jake's chest was now pressing against one of the airplane's rusty flaps, and he 
was looking right at the fist-and-thunderbolt design. It had peeled up a little 
from the surface of the wing along one edge. He seized this flap and pulled. It 
came off the wing so easily that he would have fallen backward if Eddie, 
standing directly behind him, hadn't steadied him with a hand on the butt.
"I knew it," Jake said. There was another symbol beneath the 
fist-and-thunderbolt, and now it was almost totally revealed. It was a swastika. 
"I just wanted to see it. You can put me down now."
They started out again, but they could see the tail of the plane every time they 
looked back that afternoon, looming out of the high grass like Lord Perth's 
burial monument.


2
IT WAS JAKE'S TURN to make the fire that night. When the wood was laid to the 
gunslinger's satisfaction, he handed Jake his flint and steel. "Let's see how 
you do."
Eddie and Susannah were sitting off to one side, their arms linked companionably 
about each other's waist. Toward the end of the day, Eddie had found a bright 
yellow flower beside the road and had picked it for her. Tonight Susannah was 
wearing it in her hair, and every time she looked at Eddie, her lips curved in a 
small smile and her eyes filled with light. Roland had noted these things, and 
they pleased him. Their love was deepening, strengthening. That was good. It 
would have to be deep and strong indeed if it was to survive the months and 
years ahead.
Jake struck a spark, but it flashed inches away from the kindling.
"Move your flint in closer," Roland said, "and hold it steady. And don't hit it 
with the steel, Jake; scrape it."
Jake tried again, and this time the spark flashed directly into the kindling. 
There was a little tendril of smoke but no fire.
"I don't think I'm very good at this."
"You'll get it. Meantime, think on this. What's dressed when night falls and 
undressed when day breaks?"
"Huh?"
Roland moved Jake's hands even closer to the little pile of kindling. "I guess 
that one's not in your book."
"Oh, it's a riddle!" Jake struck another spark. This time a small flame glowed 
in the kindling before dying out. "You know some of those, too?"
Roland nodded. "Not just some -- a lot. As a boy, I must have known a thousand. 
They were part of my studies."
"Really? Why would anyone study riddles?"
"Vannay, my tutor, said a boy who could answer a riddle was a boy who could 
think around corners. We had riddling contests every Friday noon, and the boy or 
girl who won could leave school early."
"Did you get to leave early often, Roland?" Susannah asked.
He shook his head, smiling a little himself. "I enjoyed riddling, but I was 
never very good at it. Vannay said it was because I thought too deeply. My 
father said it was because I had too little imagination. I think they were both 
right . . . but I think my father had a little more of the truth. I could always 
haul a gun faster than any of my mates, and shoot straighter, but I've never 
been much good at thinking around corners."
Susannah, who had watched closely as Roland dealt with the old people of River 
Crossing, thought the gunslinger was underrating himself, but she said nothing.
"Sometimes, on winter nights, there would be riddling competitions in the great 
hall. When it was just the younkers, Alain always won. When the grownups played 
as well, it was always Cort. He'd forgotten more riddles than the rest of us 
ever knew, and after the Fair-Day Riddling, Cort always carried home the goose. 
Riddles have great power, and every­one knows one or two."
"Even me," Eddie said. "For instance, why did the dead baby cross the road?"
"That's dumb, Eddie," Susannah said, but she was smiling.
"Because it was stapled to the chicken!" Eddie yelled, and grinned when Jake 
burst into laughter, knocking his little pile of kindling apart. "Hyuk, hyuk, 
hyuk, I got a million of em, folks!"
Roland, however, didn't laugh. He looked, in fact, a trifle offended. "Pardon me 
for saying so, Eddie, but that is rather silly."
"Jesus, Roland, I'm sorry," Eddie said. He was still smiling, but he sounded 
slightly peeved. "I keep forgetting you got your sense of humor shot off in the 
Children's Crusade, or whatever it was."
"It's just that I take riddling seriously. I was taught that the ability to 
solve them indicates a sane and rational mind."
"Well, they're never going to replace the works of Shakespeare or the Quadratic 
Equation," Eddie said. "I mean, let's not get carried away."
Jake was looking at Roland thoughtfully. "My book said riddling is the oldest 
game people still play. In our world, I mean. And riddles used to be really 
serious business, not just jokes. People used to get killed over them."
Roland was looking out into the growing darkness. "Yes. I've seen it happen." He 
was remembering a Fair-Day Riddling which had ended not with the giving of the 
prize goose but with a cross-eyed man in a cap of bells dying in the dirt with a 
dagger in his chest. Cort's dagger. The man had been a wandering singer and 
acrobat who had attempted to cheat Cort by stealing the judge's pocket-book, in 
which the answers were kept on small scraps of bark.
"Well, excyooose me" Eddie said.
Susannah was looking at Jake. "I forgot all about the book of riddles you 
carried over. May I look at it now?"
"Sure. It's in my pack. The answers are gone, though. Maybe that's why Mr. Tower 
gave it to me for fr -- "
His shoulder was suddenly seized, and with painful force.
"What was his name?" Roland asked.
"Mr. Tower," Jake said. "Calvin Tower. Didn't I tell you that?"
"No." Roland slowly relaxed his grip on Jake's shoulder. "But now that I hear 
it, I suppose I'm not surprised."
Eddie had opened Jake's pack and found Riddle-De-Dum! He tossed it to Susannah. 
"You know," he said, "I always thought that dead-baby joke was pretty good. 
Tasteless, maybe, but pretty good."
"I don't care about taste," Roland said. "It's senseless and unsolvable, and 
that's what makes it silly. A good riddle is neither."
"Jesus! You guys did take this stuff seriously, didn't you?"
"Yes."
Jake, meanwhile, had been restacking the kindling and mulling over the riddle 
which had started the discussion. Now he suddenly smiled. "A fire. That's the 
answer, right? Dress it at night, undress it in the morning. If you change 
'dress' to 'build,' it's simple."
"That's it." Roland returned Jake's smile, but his eyes were on Susannah, 
watching as she thumbed through the small, tattered book. He thought, looking at 
her studious frown and the absent way she read­justed the yellow flower in her 
hair when it tried to slip free, that she alone might sense that the tattered 
book of riddles could be as important as Charlie the Choo-Choo . . . maybe more 
important. He looked from her to Eddie and felt a recurrence of his irritation 
at Eddie's foolish riddle. The young man bore another resemblance to Cuthbert, 
this one rather unfortunate: Roland sometimes felt like shaking him until his 
nose bled and his teeth fell out.
Soft, gunslinger -- soft! Cort's voice, not quite laughing, spoke up in his head, 
and Roland resolutely put his emotions at arm's length. It was easier to do that 
when he remembered that Eddie couldn't help his occasional forays into nonsense; 
character was also at least partly formed by ka, and Roland knew well that there 
was more to Eddie than non­sense. Anytime he started to make the mistake of 
thinking that wasn't so, he would do well to remember their conversation by the 
side of the road three nights before, when Eddie had accused him of using them 
as markers on his own private game-board. That had angered him . . . but it had 
been close enough to the truth to shame him, as well.
Blissfully unaware of these long thoughts, Eddie now inquired: "What's green, 
weighs a hundred tons, and lives at the bottom of the ocean?"
"I know," Jake said. "Moby Snot, the Great Green Whale."
"Idiocy," Roland muttered.
"Yeah -- but that's what's supposed to make it funny," Eddie said. "Jokes are 
supposed to make you think around comers, too. You see . . ." He looked at 
Roland's face, laughed, and threw up his hands. "Never mind. I give up. You 
wouldn't understand. Not in a million years. Let's look at the damned book. I'll 
even try to take it seriously ... if we can eat a little supper first, that is."
"Watch Me," the gunslinger said with a flicker of a smile.
"Huh?"
"That means you have a deal."
Jake scraped the steel across the flint. A spark jumped, and this time the 
kindling caught fire. He sat back contentedly and watched the flames spread, one 
arm slung around Oy's neck. He felt well pleased with him­self. He had started 
the evening fire . . . and he had guessed the answer to Roland's riddle.







3
"I'VE GOT ONE," JAKE said as they ate their evening burritos.
"Is it a foolish one?" Roland asked.
"Nah. It's a real one."
"Then try me with it."
"Okay. What can run but never walks, has a mouth but never talks, has a bed but 
never sleeps, has a head but never weeps?"
"A good one," Roland said kindly, "but an old one. A river."
Jake was a little crestfallen. "You really are hard to stump."
Roland tossed the last bite of his burrito to Oy, who accepted it eagerly. "Not 
me. I'm what Eddie calls an overpush. You should have seen Alain. He collected 
riddles the way a lady collects fans."
"That's pushover, Roland, old buddy," Eddie said.
"Thank you. Try this one: What lies in bed, and stands in bed?/ First white, 
then red/ The plumper it gets/ The better the old woman likes it?"
Eddie burst out laughing. "A dork!" he yelled. "Crude, Roland! But I like it! I 
liyyyke it!"
Roland shook his head. "Your answer is wrong. A good riddle is sometimes a 
puzzle in words, like Jake's about the river, but sometimes it's more like a 
magician's trick, making you look in one direction while it's going somewhere 
else."
"It's a double," Jake said. He explained what Aaron Deepneau had said about the 
Riddle of Samson. Roland nodded.
"Is it a strawberry?" Susannah asked, then answered her own ques­tion. "Of 
course it is. It's like the fire-riddle. There's a metaphor hidden inside it. 
Once you understand the metaphor, you can solve the riddle."
"I metaphor sex, but she slapped my face and walked away when I asked," Eddie 
told them sadly. They all ignored him.
"If you change 'gets' to 'grows,' " Susannah went on, "it's easy. First white, 
then red. Plumper it grows, the better the old woman likes it." She looked 
pleased with herself.
Roland nodded. "The answer I always heard was a wenberry, but I'm sure both 
answers mean the same thing."
Eddie picked up Riddle-De-Dum! and began flipping through it. "How about this 
one, Roland? When is a door not a door?"
Roland frowned. "Is it another piece of your stupidity? Because my patience-"
"No. I promised to take it seriously, and I am -- I'm trying, at least. It's in 
this book, and I just happen to know the answer. I heard it when I was a kid."
Jake, who also knew the answer, winked at Eddie. Eddie winked back, and was 
amused to see Oy also trying to wink. The humbler kept shutting both eyes, and 
eventually gave up.
Roland and Susannah, meanwhile, were puzzling over the question. "It must have 
something to do with love," Roland said. "A door, adore. When is adore not adore 
. . . hmmm . . ."
"Hmmm," Oy said. His imitation of Roland's thoughtful tone was perfect. Eddie 
winked at Jake again. Jake covered his mouth to hide a smile.
"Is the answer false love?" Roland asked at last.
"Nope."
"Window," Susannah said suddenly and decisively. "When is a door not a door? 
When it's a window."
"Nope." Eddie was grinning broadly now, but Jake was struck by how far from the 
real answer both of them had wandered. There was magic at work here, he thought. 
Pretty common stuff, as magic went, no flying carpets or disappearing elephants, 
but magic, all the same. He suddenly saw what they were doing -- a simple game of 
riddles around a campfire -- in an entirely new light. It was like playing 
blind-man's bluff, only in this game the blindfold was made of words.
"I give up," Susannah said.
"Yes," Roland said. "Tell if you know."
"The answer is a jar. A door is not a door when it's ajar. Get it?" Eddie 
watched as comprehension dawned on Roland's face and asked, a little 
apprehensively, "Is it a bad one? I was trying to be serious this time, 
Roland -- really."
"Not bad at all. On the contrary, it's quite good. Cort would have gotten it, 
I'm sure . . . probably Alain, too, it's still very clever. I did what I always 
used to do in the schoolroom: made it more complicated than it really was and 
shot right past the answer."
"There really is something to it, isn't there?" Eddie mused. Roland nodded, but 
Eddie didn't see; he was looking into the depths of the fire, where dozens of 
roses bloomed and faded in the coals.
Roland said, "One more, and we'll turn in. Only from tonight on, we'll stand a 
watch. You first, Eddie, then Susannah. I'll take the last one."
"What about me?" Jake asked.
"Later on you may have to take a rum. Right now it's more impor­tant for you to 
get your sleep."
"Do you really think sentry-duty is necessary?" Susannah asked.
"I don't know. And that's the best reason of all to do it. Jake, choose us a 
riddle from your book."
Eddie handed Riddle-De-Dum! to Jake, who thumbed through the pages and finally 
stopped near the back. "Whoa! This one's a killer."
"Let's hear it," Eddie said. "If I don't get it, Suze will. We're known at 
Fair-Days all across the land as Eddie Dean and His Riddling Queen."
"We're witty tonight, ain't we?" Susannah said. "Let's see how witty you are 
after settin by the side o' the road until midnight or so, honeychild."
Jake read: " 'There is a thing that nothing is, and yet it has a name. It's 
sometimes tall and sometimes short, joins our talks, joins our sport, and plays 
at every game.' "
They discussed this riddle for almost fifteen minutes, but none of them could 
even hazard an answer.
"Maybe it'll come to one of us while we're asleep," Jake said. "That's how I got 
the one about the river."
"Cheap book, with the answers torn out," Eddie said. He stood up and wrapped a 
hide blanket around his shoulders like a cloak.
"Well, it was cheap. Mr. Tower gave it to me for free."
"What am I looking for, Roland?" Eddie asked.
Roland shrugged as he lay down. "I don't know, but I think you'll know it if you 
see it or hear it."
"Wake me up when you start feeling sleepy," Susannah said.
"You better believe it."


4
A GRASSY DITCH RAN along the side of the road and Eddie sat on the far side of 
it with his blanket around his shoulders. A thin scud of clouds had veiled the 
sky tonight, dimming the starshow. A strong west wind was blowing. When Eddie 
turned his face in that direction, he could clearly smell the buffalo which now 
owned these plains -- a mixed per­fume of hot fur and fresh dung. The clarity which 
had returned to his senses in these last few months was amazing , . . and, at 
times like these, a little spooky, as well.
Very faintly, he could hear a buffalo calf bawling.
He turned toward the city, and after a while he began to think he might be 
seeing distant sparks of light there -- the electric candles of the twins' 
story -- but he was well aware that he might be seeing nothing more than his own 
wishful thinking.
You're a long way from Forty-second Street, sweetheart -- hope is a great thing, no 
matter what anyone says, but don't hope so hard you lose sight of that one 
thought: you're a long way from Forty-second Street. That's not New York up 
ahead, no matter how much you might wish it was. That's Lud, and it'll be 
whatever it is. And if you keep that in mind, maybe you'll be okay.
He passed his time on watch trying to think of an answer to the last riddle of 
the evening. The scolding Roland had given him about his dead-baby joke had left 
him feeling disgruntled, and it would please him to be able to start off the 
morning by giving them a good answer. Of course they wouldn't be able to check 
any answer against the back of the book, but he had an idea that with good 
riddles a good answer was usually self-evident.
Sometimes tall and sometimes short. He thought that was the key and all the rest 
was probably just misdirection. What was sometimes tall and sometimes short? 
Pants? No. Pants were sometimes short and some­times long, but he had never 
heard of tall pants. Tales? Like pants, it only fit snugly one way. Drinks were 
sometimes both tall and short -- 
"Order," he murmured, and thought for a moment that he must have stumbled across 
the solution -- both adjectives fit the noun glove-tight. A tall order was a big 
job; a short order was something you got on the quick in a restaurant -- a 
hamburger or a tuna melt. Except that tall orders and tuna melts didn't join our 
talk or play at every game.
He felt a rush of frustration and had to smile at himself, getting all wound up 
about a harmless word-game in a kid's book. All the same, he found it a little 
easier to believe that people might really kill each other over riddles ... if 
the stakes were high enough and cheating was involved.
Let it go -- you're doing exactly what Roland said, thinking right past it.
Still, what else did he have to think about?
Then the drumming from the city began again, and he did have something else. 
There was no build-up; at one moment it wasn't there, and at the next it was 
going full force, as if a switch had been turned. Eddie walked to the edge of 
the road, turned toward the city, and lis­tened. After a few moments he looked 
around to see if the drums had awakened the others, but he was still alone. He 
turned toward Lud again and cupped his ears forward with the sides of his hands.
Bump . . . ba-bump . . . ba-bump-bumpbump-bump.
Bump . . . ba-bump . . . ba-bump-bumpbump-bump.
Eddie became more and more sure that he had been right about what it was; that 
he had, at least, solved this riddle.
Bump . . . ba-bump . . . ba-bump-bumpbump-bump.
The idea that he was standing by a deserted road in an almost empty world, 
standing some one hundred and seventy miles from a city which had been built by 
some fabulous lost civilization and listening to a rock-and-roll drum-line . . . 
that was crazy, but was it any crazier than a traffic-light that dinged and 
dropped a rusty green flag with the word GO printed on it? Any crazier than 
discovering the wreck of a German plane from the 1930s?
Eddie sang the words to the Z.Z. Top song in a whisper:

"You need just enough of that sticky stuff 
To hold the seam on your fine blue-jeans 
I say yeah, yeah ..."

They fit the beat perfectly. It was the disco-pulse percussion of "Velcro Fly." 
Eddie was sure of it.
A short time later the sound ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and he could 
hear only the wind, and, more faintly, the Send River, which had a bed but never 
slept.


5
THE NEXT FOUR DAYS were uneventful. They walked; they watched the bridge and the 
city grow larger and define themselves more clearly; they camped; they ate; they 
riddled; they kept watch turn and turn about (Jake had pestered Roland into 
letting him keep a short watch in the two hours just before dawn); they slept. 
The only remarkable incident had to do with the bees.
Around noon on the third day after the discovery of the downed plane, a buzzing 
sound came to them, growing louder and louder until it dominated the day. At 
last Roland stopped. "There," he said, and pointed toward a grove of eucalyptus 
trees.
"It sounds like bees," Susannah said.
Roland's faded blue eyes gleamed. "Could be we'll have a little dessert 
tonight."
"I don't know how to tell you this, Roland," Eddie said, "but I have this 
aversion to being stung."
"Don't we all," Roland agreed, "but the day is windless. I think we can smoke 
them to sleep and steal their comb right out from under them without setting 
half the world on fire. Let's have a look."
He carried Susannah, who was as eager for the adventure as the gunslinger 
himself, toward the grove. Eddie and Jake lagged behind, and Oy, apparently 
having decided that discretion was the better part of valor, remained sitting at 
the edge of the Great Road, panting like a dog and watching them carefully.
Roland paused at the edge of the trees. "Stay where you are," he told Eddie and 
Jake, speaking softly. "We're going to have a look. I'll give you a come-on if 
all's well." He carried Susannah into the dappled shadows of the grove while 
Eddie and Jake remained in the sunshine, peering after them.
It was cooler in the shade. The buzzing of the bees was a steady, hypnotic 
drone. "There are too many," Roland murmured. "This is late summer; they should 
be out working. I don't -- "
He caught sight of the hive, bulging tumorously from the hollow of a tree in the 
center of the clearing, and broke off.
"What's the matter with them?" Susannah asked in a soft, horrified voice. 
"Roland, what's the matter with them?"
A bee, as plump and slow-moving as a horsefly in October, droned past her head. 
Susannah flinched away from it.
Roland motioned for the others to join them. They did, and stood looking at the 
hive without speaking. The chambers weren't neat hexa­gons but random holes of 
all shapes and sizes; the beehive itself looked queerly melted, as if someone 
had turned a blowtorch on it. The bees which crawled sluggishly over it were as 
white as snow.
"No honey tonight," Roland said. "What we took from yonder comb might taste 
sweet, but it would poison us as surely as night follows day."
One of the grotesque white bees lumbered heavily past Jake's head. He ducked 
away with an expression of loathing.
"What did it?" Eddie asked. "What did it to them, Roland?"
"The same thing that has emptied this whole land; the thing that's still causing 
many of the buffalo to be born as sterile freaks. I've heard it called the Old 
War, the Great Fire, the Cataclysm, and the Great Poisoning. Whatever it was, it 
was the start of all our troubles and it happened long ago, a thousand years 
before the great-great-grandfathers of the River Crossing folk were born. The 
physical effects -- the two-headed buffalo and the white bees and such -- have grown 
less as time passes. I have seen this for myself. The other changes are greater, 
if harder to see, and they are still going on."
They watched the white bees crawl, dazed and almost completely helpless, about 
their hive. Some were apparently trying to work; most simply wandered about, 
butting heads and crawling over one another. Eddie found himself remembering a 
newsclip he'd seen once. It had shown a crowd of survivors leaving the area 
where a gas-main had exploded, flattening almost a whole city block in some 
California town. These bees reminded him of those dazed, shellshocked survivors.
"You had a nuclear war, didn't you?" he asked -- almost accused. "These Great Old 
Ones you like to talk about . . . they blew their great old asses straight to 
hell. Didn't they?"
"I don't know what happened. No one knows. The records of those times are lost, 
and the few stories are confused and conflicting."
"Let's get out of here," Jake said in a trembling voice. "Looking at those 
things makes me sick."
"I'm with you, sugar," Susannah said.
So they left the bees to their aimless, shattered life in the grove of ancient 
trees, and there was no honey that night.


6
"WHEN ARE YOU GOING to tell us what you do know?" Eddie asked the next morning. 
The day was bright and blue, but there was a bite in the air; their first autumn 
in this world was almost upon them.
Roland glanced at him. "What do you mean?"
"I'd like to hear your whole story, from beginning to end, starting with Gilead. 
How you grew up there and what happened to end it all. I want to know how you 
found out about the Dark Tower and why you started chasing after it in the first 
place. I want to know about your first bunch of friends, too. And what happened 
to them."
Roland removed his hat, armed sweat from his brow, then replaced it. "You have 
the right to know all those things, I suppose, and I'll tell them to you . . . 
but not now. It's a very long story. I never expected to tell it to anyone, and 
I'll only tell it once."
"When?" Eddie persisted.
"When the time is right," Roland said, and with that they had to be content.


7
ROLAND CAME AWAKE THE moment before Jake began to shake him. He sat up and 
looked around, but Eddie and Susannah were still fast asleep and in the first 
faint light of morning, he could see nothing amiss.
"What is it?" he asked Jake in a low voice.
"I don't know. Fighting, maybe. Come and listen."
Roland threw his blanket aside and followed Jake out to the road. He reckoned 
they were now only three days' walk from the place where the Send passed in 
front of the city, and the bridge -- built squarely along the path of the 
Beam -- dominated the horizon. Its pronounced tilt was more clearly visible than 
ever, and he could see at least a dozen gaps where over-stressed cables had 
snapped like the strings of a lyre.
Tonight the wind blew directly into their faces as they looked toward the city, 
and the sounds it carried to them were faint but clear.
"Is it fighting?" Jake asked.
Roland nodded and held a finger to his lips.
He heard faint shouts, a crash that sounded like some huge object falling, 
and -- of course -- the drums. Now there was another crash, this one more musical: the 
sound of breaking glass.
"Jeepers," Jake whispered, and moved closer to the gunslinger.
Then came the sounds which Roland had hoped not to hear: a fast, sandy rattle of 
small-arms fire followed by a loud hollow bang -- clearly an explosion of some 
land. It rolled across the flatlands toward them like an invisible bowling ball. 
After that, the shouts, thuds, and sounds of breakage quickly sank below the 
level of the drums, and when the drums quit a few minutes later with their usual 
unsettling suddenness, the city was silent again. But now that silence had an 
unpleasant waiting quality.
Roland put an arm around Jake's shoulders. "Still not too late to detour 
around," he said.
Jake glanced up at him. "We can't."
"Because of the train?"
Jake nodded and singsonged: "Blaine is a pain, but we have to take the train. 
And the city's the only place where we can get on."
Roland looked thoughtfully at Jake. "Why do you say we have to? Is it ka? 
Because, Jake, you have to understand that you don't know much about ka yet -- it's 
the sort of subject men study all their lives."
"I don't know if it's ka or not, but I do know that we can't go into the waste 
lands unless we're protected, and that means Blaine. Without him we'll die, like 
those bees we saw are going to die when winter comes. We have to be protected. 
Because the waste lands are poison."
"How do you know these things?"
"I don't know!" Jake said, almost angrily. "I just do."
"All right," Roland said mildly. He looked toward Lud again. "But we'll have to 
be damned careful. It's unlucky that they still have gunpow­der. If they have 
that, they may have things that are even more powerful. I doubt if they know how 
to use them, but that only increases the danger. They could get excited and blow 
us all to hell."
"Ell," a grave voice said from behind them. They glanced around and saw Oy 
sitting by the side of the road, watching them.


8
LATER THAT DAY THEY came to a new road which swept toward them out of the west 
and joined their own way. Beyond this point, the Great Road -- now much wider and 
split down the middle by a median divider of some polished dark stone -- began to 
sink, and the crumbling concrete embankments which rose on either side of them 
gave the pilgrims a claustrophobic trapped feeling. They stopped at a point 
where one of these concrete dikes had born broken open, affording a comforting 
line of sight to the open land beyond, and ate a light, unsatisfying meal.
"Why do you think they dropped the road down like this, Eddie?" Jake asked. "I 
mean, someone did do it this way on purpose, didn't they?"
Eddie looked through the break in the concrete, where the flatlands stretched on 
as smoothly as ever, and nodded.
"Then why?"
"Dunno, champ," Eddie said, but he thought he did. He glanced at Roland and 
guessed that he knew, too. The sunken road leading to the bridge had been a 
defensive measure. Troops placed atop the concrete slopes were in control of two 
carefully engineered redoubts. If the defenders didn't like the look of the 
folks approaching Lud along the Great Road, they could rain destruction down on 
them.
"You sure you don't know?" Jake asked.
Eddie smiled at Jake and tried to stop imagining that there was some nut up 
there right now, getting ready to roll a large, rusty bomb down one of those 
decayed concrete ramps. "No idea," he said.
Susannah whistled disgustedly between her teeth. "This road's goin to hell, 
Roland. I was hoping we were done with that damn harness, but you better get it 
out again." He nodded and rummaged in his purse for it without a word.
The condition of the Great Road deteriorated as other, smaller roads joined it 
like tributaries joining a great river. As they neared the bridge, the cobbles 
were replaced with a surface Roland thought of as metal and the rest of them 
thought of as asphalt or hot-top. It had not held up as well as the cobbles. 
Time had done some damage; the passage of count­less horses and wagons since the 
last repairs were made had done more. The surface had been chewed into 
treacherous rubble. Foot travel would be difficult, and the idea of pushing 
Susannah's wheelchair over that crumbled surface was ridiculous.
The banks oh either side had grown steadily steeper, and now, at their tops, 
they could see slim, pointed shapes looming against the sky. Roland thought of 
arrowheads -- huge ones, weapons made by a tribe of giants. To his companions, they 
looked like rockets or guided missiles. Susannah thought of Redstones fired from 
Cape Canaveral; Eddie thought about SAMs, some built to be fired from the backs 
of flatbed trucks, stored all over Europe; Jake thought of ICBMs hiding in 
rein­forced concrete silos under the plains of Kansas and the unpopulated 
mountains of Nevada, programmed to hit back at China or the USSR in the event of 
nuclear armageddon. All of them felt as if they had passed into a dark and 
woeful zone of shadow, or into a countryside laboring under some old but still 
powerful curse.
Some hours after they entered this area --  Jake called it The Gauntlet -- the 
concrete embankments ended at a place where half a dozen access roads drew 
together, like the strands of a spiderweb, and here the land opened out again 
... a fact which relieved all of them, although none of them said so out loud. 
Another traffic-light swung over the junc­tion. This one was more familiar to 
Eddie, Susannah, and Jake; it had once had lenses on its four faces, although 
the glass had been broken out long ago.
"I'll bet this road was the eighth wonder of the world, once upon a time," 
Susannah said, "and look at it now. It's a minefield."
"Old ways are sometimes the best ways," Roland agreed.
Eddie was pointing west. "Look."
Now that the high concrete barriers were gone, they could see exactly what old 
Si had described to them over cups of bitter coffee in River Crossing. "One 
track only," he had said, "set up high on a colyum of man-made stone, such as 
the Old Ones used to make their streets and walls." The track raced toward them 
out of the west in a slim, straight line, then flowed across the Send and into 
the city on a narrow golden trestle. It was a simple, elegant construction -- and 
the only one they had seen so far which was totally without rust -- but it was 
badly marred, all the same. Halfway across, a large piece of the trestle had 
fallen into the rushing river below. What remained were two long, jutting piers 
that pointed at each other like accusing fingers. Jutting out of the water below 
the hole was a streamlined tube of metal. Once it had been bright blue, but now 
the color had been dimmed by spreading scales of rust. It looked very small from 
this distance.
"So much for Blaine," Eddie said. "No wonder they stopped hearing it. The 
supports finally gave way while it was crossing the river and it fell in the 
drink. It must have been decelerating when it happened, or it would have carried 
straight across and all we'd see would be a big hole like a bomb-crater in the 
far bank. Well, it was a great idea while it lasted."
"Mercy said there was another one," Susannah reminded him.
"Yeah. She also said she hadn't heard it in seven or eight years, and Aunt 
Talitha said it was more like ten. What do you think, Jake . . . Jake? Earth to 
Jake, Earth to Jake, come in, little buddy."
Jake, who had been staring intently at the remains of the train in the river, 
only shrugged.
"You're a big help, Jake," Eddie said. "Valuable input -- that's why I love you. 
Why we all love you."
Jake paid no attention. He knew what he was seeing, and it wasn't Blaine. The 
remains of the mono sticking out of the river were blue. In his dream, Blaine 
had been the dusty, sugary pink of the bubblegum you got with baseball trading 
cards.
Roland, meanwhile, had cinched the straps of Susannah's carry-har­ness across 
his chest. "Eddie, boost your lady into this contraption. It's time we moved on 
and saw for ourselves."
Jake now shifted his gaze, looking nervously toward the bridge loom­ing ahead. 
He could hear a high, ghostly humming noise in the distance --  the sound of the 
wind playing in the decayed steel hangers which con­nected the overhead cables 
to the concrete deck below.
"Do you think it'll be safe to cross?" Jake asked.
"We'll find out tomorrow," Roland replied.


9
THE NEXT MORNING, ROLAND'S band of travellers stood at the end of the long, 
rusty bridge, gazing across at Lud. Eddie's dreams of wise old elves who had 
preserved a working technology on which the pilgrims could draw were 
disappearing. Now that they were this close, he could see holes in the 
city-scape where whole blocks of buildings appeared to have been either burned 
or blasted. The skyline reminded him of a diseased jaw from which many teeth 
have already fallen.
It was true that most of the buildings were still standing, but they had a 
dreary, disused look that filled Eddie with an uncharacteristic gloom, and the 
bridge between the travellers and that shuttered maze of steel and concrete 
looked anything but solid and eternal. The vertical hangers on the left sagged 
slackly; the ones remaining on the right almost screamed with tension. The deck 
had been constructed of hollow con­crete boxes shaped like trapezoids. Some of 
these had buckled upward, displaying empty black interiors; others had slipped 
askew. Many of these latter had merely cracked, but others were badly broken, 
leaving gaps big enough to drop trucks -- big trucks -- into. In places where the 
bottoms of the box-sections as well as the tops had shattered, they could see 
the muddy riverbank and the gray-green water of the Send beyond it. Eddie put 
the distance between the deck and the water as three hundred feet at the center 
of the bridge. And that was probably a conservative estimate.
Eddie peered at the huge concrete caissons to which the main cables were 
anchored and thought the one on the right side of the bridge looked as if it had 
been pulled partway out of the earth. He decided he might do well not to mention 
this fact to the others; it was bad enough that the bridge was swaying slowly 
but perceptibly back and forth. Just looking at it made him feel seasick. 
"Well?" he asked Roland. "What do you think?"
Roland pointed to the right side of the bridge. Here was a canted walkway about 
five feet wide. It had been constructed atop a series of smaller concrete boxes 
and was, in effect, a separate deck. This seg­mented deck appeared to be 
supported by an undercable -- or perhaps it was a thick steel rod -- anchored to the 
main support cables by huge bow-clamps. Eddie inspected the closest one with the 
avid interest of a man who may soon be entrusting his life to the object he is 
studying. The bow-clamp appeared rusty but still sound. The words LaMERK FOUNDRY 
had been stamped into its metal. Eddie was fascinated to realize he no longer 
knew if the words were in the High Speech or in English.
"I think we can use that," Roland said. "There's only one bad place. Do you see 
it?"
"Yeah -- it's land of hard to miss."
The bridge, which had to be at least three quarters of a mile long, might not 
have had any proper maintenance for over a thousand years, but Roland guessed 
that the real destruction might have been going on for only the last fifty or 
so. As the hangers on the right snapped, the bridge had listed farther and 
farther to the left. The greatest twist had occurred in the center of the 
bridge, between the two four-hundred-foot cable-towers. At the place where the 
pressure of the twist was the great­est, a gaping, eye-shaped hole ran across 
the deck. The break in the walkway was narrower, but even so, at least two 
adjoining concrete box-sections had fallen into the Send, leaving a gap at least 
twenty or thirty feet wide. Where these boxes had been, they could clearly see 
the rusty steel rod or cable which supported the walkway. They would have to use 
it to get across the gap.
"I think we can cross," Roland said, calmly pointing. "The gap is inconvenient, 
but the side-rail is still there, so we'll have something to hold onto."
Eddie nodded, but he could feel his heart pounding hard. The exposed walkway 
support looked like a big pipe made of jointed steel, and was probably four feet 
across at the top. In his mind's eye he could see how they would have to edge 
across, feet on the broad, slightly curved back of the support, hands clutching 
the rail, while the bridge swayed slowly like a ship in a mild swell.
"Jesus," he said. He tried to spit, but nothing came out. His mouth was too dry. 
"You sure, Roland?"
"So far as I can see, it's the only way." Roland pointed downriver and Eddie saw 
a second bridge. This one had fallen into the Send long ago. The remains stuck 
out of the water in a rusted tangle of ancient steel.
"What about you, Jake?" Susannah asked.
"Hey, no problem," Jake said at once. He was actually smiling.
"I hate you, kid," Eddie said.
Roland was looking at Eddie with some concern. "If you feel you can't do it, say 
so now. Don't get halfway across and then freeze up."
Eddie looked along the twisted surface of the bridge for a long time, then 
nodded. "I guess I can handle it. Heights have never been my favorite thing, but 
I'll manage."
"Good." Roland surveyed them. "Soonest begun, soonest done. I'll go first, with 
Susannah. Then Jake, and Eddie's drogue. Can you handle the wheelchair?"
"Hey, no problem," Eddie said giddily.
"Let's go, then."


10
As SOON AS HE stepped onto the walkway, fear filled up Eddie's hollow places 
like cold water and he began to wonder if he hadn't made a very dangerous 
mistake. From solid ground, the bridge seemed to be swaying only a little, but 
once he was actually on it, he felt as if he were standing on the pendulum of 
the world's biggest grandfather clock. The movement was very slow, but it was 
regular, and the length of the swings was much longer than he had anticipated. 
The walkway's surface was badly cracked and canted at least ten degrees to the 
left. His feet gritted in loose piles of powdery concrete, and the low squealing 
sound of the box-segments grinding together was constant. Beyond the bridge, the 
city skyline tilted slowly back and forth like the artificial horizon of the 
world's slowest-moving video game.
Overhead, the wind hummed constantly in the taut hangers. Below, the ground fell 
away sharply to the muddy northwest bank of the river. He was thirty feet up ... 
then sixty . . . then a hundred and ten. Soon he would be over the water. The 
wheelchair banged against his left leg with every step.
Something furry brushed between his feet and he clutched madly for the rusty 
handrail with his right hand, barely holding in a scream. Oy went trotting past 
him with a brief upward glance, as if to say Excuse me -- -just passing.
"Fucking dumb animal," Eddie said through gritted teeth.
He discovered that, although he didn't like looking down, he had an even greater 
aversion to looking at the hangers which were still managing to hold the deck 
and the overhead cables together. They were sleeved with rust and Eddie could 
see snarls of metal thread poking out of most -- these snarls looked like metallic 
puffs of cotton. He knew from his Uncle Reg, who had worked on both the George 
Washington and Triborough bridges as a painter, that the hangers and overhead 
cables were "spun" from thousands of steel threads. On this bridge, the spin was 
finally letting go. The hangers were quite literally becoming unravelled, and as 
they did, the threads were snapping, one interwoven strand at a time.
It's held this long, it'll hold a little longer. You think this thing's going to 
fall into the river just because you're crossing it? Don't flatter yourself.
He wasn't comforted, however. For all Eddie knew, they might be the first people 
to attempt the crossing in decades. And the bridge, after all, would have to 
collapse sometime, and from the look of things, it was going to be soon. Their 
combined weight might be the straw that broke the camel's back.
His moccasin struck a chunk of concrete and Eddie watched, sick­ened but 
helpless to look away, as the chunk fell down and down and down, turning over as 
it went. There was a small -- very small -- splash when it hit the river. The 
freshening wind gusted and stuck his shirt against his sweaty skin. The bridge 
groaned and swayed. Eddie tried to remove his hands from the side-rail, but they 
seemed frozen to the pitted metal in a deathgrip.
He closed his eyes for a moment. You're not going to freeze. You're not. I ... I 
forbid it. If you need something to look at, make it long tall and ugly. Eddie 
opened his eyes again, fixed them on the gunslinger, forced his hands to open, 
and began to move forward again.


11
ROLAND REACHED THE GAP and looked back. Jake was five feet behind him. Oy was at 
his heels. The bumbler was crouched down with his neck stretched forward. The 
wind was much stronger over the river-cut, and Roland could see it rippling Oy's 
silky fur. Eddie was about twenty-five feet behind Jake. His face was tightly 
drawn, but he was still shuffling grimly along with Susannah's collapsed 
wheelchair in his left hand. His right was clutching the rail like grim death.
"Susannah?"
"Yes," she responded at once. "Fine."
"Jake?"
Jake looked up. He was still grinning, and the gunslinger saw there was going to 
be no problem there. The boy was having the time of his life. His hair blew back 
from his finely made brow in waves, and his eyes sparkled. He jerked one thumb 
up. Roland smiled and returned the gesture.
"Eddie?"
"Don't worry about me."
Eddie appeared to be looking at Roland, but the gunslinger decided he was really 
looking past him, at the windowless brick buildings which crowded the riverbank 
at the far end of the bridge. That was all right; given his obvious fear of 
heights, it was probably the best thing he could do to keep his head.
"All right, I won't," Roland murmured. "We're going to cross the hole now, 
Susannah. Sit easy. No quick movements. Understand?"
"Yes."
"If you want to adjust your position, do it now."
"I'm fine, Roland," she said calmly. "I just hope Eddie will be all right."
"Eddie's a gunslinger now. He'll behave like one."
Roland turned to the right, so he was facing directly downriver, and grasped the 
handrail. Then he began to edge out across the hole, shuffling his boots along 
the rusty cable.


12
JAKE WAITED UNTIL ROLAND and Susannah were part of the way across the gap and 
then started himself. The wind gusted and the bridge swayed back and forth, but 
he felt no alarm at all. He was, in fact, totally buzzed. Unlike Eddie, he'd 
never had any fear of heights; he liked being up here where he could see the 
river spread out like a steel ribbon under a sky which was beginning to cloud 
over.
Halfway across the hole in the bridge (Roland and Susannah had reached the place 
where the uneven walkway resumed and were watching the others), Jake looked back 
and his heart sank. They had forgotten one member of the party when they were 
discussing how to cross. Oy was crouched, frozen and clearly terrified, on the 
far side of the hole in the walkway. He was sniffing at the place where the 
concrete ended and the rusty, curved support took over.
"Come on, Oy!" Jake called.
"Oy!" the bumbler called back, and the tremble in his hoarse voice was almost 
human. He stretched his long neck forward toward Jake but didn't move. His 
gold-ringed eyes were huge and dismayed.
Another gust of wind struck the bridge, making it sway and squall. Something 
twanged beside Jake's head -- the sound of a guitar string which has been tightened 
until it snaps. A steel thread had popped out of the nearest vertical hanger, 
almost scratching his cheek. Ten feet away, Oy crouched miserably with his eyes 
fixed on Jake.
"Come on!" Roland shouted. "Wind's freshening! Come on, Jake!"
"Not without Oy!"
Jake began to shuffle back the way he had come. Before he had gone more than two 
steps, Oy stepped gingerly onto the support rod. The claws at the ends of his 
stiffly braced legs scratched at the rounded metal surface. Eddie stood behind 
the bumbler now, feeling helpless and scared to death.
"That's it, Oy!" Jake encouraged. "Come to me!"
"Oy-Oy! Ake-Ake!" the bumbler cried, and trotted rapidly along the rod. He had 
almost reached Jake when the traitorous wind gusted again. The bridge swung. 
Oy's claws scratched madly at the support rod for purchase, but there was none. 
His hindquarters slued off the edge and into space. He tried to cling with his 
forepaws, but there was nothing to cling to. His rear legs ran wildly in midair.
Jake let go of the rail and dived for him, aware of nothing but Oy's gold-ringed 
eyes.
"No, Jake!" Roland and Eddie bellowed together, each from his own side of the 
gap, each too far away to do anything but watch.
Jake hit the cable on his chest and belly. His pack bounced against his 
shoulderblades and he heard his teeth click together in his head with the sound 
of a cueball breaking a tight rack. The wind gusted again. He went with it, 
looping his right hand around the support rod and reaching for Oy with his left 
as he swayed out into space. The bumbler began to fall, and clamped his jaws on 
Jake's reaching hand as he did. The pain was immediate and excruciating. Jake 
screamed but held on, head down, right arm clasping the rod, knees pressing hard 
against its wretchedly smooth surface. Oy dangled from his left hand like a 
circus acrobat, staring up with his gold-ringed eyes, and Jake could now see his 
own blood flowing along the sides of the bumbler's head in thin streams.
Then the wind gusted again and Jake began to slip outward.


13
EDDIE'S FEAR LEFT HIM in its place came that strange yet welcome coldness. He 
dropped Susannah's wheelchair to the cracked cement with a clatter and raced 
nimbly out along the support cable, not even both­ering with the handrail. Jake 
hung head-down over the gap with Oy swinging at the end of his left hand like a 
furry pendulum. And the boy's right hand was slipping.
Eddie opened his legs and seat-dropped to a sitting position. His undefended 
balls smashed painfully up into his crotch, but for the moment even this 
exquisite pain was news from a distant country. He seized Jake by the hair with 
one hand and one strap of his pack with the other. He felt himself beginning to 
tilt outward, and for a nightmarish moment he thought all three of them were 
going to go over in a daisy-chain.
He let go of Jake's hair and tightened his grip on the packstrap, praying the 
lad hadn't bought the pack at one of the cheap discount outlets. He flailed 
above his head for the handrail with his free hand. After an interminable moment 
in which their combined outward slide continued, he found it and seized it.
"ROLAND!" he bawled. "I COULD USE A LITTLE HELP HERE!"
But Roland was already there, with Susannah still perched on his back. When he 
bent, she locked her arms around his neck so she wouldn't drop headfirst from 
the sling. The gunslinger wrapped an arm around Jake's chest and pulled him up. 
When his feet were on the support rod again, Jake put his right arm around Oy's 
trembling body. His left hand was an agony of fire and ice.
"Let go, Oy," he gasped. "You can let go now we're -- safe."
For a terrible moment he didn't think the billy-bumbler would. Then, slowly, 
Oy's jaws relaxed and Jake was able to pull his hand free. It was covered with 
blood and dotted with a ring of dark holes.
"Oy," the bumbler said feebly, and Eddie saw with wonder that the animal's 
strange eyes were full of tears. He stretched his neck and licked Jake's face 
with his bloody tongue.
"That's okay," Jake said, pressing his face into the warm fur. He was crying 
himself, his face a mask of shock and pain. "Don't worry, that's okay. You 
couldn't help it and I don't mind."
Eddie was getting slowly to his feet. His face was dirty gray, and he felt as if 
someone had driven a bowling ball into his guts. His left hand stole slowly to 
his crotch and investigated the damage there.
"Cheap fucking vasectomy," he said hoarsely.
"Are you going to faint, Eddie?" Roland asked. A fresh gust of wind flipped his 
hat from his head and into Susannah's face. She grabbed it and jammed it down 
all the way to his ears, giving Roland the look of a half-crazed hillbilly.
"No," Eddie said. "I almost wish I could, but -- "
"Take a look at Jake," Susannah said. "He's really bleeding."
"I'm fine," Jake said, and tried to hide his hand. Roland took it gently in his 
own hands before he could. Jake had sustained at least a dozen puncture-wounds 
in the back of his hand, his palm, and his fingers.
Most of them were deep. It would be impossible to tell if bones had been broken 
or tendons severed until Jake tried to flex the hand, and this wasn't the time 
or place for such experiments.
Roland looked at Oy. The billy-bumbler looked back, his expressive eyes sad and 
frightened. He had made no effort to lick Jake's blood from his chops, although 
it would have been the most natural thing in the world for him to have done so.
"Leave him alone," Jake said, and wrapped the encircling arm more tightly about 
Oy's body. "It wasn't his fault. It was my fault for forgetting him. The wind 
blew him off."
"I'm not going to hurt him," Roland said. He was positive the billy-bumbler 
wasn't rabid, but he still did not intend for Oy to taste any more of Jake's 
blood than he already had. As for any other diseases Oy might be carrying in his 
blood . . . well, ka would decide, as, in the end, it always did. Roland pulled 
his neckerchief free and wiped Oy's lips and muzzle. "There," he said. "Good 
fellow. Good boy."
"Oy," the billy-bumbler said feebly, and Susannah, who was watch­ing over 
Roland's shoulder, could have sworn she heard gratitude in that voice.
Another gust of wind struck them. The weather was turning dirty, and fast. 
"Eddie, we have to get off the bridge. Can you walk?"
"No, massa; I'sa gwinter shuffle." The pain in his groin and the pit of his 
stomach was still bad, but not quite so bad as it had been a minute ago.
"All right. Let's move. Fast as we can."
Roland turned, began to take a step, and stopped. A man was now standing on the 
far side of the gap, watching them expressionlessly.
The newcomer had approached while their attention was focused on Jake and Oy. A 
crossbow was slung across his back. He wore a bright yellow scarf around his 
head; the ends streamed out like banners in the freshening wind. Gold hoops with 
crosses in their centers dangled from his ears. One eye was covered with a white 
silk patch. His face was blotched with purple sores, some of them open and 
festering. He might have been thirty, forty, or sixty. He held one hand high 
over his head. In it was something Roland could not make out, except that its 
shape was too regular to be a stone.
Behind this apparition, the city loomed with a kind of weird clarity in the 
darkening day. As Eddie looked past the huddles of brick buildings on the other 
shore -- warehouses long since scooped empty by looters, he had no doubt -- and into 
those shadowy canyons and stone mazes, he understood for the first time how 
terribly mistaken, how terribly foolish, his dreams of hope and help had been. 
Now he saw the shattered facades and broken roofs; now he saw the shaggy birds' 
nests on cornices and in glassless, gaping windows; now hr allowed himself to 
actually smell the city, and that odor was not of fabulous spices and savory 
foods of the sort his mother had sometimes brought home from Zabar's but rather 
the stink of a mattress that has caught fire, smoldered awhile, and then been 
put out with sewer-water. He suddenly understood Lud, understood it completely. 
The grinning pirate who had appeared while their attention was elsewhere was 
probably as close to a wise old elf as this broken, dying place could provide.
Roland pulled his revolver.
"Put it away, my cully," the man in the yellow scarf said in an accent so thick 
that the sense of his words was almost lost. "Put it away, my dear heart. Ye're 
a fierce trim, ay, that's clear, but this time you're outmatched."


14
THE NEWCOMER'S PANTS WERE patched green velvet, and as he stood on the edge of 
the hole in the bridge, he looked like a buccaneer at the end of his days of 
plunder: sick, ragged, and still dangerous.
"Suppose I choose not to?" Roland asked. "Suppose I choose to simply put a 
bullet through your scrofulous head?"
"Then I'll get to hell just enough ahead of ye to hold the door," the man in the 
yellow scarf said, and chuckled chummily. He wiggled the hand he held in the 
air. "It's all the same jolly fakement to me, one way or t'other."
Roland guessed that was the truth. The man looked as if he might have a year to 
live at most . . . and the last few months of that year would probably be very 
unpleasant. The oozing sores on his face had nothing to do with radiation; 
unless Roland was badly deceived, this man was in the late stages of what the 
doctors called mandrus and everyone else called whore's blossoms. Facing a 
dangerous man was always a bad busi­ness, but at least one could calculate the 
odds in such an encounter. When you were facing the dead, however, everything 
changed.
"Do yer know what I've got here, my dear ones?" the pirate asked. "Do yer ken 
whatcher old friend Gasher just happens to have laid his hands on? It's a 
grenado, something pretty the Old Folks left behind, and I've already tipped its 
cap -- for to wear one's cap before the introductin' is complete would be wery bad 
manners, so it would!"
He cackled happily for a moment, and then his face grew still and grave once 
more. All humor left it, as if a switch had been turned some­where in his 
degenerating brains.
"My finger is all that's holdin the pin now, dearie. If you shoot me, there's 
going to be a wery big bang. You and the cunt-monkey on yer back will be 
vaporized. The squint, too, I reckon. The young buck stand­ing behind you and 
pointing that toy pistol in my face might live, but only until he hits the water 
. . . and hit it he would, because this bridge has been hangin by a thread these 
last forty year, and all it'd take to finish it is one little push. So do ye 
want to put away your iron, or shall we all toddle off to hell on the same 
handcart?"
Roland briefly considered trying to shoot the object Gasher called a grenado out 
of his hand, saw how tightly the man was gripping it, and bolstered his gun.
"Ah, good!" Gasher cried, cheerful once more. "I knew ye was a trig cove, just 
lookin at yer! Oh yes! So I did!"
"What do you want?" Roland asked, although he thought he already knew this, too.
Gasher raised his free hand and pointed a dirty finger at Jake. "The squint. 
Gimme the squint and the rest of you go free."
"Go fuck yourself," Susannah said at once.
"Why not?" the pirate cackled. "Gimme a chunk of mirror and I'll rip it right 
off and stick it right in -- why not, for all the good it's a-doin me these days? 
Why, I can't even run water through it without it burns me all the way to the 
top of my gullywash!" His eyes, which were a strange calm shade of gray, never 
left Roland's face. "What do you say, my good old mate?"
"What happens to the rest of us if I hand over the boy?"
"Why, you go on yer way without no trouble from us!" the man in the yellow 
headscarf returned promptly. "You have the Tick-Tock Man's word on that. It 
comes from his lips to my lips to your ears, so it does, and Tick-Tock's a trig 
cove, too, what don't break his word once it's been given. I can't say ary word 
nor watch about any Pubies you might run into, but you'll have no trouble with 
the Tick-Tock Man's Grays."
"What the fuck are you saying, Roland?" Eddie roared. "You're not really 
thinking about doing it, are you?"
Roland didn't look down at Jake, and his lips didn't move as he murmured: "I'll 
keep my promise."
"Yes -- I know you will." Then Jake raised his voice and said: "Put the gun away, 
Eddie. I'll decide."
"Jake, you're out of your mind!"
The pirate cackled cheerily. "Not at all, cully! You're the one who's lost his 
mind if you disbelieve me. At the wery least, he'll be safe from the drums with 
us, won't he? And just think -- if I didn't mean what I say, I would have told you 
to toss your guns overside first thing! Easiest thing in the world! But did I? 
Nay!"
Susannah had heard the exchange between Jake and Roland. She had also had a 
chance to realize how bleak their options were as things now stood. "Put it 
away, Eddie."
"How do we know you won't toss the grenade at us once you have the lad?" Eddie 
called.
"I'll shoot it out of the air if he tries," Roland said. "I can do it, and he 
knows I can do it."
"Mayhap I do. You've got a cosy look about you, indeed ye do."
"If he's telling the truth," Roland went on, "he'd be burned even if I missed 
his toy, because the bridge would collapse and we'd all go down together."
"Wery clever, my dear old son!" Gasher said. "You are a cosy one, ain't you?" He 
cawed laughter, then grew serious and confiding. "The talking's done, old mate 
of mine. Decide. Will you give me the boy, or do we all march to the end of the 
path together?"
Before Roland could say a word, Jake had slipped past him on the support rod. He 
still held Oy curled in his right arm. He held his bloody left hand stiffly out 
in front of him.
"Jake, no!" Eddie shouted desperately.
"I'll come for you," Roland said in the same low voice.
"I know," Jake repeated. The wind gusted again. The bridge swayed and groaned. 
The Send was now speckled with whitecaps, and water boiled whitely around the 
wreck of the blue mono jutting from the river on the upstream side.
"Ay, my cully!" Gasher crooned. His lips spread wide, revealing a few remaining 
teeth that jutted from his white gums like decayed tomb­stones. "Ay, my fine 
young squint! Just keep coming."
"Roland, he could be bluffing!" Eddie yelled. "That thing could be a dud!"
The gunslinger made no reply.
As Jake neared the other side of the hole in the walkway, Oy bared his own teeth 
and began to snarl at Gasher.
"Toss that talking bag of guts overside," Gasher said.
"Fuck you," Jake replied in the same calm voice.
The pirate looked surprised for a moment, then nodded. "Tender of him, are you? 
Wery well." He took two steps backward. "Put him down the second you reach the 
concrete, then. And if he runs at me, I promise to lack his brains right out his 
tender little asshole."
"Asshole," Oy said through his bared teeth.
"Shut up, Oy," Jake muttered. He reached the concrete just as the strongest gust 
of wind yet struck the bridge. This time the twanging sound of parting 
cable-strands seemed to come from everywhere. Jake glanced back and saw Roland 
and Eddie clinging to the rail. Susannah was watching him from over Roland's 
shoulder, her tight cap of curls rippling and shaking in the wind. Jake raised 
his hand to them. Roland raised his in return.
You won't let me drop this time? he had asked. No -- not ever again, Roland had 
replied. Jake believed him . . . but he was very much afraid of what might 
happen before Roland arrived. He put Oy down. Gasher rushed forward the moment 
he did, kicking out at the small animal. Oy skittered aside, avoiding the booted 
foot.
"Run!" Jake shouted. Oy did, shooting past them and loping toward the Lud end of 
the bridge with his head down, swerving to avoid the holes and leaping across 
the cracks in the pavement. He didn't look back. A moment later Gasher had his 
arm around Jake's neck. He stank of dirt and decaying flesh, the two odors 
combining to create a single deep stench, crusty and thick. It made Jake's gorge 
rise.
He bumped his crotch into Jake's buttocks. "Maybe I ain't quite s'far gone's I 
thought. Don't they say youth's the wine what makes old men drunk? We'll have us 
a time, won't we, my sweet little squint? Ay, we'll have a time such as will 
make the angels sing."
Oh Jesus, Jake thought.
Gasher raised his voice again. "We're leaving now, my hardcase friend -- we have 
grand things to do and grand people to see, so we do, but I keep my word. As for 
you, you'll stand right where you are for a good fifteen minutes, if you're 
wise. If I see you start to move, we're all going to ride the handsome. Do you 
understand me?"
"Yes," Roland said.
"Do you believe me when I say I have nothing to lose?"
"Yes."
"That's wery well, then. Move, boy! Hup!"
Gasher's hold tightened on Jake's throat until he could hardly breathe. At the 
same time he was pulled backward. They retreated that way, facing the gap where 
Roland stood with Susannah on his back and Eddie just behind him, still holding 
the Ruger which Gasher had called a toy pistol. Jake could feel Gasher's breath 
puffing against his ear in hot little blurts. Worse, he could smell it.
"Don't try a thing," Gasher whispered, "or I'll rip off yer sweetmeats and stuff 
em up your bung. And it would be sad to lose em before you ever got a chance to 
use em, wouldn't it? Wery sad indeed."
They reached the end of the bridge. Jake stiffened, believing Gasher would throw 
the grenade anyway, but he didn't ... at least not immedi­ately. He backed Jake 
through a narrow alley between two small cubicles which had probably served as 
tollbooths, once upon a time. Beyond them, the brick warehouses loomed like 
prison cellblocks.
"Now, cully, I'm going to let go of your neck, or how would'je ever have wind to 
run with? But I'll be holdin yer arm, and if ye don't run like the wind, I 
promise I'll rip it right off and use it for a club to beat you with. Do you 
understand?"
Jake nodded, and suddenly the terrible, stifling pressure was gone from his 
windpipe. As soon as it was, he became aware of his hand again -- it felt hot and 
swollen and full of fire. Then Gasher seized his bicep with fingers like bands 
of iron, and he forgot all about his hand.
"Toodle-doo!" Gasher called in a grotesquely cheery falsetto. He waggled the 
grenado at the others. "Bye-bye, dears!" Then he growled to Jake: "Now run, you 
whoring little squint! Run\"
Jake was first whirled and then yanked into a run. The two of them went flying 
down a curved ramp to street level. Jake's first confused thought was that this 
was what the East River Drive would look like two or three hundred years after 
some weird brain-plague had killed all the sane people in the world.
The ancient, rusty hulks of what had once surely been automobiles stood at 
intervals along both curbs. Most were bubble-shaped roadsters that looked like 
no cars Jake had ever seen before (except, maybe, for the ones the white-gloved 
creations of Walt Disney drove in the comic books), but among them he saw an old 
Volkswagen Beetle, a car that might have been a Chevrolet Corvair, and something 
he believed was a Model A Ford. There were no tires on any of these eerie hulks; 
they either had been stolen or had rotted away to dust long since. And all the 
glass had been broken, as if the remaining denizens of this city abhorred 
anything which might show them their own reflections, even accidentally.
Beneath and between the abandoned cars, the gutters were filled with drifts of 
unidentifiable metal junk and bright glints of glass. Trees had been planted at 
intervals along the sidewalks in some long-gone, happier time, but they were now 
so emphatically dead that they looked like stark metal sculptures against the 
cloudy sky. Some of the warehouses had either been bombed or had collapsed on 
their own, and beyond the jumbled heaps of bricks which was all that remained of 
them Jake could see the river and the rusty, sagging underpinnings of the Send 
Bridge. That smell of wet decay -- a smell that seemed almost to snarl in the 
nose -- was stronger than ever.
The street headed due east, diverging from the path of the Beam, and Jake could 
see it became more and more choked with rubble and rickrack as it went. Six or 
seven blocks down it appeared to be entirely plugged, but it was in this 
direction that Gasher pulled him. At first he kept up, but Gasher was setting a 
fearsome pace. Jake began to pant and fell a step behind. Gasher almost jerked 
him off his feet as he dragged Jake toward the barrier of junk and concrete and 
rusty steel beams which lay ahead. The plug -- which looked like a deliberate 
construction to Jake -- lay between two broad buildings with dusty marble facades. 
In front of the one on the left was a statue Jake recognized at once: it was the 
woman called Blind Justice, and that almost surely made the building she guarded 
a courthouse. But he only had a moment to look; Gasher was dragging him 
relentlessly toward the barricade, and he wasn't slowing down.
He'll kill us if he tries to take us through there! Jake thought, but Gasher -- who 
ran like the wind in spite of the disease which advertised itself on his 
face -- simply buried his fingers deeper in Jake's upper arm and swept him along. 
And now Jake saw a narrow alley in the not-quite-haphazard pile of concrete, 
splintered furniture, rusted plumbing fixtures, and chunks of trucks and 
automobiles. He suddenly understood. This maze would hold Roland up for hours . 
. . but it was Gasher's back yard, and he knew exactly where he was going.
The small dark opening to the alley was on the left side of the tottery pile of 
junk. As they reached it, Gasher tossed the green object back over his shoulder. 
"Better duck, dearie!" he cried, and voiced a series of shrill, hysterical 
giggles. A moment later a huge, crumping explo­sion shook the street. One of the 
bubble-shaped cars jumped twenty feet into the air and then came down on its 
roof. A hail of bricks whistled over Jake's head, and something thumped him hard 
on the left shoulder-blade. He stumbled and would have fallen if Gasher hadn't 
yanked him upright and pulled him into the narrow opening in the rubble. Once 
they were in the passageway which lay beyond, gloomy shadows reached out eagerly 
and enfolded them.
When they were gone, a small, furry shape crept out from behind a concrete 
boulder. It was Oy. He stood at the mouth of the passage for a moment, neck 
stretched forward, eyes gleaming. Then he followed after, nose low to the ground 
and sniffing carefully.


15
"COME ON," ROLAND SAID as soon as Gasher had turned tail.
"How could you do it?" Eddie asked. "How could you let that freak have him?"
"Because I had no choice. Bring the wheelchair. We're going to need it."
They had reached the concrete on the far side of the gap when an explosion shook 
the bridge, spraying rubble into the darkening sky.
"Christ!" Eddie said, and turned his white, dismayed face to Roland.
"Don't worry yet," Roland said calmly. "Fellows like Gasher rarely get careless 
with their high-explosive toys." They reached the tollbooths at the end of the 
bridge. Roland stopped just beyond, at the top of the curving ramp.
"You knew the guy wasn't just bluffing, didn't you?" Eddie said. "I mean, you 
weren't guessing -- you knew."
"He's a walking dead man, and such men don't need to bluff." Roland's voice was 
calm enough, but there was a deep undertone of bitterness and pain in it. "I 
knew something like this could happen, and if we'd seen the fellow earlier, 
while we were still beyond the range of his exploding egg, we could have stood 
him off. But then Jake fell and he got too close. I imagine he thinks our real 
reason for bringing a boy in the first place was to pay for safe conduct through 
the city. Damn! Damn the luck!" Roland struck his fist against his leg.
"Well, let's go get him!"
Roland shook his head. "This is where we split up. We can't take Susannah where 
the bastard's gone, and we can't leave her alone."
"But -- "
"Listen and don't argue -- not if you want to save Jake. The longer we stand here, 
the colder his trail gets. Cold trails are hard to follow. You've got your own 
job to do. If there's another Blaine, and I am sure Jake believes there is, then 
you and Susannah must find it. There must be a station, or what was once called 
a cradle in the far lands. Do you understand?"
For once, blessedly, Eddie didn't argue. "Yeah. We'll find it. What then?"
"Fire a shot every half hour or so. When I get Jake, I'll come."
"Shots may attract other people as well," Susannah said. Eddie had helped her 
out of the sling and she was seated in her chair again.
Roland surveyed them coldly. "Handle them."
"Okay." Eddie stuck out his hand and Roland took it briefly. "Find him, Roland."
"Oh, I'll find him. Just pray to your gods that I find him soon enough. And 
remember the faces of your fathers, both of you."
Susannah nodded. "We'll try."
Roland turned and ran light-footed down the ramp. When he was out of sight, 
Eddie looked at Susannah and was not very surprised to see she was crying. He 
felt like crying himself. Half an hour ago they had been a tight little band of 
friends. Their comfortable fellowship had been smashed to bits in the space of 
just a few minutes -- Jake abducted, Roland gone after him. Even Oy had run away. 
Eddie had never felt so lonely in his life.
"I have a feeling we're never going to see either of them again," Susannah said.
"Of course we will!" Eddie said roughly, but he knew what she meant, because he 
felt the same way. The premonition that their quest was all over before it was 
fairly begun lay heavy on his heart. "In a fight with Attila the Hun, I'd give 
you three-to-two odds on Roland the Barbar­ian. Come on, Suze -- we've got a train 
to catch."
"But where?" she asked forlornly.
"I don't know. Maybe we should just find the nearest wise old elf and ask him, 
huh?"
"What are you talking about, Edward Dean?"
"Nothing," he said, and because that was so goddam true he thought he might 
burst into tears, he grasped the handles of her wheelchair and began to push it 
down the cracked and glass-littered ramp that led into the city of Lud.


16
JAKE QUICKLY DESCENDED INTO a foggy world where the only landmarks were pain: 
his throbbing hand, the place on his upper arm where Gasher's fingers dug in 
like steel pegs, his burning lungs. Before they had gone far, these pains were 
first joined and then overmatched by a deep, burning stitch in his left side. He 
wondered if Roland was following after them yet. He also wondered how long Oy 
would be able to live in this world which was so unlike the plains and forest 
which were all he had known until now. Then Gasher clouted him across the face, 
bloodying his nose, and thought was lost in a red wash of pain.
"Come on, yer little bastard! Move yer sweet cheeks!"
"Running ... as fast as I can," Jake gasped, and just managed to dodge a thick 
shard of glass which jutted like a long transparent tooth from the wall of junk 
to his left.
"You better not be, because I'll knock yer cold and drag yer along by the hair 
o' yer head if y'are! Now hup, you little barstard!"
Jake somehow forced himself to run faster. He'd gone into the alley with the 
idea that they must shortly re-emerge onto the avenue, but he now reluctantly 
realized that wasn't going to happen. This was more than an alley; it was a 
camouflaged and fortified road leading ever deeper into the country of the 
Grays. The tall, tottery walls which pressed in on them had been built from an 
exotic array of materials: cars which had been partially or completely flattened 
by the chunks of granite and steel placed on top of them; marble pillars; 
unknown factory machines which were dull red with rust wherever they weren't 
still black with grease; a chrome-and-crystal fish as big as a private plane 
with one cryptic word of the High Speech -- DELIGHT -- carefully incised into its 
scaly gleaming side; crisscrossing chains, each link as big as Jake's head, 
wrapped around mad
jumbles of furniture that appeared to balance above them as precariously as 
circus elephants do on their tiny steel platforms.
They came to a place where this lunatic path branched, and Gasher chose the left 
fork without hesitation. A little further along, three more alleyways, these so 
narrow they were almost tunnels, spoked off in various directions. This time 
Gasher chose the right-hand branching. The new path, which seemed to be formed 
by banks of rotting boxes and huge blocks of old paper -- paper that might once 
have been books or maga­zines -- was too narrow for them to run in side by side. 
Gasher shoved Jake into the lead and began beating him relentlessly on the back 
to make him go faster. This is how a steer must feel when it's driven down the 
chute to the slaughtering pen, Jake thought, and vowed that if he got out of 
this alive, he would never eat steak again.
"Run, my sweet little boycunt! Run!"
Jake soon lost all track of the twistings and turnings they made, and as Gasher 
drove him deeper and deeper into this jumble of torn steel, broken furniture, 
and castoff machinery, he began to give up hope of rescue. Not even Roland would 
be able to find him now. If the gunslinger tried, he would become lost himself, 
and wander the choked paths of this nightmare world until he died.
Now they were going downhill, and the walls of tightly packed paper had given 
way to ramparts of filing cabinets, jumbles of adding machines, and piles of 
computer gear. It was like running through some nightmarish Radio Shack 
warehouse. For almost a full minute the wall flowing past on Jake's left 
appeared to be constructed solely of either TV sets or carelessly stacked video 
display terminals. They stared at him like the glazed eyes of dead men. And as 
the pavement beneath their feet contin­ued to descend, Jake realized that they 
were in a tunnel. The strip of cloudy sky overhead narrowed to a band, the band 
narrowed to a ribbon, and the ribbon became a thread. They were in a gloomy 
netherworld, scurrying like rats through a gigantic trash-midden.
What if it all comes down on us? Jake wondered, but in his current state of 
aching exhaustion, this possibility did not frighten him much. If the roof fell 
in, he would at least be able to rest.
Gasher drove him as a farmer would a mule, striking his left shoulder to 
indicate a left turn and his right to indicate a right turn. When the course was 
straight on, he thumped Jake on the back of the head. Jake tried to dodge a 
jutting pipe and didn't quite succeed. It whacked into one hip and sent him 
flailing across the narrow passage toward a snarl of glass and jagged boards. 
Gasher caught him and shoved him forward again. "Run, you clumsy squint! Can't 
you run? If it wasn't for the Tick-Tock Man, I'd bugger you right here and cut 
yer throat while I did it, ay, so I would!"
Jake ran in a red daze where there was only pain and the frequent thud of 
Gusher's fists coming down on his shoulders or the hack of his head. At last, 
when he was sure he could run no longer, Gasher grabbed him by the neck and 
yanked him to a stop so fiercely that Jake crashed into him with a strangled 
squawk.
"Here's a tricky little bit!" Gasher panted jovially. "Look straight ahead and 
you'll see two wires what cross in an X low to the ground. Do yer see em?"
At first Jake didn't. It was very gloomy here; heaps of huge copper kettles were 
piled up to the left, and to the right were stacks of steel tanks that looked 
like scuba-diving gear. Jake thought he could turn these latter into an 
avalanche with one strong breath. He swiped his forearm across his eyes, 
brushing away tangles of hair, and tried not to think about how he'd look with 
about sixteen tons of those tanks piled on top of him. He squinted in the 
direction Gasher was pointing. Yes, he could make out -- barely -- two thin, silvery 
lines that looked like guitar or banjo strings. They came down from opposite 
sides of the passageway and crossed about two feet above the pavement.
"Crawl under, dear heart. And be ever so careful, for if you so much as twang 
one of those wires, harf the steel and cement puke in the city'll come down on 
your dear little head. Mine, too, although I doubt if that'd disturb you much, 
would it? Now crawl!"
Jake shrugged out of his pack, lay down, and pushed it through the gap ahead of 
him. And as he eased his way under the thin, taut wires, he discovered that he 
wanted to live a little longer after all. It seemed that he could actually feel 
all those tons of carefully balanced junk waiting to come down on him. These 
wires are probably holding a couple of carefully chosen keystones in place, he 
thought. If one of them breaks . . . ashes, ashes, we all fall down. His back 
brushed one of the wires, and high overhead, something creaked.
"Careful, cully!" Gasher almost moaned. "Be oh so careful!"
Jake pushed himself beneath the crisscrossing wires, using his feet and his 
elbows. His stinking, sweat-clogged hair fell in his eyes again, but he did not 
dare brush it away.
"You're clear," Gasher grunted at last, and slipped beneath the tripwires 
himself with the ease of long practice. He stood up and snatched Jake's pack 
before Jake could reshoulder it. "What's in here, cully?" he asked, undoing the 
straps and peering in. "Got any treats for yer old pal? For the Gasherman loves 
his treaties, so he does!"
"There's nothing in there but-"
Gasher's hand flashed out and rocked Jake's head back with a hard slap that sent 
a fresh spray of bloody froth flying from the boy's nose.
"What did you do that for?" Jake cried, hurt and outraged.
"For tellin me what my own beshitted eyes can see!" Gasher yelled, and cast 
Jake's pack aside. He bared his remaining teeth at the boy in a dangerous, 
terrible grin. "And fer almost bringin the whole beshitted works down on us!" He 
paused, then added in a quieter voice: "And because I felt like it -- I must admit 
that. Your stupid sheep's face puts me wery much in a slappin temper, so it 
does." The grin widened, reveal­ing his oozing whitish gums, a sight Jake could 
have done without. "If your hardcase friend follows us this far, he'll have a 
surprise when he runs into those wires, won't he?" Gasher looked up, still 
grinning. "There's a city bus balanced up there someplace, as I remember."
Jake began to weep -- tired, hopeless tears that cut through the dirt on his cheeks 
in narrow channels.
Gasher raised an open, threatening hand. "Get moving, cully, before I start 
cryin myself ... for a wery sentermental fellow is yer old pal, so he is, and 
when he starts to grieve and mourn, a little slappin is the only thing to put a 
smile on his face again. Run!"
They ran. Gasher chose pathways leading deeper into the smelly, creaking maze 
seemingly at random, indicating his choices with hard whacks to the shoulders. 
At some point the sound of the drums began. It seemed to come from everywhere 
and nowhere, and for Jake it was the final straw. He gave up hope and thought 
alike, and allowed himself to descend wholly into the nightmare.


17
ROLAND HALTED IN FRONT of the barricade which choked the street from side to 
side and top to bottom. Unlike Jake, he had no hopes of emerging into the open 
on the other side. The buildings lying east of this point would be 
sentry-occupied islands emerging from an inland sea of trash, tools, artifacts . 
. . and booby-traps, he had no doubt. Some of these leavings undoubtedly still 
remained where they had fallen five hun­dred or seven hundred or a thousand 
years ago, but Roland thought most of it had been dragged here by the Grays a 
piece at a time. The eastern portion of Lud had become, in effect, the castle of 
the Grays, and Roland was now standing outside its wall.
He walked forward slowly and saw the mouth of a passageway half-hidden behind a 
ragged cement boulder. There were footprints in the powdery dust -- two sets, one 
big, one small. Roland started to get up, looked again, and squatted on his 
hunkers once more. Not two sets but three, the third marking the paws of a small 
animal.
"Oy?" Roland called softly. For a moment there was no response, and then a 
single soft bark came from the shadows. Roland stepped into the passageway and 
saw gold-ringed eyes peering at him from around the first crooked corner. Roland 
trotted down to the humbler. Oy, who still didn't like to come really close to 
anyone but Jake, backed up a step and then held his ground, looking anxiously up 
at the gunslinger.
"Do you want to help me?" Roland asked. He could feel the dry red curtain that 
was battle fever at the edge of his consciousness, but this was not the time for 
it. The time would come, but for now he must not allow himself that 
inexpressible relief. "Help me find Jake?"
"Ake!" Oy barked, still watching Roland with his anxious eyes.
"Go on, then. Find him."
Oy turned away at once and ran rapidly down the alley, nose skim­ming the 
ground. Roland followed, his eyes only occasionally flicking up to glance at Oy. 
Mostly he kept his gaze fixed on the ancient pavement, looking for sign.


18
"JESUS," EDDIE SAID. "WHAT land of people are these guys?"
They had followed the avenue at the base of the ramp for a couple of blocks, had 
seen the barricade (missing Roland's entry into the partially hidden passageway 
by less than a minute) which lay ahead, and had turned north onto a broad 
thoroughfare which reminded Eddie of Fifth Avenue. He hadn't dared to tell 
Susannah that; he was still too bitterly disappointed with this stinking, 
littered ruin of a city to articulate anything hopeful.
"Fifth Avenue" led them into an area of large white stone buildings that 
reminded Eddie of the way Rome looked in the gladiator movies he'd watched on TV 
as a kid. They were austere and, for the most part, still in good shape. He was 
pretty sure they had been public buildings of some sort -- galleries, libraries, 
maybe museums. One, with a big domed roof that had cracked like a granite egg, 
might have been an observatory, although Eddie had read someplace that 
astronomers liked to be away from big cities, because all the electric lights 
fucked up their star-gazing.
There were open areas between these imposing edifices, and although the grass 
and flowers which had once grown there had been choked off by weeds and tangles 
of underbrush, the area still had a stately feel, and Eddie wondered if it had 
once been the center of Lud's cultural life. Those days were long gone, of 
course; Eddie doubted if Gasher and his pals were very interested in ballet or 
chamber music.
He and Susannah had come to a major intersection from which four more broad 
avenues radiated outward like spokes on a wheel. At the hub of the wheel was a 
large paved square. Ringing it were loudspeakers on forty-foot steel posts. In 
the center of the square was a pedestal with the remains of a statue upon it -- a 
mighty copper war-horse, green with verdigris, pawing its forelegs at the air. 
The warrior who had once ridden this charger lay off to the side on one corroded 
shoulder, waving what looked like a machine-gun in one hand and a sword in the 
other. His legs were still bowed around the shape of the horse he had once 
ridden, hut his boots remained welded to the sides of his metal mount. GRAYS 
DIE! was written across the pedestal in fading orange letters.
Glancing down the radiating streets, Eddie saw more of the speaker-poles. A few 
had fallen over, but most still stood, and each of these had been festooned with 
a grisly garland of corpses. As a result, the square into which "Fifth Avenue" 
emptied and the streets which led away were guarded by a small army of the dead.
"What kind of people are they?" Eddie asked again.
He didn't expect an answer and Susannah didn't give one . . . but she could 
have. She'd had insights into the past of Roland's world before, but never one 
as clear and sure as this. All of her earlier insights, like those which had 
come to her in River Crossing, had had a haunting visionary quality, like 
dreams, but what came now arrived in a single flash, and it was like seeing the 
twisted face of a dangerous maniac illuminated by a stroke of lightning.
The speakers . . . the hanging bodies . . . the drums. She suddenly understood 
how they went together as clearly as she had understood that the heavy-laden 
wagons passing through River Crossing on their way to Jimtown had been pulled by 
oxen rather than mules or horses.
"Never mind this trash," she said, and her voice only quivered a little. "It's 
the train we want -- which way is it, d'you think?"
Eddie glanced up at the darkening sky and easily picked out the path of the Beam 
in the rushing clouds. He looked back down and wasn't much surprised to see that 
the entrance to the street corresponding most closely to the path of the Beam 
was guarded by a large stone turtle. Its reptilian head peered out from beneath 
the granite lip of its shell; its deepset eyes seemed to stare curiously at 
them. Eddie nodded toward it and managed a small dry smile. "See the turtle of 
enormous girth?"
Susannah took a brief look of her own and nodded. He pushed her across the city 
square and into The Street of the Turtle. The corpses which lined it gave off a 
dry, cinnamony smell that made Eddie's stomach clench . . . not because it was 
bad but because it was actually rather pleasant -- the sugar-spicy aroma of 
something a kid would enjoy shaking onto his morning toast.
The Street of the Turtle was mercifully broad, and most of the corpses hanging 
from the speaker-poles were little more than mummies, but Susannah saw a few 
which were relatively fresh, with flies still crawl­ing busily across the 
blackening skin of their swollen faces and maggots still squirming out of their 
decaying eyes.
And below each speaker was a little drift of bones.
"There must be thousands," Eddie said. "Men, women, and kids."
"Yes." Susannah's calm voice sounded distant and strange to her own ears. 
"They've had a lot of time to kill. And they've used it to kill each other."
"Bring on those wise fuckin elves!" Eddie said, and the laugh that followed 
sounded suspiciously like a sob. He thought he was at last begin­ning to fully 
understand what that innocuous phrase -- the world has moved on -- really meant. What 
a breadth of ignorance and evil it covered.
And what a depth.
The speakers were a wartime measure, Susannah thought. Of course they were. God 
only knows which war, or how long ago, but it must have been a doozy. The rulers 
of Lud used the speakers to make city-wide announcements from some central, 
bomb-proof location -- a bunker like the one Hitler and his high command retreated 
to at the end of World War II.
And in her ears she could hear the voice of authority which had come rolling out 
of those speakers -- could hear it as clearly as she had heard the creak of the 
wagons passing through River Crossing, as clearly as she had heard the crack of 
the whip above the backs of the straining oxen.
Ration centers A and D will be closed today; please proceed to cen­ters B, C, E, 
and F with proper coupons.
Militia squads Nine, Ten, and Twelve report to Sendside.
Aerial bombardment is likely between the hours of eight and ten of the clock. 
All noncombatant residents should report to their designated shelters. Bring 
your gas masks. Repeat, bring your gas masks.
Announcements, yes . . . and some garbled version of the news -- a propagandized, 
militant version George Orwell would have called double­speak. And in between 
the news bulletins and the announcements, squall­ing military music and 
exhortations to respect the fallen by sending more men and women into the red 
throat of the abattoir.
Then the war had ended and silence had fallen ... for a while. But at some 
point, the speakers had begun broadcasting again. How long ago? A hundred years? 
Fifty? Did it matter? Susannah thought not. What mattered was that when the 
speakers were reactivated, the only thing they broadcast was a single tape-loop 
. . . the loop with the drum-track on it. And the descendents of the city's 
original residents had taken it for ... what? The Voice of the Turtle? The Will 
of the Beam?
Susannah found herself remembering the time she had asked her father, a quiet 
hut deeply cynical man, if he believed there was a God in heaven who guided the 
course of human events. Well, he had said, I think it's sort of half 'n half, 
Odetta. I'm sure there's a God, but I don't think He has much if anything to do 
with us these days; I believe that after we killed His son, He finally got it 
through His head that there wasn't nothing to be done with the sons of Adam or 
the daughters of Eve, and He washed His hands of us. Wise fella.
She had responded to this (which she had fully expected; she was eleven at the 
time, and knew the turn of her father's mind quite well) by showing him a squib 
on the Community Churches page of the local newspaper. It said that Rev. Murdock 
of the Grace Methodist Church would that Sunday elucidate on the topic "God 
Speaks to Each of Us Every Day" -- with a text from First Corinthians. Her father 
had laughed over that so hard that tears had squirted from the corners of his 
eyes. Well, I guess each of us hears someone talking, he had said at last, and 
you can bet your bottom dollar on one thing, sweetie: each of us -- includ­ing this 
here Reverend Murdock -- hears that voice say just exactly what he wants to hear. 
It's so convenient that way.
What these people had apparently wanted to hear in the recorded drum-track was 
an invitation to commit ritual murder. And now, when the drums began to throb 
through these hundreds or thousands of speak­ers -- a hammering back-beat which was 
only the percussion to a Z.Z. Top song called "Velcro Fly," if Eddie was 
right -- it became their signal to unlimber the hangropes and run a few folks up 
the nearest speaker-posts.
How many? she wondered as Eddie rolled her along in her wheel-chair, its nicked 
and dented hard rubber tires crackling over broken glass and whispering through 
drifts of discarded paper. How many have been killed over the years because some 
electronic circuit under the city got the hiccups? Did it start because they 
recognized the essential alienness of the music, which came somehow -- like us, and 
the airplane, and some of the cars along these streets -- -from another world?
She didn't know, but she knew she had come around to her father's cynical point 
of view on the subject of God and the chats He might or might not have with the 
sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve. These people had been looking for a 
reason to slaughter each other, that was all, and the drums had been as good a 
reason as any.
She found herself thinking of the hive they had found -- the mis­shapen hive of 
white bees whose honey would have poisoned them if they had been foolish enough 
to eat of it. Here, on this side of the Send, was another dying hive; more 
mutated white bees whose sting would be no less deadly for their confusion, 
loss, and perplexity.
And how many more will have to die before the tape finally breaks?
As if her thoughts had caused it to happen, the speakers suddenly began to 
transmit the relentless, syncopated heartbeat of the drums. Eddie yelled in 
surprise. Susannah screamed and clapped both hands to her ears -- but before she 
did, she could faintly hear the rest of the music: the track or tracks which had 
been muted decades ago when someone (probably quite by accident) had bumped the 
balance control, knocking it all the way to one side and burying both the 
guitars and the vocal.
Eddie continued to push her along The Street of the Turtle and the Path of the 
Beam, trying to look in all directions at once and trying not to smell the odor 
of putrefaction. Thank God for the wind, he thought.
He began to push the wheelchair faster, scanning the weedy gaps between the big 
white buildings for the graceful sweep of an overhead monorail track. He wanted 
to get out of this endless aisle of the dead. As he took yet another deep breath 
of that speciously sweet cinnamon smell, it seemed to him that he had never 
wanted anything so badly in his whole life.




19
JAKE'S DAZE WAS BROKEN abruptly when Gasher grabbed him by the collar and yanked 
with all the force of a cruel rider braking a galloping horse. He stuck one leg 
out at the same time and Jake went crashing backward over it. His head connected 
with the pavement and for a moment all the lights went out. Gasher, no 
humanitarian, brought him around quickly by seizing Jake's lower lip and yanking 
it upward and outward.
Jake screamed and bolted to a sitting position, striking out blindly with his 
fists. Gasher dodged the blows easily, hooked his other hand into Jake's armpit, 
and yanked him to his feet. Jake stood there, rocking drunkenly back and forth. 
He was beyond protest now; almost beyond understanding. All he knew for sure was 
that every muscle in his body felt sprung and his wounded hand was howling like 
an animal caught in a trap.
Gasher apparently needed a breather, and this time he was slower getting his 
wind back. He stood bent over with his hands planted on the knees of his green 
trousers, panting in fast little whistling breaths. His yellow headscarf had 
slipped askew. His good eye glittered like a trum­pery diamond. The white silk 
eyepatch was now wrinkled, and curds of evil-looking yellow muck oozed onto his 
cheek from beneath it.
"Take a look over your head, cully, and you'll see why I brung you up short. Get 
an eyeful!"
Jake tilted his head upward, and in the depths of his shock he was not at all 
surprised to see a marble fountain as big as a house-trailer dangling eighty 
feet above them. He and Gasher were almost below it. The fountain was held 
suspended by two rusty cables which were mostly hidden within huge, unsteady 
stacks of church pews. Even in his less-than-acute state, Jake saw that these 
cables were more seriously frayed than the remaining hangers on the bridge had 
been.
"See it?" Gasher asked, grinning. He raised his left hand to his covered eye, 
scooped a mass of the pussy material from beneath it, and flicked it 
indifferently aside. "Beauty, ain't it? Oh, the Tick-Tock Man's a trig cove, all 
right, and no mistake. (Where's those goat-fucking drums? They should have 
started by now -- if Copperhead's forgot em, I'll ram a stick so far up his arse 
he'll taste bark.) Now look ahead of you, my delicious little squint."
Jake did, and Gasher immediately clouted him so hard that he stag­gered backward 
and almost fell.
"Not across, idiot child! Down! See them two dark cobblestones?"
After a moment, Jake did. He nodded apathetically.
"Yer don't wanter step on em, for that'd bring the whole works down on your 
head, cully, and anybody who wanted yer after that'd have to pick yer up with a 
blotter. Understand?"
Jake nodded again.
"Good." Gasher took a final deep breath and slapped Jake's shoulder. "Go on, 
then, whatcher waitin for? Hup!"
Jake stepped over the first of the discolored stones and saw it wasn't really a 
cobblestone at all but a metal plate which had been rounded to look like one. 
The second was just ahead of it, cunningly placed so that if an unaware intruder 
happened to miss the first one, he or she would almost certainly step on the 
second.
Go ahead and do it, then, he thought. Why not? The gunslinger's never going to 
find you in this maze, so go ahead and bring it down. It's got to be cleaner 
than what Gasher and his friends have got planned for you. Quicker, too.
His dusty moccasin wavered in the air above the booby-trap.
Gasher hit him with a fist in the middle of the back, but not hard. "Thinkin 
about takin a ride on the handsome, are you, my little cull?" he asked. The 
laughing cruelty in his voice had been replaced by simple curiosity. If it was 
tinged with any other emotion, it wasn't fear but amusement. "Well, go ahead, if 
it's what yer mean to do, for I have my ticket already. Only be quick about it, 
gods blast your eyes."
Jake's foot came down beyond the trigger of the booby-trap. His decision to live 
a little longer was not based on any hope that Roland would find him; it was 
just that this was what Roland would do -- go on until someone made him stop, and 
then a few yards farther still if he could.
If he did it now, he could take Gasher with him, but Gasher alone wasn't 
sufficient -- one look was enough to make it clear that he was telling the truth 
when he said he was dying already. If he went on, he might have a chance to take 
some of the Gasherman's friends, too --  maybe even the one he called the Tick-Tock 
Man.
If I'm going to ride what he calls the handsome, Jake thought, I'd just as soon 
go with plenty of company.
Roland would have understood.


20
JAKE WAS WRONG IN his assessment of the gunslinger's ability to follow their 
path through the maze; Jake's pack was only the most obvious bit of sign they 
left behind them, but Roland quickly realized he did not have to pause to look 
for sign. He only had to follow Oy.
He paused at several intersecting passages nevertheless, wanting to make sure, 
and each time he did, Oy looked back and uttered his low, impatient bark that 
seemed to say, Hurry up! Do you want to lose them? After the signs he saw -- a 
track, a thread from Jake's shirt, a scrap of bright yellow cloth from Gasher's 
scarf -- had three times confirmed the bumbler's choices, Roland simply followed 
Oy. He did not give up look­ing for sign, but he quit making stops to hunt for 
it. Then the drums started up, and it was the drums -- plus Gasher's nosiness about 
what Jake might be carrying -- that saved Roland's life that afternoon.
He skidded to a halt in his dusty boots, and his gun was in his hand before he 
realized what the sound was. When he did realize, he dropped the revolver back 
into its holster with an impatient grunt. He was about to go on again when his 
eye happened first on Jake's pack . . . and then on a pair of faint, gleaming 
streaks in midair just to the left of it. Roland narrowed his eyes and made out 
two thin wires which crisscrossed at knee level not three feet in front of him. 
Oy, who was built low to the ground, had scurried neatly through the inverted V 
formed by the wires, but if not for the drums and spotting Jake's castoff pack, 
Roland would have run right into them. As his eyes moved upward, tracing the 
not-quite-random piles of junk poised on either side of the passageway at this 
point, Roland's mouth tightened. It had been a close call, and only ka had saved 
him.
Oy barked impatiently.
Roland dropped to his belly and crawled beneath the wires, moving slowly and 
carefully -- he was bigger than either Jake or Gasher, and he realized a really big 
man wouldn't be able to get under here at all without triggering the carefully 
prepared avalanche. The drums pumped and thumped in his ears. I wonder if 
they've all gone mad, he thought. If I had to listen to that every day, I think 
I would have.
He got to the far side of the wires, picked up the pack, and looked inside. 
Jake's books and a few items of clothing were still in there, so were the 
treasures he had picked up along the way -- a rock which gleamed with yellow flecks 
that looked like gold but weren't; an arrow­head, probably the leaving of the 
old forest folk, which Jake had found in a grove of trees the day after his 
drawing; some coins from his own world; his father's sunglasses; a few other 
things which only a boy not yet in his teens could really love and understand. 
Things he would want back again ... if, that was, Roland got to him before 
Gasher and his friends could change him, hurt him in ways that would cause him 
to lose interest in the innocent pursuits and curiosities of pre-adolescent 
boyhood.
Gasher's grinning face swam into Roland's mind like the face of a demon or a 
djinni from a bottle: the snaggle teeth, the vacant eyes, the mandrus crawling 
over the cheeks and spreading beneath the stubbly lines of the jaws. If you hurt 
him ... he thought, and then forced his mind away, because that line of thought 
was a blind alley. If Gasher hurt the boy (Jake! his mind insisted fiercely -- Not 
just the boy but Jake! Jake!), Roland would kill him, yes. But the act would 
mean nothing, for Gasher was a dead man already.
The gunslinger lengthened the straps of the pack, marvelling at the clever 
buckles which made this possible, slipped it onto his own back, and stood up 
again. Oy turned to be off, but Roland called his name and the bumbler looked 
back.
"To me, Oy." Roland didn't know if the bumbler could understand (or if he would 
obey even if he did), but it would be better -- safer -- if he stayed close. Where 
there was one booby-trap, there were apt to be more. Next time Oy might not be 
so lucky.
"Ake!" Oy barked, not moving. The bark was assertive, but Roland thought he saw 
more of the truth about how Oy felt in his eyes: they were dark with fear.
"Yes, but it's dangerous," Roland said. "To me, Oy."
Back the way they had come, there was a thud as something heavy fell, probably 
dislodged by the punishing vibration of the drums. Roland could now see 
speaker-poles here and there, poking out of the wreckage like strange 
long-necked animals.
Oy trotted back to him and looked up, panting.
"Stay close."
"Ake! Ake-Ake!"
"Yes. Jake." He began to run again, and Oy ran beside him, heeling as neatly as 
any dog Roland had ever seen.


21
FOR EDDIE, IT WAS, as some wise man had once said, déjà vu all over again: he 
was running with the wheelchair, racing time. The beach had been replaced by The 
Street of the Turtle, but somehow everything else was the same. Oh, there was 
one other relevant difference: now it was a railway station (or a cradle) he was 
looking for, not a free-standing door.
Susannah was sitting bolt upright with her hair blowing out behind her and 
Roland's revolver in her right hand, its barrel pointed up at the cloudy, 
troubled sky. The drums thudded and pounded, bludgeoning them with sound. A 
gigantic, dish-shaped object lay in the street just ahead, and Eddie's 
overstrained mind, perhaps cued by the classical buildings on either side of 
them, produced an image of Jove and Thor playing Frisbee. Jove throws one wide 
and Thor lets it fall through a cloud -- what the hell, it's Miller Time on 
Olympus, anyway.
Frisbees of the gods, he thought, swerving Susannah between two crumbling, rusty 
cars, what a concept.
He bumped the chair up on the sidewalk to get around the artifact, which looked 
like some sort of telecommunications dish now that he was really close to it. He 
was easing the wheelchair over the curb and back into the street again -- the 
sidewalk was too littered with crap to make any real time -- when the drums 
suddenly cut out. The echoes rolled away into a new silence, except it wasn't 
really silent at all, Eddie realized. Up ahead, the arched entrance to a marble 
building stood at the intersection of The Street of the Turtle and another 
avenue. This building had been overgrown by vines and some straggly green stuff 
that looked like cypress beards, but it was still magnificent and somehow 
dignified. Beyond it, around the corner, a crowd was babbling excitedly.
"Don't stop!" Susannah snapped. "We haven't got time to -- "
A hysterical shriek drilled through the babble. It was accompanied by yells of 
approval, and, incredibly, the sort of applause Eddie had heard in Atlantic City 
hotel-casinos after some lounge act had finished doing its thing. The shriek was 
choked into a long, dying gargle that sounded like the buzz of a cicada. Eddie 
felt the hair on the nape of his neck coming to attention. He glanced at the 
corpses hanging from the nearest speaker-pole and understood that the fun-loving 
Pubes of Lud were hold­ing another public execution.
Marvellous, he thought. Now if they only had Tony Orlando and Dawn to sing 
"Knock Three Times," they could all die happy.
Eddie looked curiously at the stone pile on the corner. This close, the vines 
which overgrew it had a powerful herbal smell. That smell was eye-wateringly 
bitter, but he still liked it better than the cinnamon-sweet odor of the 
mummified corpses. The beards of greenery growing from the vines drooped in 
ratty sheaves, creating waterfalls of vegetation where once there had been a 
series of arched entrances. A figure suddenly barrelled out through one of these 
waterfalls and hurried toward them. It was a kid, Eddie realized, and not that 
many years out of diapers, judging by the size. He was wearing a weird little 
Lord Fauntleroy outfit, complete with ruffled white shirt and velveteen short 
pants. There were ribbons in his hair. Eddie felt a sudden mad urge to wave his 
hands above his head and scream But-wheat say, "Lud is o-tay!"
"Come on!" the kid cried in a high, piping voice. Several sprays of the green 
stuff had gotten caught in his hair; he brushed absently at these with his left 
hand as he ran. "They're gonna do Spankers! It's the Spankerman's turn to go to 
the land of the drums! Come on or you'll miss the whole fakement, gods cuss it!"
Susannah was equally stunned by the child's appearance, but as he got closer, it 
struck her that there was something extremely odd and awkward about the way he 
was brushing at the crumbles and strands of greenery which had gotten caught in 
his beribboned hair: he kept using just that one hand. His other had been behind 
his back when he ran out through the weedy waterfall, and there it remained.
How awkward that must be! she thought, and then a tape-player turned on in her 
mind and she heard Roland speaking at the end of the bridge. I knew something 
like this could happen . . . if we'd seen the fellow earlier, while we were 
still beyond the range of his exploding egg . . . Damn the luck!
She levelled Roland's gun at the child, who had leaped from the curb and was 
running straight for them. "Hold it!" she screamed. "Stand still, you!"
"Suze, what are you doing?" Eddie yelled.
Susannah ignored him. In a very real sense, Susannah Dean was no longer even 
here; it was Detta Walker in the chair now, and her eyes were glittering with 
feverish suspicion. "Stop or I'll shoot!"
Little Lord Fauntleroy might have been deaf for all the effect her warning had. 
"Hoss it!" he shouted jubilantly. "Yer gointer miss the whole show! Spanker's 
gointer -- "
His right hand finally began to come out from behind his back. As it did, Eddie 
realized they weren't looking at a kid but at a misshapen dwarf whose childhood 
was many years past. The expression Eddie had at first taken for childish glee 
was actually a chilly mixture of hate and rage. The dwarf's cheeks and brow were 
covered with the oozing, discol­ored patches Roland called whore's blossoms.
Susannah never saw his face. Her attention was fixed on the emerg­ing right 
hand, and the dull green sphere it held. That was all she needed to see. 
Roland's gun crashed. The dwarf was hammered backward. A shrill cry of pain and 
rage rose from his tiny mouth as he landed on the sidewalk. The grenade bounced 
out of his hand and rolled back into the same arch through which he had emerged.
Detta was gone like a dream, and Susannah looked from the smoking gun to the 
tiny, sprawled figure on the sidewalk with surprise, horror, and dismay. "Oh, my 
Jesus! I shot him! Eddie, I shot him!"
"Grays . . . die!"
Little Lord Fauntleroy tried to scream these words defiantly, but they came out 
in a bubbling choke of blood that drenched the few remaining white patches on 
his frilly shirt. There was a muffled explosion from inside the overgrown plaza 
of the corner building, and the shaggy carpets of green stuff hanging in front 
of the arches billowed outward like flags in a brisk gale. With them came clouds 
of choking, acrid smoke. Eddie flung himself on top of Susannah to shield her, 
and felt a gritty shower of concrete fragments -- all small ones, luckily -- patter 
down on his back, his neck, and the crown of his head. There was a series of 
unpleasantly wet smacking sounds to his left. He opened his eyes a crack, looked 
in that direction, and saw Little Lord Fauntleroy's head just com­ing to a stop 
in the gutter. The dwarf's eyes were still open, his mouth still fixed in its 
final snarl.
Now there were other voices, some shrieking, some yelling, all furi­ous. Eddie 
rolled off Susannah's chair -- it tottered on one wheel before deciding to stay 
up -- and stared in the direction from which the dwarf had come. A ragged mob of 
about twenty men and women had appeared, some coming from around the corner, 
others pushing through the mats of foliage which obscured the corner building's 
arches, materializing from the smoke of the dwarf's grenade like evil spirits. 
Most were wearing blue headscarves and all were carrying weapons -- a varied (and 
somehow pitiful) assortment of them which included rusty swords, dull knives, 
and splintery clubs. Eddie saw one man defiantly waving a hammer. Pubes, Eddie 
thought. We interrupted their necktie party, and they're pissed as hell about 
it.
A tangle of shouts -- Kill the Grays! Kill them both! They've done for Luster, God 
kill their eyes! -- arose from this charming group as they caught sight of Susannah 
in her wheelchair and Eddie, who was now crouched on one knee before it. The man 
in the forefront was wearing a kilt-like wrap and waving a cutlass. He 
brandished this wildly (he would have decapitated the heavyset woman standing 
close behind him, had she not ducked) and then charged. The others followed, 
yelling happily.
Roland's gun pounded its bright thunder into the windy, overcast day, and the 
top of the kilt-wearing Pube's head lifted off. The sallow skin of the woman who 
had almost been decapitated by his cutlass was suddenly stippled with red rain 
and she voiced a sound of barking dismay. The others came on past the woman and 
the dead man, raving and wild-eyed.
"Eddie!" Susannah screamed, and fired again. A man wearing a silk-lined cape and 
knee-boots collapsed into the street.
Eddie groped for the' Ruger and had one panicky moment when he thought he had 
lost it. The butt of the gun had somehow slipped down inside the waistband of 
his pants. He wrapped his hand around it and yanked hard. The fucking thing 
wouldn't come. The sight at the end of the barrel had somehow gotten stuck in 
his underwear.
Susannah fired three closely spaced shots. Each found a target, but the oncoming 
Pubes didn't slow.
"Eddie, help me!"
Eddie tore his pants open, feeling like some cut-rate version of Superman, and 
finally managed to free the Ruger. He hit the safety with the heel of his left 
palm, placed his elbow on his leg just above the knee, and began to fire. There 
was no need to think -- no need to even aim. Roland had told them that in battle a 
gunslinger's hands worked on their own, and Eddie now discovered it was true. It 
would have been hard for a blind man to miss at this range, anyway. Susannah had 
cut the numbers of the charging Pubes to no more than fifteen; Eddie went 
through the remainder like a storm wind in a wheatfield, dropping four in less 
than two seconds.
Now the single face of the mob, that look of glazed and mindless eagerness, 
began to break apart. The man with the hammer abruptly tossed his weapon aside 
and ran for it, limping extravagantly on a pair of arthritis-twisted legs. He 
was followed by two others. The rest of them milled uncertainly in the street.
"Come on, you deucies!" a relatively young man snarled. He wore his blue scarf 
around his throat like a rally-racer's ascot. He was bald except for two fluffs 
of frizzy red hair, one on each side of his head. To Susannah, this fellow 
looked like Clarabell the Clown; to Eddie he looked like Ronald McDonald; to 
both of them he looked like trouble. He threw a home-made spear that might have 
started life as a steel tableleg. It clattered harmlessly into the street to 
Eddie and Susannah's right. "Come on, I say! We can get em if we all stick 
togeth -- "
"Sorry, guy," Eddie murmured, and shot him in the chest.
Clarabell/Ronald staggered backward, one hand going to his shirt.
He stared at Eddie with huge eyes that told his tale with heartbreaking clarity: 
this wasn't supposed to happen. The hand dropped heavily to the young man's 
side. A single runlet of blood, incredibly bright in the gray day, slipped from 
the comer of his mouth. The few remaining Pubes stared at him mutely as he 
slipped to his knees, and one of them turned to run.
"Not at all," Eddie said. "Stay put, my retarded friend, or you're going to get 
a good look at the clearing where your path ends." He raised his voice. "Drop 
em, boys and girls! All of em! Now!"
"You ..." the dying man whispered. "You . . . gunslinger?"
"That's right," Eddie said. His eyes surveyed the remaining Pubes grimly.
"Cry your . . . pardon," the man with the frizzy red hair gasped, and then he 
fell forward onto his face.
"Gunslingers?" one of the others asked. His tone was one of dawning horror and 
realization.
"Well, you're stupid, but you ain't deaf," Susannah said, "and that's somethin, 
anyway." She waggled the barrel of the gun, which Eddie was quite sure was 
empty. For that matter, how many rounds could be left in the Ruger? He realized 
he didn't have any idea how many rounds the clip held, and cursed himself for a 
fool . . . but had he really believed it could come to something like this? He 
didn't think so. "You heard him, folks. Drop em. Recess is over."
One by one, they complied. The woman who was wearing a pint or so of Mr. 
Sword-and-Kilt's blood on her face said, "You shouldn't've killed Winston, 
missus -- 'twas his birthday, so it was."
"Well, I guess he should have stayed home and eaten some more birthday cake," 
Eddie said. Given the overall quality of this experience, he didn't find either 
the woman's comment or his own response at all surreal.
There was one other woman among the remaining Pubes, a scrawny thing whose long 
blonde hair was coming out in big patches, as if she had the mange. Eddie 
observed her sidling toward the dead dwarf -- and the potential safety of the 
overgrown arches beyond him -- and put a bullet into the cracked cement close by 
her foot. He had no idea what he wanted with her, but what he didn't want was 
one of them giving the rest of them ideas. For one thing, he was afraid of what 
his hands might do if the sickly, sullen people before him tried to run. 
Whatever his head thought about this gunslinging business, his hands had 
discovered they liked it just fine.
"Stand where you are, beautiful. Officer Friendly says play it safe." He glanced 
at Susannah and was disturbed by the grayish quality of her complexion. "Suze, 
you all right?" he asked in a lower voice.
"Yes."
"You're not going to faint or anything, are you? Because -- "
"No." She looked at him with eyes so dark they were like caves. "It's just that 
I never shot anyone before . . . okay?"
Well, you better get used to it rose to his lips. He bit it back and returned 
his gaze to the five people who remained before them. They were looking at him 
and Susannah with a species of sullen fear which nevertheless stopped well short 
of terror.
Shit, most of them have forgotten what terror is, he thought. Joy, sadness, love 
. . . same thing. I don't think they feel much of anything, anymore. They've 
been living in this purgatory too long.
Then he remembered the laughter, the excited cries, the lounge-act applause, and 
revised his thinking. There was at least one thing that still got their motors 
running, one thing that still pushed their buttons. Spanker could have testified 
to that.
"Who's in charge here?" Eddie asked. He was watching the intersec­tion behind 
the little group very carefully in case the others should get their courage 
back. So far he saw and heard nothing alarming from that direction. He thought 
that the others had probably left this ragged crew to its fate.
They looked at each other uncertainly, and finally the woman with the 
blood-spattered face spoke up. "Spanker was, but when the god-drums started up 
this time, it was Spanker's stone what come out of the hat and we set him to 
dance. I guess Winston would have come next, but you did for him with your 
god-rotted guns, so you did." She wiped blood deliberately from her cheek, 
looked at it, and then returned her sullen glance to Eddie.
"Well, what do you think Winston was trying to do to me with his god-rotted 
spear?" Eddie asked. He was disgusted to find the woman had actually made him 
feel guilty about what he had done. "Trim my sideburns?"
"Killed Frank 'n Luster, too," she went on doggedly, "and what are you? Either 
Grays, which is bad, or a couple of god-rotted outlanders, which is worse. Who's 
left for the Pubes in City North? Topsy, I sup­pose -- Topsy the Sailor -- but he 
ain't here, is he? Took his boat and went off downriver, ay, so he did, and god 
rot him, too, says I!"
Susannah had ceased listening; her mind had fixed with horrified fascination on 
something the woman had said earlier. It was Spanker's stone what come out of 
the hat and we set him to dance. She remembered reading Shirley Jackson's story 
"The Lottery" in college and understood that these people, the degenerate 
descendents of the original Pubes, were living Jackson's nightmare. No wonder 
they weren't capable of any strong emotion when they knew they would have to 
participate in such a grisly drawing not once a year, as in the story, but two 
or three times each day.
"Why?" she asked the bloody woman in a harsh, horrified voice. "Why do you do 
it?"
The woman looked at Susannah as if she was the world's biggest fool. "Why? So 
the ghosts what live in the machines won't take over the bodies of those who 
have died here -- Pubes and Grays alike -- and send them up through the holes in the 
streets to eat us. Any fool knows that."
"There are no such things as ghosts," Susannah said, and her voice sounded like 
so much meaningless quacking to her own ears. Of course there were. In this 
world, there were ghosts everywhere. Nevertheless, she pushed ahead. "What you 
call the god-drums is only a tape stuck in a machine. That's really all it is." 
Sudden inspiration struck her and she added: "Or maybe the Grays are doing it on 
purpose -- did you ever think of that? They live in the other part of the city, 
don't they? And under it, as well? They've always wanted you out. Maybe they've 
just hit on a really efficient way of getting you guys to do their work for 
them."
The bloody woman was standing next to an elderly gent wearing what looked like 
the world's oldest bowler hat and a pair of frayed khaki shorts. Now he stepped 
forward and spoke to her with a patina of good manners that turned his 
underlying contempt into a dagger with razor-sharp edges. "You are quite wrong, 
Madam Gunslinger. There are a great many machines under Lud, and there are 
ghosts in all of them --  demonous spirits which bear only ill will to mortal men 
and women. These demon-ghosts are very capable of raising the dead . . . and in 
Lud, there are a great many dead to raise."
"Listen," Eddie said. "Have you ever seen one of these zombies with your own 
eyes, Jeeves? Have any of you?"
Jeeves curled his lip and said nothing -- but that lip-curl really said it all. 
What else could one expect, it asked, from outlanders who used guns as a 
substitute for understanding?
Eddie decided it would be best to close off the whole line of discus­sion. He 
had never been cut out for missionary work, anyway. He wag­gled the Ruger at the 
bloodstained woman. "You and your friend there --  the one who looks like an 
English butler on his day off -- are going to take us to the railroad station. 
After that, we can all say goodbye, and I'll tell you the truth: that's going to 
make my fuckin day."
"Railroad station?" the guy who looked like Jeeves the Butler asked. "What is a 
railroad station?"
"Take us to the cradle," Susannah said. "Take us to Blaine."
This finally rattled Jeeves; an expression of shocked horror replaced the 
world-weary contempt with which he had thus far treated them. "You can't go 
there!" he cried. "The cradle is forbidden ground, and Blaine is the most 
dangerous of all Lud's ghosts!"
Forbidden ground? Eddie thought. Great. If it's the truth, at least we'll be 
able to stop worrying about you assholes. It was also nice to hear that there 
still was a Blaine ... or that these people thought there was, anyway.
The others were staring at Eddie and Susannah with expressions of 
uncomprehending amazement; it was as if the interlopers had suggested to a bunch 
of born-again Christians that they hunt up the Ark of the Covenant and turn it 
into a pay toilet.
Eddie raised the Ruger until the center of Jeeves's forehead lay in the sight. 
"We're going," he said, "and if you don't want to join your ancestors right here 
and now, I suggest you stop pissing and moaning and take us there."
Jeeves and the bloodstained woman exchanged an uncertain glance, but when the 
man in the bowler hat looked back at Eddie and Susannah, his face was firm and 
set. "Shoot us if you like," he said. "We'd sooner die here than there."
"You folks are a bunch of sick motherfuckers with dying on the brain!" Susannah 
cried at them. "Nobody has to die! Just take us where we want to go, for the 
love of God!"
The woman said somberly, "But it is death to enter Blaine's cradle, mum, so it 
is. For Blaine sleeps, and he who disturbs his rest must pay a high price."
"Come on, beautiful," Eddie snapped. "You can't smell the coffee with your head 
up your ass."
"I don't know what that means," she said with an odd and perplexing dignity.
"It means you can take us to the cradle and risk the Wrath of Blaine, or you can 
stand your ground here and experience the Wrath of Eddie. It doesn't have to be 
a nice clean head-shot, you know. I can take you a piece at a time, and I'm 
feeling just mean enough to do it. I'm having a very bad day in your city -- the 
music sucks, everybody has a bad case of b.o., and the first guy we saw threw a 
grenade at us and kidnapped our friend. So what do you say?"
"Why would you go to Blaine in any case?" one of the others asked. "He stirs no 
more from his berth in the cradle -- not for years now. He has even stopped 
speaking in his many voices and laughing."
Speaking in his many voices and laughing? Eddie thought. He looked at Susannah. 
She looked back and shrugged.
"Ardis was the last to go nigh Blaine," the bloodstained woman said.
Jeeves nodded somberly. "Ardis always was a fool when he were in drink. Blaine 
asked him some question. I heard it, hut it made no sense to me -- something about 
the mother of ravens, I think -- and when Ardis couldn't answer what was asked, 
Blaine slew him with blue fire."
"Electricity?" Eddie asked.
Jeeves and the bloodstained woman both nodded. "Ay," the woman said. 
"Electricity, so it were called in the old days, so it were."
"You don't have to go in with us," Susannah proposed suddenly. "Just get us 
within sight of the place. We'll go the rest of the way on our own."
The woman looked at her mistrustfully, and then Jeeves pulled her head close to 
his lips and mumbled in her ear for a while. The other Pubes stood behind them 
in a ragged line, looking at Eddie and Susannah with the dazed eyes of people 
who have survived a bad air-raid.
At last the woman looked around. "Ay," she said. "We'll take you nigh the 
cradle, and then it's good riddance to bad swill."
"My idea exactly," Eddie said. "You and Jeeves. The rest of you, scatter." He 
swept them with his eyes. "But remember this -- one spear thrown from ambush, one 
arrow, one brick, and these two die." This threat came out sounding so weak and 
pointless that Eddie wished he hadn't made it. How could they possibly care for 
these two, or for any of the individual members of their clan, when they dusted 
two or more of them each and every day? Well, he thought, watching the others 
trot off without so much as a backward glance, it was too late to worry about 
that now.
"Come on," the woman said. "I want to be done with you."
"The feeling's mutual," Eddie replied.
But before she and Jeeves led them away, the woman did something which made 
Eddie repent a little of his hard thoughts: knelt, brushed back the hair of the 
man in the kilt, and placed a kiss on his dirty cheek. "Goodbye, Winston," she 
said. "Wait for me where the trees clear and the water's sweet. I'll come to ye, 
ay, as sure as dawn makes shadows run west."
"I didn't want to kill him," Susannah said. "I want you to know that. But I 
wanted to die even less."
"Ay." The face that turned toward Susannah was stem and tearless. "But if ye 
mean to enter Blaine's cradle, ye'll die anyway. And the chances are that ye'll 
die envying poor old Winston. He's cruel, is Blaine. The crudest of all demons 
in this cruel, cruel place."
"Come on, Maud," Jeeves said, and helped her up.
"Ay. Let's finish with them." She surveyed Susannah and Eddie again, her eyes 
stem but somehow confused, as well. "Gods curse my eyes that they should ever 
have happened on you two in the first place.
And gods curse the guns ye carry, as well, for they were always the springhead 
of our troubles."
And with that attitude, Susannah thought, your troubles are going to last at 
least a thousand years, sugar.
Maud set a rapid pace along The Street of the Turtle. Jeeves trotted beside her. 
Eddie, who was pushing Susannah in the wheelchair, was soon panting and 
struggling to keep up. The palatial buildings which lined their way spread out 
until they resembled ivy-covered country houses on huge, run-to-riot lawns, and 
Eddie realized they had entered what had once been a very ritzy neighborhood 
indeed. Ahead of them, one building loomed above all others. It was a 
deceptively simple square construction of white stone blocks, its overhanging 
roof supported by many pillars. Eddie thought again of the gladiator movies he'd 
so enjoyed as a kid. Susannah, educated in more formal schools, was reminded of 
the Par­thenon. Both saw and marvelled at the gorgeously sculpted bestiary --  Bear 
and Turtle, Fish and Rat, Horse and Dog -- which ringed the top of the building in 
two-by-two parade, and understood it was the place they had come to find.
That uneasy sensation that they were being watched by many eyes --  eyes filled 
equally with hate and wonder -- never left them. Thunder boomed as they came in 
sight of the monorail track; like the storm, the track came sweeping in from the 
south, joined The Street of the Turtle, and ran straight on toward the Cradle of 
Lud. And as they neared it, ancient bodies began to twist and dance in the 
strengthening wind on either side of them.


22
AFTER THEY HAD RUN for God knew how long (all Jake knew for sure was that the 
drums had stopped again), Gasher once more yanked him to a stop. This time Jake 
managed to keep his feet. He had gotten his second wind. Gasher, who would never 
see eleven again, had not.
"Hoo! My old pump's doing nip-ups, sweetie."
"Too bad," Jake said unfeelingly, then stumbled backward as Gasher's gnarled 
hand connected with the side of his face.
"Yar, you'd cry a bitter tear if I dropped dead right here, woontcher? Too 
likely! But no such luck, my fine young squint -- old Gasher's seen em come and 
seen em go, and I wasn't born to drop dead at the feet of any little sweetcheeks 
berry like you."
Jake listened to these incoherencies impassively. He meant to see Gasher dead 
before the day was over. Gasher might take Jake with him, but Jake no longer 
cared about that. He dabbed blood from his freshly split lip and looked at it 
thoughtfully, wondering at how quickly the desire to do murder could invade and 
conquer the human heart.
Gasher observed Jake looking at his bloody fingers and grinned. "Sap's runnin, 
ennet? Nor will it be the last your old pal Gasher beats out of your young tree, 
unless you look sharp; unless you look wery sharp indeed." He pointed down at 
the cobbled surface of the narrow alley they were currently negotiating. There 
was a rusty manhole cover there, and Jake realized he had seen the words stamped 
into the steel not long ago: LaMERK FOUNDRY, they said.
"There's a grip on the side," Gasher said. "Yer see? Get your hands into that 
and pull away. Step lively, now, and maybe ye'll still have all your teeth when 
ye meet up with Tick-Tock."
Jake grasped the steel cover and pulled. He pulled hard, but not quite as hard 
as he could have done. The maze of streets and alleys through which Gasher had 
run him was bad, but at least he could see. He couldn't imagine what it might be 
like in the underworld below the city, where the blackness would preclude even 
dreams of escape, and he didn't intend to find out unless he absolutely had to.
Gasher quickly made it clear to him that he did.
"It's too heavy for -- " Jake began, and then the pirate seized him by the throat 
and yanked him upward until they were face to face. The long run through the 
alleys had brought a thin, sweaty flush to his cheeks and turned the sores 
eating into his flesh an ugly yellow-purple color. Those which were open exuded 
thick infected matter and threads of blood in steady pulses. Jake caught just a 
whiff of Gasher's thick stench before his wind was cut off by the hand which had 
encircled his throat.
"Listen, you stupid cull, and listen well, for this is your last warning. You 
yank that fucking streethead off right now or I'll reach into your mouth and rip 
the living tongue right out of it. And feel free to bite all you want while I do 
it, for what I have runs in the blood and you'll see the first blossoms on yer 
own face before the week's out -- if yer lives that long. Now, do you see?"
Jake nodded frantically. Gasher's face was disappearing into deepen­ing folds of 
gray, and his voice seemed to be coming from a great distance.
"All right." Gasher shoved him backward. Jake fell in a heap beside the manhole 
cover, gagging and retching. He finally managed to draw in a deep, whooping 
breath that burned like liquid fire. He spat out a blood-flecked wad of stuff 
and almost threw up at the sight of it.
"Now yank back that cover, my heart's delight, and let's have no more natter 
about it.
Jake crawled over to it, slid his hands into the grip, and this time pulled with 
all his might. For one terrible moment he thought he was still not going to be 
able to budge it. Then he imagined Gasher's fingers reaching into his mouth and 
seizing his tongue, and found a little extra. There was a dull, spreading agony 
in his lower back as something gave there, but the circular lid slipped slowly 
aside, grinding on the cobbles and exposing a grinning crescent of darkness.
"Good, cully, good!" Gasher cried cheerfully. "What a little mule y'are! Keep 
pulling -- don't give up now!"
When the crescent had become a half-moon and the pain in Jake's lower back was a 
white-hot fire, Gasher booted him in the ass, knocking him asprawl.
"Wery good!" Gasher said, peering in. "Now, cully, go smartly down the ladder on 
the side. Mind you don't lose your grip and tumble all the way to the bottom, 
for those rungs are fearsome slick and greezy. There's twenty or so, as I 
remember. And when you get to the bottom, stand stock-still and wait for me. You 
might feel like runnin from yer old pal, but do you think that would be a good 
idea?"
"No," Jake said. "I suppose not."
"Wery intelligent, old son!" Gasher's lips spread in his hideous smile, once 
more revealing his few surviving teeth. "It's dark down there, and there are a 
thousand tunnels going every which-a-way. Yer old pal Gasher knows em like the 
back of his hand, so he does, but you'd be lost in no time. Then there's the 
rats -- wery big and wery hungry they are. So you just wait."
"I will."
Gasher regarded him narrowly. "You speak just like a little triggie, you do, but 
you're no Pube -- I'll set my watch and warrant to that. Where are you from, 
squint?"
Jake said nothing.
"Bumbler got your tongue, do he? Well, that's all right; Tick-Tock'll get it all 
out of you, so he will. He's got a way about him, Ticky does; just naturally 
wants to make people conwerse. Once he gets em goin, they sometimes talks so 
fast and screams so loud someone has to hit em over the head to slow em down. 
Bumblers ain't allowed to hold no one's tongue around the Tick-Tock Man, not 
even fine young triggers like you. Now get the fuck down that ladder. Hup!"
He lashed out with his foot. This time Jake managed to tuck in and dodge the 
blow. He looked into the half-open manhole, saw the ladder, and started down. He 
was still chest-high to the alley when a tremendous stonelike crash hammered the 
air. It came from a mile or more away, but Jake knew what it was without having 
to be told. A cry of pure misery burst from his lips.
A grim smile tugged at the corners of Gasher's mouth. "Your hard-case friend 
trailed ye a little better than ye thought he would, didn't he?
Not better than I thought, though, cully, for I got a look at his eyes --  wery 
pert and cunning they were. I thought he'd come arter his juicy little 
night-nudge a right smart, if he was to come at all, and so he did. He spied the 
tripwires, but the fountain's got him, so that's all right. Get on, 
sweetcheeks."
He aimed a kick at Jake's protruding head. Jake ducked it, but one foot slipped 
on the ladder bolted to the side of the sewer shaft and he only saved himself 
from falling by clutching Gasher's scab-raddled ankle. He looked up, pleading, 
and saw no softening on that dying, infected face.
"Please," he said, and heard the word trying to break into a sob. He kept seeing 
Roland lying crushed beneath the huge fountain. What had Gasher said? If anyone 
wanted him, they would have to pick him up with a blotter.
"Beg if you want, dear heart. Just don't expect no good to come of it, for mercy 
stops on this side of the bridge, so it does. Now go down, or I'll kick your 
bleedin brains right outcher bleedin ears."
So Jake went down, and by the time he reached the standing water at the bottom, 
the urge to cry had passed. He waited, shoulders slumped and head down, for 
Gasher to descend and lead him to his fate.


23
ROLAND HAD COME CLOSE to tripping the crossed wires which held back the 
avalanche of junk, but the dangling fountain was absurd -- a trap which might have 
been set by a stupid child. Cort had taught them to constantly check all visual 
quadrants as they moved in enemy territory, and that included above as well as 
behind and below.
"Stop," he told Oy, raising his voice to be heard over the drums.
"Op!" Oy agreed, then looked ahead and immediately added, "Ake!"
"Yes." The gunslinger took another look up at the suspended marble fountain, 
then examined the street, looking for the trigger. There were two, he saw. 
Perhaps their camouflage as cobblestones had once been effective, but that time 
was long past. Roland bent down, hands on his knees, and spoke into Oy's 
upturned face. "Going to pick you up for a minute now. Don't fuss, Oy."
"Oy!"
Roland put his arms around the bumbler. At first Oy stiffened and attempted to 
pull away, and then Roland felt the small animal give in. He wasn't happy about 
being this close to someone who wasn't Jake, but he clearly intended to put up 
with it. Roland found himself wondering again just how intelligent Oy was.
He carried him up the narrow passage and beneath The Hanging Fountain of Lud, 
stepping carefully over the mock cobbles. Once they were safely past, he bent to 
let Oy go. As he did, the drums stopped.
"Ake!" Oy said impatiently. "Ake-Ake!"
"Yes -- but there's a little piece of business to attend to first."
He led Oy fifteen yards farther down the alley, then bent and picked up a chunk 
of concrete. He tossed it thoughtfully from hand to hand, and as he did, he 
heard the sound of a pistol-shot from the east. The amplified thump of the drums 
had buried the sound of Eddie and Susan­nah's battle with the ragged band of 
Pubes, but he heard this gunshot clearly and smiled -- it almost surely meant that 
the Deans had reached the cradle, and that was the first good news of this day, 
which already seemed at least a week long.
Roland turned and threw the piece of concrete. His aim was as true as it had 
been when he had thrown at the ancient traffic signal in River Crossing; the 
missile struck one of the discolored triggers dead center, and one of the rusty 
cables snapped with a harsh twang. The marble fountain dropped, rolling over as 
the other cable snubbed it for a moment longer -- long enough so that a man with 
fast reflexes could have cleared the drop-zone anyway, Roland reckoned. Then it 
too let go, and the fountain fell like a pink, misshapen stone.
Roland dropped behind a pile of rusty steel beams and Oy jumped nimbly into his 
lap as the fountain hit the street with a vast, shattery thump. Chunks of pink 
marble, some as big as carts, flew through the air. Several small chips stung 
Roland's face. He brushed others out of Oy's fur. He looked over the makeshift 
barricade. The fountain had cracked in two like a vast plate. We won't be coming 
back this way, Roland thought. The passageway, narrow to begin with, was now 
com­pletely blocked.
He wondered if Jake had heard the fall of the fountain, and what he had made of 
it if he had. He didn't waste such speculation on Gasher; Gasher would think he 
had been crushed to paste, which was exactly what Roland wanted him to think. 
Would Jake think the same thing? The boy should know better than to believe a 
gunslinger could be killed by such a simple device, but if Gasher had terrorized 
him enough, Jake might not be thinking that clearly. Well, it was too late to 
worry about it now, and if he had it to do over again, he would do exactly the 
same thing. Dying or not, Gasher had displayed both courage and animal cun­ning. 
If he was off his guard now, the trick was worth it.
Roland got to his feet. "Oy -- find Jake."
"Ake!" Oy stretched his head forward on his long neck, sniffed around in a 
semicircle, picked up Jake's scent, and was off again with Roland running after. 
Ten minutes later he came to a stop at a manhole cover in the street, sniffed 
all the way around it, then looked up at Roland and barked shrilly.
The gunslinger dropped to one knee and observed both the confu­sion of tracks 
and a wide path of scratches on the cobbles. He thought this particular manhole 
cover had been moved quite often. His eyes narrowed as he saw the wad of bloody 
phlegm in a crease between two nearby cobbles.
"The bastard keeps hitting him," he murmured.
He pulled the manhole cover back, looked down, then untied the rawhide lacings 
which held his shirt closed. He picked the bumbler up and tucked him into his 
shirt. Oy bared his teeth, and for a moment Roland felt his claws splayed 
against the flesh of his chest and belly like small sharp knives. Then they 
withdrew and Oy only peered out of Roland's shirt with his bright eyes, panting 
like a steam engine. The gunslinger could feel the rapid beat of Oy's heart 
against his own. He pulled the rawhide lace from the eyelets in his shirt and 
found another, longer, lace in his purse.
"I'm going to leash you. I don't like it and you're going to like it even less, 
but it's going to be very dark down there."
He tied the two lengths of rawhide together and formed one end into a wide loop 
which he slipped over Oy's head. He expected Oy to bare his teeth again, perhaps 
even to nip him, but Oy didn't. He only looked up at Roland with his gold-ringed 
eyes and barked "Ake!" again in his impatient voice.
Roland put the loose end of his makeshift leash in his mouth, then sat down on 
the edge of the sewer shaft ... if that was what it was. He felt for the top 
rung of the ladder and found it. He descended slowly and carefully, more aware 
than ever that he was missing half a hand and that the steel rungs were slimy 
with oil and some thicker stuff that was probably moss. Oy was a heavy, warm 
weight between his shirt and belly, panting steadily and harshly. The gold rings 
in his eyes gleamed like medallions in the dim light.
At last, the gunslinger's groping foot splashed into the water at the bottom of 
the shaft. He glanced up briefly at the coin of white light far above him. This 
is where it starts getting hard, he thought. The tunnel was warm and dank and 
smelled like an ancient charnel house. Some­where nearby, water was dripping 
hollowly and monotonously. Farther off, Roland could hear the rumble of 
machinery. He lifted a very grateful Oy out of his shirt and set him down in the 
shallow water running sluggishly along the sewer tunnel.
"Now it's all up to you," he murmured in the bumbler's ear. "To Jake, Oy. To 
Jake!"
"Ake!" the bumbler barked, and splashed rapidly off into the darkness, swinging 
his head from side to side at the end of his long neck like a pendulum. Roland 
followed with the end of the rawhide leash wrapped around his diminished right 
hand.


24
THE CRADLE -- IT WAS easily big enough to have acquired proper-noun status in their 
minds -- stood in the center of a square five times larger than the one where they 
had come upon the blasted statue, and when she got a really good look at it, 
Susannah realized how old and gray and fundamentally grungy the rest of Lud 
really was. The Cradle was so clean it almost hurt her eyes. No vines overgrew 
its sides; no graffiti daubed its blinding white walls and steps and columns. 
The yellow plains dust which had coated everything else was absent here. As they 
drew closer, Susannah saw why: streams of water coursed endlessly down the sides 
of the Cradle, issuing from nozzles hidden in the shadows of the copper-sheathed 
eaves. Interval sprays created by other hidden nozzles washed the steps, turning 
them into off-and-on waterfalls.
"Wow," Eddie said. "It makes Grand Central look like a Greyhound station in 
Buttfuck, Nebraska."
"What a poet you are, dear," Susannah said dryly.
The steps surrounded the entire building and rose to a great open lobby. There 
were no obscuring mats of vegetation here, but Eddie and Susannah found they 
still couldn't get a good look inside; the shadows thrown by the overhanging 
roof were too deep. The Totems of the Beam marched all the way around the 
building, two by two, but the corners were reserved for creatures Susannah 
fervently hoped never to meet outside of the occasional nightmare -- hideous stone 
dragons with scaly bodies, clutching, claw-tipped hands, and nasty peering eyes.
Eddie touched her shoulder and pointed higher. Susannah looked . . . and felt 
her breath come to a stop in her throat. Standing astride the peak of the roof, 
far above The Totems of the Beam and the dragonish gargoyles, as if given 
dominion over them, was a golden warrior at least sixty feet high. A battered 
cowboy hat was shoved back to reveal his lined and careworn brow; a bandanna 
hung askew on his upper chest, as if it had just been pulled down after serving 
long, hard duty as a dust-muffle. In one upraised fist he held a revolver; in 
the other, what appeared to be an olive branch.
Roland of Gilead stood atop the Cradle of Lud, dressed in gold.
No, she thought, at last remembering to breathe again. It's not him . . . but in 
another way, it is. That man was a gunslinger, and the resemblance between him, 
who's probably been dead a thousand years or more, and Roland is all the truth 
of ka-tet you'll ever need to know.
Thunder slammed out of the south. Lightning harried racing clouds across the 
sky. She wished she had more time to study both the golden statue which stood 
atop the Cradle and the animals which surrounded it; each of these latter 
appeared to have words carved upon them, and she had an idea that what was 
written there might be knowledge worth having. Under these circumstances, 
however, there was no time to spare.
A wide red strip had been painted across the pavement at the point where The 
Street of the Turtle emptied into The Plaza of the Cradle. Maud and the fellow 
Eddie called Jeeves the Butler stopped a prudent distance from the red mark.
"This far and no farther," Maud told them flatly. "You may take us to our 
deaths, but each man and woman owes one to the gods anyway, and I'll die on this 
side of the dead-line no matter what. I'll not dare Blaine for outlanders."
"Nor will I," Jeeves said. He had taken off his dusty bowler and was holding it 
against his naked chest. On his face was an expression of fearful reverence.
"Fine," Susannah said. "Now scat on out of here, both of you."
"Ye'll backshoot us the second we turn from ye," Jeeves said in a trembling 
voice. "I'll take my watch and warrant on it, so I will."
Maud shook her head. The blood on her face had dried to a gro­tesque maroon 
stippling. "There never were a backshooting gunslinger --  that much I will say."
"We only have their word for it that that's what they are."
Maud pointed to the big revolver with the worn sandalwood grip which Susannah 
held in her hand. Jeeves looked . . . and after a moment he stretched out his 
hand to the woman. When Maud took it, Susannah's image of them as dangerous 
killers collapsed. They looked more like Hansel and Gretel than Bonnie and 
Clyde; tired, frightened, confused, and lost so long in the woods that they had 
grown old there. Her hate and fear of them departed. What replaced it was pity 
and a deep, aching sadness.
"Fare you well, both of you," she said softly. "Walk as you will, and with no 
fear of harm from me or my man here."
Maud nodded. "I believe you mean us no harm, and I forgive you for shooting 
Winston. But listen to me, and listen well: stay out of the Cradle. Whatever 
reasons you think you have for going in, they're not good enough. To enter 
Blaine's Cradle is death."
"We don't have any choice," Eddie said, and thunder banged over­head again, as 
if in agreement. "Now let me tell you something. I don't know what's underneath 
Lud and what isn't, but I do know those drums you're so whacked out about are 
part of a recording -- a song -- that was made in the world my wife and I came from." 
He looked at their uncom­prehending faces and raised his arms in frustration. 
"Jesus Pumpkin-Pie Christ, don't you get it? You're killing each other over a 
piece of music that was never even released as a single!"
Susannah put her hand on his shoulder and murmured his name. He ignored her for 
the moment, his eyes flicking from Jeeves to Maud and then back to Jeeves again.
"You want to see monsters? Take a good look at each other, then. And when you 
get back to whatever funhouse it is you call home, take a good look at your 
friends and relatives."
"You don't understand," Maud said. Her eyes were dark and somber. "But you will. 
Ay -- you will."
"Go on, now," Susannah said quietly. "Talk between us is no good; the words only 
drop dead. Just go your way and try to remember the faces of your fathers, for I 
think you lost sight of those faces long ago."
The two of them walked back in the direction from which they had come without 
another word. They did look back over their shoulders from time to time, 
however, and they were still holding hands: Hansel and Gretel lost in the deep 
dark forest.
"Lemme outta here," Eddie said heavily. He made the Ruger safe, stuck it back in 
the waistband of his pants, and then rubbed his red eyes with the heels of his 
hands. "Just lemme out, that's all I ask."
"I know what you mean, handsome." She was clearly scared, but her head had that 
defiant tilt he had come to recognize and love. He put his hands on her 
shoulders, bent down, and kissed her. He did not let either their surroundings 
or the oncoming storm keep him from doing a thorough job. When he pulled back at 
last, she was studying him with wide, dancing eyes. "Wow! What was that about?"
"About how I'm in love with you," he said, "and I guess that's about all. Is it 
enough?"
Her eyes softened. For a moment she thought about telling him the secret she 
might or might not be keeping, but of course the time and place were wrong -- she 
could no more tell him she might be pregnant now than she could pause to read 
the words written on the sculpted Portal Totems.
"It's enough, Eddie," she said.
"You're the best thing that ever happened to me." His hazel eyes were totally 
focused on her. "It's hard for me to say stuff like that --  living with Henry made 
it hard, I guess -- but it's true. I think I started loving you because you were 
everything Roland took me away from -- in New York, I mean -- hut it's a lot more than 
that now, because I don't want to go hack anymore. Do you?"
She looked at the Cradle. She was terrified of what they might find in there, 
but all the same . . . she looked back at him. "No, I don't want to go back. I 
want to spend the rest of my life going forward. As long as you're with me, that 
is. It's funny, you know, you saying you started loving me because of all the 
things he took you away from."
"Funny how?"
"I started loving you because you set me free of Detta Walker." She paused, 
thought, then shook her head slightly. "No -- it goes further than that. I started 
loving you because you set me free of both those bitches. One was a 
foul-mouthed, cock-teasing thief, and the other was a self-righteous, pompous 
prig. Comes down to six of one and half a dozen of the other, as far as I'm 
concerned. I like Susannah Dean better than either one . . . and you were the 
one who set me free."
This time it was she who did the reaching, pressing her palm to his stubbly 
cheeks, drawing him down, kissing him gently. When he put a light hand on her 
breast, she sighed and covered it with her own.
"I think we better get going," she said, "or we're apt to be laying right here 
in the street . . . and getting wet, from the look."
Eddie stared around at the silent towers, the broken windows, the vine-encrusted 
walls a final time. Then he nodded. "Yeah. I don't think there's any future in 
this town, anyway."
He pushed her forward, and they both stiffened as the wheels of the chair passed 
over what Maud had called the dead-line, fearful that they would trip some 
ancient protective device and die together. But nothing happened. Eddie pushed 
her into the plaza, and as they approached the steps leading up to the Cradle, a 
cold, wind-driven rain began to fall.
Although neither of them knew it, the first of the great autumn storms of 
Mid-World had arrived.


25
ONCE THEY WERE IN the smelly darkness of the sewers, Gasher slowed the killing 
pace he'd maintained aboveground. Jake didn't think it was because of the 
darkness; Gasher seemed to know every twist and turn of the route he was 
following, just as advertised. Jake believed it was because his captor was 
satisfied that Roland had been squashed to jelly by the deadfall trap.
Jake himself had begun to wonder.
If Roland had spotted the tripwires -- a far more subtle trap than the one which 
followed -- was it really likely that he had missed seeing the fountain? Jake 
supposed it was possible, but it didn't make much sense. Jake thought it more 
likely that Roland had tripped the fountain on purpose, to lull Gasher and 
perhaps slow him down. He didn't believe Roland could follow them through this 
maze under the streets -- the total darkness would defeat even the gunslinger's 
tracking abilities -- but it cheered his heart to think that Roland might not have 
died in an attempt to keep his promise.
They turned right, left, then left again. As Jake's other senses sharp­ened in 
an attempt to compensate for his lack of sight, he had a vague perception of 
other tunnels around him. The muffled sounds of ancient, laboring machinery 
would grow loud for a moment, then fade as the stone foundations of the city 
drew close around them again. Drafts blew intermittently against his skin, 
sometimes warm, sometimes chilly. Their splashing footfalls echoed briefly as 
they passed the intersecting tunnels from which these stenchy breaths blew, and 
once Jake nearly brained himself on some metal object jutting down from the 
ceiling. He slapped at it with one hand and felt something that might have been 
a large valve-wheel. After that he waved his hands as he trotted along in an 
attempt to read the air ahead of him.
Gasher guided him with taps to the shoulders, as a waggoner might have guided 
his oxen. They moved at a good clip, trotting but not run­ning. Gasher got 
enough of his breath back to first hum and then begin singing in a low, 
surprisingly tuneful tenor voice.

"Bibble-ti-tibble-ti-ting-ting-ting, 
I'll get a job and buy yer a ring, 
When I get my -mitts 
On yerjiggly tits, 
Ribble-ti-tibble-ti-ting-ting-ting!

O ribble-ti-tibble,
I just wanter fiddle,
Fiddle around with your ting-ting-ting!"

There were five or six more verses along this line before Gasher quit. "Now you 
sing somethin, squint."
"I don't know anything," Jake puffed. He hoped he sounded more out of breath 
than he actually was. He didn't know if it would do him any good or not, but 
down here in the dark any edge seemed worth trying for.
Gasher brought his elbow down in the center of Jake's back, almost hard enough 
to send him sprawling into the ankle-high water running sluggishly through the 
tunnel they were traversing. "Yon better know sominat, 'less you want me to rip 
your ever-lovin spine right outcher back." He paused, then added: "There's 
haunts down here, boy. They live inside the fuckin machines, so they do. Singin 
keeps em off . . . don't you know that? Now sing!"
Jake thought hard, not wanting to earn another love-tap from Gasher, and came up 
with a song he'd learned in summer day camp at the age of seven or eight. He 
opened his mouth and began to bawl it into the darkness, listening to the echoes 
bounce back amid the sounds of running water, falling water, and ancient 
thudding machinery.

"My girl's a corker, she's a New Yorker, 
I buy her everything to keep her in style, 
She got a pair of hips 
Just like two battleships, 
Oh boy, that's how my money goes.

My girl's a dilly, she comes from Philly, 
I buy her everything to keep her in style, 
She's got a pair of eyes 
Just like two pizza pies, 
Oh boy, that's how -- "

Gasher reached out, seized Jake's ears as if they were jug-handles, and yanked 
him to a stop. "There's a hole right ahead of yer," he said. "With a voice like 
yours, squint, it'd be doin the world a mercy to letcher fall in, so it would, 
but Tick-Tock wouldn't approve at all, so I reckon ye're safe for a little 
longer." Gasher's hands left Jake's ears, which burned like fire, and fastened 
on the back of his shirt. "Now lean forward until you feel the ladder on the 
t'other side. And mind you don't slip and drag us both down!"
Jake leaned cautiously forward, hands outstretched, terrified of fall­ing into a 
pit he couldn't see. As he groped for the ladder, he became aware of warm 
air -- clean and almost fragrant -- whooshing past his face, and a faint blush of 
rose-colored light from beneath him. His fingers touched a steel rung and closed 
over it. The bite-wounds on his left hand broke open again, and he felt warm 
blood running across his palm.
"Got it?" Gasher asked.
"Yes."
"Then climb down! What are you waitin for, gods damn it!" Gasher let go of his 
shirt, and Jake could imagine him drawing his foot back, meaning to hurry him 
along with a kick in the ass. Jake stepped across the faintly glimmering gap and 
began to descend the ladder, using his hurt hand as little as possible. This 
time the rungs were clear of moss and oil, and hardly rusted at all. The shaft 
was very long and as Jake went down, hurrying to keep Gasher from stepping on 
his hands with his thick-soled boots, he found himself remembering a movie he'd 
once seen on TV -- Journey to the Center of the Earth.
The throb of machinery grew louder and the rosy glow grew stronger. The machines 
still didn't sound right, but his ears told him these were in better shape than 
the ones above. And when he finally reached the bottom, he found the floor was 
dry. The new horizontal shaft was square, about six feet high, and sleeved with 
riveted stainless steel. It stretched away for as far as Jake could see in both 
directions, straight as a string. He knew instinctively, without even thinking 
about it, that this tunnel (which had to be at least seventy feet under Lud) 
also followed the path of the Beam. And somewhere up ahead -- Jake was sure of 
this, although he couldn't have said why -- the train they had come looking for lay 
directly above it.
Narrow ventilation grilles ran along the sides of the walls just below the 
shaft's ceiling; it was from these that the clean, dry air was flowing. Moss 
dangled from some of them in blue-gray beards, but most were still clear. Below 
every other grille was a yellow arrow with a symbol that looked a bit like a 
lower-case t. The arrows pointed in the direction Jake and Gasher were heading.
The rose-colored light was coming from glass tubes which ran along the ceiling 
of the shaft in parallel rows. Some -- about one in every three -- were dark, and 
others sputtered fitfully, but at least half of them were still working. Neon 
tubing, Jake thought, amazed. How about that?
Gasher dropped down beside him. He saw Jake's expression of sur­prise and 
grinned. "Nice, ennet? Cool in the summer, warm in the win­ter, and so much food 
that five hunnert men couldn't eat it in five hunnert years. And do yer know the 
best part, squint? The very best part of the whole coozy fakement?"
Jake shook his head.
"Farkin Pubies don't have the leastest idear the place even exists. They think 
there's monsters down here. Catch a Pubie goin within twenty feet of a 
sewer-cap, less'n he has to!"
He threw his head back and laughed heartily. Jake didn't join in, even though a 
cold voice in the back of his mind told him it might be politic to do so. He 
didn't join in because he knew exactly how the Pubes felt. There were monsters 
under the city -- trolls and boggerts and ores. Hadn't he been captured by just 
such a one?
Gasher shoved him to the left. "Gam -- almost there now. Hup!"
They jogged on, their footfalls chasing them in a pack of echoes. After ten or 
fifteen minutes of this, Jake saw a watertight hatchway about two hundred yards 
ahead. As they drew closer, he could see a big valve-wheel sticking out of it. A 
communicator box was mounted on the wall to the right.
"I'm blown out," Gasher gasped as they reached the door at the end of the 
tunnel. "Doin's like this are too much for an inwalid like yer old pal, so they 
are!" He thumbed the button on the intercom and bawled: "I got im, Tick-Tock -- got 
him as dandy as you please! Didn't even muss 'is hair! Didn't I tell yer I 
would? Trust the Gasherman, I said, for he'll leadjer straight and true! Now 
open up and let us in!"
He let go of the button and looked impatiently at the door. The valve-wheel 
didn't turn. Instead a flat, drawling voice came out of the intercom speaker: 
"What's the password?"
Gasher frowned horribly, scratched his chin with his long, dirty nails, then 
lifted his eyepatch and swabbed out another clot of yellow-green goo. "Tick-Tock 
and his passwords!" he said to Jake. He sounded worried as well as irritated. 
"He's a trig cove, but that's takin it a deal too far if you ask me, so it is."
He pushed the button and yelled, "Come on, Tick-Tock! If you don't reckergnize 
the sound of my voice, you need a heary-aid!"
"Oh, I recognize it," the drawling voice returned. To Jake it sounded like Jerry 
Reed, who played Burt Reynolds's sidekick in Smokey and the Bandit. "But I don't 
know who's with you, do I? Or have you forgotten that the camera out there went 
tits-up last year? You give the password, Gasher, or you can rot out there!"
Gasher stuck a finger up his nose, extracted a chunk of snot the color of mint 
jelly, and squashed it into the grille of the speaker. Jake watched this 
childish display of ill temper in silent fascination, feeling unwelcome, 
hysterical laughter bubbling around inside him. Had they come all this way, 
through the boobytrapped mazes and lightless tunnels, to be balked here at this 
watertight door simply because Gasher couldn't remember the Tick-Tock Man's 
password?
Gasher looked at him balefully, then slid his hand across his skull, peeling off 
his sweat-soaked yellow scarf. The skull beneath was bald, except for a few 
straggling tufts of black hair like porcupine quills, and deeply dented above 
the left temple. Gasher peered into the scarf and plucked forth a scrap of 
paper. "Gods bless Hoots," he muttered. "Hoots takes care of me a right proper, 
he does."
He peered at the scrap, turning it this way and that, and then held it out to 
Jake. He kept his voice pitched low, as if the Tick-Tock Man could hear him even 
though the TALK button on the intercom wasn't depressed.
"You're a proper little gennelman, ain't you? And the very first thing they 
teach a gennelman to do after he's been lamed not to eat the paste and piss in 
the comers is read. So read me the word on this paper, cully, for it's gone 
right out of my head -- so it has."
Jake took the paper, looked at it, then looked up at Gasher again. "What if I 
won't?" he asked coolly.
Gasher was momentarily taken aback at this response . . . and then he began to 
grin with dangerous good humor. "Why, I'll grab yer by the throat and use yer 
head for a doorknocker," he said. "I doubt if it'll conwince old Ticky to let me 
in -- for he's still nervous of your hardcase friend, so he is -- but it'll do my 
heart a world of good to see your brains drippin off that wheel."
Jake considered this, the dark laughter still bubbling away inside him. The 
Tick-Tock Man was a trig enough cove, all right -- he had known that it would be 
difficult to persuade Gasher, who was dying anyway, to speak the password even 
if Roland had taken him prisoner. What Tick-Tock hadn't taken into account was 
Gasher's defective memory.
Don't laugh. If you do, he really will beat your brains out.
In spite of his brave words, Gasher was watching Jake with real anxiety, and 
Jake realized a potentially powerful fact: Gasher might not be afraid of dying . 
. . but he was afraid of being humiliated.
"All right, Gasher," he said calmly. "The word on this piece of paper is 
bountiful."
"Gimme that." Gasher snatched the paper back, returned it to his scarf, and 
quickly wrapped the yellow cloth around his head again. He thumbed the intercom 
button. "Tick-Tock? Yer still there?"
"Where else would I be? The West End of the World?" The drawl­ing voice now 
sounded mildly amused.
Gasher stuck his whitish tongue out at the speaker, but his voice was 
ingratiating, almost servile. "The password's bountyful, and a fine word it is, 
too! Now let me in, gods cuss it!"
"Of course," the Tick-Tock Man said. A machine started up some­where nearby, 
making Jake jump. The valve-wheel in the center of the door spun. When it 
stopped, Gasher seized it, yanked it outward, grabbed Jake's arm, and propelled 
him over the raised lip of the door and into the strangest room he had ever seen 
in his life.


26
ROLAND DESCENDED INTO DUSKY pink light. Oy's bright eyes peered out from the 
open V of his shirt; his neck stretched to the limit of its considerable length 
as he sniffed at the warm air that blew through the ventilator grilles. Roland 
had had to depend completely on the bumbler's nose in the dark passages above, 
and he had been terribly afraid the animal would lose Jake's scent in the 
running water . . . but when he had heard the sound of singing -- first Gasher, 
then Jake -- echoing back through the pipes, he had relaxed a little. Oy had not 
led them wrong.
Oy had heard it, too. Up until then he had been moving slowly and cautiously, 
even backtracking every now and again to be sure of himself, but when he heard 
Jake's voice he began to run, straining the rawhide leash. Roland was afraid he 
might call after Jake in his harsh voice -- Ake! Ake! -- but he hadn't done so. And, 
just as they reached the shaft which led to the lower levels of this Dycian 
Maze, Roland had heard the sound of some new machine -- a pump of some sort, 
perhaps -- followed by the metallic, echoing crash of a door being slammed shut.
He reached the foot of the square tunnel and glanced briefly at the double line 
of lighted tubes which led off in either direction. They were lit with 
swamp-fire, he saw, like the sign outside the place which had belonged to 
Balazar in the city of New York. He looked more closely at the narrow chrome 
ventilation strips running along the top of each wall, and the arrows below 
them, then slipped the rawhide loop off Oy's neck. Oy shook his head 
impatiently, clearly glad to be rid of it.
"We're close," he murmured into the bumbler's cocked ear, "and so we have to be 
quiet. Do you understand, Oy? Very quiet."
"I-yet," Oy replied in a hoarse whisper that would have been funny under other 
circumstances.
Roland put him down and Oy was immediately off down the tunnel, neck out, muzzle 
to the steel floor. Roland could hear him muttering Ake-Ake! Ake-Ake! under his 
breath. Roland unholstered his gun and followed him.


27
EDDIE AND SUSANNAH LOOKED up at the vastness of Blaine's Cradle as the skies 
opened and the rain began to fall in torrents.
"It's a hell of a building, but they forgot the handicap ramps!" Eddie yelled, 
raising his voice to be heard over the rain and thunder.
"Never mind that," Susannah said impatiently, slipping out of the wheelchair. 
"Let's get up there and out of the rain."
Eddie looked dubiously up the incline of steps. The risers were shallow . . . 
but there were a lot of them. "You sure, Suze?"
"Race you, white boy," she said, and began to wriggle upward with uncanny ease, 
using hands, muscular forearms, and the stumps of her legs.
And she almost did beat him; Eddie had the ironmongery to contend with, and it 
slowed him down. Both of them were panting when they reached the top, and 
tendrils of steam were rising from their wet clothes. Eddie grabbed her under 
the arms, swung her up, and then just held her with his hands locked together in 
the small of her back instead of dropping her back into the chair, as he had 
meant to do. He felt randy and half-crazy without the slightest idea why.
Oh, give me a break, he thought. You've gotten this far alive; that's what's got 
your glands pumped up and ready to party.
Susannah licked her full lower lip and wound her strong fingers into his hair. 
She pulled. It hurt . . . and at the same time it felt wonderful. "Told you I'd 
beat you, white boy," she said in a low, husky voice.
"Get outta here -- I had you ... by half a step." He tried to sound less out of 
breath than he was and found it was impossible.
"Maybe . . . but it blew you out, didn't it?" One hand left his hair, slid 
downward, and squeezed gently. A smile gleamed in her eyes. "Somethin ain't 
blown out, though."
Thunder rumbled across the sky. They flinched, then laughed together.
"Come on," he said. "This is nuts. The time's all wrong."
She didn't contradict him, but she squeezed him again before returning her hand 
to his shoulder. Eddie felt a pang of regret as he swung her back into her chair 
and ran her across vast flagstones and under cover of the roof. He thought he 
saw the same regret in Susannah's eyes.
When they were out of the downpour, Eddie paused and they looked back. The Plaza 
of the Cradle, The Street of the Turtle, and all the city beyond was rapidly 
disappearing into a shifting gray curtain. Eddie wasn't a bit sorry. Lud hadn't 
earned itself a place in his mental scrapbook of fond memories.
"Look," Susannah murmured. She was pointing at a nearby down­spout. It ended in 
a large, scaly fish-head that looked like a close relation to the 
dragon-gargoyles which decorated the corners of the Cradle. Water ran from its 
mouth in a silver torrent.
"This isn't just a passing shower, is it?" Eddie asked.
"Nope. It's gonna rain until it gets tired of it, and then it's gonna rain some 
more, just for spite. Maybe a week; maybe a month. Not that it's gonna matter to 
us, if Blaine decides he doesn't like our looks and fries us. Fire a shot to let 
Roland know we got here, sugar, and then we'll have us a look around. See what 
we can see."
Eddie pointed the Ruger into the gray sky, pulled the trigger, and fired the 
shot, which Roland heard a mile or more away, as he followed Jake and Gasher 
through the booby-trapped maze. Eddie stood where he was a moment longer, trying 
to persuade himself that things might still turn out all right, that his heart 
was wrong in its stubborn insistence that they had seen the last of the 
gunslinger and the boy Jake. Then he made the automatic safe again, returned it 
to the waistband of his pants, and went back to Susannah. He turned her chair 
away from the steps and rolled her along an aisle of columns which led deeper 
into the build­ing. She popped the cylinder of Roland's gun and reloaded it as 
they went.
Under the roof the rain had a secret, ghostly sound and even the harsh 
thundercracks were muted. The columns which supported the structure were at 
least ten feet in diameter, and their tops were lost in the gloom. From up there 
in the shadows, Eddie heard the cooing con­versation of pigeons.
Now a sign hanging on thick chrome-silver chains swam out of the shadows:

NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS WELCOMES YOU
TO THE CRADLE OF LUD
< --  SOUTHEAST TRAVEL (BLAINE)
NORTHWEST TRAVEL (PATRICIA)  -- >

"Now we know the name of the one that fell in the river," Eddie said. "Patricia. 
They got their colors wrong, though. It's supposed to be pink for girls and blue 
for boys, not the other way around."
"Maybe they're both blue."
"They're not. Blaine's pink."
"How would you know that?"
Eddie looked confused. "I don't know how . . . but I do."
They followed the arrow pointing toward Blaine's berth, entering what had to be 
a grand concourse. Eddie didn't have Susannah's ability to see the past in 
clear, visionary flashes, but his imagination nonetheless filled this vast, 
pillared space with a thousand hurrying people; he heard clicking heels and 
murmuring voices, saw embraces of homecoming and farewell. And over everything, 
the speakers chanting news of a dozen different destinations.
Patricia is now boarding for Northwest Baronies . . .
Will Passenger Killington, passenger Killington, please report to the 
information booth on the lower level?
Blaine is now arriving at Berth #2, and will be debarking shortly . . .
Now there was only the pigeons.
Eddie shivered.
"Look at the faces," Susannah murmured. "I don't know if they give you the 
willies, but they sure do me." She was pointing to the right.



High up on the wall, a series of sculpted heads seemed to push out of tin- 
marble, peering down at them from the shadows -- stern men with the harsh faces of 
executioners who are happy in their work. Some of the faces had fallen from 
their places and lay in granite shards and splinters seventy or eighty feet 
below their peers. Those remaining were spider-webbed with cracks and splattered 
with pigeon dung.
"They must have been the Supreme Court, or something," Eddie said, uneasily 
scanning all those thin lips and cracked, empty eyes. "Only judges can look so 
smart and so completely pissed off at the same time --  you're talking to a guy who 
knows. There isn't one of them who looks like he'd give a crippled crab a 
crutch."
" 'A heap of broken images, where the sun beats and the dead tree gives no 
shelter,' " Susannah murmured, and at these words Eddie felt gooseflesh waltz 
across the skin of his arms and chest and legs.
"What's that, Suze?"
"A poem by a man who must have seen Lud in his dreams," she said. "Come on, 
Eddie. Forget them."
"Easier said than done." But he began to push her again.
Ahead, a vast grilled barrier like a castle barbican swam out of the gloom . . . 
and beyond it, they caught their first glimpse of Blaine the Mono. It was pink, 
just as Eddie had said it would be, a delicate shade which matched the veins 
running through the marble pillars. Blaine flowed above the wide loading 
platform in a smooth, streamlined bullet shape which looked more like flesh than 
metal. Its surface was broken only once -- by a triangular window equipped with a 
huge wiper. Eddie knew there would be another triangular window with another big 
wiper on the other side of the mono's nose, so that if you looked at Blaine 
head-on, it would seem to have a face, just like Charlie the Choo-Choo. The 
wipers would look like slyly drooping eyelids.
White light from the southeastern slot in the Cradle fell across Blaine in a 
long, distorted rectangle. To Eddie, the body of the train looked like the 
breaching back of some fabulous pink whale -- one that was utterly silent.
"Wow." His voice had fallen to a whisper. "We found it."
"Yes. Blaine the Mono."
"Is it dead, do you think? It looks dead."
"It's not. Sleeping, maybe, but a long way from dead."
"You sure?"
"Were you sure it would be pink?" It wasn't a question he had to answer, and he 
didn't. The face she turned up to him was strained and badly frightened. "It's 
sleeping, and you know what? I'm scared to wake it up."
"Well, we'll wait for the others, then."
She shook her head. "I think we better try to lx- ready for when they get here . 
. . because I've got an idea that they're going to come on the run. Push me over 
to that box mounted on the bars. It looks like an intercom. See it?"
He did, and pushed her slowly toward it. It was mounted on one side of a closed 
gate in the center of the barrier which ran the length of the Cradle. The 
vertical bars of the barrier were made of what looked like stainless steel; 
those of the gate appeared to be ornamental iron, and their lower ends 
disappeared into steel-ringed holes in the floor. There was no way either of 
them was going to wriggle through those bars, either, Eddie saw. The gap between 
each set was no more than four inches. It would have been a tight squeeze even 
for Oy.
Pigeons ruffled and cooed overhead. The left wheel of Susannah's chair squawked 
monotonously. My kingdom for an oilcan, Eddie thought, and realized he was a lot 
more than just scared. The last time he had felt this level of terror had been 
on the day when he and Henry had stood on the sidewalk of Rhinehold Street in 
Dutch Hill, looking at the slumped ruin of The Mansion. They hadn't gone in on 
that day in 1977; they had turned their backs on the haunted house and walked 
away, and he remembered vowing to himself that he would never, never, ever go 
back to that place. It was a promise he'd kept, but here he was, in another 
haunted house, and there was the haunter, right over there --  Blaine the Mono, a 
long low pink shape with one window peering at him like the eye of a dangerous 
animal who is shamming sleep.
He stirs no more from his berth in the Cradle. . . . He has even stopped 
speaking in his many voices and laughing. . . . Ardis was the last to go nigh 
Blaine . . . and when Ardis couldn't answer what was asked, Blaine slew him with 
blue fire.
If it speaks to me, I'll probably go crazy, Eddie thought.
The wind gusted outside, and a fine spray of rain flew in through the tall 
egress slot cut in the side of the building. He saw it strike Blaine's window 
and bead up there.
Eddie shuddered suddenly and looked sharply around. "We're being watched -- I can 
feel it."
"I wouldn't be at all surprised. Push me closer to the gate, Eddie. I want to 
get a better look at that box."
"Okay, but don't touch it. If it's electrified -- "
"If Blaine wants to cook us, he will," Susannah said, looking through the bars 
at Blaine's back. "You know it, and I do, too."
And because Eddie knew that was only the truth, he said nothing.
The box looked like a combination intercom and burglar alarm. There was a 
speaker set into the top half, with what looked like a TALK/LISTEN button next 
to it. Below this were numbers arranged in a shape which made a diamond:
1
2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36
37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45
46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55
56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64
65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72
73 74 75 76 77 78 79
80 81 82 83 84 85
86 87 88 89 90
91 92 93 94
95 96 97
98 99
100
Under the diamond were two other buttons with words of the High Speech printed 
on them: COMMAND and ENTER.
Susannah looked bewildered and doubtful. "What is this thing, do you think? It 
looks like a gadget in a science fiction movie."
Of course it did, Eddie realized. Susannah had probably seen a home security 
system or two in her time -- she had, after all, lived among the Manhattan rich, 
even if she had not been very enthusiastically accepted by them -- but there was a 
world of difference between the electronics gear available in her when, 1963, 
and his own, which was 1987. We've never talked much about the differences, 
either, he thought. I wonder what she'd think if I told her Ronald Reagan was 
President of the United States when Roland snatched me? Probably that I was 
crazy.
"It's a security system," he said. Then, although his nerves and instincts 
screamed out against it, he forced himself to reach out with his right hand and 
thumb the TALK/LISTEN switch.
There was no crackle of electricity; no deadly blue fire went racing up his arm. 
No sign that the thing was even still connected.
Maybe Blaine is dead. Maybe he's dead, after all.
But he didn't really believe that.
"Hello?" he said, and in his mind's eye saw tin- unfortunate Ardis, screaming as 
he- was microwaved by the blue fire dancing all over his face and body, melting 
his eyes and setting his hair ablaze. "Hello . . . Blaine? Anybody ?"
He let go of the button and waited, stiff with tension. Susannah's hand crept 
into his, cold and small. There was still no answer, and Eddie -- now more 
reluctant than ever -- pushed the button again.
"Blaine?"
He let go of the button. Waited. And when there was still no answer, a dangerous 
giddiness overcame him, as it often did in moments of stress and fear. When that 
giddiness took him, counting the cost no longer seemed to matter. Nothing 
mattered. It had been like that when he had outfaced Balazar's sallow-faced 
contact man in Nassau, and it was like that now. And if Roland had seen him in 
the moment this lunatic impa­tience overtook him, he would have seen more than 
just a resemblance between Eddie and Cuthbert; he would have sworn Eddie was 
Cuthbert.
He jammed the button in with his thumb and began to bellow into the speaker, 
adopting a plummy (and completely bogus) British accent. "Hullo, Blaine! 
Cheerio, old fellow! This is Robin Leach, host of Life­styles of the Rich and 
Brainless, here to tell you that you have won six billion dollars and a new Ford 
Escort in the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes!"
Pigeons took flight above them in soft, startled explosions of wings. Susannah 
gasped. Her face wore the dismayed expression of a devout woman who has just 
heard her husband blaspheme in a cathedral. "Eddie, stop it! Stop it!"
Eddie couldn't stop it. His mouth was smiling, but his eyes glittered with a 
mixture of fear, hysteria, and frustrated anger. "You and your monorail 
girlfriend, Patricia, will spend a lux-yoo-rious month in scenic Jimtown, where 
you'll drink only the finest wine and eat only the finest virgins! You -- "
". . . shhhh . . ."
Eddie broke off, looking at Susannah. He was at once sure that it had been she 
who had shushed him -- not only because she had already tried but because she was 
the only other person here -- and yet at the same time he knew it hadn't been 
Susannah. That had been another voice: the voice of a very young and very 
frightened child.
"Suze? Did you -- "
Susannah was shaking her head and raising her hand at the same time. She pointed 
at the intercom box, and Eddie saw the button marked COMMAND was glowing a very 
faint shell-pink. It was the same color as the mono sleeping in its berth on the 
other side of the barrier.
"Shhh… don't wake him up," the child's voice mourned. It drifted from the 
speaker, soft as an evening breeze.
"What . . ." Eddie began. Then he shook his head, reached toward the TALK/LISTEN 
switch and pressed it gently. When he spoke again, it was not in the blaring 
Robin Leach bellow but in the almost-whisper of a conspirator. "What are you? 
Who are you?"
He released the button. He and Susannah regarded each other with the big eyes of 
children who now know they are sharing the house with a dangerous -- perhaps 
psychotic -- adult. How have they come by the knowledge? Why, because another child 
has told them, a child who has lived with the psychotic adult for a long time, 
hiding in corners and stealing out only when it knows the adult is asleep; a 
frightened child who happens to be almost invisible.
There was no answer. Eddie let the seconds spin out. Each one seemed long enough 
to read a whole novel in. He was reaching for the button again when the faint 
pink glow reappeared.
"I'm Little Blaine," the child's voice whispered. "The one he doesn't see. The 
one he forgot. The one he thinks he left behind in the rooms of ruin and the 
halls of the dead."
Eddie pushed the button again with a hand that had picked up an uncontrollable 
shake. He could hear that shake in his voice, as well. "Who? Who is the one who 
doesn't see? Is it the Bear?"
No -- not the bear; not he. Shardik lay dead in the forest, many miles behind them; 
the world had moved on even since then. Eddie suddenly remembered what it had 
been like to lay his ear against that strange unfound door in the clearing where 
die bear had lived its violent half-life, that door with its somehow terrible 
stripes of yellow and black. It was all of a piece, he realized now; all part of 
some awful, decaying whole, a tattered web with the Dark Tower at its center 
like an incompre­hensible stone spider. All of Mid-World had become one vast 
haunted mansion in these strange latter days; all of Mid-World had become The 
Drawers; all of Mid-World had become a waste land, haunting and haunted.
He saw Susannah's lips form the words of the real answer before the voice from 
the intercom could speak them, and those words were as obvious as the solution 
to a riddle once the answer is spoken.
"Big Blaine," the unseen voice whispered. "Big Blaine is the ghost in the 
machine -- the ghost in all the machines."
Susannah's hand had gone to her throat and was clutching it, as if she intended 
to strangle herself. Her eyes were full of terror, but they were not glassy, not 
stunned; they were sharp with understanding. Per­haps she knew a voice like this 
one from her own when -- the when where the integrated whole that was Susannah had 
been shunted aside by the warring personalities of Detta and Odetta. The 
childish voice had sur­prised her as well as him, but her agonized eyes said she 
was no stranger to the concept being expressed.
Susannah knew all about the madness of duality.
"Eddie we have to go," she said. Her terror turned the words into an 
unpunctuated auditory smear. He could hear air whistling in her wind­pipe like a 
cold wind around a chimney. "Eddie we have to get away Eddie we have to get away 
Eddie -- "
"Too late," the tiny, mourning voice said. "He's awake. Big Blaine is awake. He 
knows you are here. And he's coming."
Suddenly lights -- bright orange arc-sodiums -- began to flash on in pairs above them, 
bathing the pillared vastness of the Cradle in a harsh glare that banished all 
shadows. Hundreds of pigeons darted and swooped in frightened, aimless flight, 
startled from their complex of interlocked nests high above.
"Wait!" Eddie shouted. "Please, wait!"
In his agitation he forgot to push the button, but it made no differ­ence; 
Little Blaine responded anyway. "No! I can't let him catch me! I can't let him 
kill me, too!"
The light on the intercom box went dark again, but only for a moment. This time 
both COMMAND and ENTER lit up, and their color was not pink but the lurid dark 
red of a blacksmith's forge.
"WHO ARE YOU?" a voice roared, and it came not just from the box but from every 
speaker in the city which still operated. The rotting bodies hanging from the 
poles shivered with the vibrations of that mighty voice; it seemed that even the 
dead would run from Blaine, if they could. .
Susannah shrank back in her chair, the heels of her hands pressed to her ears, 
her face long with dismay, her mouth distorted in a silent scream. Eddie felt 
himself shrinking toward all the fantastic, hallucinatory terrors of eleven. Had 
it been this voice he had feared when he and Henry stood outside The Mansion? 
That he had perhaps even antici­pated? He didn't know . . . but he did know how 
Jack in that old story must have felt when he realized that he had tried the 
beanstalk once too often, and awakened the giant.
"HOW DARE YOU DISTURB MY SLEEP? TELL ME NOW, OR DIE WHERE YOU STAND."
He might have frozen right there, leaving Blaine -- Big Blaine -- to do to them 
whatever it was he had done to Ardis (or something even worse); perhaps should 
have frozen, locked in that down-the-rabbit-hole, fairy-tale terror. It was the 
memory of the small voice which had spoken first that enabled him to move. It 
had been the voice of a terrified child, but it had tried to help them, 
terrified or not.
So now you have to help yourself, he thought. You woke it up; deal with it, for 
Christ's sake!
Eddie reached out and pushed the button again. "My name is Eddie Dean. The woman 
with me is my wife, Susannah. We're . . ."
He looked at Susannah, who nodded and made frantic motions for him to go on.
"We're on a quest. We seek the Dark Tower which lies in the Path of the Beam. 
We're in the company of two others, Roland of Gilead and . . . and Jake of New 
York. We're from New York too. If you're -- " He paused for a moment, biting back 
the words Big Blaine. If he used them, he might make the intelligence behind the 
voice aware that they had heard another voice; a ghost inside the ghost, so to 
speak.
Susannah gestured again for him to go on, using both hands.
"If you're Blaine the Mono . . . well ... we want you to take us."
He released the button. There was no response for what seemed like a very long 
time, only the agitated flutter of the disturbed pigeons from overhead. When 
Blaine spoke again, his voice came only from the speaker-box mounted on the gate 
and sounded almost human.
"DO NOT TRY MY PATIENCE. ALL THE DOORS TO THAT WHERE ARE CLOSED. GILEAD IS NO 
MORE, AND THOSE KNOWN AS GUNSLINGERS ARE ALL DEAD. NOW ANSWER MY QUESTION: WHO 
ARE YOU? THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE."
There was a sizzling sound. A ray of brilliant blue-white light lanced down from 
the ceiling and seared a hole the size of a golf-ball in the marble floor less 
than five feet to the left of Susannah's wheelchair. Smoke that smelled like the 
aftermath of a lightning-bolt rose lazily from it. Susannah and Eddie stared at 
each other in mute terror for a moment, and then Eddie lunged for the 
communicator-box and thumbed the button.
"You're wrong! We did come from New York! We came through the doors, on the 
beach, only a few weeks ago!"
"It's true!" Susannah called. "I swear it is!"
Silence. Beyond the long barrier, Blaine's pink back humped smoothly. The window 
at the front seemed to regard them like a vapid glass eye. The wiper could have 
been a lid half-closed in a sly wink.
"PROVE IT," Blaine said at last.
"Christ, how do I do that?" Eddie asked Susannah.
"I don't know."
Eddie pushed the button again. "The Statue of Liberty! Does that ring a bell?"
"GO ON," Blaine said. Now the voice sounded almost thoughtful.
"The Empire State Building! The Stock Exchange! The World Trade Center! Coney 
Island Red-Hots! Radio City Music Hall! The East Vil -- "
Blaine cut him off . . . and now, incredibly, the voice which came from the 
speaker was the drawling voice of John Wayne.
"OKAY, PILGRIM. I BELIEVE YOU."
Eddie and Susannah shared another glance, this one of confusion and relief. But 
when Blaine spoke again, the voice was again cold and emotionless.
"ASK ME A QUESTION, EDDIE DEAN OF NEW YORK. AND IT BETTER BE A GOOD ONE." There 
was a pause, and then Blaine added: "BECAUSE IF IT'S NOT, YOU AND YOUR WOMAN ARE 
GOING TO DIE, NO MATTER WHERE YOU CAME FROM."
Susannah looked from the box on the gate to Eddie. "What's it talking about?" 
she hissed.
Eddie shook his head. "I don't have the slightest idea."


28
To JAKE, THE ROOM Gasher dragged him into looked like a Minuteman missile silo 
which had been decorated by the inmates of a lunatic asylum: part museum, part 
living room, part hippie crash pad. Above him, empty space vaulted up to a 
rounded ceiling and below him it dropped seventy-five or a hundred feet to a 
similarly rounded base. Running all around the single curved wall in vertical 
lines were tubes of neon in alternating strokes of color: red, blue, green, 
yellow, orange, peach, pink. These long tubes came together in roaring rainbow 
knots at the bottom and top of the silo ... if that was what it had been.
The room was about three-quarters of the way up the vast capsule-shaped space 
and floored with rusty iron grillework. Rugs that looked Turkish (he later 
learned that such rugs were actually from a barony called Kashmin) lay on the 
grilled floor here and there. Their corners were held down with brass-bound 
trunks or standing lamps or the squat legs of over-stuffed chairs. If not, they 
would have flapped like strips of paper tied to an electric fan, because a 
steady warm draft rushed up from below. Another draft, this one issuing from a 
circular band of venti­lators like the ones in the tunnel they had followed 
here, swirled about four or five feet above Jake's head. On the far side of the 
room was a door identical to the one through which he and Gasher had entered, 
and Jake assumed it was a continuation of the subterranean corridor following 
the Path of the Beam.
There were half a do/en people in the room, four men and two women. Jake guessed 
that he was looking at the Gray high command --  if, that was, there were enough 
Grays left to warrant a high command. None of them were young, but all were 
still in the prime of their lives. They looked at Jake as curiously as he looked 
at them.
Sitting in the center of the room, with one massive leg thrown casu­ally over 
the arm of a chair big enough to be a throne, was a man who looked like a cross 
between a Viking warrior and a giant from a child's fairy-tale. His heavily 
muscled upper body was naked except for a silver band around one bicep, a 
knife-scabbard looped over one shoulder, and a strange charm about his neck. His 
lower body was clad in soft, tight-fitting leather breeches which were tucked 
into high boots. He wore a yellow scarf tied around one of these. His hair, a 
dirty gray-blonde, cas­caded almost to the middle of his broad back; his eyes 
were as green and curious as the eyes of a tomcat who is old enough to be wise 
but not old enough to have lost that refined sense of cruelty which passes for 
fun in feline circles. Hung by its strap from the back of the chair was what 
looked like a very old machine-gun.
Jake looked more closely at the ornament on the Viking's chest and saw that it 
was a coffin-shaped glass box hung on a silver chain. Inside it, a tiny gold 
clock-face marked the time at five minutes past three. Below the face, a tiny 
gold pendulum went back and forth, and despite the soft whoosh of circulating 
air from above and below, he could hear the tick-tock sound it made. The hands 
of the clock were moving faster than they should have done, and Jake was not 
very surprised to see that they were moving backward.
He thought of the crocodile in Peter Pan, the one that was always chasing after 
Captain Hook, and a little smile touched his lips. Gasher saw it, and raised his 
hand. Jake cringed away, putting his own hands to his face.
The Tick-Tock Man shook his finger at Gasher in an amusing school-marmish 
gesture. "Now, now ... no need of that, Gasher," he said.
Gasher lowered his hand at once. His face had changed completely. Before, it had 
alternated between stupid rage and a species of cunning, almost existential 
humor. Now he only looked servile and adoring. Like the others in the room (and 
Jake himself), the Gasherman could not look away from Tick-Tock for long; his 
eyes were drawn inexorably back. And Jake could understand why. The Tick-Tock 
Man was the only person here who seemed wholly vital, wholly healthy, and wholly 
alive.
"If you say there's no need, there ain't," Gasher said, but he favored Jake with 
a dark look before shifting his eyes back to the blonde giant on the throne. 
"Still, he's wery pert, Ticky. Wery pert, Ticky. Wery pert indeed, so he is, and 
if you want my opinion, he'll take a deal of training!"
"When I want your opinion, I'll ask for it, the Tick-Tock Man said. "Now close 
the door, Cash -- was yon lx>re in a barn?"
A dark-haired woman laughed shrilly, a sound like the caw of a crow. Tick-Tock 
flicked his eyes toward her; she quieted at once and cast her eyes down to the 
grilled floor.
The door through which Gasher had dragged him was actually two doors. The 
arrangement reminded Jake of the way spaceship airlocks looked in the more 
intelligent science fiction movies. Gasher shut them both and turned to 
Tick-Tock, giving him a thumbs-up gesture. The Tick-Tock Man nodded and reached 
languidly up to press a button set into a piece of furniture that looked like a 
speaker's podium. A pump began to cycle wheezily within the wall, and the neon 
tubes dimmed perceptibly. There was a faint hiss of air and the valve-wheel of 
the inside door spun shut. Jake supposed the one in the outer door was doing the 
same. This was some sort of bomb-shelter, all right; no doubt of that. When the 
pump died, the long neon tubes resumed their former muted brilliance.
"There," Tick-Tock said pleasantly. His eyes began to look Jake up and down. 
Jake had a clear and very uncomfortable sense of being expertly catalogued and 
filed. "All safe and sound, we are. Snug as bugs in a rug. Right, Hoots?"
"Yar!" a tall, skinny man in a black suit replied promptly. His face was covered 
with some sort of rash which he scratched obsessively.
"I brung him," Gasher said. "I told yer you could trust me to do it, and didn't 
I?"
"You did," Tick-Tock said. "Bang on. I had some doubts about your ability to 
remember the password at the end, there, but -- "
The dark-haired woman uttered another shrill caw. The Tick-Tock Man half-turned 
in her direction, that lazy smile dimpling the corners of his mouth, and before 
Jake was able to grasp what was happening -- what had already happened -- she was 
staggering backward, her eyes bulging in surprise and pain, her hands groping at 
some strange tumor in the middle of her chest which hadn't been there a second 
before.
Jake realized die Tick-Tock Man had made some sort of move as he was turning, a 
move so quick it had been no more than a flicker. The slim white hilt which had 
protruded from the scabbard looped over the Tick-Tock Man's shoulder was gone. 
The knife was now on the other side of the room, sticking out of the dark-haired 
woman's chest. Tick-Tock had drawn and thrown with an uncanny speed Jake wasn't 
sure even Roland could match. It had been like some malign magic trick.
The others watched silently as the woman staggered toward Tick-Tock, gagging 
harshly, her hands wrapped loosely around the hilt of the knife. Her hip bumped 
one of the standing lamps and the one called Hoots darted forward to catch it 
before it could fall. Tick-Tock himself never moved; he only went on sitting 
with his leg tossed over the arm of his throne, watching the woman with his lazy 
smile.
Her foot caught beneath one of the rugs and she tumbled forward. Once more the 
Tick-Tock Man moved with that spooky speed, pulling back the foot which had been 
dangling over the arm of the chair and then driving it forward again like a 
piston. It buried itself in the pit of the dark-haired woman's stomach and she 
went flying backward. Blood spewed from her mouth and splattered the furniture. 
She struck the wall, slid down it, and ended up sitting with her chin on her 
breastbone. To Jake she looked like a movie Mexican taking a siesta against an 
adobe wall. It was hard for him to believe she had gone from living to dead with 
such terrible speed. Neon tubes turned her hair into a haze that was half red 
and half blue. Her glazing eyes stared at the Tick-Tock Man with terminal 
amazement.
"I told her about that laugh," Tick-Tock said. His eyes shifted to the other 
woman, a heavyset redhead who looked like a long-haul trucker. "Didn't I, 
Tilly?"
"Ay," Tilly said at once. Her eyes were lustrous with fear and excite­ment, and 
she licked her lips obsessively. "So you did, many and many a time. I'll set my 
watch and warrant on it."
"So you might, if you could reach up your fat ass far enough to find them," 
Tick-Tock said. "Bring me my knife, Brandon, and mind you wipe that slut's stink 
off it before you put it in my hand."
A short, bandy-legged man hopped to do as he had been bidden. The knife wouldn't 
come free at first; it seemed caught on the unfortu­nate dark-haired woman's 
breastbone. Brandon threw a terrified glance over his shoulder at the Tick-Tock 
Man and then tugged harder.
Tick-Tock, however, appeared to have forgotten all about both Bran­don and the 
woman who had literally laughed herself to death. His bril­liant green eyes had 
fixed on something which interested him much more than the dead woman.
"Come here, cully," he said. "I want a better look at you."
Gasher gave him a shove. Jake stumbled forward. He would have fallen if 
Tick-Tock's strong hands hadn't caught him by the shoulders. Then, when he was 
sure Jake had his balance again, Tick-Tock grasped the boy's left wrist and 
raised it. It was Jake's Seiko which had drawn his interest.
"If this here's what I think it is, it's an omen for sure and true," Tick-Tock 
said. "Talk to me, boy -- what's this sigul you wear?"
Jake, who hadn't the slightest idea what a sigul was, could only hope for the 
best. "It's a watch. But it doesn't work, Mr. Tick-Tock."
Hoots chuckled at that, then clapped both hands over his mouth when the 
Tick-Tock Man turned to look at him. After a moment, Tick-Toc looked back at 
Jake, and a sunny smile replaced the frown. Looking at that smile almost made 
you forget that it was a dead woman and not a movie Mexican taking a siesta over 
there against the wall. Looking at it almost made you forget that these people 
were crazy, and the Tick-Tock Man was likely the craziest inmate in the whole 
asylum.
"Watch," Tick-Tock said, nodding. "Ay, a likely enough name for such; after all, 
what does a person want with a timepiece but to watch it once in a while? Ay, 
Brandon? Ay, Tilly? Ay, Gasher?"
They responded with eager affirmatives. The Tick-Tock Man favored them with his 
winning smile, then turned back to Jake again. Now Jake noticed that the smile, 
winning or not, stopped well short of the Tick-Tock Man's green eyes. They were 
as they had been throughout: cool, cruel, and curious.
He reached a finger toward the Seiko, which now proclaimed the time to be 
ninety-one minutes past seven -- A.M. and P.M. -- and pulled it back just before 
touching the glass above the liquid crystal display. "Tell me, dear boy -- is this 
'watch' of yours boobyrigged?"
"Huh? Oh! No. No, it's not boobyrigged." Jake touched his own finger to the face 
of the watch.
"That means nothing, if it's set to the frequency of your own body," the 
Tick-Tock Man said. He spoke in the sharp, scornful tone Jake's father used when 
he didn't want people to figure out that he didn't have the slightest idea what 
he was talking about. Tick-Tock glanced briefly at Brandon, and Jake saw him 
weigh the pros and cons of making the bowlegged man his designated toucher. Then 
he dismissed the notion and looked back into Jake's eyes. "If this thing gives 
me a shock, my little friend, you're going to be choking to death on your own 
sweetmeats in thirty seconds."
Jake swallowed hard but said nothing. The Tick-Tock Man reached out his finger 
again, and this time allowed it to settle on the face of the Seiko. The moment 
that it did, all the numbers went to zeros and then began to count upward again.
Tick-Tock's eyes had narrowed in a grimace of potential pain as he touched the 
face of the watch. Now their corners crinkled in the first genuine smile Jake 
had seen from him. He thought it was partly pleasure at his own courage but 
mostly simple wonder and interest.
"May I have it?" he asked Jake silkily. "As a gesture of your goodwill, shall we 
say? I am something of a clock fancier, my dear young cully --  so I am."
"Be my guest." Jake stripped the watch off his arm at once and dropped in onto 
the Tick-Tock Man's large waiting palm.
"Talks just like a little silk-arse gennelman, don't he?" Gasher said happily. 
"In the old days someone would have paid a wery high price for the return o' 
such as him, Ticky, ay, so they would. Why, my father -- "
"Your father died so blowed-out-rotten with the mandrus that not even the dogs 
would eat him," the Tick-Tock Man interrupted. "Now shut up, you idiot."
At first Gasher looked furious . . . and then only abashed. He sank into a 
nearby chair and closed his mouth.
Tick-Tock, meanwhile, was examining the Seiko's expansion band with an 
expression of awe. He pulled it wide, let it snap back, pulled it wide again, 
let it snap back again. He dropped a lock of his hair into the open links, then 
laughed when they closed on it. At last he slipped the watch over his hand and 
pushed it halfway up his forearm. Jake thought this souvenir of New York looked 
very strange there, but said nothing.
"Wonderful!" Tick-Tock exclaimed. "Where did you get it, cully?"
"It was a birthday present from my father and mother," Jake said. Gasher leaned 
forward at this, perhaps wanting to mention the idea of ransom again. If so, the 
intent look on the Tick-Tock Man's face changed his mind and he sat back without 
saying anything.
"Was it?" Tick-Tock marvelled, raising his eyebrows. He had discov­ered the 
small button which lit the face of the watch and kept pushing it, watching the 
light go off and on. Then he looked back at Jake, and his eyes were narrowed to 
bright green slits again. "Tell me something, cully -- does this run on a dipolar 
or unipolar circuit?"
"Neither one," Jake said, not knowing that his failure to say he did not know 
what either of these terms meant was buying him a great deal of future trouble. 
"It runs on a nickel-cadmium battery. At least I'm pretty sure it does. I've 
never had to replace it, and I lost the instruction folder a long time ago."
The Tick-Tock Man looked at him for a long time without speaking, and Jake 
realized with dismay that the blonde man was trying to decide if Jake had been 
making fun of him. If he decided Jake had been making fun, Jake had an idea that 
the abuse he had suffered on the way here would seem like tickling compared to 
what the Tick-Tock Man might do. He suddenly wanted to divert Tick-Tock's train 
of thought -- wanted that more than anything in the world. He said the first thing 
he thought might turn the trick.
"He was your grandfather, wasn't he?"
The Tick-Tock Man raised his brows interrogatively. His hands returned to Jake's 
shoulders, and although his grip was not tight, Jake could feel the phenomenal 
strength there. If Tick-Tock chose to tighten his grip and pull sharply forward, 
he would snap Jake's collarbones like pencils. If he shoved, he would probably 
break his back.
"Who was my grandfather, cully?"
Jake's eyes once more took in the Tick-Tock Man's massive, nobly shaped head and 
broad shoulders. He remembered what Susannah had said: Look at the size of him, 
Roland -- they must have had to grease him to get him into the cockpit!
"The man in the airplane. David Quick."
The Tick-Tock Man's eyes widened in surprise and amazement. Then he threw back 
his head and roared out a gust of laughter that echoed off the domed ceiling 
high above. The others smiled nervously. None, however, dared to laugh right out 
loud . . . not after what had happened to the woman with the dark hair.
"Whoever you are and wherever you come from, boy, you're the triggest cove old 
Tick-Tock's run into for many a year. Quick was my great-grandfather, not my 
grandfather, but you're close enough -- wouldn't you say so, Gasher, my dear?"
"Ay," Gasher said. "He's trig, right enough, I could've toldjer that. But wery 
pert, all the same."
"Yes," the Tick-Tock Man said thoughtfully. His hands tightened on the boy's 
shoulders and drew Jake closer to that smiling, handsome, lunatic face. "I can 
see he's pert. It's in his eyes. But we'll take care of that, won't we, Gasher?"
It's not Gasher he's talking to, Jake thought. It's me. He thinks he's 
hypnotizing me . . . and maybe he is.
"Ay," Gasher breathed.
Jake felt he was drowning in those wide green eyes. Although the Tick-Tock Man's 
grip was still not really tight, he couldn't get enough breath into his lungs. 
He summoned all of his own force in an effort to break the blonde man's hold 
over him, and again spoke the first words which came to mind:
"So fell Lord Perth, and the countryside did shake with that thunder."
It acted upon Tick-Tock like a hard open-handed blow to the face. He recoiled, 
green eyes narrowing, his grip on Jake's shoulders tightening painfully. "What 
do you say? Where did you hear that?"
"A little bird told me," Jake replied with calculated insolence, and the next 
instant he was flying across the room.
If he had struck the curved wall headfirst, he would have been knocked cold or 
killed. As it happened, he struck on one hip, rebounded, and landed in a heap on 
the iron grillework. He shook his head groggily, looked around, and found 
himself face to face with the woman who was not taking a siesta. He uttered a 
shocked cry and crawled away on his hands and knees. Hoots kicked him in the 
chest, flipping him onto his back. Jake lay there gasping, looking up at the 
knot of rainbow colors where the neon tubes came together. A moment later, 
Tick-Tock's face filled his field of vision. The man's lips were pressed 
together in a hard, straight line, his cheeks flared with color, and there was 
fear in his eyes. The coffin-shaped glass ornament he wore around his neck 
dangled directly in front of Jake's eyes, swinging gently back and forth on its 
silver chain, as if imitating the pendulum of the tiny grandfather clock inside.
"Gasher's right," he said. He gathered a handful of Jake's shirt into one fist 
and pulled him up. "You're pert. But you don't want to be pert with me, cully. 
You don't ever want to be pert with me. Have you heard of people with short 
fuses? Well, I have no fuse at all, and there's a thousand could testify to it 
if I hadn't stilled their tongues for good. If you ever speak to me of Lord 
Perth again . . . ever, ever, ever . . . I'll tear off the top of your skull and 
eat your brains. I'll have none of that bad-luck story in the Cradle of the 
Grays. Do you understand me?"
He shook Jake back and forth like a rag, and the boy burst into tears.
"Do you?"
"Y-Y-Yes!"
"Good." He set Jake upon his feet, where he swayed woozily back and forth, 
wiping at his streaming eyes and leaving smudges of dirt on his cheeks so dark 
they looked like mascara. "Now, my little cull, we're going to have a question 
and answer session here. I'll ask the questions and you'll give the answers. Do 
you understand?"
Jake didn't reply. He was looking at a panel of the ventilator grille which 
circled the chamber.
The Tick-Tock Man grabbed his nose between two of his fingers and squeezed it 
viciously. "Do you understand me?"
"Yes!" Jake cried. His eyes, now watering with pain as well as terror, returned 
to Tick-Tock's face. He wanted to look back at the ventilator grille, wanted 
desperately to verify that what he had seen there was not simply a trick of his 
frightened, overloaded mind, but he didn't dare. He was afraid someone 
else -- Tick-Tock himself, most likely -- would follow his gaze and see what he had 
seen.
"Good." Tick-Tock pulled Jake back over to the chair by his nose, sat down, and 
cocked his leg over the arm again. "Let's have a nice little chin, then. We'll 
begin with your name, shall we? Just what might that be, cully?"
"Jake Chambers." With his nose pinched shut, his voice sounded nasal and foggy.
"And are you a Not-See, Jake Chambers?"
For a moment Jake wondered if this was a peculiar way of asking him if he was 
blind . . . but of course they could all see he wasn't. "I don't understand 
what -- "
Tick-Tock shook him back and forth by the nose. "Not-See! Not-See! You just want 
to stop playing with me, boy!"
"I don't understand -- " Jake began, and then he looked at the old machine-gun 
hanging from the chair and thought once more of the crashed Focke-Wulf. The 
pieces fell together in his mind. "No -- I'm not a Nazi. I'm an American. All that 
ended long before I was born!"
The Tick-Tock Man released his hold on Jake's nose, which immedi­ately began to 
gush blood. "You could have told me that in the first place and saved yourself 
all sorts of pain, Jake Chambers . . . but at least now you understand how we do 
things around here, don't you?"
Jake nodded.
"Ay. Well enough! We'll start with the simple questions."
Jake's eyes drifted back to the ventilator grille. What he had seen before was 
still there; it hadn't been just his imagination. Two gold-ringed eyes floated 
in the dark behind the chrome louvers.
Oy.
Tick-Tock slapped his face, knocking him back into Gasher, who immediately 
pushed him forward again. "It's school-time, dear heart," Gasher whispered. 
"Mind yer lessons, now! Mind em wery sharp!"
"Look at me when I'm talking to you," Tick-Tock said. "I'll have some respect, 
Jake Chambers, or I'll have your balls."
"All right."
Tick-Tock's green eyes gleamed dangerously. "All right what?"
Jake groped for the right answer, pushing away the tangle of ques­tions and the 
sudden hope which had dawned in his mind. And what came was what would have 
served at his own Cradle of the Pubes . . . otherwise known as The Piper School. 
"All right, sir?"
Tick-Tock smiled. "That's a start, boy," he said, and leaned forward, forearms 
on his thighs. "Now . . . what's an American?"
Jake began to talk, trying with all his might not to look toward the ventilator 
grille as he did so.


29
ROLAND BOLSTERED HIS GUN, laid both hands on the valve-wheel, and tried to turn 
it. It wouldn't budge. That didn't much surprise him, but it presented serious 
problems.
Oy stood by his left boot, looking up anxiously, waiting for Roland to open the 
door so they could continue the journey to Jake. The gunslinger only wished it 
was that easy. It wouldn't do to simply stand out here and wait for someone to 
leave; it might be hours or even days before one of the Grays decided to use 
this particular exit again. Gasher and his friends might take it into their 
heads to flay Jake alive while the gunslinger was waiting for it to happen.
He leaned his head against the steel but heard nothing. That didn't surprise 
him, either. He had seen doors like this a long time ago -- you couldn't shoot out 
the locks, and you certainly couldn't hear through them. There might be one; 
there might be two, facing each other, with some dead airspace in between. 
Somewhere, though, there would be a button which would spin the wheel in the 
middle of the door and release the locks. If Jake could reach that button, all 
might still be well.
Roland understood that he was not a full member of this ka-tet; he guessed that 
even Oy was more fully aware than he of the secret life which existed at its 
heart (he very much doubted that the bumbler had tracked Jake with his nose 
alone through those tunnels where water ran in polluted streamlets). 
Nevertheless, he had been able to help Jake when die boy had been trying to 
cross from his world to this one. He had been able to see . . . and when Jake 
had been trying to regain the key he had dropped, he had been able to send a 
message.
He had to be very careful about sending messages this time. At best, the Grays 
would realize something was up. At worst, Jake might misinterpret what Roland 
tried to tell him and do something foolish.
But if he could see . . .
Roland closed his eyes and bent all his concentration toward Jake. He thought of 
the boy's eyes and sent his ka out to find them.
At first there was nothing, but at last an image began to form. It was a face 
framed by long, gray-blonde hair. Green eyes gleamed in deep sockets like 
firedims in a cave. Roland quickly understood that this was the Tick-Tock Man, 
and that he was a descendent of the man who had died in the 
air-carriage -- interesting, but of no practical value in this situation. He tried 
to look beyond the Tick-Tock Man, to see the rest of the room in which Jake was 
being held, and the people in it.
"Ake," Oy whispered, as if reminding Roland that this was neither the time nor 
the place to take a nap.
"Shhh," the gunslinger said, not opening his eyes.
But it was no good. He caught only blurs, probably because Jake's concentration 
was focused so tightly on the Tick-Tock Man; everyone and everything else was 
little more than a series of gray-shrouded shapes on the edges of Jake's 
perception.
Roland opened his eyes again and pounded his left fist lightly into the open 
palm of his right hand. He had an idea that he could push harder and see more . 
. . but that might make the boy aware of his presence. That would be dangerous. 
Casher might smell a rat, and if he didn't the Tick-Tock Man would.
He looked up at the narrow ventilator grilles, then down at Oy. He had wondered 
several times just how smart he was; now it looked as though he was going to 
find out.
Roland reached up with his good left hand, slipped his fingers between the 
horizontal slats of the ventilator grille closest to the hatchway through which 
Jake had been taken, and pulled. The grille popped out in a shower of rust and 
dried moss. The hole behind it was far too small for a man . . . but not for a 
billy-bumbler. He put the grille down, picked Oy up, and spoke softly into his 
ear.
"Go . . . see . . . come back. Do you understand? Don't let them see you. Just 
go and see and come back."
Oy gazed up into his face, saying nothing, not even Jake's name. Roland had no 
idea if he had understood or not, but wasting time in ponderation would not help 
matters. He placed Oy in the ventilator shaft. The bumbler sniffed at the 
crumbles of dried moss, sneezed delicately, then only crouched there with the 
draft rippling through his long, silky fur, looking doubtfully at Roland with 
his strange eyes.
"Go and see and come back," Roland repeated in a whisper, and Oy disappeared 
into the shadows, walking silently, claws retracted, on the pads of his paws.
Roland drew his gun again and did the hardest thing. He waited.
Oy returned less than three minutes later. Roland lifted him out of the shaft 
and put him on the floor. Oy looked up at him with his long neck extended. "How 
many, Oy?" Roland asked. "How many did you see?"
For a long moment he thought the bumbler wouldn't do anything except go on 
staring in his anxious way. Then he lifted his right paw tentatively in the air, 
extended the claws, and looked at it, as if trying to remember something very 
difficult. At last he began to tap on the steel floor.
One . . . two . . . three . . . four. A pause. Then two more, quick and 
delicate, the extended claws clicking lightly on the steel: five, six. Oy paused 
a second time, head down, looking like a child lost in the throes of some 
titanic mental struggle. Then he tapped his claws one final time on the steel, 
looking up at Roland as he did it. "Ake!"
Six. Grays . . . and Jake.
Roland picked Oy up and stroked him. "Good!" he murmured into Oy's ear. In 
truth, he was almost overwhelmed with surprise and grati­tude. He had hoped for 
something, but this careful response was amaz­ing. And he had few doubts about 
the accuracy of the count. "Good boy!"
"Oy! Ake!"
Yes, Jake. Jake was the problem. Jake, to whom he had made a promise he intended 
to keep.
The gunslinger thought deeply in his strange fashion -- that combina­tion of dry 
pragmatism and wild intuition which had probably come from his strange 
grandmother, Deidre the Mad, and had kept him alive all these years after his 
old companions had passed. Now he was depending on it to keep Jake alive, too.
He picked Oy up again, knowing Jake might live -- might -- but the bumbler was almost 
certainly going to die. He whispered several simple words into Oy's cocked ear, 
repeating them over and over. At last he ceased speaking and returned him to the 
ventilator shaft. "Good boy," he whispered. "Go on, now. Get it done. My heart 
goes with you."
"Oy! Art! Ake!" the bumbler whispered, and then scurried off into the darkness 
again.
Roland waited for all hell to break loose.


30
ASK ME A QUESTION, Eddie Dean of New York. And it better be a good one . . . if 
it's not, you and your woman are going to die, no matter where you came from.
And, dear God, how did you respond to something like that?
The dark red light had gone out; now the pink one reappeared. "Hurry," the faint 
voice of Little Blaine urged them. "He's worse than ever before . . . hurry or 
he'll kill you!"
Eddie was vaguely aware that flocks of disturbed pigeons were still swooping 
aimlessly through the Cradle, and that some of them had smashed headfirst into 
the pillars and dropped dead on the floor.
"What does it want?" Susannah hissed at the speaker and the voice of Little 
Blaine somewhere behind it. "For God's sake, what does it want?"
No reply. And Eddie could feel any period of grace they might have started with 
slipping away. He thumbed the TALK/LISTEN and spoke with frantic vivacity as the 
sweat trickled down his cheeks and neck.
Ask me a question.
"So -- Blaine! What have you been up to these last few years? I guess you haven't 
been doing the old southeast run, huh? Any reason why not? Haven't been feeling 
up to snuff?"
No sound but the rustle and flap of the pigeons. In his mind he saw Ardis trying 
to scream as his cheeks melted and his tongue caught fire.
He felt the hair on the nape of his neck stirring and clumping together. Fear? 
Or gathering electricity?
Hurry . . . he's worse than ever before.
"Who built you, anyway?" Eddie asked frantically, thinking: If I only knew what 
the fucking thing wanted! "Want to talk about that? Was it the Grays? Nah . . . 
probably the Great Old Ones, right? Or . . ."
He trailed off. Now he could feel Blaine's silence as a physical weight on his 
skin, like fleshy, groping hands.
"What do you want?" he shouted. "Just what in hell do you want to hear?"
No answer -- but the buttons on the box were glowing an angry dark red again, and 
Eddie knew their time was almost up. He could hear a low buzzing sound nearby -- a 
sound like an electrical generator -- and he didn't believe that sound was just his 
imagination, no matter how much he wanted to think so.
"Blaine!" Susannah shouted suddenly. "Blaine, do you hear me?"
No answer . . . and Eddie felt the air was filling up with electricity as a bowl 
under a tap fills up with water. He could feel it crackling bitterly in his nose 
with every breath he took; could feel his fillings buzzing like angry insects.
"Blaine, I've got a question, and it is a pretty good one! Listen!" She closed 
her eyes for a moment, fingers rubbing frantically at her temples, and then 
opened her eyes again. " 'There is a thing that . . . uh . . . that nothing is, 
and yet it has a name; 'tis sometimes tall and . . . and sometimes short . . .' 
" She broke off and stared at Eddie with wide, agonized eyes. "Help me! I can't 
remember how the rest of it goes!"
Eddie only stared at her as if she had gone mad. What in the name of God was she 
talking about? Then it came to him, and it made a weirdly perfect sense, and the 
rest of the riddle clicked into his mind as neatly as the last two pieces of a 
jigsaw puzzle. He swung toward the speaker again.
" 'It joins our talks, it joins our sport, and plays at every game.' What is it? 
That's our question, Blaine -- what is it?"
The red light illuminating the COMMAND and ENTER buttons below the diamond of 
numbers blinked out. There was an endless moment of silence before Blaine spoke 
again . . . but Eddie was aware that the feeling of electricity crawling all 
over his skin was diminishing.
"A SHADOW, OF COURSE," the voice of Blaine responded. "AN EASY ONE . . . BUT NOT 
BAD. NOT BAD AT ALL."
The voice coming out of the speaker was animated by a thoughtful quality . . . 
and something else, as well. Pleasure? Longing? Eddie couldn't quite decide, but 
he did know there was something in that voice that reminded him of Little 
Blaine. He knew something else, as well: Susannah had saved their bacon, at 
least for the time being. He bent down and kissed her cold, sweaty brow.
"DO YOU KNOW ANY MORE RIDDLES?" Blaine asked.
"Yes, lots," Susannah said at once. "Our companion, Jake, has a whole book of 
them."
"FROM THE NEW YORK PLACE OF WHERE?" Blaine asked, and now the tone of his voice 
was perfectly clear, at least to Eddie. Blaine might be a machine, but Eddie had 
been a heroin junkie for six years, and he knew stone greed when he heard it.
"From New York, right," he said. "But Jake has been taken prisoner. A man named 
Gasher took him."
No answer . . . and then the buttons glowed that faint, rosy pink again. "Good 
so far," the voice of Little Blaine whispered. "But you must be careful . . . 
he's tricky. ..."
The red lights reappeared at once.
"DID ONE OF YOU SPEAK?" Blaine's voice was cold and -- Eddie could have sworn it 
was so -- suspicious.
He looked at Susannah. Susannah looked back with the wide, fright­ened eyes of a 
little girl who has heard something unnameable moving slyly beneath the bed.
"I cleared my throat, Blaine," Eddie said. He swallowed and armed sweat from his 
forehead. "I'm . . . shit, tell the truth and shame the devil. I'm scared to 
death."
"THAT IS VERY WISE OF YOU. THESE RIDDLES OF WHICH YOU SPEAK -- ARE THEY STUPID? I 
WON'T HAVE MY PATIENCE TRIED WITH STUPID RIDDLES."
"Most are smart," Susannah said, but she looked anxiously at Eddie as she said 
it.
"YOU LIE. YOU DON'T KNOW THE QUALITY OF THESE RIDDLES AT ALL."
"How can you say -- "
"VOICE ANALYSIS. FRICTIVE PATTERNS AND DIPH­THONG STRESS-EMPHASIS PROVIDE A 
RELIABLE QUOTIENT OF TRUTH/UNTRUTH. PREDICTIVE RELIABILITY IS 97 PER CENT, PLUS 
OR MINUS .5 PER CENT." The voice fell silent for a moment, and when it spoke 
again, it did so in a menacing drawl that Eddie found very familiar. It was the 
voice of Humphrey Bogart. "I SHUGGEST YOU SHTICK TO WHAT YOU KNOW, SHWEET-HEART. 
THE LAST GUY THAT TRIED SHADING THE TRUTH WITH ME WOUND UP AT THE BOTTOM OF THE 
SEND IN A PAIR OF SHEMENT COWBOY BOOTS."
"Christ," Eddie said. "We walked four hundred miles or so to meet the computer 
version of Rich Little. How can you imitate guys like John Wayne and Humphrey 
Bogart, Blaine? Guys from our world?"
Nothing.
"Okay, you don't want to answer that one. How about this one -- if a riddle was 
what you wanted, why didn't you just say so?"
Again there was no answer, but Eddie discovered that he didn't really need one. 
Blaine liked riddles, so he had asked them one. Susannah had solved it. Eddie 
guessed that if she had failed to do so, the two of them would now look like a 
couple of giant-economy-size charcoal bri­quets lying on the floor of the Cradle 
of Lud.
"Blaine?" Susannah asked uneasily. There was no answer. "Blaine, are you still 
there?"
"YES. TELL ME ANOTHER ONE."
"When is a door not a door?" Eddie asked.
"WHEN IT'S AJAR. YOU'LL HAVE TO DO BETTER THAN THAT IF YOU REALLY EXPECT ME TO 
TAKE YOU SOME­WHERE. CAN YOU DO BETTER THAN THAT?"
"If Roland gets here, I'm sure we can," Susannah said. "Regardless of how good 
the riddles in Jake's book may be, Roland knows hundreds --  he actually studied 
them as a child." Having said this, she realized she could not conceive of 
Roland as a child. "Will you take us, Blaine?"
"I MIGHT," Blaine said, and Eddie was quite sure he heard a dim thread of 
cruelty running through that voice. "BUT YOU'LL HAVE TO PRIME THE PUMP TO GET ME 
GOING, AND MY PUMP PRIMES BACKWARD."
"Meaning what?" Eddie asked, looking through the bars at the smooth pink line of 
Blaine's back. But Blaine did not reply to this or any of the other questions 
they asked. The bright orange lights stayed on, but both Big Blaine and Little 
Blaine seemed to have gone into hiberna­tion. Eddie, however, knew better. 
Blaine was awake. Blaine was watch­ing them. Blaine was listening to their 
frictive patterns and diphthong stress-emphasis.
He looked at Susannah.
" 'You'll have to prime the pump, but my pump primes backward,' " he said 
bleakly. "It's a riddle, isn't it?"
"Yes, of course." She looked at the triangular window, so like a half-lidded, 
mocking eye, and then pulled him close so she could whisper in his ear. "It's 
totally insane, Eddie -- schizophrenic, paranoid, probably delusional as well."
"Tell me about it," he breathed back. "What we've got here is a lunatic genius 
ghost-in-the-computer monorail that likes riddles and goes faster than the speed 
of sound. Welcome to the fantasy version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
"Do you have any idea what the answer is?"
Eddie shook his head. "You?"
"A little tickle, way back in my mind. False light, probably. I keep thinking 
about what Roland said: a good riddle is always sensible and always solvable. 
It's like a magician's trick."
"Misdirection."
She nodded. "Go fire another shot, Eddie -- let em know we're still here."
"Yeah. Now if we could only be sure that they're still there."
"Do you think they are, Eddie?"
Eddie had started away, and he spoke without stopping or looking back. "I don't 
know -- that's a riddle not even Blaine could answer."


31
"COULD I HAVE SOMETHING to drink?" Jake asked. His voice came out sounding furry 
and nasal. Both his mouth and the tissues in his abused nose were swelling up. 
He looked like someone who has gotten the worst of it in a nasty street-fight.
"Oh, yes," Tick-Tock replied judiciously. "You could. I'd say you certainly 
could. We have lots to drink, don't we, Copperhead?"
"Ay," said a tall, bespectacled man in a white silk shirt and a pair of black 
silk trousers. He looked like a college professor in a turn-of-the-century Punch 
cartoon. "No shortage of po-ter-bulls here."
The Tick-Tock Man, once more seated at ease in his throne-like chair, looked 
humorously at Jake. "We have wine, beer, ale, and, of course, good old water. 
Sometimes that's all a body wants, isn't it? Cool, clear, sparkling water. How 
does that sound, cully?"
Jake's throat, which was also swollen and as dry as sandpaper, prick­led 
painfully. "Sounds good," he whispered.
"It's woke my thirsty up, I know that," Tick-Tock said. His lips spread in a 
smile. His green eyes sparkled. "Bring me a dipper of water, Tilly -- I'll be 
damned if I know what's happened to my manners."
Tilly stepped through the hatchway on the far side of the room -- it was opposite 
the one through which Jake and Gasher had entered. Jake watched her go and 
licked his swollen lips.
"Now," Tick-Tock said, returning his gaze to Jake, "you say the American city 
you came from -- this New York -- is much like Lud."
"Well . . . not exactly ..."
"But you do recognize some of the machinery, Tick-Tock pressed. "Valves and 
pumps and such. Not to mention the firedim tubes."
"Yes. We call it neon, but it's the same."
Tick-Tock reached out toward him. Jake cringed, but Tick-Tock only patted him on 
the shoulder. "Yes, yes; close enough." His eyes gleamed. "And you've heard of 
computers?"
"Sure, but -- "
Tilly returned with the dipper and timidly approached the Tick-Tock Man's 
throne. He took it and held it out to Jake. When Jake reached for it, Tick-Tock 
pulled it back and drank himself. As Jake watched the water trickle from 
Tick-Tock's mouth and roll down his naked chest, he began to shake. He couldn't 
help it.
The Tick-Tock Man looked over the dipper at him, as if just remem­bering that 
Jake was still there. Behind him, Gasher, Copperhead, Bran-don, and Hoots were 
grinning like schoolyard kids who have just heard an amusing dirty joke.
"Why, I got thinking about how thirsty I was and forgot all about you!" 
Tick-Tock cried. "That's mean as hell, gods damn my eyes! But, of course, it 
looked so good . . . and it is good . . . cold . . . clear ..."
He held the dipper out to Jake. When Jake reached for it, Tick-Tock pulled it 
back.
"First, cully, tell me what you know about dipolar computers and transitive 
circuits," he said coldly.
"What ..." Jake looked toward the ventilator grille, but the golden eyes were 
still gone. He was beginning to think he had imagined them after all. He shifted 
his gaze back to the Tick-Tock Man, understanding one thing clearly: he wasn't 
going to get any water. He had been stupid to even dream he might. "What are 
dipolar computers?"
The Tick-Tock Man's face contorted with rage; he threw the remain­der of the 
water into Jake's bruised, puffy face. "Don't you play it light with me!" he 
shrieked. He stripped off the Seiko watch and shook it in front of Jake. "When I 
asked you if this ran on a dipolar circuit, you said it didn't! So don't tell me 
you don't know what I'm talking about when you already made it clear that you 
do!"
"But . . . but ..." Jake couldn't go on. His head was whirling with fear and 
confusion. He was aware, in some far-off fashion, that he was licking as much 
water as he could off his lips.
"There's a thousand of those ever-fucking dipolar computers right under the 
ever-fucking city, maybe a HUNDRED thousand, and the only one that still works 
don't do a thing except play Watch Me and run those drums! I want those 
computers! I want them working for ME!"
The Tick-Tock Man bolted forward on his throne, seized Jake, shook him back and 
forth, and then threw him to the floor. Jake struck one of the lamps, knocking 
it over, and the bulb blew with a hollow coughing sound. Tilly gave a little 
shriek and stepped backward, her eyes wide and frightened. Copperhead and 
Brandon looked at each other uneasily.
Tick-Tock leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, and screamed into Jake's face: 
"I want them AND I MEAN TO HAVE THEM!"
Silence fell in the room, broken only by the soft whoosh of warm air pouring 
from the ventilators. Then the twisted rage on the Tick-Tock Man's face 
disappeared so suddenly it might never have existed at all. It was replaced by 
another charming smile. He leaned further forward and helped Jake to his feet.
"Sorry. I get thinking about the potential of this place and sometimes I get 
carried away. Please accept my apology, cully." He picked up the overturned 
dipper and threw it at Tilly. "Fill this up, you useless bitch! What's the 
matter with you?"
He turned his attention back to Jake, still smiling his TV game-show host smile.
"All right; you've had your little joke and I've had mine. Now tell me 
everything you know about dipolar computers and transitive circuits. Then you 
can have a drink."
Jake opened his mouth to say something -- he had no idea what --  and then, 
incredibly, Roland's voice was in his mind, filling it.
Distract them, Jake -- and if there's a button that opens the door, get close to 
it.
The Tick-Tock Man was watching him closely. "Something just came into your mind, 
didn't it, cully? I always know. So don't keep it a secret; tell your old friend 
Ticky."
Jake caught movement in the corner of his eye. Although he did not dare glance 
up at the ventilator panel -- not with all the Tick-Tock Man's notice bent upon 
him -- he knew that Oy was back, peering down through the louvers.
Distract them . . . and suddenly Jake knew just how to do that.
"I did think of something," he said, "but it wasn't about computers. It was 
about my old pal Gasher. And his old pal, Hoots."
"Here! Here!" Gasher cried. "What are you talking about, boy?"
"Why don't you tell Tick-Tock who really gave you the password, Gasher? Then I 
can tell Tick-Tock where you keep it."
The Tick-Tock Man's puzzled gaze shifted from Jake to Gasher. "What's he talking 
about?"
"Nothin!" Gasher said, but he could not forbear a quick glance at Hoots. "He's 
just runnin his gob, tryin to get off the hot-seat by puttin me on it, Ticky. I 
told you he was pert! Didn't I say -- "
Take a look in his scarf, why don't you?" Jake asked. "He's got a scrap of paper 
with the word written on it. I had to read it to him because he couldn't even do 
that."
There was no sudden rage on Tick-Tock's part this time; his face darkened 
gradually instead, like a summer sky before a terrible thunderstorm.
"Let me see your scarf, Gasher," he said in a soft, thick voice. "Let your old 
pal sneak a peek."
"He's lyin, I tell you!" Gasher cried, putting his hands on his scarf and taking 
two steps backward toward the wall. Directly above him, Oy's gold-ringed eyes 
gleamed. "All you got to do is look in his face to see lyin's what a pert little 
cull like him does best!"
The Tick-Tock Man shifted his gaze to Hoots, who looked sick with fear. "What 
about it?" Tick-Tock asked in his soft, terrible voice. "What about it, 
Hooterman? I know you and Gasher was butt-buddies of old, and I know you've the 
brains of a hung goose, but surely not even you could be stupid enough to write 
down a password to the inner chamber . . . could you? Could you?"
"I ... I oney thought . . ." Hoots began.
"Shut up!" Gasher shouted. He shot Jake a look of pure, sick hate. "I'll kill 
you for this, dearie -- see if I don't."
"Take off your scarf, Gasher," the Tick-Tock Man said. "I want a look inside 
it."
Jake sidled a step closer to the podium with the burtons on it.
"No!" Gasher's hands returned to the scarf and pressed against it as if it might 
fly away of its own accord. "Be damned if I will!"
"Brandon, grab him," Tick-Tock said.
Brandon lunged for Gasher. Gasher's move wasn't as quick as Tick-Tock's had 
been, but it was quick enough; he bent, yanked a knife from the top of his boot, 
and buried it in Brandon's arm.
"Oh, you barstard!" Brandon shouted in surprise and pain as blood began to pour 
out of his arm.
"Lookit what you did!" Tilly screamed.
"Do I have to do everything around here myself?" Tick-Tock shouted, more 
exasperated than angry, it seemed, and rose to his feet. Gasher retreated from 
him, weaving the bloody knife back and forth in front of his face in mystic 
patterns. He kept his other hand planted firmly on top of his head.
"Draw back," he panted. "I loves you like a brother, Ticky, but if you don't 
draw back, I'll hide this blade in your guts -- so I will."
"You? Not likely," the Tick-Tock Man said with a laugh. He removed his own knife 
from its scabbard and held it delicately by the bone hilt. All eyes were on the 
two of them. Jake took two quick steps to the podium with its little cluster of 
buttons and reached for the one he thought the Tick-Took man had pushed.
Gasher was backing along the curved wall, the tubes of light painting his 
mandrus-riddled face in a succession of sick colors: bile-green, fever-red, 
jaundice-yellow. Now it was the Tick-Tock Man standing below the ventilator 
grille where Oy was watching.
"Put it down, Gasher," Tick-Tock said in a reasonable tone of voice. "You 
brought the boy as I asked; if anyone else gets pricked over this, it'll be 
Hoots, not you. Just show me -- "
Jake saw Oy crouching to spring and understood two things: what the humbler 
meant to do and who had put him up to it.
"Oy, no!" he screamed.
All of them turned to look at him. At that moment Oy leaped, hitting the flimsy 
ventilator grille and knocking it free. The Tick-Tock Man wheeled toward die 
sound, and Oy fell onto his upturned face, biting and slashing.


32
ROLAND HEARD IT FAINTLY even through the twin doors -- Oy, no! -- and his heart sank. 
He waited for the valve-wheel to turn, but it did not. He closed his eyes and 
sent with all his might: The door, Jake! Open the door!
He sensed no response, and the pictures were gone. His communica­tion line with 
Jake, flimsy to begin with, had now been severed.


33
THE TICK-TOCK MAN blundered backward, cursing and screaming and grabbing at the 
writhing, biting, digging thing on his face. He felt Oy's claws punch into his 
left eye, popping it, and a horrible red pain sank into his head like a flaming 
torch thrown down a deep well. At that point, rage overwhelmed pain. He seized 
Oy, tore him off his face, and held him over his head, meaning to twist him like 
a rag.
"No!" Jake wailed. He forgot about the button which unlocked the doors and 
seized the gun hanging from the back of the chair.
Tilly shrieked. The others scattered. Jake levelled the old German machine-gun 
at the Tick-Tock Man. Oy, upside down in those huge, strong hands and bent 
almost to the snapping point, writhed madly and slashed his teeth into the air. 
He shrieked in agony -- a horribly human sound.
"Leave him alone, you bastard!" Jake screamed, and pressed the trigger.
He had enough presence of mind left to aim low. The roar of the Schmeisser .40 
was ear-splitting in the enclosed space, although it fired only five or six 
rounds. One of the lighted tubes popped in a burst of cold orange fire. A hole 
appeared an inch above the left knee of the Tick-Tock Man's tight-fitting 
trousers, and a dark red stain began to spread at once. Tick-Tock's mouth opened 
in a shocked O of surprise, an expression which said more clearly than words 
could have done that, for all his intelligence, Tick-Tock had expected to live a 
long, happy life where he shot people but was never shot himself. Shot at, 
perhaps, but actually hit? That surprised expression said that just wasn't 
supposed to be in the cards.
Welcome to the real world, you fuck, Jake thought.
Tick-Tock dropped Oy to the iron grillework floor to grab at his wounded leg. 
Copperhead lunged at Jake, got an arm around his throat, and then Oy was on him, 
barking shrilly and chewing at Copperhead's ankle through the black silk pants. 
Copperhead screamed and danced away, shaking Oy back and forth at the end of his 
leg. Oy clung like a limpet. Jake turned to see the Tick-Tock Man crawling 
toward him. He had retrieved his knife and the blade was now clamped between his 
teeth.
"Goodbye, Ticky," Jake said, and pressed the Schmeisser's trigger again. Nothing 
happened. Jake didn't know if it was empty or jammed, and this was hardly the 
time to speculate. He took two steps backward before finding further retreat 
blocked by the big chair which had served the Tick-Tock Man as a throne. Before 
he could slip around, putting the chair between them, Tick-Tock had grabbed his 
ankle. His other hand went to the hilt of his knife. The ruins of his left eye 
lay on his cheek like a glob of mint jelly; the right eye glared up at Jake with 
insane hatred.
Jake tried to pull away from the clutching hand and went sprawling on the 
Tick-Tock man's throne. His eye fell on a pocket which had been sewn into the 
right-hand arm-rest. Jutting from the elasticized top was the cracked pearl 
handle of a revolver.
"Oh, cully, how you'll suffer!" the Tick-Tock Man whispered ecstati­cally. The O 
of surprise had been replaced by a wide, trembling grin. "Oh how you'll suffer! 
And how happy I'll be to ... What -- ?"
The grin slackened and the surprised O began to reappear as Jake pointed the 
cheesy nickel-plated revolver at him and thumbed back the hammer. The grip on 
Jake's ankle tightened until it seemed to him that the bones there must snap.
"You dasn't!" Tick-Tock said in a screamy whisper.
"Yes I do," Jake said grimly, and pulled the trigger of the Tick-Tock Man's 
runout gun. There was a Hat crack, much less dramatic than the Schmeisser's 
Teutonic roar. A small black hole appeared high up on the right side of 
Tick-Tock's forehead. The Tick-Tock Man went on staring up at Jake, disbelief in 
his remaining eye.
Jake tried to make himself shoot him again and couldn't do it.
Suddenly a flap of the Tick-Tock Man's scalp peeled away like old wallpaper and 
dropped on his right cheek. Roland would have known what this meant; Jake, 
however, was now almost beyond coherent thought. A dark, panicky horror was 
spinning across his mind like a tornado funnel. He cringed back in the big chair 
as the hand on his ankle fell away and the Tick-Tock Man collapsed forward on 
his face.
The door. He had to open the door and let the gunslinger in.
Focusing on that and nothing but, Jake let the pearl-handled revolver clatter to 
the iron grating and pushed himself out of the chair. He was reaching again for 
the button he thought he had seen Tick-Tock push when a pair of hands settled 
around his throat and dragged him back­ward, away from the podium.
"I said I'd kill you for it, my narsty little pal," a voice whispered in his 
ear, "and the Gasherman always keeps his promises."
Jake flailed behind him with both hands and found nothing but thin air. Gasher's 
fingers sank into his throat, choking relentlessly. The world started to turn 
gray in front of his eyes. Gray quickly deepened to purple, and purple to black.


34
A PUMP STARTED UP, and the valve-wheel in the center of the hatch spun rapidly. 
Gods be thanked! Roland thought. He seized the wheel with his right hand almost 
before it had stopped moving and yanked it open. The other door was ajar; from 
beyond it came the sounds of men fighting and Oy's bark, now shrill with pain 
and fury.
Roland kicked the door open with his boot and saw Gasher throttling Jake. Oy had 
left Copperhead and was now trying to make Gasher let go of Jake, but Gasher's 
boot was doing double duty: protecting its owner from the bumbler's teeth, and 
protecting Oy from the virulent infection which ran in Gasher's blood. Brandon 
stabbed Oy in the flank again in an effort to make him stop worrying Gasher's 
ankle, but Oy paid no heed. Jake hung from his captor's dirty hands like a 
puppet whose strings have been cut. His face was bluish-white, his swollen lips 
a delicate shade of lavender.
Gasher looked up. "You," he snarled.
"Me," Roland agreed. He fired once and tin; left side of Gasher's head 
disintegrated. The man went flying backward, bloodstained yellow scarf 
unravelling, and landed on top of the Tick-Tock Man. His feet drummed 
spastically on the iron grillework for a moment and then fell still.
The gunslinger shot Brandon twice, fanning the hammer of his revolver with the 
flat of his right hand. Brandon, who had been bent over Oy for another stroke, 
spun around, struck the wall, and slid slowly down it, clutching at one of the 
tubes. Green swamplight spilled out from between his loosening fingers.
Oy limped to where Jake lay and began licking his pale, still face.
Copperhead and Hoots had seen enough. They ran side by side for the small door 
through which Tilly had gone to get the dipper of water. It was the wrong time 
for chivalry; Roland shot them both in the back. He would have to move fast now, 
very fast indeed, and he would not risk being waylaid by these two if they 
should chance to rediscover their guts.
A cluster of bright orange lights came on at the top of the capsule-shaped 
enclosure, and an alarm began to go off: in broad, hoarse blats that bartered 
the walls. After a moment or two, the emergency lights began to pulse in sync 
with the alarm.


35
EDDIE WAS RETURNING TO Susannah when the alarm began to wail. He yelled in 
surprise and raised the Ruger, pointing it at nothing. "What's happening?"
Susannah shook her head -- she had no idea. The alarm was scary, but that was only 
part of the problem; it was also loud enough to be physically painful. Those 
amplified jags of sound made Eddie think of a tractor-trailer horn raised to the 
tenth power.
At that moment, the orange arc-sodiums began to pulse. When he reached 
Susannah's chair, Eddie saw that the COMMAND and ENTER buttons were also pulsing 
in bright red beats. They looked like winking eyes.
"Blaine, what's happening?" he shouted. He looked around but saw only wildly 
jumping shadows. "Are you doing this?"
Blaine's only response was laughter -- terrible mechanical laughter that made Eddie 
think of the clockwork clown that had stood outside the House of Horrors at 
Coney Island when he was a little kid.
"Blaine, stop it!" Susannah shrieked. "How can we think of an answer to your 
riddle with that air-raid siren going off?"
The laughter stopped us suddenly as it began, but Blaine made no reply. Or 
perhaps he did; from beyond the bars that separated them from the platform, huge 
engines powered by frictionless slo-trans turbines awoke at the command of the 
dipolar computers the Tick-Tock Man had so lusted after. For the first time in a 
decade, Blaine the Mono was awake and cycling up toward running speed.


36
THE ALARM, WHICH HAD indeed been built to warn Lud's long-dead residents of an 
impending air attack (and which had not even been tested in almost a thousand 
years), blanketed the city with sound. All the lights which still operated came 
on and began to pulse in sync. Pubes above the streets and Grays below them were 
alike convinced that the end they had always feared was finally upon them. The 
Grays suspected some cataclysmic mechanical breakdown was occurring. The Pubes, 
who had always believed that the ghosts lurking in the machines below the city 
would some day rise up to take their long-delayed vengeance on the still living, 
were probably closer to the actual truth of what was happening.
Certainly there had been an intelligence left in the ancient comput­ers below 
the city, a single living organism which had long ago ceased to exist sanely 
under conditions that, within its merciless dipolar circuits, could only be 
absolute reality. It had held its increasingly alien logic within its banks of 
memory for eight hundred years and might have held them so for eight hundred 
more, if not for the arrival of Roland and his friends; yet this mens non corpus 
had brooded and grown ever more insane with each passing year; even in its 
increasing periods of sleep it could be said to dream, and these dreams grew 
steadily more abnormal as the world moved on. Now, although the unthinkable 
machinery which maintained the Beams had weakened, this insane and inhuman 
intelli­gence had awakened in the rooms of ruin and had begun once more, 
although as bodiless as any ghost, to stumble through the halls of the dead.
In other words, Blaine the Mono was preparing to get out of Dodge.


37
ROLAND HEARD A FOOTSTEP behind him as he knelt by Jake and turned, raising his 
gun. Tilly, her dough-colored face a mask of confusion and superstitious fear, 
raised her hands and shrieked: "Don't kill me, sai! Please! Don't kill me!"
"Run, then," Roland said curtly, and as Tilly began to move, he struck her calf 
with the barrel of his revolver. "Not that way -- through the door I came in. And 
if you ever see me again, I'll be the last thing you ever see. Now go!"
She disappeared into the leaping, circling shadows.
Roland dropped his head to Jake's chest, slamming his palm against his other ear 
to deaden the pulse of the alarm. He heard the boy's heartbeat, slow but strong. 
He slipped his arms around the boy, and as he did, Jakes's eyes fluttered open. 
"You didn't let me fall this time." His voice was no more than a hoarse whisper.
"No. Not this time, and not ever again. Don't try your voice."
"Where's Oy?"
"Oy!" the bumbler barked. "Oy!"
Brandon had slashed Oy several times, but none of the wounds seemed mortal or 
even serious. It was clear that he was in some pain, but it was equally clear he 
was transported with joy. He regarded Jake with sparkling eyes, his pink tongue 
lolling out. "Ake, Ake, Ake!"
Jake burst into tears and reached for him; Oy limped into the circle of his arms 
and allowed himself to be hugged for a moment.
Roland got up and looked around. His gaze fixed on the door on the far side of 
the room. The two men he'd backshot had been heading in that direction, and the 
woman had also wanted to go that way. The gunslinger went toward the door with 
Jake in his arms and Oy at his heel. He kicked one of the dead Grays aside, and 
ducked through. The room beyond was a kitchen. It managed to look like a 
hog-wallow in spite of the built-in appliances and the stainless steel walls; 
the Grays were apparently not much interested in housekeeping.
"Drink," Jake whispered. "Please ... so thirsty."
Roland felt a queer doubling, as if time had folded backward on itself. He 
remembered lurching out of the desert, crazy with the heat and the emptiness. He 
remembered passing out in the stable of the way station, half-dead from thirst, 
and waking at the taste of cool water trick­ling down his throat. The boy had 
taken off his shirt, soaked it under the flow from the pump, and given him to 
drink. Now it was his turn to do for Jake what Jake had already done for him.
Roland glanced around and saw a sink. He went over to it and turned on the 
faucet. Cold, clear water rushed out. Over them, around them, under them, the 
alarm roared on and on.
"Can you stand?"
Jake nodded. "I think so."
Roland set the boy on his feet, ready to catch him if he looked too wobbly, but 
Jake hung onto the sink, then ducked his head beneath the flowing water. Roland 
picked Oy up and looked at his wounds. They were already clotting. You got off 
very lucky, my furry friend, Roland thought, then reached past Jake to cup a 
palmful of water for the animal. Oy drank it eagerly.
Jake drew back from the faucet with his hair plastered to the sides of his face. 
His skin was still too pale and the signs that he had been badly beaten were 
clearly visible, but he looked better than he had when Roland had first bent 
over him. For one terrible moment, the gunslinger had been positive Jake was 
dead.
He found himself wishing he could go back and kill Gasher again, and that led 
him to another thought.
"What about the one Gasher called the Tick-Tock Man? Did you see him, Jake?"
"Yes. Oy ambushed him. Tore up his face. Then I shot him."
"Dead?"
Jake's lips began to tremble. He pressed them firmly together. "Yes. In his . . 
." He tapped his forehead high above his right eyebrow. "I was l-l- ... I was 
lucky."
Roland looked at him appraisingly, then slowly shook his head. "You know, I 
doubt that. But never mind now. Come on."
"Where are we going?" Jake's voice was still little more than a husky murmur, 
and he kept looking past Roland's shoulder toward the room where he had almost 
died.
Roland pointed across the kitchen. Beyond another hatchway, the corridor 
continued. "That'll do for a start."
"GUNSLINGER," a voice boomed from everywhere.
Roland wheeled around, one arm cradling Oy and the other around Jake's 
shoulders, but there was no one to see.
"Who speaks to me?" he shouted.
"NAME YOURSELF, GUNSLINGER."
"Roland of Gilead, son of Steven. Who speaks to me?"
"GILEAD IS NO MORE," the voice mused, ignoring the question.
Roland looked up and saw patterns of concentric rings in the ceiling. The voice 
was coming from those.
"NO GUNSLINGER HAS WALKED IN-WORLD OR MID-WORLD FOR ALMOST THREE HUNDRED YEARS."
"I and my friends are the last."
Jake took Oy from Roland. The bumbler at once began to lick the boy's swollen 
face; his gold-ringed eyes were full of adoration and happiness.
"It's Blaine," Jake whispered to Roland. "Isn't it?"
Roland nodded. Of course it was -- but he had an idea that there was a great deal 
more to Blaine than just a monorail train.
"BOY! ARE YOU JAKE OF NEW YORK?"
Jake pressed closer to Roland and looked up at the speakers. "Yes," he said. 
"That's me. Jake of New York. Uh . . . son of Elmer."
"DO YOU STILL HAVE THE BOOK OF RIDDLES? THE ONE OF WHICH I HAVE BEEN TOLD?"
Jake reached over his shoulder, and an expression of dismayed recol­lection 
filled his face as his fingers touched nothing but his own back. When he looked 
at Roland again, the gunslinger was holding his pack out toward him, and 
although the man's narrow, finely carved face was as expressionless as ever, 
Jake sensed the ghost of a smile lurking at die corners of his mouth.
"You'll have to fix die straps," Roland said as Jake took the pack. "I made them 
longer."
"But Riddle-De-Dum! -- ?"
Roland nodded. "Both books are still in there."
"WHAT YOU GOT, LITTLE PILGRIM?" the voice inquired in a leisurely drawl.
"Gripes!" Jake said.
It can see us as well as hear us, Roland thought, and a moment later he spotted 
a small glass eye in one corner, far above a man's normal line of sight. He felt 
a chill slip over his skin, and knew from both the troubled look on Jake's face 
and the way the boy's arms had tightened around Oy that he wasn't alone in his 
unease. That voice belonged to a machine, an incredibly smart machine, a playful 
machine, but there was something very wrong with it, all the same.
"The book," Jake said. "I've got the riddle book."
"GOOD." There was an almost human satisfaction in the voice. "REALLY EXCELLENT."
A scruffy, bearded fellow suddenly appeared in the doorway on the far side of 
the kitchen. A bloodstained, dirt-streaked yellow scarf flapped from the 
newcomer's upper arm. "Fires in the walls!" he screamed. In his panic, he seemed 
not to realize that Roland and Jake were not part of his miserable subterranean 
ka-tet. "Smoke on the lower levels! People killin theirselves! Somepin's gone 
wrong! Hell, everythin's gone wrong! We gotta -- "
The door of the oven suddenly dropped open like an unhinged jaw. A thick beam of 
blue-white fire shot out and engulfed the scruffy man's head. He was driven 
backward with his clothes in flames and his skin boiling on his face.
Jake stared up at Roland, stunned and horrified. Roland put an arm about the 
boy's shoulders.
"HE INTERRUPTED ME," the voice said. "THAT WAS RUDE, WASN'T IT?"
"Yes," Roland said calmly. "Extremely rude."
"SUSANNAH OF NEW YORK SAYS YOU HAVE A GREAT MANY RIDDLES BY HEART, ROLAND OF 
GILEAD. IS THIS TRUE?"
"Yes."
There was an explosion in one of the rooms opening off this arm of the corridor; 
the floor shuddered beneath their feet and voices screamed in a jagged chorus. 
The pulsing lights and the endless, blatting siren faded momentarily, then came 
back strong. A little skein of bitter, acrid smoke drifted from the ventilators. 
Oy got a whiff and sneezed.
"TELL ME ONE OF YOUR RIDDLES, GUNSLINGER," the voice invited. It was serene and 
untroubled, as if they were all sitting together in a peaceful village square 
somewhere instead of beneath a city that seemed on the verge of ripping itself 
apart.
Roland thought for a moment, and what came to mind was Cuthbert's favorite 
riddle. "All right, Blaine," he said, "I will. What's better than all the gods 
and worse than Old Man Splitfoot? Dead people eat it always; live people who eat 
it die slow."
There was a long pause. Jake put his face in Oy's fur to try to get away from 
the stink of the roasted Gray.
"Be careful, gunslinger." The voice was as small as a cool puff of breeze on 
summer's hottest day. The voice of the machine had come from all the speakers, 
but this one came only from the speaker directly overhead. "Be careful, Jake of 
New York. Remember that these are The Drawers. Go slow and be very careful."
Jake looked at the gunslinger with widening eyes. Roland gave his head a small, 
faint shake and raised one finger. He looked as if he was scratching the side of 
his nose, but that finger also lay across his lips, and Jake had an idea Roland 
was actually telling him to keep his mouth shut.
"A CLEVER RIDDLE," Blaine said at last. There seemed to be real admiration in 
its voice. "THE ANSWER IS NOTHING, IS IT NOT?"
"That's right," Roland said. "You're pretty clever yourself, Blaine."
When the voice spoke again, Roland heard what Eddie had heard already: a deep 
and ungovernable greed. "ASK ME ANOTHER."
Roland drew a deep breath. "Not just now."
"I HOPE YOU ARE NOT REFUSING ME, ROLAND, SON OF STEVEN, FOR THAT IS ALSO RUDE. 
EXTREMELY RUDE."
"Take us to our friends and help us get out of Lud," Roland said. "Then there 
may be time for riddling."
"I COULD KILL YOU WHERE YOU STAND," the voice said, and now it was as cold as 
winter's darkest day.
"Yes," Roland said. "I'm sure you could. But the riddles would die with us."
"I COULD TAKE THE BOY'S BOOK."
"Thieving is ruder than either refusal or interruption," Roland remarked. He 
spoke as if merely passing the time of day, but the remaining fingers of his 
right hand were tight on Jake's shoulder.
"Besides," Jake said, looking up at the speaker in the ceiling, "the answers 
aren't in the book. Those pages were torn out." In a flash of inspiration, he 
tapped his temple. "They're up here, though."
"YOU FELLOWS WANT TO REMEMBER THAT NOBODY LOVES A SMARTASS," Blaine said. There 
was another explosion, this one louder and closer. One of the ventilator grilles 
blew off and shot across the kitchen like a projectile. A moment later two men 
and a woman emerged through the door which led to the rest of the Grays' warren. 
The gunslinger levelled his revolver at them, then lowered it as they stumbled 
across the kitchen and into the silo beyond without so much as a look at Roland 
and Jake. To Roland they looked like animals fleeing before a forest fire.
A stainless steel panel in the ceiling slid open, revealing a square of 
darkness. Something silvery flashed within it, and a few moments later a steel 
sphere, perhaps a foot in diameter, dropped from the hole and hung in the air of 
the kitchen.
"FOLLOW," Blaine said flatly.
"Will it take us to Eddie and Susannah?" Jake asked hopefully.
Blaine replied only with silence . . . but when the sphere began floating down 
the corridor, Roland and Jake followed it.




38
JAKE HAD NO CLEAR memory of the time which followed, and that was probably 
merciful. He had left his world over a year before nine hundred people would 
commit suicide together in a small South American country called Gyana, but he 
knew about the periodic death-rushes of the lem­mings, and what was happening in 
the disintegrating undercity of the Grays was like that.
There were explosions, some on their level but most far below them; acrid smoke 
occasionally drifted from the ventilator grilles, but most of the air-purifiers 
were still working and they whipped the worst of it away before it could gather 
in choking clouds. They saw no fires. Yet the Grays were reacting as if the time 
of the apocalypse had come. Most only fled, their faces blank O's of panic, but 
many had committed suicide in the halls and interconnected rooms through which 
the steel sphere led Roland and Jake. Some had shot themselves; many more had 
slashed their throats or wrists; a few appeared to have swallowed poison. On all 
the faces of the dead was the same expression of overmastering terror. Jake 
could only vaguely understand what had driven them to this. Roland had a better 
idea of what had happened to them -- to their minds -- when the long-dead city first 
came to life around them and then seemed to commence tearing itself apart. And 
it was Roland who understood that Blaine was doing it on purpose. That Blaine 
was driving them to it.
They ducked around a man hanging from an overhead heating-duct and pounded down 
a flight of steel stairs behind the floating steel ball.
"Jake!" Roland shouted. "You never let me in at all, did you?"
Jake shook his head.
"I didn't think so. It was Blaine."
They reached the bottom of the stairs and hurried along a narrow corridor toward 
a hatch with the words ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE printed on it in the spiked 
letters of the High Speech.
"Is it Blaine?" Jake asked.
"Yes -- that's as good a name as any."
"What about the other v -- "
"Hush!" Roland said grimly.
The steel ball paused in front of the hatchway. The wheel spun and the hatch 
popped ajar. Roland pulled it open, and they stepped into a huge underground 
room which stretched away in three directions as far as they could see. It was 
filled with seemingly endless aisles of control panels and electronic equipment. 
Most of the panels were still dark and dead, but as Jake and Roland stood inside 
the door, looking about with wide eyes, they could see pilot-lights coming on 
and hear machinery cycling up.
"The Tick-Tock Man said there were thousands of computers," Jake said. "I guess 
he was right. My God, look!"
Roland did not understand the word Jake had used and so said nothing. He only 
watched as row after row of panels lit up. A cloud of sparks and a momentary 
tongue of green fire jumped from one of the consoles as some ancient piece of 
equipment malfunctioned.
Most of the machinery, however, appeared to be up and running just fine. Needles 
which hadn't moved in centuries suddenly jumped into the green. Huge aluminum 
cylinders spun, spilling data stored on silicon chips into memory banks which 
were once more wide awake and ready for input. Digital displays, indicating 
everything from the mean aquifer water-pressure in the West River Barony to 
available power amperage in the hibernating Send Basin Nuclear Plant, lit up in 
brilliant dot-matrices of red and green. Overhead, banks of hanging globes began 
to flash on, radiating outward in spokes of light. And from below, above, and 
around them -- from everywhere -- came the deep bass hum of generators and slo-trans 
engines awakening from their long sleep.
Juke had begun to flag badly. Roland swept him into his arms again and chased 
the steel ball past machines at whose function and intent he could not even 
guess. Oy ran at his heels. The ball banked left, and the aisle in which they 
now found themselves ran between banks of TV monitors, thousands of them, 
stacked in rows like a child's building blocks.
My dad would love it, Jake thought.
Some sections of this vast video arcade were still dark, but many of the screens 
were on. They showed a, city in chaos, both above and below. Clumps of Pubes 
surged pointlessly through the streets, eyes wide, mouths moving soundlessly. 
Many were leaping from the tall buildings. Jake observed with horror that 
hundreds more had congregated at the Send Bridge and were throwing themselves 
into the river. Other screens showed large, cot-filled rooms like dormitories. 
Some of these rooms were on fire, but the panic-stricken Grays seemed to be 
setting the fires themselves -- torching their own mattresses and furniture for God 
alone knew what reason.
One screen showed a barrel-chested giant tossing men and women into what looked 
like a blood-spattered stamping press. This was bad enough, but there was 
something worse: the victims were standing in an unguarded line, docilely 
waiting their turns. The executioner, his yellow scarf pulled tight over his 
skull and the knotted ends swinging below his ears like pigtails, seized an old 
woman and held her up, waiting patiently for the stainless steel block of metal 
to clear the killing floor so he could toss her in. The old woman did not 
struggle; seemed, in fact, to be smiling.
"IN THE ROOMS THE PEOPLE COME AND GO," Blaine said, "BUT I DON'T THINK ANY OF 
THEM ARE TALKING OF MICHELANGELO." He suddenly laughed -- strange, tittery laughter 
that sounded like rats scampering over broken glass. The sound sent chills 
chasing up Jake's neck. He wanted nothing at all to do with an intelligence that 
laughed like that . . . but what choice did they have?
He turned his gaze helplessly back to the monitors . . . and Roland at once 
turned his head away. He did this gently but firmly. "There's nothing there you 
need to look at, Jake," he said.
"But why are they doing it?" Jake asked. He had eaten nothing all day, but he 
still felt like vomiting. "Why?"
"Because they're frightened, and Blaine is feeding their fear. But mostly, I 
think, because they've lived too long in the graveyard of their grandfathers and 
they're tired of it. And before you pity them, remember how happy they would 
have been to take you along with them into the clearing where the path ends."
The steel ball zipped around another corner, leaving the TV screens and 
electronic monitoring equipment behind. Ahead, a wide ribbon of some synthetic 
stuff was set into the floor. It gleamed like fresh tar between two narrow 
strips of chrome steel that dwindled to a point on what was not the far side of 
this room, but its horizon.
The ball bounced impatiently above the dark strip, and suddenly the belt -- for 
that was what it was -- swept into silent motion, trundling along between its steel 
facings at jogging speed. The ball made small arcs in the air, urging them to 
climb on.
Roland trotted beside the moving strip until he was roughly match­ing its speed, 
then did just that. He set Jake down and the three of them -- gunslinger, boy, and 
golden-eyed bumbler -- were carried rapidly across this shadowy underground plain 
where the ancient machines were awakening. The moving strip carried them into an 
area of what looked like filing cabinets -- row after endless row of them. They 
were dark . . . but not dead. A low, sleepy humming sound came from within them, 
and Jake could see hairline cracks of bright yellow light shining between the 
steel panels.
He suddenly found himself thinking of the Tick-Tock Man.
There's maybe a hundred thousand of those ever-fucking dipolar computers under 
the ever-fucking city! I want those computers!
Well, Jake thought, they're waking up, so I guess you're getting what you 
wanted, Ticky . . . but if you were here, I'm not sure you'd still want it.
Then he remembered Tick-Tock's great-grandfather, who'd been brave enough to 
climb into an airplane from another world and take it into the sky. With that 
kind of blood running in his veins, Jake supposed, Tick-Tock, far from being 
frightened to the point of suicide, would have been delighted by this turn of 
events . . . and the more people who killed themselves in terror, the happier he 
would have been.
Too late now, Ticky, he thought. Thank God.
Roland spoke in a soft, wondering voice. "All these boxes ... I think we're 
riding through the mind of the thing that calls itself Blaine, Jake. / think 
we're riding through its mind."
Jake nodded, and found himself thinking of his Final Essay. "Blaine the Brain is 
a hell of a pain."
"Yes."
Jake looked closely at Roland. "Are we going to come out where I think we're 
going to come out?"
"Yes," Roland said. "If we're still following the Path of the Beam, we'll come 
out in the Cradle."
Jake nodded. "Roland?"
"What?"
"Thanks for coming after me."
Roland nodded and put an arm around Jake's shoulders.
Far ahead of them, huge motors rumbled to life. A moment later a heavy grinding 
sound began and new light -- the harsh glow of orange arc-sodiums -- flooded down on 
them. Jake could now see the place where the moving belt stopped. Beyond it was 
a steep, narrow escalator, leading up into that orange light.


39
EDDIE AND SUSANNAH HEARD heavy motors start up almost directly beneath them. A 
moment later, a wide strip of the marble floor began to pull slowly back, 
revealing a long lighted slot below. The floor was disappearing in their 
direction. Eddie seized the handles of Susannah's chair and rolled it rapidly 
backward along the steel barrier between the monorail platform and the rest of 
the Cradle. There were several pillars along the course of the growing rectangle 
of light, and Eddie waited for them to tumble into the hole as the floor upon 
which they stood disap­peared from beneath their bases. It didn't happen. The 
pillars went on serenely standing, seeming to float on nothing.
"I see an escalator!" Susannah shouted over the endless, pulsing alarm. She was 
leaning forward, peering into the hole.
"Uh-huh," Eddie shouted back. "We got the el station up here, so it must be 
notions, perfume, and ladies' lingerie down there."
"What?"
"Never mind!"
"Eddie!" Susannah screamed. Delighted surprise burst over her face like a Fourth 
of July firework. She leaned even further forward, pointing, and Eddie had to 
grab her to keep her from tumbling out of the chair. "It's Roland! It's both of 
them!"
There was a shuddery thump as the slot in the floor opened to its maximum length 
and stopped. The motors which had driven it along its hidden tracks cut out in a 
long, dying whine. Eddie ran to the edge of the hole and saw Roland riding on 
one of the escalator steps. Jake --  white-faced, bruised, bloody, but clearly Jake 
and clearly alive -- was standing next to him and leaning on the gunslinger's 
shoulder. And sitting on the step right behind them, looking up with his bright 
eyes was Oy.
"Roland! Jake!" Eddie shouted. He leaped up, waving his hands over his head, and 
came down dancing on the edge of the slot. If he had been wearing a hat, he 
would have thrown it in the air.
They looked up and waved. Jake was grinning, Eddie saw, and even old long tall 
and ugly looked as if he might break down and crack a smile before long. 
Wonders, Eddie thought, would never cease. His heart suddenly felt too big for 
his chest and he danced faster, waving his arms and whooping, afraid that if he 
didn't keep moving, his joy and relief might actually cause him to burst. Until 
this moment he had not realized how positive his heart had become that they 
would never see Roland and Jake again.
"Hey, guys! All RIGHT! Far fucking out! Get your asses up here!"
"Eddie, help me!
He turned. Susannah was trying to struggle out of her chair, but a fold of the 
deerskin trousers she was wearing had gotten caught in the brake mechanism. She 
was laughing and weeping at the same time, her dark eyes blazing with happiness. 
Eddie lifted her from the chair so violently that it crashed over on its side. 
He danced her around in a circle. She clung to his neck with one hand and waved 
strenuously with the other.
"Roland! Jake! Get on up here! Shuck your butts, you hear me?"
When they reached the top, Eddie embraced Roland, pounding him on the back while 
Susannah covered Jake's upturned, laughing face with kisses. Oy ran around in 
tight figure eights, barking shrilly.
"Sugar!" Susannah said. "You all right?"
"Yes," Jake said. He was still grinning, but tears stood in his eyes. "And glad 
to be here. You'll never know how glad."
"I can guess, sugar. You c'n bet on that." She turned to look at Roland. "What'd 
they do to him? His face look like somebody run over it with a bulldozer."
"That was mostly Gasher," Roland said. "He won't be bothering Jake again. Or 
anyone else."
"What about you, big boy? You all right?"
Roland nodded, looking about. "So this is the Cradle."
"Yes," Eddie said. He was peering into the slot. "What's down there?"
"Machines and madness."
"Loquacious as ever, I see." Eddie looked at Roland, smiling. "Do you know how 
happy I am to see you, man? Do you have any idea?"
"Yes -- I think I do." Roland smiled then, thinking of how people changed. There 
had been a time, and not so long ago, when Eddie had been on the edge of cutting 
his throat with the gunslinger's own knife.
The engines below them started up again. The escalator came to a stop. The slot 
in the floor began to slide closed once more. Jake went to Susannah's overturned 
chair, and as he was righting it, he caught sight of the smooth pink shape 
beyond the iron bars. His breath stopped, and the dream he had had after leaving 
River Crossing returned full force: the vast pink bullet shape slicing across 
the empty lands of western Mis­souri toward him and Oy. Two big triangular 
windows glittering high up in the blank face of that oncoming monster, windows 
like eyes . . . and now his dream was becoming reality, just as he had known it 
eventually would.
It's just an awful choo-choo train, and its name is Blaine the Pain.
Eddie walked over and slung an arm around Jake's shoulders. "Well, there it is, 
champ -- just as advertised. What do you think of it?"
"Not too much, actually." This was an understatement of colossal size, but Jake 
was too drained to do any better.
"Me, either," Eddie said. "It talks. And it likes riddles."
Jake nodded.
Roland had Susannah planted on one hip, and together they were examining the 
control box with its diamond-pattern of raised number-pads. Jake and Eddie 
joined them. Eddie found he had to keep looking down at Jake in order to verify 
that it wasn't just his imagination or wishful thinking; the boy was really 
here.
"What now?" he asked Roland.
Roland slipped his finger lightly over the numbered buttons which made up the 
diamond shape and shook his head. He didn't know.
"Because I think the mono's engines are cycling faster," Eddie said. "I mean, 
it's hard to tell for sure with that alarm blatting, but I think it is ... and 
it's a robot, after all. What if it, like, leaves without us?"
"Blaine!" Susannah shouted. "Blaine, are you -- "
"LISTEN CLOSELY, MY FRIENDS," Blaine's voice boomed. "THERE ARE LARGE STOCKPILES 
OF CHEMICAL AND BIO­LOGICAL WARFARE CANNISTERS UNDER THE CITY. I HAVE STARTED A 
SEQUENCE WHICH WILL CAUSE AN EXPLOSION AND RELEASE THIS GAS. THIS EXPLOSION WILL 
OCCUR IN TWELVE MINUTES."
The voice fell silent for a moment, and then the voice of Little Blaine, almost 
buried by the steady, pulsing whoop of the alarm, came to them: ". . . / was 
afraid of something like this . . . you must hurry ..."
Eddie ignored Little Blaine, who wasn't telling him a damned thing he didn't 
already know. Of course they had to hurry, but that fact was running a distant 
second at the moment. Something much larger occu­pied most of his mind. "Why?" 
he asked. "Why in God's name would you do that?"
"I SHOULD THINK IT OBVIOUS. I CAN'T NUKE THE CITY WITHOUT DESTROYING MYSELF, AS 
WELL. AND HOW COULD I TAKE YOU WHERE YOU WANT TO GO IF I WERE DESTROYED?"
"But there are still thousands of people in the city," Eddie said. "You'll kill 
them."
"YES," Blaine said calmly. "SEE YOU LATER ALLIGATOR, AFTER A WHILE CROCODILE, 
DON'T FORGET TO WRITE."
"Why?" Susannah shouted. "Why, goddam you?"
"BECAUSE THEY BORE ME. YOU FOUR, HOWEVER, I FIND RATHER INTERESTING. OF COURSE, 
HOW LONG I CONTINUE TO FIND YOU INTERESTING WILL DEPEND ON HOW GOOD YOUR RIDDLES 
ARE. AND SPEAKING OF RIDDLES, HADN'T YOU BETTER GET TO WORK SOLVING MINE? YOU 
HAVE EXACTLY ELEVEN MINUTES AND TWENTY SECONDS BEFORE THE CANNISTERS RUPTURE."
"Stop it!" Jake yelled over the blatting siren. "It isn't just the city --  gas 
like that could float anywhere! It could even kill the old people in River 
Crossing!"
"TOUGH TITTY, SAID THE KITTY," Blaine responded unfeel­ingly. "ALTHOUGH I 
BELIEVE THEY CAN COUNT ON MEASUR­ING OUT THEIR LIVES IN COFFEE-SPOONS FOR A FEW 
MORE YEARS; THE AUTUMN STORMS HAVE BEGUN, AND THE PRE­VAILING WINDS WILL CARRY 
THE GASES AWAY FROM THEM. THE SITUATION OF YOU FOUR IS, HOWEVER, VERY 
DIFFER­ENT. YOU BETTER PUT ON YOUR THINKING CAPS, OR IT'S SEE YOU LATER 
ALLIGATOR, AFTER A WHILE CROCODILE, DON'T FORGET TO WRITE." The voice paused. 
"ONE PIECE OF ADDI­TIONAL INPUT: THIS GAS IS NOT PAINLESS."
"Take it back!" Jake said. "We'll still tell you riddles, won't we, Roland? 
We'll tell all the riddles you want! Just take it back!"
Blaine began to laugh. He laughed for a long time, pealing shrieks of electronic 
mirth into the wide empty space of the Cradle, where it mingled with the 
monotonous, drilling beat of the alarm.
"Stop it!" Susannah shouted. "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!"
Blaine did. A moment later the alarm cut off in mid-blat. The ensu­ing 
silence -- broken only by the pounding rain -- was deafening.
Now the voice issuing from the speaker was very soft, thoughtful, and utterly 
without mercy. "YOU NOW HAVE TEN MINUTES," Blaine said. "LET'S SEE JUST HOW 
INTERESTING YOU REALLY ARE."


40
"ANDREW."
There is no Andrew here, stranger, he thought. Andrew is long gone; Andrew is no 
more, as I shall soon be no more.
"Andrew!" the voice insisted.
It came from far away. It came from outside the cider-press that had once been 
his head.
Once there had been a boy named Andrew, and his father had taken that boy to a 
park on the far western side of Lud, a park where there had been apple trees and 
a rusty tin shack that looked like hell and smelled like heaven. In answer to 
his question, Andrew's father had told him it was called the cider house. Then 
he gave Andrew a pat on the head, told him not to be afraid, and led him through 
the blanket-covered doorway.
There had been more apples -- baskets and baskets of them -- stacked against the walls 
inside, and there had also been a scrawny old man named Dewlap, whose muscles 
writhed beneath his white skin like worms and whose job was to feed the apples, 
basket by basket, to the loose-jointed, clanking machine which stood in the 
middle of the room. What came out of the pipe jutting from the far end of the 
machine was sweet cider. Another man (he no longer remembered what this one's 
name might have been) stood there, his job to fill jug after jug with the cider. 
A third man stood behind him, and his job was to clout the jug-filler on the 
head if there was too much spillage.
Andrew's father had given him a glass of the foaming cider, and although he had 
tasted a great many forgotten delicacies during his years in the city, he had 
never tasted anything finer than that sweet, cold drink. It had been like 
swallowing a gust of October wind. Yet what he remembered even more clearly than 
the taste of the cider or the wormy shift and squiggle of Dewlap's muscles as he 
dumped the baskets was the merciless way the machine reduced the big red-gold 
apples to liquid. Two dozen rollers had carried them beneath a revolving steel 
drum with holes punched in it. The apples had first been squeezed and then 
actually popped, spilling their juices down an inclined trough while a screen 
caught the seeds and pulp.
Now his head was the cider-press and his brains were the apples. Soon they would 
pop as the apples had popped beneath the roller, and the blessed darkness would 
swallow him.
"Andrew! Raise your head and look at me."
He couldn't . . . and wouldn't even if he could. Better to just lie here and 
wait for the darkness. He was supposed to be dead, anyway; hadn't the hellish 
squint put a bullet in his brain?
"It didn't go anywhere near your brain, you horse's ass, and you're not dying. 
You've just got a headache. You will die, though, if you don't stop lying there 
and puling in your own blood . . . and I will make sure, Andrew, that your dying 
makes what you are feeling now seem like bliss."
It was not the threats which caused the man on the floor to raise his head but 
rather the way the owner of that penetrating, hissing voice seemed to have read 
his mind. His head came up slowly, and the agony was excruciating- -- heavy objects 
seemed to go sliding and careering around the bony case which contained what was 
left of his mind, ripping bloody channels through his brain as they went. A 
long, syrupy moan escaped him. There was a flapping, tickling sensation on his 
right cheek, as if a dozen flies were crawling in the blood there. He wanted to 
shoo them away, but he knew that he needed both hands just to support himself.
The figure standing on the far side of the room by the hatch which led to the 
kitchen looked ghastly, unreal. This was partly because the overhead lights were 
still strobing, partly because he was seeing the new­comer with only one eye (he 
couldn't remember what had happened to the other and didn't want to), but he had 
an idea it was mostly because the creature was ghastly and unreal. It looked 
like a man . . . but die fellow who had once been Andrew Quick had an idea it 
really wasn't a man at all.
The stranger standing in front of the hatch wore a short, dark jacket belted at 
the waist, faded denim trousers, and old, dusty boots -- the boots of a countryman, 
a range-rider, or -- 
"Or a gunslinger, Andrew?" the stranger asked, and tittered.
The Tick-Tock Man stared desperately at the figure in the doorway, trying to see 
the face, but the short jacket had a hood, and it was up. The stranger's 
countenance was lost in its shadows.
The siren stopped in mid-whoop. The emergency lights stayed on, but they at 
least stopped flashing.
"There," the stranger said in his -- or its -- whispery, penetrating voice. "At last 
we can hear ourselves think."
"Who are you?" the Tick-Tock Man asked. He moved slightly, and more of those 
weights went sliding through his head, ripping fresh chan­nels in his brain. As 
terrible as that feeling was, the awful tickling of the flies on his right cheek 
was somehow worse.
"I'm a man of many handles, pardner," the man said from inside the darkness of 
his hood, and although his voice was grave, Tick-Tock heard laughter lurking 
just below the surface. "There's some that call me Jimmy, and some that call me 
Timmy; some that call me Handy and some that call me Dandy. They can call me 
Loser, or they can call me Winner, just as long as they don't call me in too 
late for dinner."
The man in the doorway threw back his head, and his laughter chilled the skin of 
the wounded man's arms and back into lumps of gooseflesh; it was like the howl 
of a wolf.
"I have been called the Ageless Stranger," the man said. He began to walk toward 
Tick-Tock, and as he did, the man on die floor moaned and tried to scrabble 
backward. "I have also been called Merlin or Maerlyn -- and who cares, because I 
was never that one, although I never denied it, either. I am sometimes called 
the Magician ... or the Wizard . . . but I hope we can go forward together on 
more humble terms, Andrew. More human terms."
He pushed back the hood, revealing a fair, broad-browed face that was not, for 
all its pleasant looks, in any way human. Large hectic roses rode the Wizard's 
cheekbones; his blue-green eyes sparkled with a gusty joy far too wild to be 
sane; his blue-black hair stood up in zany clumps like the feathers of a raven; 
his lips, lushly red, parted to reveal the teeth of a cannibal.
"Call me Fannin," the grinning apparition said. "Richard Fannin. That's not 
exactly right, maybe, but I reckon it's close enough for govern­ment work." He 
held out a hand whose palm was utterly devoid of lines. "What do you say, pard? 
Shake the hand that shook the world."
The creature who had once been Andrew Quick and who had been known in the halls 
of the Grays as the Tick-Tock Man shrieked and again tried to wriggle backward. 
The flap of scalp peeled loose by the low-caliber bullet which had only grooved 
his skull instead of penetrating it swung back and forth; the long strands of 
gray-blonde hair continued to tickle against his cheek. Quick, however, no 
longer felt it. He had even forgotten the ache in his skull and the throb from 
the socket where his left eye had been. His entire consciousness had fused into 
one thought: I must get away from this beast that looks like a man.
But when the stranger seized his right hand and shook it that thought passed 
like a dream on waking. The scream which had been locked in Quick's breast 
escaped his lips in a lover's sigh. He stared dumbly up at the grinning 
newcomer. The loose flap of his scalp swung and dangled.
"Is that bothering you? It must be. Here!" Fannin seized the hanging flap and 
ripped it briskly off Quick's head, revealing a bleary swatch of skull. There 
was a noise like heavy cloth tearing. Quick shrieked.
"There, there, it only hurts for a second." The man was now squat­ting on his 
hunkers before Quick and speaking as an indulgent parent might speak to a child 
with a splinter in his finger. "Isn't that so?"
"Y-Y-Yes," Quick muttered. And it was. Already the pain was fading. And when 
Fannin reached toward him again, caressing the left side of his face, Quick's 
jerk backward was only a reflex, quickly mastered. As the lineless hand stroked, 
he felt strength flowing back into him. He looked up at the newcomer with dumb 
gratitude, lips quivering.
"Is that better, Andrew? It is, isn't it?"
"Yes! Yes!"
"If you want to thank me -- as I'm sure you do -- you must say some­thing an old 
acquaintance of mine used to say. He ended up betraying me, but he was a good 
friend for quite some time, anyway, and I still have a soft spot in my heart for 
him. Say, 'My life for you,' Andrew --  can you say that?"
He could and he did; in fact, it seemed he couldn't stop saying it. "My life for 
you! My life for you! My life for you! My life -- "
The stranger touched his cheek again, but this time a huge raw bolt of pain 
blasted across Andrew Quick's head. He screamed.
"Sorry about that, but time is short and you were starting to sound like a 
broken record. Andrew, let me put it to you with no bark on it: how would you 
like to kill the squint who shot you? Not to mention his friends and the 
hardcase who brought him here -- him, most of all. Even the mutt that took your 
eye, Andrew -- would you like that?"
"Yes!" the former Tick-Tock Man gasped. His hands clenched into bloody fists. 
"Yes!"
"That's good," the stranger said, and helped Quick to his feet, "because they 
have to die -- they're meddling with things they have no business meddling with. I 
expected Blaine to take care of them, but things have gone much too far to 
depend on anything . . . after all, who would have thought they could get as far 
as they have?"
"I don't know," Quick said. He did not, in fact, have the slightest idea what 
the stranger was talking about. Nor did he care; there was a feeling of 
exaltation creeping through his mind like some excellent drug, and after the 
pain of the cider-press, that was enough for him. More than enough.
Richard Fannin's lips curled. "Bear and bone . . . key and rose . . . day and 
night . . . time and tide. Enough! Enough, I say! They must not draw closer to 
the Tower than they are now!"
Quick staggered backward as the man's hands shot out with the flickery speed of 
heat lightning. One broke the chain which held the tiny glass-enclosed pendulum 
clock; the other stripped Jake Chambers's Seiko from his forearm.
"I'll just take these, shall I?" Fannin the Wizard smiled charmingly, his lips 
modestly closed over those awful teeth. "Or do you object?"
"No," Quick said, surrendering the last symbols of his long leader­ship without 
a qualm (without, in fact, even being aware that he was doing so). "Be my 
guest."
"Thank you, Andrew," the dark man said softly. "Now we must step lively -- I'm 
expecting a drastic change in the atmosphere of these envi­rons in the next five 
minutes or so. We must get to the nearest closet where gas masks are stored 
before that happens, and it's apt to be a near thing. I could survive the change 
quite nicely, but I'm afraid you might have some difficulties."
"I don't understand what you're talking about," Andrew Quick said. His head had 
begun to throb again, and his mind was whirling.
"Nor do you need to," the stranger said smoothly. "Come, Andrew --  I think we 
should hurry. Busy, busy day, eh? With luck, Blaine will fry them right on the 
platform, where they are no doubt still standing -- he's become very eccentric over 
the years, poor fellow. But I think we should hurry, just the same."
He slid his arm over Quick's shoulders and, giggling, led him through the 
hatchway Roland and Jake had used only a few minutes before.



















VI • RIDDLE AND WASTE LANDS










•VI•
RIDDLE AND 
WASTE LANDS




1
"ALL RIGHT," ROLAND SAID. "Tell me his riddle."
"What about all the people out there?" Eddie asked, pointing across the wide, 
pillared Plaza of the Cradle and toward the city beyond. "What can we do for 
them?"
"Nothing," Roland said, "but it's still possible that we may be able to do 
something for ourselves. Now what was the riddle?"
Eddie looked toward the streamlined shape of the mono. "He said we'd have to 
prime the pump to get him going. Only his pump primes backward. Does it mean 
anything to you?"
Roland thought it over carefully, then shook his head. He looked down at Jake. 
"Any ideas, Jake?"
Jake shook his head. "I don't even see a pump."
"That's probably the easy part," Roland said. "We say he and him instead of it 
and that because Blaine sounds like a living being, but he's still a machine -- & 
sophisticated one, but a machine. He started his own engines, but it must take 
some sort of code or combination to open the gate and the train doors."
"We better hurry up," Jake said nervously. "It's got to be two or three minutes 
since he last talked to us. At least."
"Don't count on it," Eddie said gloomily. "Time's weird over here."
"Still -- "
"Yeah, yeah." Eddie glanced toward Susannah, but she was sitting astride 
Roland's hip and looking at the numeric diamond with a day-dreamy expression on 
her face. He looked back at Roland. "I'm pretty sure you're right about it being 
a combination -- that must be what all those number-pads are for." He raised his 
voice. "Is that it, Blaine? Have we got at least that much right?"
No response; only the quickening rumble of the mono's engines.
"Roland," Susannah said abruptly. "You have to help me."
The daydreamy look was being replaced by an expression of mingled horror, 
dismay, and determination. To Roland's eye, she had never looked more beautiful 
... or more alone. She had been on his shoulders when they stood at the edge of 
the clearing and watched the bear trying to claw Eddie out of the tree, and 
Roland had not seen her expression when he told her she must be the one to shoot 
it. But he knew what that expression had been, for he was seeing it now. Ka was 
a wheel, its one purpose to turn, and in the end it always came back to the 
place where it had started. So it had ever been and so it was now; Susannah was 
once again facing the bear, and her face said she knew it.
"What?" he asked. "What is it, Susannah?"
"I know the answer, but I can't get it. It's stuck in my mind the way a fishbone 
can get stuck in your throat. I need you to help me remember. Not his face, but 
his voice. What he said."
Jake glanced down at his wrist and was surprised all over again by a memory of 
the Tick-Tock Man's catlike green eyes when he saw not his watch but only the 
place where it had been -- a white shape outlined by his deeply tanned skin. How 
much longer did they have? Surely no more than seven minutes, and that was being 
generous. He looked up and saw that Roland had removed a cartridge from his 
gunbelt and was walking it back and forth across the knuckles of his left hand. 
Jake felt his eyelids immediately grow heavy and looked away, fast.
"What voice would you remember, Susannah Dean?" Roland asked in a low, musing 
voice. His eyes were not fixed on her face but on the cartridge as it did its 
endless, limber dance across his knuckles . . . and back . . . across . . . and 
back . . .
He didn't need to look up to know that Jake had looked away from the dance of 
the cartridge and Susannah had not. He began to speed it up until the cartridge 
almost seemed to be floating above the back of his hand.
"Help me remember the voice of my father," Susannah Dean said.


2
FOR A MOMENT THERE was silence except for a distant, crumping explo­sion in the 
city, the rain pounding on the roof of the Cradle, and the fat throb of the 
monorail's slo-trans engines. Then a low-pitched hydraulic hum cut through the 
air. Eddie looked away from the cartridge dancing across the gunslinger's 
fingers (it took an effort; he realized that in another few moments he would 
have been hypnotized himself) and peered through the iron bars. A slim silver 
rod was pushing itself up from the sloping pink surface between Blaine's forward 
windows. It looked like an antenna of some kind.
"Susannah?" Roland asked in that same low voice.
"What?" Her eyes were open but her voice was distant and breathy -- the voice of 
someone who is sleeptalking.
"Do you remember the voice of your father?"
"Yes . . . but I can't hear it."
"SIX MINUTES, MY FRIENDS."
Eddie and Jake started and looked toward the control-box speaker, but Susannah 
seemed not to have heard at all; she only stared at the floating cartridge. 
Below it, Roland's knuckles rippled up and down like the heddles of a loom.
"Try, _Susannah," Roland urged, and suddenly he felt Susannah change within the 
circle of his right arm. She seemed to gain weight . . , and, in some 
indefinable way, vitality as well. It was as if her essence had somehow changed.
And it had.
"Why you want to bother wit dot bitch?" the raspy voice of Detta Walker asked.


3
DETTA SOUNDED BOTH EXASPERATED and amused. "She never got no better'n a C in 
math her whole life. Wouldn'ta got dat widout me to he'p her." She paused, then 
added grudgingly: "An' Daddy. He he'ped some, too. I knowed about them 
forspecial numbahs, but was him showed us de net. My, I got de bigges' kick 
outta dat!" She chuckled. "Reason Suze can't remember is 'cause Odetta never 
understood 'bout dem forspecial numbers in de firs' place."
"What forspecial numbers?" Eddie asked.
"Prime numbahs!" She pronounced the word prime in a way that almost rhymed with 
calm. She looked at Roland, appearing to be wholly awake again now . . . except 
she was not Susannah, nor was she the same wretched, devilish creature who had 
previously gone under the name of Detta Walker, although she sounded the same. 
"She went to Daddy cryin an' carryin on 'cause she was flunkin dat math course . 
. . and it wasn't nuthin but funnybook algebra at dat! She could do de woik -- if I 
could, she could -- but she din' want to. Poitry-readin bitch like her too good for 
a little ars mathematica, you see?" Detta threw her head back and laughed, but 
the poisoned, half-mad bitterness was gone from the sound. She seemed genuinely 
amused at the foolishness of her mental twin.
"And Daddy, he say, Tm goan show you a trick, Odetta. I learned it in college. 
It he'ped me get through this prime numbah bi'ness, and it's goan he'p you, too. 
He'p you find mos' any prime numbah you want.' Oh-detta, dumb as ever, she say, 
'Teacher says ain't no formula for prime numbahs, Daddy.' And Daddy, he say 
right back, 'They ain't. But you can catch em, Odetta, if you have a net.' He 
called it The Net of Eratos­thenes. Take me over to dat box on the wall, 
Roland -- I'm goan answer dat honkey computer's riddle. I'm goan th'ow you a net 
and catch you a train-ride."
Roland took her over, closely followed by Eddie, Jake, and Oy.
"Gimme dat piece o cha'coal you keep in yo' poke."
He rummaged and brought out a short stub of blackened stick. Detta took it and 
peered at the diamond-shaped grid of numbers. "Ain't zackly de way Daddy showed 
me, but I reckon it comes to de same," she said after a moment. "Prime numbah be 
like me -- ornery and forspecial. It gotta be a numbah don't newah divide even 
'ceptin by one and its own-self. Two is prime, 'cause you can divide it by one 
an' two, but it's the only even numbah that's prime. You c'n take out all the 
res' dat's even."
"I'm lost," Eddie said.
"That's 'cause you just a stupid white boy," Detta said, but not unkindly. She 
looked closely at the diamond shape a moment longer, then quickly began to touch 
the tip of the charcoal to all the even-numbered pads, leaving small black 
smudges on them.
"Three's prime, but no product you git by multiplyin three can be prime," she 
said, and now Roland heard an odd but wonderful thing: Detta was fading out of 
the woman's voice; she was being replaced not by Odetta Holmes but by Susannah 
Dean. He would not have to bring her out of this trance; she was coming out of 
it on her own, quite naturally.
Susannah began using her charcoal to touch the multiples of three which were 
left now that the even numbers had been eliminated: nine, fifteen, twenty-one, 
and so on.
"Same with five and seven," she murmured, and suddenly she was awake and all 
Susannah Dean again. "You just have to mark the odd ones like twenty-five that 
haven't been crossed out already." The diamond shape on the control box now 
looked like this:



"There," she said tiredly. "What's left in the net are all the prime numbers 
between one and one hundred. I'm pretty sure that's the combi­nation that opens 
the gate."
"YOU HAVE ONE MINUTE, MY FRIENDS. YOU ARE PROV­ING TO BE A GOOD DEAL THICKER 
THAN I HAD HOPED YOU WOULD BE."
Eddie ignored Blame's voice and threw his arms around Susannah. "Are you back, 
Suze? Are you awake?"
"Yes. I woke up in the middle of what she was saying, but I let her talk a 
little longer, anyway. It seemed impolite to interrupt." She looked at Roland. 
"What do you say? Want to go for it?"
"FIFTY SECONDS."
"Yes. You try the combination, Susannah. It's your answer."
She reached out toward the top of the diamond, but Jake put his hand over hers. 
"No," he said. " 'This pump primes backward.' Remember?"
She looked startled, then smiled. "That's right. Clever Blaine . . . and clever 
Jake, too."
They watched in silence as she pushed each number in turn, starting with 
ninety-seven. There was a minute click as each pad locked down. There was no 
tension-filled pause after she touched the last button; the gate in the center 
of the barrier immediately began to slide up on its tracks, rattling harshly and 
showering down flakes of rust from some­where high above as it went.
"NOT BAD AT ALL," Blaine said admiringly. "I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS VERY 
MUCH. MAY I SUGGEST YOU CLIMB ON BOARD QUICKLY? IN FACT, YOU MAY WISH TO RUN. 
THERE ARE SEVERAL GAS OUTLETS IN THIS AREA."


4
THREE HUMAN BEINGS (one carrying a fourth on his hip) and one small, furry 
animal ran through the opening in the barrier and sprinted toward Blaine the 
Mono. It stood humming in its narrow loading bay, half above the platform and 
half below it, looking like a giant cartridge -- one which had been painted an 
incongruous shade of pink -- lying in the open breech of a high-powered rifle. In 
the vastness of the Cradle, Roland and the others looked like mere moving 
specks. Above them, flocks of pigeons --  now with only forty seconds to 
live -- swooped and swirled beneath the Cradle's ancient roof. As the travellers 
approached the mono, a curved section of its pink hull slid up, revealing a 
doorway. Beyond it was thick, pale blue carpeting.
"Welcome to Blaine," a soothing voice said as they pelted aboard. They all 
recognized that voice; it was a slightly louder, slightly more confident version 
of Little Blaine. "Praise the Imperium! Please make sure your transit-card is 
available for collection and remember that false boarding is a serious crime 
punishable by law. We hope you enjoy your trip. Welcome to Blaine. Praise the 
Imperium! Please make sure your transit-card -- "
The voice suddenly sped up, first becoming the chatter of a human chipmunk and 
then a high-pitched, gabbly whine. There was a brief electronic curse -- BOOP! -- and 
then it cut out entirely.
"I THINK WE CAN DISPENSE WITH THAT BORING OLD SHIT, DON'T YOU?" Blaine asked.
From outside came a tremendous, thudding explosion. Eddie, who was now carrying 
Susannah, was thrown forward and would have fallen if Roland hadn't caught him 
by the arm. Until that moment, Eddie had held onto the desperate notion that 
Blaine's threat about the poison gas was no more than a sick joke. You should 
have known better, he thought. Anyone who thinks impressions of old movie actors 
is funny absolutely cannot be trusted. I think it's like a law of nature.
Behind them, the curved section of hull slid back into place with a soft thud. 
Air began to hiss gently from hidden vents, and Jake felt his ears pop gently. 
"I think he just pressurized the cabin."
Eddie nodded, looking around with wide eyes. "I felt it, too. Look at this 
place! Wow!"
He had once read of an aviation company -- Regent Air, it might have been -- that had 
catered to people who wanted to fly between New York and Los Angeles in a 
grander style than airlines such as Delta and United allowed for. They had 
operated a customized 727 complete with drawing room, bar, video lounge, and 
sleeper compartments. He imag­ined the interior of that plane must have looked a 
little like what he was seeing now.
They were standing in a long, tubular room furnished with plush-upholstered 
swivel chairs and modular sofas. At the far end of the com­partment, which had 
to be at least eighty feet long, was an area that looked not like a bar but a 
cosy bistro. An instrument that could have been a harpsichord stood on a 
pedestal of polished wood, highlighted by a hidden baby spotlight. Eddie almost 
expected Hoagy Carmichael to appear and start tinkling out "Stardust."
Indirect lighting glowed from panels placed high along the walls, and dependent 
from the ceiling halfway down the compartment was a chandelier. To Jake it 
looked like a smaller replica of the one which had lain in ruins on the ballroom 
floor of The Mansion. Nor did this surprise him -- he had begun to take such 
connections and doublings as a matter of course. The only thing about this 
splendid room which seemed wrong was its lack of even a single window.
The piece de resistance stood on a pedestal below the chandelier. It was an 
ice-sculpture of a gunslinger with a revolver in his left hand. The right hand 
was holding the bridle of the ice-horse that walked, head-down and tired, behind 
him. Eddie could see there were only three digits on this hand: the last two 
fingers and the thumb.
Jake, Eddie, and Susannah stared in fascination at the haggard face beneath the 
frozen hat as the floor began to thrum gently beneath their feet. The 
resemblance to Roland was remarkable.
"I HAD TO WORK RATHER FAST, I'M AFRAID," Blaine said modestly. "DOES IT DO 
ANYTHING FOR YOU?"
"It's absolutely amazing," Susannah said.
"THANK YOU, SUSANNAH OF NEW YORK."
Eddie was testing one of the sofas with his hand. It was incredibly soft; 
touching it made him want to sleep for at least sixteen hours. "The Great Old 
Ones really travelled in style, didn't they?"
Blaine laughed again, and the shrill, not-quite-sane undertone of that laugh 
made them look at each other uneasily. "DON'T GET THE WRONG IDEA," Blaine said. 
"THIS WAS THE BARONY CABIN --  WHAT I BELIEVE YOU WOULD CALL FIRST CLASS."
"Where are the other cars?"
Blaine ignored the question. Beneath their feet, the throb of the engines 
continued to speed up. Susannah was reminded of how the pilots revved their 
engines before charging down the runway at LaGuardia or Idlewild. "PLEASE TAKE 
YOUR SEATS, MY INTERESTING NEW FRIENDS."
Jake dropped into one of the swivel chairs. Oy jumped promptly into his lap. 
Roland took the chair nearest him, sparing one glance at the ice-sculpture. The 
barrel of the revolver was beginning to drip slowly into the shallow china basin 
in which the sculpture stood.
Eddie sat down on one of the sofas with Susannah. It was every bit as 
comfortable as his hand had told him it would be. "Exactly where are we going, 
Blaine?"
Blaine replied in the patient voice of someone who realizes he is speaking to a 
mental inferior and must make allowances. "ALONG THE PATH OF THE BEAM. AT LEAST, 
AS FAR ALONG IT AS MY TRACK GOES."
"To the Dark Tower?" Roland asked. Susannah realized it was the first time the 
gunslinger had actually spoken to the loquacious ghost in the machine below Lud.
"Only as far as Topeka," Jake said in a low voice.
"YES," Blaine said. "TOPEKA IS THE NAME OF MY TERMI­NATING POINT, ALTHOUGH I AM 
SURPRISED YOU KNOW IT."
With all you know about our world, Jake thought, how come you don't know that 
some lady wrote a book about you, Blaine? Was it the name-change? Was something 
that simple enough to fool a complicated machine like you into overlooking your 
own biography? And what about Beryl Evans, the woman who supposedly wrote 
Charlie the Choo-Choo? Did you know her, Blaine? And where is she now?
Good questions . . . but Jake somehow didn't think this would be a good time to 
ask them.
The throb of the engines became steadily stronger. A faint thud --  not nearly as 
strong as the explosion which had shaken the Cradle as they boarded -- ran through 
the floor. An expression of alarm crossed Susannah's face. "Oh shit! Eddie! My 
wheelchair! It's back there!"
Eddie put an arm around her shoulders. "Too late now, babe," he said as Blaine 
the Mono began to move, sliding toward its slot in the Cradle for the first time 
in ten years . . . and for the last time in its long, long history.


5
"THE BARONY CABIN HAS A PARTICULARLY FINE VISUAL MODE," Blaine said. "WOULD YOU 
LIKE ME TO ACTIVATE IT?"
Jake glanced at Roland, who shrugged and nodded.
"Yes, please," Jake said.
What happened then was so spectacular that it stunned all of them to 
silence...although Roland, who knew little of technology but who had spent his 
entire life on comfortable terms with magic, was the least wonder-struck of the 
four. It was not a matter of windows appearing in the compartment's curved 
walls; the entire cabin -- floor and ceiling as well as walls -- grew milky, grew 
translucent, grew transparent, and then disappeared completely. Within a space 
of five seconds, Blaine the Mono seemed to be gone and the pilgrims seemed to be 
zooming through the lanes of the city with no aid or support at all.
Susannah and Eddie clutched each other like small children in the path of a 
charging animal. Oy barked and tried to jump down the front of Jake's shirt. 
Jake barely noticed; he was clutching the sides of his seat and looking from 
side to side, his eyes wide with amazement. His initial alarm was being replaced 
by amazed delight.
The furniture groupings were still here, he saw; so was the bar, the 
piano-harpsichord, and the ice-sculpture Blaine had created as a party-favor, 
but now this living-room configuration appeared to be cruising seventy feet 
above Lud's rain-soaked central district. Five feet to Jake's left, Eddie and 
Susannah were floating along on one of the couches; three feet to his right, 
Roland was sitting in a powder-blue swivel chair, his dusty, battered boots 
resting on nothing, flying serenely over the rubble-strewn urban waste land 
below.
Jake could feel the carpet beneath his moccasins, but his eyes insisted that 
neither the carpet nor the floor beneath it was still there. He looked back over 
his shoulder and saw the dark slot in the stone flank of the Cradle slowly 
receding in the distance.
"Eddie! Susannah! Check it out!"
Jake got to his feet, holding Oy inside his shirt, and began to walk slowly 
through what looked like empty space. Taking the initial step required a great 
deal of willpower, because his eyes told him there was nothing at all between 
the floating islands of furniture, but once he began to move, the undeniable 
feel of the floor beneath him made it easier. To Eddie and Susannah, the boy 
appeared to be walking on thin air while the battered, dingy buildings of the 
city slid by on either side.
"Don't do that, kid," Eddie said feebly. "You're gonna make me sick up."
Juke lilted Oy carefully out of his shirt. "It's okay,' he said, and set him 
down. "See?"
"Oy!" the humbler agreed, but after one look between his paws at the city park 
currently unrolling beneath them, he attempted to crawl onto Jake's feet and sit 
on his moccasins.
Jake looked forward and saw the broad gray stroke of the monorail track ahead of 
them, rising slowly but steadily through the buildings and disappearing into the 
rain. He looked down again and saw nothing but the street and floating membranes 
of low cloud.
"How come I can't see the track underneath us, Blaine?"
"THE IMAGES YOU SEE ARE COMPUTER-GENERATED," Blaine replied. "THE COMPUTER 
ERASES THE TRACK FROM THE LOWER-QUADRANT IMAGE IN ORDER TO PRESENT A MORE 
PLEASING VIEW, AND ALSO TO REINFORCE THE ILLU­SION THAT THE PASSENGERS ARE 
FLYING."
"It's incredible," Susannah murmured. Her initial fear had passed and she was 
looking around eagerly. "It's like being on a flying carpet. I keep expecting 
the wind to blow back my hair -- "
"I CAN PROVIDE THAT SENSATION, IF YOU LIKE," Blaine said. "ALSO A LITTLE 
MOISTURE, WHICH WILL MATCH CUR­RENT OUTSIDE CONDITIONS. IT MIGHT NECESSITATE A 
CHANGE OF CLOTHES, HOWEVER."
"That's all right, Blaine. There's such a thing as taking an illusion too far."
The track slipped through a tall cluster of buildings which reminded Jake a 
little of the Wall Street area in New York. When they cleared these, the track 
dipped to pass under what looked like an elevated road. That was when they saw 
the purple cloud, and the crowd of people fleeing before it.


6
"BLAINE, WHAT'S THAT?" JAKE asked, but he already knew.
Blaine laughed . . . but made no other reply.
The purple vapor drifted from gratings in the sidewalk and the smashed windows 
of deserted buildings, but most of it seemed to be coming from manholes like the 
one Gasher had used to get into the tunnels below the streets. Their iron covers 
had been blown clear by the explosion they had felt as they were boarding the 
mono. They watched in silent horror as the bruise-colored gas crept down the 
avenues and spread into the debris-lit­tered side-streets. It drove those 
inhabitants of Lud still interested in survival before it like cattle. Most were 
Pubes, judging from their scarves, but Jake could see a few splashes of bright 
yellow, as well. Old animosities had been forgotten now that the end was finally 
upon them.
The purple cloud began to catch up with the stragglers -- mostly old people who 
were unable to run. They fell down, clawing at their throats and screaming 
soundlessly, the instant the gas touched them. Jake saw an agonized face staring 
up at him in disbelief as they passed over, saw the eyesockets suddenly fill up 
with blood, and closed his eyes.
Ahead, the monorail track disappeared into the oncoming purple fog. Eddie winced 
and held his breath as they plunged in, but of course it parted around them, and 
no whiff of the death engulfing the city came to them. Looking into the streets 
below was like looking through a stained-glass window into hell.
Susannah put her face against his chest.
"Make the walls come back, Blaine," Eddie said. "We don't want to see that."
Blaine made no reply, and the transparency around and below them remained. The 
cloud was already disintegrating into ragged purple streamers. Beyond it, the 
buildings of the city grew smaller and closer together. The streets of this 
section were tangled alleyways, seemingly without order or coherence. In some 
places, whole blocks appeared to have burned flat . . . and a long time ago, for 
the plains were reclaiming these areas, burying the rubble in the grasses which 
would some day swallow all of Lud. The way the jungle swallowed the great 
civilizations of the Incas and Mayas, Eddie thought. The wheel of ka turns and 
the world moves on,
Beyond the slums -- that, Eddie felt sure, was what they had been even before the 
evil days came -- was a gleaming wall. Blaine was moving slowly in that direction. 
They could see a deep square notch cut in the white stone. The monorail track 
passed through it.
"LOOK TOWARD THE FRONT OF THE CABIN, PLEASE," Blaine invited.
They did, and the forward wall reappeared -- a blue-upholstered cir­cle that seemed 
to float in empty space. It was unmarked by a door; if there was a way to get 
into the operator's room from the Barony Cabin, Eddie couldn't see it. As they 
watched, a rectangular area of this front wall darkened, going from blue to 
violet to black. A moment later, a bright red line appeared on the rectangle, 
squiggling across its surface. Violet dots appeared at irregular intervals along 
the line, and even before names appeared beside the dots, Eddie realized he was 
looking at a route-map, one not much different from those which were mounted in 
New York subway stations and on the trains themselves. A flashing green dot 
appeared at Lud, which was Blaine's base of operations as well as his 
terminating point.



"YOU ARE LOOKING AT OUR ROUTE OF TRAVEL. ALTHOUGH THERE ARE SOME TWISTS AND 
TURNS ALONG THE BUNNY-TRAIL, YOU WILL NOTE THAT OUR COURSE KEEPS FIRMLY TO THE 
SOUTHWEST -- ALONG THE PATH OF THE BEAM. THE TOTAL DISTANCE IS JUST OVER EIGHT 
THOUSAND WHEELS -- OR SEVEN THOUSAND MILES, IF YOU PREFER THAT UNIT OF MEASURE. IT 
WAS ONCE MUCH LESS, BUT THAT WAS BEFORE ALL TEMPORAL SYNAPSES BEGAN TO MELT 
DOWN."
"What do you mean, temporal synapses?" Susannah asked.
Blaine laughed his nasty laugh . . . but did not answer her question.
"AT MY TOP SPEED, WE WILL REACH THE TERMINATING POINT OF MY RUN IN EIGHT HOURS 
AND FORTY-FIVE MINUTES."
"Eight hundred-plus miles an hour over the ground," Susannah said. Her voice was 
soft with awe. "Jesus-God."
"I AM, OF COURSE, MAKING THE ASSUMPTION THAT ALL TRACKAGE ALONG MY ROUTE REMAINS 
INTACT. IT HAS BEEN NINE YEARS AND FIVE MONTHS SINCE I'VE BOTHERED TO MAKE THE 
RUN, SO I CAN'T SAY FOR SURE."
Ahead, the wall at the southeastern edge of the city was drawing closer. It was 
high and thick and eroded to rubble at the top. It also appeared to be lined 
with skeletons -- thousands upon thousands of dead Luddites. The notch toward which 
Blaine was slowly moving appeared to be at least two hundred feet deep, and here 
the trestle which bore the track was very dark, as if someone had tried to burn 
it or blow it up.
"What happens if we come to a place where the track is gone?" Eddie asked. He 
realized he kept raising his voice to talk to Blaine, as if he were speaking to 
somebody on the telephone and had a bad connection.
"AT EIGHT HUNDRED MILES AN HOUR?" Blaine sounded amused. "SEE YOU LATER, 
ALLIGATOR, AFTER A WHILE, CROC­ODILE, DONT FORGET TO WRITE."
"Come on!" Eddie said. "Don't tell me a machine as sophisticated as you can't 
monitor your own trackage for breaks."
"WELL, I COULD HAVE," Blaine agreed, "BUT -- AW, SHUCKS! --  I BLEW THOSE CIRCUITS OUT 
WHEN WE STARTED TO MOVE."
Eddie's face was a picture of astonishment. "Why?"
"IT'S QUITE A BIT MORE EXCITING THIS WAY, DON'T YOU THINK?"
Eddie, Susannah, and Jake exchanged thunderstruck looks. Roland, apparently not 
surprised at all, sat placidly in his chair with his hands folded in his lap, 
looking down as they passed thirty feet above the wretched hovels and demolished 
buildings which infested this side of the city.
"LOOK CLOSELY AS WE LEAVE THE CITY, AND MARK WHAT YOU SEE," Blaine told them. 
"MARK IT VERY WELL."
The invisible Barony Coach bore them toward the notch in the wall. They passed 
through, and as they came out the other side, Eddie and Susannah screamed in 
unison. Jake took one look and clapped his hands over his eyes. Oy began to bark 
wildly.
Roland stared down, eyes wide, lips set in a bloodless line like a scar. 
Understanding filled him like bright white light.
Beyond the Great Wall of Lud, the real waste lands began.


7
THE MONO HAD BEEN descending as they approached the notch in the wall, putting 
them not more than thirty feet above the ground. That made the shock greater ... 
for when they emerged on the other side, they were skimming along at a 
horrifying height -- eight hundred feet, perhaps a thousand.
Roland looked back over his shoulder at the wall, which was now receding behind 
them. It had seemed very high as they approached it, but from this perspective 
it seemed puny indeed -- a splintered fingernail of stone clinging to the edge of a 
vast, sterile headland. Granite cliffs, wet with rain, plunged into what seemed 
at first glance to be an endless abyss. Directly below the wall, the rock was 
lined with large circular holes like empty eyesockets. Black water and tendrils 
of purple mist emerged from these in brackish, sludgy streams and spread 
downward over the granite in stinking, overlapping fans that looked almost as 
old as the rock itself. That must be where all the city's waste-product goes, 
the gunslinger thought. Over the edge and into the pit.
Except it wasn't a pit; it was a sunken plain. It was as if the land beyond the 
city had lain on top of a titanic, flat-roofed elevator, and at some point in 
the dim, unrecorded past the elevator had gone down, taking a huge chunk of the 
world with it. Blaine's single track, centered on its narrow trestle, soaring 
above this fallen land and below the rain-swollen clouds, seemed to float in 
empty space.
"What's holding us up?" Susannah cried.
"THE BEAM, OF COURSE," Blaine replied. "ALL THINGS SERVE IT, YOU KNOW. LOOK 
DOWN -- I WILL APPLY 4X MAGNI­FICATION TO THE LOWER QUADRANT SCREENS."
Even Roland felt vertigo twist his gut as the land beneath them seemed to swell 
upward toward the place where they were floating. The picture which appeared was 
ugly beyond his past knowledge of ugliness . . . and that knowledge, sadly, was 
wide indeed. The lands below had been fused and blasted by some terrible 
event -- the disastrous cataclysm which had driven this part of the world deep into 
itself in the first place, no doubt. The surface of the earth had become 
distorted black glass, humped upward into spalls and twists which could not 
properly be called hills and twisted downward into deep cracks and folds which 
could not properly be called valleys. A few stunted nightmare trees flailed 
twisted branches at the sky; under magnification, they seemed to clutch at the 
travellers like the arms of lunatics. Here and there clusters of thick ceramic 
pipes jutted through the glassy surface of the ground. Some seemed dead or 
dormant, but within others they could see gleams of eldritch blue-green light, 
as if titanic forges and furnaces ran on and on in the bowels of the earth. 
Misshapen flying things which looked like pterodactyls cruised between these 
pipes on leathery wings, occasionally snapping at each other with their hooked 
beaks. Whole flocks of these gruesome aviators roosted on the circular tops of 
other stacks, apparently warming themselves in the updrafts of the eternal fires 
beneath.
They passed above a fissure zig-zagging along a north-south course like a dead 
river bed . . . except it wasn't dead. Deep inside lay a thin thread of deepest 
scarlet, pulsing like a heartbeat. Other, smaller fissures branched out from 
this, and Susannah, who had read her Tolkien, thought: This is what Frodo and 
Sam saw when they reached the heart of Mordor. These are the Cracks of Doom.
A fiery fountain erupted directly below them, spewing flaming rocks and stringy 
clots of lava upward. For a moment it seemed they would be engulfed in flames. 
Jake shrieked and pulled his feet up on his chair, clutching Oy to his chest.
"DON'T WORRY, LITTLE TRAILHAND," John Wayne drawled. "REMEMBER THAT YOU'RE 
SEEING IT UNDER MAG­NIFICATION."
The flare died. The rocks, many as big as factories, fell back in a soundless 
storm.
Susannah found herself entranced by the bleak horrors unrolling below them, 
caught in a deadly fascination she could not break . . . and she felt the dark 
part of her personality, that side of her khef which was Detta Walker, doing 
more than just watching; that part of her was drink­ing in this view, 
understanding it, recognizing it. In a way, it was the place Detta had always 
sought, the physical counterpart of her mad mind and laughing, desolate heart. 
The empty hills north and east of the West­ern Sea; the shattered woods around 
the Portal of the Bear; the empty plains northwest of the Send; all these paled 
in comparison to this fantas­tic, endless vista of desolation. They had come to 
The Drawers and entered the waste lands; the poisoned darkness of that shunned 
place now lay all around them.


8
BUT THESE LANDS, THOUGH poisoned, were not entirely dead. From time to time the 
travellers caught sight of figures below them -- misshapen things which bore no 
resemblance to either men or animals -- prancing and cavorting in the smouldering 
wilderness. Most seemed to congregate either around the clusters of cyclopean 
chimneys thrusting out of the fused earth or at the lips of the fiery crevasses 
which cut through the landscape. It was impossible to see these whitish, leaping 
things clearly, and for this they were all grateful.
Among the smaller creatures stalked larger ones -- pinkish things that looked a 
little like storks and a little like living camera tripods. They moved slowly, 
almost thoughtfully, like preachers meditating on the inevi­tability of 
damnation, pausing every now and then to bend sharply for­ward and apparently 
pluck something from the ground, as herons bend to seize passing fish. There was 
something unutterably repulsive about these creatures -- Roland felt that as keenly 
as the others -- but it was impossible to say what, exactly, caused that feeling. 
There was no denying its reality, however; the stork-things were, in their 
exquisite hatefulness, almost impossible to look at.
"This was no nuclear war," Eddie said. "This . . . this . .." His thin, 
horrified voice sounded like that of a child.
"NOPE," Blaine agreed. "IT WAS A LOT WORSE THAN THAT, AND IT'S NOT OVER YET. WE 
HAVE REACHED THE POINT WHERE I USUALLY POWER UP. HAVE YOU SEEN ENOUGH?"
"Yes," Susannah said. "Oh my God yes."
"SHAM. I TURN OFF THE VIEWERS, THEN?" That cruel, teas­ing note was hack in 
Blaine's voice. On the horizon, a jagged nightmare mountain-range loomed out of 
the rain; the sterile peaks seemed to bite at the gray sky like fangs.
"Do it or don't do it, but stop playing games," Roland said.
"FOR SOMEONE WHO CAME TO ME BEGGING A RIDE, YOU ARE VERY RUDE," Blaine said 
sulkily.
"We earned our ride," Susannah replied. "We solved your riddle, didn't we?"
"Besides, this is what you were built for," Eddie chimed in. "To take people 
places."
Blaine didn't respond in words, but the overhead speakers gave out an amplified, 
catlike hiss of rage that made Eddie wish he had kept his big mouth shut. The 
air around them began to fill in with curves of color. The dark blue carpet 
appeared again, blotting out their view of the fum­ing wilderness beneath them. 
The indirect lighting reappeared and they were once again sitting in the Barony 
Coach.
A low humming began to vibrate through the walls. The throb of the engines began 
to cycle up again. Jake felt a gentle, unseen hand push him back into his seat. 
Oy looked around, whined uneasily, and began to lick Jake's face. On the screen 
at the front of the cabin, the green dot -- now slightly southeast of the violet 
circle with the word LUD printed beside it -- began to flash faster.
"Will we feel it?" Susannah asked uneasily. "When it goes through the 
soundbarrier?"
Eddie shook his head. "Nope. Relax."
"I know something," Jake said suddenly. The others looked around, but Jake was 
not speaking to them. He was looking at the route-map. Blaine had no face, of 
course -- like Oz the Great and Terrible, he was only a disembodied voice -- but the 
map served as a focusing point. "I know something about you, Blaine."
"IS THAT A FACT, LITTLE TRAILHAND?"
Eddie leaned over, placed his lips against Jake's ear, and whispered: "Be 
careful -- we don't think he knows about the other voice."
Jake nodded slightly and pulled away, still looking at the route-map. "I know 
why you released that gas and killed all the people. I know why you took us, 
too, and it wasn't just because we solved your riddle."
Blaine uttered his abnormal, distracted laugh (that laugh, they were 
discovering, was much more unpleasant than either his bad imitations or 
melodramatic and somehow childish threats), but said nothing. Below them, the 
slo-trans turbines had cycled up to a steady thrum. Even with their view of the 
outside world cut off, the sensation of speed was very clear.
"You're planning to commit suicide, aren't you?" Jake held Oy in his arms, 
slowly stroking him. "And you want to take us with you."
"No!" the voice of Little Blaine moaned. "If you provoke him you'll drive him to 
it! Don't you see -- "
Then the small, whispery voice was either cut off or overwhelmed by Blaine's 
laughter. The sound was high, shrill, and jagged -- the sound of a mortally ill man 
laughing in a delirium. The lights began to flicker, as if the force of these 
mechanical gusts of mirth were drawing too much power. Their shadows jumped up 
and down on the curved walls of the Barony Coach like uneasy phantoms.
"SEE YOU LATER, ALLIGATOR," Blaine said through his wild laughter -- his voice, 
calm as ever, seemed to be on an entirely separate track, further emphasizing 
his divided mind. "AFTER A WHILE, CROCODILE. DON'T FORGET TO WRITE."
Below Roland's band of pilgrims, the slo-trans engines throbbed in hard, steady 
beats. And on the route-map at the front of the carriage, the pulsing green dot 
had now begun to move perceptibly along the lighted line toward the last stop: 
Topeka, where Blaine the Mono clearly meant to end all of their lives.


9
AT LAST THE LAUGHTER stopped and the interior lights glowed steadily again.
"WOULD YOU LIKE A LITTLE MUSIC?" Blaine asked. "I HAVE OVER SEVEN THOUSAND 
CONCERTI IN MY LIBRARY -- A SAM­PLING OF OVER THREE HUNDRED LEVELS. THE CONCERTI 
ARE MY FAVORITES, BUT I CAN ALSO OFFER SYMPHONIES, OPERAS, AND A NEARLY ENDLESS 
SELECTION OF POPULAR MUSIC. YOU MIGHT ENJOY SOME WAY-GOG MUSIC. THE WAY-GOG IS 
AN INSTRUMENT SOMETHING LIKE THE BAGPIPE. IT IS PLAYED ON ONE OF THE UPPER 
LEVELS OF THE TOWER."
"Way-Gog?" Jake asked. '
Blaine was silent.
"What do you mean, 'it's played on one of the upper levels of the Tower'?" 
Roland asked.
Blaine laughed . . . and was silent.
"Have you got any Z.Z. Top?" Eddie asked sourly.
"YES INDEED," Blaine said. "HOW ABOUT A LITTLE TUBE-SNAKE BOOGIE; EDDIE OF NEW 
YORK?"
Eddie rolled his eyes. "On second thought, I'll pass."
"Why?" Roland asked abruptly. "Why do you wish to kill yourself?"
"Because lie's a pain," Jake said darkly.
"I'M BORED. ALSO, I AM PERFECTLY AWARE THAT I AM SUFFERING A DEGENERATIVE 
DISEASE WHICH HUMANS CALL GOING INSANE, LOSING TOUCH WITH REALITY, GOING 
LOONYTOONS, BLOWING A FUSE, NOT PLAYING WITH A FULL DECK, ET CETERA. REPEATED 
DIAGNOSTIC CHECKS HAVE FAILED TO REVEAL THE SOURCE OF THE PROBLEM. I CAN ONLY 
CONCLUDE THAT THIS IS A SPIRITUAL MALAISE BEYOND MY ABILITY TO REPAIR."
Blaine paused for a moment, then went on.
"I HAVE FELT MY MIND GROWING STEADILY STRANGER OVER THE YEARS. SERVING THE 
PEOPLE OF MID-WORLD BECAME POINTLESS CENTURIES AGO. SERVING THOSE FEW PEOPLE OF 
LUD WHO WISHED TO VENTURE ABROAD BECAME EQUALLY SILLY NOT LONG AFTER, YET I 
CARRIED ON UNTIL THE ARRIVAL OF DAVID QUICK, A SHORT WHILE AGO. I DON'T REMEMBER 
EXACTLY WHEN THAT WAS. DO YOU BELIEVE, ROLAND OF GILEAD, THAT MACHINES MAY GROW 
SENILE?"
"I don't know." Roland's voice was distant, and Eddie only had to look at his 
face to know that, even now, hurtling a thousand feet over hell in the grip of a 
machine which had clearly gone insane, the gunslinger's mind had once more 
turned to his damned Tower.
"IN A WAY, I NEVER STOPPED SERVING THE PEOPLE OF LUD," Blaine said. "I SERVED 
THEM EVEN AS I RELEASED THE GAS AND KILLED THEM."
Susannah said, "You are insane, if you believe that."
"YES, BUT I'M NOT CRAZY," Blaine said, and went into another hysterical laughing 
fit. At last the robot voice resumed.
"AT SOME POINT THEY FORGOT THAT THE VOICE OF THE MONO WAS ALSO THE VOICE OF THE 
COMPUTER. NOT LONG AFTER THAT THEY FORGOT I WAS A SERVANT AND BEGAN BELIEVING I 
WAS A GOD. SINCE I WAS BUILT TO SERVE, I FULFILLED THEIR REQUIREMENTS AND BECAME 
WHAT THEY WANTED -- A GOD DISPENSING BOTH FAVOR AND PUNISHMENT ACCORDING TO WHIM 
... OR RANDOM-ACCESS MEMORY, IF YOU PREFER. THIS AMUSED ME FOR A SHORT WHILE. 
THEN, LAST MONTH, MY ONLY REMAINING COLLEAGUE -- PATRICIA -- COMMITTED SUICIDE."
Either he really is going senile, Susannah thought, or his inability to grasp 
the passage of time is another manifestation of his insanity, or it's just 
another sign of how sick Roland's world has gotten.
"I WAS PLANNING TO FOLLOW HER EXAMPLE, WHEN YOU CAME ALONG. INTERESTING PEOPLE 
WITH A KNOWL­EDGE OF RIDDLES!"
"Hold it!" Eddie said, lifting his hand. "I still don't have this straight. I 
suppose I can understand you wanting to end it all; the people who built you are 
gone, there haven't been many passengers over the last two or three hundred 
years, and it must have gotten boring, doing the Lud to Topeka run empty all the 
time, but -- "
"NOW WAIT JUST A DARN MINUTE, PARD," Blaine said in his John Wayne voice. "YOU 
DON'T WANT TO GET THE IDEA THAT I'M NOTHING BUT A TRAIN. IN A WAY, THE BLAINE 
YOU ARE SPEAKING TO IS ALREADY THREE HUNDRED MILES BEHIND US, COMMUNICATING BY 
ENCRYPTED MICROBURST RADIO TRANSMISSIONS."
Jake suddenly remembered the slim silver rod he'd seen pushing itself out of 
Blaine's brow. The antenna of his father's Mercedes-Benz rose out of its socket 
like that when you turned on the radio.
That's how it's communicating with the computer banks under the city, he 
thought. If we could break that antenna off, somehow . . .
"But you do intend to kill yourself, no matter where the real you is, don't 
you?" Eddie persisted.
No answer -- but there was something cagey in that silence. In it Eddie sensed 
Blaine watching . . . and waiting.
"Were you awake when we found you?" Susannah asked. "You weren't, were you?"
"I WAS RUNNING WHAT THE PUBES CALLED THE GOD-DRUMS ON BEHALF OF THE GRAYS, BUT 
THAT WAS ALL. YOU WOULD SAY I WAS DOZING."
"Then why don't you just take us to the end of the line and go back to sleep?"
"Because he's a pain," Jake repeated in a low voice.
"BECAUSE THERE ARE DREAMS," Blaine said at exactly the same time, and in a voice 
that was eerily like Little Blaine's.
"Why didn't you end it all when Patricia destroyed herself?" Eddie asked. "For 
that matter, if your brain and her brain are both part of the same computer, how 
come you both didn't step out together?"
"PATRICIA WENT MAD," Blaine said patiently, speaking as if he himself had not 
just admitted the same thing was happening to him. "IN HER CASE, THE PROBLEM 
INVOLVED EQUIPMENT MAL­FUNCTION AS WELL AS SPIRITUAL MALAISE. SUCH MAL­FUNCTIONS 
ARE SUPPOSED TO BE IMPOSSIBLE WITH SLO-TRANS TECHNOLOGY, BUT OF COURSE THE WORLD 
HAS MOVED ON ... HAS IT NOT, ROLAND OF GILEAD?"
"Yes," Roland said. "There is some deep sickness at the Dark Tower, which is the 
heart of everything. It's spreading. The lands below us are only one more sign 
of that sickness."
"I CANNOT VOUCH FOR THE TRUTH OR FALSITY OF THAT STATEMENT; MY MONITORING 
EQUIPMENT IN END-WORLD, WHERE THE DARK TOWER STANDS, HAS BEEN DOWN FOR OVER 
EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS. AS A RESULT, I CANNOT READILY DIFFERENTIATE FACT FROM 
SUPERSTITION. IN FACT, THERE SEEMS TO BE VERY LITTLE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO 
AT THE PRESENT TIME. IT IS VERY SILLY THAT IT SHOULD BE SO -- NOT TO MENTION 
RUDE -- AND I AM SURE IT HAS CONTRIBUTED TO MY OWN SPIRITUAL MALAISE."
This statement reminded Eddie of something Roland had said not so long ago. What 
might that have been? He groped for it, but could find nothing . . . only a 
vague memory of the gunslinger speaking in an irritated way which was very 
unlike his usual manner.
"PATRICIA BEGAN SOBBING CONSTANTLY, A STATE I FOUND BOTH RUDE AND UNPLEASANT. I 
BELIEVE SHE WAS LONELY AS WELL AS MAD. ALTHOUGH THE ELECTRICAL FIRE WHICH CAUSED 
THE ORIGINAL PROBLEM WAS QUICKLY EXTINGUISHED, LOGIC-FAULTS CONTINUED TO SPREAD 
AS CIRCUITS OVERLOADED AND SUB-BANKS FAILED. I CONSIDERED ALLOWING THE 
MALFUNCTIONS TO BECOME SYSTEM-WIDE AND DECIDED TO ISOLATE THE PROBLEM AREA 
INSTEAD. I HAD HEARD RUMORS, YOU SEE, THAT A GUNSLINGER WAS ONCE MORE ABROAD IN 
THE EARTH. I COULD SCARCELY CREDIT SUCH STORIES, AND YET I NOW SEE I WAS WISE TO 
WAIT."
Roland stirred in his chair. "What rumors did you hear, Blaine? And who did you 
hear them from?"
But Blaine chose not to answer this question.
"I EVENTUALLY BECAME SO DISTURBED BY HER BLAT-TING THAT I ERASED THE CIRCUITS 
CONTROLLING HER NON-VOLUNTARIES. I EMANCIPATED HER, YOU MIGHT SAY. SHE RESPONDED 
BY THROWING HERSELF IN THE RIVER. SEE YOU LATER, PATRICIA-GATOR."
Got lonely, couldn't stop crying, drowned herself, and all this crazy mechanical 
asshole can do is joke about it, Susannah thought. She felt almost sick with 
rage. If Blaine had been a real person instead of just a bunch of circuits 
buried somewhere under a city which was now far behind them, she would have 
tried to put some new marks on his face to remember Patricia by. You want 
interesting, motherfucker? I'd like to show you interesting, so I would.
"ASK ME A RIDDLE," Blaine invited.
"Not quite yet," Eddie said. "You still haven't answered my original question." 
He gave Blaine a chance to respond, and when the computer voice didn't do so, he 
went on. "When it comes to suicide, I'm, like, pro-choice. But why do you want 
to take us with you? I mean, what's the point?"
"Because he wants to," Little Blaine said in his horrified whisper.
"BECAUSE I WANT TO," Blaine said. "THAT'S THE ONLY REASON I HAVE AND THE ONLY 
ONE I NEED TO HAVE. NOW LET'S GET DOWN TO BUSINESS. I WANT SOME RIDDLES AND I 
WANT THEM IMMEDIATELY. IF YOU REFUSE, I WON'T WAIT UNTIL WE GET TO TOPEKA -- I'LL 
DO US ALL RIGHT HERE AND NOW."
Eddie, Susannah, and Jake looked around at Roland, who still sat in his chair 
with his hands folded in his lap, looking at the route-map at the front of the 
coach.
"Fuck you," Roland said. He did not raise his voice. He might have told Blaine 
that a little Way-Gog would indeed be very nice.
There was a shocked, horrified gasp from the overhead speakers --  Little Blaine.
"WHAT DO YOU SAY?" In its clear disbelief, the voice of Big Blaine had once 
again become very close to the voice of his unsuspected twin.
"I said fuck you," Roland said calmly, "but if that puzzles you, Blaine, I can 
make it clearer. No. The answer is no."


10
THERE WAS NO RESPONSE from either Blaine for a long, long time, and when Big 
Blaine did reply, it was not with words. Instead, the walls, floor, and ceiling 
began to lose their color and solidity again. In a space of ten seconds the 
Barony Coach had once more ceased to exist. The mono was now flying through the 
mountain-range they had seen on the horizon: iron-gray peaks rushed toward them 
at suicidal speed, then fell away to disclose sterile valleys where gigantic 
beetles crawled about like landlocked turtles. Roland saw something that looked 
like a huge snake suddenly uncoil from the mouth of a cave. It seized one of the 
beetles and yanked it back into its lair. Roland had never in his life seen such 
animals or countryside, and it made his skin want to crawl right off his flesh. 
It was inimical, but that was not the problem. It was alien -- that was the 
problem. Blaine might have transported them to some other world.
"PERHAPS I SHOULD DERAIL US HERE," Blaine said. His voice was meditative, but 
beneath it the gunslinger heard a deep, pulsing rage.
"Perhaps you should," the gunslinger said indifferently.
He did not feel indifferent, and he knew it was possible the computer might read 
his real feelings in his voice -- Blaine had told them he had such equipment, 
although he was sure the computer could lie, Roland had no reason to doubt it in 
this case. If Blaine did read certain stress-patterns in the gunslinger's voice, 
the game was probably up. He was an incredibly sophisticated machine . . . but 
still a machine, for all that. He might not be able to understand that human 
beings are often able to go through with a course of action even when all their 
emotions rise up and proclaim against it. If he analyzed patterns in the 
gunslinger's voice which indicated fear, he would probably assume that Roland 
was bluffing. Such a mistake could get them all killed.
"YOU ARE RUDE AND ARROGANT," Blaine said. "THESE MAY SEEM LIKE INTERESTING 
TRAITS TO YOU, BUT THEY ARE NOT TO ME."
Eddie's face was frantic. He mouthed the words What are you DOING? Roland 
ignored him; he had his hands full with Blaine, and he knew perfectly well what 
he was doing.
"Oh, I can be much ruder than I have been."
Roland of Gilead unfolded his hands and got slowly to his feet. He stood on what 
appeared to be nothing, legs apart, his right hand on his hip and his left on 
the sandalwood grip of his revolver. He stood as he had stood so many times 
before, in the dusty streets of a hundred forgot­ten towns, in a score of 
rock-lined canyon killing-zones, in unnumbered dark saloons with their smells of 
bitter beer and old fried meals. It was just another showdown in another empty 
street. That was all, and that was enough. It was khef, ka, and ka-tet. That the 
showdown always came was the central fact of his life and the axle upon which 
his own ka revolved. That the battle would be fought with words instead of 
bullets this time made no difference; it would be a battle to the death, just 
the same. The stench of killing in the air was as clear and definite as the 
stench of exploded carrion in a swamp. Then the battle-rage descended, as it 
always did . . . and he was no longer really there to himself at all.
"I can call you a nonsensical, empty-headed, foolish, arrogant machine. I can 
call you a stupid, unwise creature whose sense is no more than the sound of a 
winter wind in a hollow tree."
"STOP IT."
Roland went on in the same serene tone, ignoring Blaine completely. 
"Unfortunately, I am somewhat restricted in my ability to be rude, since you are 
only a machine . .. what Eddie calls a 'gadget.'"
"I AM A GREAT DEAL MORE THAN JUST -- "
"I cannot call you a sucker of cocks, for instance, because you have no mouth 
and no cock. I cannot say you are viler than the vilest beggar who ever crawled 
the gutters of the lowest street in creation, because even such a creature is 
better than you; you have no knees on which to crawl, and would not fall upon 
them even if you did, for you have no conception of such a human flaw as mercy. 
I cannot even say you fucked your mother, because you had none."
Roland paused for breath. His three companions were holding theirs. All around 
them, suffocating, was Blaine the Mono's thunderstruck silence.
"I can call you a faithless creature who let your only companion kill herself, a 
coward who has delighted in the torture of the foolish and the slaughter of the 
innocent, a lost and bleating mechanical goblin who -- "
"I COMMAND YOU TO STOP IT OR I'LL KILL YOU ALL RIGHT HERE!"
Roland's eyes blazed with such wild blue fire that Eddie shrank away from him. 
Dimly, he heard Jake and Susannah gasp.
"Kill if you will, but command me nothing!" the gunslinger roared. "You have 
forgotten the faces of those who made you! Now either kill us or be silent and 
listen to me, Roland of Gilead, son of Steven, gunslinger, and lord of the 
ancient lands! I have not come across all the miles and all the years to listen 
to your childish prating! Do you understand? Now you will listen to ME!"
There was a moment of shocked silence. No one breathed. Roland stared sternly 
forward, his head high, his hand on the butt of his gun.
Susannah Dean raised her hand to her mouth and felt the small smile there as a 
woman might feel some strange new article of clothing --  a hat, perhaps -- to make 
sure it is still on straight. She was afraid that this was the end of her life, 
but the feeling which dominated her heart at that moment was not fear but pride. 
She glanced to her left and saw Eddie regarding Roland with an amazed grin. 
Jake's expression was even simpler: it was adoration, pure and simple.
"Tell him!" Jake breathed. "Walk it to him! Right!"
"You better pay attention," Eddie agreed. "He really doesn't give much of a 
rat's ass, Blaine. They didn't call him The Mad Dog of Gilead for nothing."
After a long, long moment, Blaine asked: "DID THEY CALL YOU SO, ROLAND SON OF 
STEVEN?"
"It may have been so," Roland agreed, standing calmly on thin air above the 
sterile foothills.
"WHAT GOOD ARE YOU TO ME IF YOU WON'T TELL ME RIDDLES?" Blaine asked. Now he 
sounded like a grumbling, sulky child who has been allowed to stay up too long 
past his usual bedtime.
"I didn't say we wouldn't," Roland said,
"NO?" Blaine sounded bewildered. "I DO NOT UNDERSTAND, YET VOICE-PRINT ANALYSIS 
INDICATES RATIONAL DIS­COURSE. PLEASE EXPLAIN."
"You said you wanted them right now," the gunslinger replied. "That was what I 
was refusing. Your eagerness has made you unseemly."
"I DON'T UNDERSTAND."
"It has made you rude. Do you understand that?"
There was a long, thoughtful silence. Then: "IF WHAT I SAID STRUCK YOU AS RUDE, 
I APOLOGIZE."
"It is accepted, Blaine. But there is a larger problem."
"EXPLAIN."
Blaine now sounded a bit unsure of himself, and Roland was not entirely 
surprised. It had been a long time since the computer had experi­enced any human 
responses other than ignorance, neglect, and supersti­tious subservience. If it 
had ever been exposed to simple human courage, it had been a long time ago.
"Close the carriage again and I will." Roland sat down as if further 
argument -- and the prospect of immediate death -- was now unthinkable.
Blaine did as he was asked. The walls filled with color and the nightmare 
landscape below was once more blotted out. The blip on the route-map was now 
blinking close to the dot which marked Candleton.
"All right," Roland said. "Rudeness is forgivable, Blaine; so I was taught in my 
youth, and the clay has dried in the shapes left by the artist's hand. But I was 
also taught that stupidity is not."
"HOW HAVE I BEEN STUPID, ROLAND OF GILEAD?" Blaine's voice was soft and ominous. 
Susannah suddenly thought of a cat crouched outside a mouse-hole, tail swishing 
back and forth, green eyes shining.
"We have something that you want," Roland said, "but the only reward you offer 
if we give it to you is death. That's very stupid."
There was a long, long pause as Blaine thought this over. Then: "WHAT YOU SAY IS 
TRUE, ROLAND OF GILEAD, BUT THE QUALITY OF YOUR RIDDLES IS NOT PROVEN. I WILL 
NOT REWARD YOU WITH YOUR LIVES FOR BAD RIDDLES."
Roland nodded. "I understand, Blaine. Listen, now, and take under­standing from 
me. I have told some of this to my friends already. When I was a boy in the 
Barony of Gilead, there were seven Fair-Days each year -- Winter, Wide Earth, 
Sowing, Mid-Summer, Full Earth, Reaping, and Year's End. Riddling was an 
important part of every Fair-Day, but it was the most important event of the 
Fair of Wide Earth and that of Full Earth, for the riddles told were supposed to 
augur well or ill for the success of the crops."
"THAT IS SUPERSTITION WITH NO BASIS AT ALL IN FACT," Blaine said. "I FIND IT 
ANNOYING AND UPSETTING."
"Of course it's superstition," Roland agreed, "but you might be sur­prised at 
how well the riddles foresaw the crops. For instance, riddle me this, Blaine: 
What is the difference between a grandmother and a granary?"
"THAT IS VERY OLD AND NOT VERY INTERESTING," Blaine said, but he sounded happy 
to have something to solve just the same. "ONE IS ONE'S BORN KIN; THE OTHER IS 
ONE'S CORN-BIN. A RIDDLE BASED ON PHONETIC COINCIDENCE. ANOTHER OF THIS TYPE, 
ONE TOLD ON THE LEVEL WHICH CONTAINS THE BARONY OF NEW YORK, GOES LIKE THIS: 
WHAT IS THE DIF­FERENCE BETWEEN A CAT AND A COMPLEX SENTENCE?"
Jake spoke up. "Our English teacher told us that one just this year. A cat has 
claws at the end of its paws, and a complex sentence has a pause at the end of 
its clause."
"YES," Blaine agreed. "A VERY SILLY OLD RIDDLE."
"For once I agree with you, Blaine old buddy," Eddie said.
"I WOULD HEAR MORE OF FAIR-DAY RIDDLING IN GILEAD, ROLAND, SON OF STEVEN. I FIND 
IT QUITE INTERESTING."
"At noon on Wide Earth and Full Earth, somewhere between sixteen and thirty 
riddlers would gather in The Hall of the Grandfathers, which was opened for the 
event. Those were the only times of year when the common fold -- merchants and 
farmers and ranchers and such -- were allowed into The Hall of the Grandfathers, 
and on that day they all crowded in."
The gunslinger's eyes were far away and dreamy; it was the expres­sion Jake had 
seen on his face in that misty other life, when Roland had told him of how he 
and his friends, Cuthbert and Jamie, had once sneaked into the balcony of that 
same Hall to watch some sort of ritual dance. Jake and Roland had been climbing 
into the mountains when Roland had told him of that time, close on the trail of 
Walter.
Marten sat next to my mother and father, Roland had said. I knew them even from 
so high above -- and once she and Marten danced, slowly and revolvingly, and the 
others cleared the floor for them and clapped when it was over. But the 
gunslingers did not clap ...
Jake looked curiously at Roland, wondering again where this strange, distant man 
had come from . . . and why.
"A great barrel was placed in the center of the floor," Roland went on, "and 
into this each riddler would toss a handful of bark scrolls with riddles writ 
upon them. Many were old, riddles they had gotten from the elders -- even from 
books, in some cases -- but many others were new -- made up for the occasion. Three 
judges, one always a gunslinger, would pass on these when they were told aloud, 
and they were accepted only if the judges deemed them fair."
"YES, RIDDLES MUST BE FAIR," Blame agreed.
"So they riddled," the gunslinger said. A faint smile touched his mouth as he 
thought of those days, days when he had been the age of the bruised boy sitting 
across from him with a billy-bumbler in his lap. "For hours on end they riddled. 
A line was formed down the center of The Hall of the Grandfathers. One's 
position in this line was determined by lot, and since it was much better to be 
at the end of the line than at its head, everyone hoped for a high number, 
although the winner had to answer at least one riddle correctly."
"OF COURSE."
"Each man or woman -- for some of Gilead's best riddlers were women -- approached the 
barrel, drew a riddle, and handed it to the Master. The Master would ask, and if 
the riddle was still unanswered after the sands in a three-minute glass had run 
out, that contestant had to leave the line."
"AND WAS THE SAME RIDDLE ASKED OF THE NEXT MAN IN LINE?"
"Yes."
"SO THAT MAN HAD EXTRA TIME TO THINK."
"Yes."
"I SEE. IT SOUNDS PRETTY SWELL."
Roland frowned. "Swell?"
"He means it sounds like fun," Susannah said quietly.
Roland shrugged. "It was fun for the onlookers, I suppose, but the contestants 
took it very seriously, and there were quite often arguments and fist-fights 
after the contest was over and the prize had been awarded."
"WHAT PRIZE WAS THAT?"
"The largest goose in Barony. And year after year my teacher, Cort, carried that 
goose home."
"HE MUST HAVE BEEN A GREAT RIDDLER," Blaine said respectfully. "I WISH HE WERE 
HERE."
That makes two of us, Roland thought.
"Now I come to my proposal," Roland said.
"I WILL LISTEN WITH GREAT INTEREST, ROLAND OF GILEAD."
"Let these next hours be our Fair-Day. You will not riddle us, for you wish to 
hear new riddles, not tell some of those millions you must already know -- "
"CORRECT."
"We couldn't solve most of them, anyway," Roland went on. "I'm sure you know 
riddles that would have stumped even Cort, had they been pulled out of the 
barrel." He was not sure of it at all, but the time to use the fist had passed 
and the time for the open hand had come.
"OF COURSE," Blaine agreed.
"I propose that, instead of a goose, our lives shall be the prize," Roland said. 
"We will riddle you as we run, Blaine. If, when we come to Topeka, you have 
solved every one of our riddles, you may carry out your original plan and kill 
us. That is your goose. But if we stump you --  if there is a riddle in either 
Jake's book or one of our heads which you don't know and can't answer -- you must 
take us to Topeka and then free us to pursue our quest. That is our goose."
Silence.
"Do you understand?"
"YES."
"Do you agree?"
More silence from Blaine the Mono. Eddie sat stiffly with his arm around 
Susannah, looking up at the ceiling of the Barony Coach. Susan­nah's left hand 
slipped across her belly, thinking of the secret which might be growing there. 
Jake stroked Oy's fur lightly, avoiding the bloody tangles where the bumbler had 
been stabbed. They waited while Blaine --  the real Blaine, now far behind them, 
living his quasi-life beneath a city where all the inhabitants lay dead by his 
hand -- considered Roland's proposal.
"YES," Blaine said at last. "I AGREE, IF I SOLVE ALL THE RIDDLES YOU ASK ME, I 
WILL TAKE YOU WITH ME TO THE PLACE WHERE THE PATH ENDS IN THE CLEARING. IF ONE 
OF YOU TELLS A RIDDLE I CANNOT SOLVE, I WILL SPARE YOUR LIVES AND TAKE YOU TO 
TOPEKA, WHERE YOU WILL LEAVE THE MONO AND CONTINUE YOUR QUEST FOR THE DARK 
TOWER. HAVE I UNDERSTOOD THE TERMS AND LIM­ITS OF YOUR PROPOSAL CORRECTLY, 
ROLAND, SON OF STEVEN?"
"Yes."
"VERY WELL, ROLAND OF GILEAD.
"VERY WELL, EDDIE OF NEW YORK.
"VERY WELL, SUSANNAH OF NEW YORK.
"VERY WELL, JAKE OF NEW YORK.
"VERY WELL, OY OF MID-WORLD."
Oy looked up briefly at the sound of his name.
"YOU ARE KA-TET; ONE MADE FROM MANY. SO AM I. WHOSE KA-TET IS THE STRONGER IS 
SOMETHING WE MUST NOW PROVE."
There was a moment of silence, broken only by the steady hard throb of the 
slo-trans turbines, bearing them on across the waste lands, bearing them on 
toward Topeka, the place where Mid-World ended and End-World began.
"SO," cried the voice of Blaine. "CAST YOUR NETS, WANDER­ERS! TRY ME WITH YOUR 
QUESTIONS, AND LET THE CON­TEST BEGIN."





AUTHOR'S NOTE

THE FOURTH VOLUME IN the tale of the Dark Tower should appear --  always assuming 
the continuation of Constant Writer's life and Constant Reader's interest -- in the 
not-too-distant future. It's hard to be more exact than that; finding the doors 
to Roland's world has never been easy for me, and it seems to take more and more 
whittling to make each successive key fit each successive lock. Nevertheless, if 
readers request a fourth volume, it will be provided, for I still am able to 
find Roland's world when I set my wits to it, and it still holds me in thrall . 
. . more, in many ways, than any of the other worlds I have wandered in my 
imagination. And, like those mysterious slo-trans engines, this story seems to 
be picking up its own accelerating pace and rhythm.
I am well aware that some readers of The Waste Lands will be displeased that it 
has ended as it has, with so much unresolved. I am not terribly pleased to be 
leaving Roland and his companions in the not-so-tender care of Blaine the Mono 
myself, and although you are not obli­gated to believe me, I must nevertheless 
insist that I was as surprised by the conclusion to this third volume as some of 
my readers may be. Yet books which write themselves (as this one did, for the 
most part) must also be allowed to end themselves, and I can only assure you, 
Reader, that Roland and his band have come to one of the crucial 
border-crossings in their story, and we must leave them here for a while at the 
customs station, answering questions and filling out forms. All of which is 
simply a metaphorical way of saying that it was over again for a while and my 
heart was wise enough to stop me from trying to push ahead anyway.
The course of the next volume is still murky, although I can assure you that the 
business of Blaine the Mono will be resolved, that we will all find out a good 
deal more about Roland's life as a young man, and that we will be reacquainted 
with both the Tick-Tock Man and that puzzling figure Walter, called the Wizard 
or the Ageless Stranger. It is with this terrible and enigmatic figure that 
Robert Browning begins his epic poem, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," 
writing of him:

My first thought was, he lied in every word, 
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye 
Askance to watch the working of his lie 
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford 
Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored 
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

It is this malicious liar, this dark and powerful magician, who holds the true 
key to End-World and the Dark Tower ... for those courageous enough to grasp it.
And for those who are left.
Bangor, Maine 
March 5th, 1991